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Hello there TORWarriors and welcome to yet another episode of the TORWars podcast. Today we present to you episode #130 where we talk about all of the wonderful information that came to us from BioWare over the last week. There are some new features here at TORWars and things are every in flux. We have some new columns you may have noticed as well as some video livestreams of the TORWars guild in action. With those columns, you may have noticed some new names on the site and we want to welcome our newest writers to the den of mischief and mayhem.
“Hey Lady, nice tentacles.”
“you say that to all the Greels….”
TORWars is always looking for great writers. People who can do more than just string a couple of words together and make a sentence. If you are looking for a creative outlet to talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic, contact me at dmhollis [at] torwars [dot] com. What we are looking for is stable content on a weekly basis, which means you will likely get a day that you need to have something submitted by so that I can publish. If this is something you can do and are deeply interested in, please let me know. I’d like to talk with you.
Enough with the business! What do you say, I stop my jibber-jabbering and get on with the show notes?
News
Game Update 1.7 – Return of the Gree
NEW RECURRING EVENT: RELICS OF THE GREE
- ● Explore Ilum’s contested area in the Western Ice Shelf to uncover the mysterious purpose of the Gray Secant, an enormous ancient Gree starship.
- ● Get ready to face a powerful opponent that awaits you at the center of this ancient vessel.
- ● Earn exclusive Gree technology, including highly-advanced weapon and armor!
- ● Look for opportunities to join this recurring event throughout the rest of the year. More details to come!
NEW SYSTEM: GALACTIC REPUTATION
- ● Check out an all new exciting way to level up your character.
- ● Advance through six ranks of increasing prestige: “Outsider”, “Newcomer”, “Friend”, “Hero”, “Champion”, and “Legend”.
- ● Earn Reputation Points by completing missions for allies such as the Gree and the Voss, or for military divisions within the Republic and the Empire.
- ● Galactic Reputation is tied to your character’s Legacy, so enjoy earned Reputation Points and ranks across all characters in your Legacy!
EA to Release Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2013 Results on Jan. 30, 2013
First Financial Update Since Free To Play Option/Cartel Market
Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013
2:00 pm Pacific Time (5:00 pm Eastern Time)
Webcast: http://ir.ea.com
Updated BioWare Response On Spymaster, Phantom, Trailblazer, and Preceptor outfits Gear Changes
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● In Game Update 1.7 (which should be going live in the next month or so), will offer versions of the aforementioned outfits as they appeared before the 1.6.2 changes in addition to the current versions that appear in the Cartel Market Packs.
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● Already have the outfits? Any player that has any pieces of the four outfits will receive the “Classic” version of those pieces as well, at no extra cost.
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● How will they know? They will scan the bank, currently equipped items, and personal mail to check for the pieces to these outfits, so be sure to remove them from a Guild Bank before then.
SWTOR Community Cantina Tour – San Francisco
Venue: Jillian’s @ The Metreon
Date: Friday, March 1st, 2013
Time: 7-11PM PST
Come Meet TORWars – TORWars Representatives Will Be In Attendance, come meet us in person!
Shout Outs:
- ● Thank You To All Our Loyal Listeners/Readers
- ● Special thanks to our Paypal Donations
- ● Enjin.com – Thanks for the Guild/Mumble hosting for the TORWars guild!
- ● Corellian Run Radio
- ● TORWars.enjin.com – Shadowlands – Imperial Side
Thank as always for listening. We enjoy your feedback so please leave it in the comments section below.
TORWars Podcast #151: Aren't You the Pretty Kitty?
Demi Moore pregnant is not what i look like
for the win ! Oh I laughed and laughed
Im really looking forward to the freeper perspective .
Bring on TORwars TV
I’m excited for Rep Grinds to be honest. I’ve long since capped my main toon in pretty much best in slot everything. Now I only log on to him once a week for Nightmare E.C. runs. I miss playing my Knight, but there is just no purpose to play him outside of raids atm. (I don’t PvP). My time is better spent gearing up and leveling alts.
Rep grinds will be a great reason to get back on my “main” and have some some reunion time questing with him again haha.
Thanks for another great episode and shout out to Brian for the livestream videos!
Always fun to watch if I can’t play
So this post was censored and I got temporarily banned from the swtor forums because of it. God Knows why.
My thoughts on Makeb SGR’s:
I’ve said this 1000 times and the developers have yet to get it right: If you’re going to make an alteration/improvement to SWTOR, you’d better make sure it makes the game more enjoyable for the first time player, not just the “elder gamer”.
Unfortunately, churning out more high-level flashpoints, planets, operations, etc…seems to be Bioware’s philosophy. It’s as if they were on a mission to retain customers, rather than attract new ones.
Now, we know there was a fraction of the community which, although small, were extremely vocal about SGR’s being implemented. For some reason, out of all the other things Bioware could focus on instead, they chose to appease this sub-set of the community. I get that, fine. I’m all for having more interaction with companions, whichever flavor it comes in. It’s just the manner in which they did it that strikes me as being completely nonsensical.
So here’s my problem, in a nutshell: NPC’s with which you can interact with romantically, even though they’re of the same gender? Fine! But to only add this in POST-LEVEL 50 content?! It makes virtually zero sense. I mean, am I really I supposed to buy that after all those long months of grinding my way to level 50, my character is suddenly and inexplicably overcome with homosexual impulses the moment he steps foot on Makeb? No wonder it’s been coined by the sensationalist media as Star Wars’ “gay planet”!
Please. Get with the program Bioware. If you were going to do this you have should have done it on the starter planets and taken it from there.
Why on Earth BW would censor this comment, I don’t know, but I’m sorry they did. This is why TORWars is here though, so people can say what they want.
I also have one thing to say about your comment….
THIS! So much this!!!!
I hadn’t quite thought about the fact that only 50+ will be the only ones to see this content and it made me rethink my opinion and thoughts a bit. It should indeed be in lower level areas, but I can see why BW didn’t do that. What 50 is going to spend time going back to someplace like Dromund Kaas and seek out a specific NPC just to have a SGR fling with them? Maybe some will, but the best way to get an overwhelming majority of people to see this SGR content is to put it where the player is.
Just some food for thought. Either way, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on TORWars.
Thanks for the input, Deirdre. Big fan of your show
I would say that reputation grinding should be rewarding. Rewards should be valuable, and on par with operation drops (though maybe not the very hardest operations). I don’t agree that offering valuable rewards somehow gates entry into raiding. Raids are designed to be accessible without being geared in best available in every slot.
Where that became an issue was with competitive progression raiders who felt that they needed to arrive at the raid the day it opened with every single advantage they could find, in order to achieve world firsts. They were frustrated that there was good gear out there that wasn’t immediately available to them, but was instead intended for people who enjoyed extended solo work. To me, this is an example of the game working as designed.
In fact, one of the original reasons for reputation grinds in WoW (during the Argent Dawn days in Eastern Plaguelands or the Timbermaw patterns in Felwood) was to offer the non-raiding pve player a way to earn end game gear.
The reason this is so appealing to me is that it is right in line with another stated objective: giving players reasons to visit other planets. Characters progress through a number of detailed and well-designed worlds and then never return, so Bioware doesn’t get any value out of them beyond the initial questing pass. This allows them to leverage existing content in a new way to give max-level players a greater variety of things to do.
Yes. Yes. Yes. AND YES!
Yeah, I hope they get creative about the rewards they give the player for reaching new tiers of reputation. Unique emotes/moods, for instance (preferably ones you can actually use in in-game cut-scenes), unlocking a new body type for reaching the uppermost — what is it, Champion? — tier, and finally, unique armor sets and titles (seems boring, but an obvious choice).
But you want to know what would make this system REALLY interesting? If NPC’s reacted to you differently, depending on your rep.
Why stop there, though? The possibilities are potentially limitless: What if players were given a statue of themselves, to place at a non-instanced location of their choosing, in celebration of their reaching level cap in the achievement system? A gift worthy of a champion!
This reward would of course only be available for a limited-time only, lest planets start getting overflowed with the things.
[...] that all their metrics are amazingly good. We hope to find out on January 30th how good, when EA has their latest quarterly financial status call. Until then, all we have to go on are carefully worded statements from the development and [...]