Totalbiscuit Interview: Gabe Amantangelo

Posted by FelizB on Jan 26, 2012 in News, noindex, Star Wars: The Old Republic | 0 comments

Here’s an interview by Totalbiscuit with Gabe Amantangelo, SWTOR lead developer of operations, flashpoints and pvp. Various topics are being covered from flash points, immersion, faction balance, pvp only skills, endgame, operations, UI configuration and mods, crew skills

In a Rush: Soloing on Korriban

Posted by FelizB on Jan 24, 2012 in Guides, Star Wars: The Old Republic | 0 comments

This guide is supposed to help you getting through Korriban as a Sith Inquisitor or a Sith Warrior as fast as possible, without leaving anything out. The guide will not describe every single step along the way, only things that should be done at certain points in the game. Quests that are offered along the obvious path should all be picked up and finished. They will only be mentioned if more explanations are needed or if there is some obstacle to overcome.

Arrival

Once you are through the opening sequence, stop to set up your UI preferences, your key bindings and your quickslot assignments. Then run out into the valley, bind and kill a few slugs for the first bonus quest. Then head into the tomb and do the quest offered there. Otherwise, you won’t have money to train. Finish up the quests in the tomb and head to the academy. Don’t forget to bind on your way in.

Academy

Follow the class quest within the academy. Both classes will be sent to the lower wilds as their next step. See your trainer before you leave the building. Pickup and finish the Allegiance quest at the taxi stand before you head for the lower wilds. By now you should be level 4 or halfway to level 5.

Lower Wilds

From the taxi stand a quest will lead you to Lord Renning’s camp.  Lord Renning’s quest will lead you deeper into the wilds. Stay on the right side of the canyon to pick up another quest from a datapad and continue following the right wall around a corner and a bit uphill to pick up your first datacron, a willpower+2 datacron. Finish all quests in the area, then hand in Renning’s quest. Leave the area using the taxi stand above the camp. There’s a bind point as well.

Back at the Academy

Back at the academy turn in the remaining quests. After the class quest, you can pick up 3 more quests: Jailbreak which leads you into he same area as your class quest, “Purity”, which has you checking 4 Sith academy members and “Blood Legacy”, which we will finish once we return. Scan the academy members inside the building, head to the taxi stand and finally to the shuttle to scan the last member. Pickup the “Armed and Dangerous” heroic quest from the mission board there. Across the shuttle behind a wall and looking into the canyon, you’ll find the endurance+2 datacron.

Into the Tomb of Tulak Hord

Right at the entrance to the antechamber you can get the heroic quest “The Hate Machine” and just after the imperial guards on the right wall, you’ll find a holopad with another quest. Pass through the antechamber with a little side trip to pick up your class quest items. Once inside the atrium, follow the path to the right, until you pass through an arch. To the left of the arch within a little hole is the next datacron with a red matrix shard. It is sometimes protected by a level 8 champion. Leave him alone and get him on your second pass through the tomb.

Continue to the archives to pick up the class quest items. Don’t forget the lore object behind the tablet and a potential treasure chest in the same room. Ignore the heroic quest. Remember, you want to solo this and you are level 7 right now. Not going to happen. Once outside in the atrium again, pickup the parts for the Jailbreak quest and continue to the machine vault. Rinse and repeat, get the class quest item, ignore the heroic quest, try to get a chest.

Once back in the atrium, wrap things up: make sure you have the jailbreak pieces, finished the bonus quest and got enough robots killed. You also should have been able to kill the Slave Rebellion Leader (lvl 6, Elite) on each pass through the atrium.

Academy

Turn in your quests. You might not be level 8 yet for “The Blood Legacy”, but you should be able to solo it anyway, just use your stuns or crowd control spells to get some rest for yourself. The force and health gained during those short breaks is usually enough to push the elite mob over the edge.

Tomb of Naga Sadow

By now you should be level 9 or close to it. Your class quest will send you into the Tomb of Naga Sadow for the last steps on Korriban. The problem is, Sith Warriors have now already Vette by their side, while inquistors have to fight their way in solo in order to find their companion Khem Val. On your way in, you pick up three more side quests and another bonus quests. Nothing more needs to be said about those.

For a Sith Warrior, the end of the class quest line and all side quests is straight forward, no further difficulties to be expected. The side quests require one more trip to the Tomb of Naga Sadow after turn ins at the academy.

The inquisitors face a couple of harder fights against level 10 droids marked strong, plus the final fight against Khem Val, before he gives in and follows you. You may die a couple of times on your way in. Keep trying or wait until you turn level 10.

Tomb of Tulak Hord Once More

Once you’ve finished up your class quest on Korriban, you can either go back right away to the two heroic quests in the tomb. You should be level 10 by now and those quest shouldn’t be much of a challenge anymore. Or, if you are overly careful, you can go to the fleet first and pick your advanced class and crewskills. By the time you’ve done that, you are already level 11. And now the heroics should be really easy.

Winding Down

In winding down I want to say just one more thing: Don’t obsess about gear. Pick up what you can, but don’t go out of your way to get that eighth Korriban Commendation for your blue chest piece. By the time you turn 13 you’ll have it replaced already, even as early as the next flashpoint. Plus, in this level range things really aren’t gear dependent. Also, don’t waste your money buying gear from the vendors.

The Moat Around World of Warcraft And How Bioware’s SWTOR Gets Around It

Posted by FelizB on Jan 5, 2012 in Blog, Current Games, Featured, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft | 0 comments

Investor Warren Buffet has coined the term economic moat as an almost insurmountable advantage of one company over another company in the same industry. Typical names that come up in this discussion are Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart. Any new company that wants to compete with these two is looking at a very long time with minimal income before they will be able to come even close.

Does this mean World of Warcraft has a moat? You bet. Just look at all the features it offers and how many of them new games like Rift or Star Wars had implemented at their release date. Here’s an incomplete list:

• Dungeon Finder
• Raid Finder
• Extendable User Interface
• Accomplishments
• Guild Perks
• Plethora of Pets
• Flying Mounts
• WOW Armory
• Class Balance
• Economic Balance
• In Game Events

Of course, at first, this list doesn’t look to bad, but these features have to be implemented, tested and rolled out and balanced. How hard will it be to implement a cross server dungeon and raid finder for SWTOR? It’s my gut feeling, not backed up by many facts that they’ll have a harder time to do that than Rift.

While playing Star Wars, of course I notice issues where I can clearly say, that Bioware will have to either take some lessons from Blizzard or learn them the hard way. For instance I am not sure, if the economy around the Galactic Trade Market will ever become viable. The auction interface is certainly not up to it. The bigger problem there will be the underlying supply and demand of raw materials and finished goods. I can see for instance that there’s far more metal for armor and arms available than there are crystals for synthweaving and artificing. It is open where it will find a balance, but I question if the Bioware designers have put much thought into the subject. But that is part of the moat I described.

Having said that, Bioware might not need to conquer the moat, simply by building their own castle. Bioware’s loyal customers are RPG fans who’ve kept their distance to MMORPGs. But the way it looks, with Bioware’s story driven approach and a lot of voice acting, that barrier is torn down. The ingame chat has certainly seen its amount of WOW comparisons, but they’ve actually died down relatively fast. Thus, Bioware isn’t taking away much of WOW’s market share. Bioware is expanding the market. Something everybody in the industry will be grateful for.

Objectivist Gamer

Posted by FelizB on Jan 5, 2012 in Blog, Current Games, Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft | 0 comments

While playing last night, somebody mentioned in chat the usual “SWTOR plays like WOW” and of course started a small storm. What was different this time, it wasn’t just a troll, but a gaming writer who was reviewing the game. Which of course gives the discussion an entirely new dimension.

I can certainly see where the opinion comes from: There are many aspects which are very similar, for instance the user interface and the skill tree. But that is a good thing. Every MMO player wants to be able to type /who, or find the social menu bound to the O key, as well as configurable hotkey bars. But there are enough differences aside from the voice dialogues which make SWTOR stand out over WOW.

In any case, I didn’t want to start a lengthy rant, but wanted to point to a site of a professional game reviewer and to his work. Most of his reviews cover the general gaming area and much less MMOs. That, by itself is an interesting fact, since obviously SWTOR pulls in Bioware’s RPG fanbase with their familiar story driven games, just like WOW brought Blizzards RTS crowd into the MMO mixture.

I am looking forward to his review and his viewpoint.

SWTOR Overview to Sith Sorcerer and Jedi Sage Guides

Posted by FelizB on Jan 3, 2012 in Guides, Star Wars: The Old Republic | 0 comments

The Sith Sorcerer and the Jedi Sage, although using light sabers are primarily casting classes. Both classes are able to heal and to deal burst damage through their Lightning or Telekinesis trees or using the Madness and Balance trees to deal periodic damage.

Here are a few guides I came across when researching the Sith Sorcerer and the Jedi Sage advanced classes. The SWTOR main forum hosts these guides for the Sith Sorcerer and the Jedi Sage. Both guides are nearly identical, having only translated the Sith and Jedi abilities and vocabulary. In the long run it’s probably easier to read the guide for the side you choose, since you’ll be much more familiar with the skill names.

The guides themselves contain an introduction of the class, details about the three skill trees, builds for various scenarios, more information about the companions, about equipment and crew skills.

Another set of great guides (PvE only) comes from sithwarrior.com, which wants to be the prime theory crafting site for SWTOR. There’s the Sith Sorcerer Healing Compendium, which of course is valid for Jedi Sage’s as well. Both, the Madness/Balance Sorcerer DPS Compendium and the Sith Sorcerer/Jedi Sage Lightning/Telekinetics Compendium follow SithWarrior’s standard format with ability descriptions, builds, how to play the build and how to gear.

This table lists the builds discussed in all guides. Builds named SW xxx are from sithwarrior.com , all others from swtor.com

PvE Healer	Standard 32/7/2 Offensive Leveling 30/9/2 SW Healer 31/7/2	Standard 32/7/2 Offensive Leveling 30/9/2 SW Healer 31/7/2
PvP Healer	PvP Standard 32/7/2	PvP Standard 32/7/2
PvE Telekinesis / Lightning	Standard 3/31/7 SW 3/31/7	Standard 3/31/7 SW 3/31/7
PvP Telekinesis / Lightning	PvP Standard 3/31/5 +2	PvP Standard 3/31/5 +2
PvP Balance / Madness	Sever Force 3/7/31 Hybrid Telekinesis 0/13/28 SW Sever Force 0/7/31 SW Telekinetic Wave 0/13/28 SW Telekinesis Effusion 0/17/24	Creeping Terror 3/7/31 Hybrid Lightning 0/13/28 SW Creeping Terror 3/7/31 SW Chain Lightning 0/13/28 SW Lightning Effusion 0/17/24
PvP Balance / Madness	PvP Sever Force 3/7/31	PvP Creeping Terror 3/7/31

SWTOR Sending Out Progression Guides For Advanced Classes

Posted by FelizB on Jan 1, 2012 in Guides, News, Star Wars: The Old Republic | 0 comments

Star Wars: The Old Republic has started sending out progression guides by email to players who’ve reached level 10 for their class. The guides introduce the advanced classes to the players and give some insight into their capabilities. Since many players actually missed choosing their advanced class, the guide explains how to pick it while at the fleet’s docks.

Furthermore, there’s a short section about Flashpoints and some more information about your brand new ingame companion is given. A quick rundown of the players crew skill options is provided and the guide closes with a description of the Warzones.

Here is a list of the progression guides:

Jedi Knight	Sith Warrior
Jedi Consular	Sith Inquisitor
Smuggler	Imperial Agent
Trooper	Bounty Hunter