SWTOR information gathered thus far from various sources

[Jojobinks]

Was this event anything special

I don't see how it could be - space combat is just a mini-game really and a 30 sec clip is probably as informative as a 10 minute video of it.

[Deleted]

it was really short ye, tbh to short i got to do only 4 quests it was verry nice but like you said 20min would have been way better, but then again it beats no play time at all.
at first i didn't want to skip cutscenes but with so much noise i couldn't even understand a word they said, it was nice to see the detail in the faces tho. and got to play BH

[sammiam]

I did read that, and that's strange. I'm very curious to see actual numbers since BF3 is rumored to be about 1/2 a million...

My guess is that they were comparing week one of preorders of swtor to week one preorders of other games. Looking at VGchartz in April, when BF3 first appeared on thier top20, they were adding 7k a week, and were at 40k, so had been available for preorder for probably about a month. In contrast, TOR was on thier top20 the first week it was available for preorder, at something like 140k preorders in the first week, and have been adding more than 70k per week, so a factor of 10 sounds about right.

I do agree that VGchart doesn't seem to have the whole picture, since my guess is TOR easily broke 500k preorders, and is most likely closing in on 1 mil, if they havent hit it already. Thats just this layman's opinion.

EDIT:

"In an interview on Reuters, Eric Brown mentions Electronic Arts took over 200,000 pre-orders in the first couple days of Star Wars: The Old Republic being available." -http://darthhater.com/2011/07/26/electronic-arts-q1-2012-earnings-conference-call/

Acording to the July 23rd to 30th list from vg (http://www.vgchartz.com/preorders.php?date=40755), swtor sold around 23k units from July 21st to July 23rd, then almost 115k the first full week of reporting. Obviously there is some disconnect from VG and Mr Brown. Considering VG reported 300k+ preorders as of last saturday, and VG appears to be anywhere from 1/2 to 1/5 of what the actual numbers are, I think 1-1.5 million preorders already in is a safe guess.

[Marksman79]

Do these beta invites come in your regular e-mail or SWTOR account mail box?

Good question. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

Also, it's almost time for another Friday update...

[moaradin]

Good question. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

Also, it's almost time for another Friday update...

regular email(hotmail, etc.) that you have signed up to your SWTOR account.

[tarconus]

Good question. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

Also, it's almost time for another Friday update...

they come in your regular email, you can also check by loging into your account and going to swtor.com/tester

[sammiam]

Good question. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

I belive an email is sent to your regualr email, though I assume if you get a mail sent to your community site inbox, a "you have mail" message is sent to your regualar email.

They link they send you to in the email is this: http://www.swtor.com/tester. Once your account has been flaged, a message will pop up there telling you how to dl the client.

[jvbastel]

About the raiding, I'm not sure what to think of it, there's some things I really like a lot, but some I didn't want to see in.

For example, when he said normal mode, I died a little bit inside.
Normal/hard mode in wow is awful IMO. Noone likes having to run the same content twice as progression.
This is what I like in rift, 1 mode per content.

Also, he made it seem like the normal modes were just to be steamrolled through by everyone.

What I did like, was the loot system. It's good that everyone gets something.

I want to know more about the lockout system, I would prefer to just have no lockouts at all.

My main reason for playing SW:TOR will be endgame raiding, so I hope it's good

[SinR]

I'll be honest, I really want to get into the beta so I can get a head start on the ginormous 40 GB download I'm looking at. Playing the game before headstart is a very nice plus.

Of course, a shady torrent of the current game client works just as well

[Marksman79]

I'll be honest, I really want to get into the beta so I can get a head start on the ginormous 40 GB download I'm looking at. Playing the game before headstart is a very nice plus.

Of course, a shady torrent of the current game client works just as well

First of all, the 40gb download is only for the Beta, which is not streamlined and has a LOT of extra data that the release client won't have. I expect around 20gb or less.

Now, you can download a shady torrent, but you would not be able to connect to their servers if your account is not flagged for Beta testing. The next best thing is for a person in the community to host their own private server. The only problem is that they would have to throttle players so much that you'd be waiting hours to play unless they own a room full of servers. And even then...

[Deleted]

I've read that article last night but didn't post anything about it here not to start mass panic that the game will be easy as hell. I think that lootbags for every meatbag idea is good and I think that we should all understand that this will be the first operation in the game. People will get out of questing and flashpoints and suddenly their group size isn't 4 anymore, it's 8 or 16. There must always be an introduction raid in any game.

I remember going for the 1st time in BWD with my guild, and getting to Chimaeron, everyone was like WTF this boss is bugged, WTF this needs to be nerfed NOW, etc and going through trial and error to find out why we're wiping over and over. And when we finally cleared him and got to Nefarian, that was simply the mind killer. I liked the difficulty (we all did, I think, since no one guild quit during the encounters ) but I would understand if raiding would need to be easier in the beginning, for players to grasp the basic concepts etc. If I were a game dev, I know I wouldn't slap players first emerging from quests with Nefarian There needs to be something that introduces raiding to players, something easy to grasp, and it looks like EV will be that operation. I'm pretty sure that in the end, they will add harder and harder operations in expansions. I think the major reason Blizzard decided to make Cataclysm a lot harder was because new players stopped coming in and old players weren't getting challenged anymore. I don't know how wise that was in the end (random dungeon failure rate increased 700% in Cataclysm), but it was very fun for me, personally.Bioware, never underestimate the number of players playing a game for 6 years and still sucking at it

Btw, remember when Blizzard introduced some (very) hard raids in The Burning Crusades? The trailer ended with a very angry Illidan saying "You are not prepared". I almost renewed my sub right there and then I'm hoping the next expansion will bring something a lot more challenging to TOR as well.

[sammiam]

First of all, the 40gb download is only for the Beta, which is not streamlined and has a LOT of extra data that the release client won't have. I expect around 20gb or less.

Now, you can download a shady torrent, but you would not be able to connect to their servers if your account is not flagged for Beta testing. The next best thing is for a person in the community to host their own private server. The only problem is that they would have to throttle players so much that you'd be waiting hours to play unless they own a room full of servers. And even then...

I think they meant for release. It's something I did for BC and Wotlk... invariably someone gets the discs early because they are an employee at a video game store, or an online retailer sends them the game early. So they rip the discs and put them on tpb.

[SinR]

Yeah, I'm not lookin forward to spending my headstart week downloading 40GB at 80KBps (did the math, its literally a week straight non-stop downloading at 80KBps).

[sammiam]

Yeah, I'm not lookin forward to spending my headstart week downloading 40GB at 80KBps (did the math, its literally a week straight non-stop downloading at 80KBps).

Where do you live that you only get 80 kbps? I honestly feel really bad for you. Are you in one of the rural parts of the US where the telecom companies have basicly said "fuck them, they dont get high speed internet because the profit margin isn't large enough"?

[Saverem]

yea :-( guess they wanted to shorten the que, i even skipped most of the voice overs (to much noise to understand anyway) since i mainly wanted to test the combat.
at least i got to lvl 3 on my BH (premade chars aswel your not allowed to make one sadly guess else most ppl won't see more then the char creation screen in that time)
in wow i hated pvp ever since they added resilience, but in swtor i really wanna go for pvp.

I find it really strange that MMOs like GW2 and Tera which won't even be out until 2012 is letting people access lots of their gameplay and such like letting people start a premade at max level, GW2 let people play their game's PvE and PvP for hours, yet SWTOR, a game that is supposed to be released in a few months are still not even letting people create their own characters?

I don't like this sign, it reminds me too much of Warhammer when they kept that game a close secret until it was finally released, and it was a piece of garbage.

---------- Post added 2011-08-19 at 07:37 AM ----------

Yeah, I'm not lookin forward to spending my headstart week downloading 40GB at 80KBps (did the math, its literally a week straight non-stop downloading at 80KBps).

Get a better connection? If you don't have access to one, rent a room at a hotel that has a fast connection for a day and DL it there. Also, how do you even play MMOs with such a connection? I remember trying to play WoW on a NetZero connection and I gave up after 2m of playing.

[Deleted]

I find it really strange that MMOs like GW2 and Tera which won't even be out until 2012 is letting people access lots of their gameplay and such like letting people start a premade at max level, GW2 let people play their game's PvE and PvP for hours, yet SWTOR, a game that is supposed to be released in a few months are still not even letting people create their own characters?

I don't like this sign, it reminds me too much of Warhammer when they kept that game a close secret until it was finally released, and it was a piece of garbage.

Here's a thought: they got 30-40 PCs ready for people wanting to play the game, yet many complain about waiting hours in line to get to them. Someone in this thread said he waited 4 hours for 10 minutes. If it were a 20 minute play time, he would have waited a lot more. GW2 didn't have half as many fans wanting to play.

[Marksman79]

I think they meant for release. It's something I did for BC and Wotlk... invariably someone gets the discs early because they are an employee at a video game store, or an online retailer sends them the game early. So they rip the discs and put them on tpb.

The time of discs is coming to an end. The Beta client is out there already, and it is very much playable. It could be ripped and distributed; that isn't the problem. The problem is that MMO's don't just rely on the client, they must connect to a server which hosts all of the character and account data for each player. Think about this. A cracked Beta client was placed on TPB. Someone decided they would host a server. Unless they have dedicated server hardware ($$$) and a speedy internet connection, they won't get far. To prevent them from crashing every second, they would have to throttle players. With the amount of demand, it would be easy to imagine waiting in a line for hours just to get into someones private server. All this is ignoring the host of problems that arise when trying to run a MMO server from a cracked client, which is still in Beta no less.

The ONLY way I could see this happening is if some tech guru figures out a way to allow players to host their own local servers and connect to them with a cracked client. This would essentially be like playing single player. You could potentially host the server for friends using programs such as Hamachi to support the connections. Again, this is all reliant on an amazing tech guru to figure this all out. It's not an easy undertaking, and being <3 (not a heart) months away, I can't see many fruits as a result of the labor.

Edit: In regards to the second paragraph, anyone who has hosted a Minecraft SMP server on their computer for friends knows what I am talking about.

[Saverem]

I'll be honest, I really want to get into the beta so I can get a head start on the ginormous 40 GB download I'm looking at. Playing the game before headstart is a very nice plus.

Of course, a shady torrent of the current game client works just as well

You do realize they won't be using that client for the actual game, right? Even if you DL that beta client, you'll still have to DL the actual live client when the game comes out. Good news is that the live client is smaller than the beta client most of the time. I'd say the live client will be around 30gb.

[Pool of the Dead]

About the raiding, I'm not sure what to think of it, there's some things I really like a lot, but some I didn't want to see in.

For example, when he said normal mode, I died a little bit inside.
Normal/hard mode in wow is awful IMO. Noone likes having to run the same content twice as progression.
This is what I like in rift, 1 mode per content.

Also, he made it seem like the normal modes were just to be steamrolled through by everyone.

What I did like, was the loot system. It's good that everyone gets something.

I want to know more about the lockout system, I would prefer to just have no lockouts at all.

My main reason for playing SW:TOR will be endgame raiding, so I hope it's good

Though having normal/hard modes i feel is a better model than just one normal mode.

In rift after i killed the raid once i was like...hmmm yeah that was easy, next please, oh wait same guy again every week from now on.

yet in WoW i like being able to kill a boss and think that was challenging, lets go back through it again! But harder next week!

just like in singleplayer games where i finished it on normal and went through again on harder difficulties.

having an Easy Normal mode raid lets most people "experience" the story and bosses, while having a hard mdoe lets people experience it, but with a challenge for greater rewards.

[Tenilius]

Has there been any word on whether or not we will be able to build our own lightsabers during the starting zones of the game?
I think it would make the learning experience much more interesting.