[SWTOR] Dev Tracker Summary

[Arlee]

Here is a summery of the Dev Tracker blog for this week. Link to the full article with links to the posts here.

Sr. Online Community Manager Stephen Reid

• Queuing as a 8 man ops group will be for ranked warzones only in Patch 1.2
• There is a plan for whenever cross server queuing is implemented to allow people to create teams that can be named.
• They are not currently developing a MAC OS client.
• The importance of Ilum in PvP will be lessened in 1.2. Rewards that you got in Ilum will also be obtainable in warzones and that is where they expect the majority of PvP to take place.
• Only certain skills will be unlocked with the Heroic Ability, and players do not get to choose what ability they will unlock. The Heroic Ability will require an active companion and will have a cooldown.

Assistant Community Production Coordinator Courtney Woods

• Announced the start of the Friends Trial Program
• posted a video covering the Features of Patch 1.2
• Announced the Weekend Pass Free Trial

Principal Lead Combat Designer, Georg Zoeller

• Confirmed that sorcerers were not nerf'ed in 1.1.5
• Confirmed that the upcoming Group Finder feature is going to be single-server only.
• Macros are possibility in the future, they just do not want macros that will automate combat (mouse over healing does not fall into this category).
• Species is a feature that can be unlocked through credits instead of just having to level one to 50.
• The Heroic Abilities will not be something that can be unlocked with credits.
• Legacy xp gains are lower for toons that are 1-15 to discourage people from making throw away alts to abuse the system.
• There are no current plans for a 64-bit Client
• Every class will see enough changes that they are granting everyone a free respec
• The cost of all Tier 3 speeders will go up in 1.2. The cost for training will go down in all 3 tiers.
• Certain landspeeder models will be removed from the game.
• In 1.2 endgame Lightsabers will be fully moddable
• You will be able to match individual pieces of gear against chest color.
• You will be able to extract set bonuses of endgame gear onto custom gear
• Pointed out that different classes work differently and have different abilities
• explained why free respecs were being given in 1.2
• Cross-server warzones are coming (did not say if that was in 1.2 or not)
• Reusable stims are not being removed from the game. What they are doing is not putting in new reusable stims to keep up with the new tiers of content.
• In 1.2 you will be able to Reverse Engineer Shotguns and Vibroblades.

European Community Manager Chris Collins commented on why the “Darth” title was fixed to “Dark” for our French players.

And finally, Sr. Community Coordinator David Bass updated the 1.2 testing call for guilds thread with more details, specifically asking for guilds that applied to ensure that: each player patches to the Public Test Server and logs into it before submitting your team list via email.

[Dakia]

Holy crap Zoeller has been busy. About the biggest thing out of all of this for me was the clarification on their stance on macros. Also, the statement that mouse over healing is consider QoL and not macro-like in nature to them. That is a big plus that tells me we will be seeing such functionality coming.

[Leonard McCoy]

Indeed. What it means is that BW will have to build their own built in mouse over healing function into the game.

[Darsithis]

I'm surprised about not adding a Mac client. Not that anyone has particularly brought it up, but the more platforms the better. And yay for cross-server warzones!

[Dakia]

I'm surprised about not adding a Mac client. Not that anyone has particularly brought it up, but the more platforms the better. And yay for cross-server warzones!

We've had quite a few threads on this forum about a Mac client. That is also something I'm surprised that they haven't pursued.

[Raeli]

So you, as a Mod will be making more regular "news" type posts? It seems lately you've made a few posts like this. I'd certainly like to see it continue is all, it's basically the sort of thing I've been longing for, regular news updates, cause let's face it, none of the SWTOR fan sites are anywhere near as good and updated as often as MMO Champion for WoW.

[Arlee]

So you, as a Mod will be making more regular "news" type posts? It seems lately you've made a few posts like this. I'd certainly like to see it continue is all, it's basically the sort of thing I've been longing for, regular news updates, cause let's face it, none of the SWTOR fan sites are anywhere near as good and updated as often as MMO Champion for WoW.

Yes that is the plan (not saying other mods can't make news posts as well, it's just something I am particularly focusing on). It started with a thought to just do Patch notes in a way that is similar to how we do them on blizzard updates and sort of gone from there. They have a lot of news that comes out often and I figured it would be a good idea to highlight that stuff and in the long run it would help the community.

Anyone can always PM me feedback you guys have on it too!

[Leonard McCoy]

So you, as a Mod will be making more regular "news" type posts? It seems lately you've made a few posts like this. I'd certainly like to see it continue is all, it's basically the sort of thing I've been longing for, regular news updates, cause let's face it, none of the SWTOR fan sites are anywhere near as good and updated as often as MMO Champion for WoW.

That's not true at all especially for news and info. Oldrepublic and forcetremor are both excellent. Darthater is good only because it has curse money behind it and will sometimes get an exclusive interview here and there.

[Koalachan]

We've had quite a few threads on this forum about a Mac client. That is also something I'm surprised that they haven't pursued.

Off topic, took me a second to recognize your new avatar.

On topic, I have a few friends who have macs. One is having problems getting bootcamp to work, mostly in the needing windows 7 aspect. I guess he has the XP CD, which is what it came with or something, but its complaining XP is too old and it will only take 7. I really see no reason at this point to not even be considering a mac client, as they seem to be doing. It will only broaden their player base.

[Raeli]

That's not true at all especially for news and info. Oldrepublic and forcetremor are both excellent. Darthater is good only because it has curse money behind it and will sometimes get an exclusive interview here and there.

Of course, it's hugely subjective since it's my opinion, but personally I don't think that all of those three combined are as good as MMO Champion. Just alone on the size of the community.

Darth Hater has a habit of not posting anything for days, and then two to three articles at once.

Force Tremor seems quite promising, it feels the most like MMO Champion, although it remains to be seen yet how they will do at datamining patches and such, and the community is extremely small still, so the forums aren't too active.

Oldrepublic I can't really explain, but something about it just rubs me up the wrong way, I don't like it. I can't explain why, but I don't.


MMO Champion, at least for WoW has a huge community, it has updates nearly daily, and when there are things coming out such as patches, you'll often see several patches through the day, datamined files and so on. Darth Hater has shown this coming through the beta, and they've shown that they're terrible at it in comparison. MMO Champion also has a website that's easy on the eye after reading for a while. Force Tremor and Darth Hater's dark styles look cool, but for reading the forums over a long period of time, it strains the eyes too much. MMO Champion's background is light, but it's not pure white, so it's not too much contrast.

So generally, I stick to my opinion that overall, none of the current fan sites hold a Candle to what MMO Champion does for WoW, and certainly if I can expect to see a nice amount of updates coming through from Arlee, I'll certainly spend more time here. I usually pop to other sites only for a few moments to read their news page, however I spend a lot of time on MMO Champion because they have very active forums, certainly the most active in regards to SWTOR that I've seen so far, other than the official ones.

[Qwell]

I'm surprised about not adding a Mac client.

sucks, but it falls in line with 90% of other videogames made. Macs get gipped frequently--unless you count iOS. they say that it's too resourse intensive for not a large profit out of it. can't blame 'em, Macs don't make up a large (or even somewhat large) portion of the market. their new OS is way better than 7, but also you have to figure "how many gamers actually USE/WANT TO USE a Mac for gaming" and then realize the answer is depressing.

[Deleted]

[*]Confirmed that the upcoming Group Finder feature is going to be single-server only.

I really like this, the news of a group-finder that could have been cross-server is mainly what made me lose all interest in the game, if they go by it like this I might actually return. I will wait and see though, I still want them to add the possibility to move set bonuses so you can customize end-game gear. Really like the Ilum daily quest change as well, it was a pain to farm those chests every-day having to log on at low-peak hours to even have a chance of collecting them all.

Looks like the game is heading towards the right direction at least, I'm glad.

[Raeli]

I really like this, the news of a group-finder that could have been cross-server is mainly what made me lose all interest in the game, if they go by it like this I might actually return. I will wait and see though, I still want them to add the possibility to move set bonuses so you can customize end-game gear. Really like the Ilum daily quest change as well, it was a pain to farm those chests every-day having to log on at low-peak hours to even have a chance of collecting them all.

Looks like the game is heading towards the right direction at least, I'm glad.

Well unless they do something about all the lower population servers, a single server group finder might not help all that much. Afterall, if there's only 50-80 50s online, some of which are PvPing, some of which are Raiding etc, only so many are wanting groups, it will help a bit, but those low population servers are still going to be low population.

Unless 1.2 brings a significant increase in the amount of players actively playing, they're really going to have to start merging some servers - and that doesn't mean the game is dying, they can just come out and say "yep, sorry guys, we made a mistake with the numbers. We put out way too many servers at launch." I mean, SWTOR has a number similar to the amount WoW has, yet only a fraction of the player base, it seems a little like overkill.

[Arlee]

I really like this, the news of a group-finder that could have been cross-server is mainly what made me lose all interest in the game, if they go by it like this I might actually return. I will wait and see though, I still want them to add the possibility to move set bonuses so you can customize end-game gear. Really like the Ilum daily quest change as well, it was a pain to farm those chests every-day having to log on at low-peak hours to even have a chance of collecting them all.

Looks like the game is heading towards the right direction at least, I'm glad.

Actually George did also confirm that you can move the set bonuses from end game gear to other customizable gear as well.

[Roxinius]

please sticky this if you'll be doing this with the dev tracker stuff would be nice

[Arlee]

The problem with Stickies is people tend to just ignore them... which then defeats the point of posting the info. Also the info is really only relevant for a fairly short period of time, so given that these posts shouldn't have too much of an issue with at least remaining on the first page while it matters. We'll definitely keep an eye on it and do something different if it seems to not be working.

[Redblade]

I'd love to see a similar feature like the forum filter added to the dev tracker on the front page where we could select to get the TOR dev posts with the WoW once or just the TOR/WoW once by them selfs. Guess it's not very likely but one can always hope.

[OhpUldum]

I'd love to see a similar feature like the forum filter added to the dev tracker on the front page where we could select to get the TOR dev posts with the WoW once or just the TOR/WoW once by them selfs. Guess it's not very likely but one can always hope.

You can always suggest it in the suggestions and feedback section of the website. However I will mention that it was discussed previously by mods and admins of the site, so far we're getting news bits on the front page which lets be honest is a first for MMO Champ which has primarily been a dedicated WoW news site, because that is what it was at its inception.

[philefluxx]

Hmmm the speeder thing pisses me off. It should be expensive for the skill, not the actual speeder so I don't go broke collecting them...

[Redblade]

You can always suggest it in the suggestions and feedback section of the website. However I will mention that it was discussed previously by mods and admins of the site, so far we're getting news bits on the front page which lets be honest is a first for MMO Champ which has primarily been a dedicated WoW news site, because that is what it was at its inception.

I kinda figured I wouldn't be the first with the idea, if you all have been discussing it at some point I'd consider it suggested already, and yeah the major news bits are a nice addition to the site in my opinion.