Rise of The Hutt Cartel: First Digital Expansion

[Deleted]

IGN article + long video of the ROTHC gameplay: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/2...y-far-far-away

1 thing that absolutely terrified me. The loading screen in the video takes literally 1 minute. If this is the loading on high-end machine, I can't even imagine how long will it take on my laptop :| Next thing they should prioritize is engine optimization IMO

[notorious98]

IGN article + long video of the ROTHC gameplay: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/03/2...y-far-far-away

1 thing that absolutely terrified me. The loading screen in the video takes literally 1 minute. If this is the loading on high-end machine, I can't even imagine how long will it take on my laptop :| Next thing they should prioritize is engine optimization IMO

Considering they were likely shooting this at BW Austin, I'd hope they're using high-end machines (although, for some reason, it wouldn't shock me if they weren't). My question is why everybody insists on saying they're continuing your personal story? This "personal quest" isn't any more personal than any other planetary story arc.

[Deleted]

My question is why everybody insists on saying they're continuing your personal story? This "personal quest" isn't any more personal than any other planetary story arc.

They pretty much said it that it's over for class stories in Darth Hater interview:

Q: Where does the development team stand with regards to individual class stories? Are these still a priority for upcoming content?
A: Great question. The way you choose to overcome your own personal villains is a crucial part of what defines your character, and once you’ve gotten closure on your personal story, you’re ready to be a key player in the larger conflicts that threaten the Empire and the Republic. Moving forward, we’re focusing on those stories – conflicts that decide the fate of the entire Galaxy and demand the attention of other living legends like yourself. You can still put your personal touch on these stories, and you’ll develop relationships just like before, but now the stakes are higher, and the experience can be shared with your friends.

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/f...-bruce-maclean

So yeah. I'm of course disappointed, but I get why it won't happen again (the cost would obviously be too high). But this means that Bioware needs to include greater variety/depth of the choices in the planetary/faction arcs. Without spoilers, my Empire character declared that he wants to make the Empire kinder, more light and transform it into his Light Side image. I didn't role-play or 'imagine' this, the game gave me the specific options to say it loud and clearly. So the future planetary/faction arcs needs to be flexible enough to respect that. Unlike it was in the original planetary arcs which rarely allowed me to actually do what my character proclaimed he wanted to do. The planetary/faction arcs treated everyone like an Empire cheerleader who will go 100% with the current direction and style of 'doing business' of the Empire.

Same goes for Republic players and the Dark Side. If they're going with faction arcs from now on, these arcs need to include sabotage from-within options, outright betrayal, defiance of orders etc on both sides.

[notorious98]

That Q&A was terrible. My favorite was the Cathar deflection followed by the cookie cutter answer we've already seen. "Why Cathar considering it wasn't one of the favorites of players?" "Well, different players have different favorites." What a load of shit. Then there was just a bunch of "Soon".

As far as the story goes, yeah, it's going to need to be much more robust than the other planetary arcs. For example, you finish area A, if you choose LS you go to area B, DS and you go to area C. Something to that affect. I think you should meet different people and do different things based on your "morality" choices.

[Edge-]

@ That interview:

I like how he says a race is "Decidedly not very Imperial." Because Sith are totally Republic and Jedi? >.> (Honestly, I don't know, so tell me if I'm wrong.)

I think they need to stop pretending to adhere to any semblance of lore and just go with what makes sense with gameplay. They don't seem to be able to make it work with the lore (FFA PvP zones make total sense with lore...except not), and focusing so heavily on it seems to have really put them in a corner : /

Other nitpicks:

16 advanced classes? He mans 8, right? Because mirrored classes and all.
Grey morality! They've been silent for a year on this, but it's nice to see them actually talk about it again. I feared they'd forgotten. Too bad I'm screwed on my existing characters. Fuck you binary morality systems, you're terrible.
Dual spec... weren't they like, against this in the past? I remember them being resistant to the idea for some reason. It really doesn't make sense to not have it with the way the rest of the game is set up.


Side question: Were the APAC servers hosted locally or from the US? Because apparently they're merging them with existing NA servers, meaning APAC players will enjoy populated servers finally, but at the cost of a few hundred ping : /

[notorious98]

I'm not sure about APAC servers. Those players started out on EU servers to begin with (if memory recalls).

Funny you should bring up those two things (morality and dual spec). At the SF Cantina, grey morality was "coming soonish" and dual spec was on the Wall of Crazy. Imagine that shit? Dual spec in an MMO, in this day and age, is considered to be "Wall of Crazy" material.

As for the species, if I'm understanding your question correctly, you're asking if Sith Purebloods are Republic and Jedi? For that, of course, the answer would be "no". But they've decided to kick lore to the curb for the sake of "Legacy". In fact, there was an interview with Erickson before TOR launched and one of his responses was "You are not going to be seeing a Sith Pureblood playing a Jedi". I guess they weren't listening when he brought that up in the meeting.

[Window]

I got a bit lost with the information for this expansion its basically 5 levels a slight increase to the main story, cat people and a chance to get gay on the planet right
no new companions or companion questslines etc

[Redblade]

Funny thing that Q&A, We love the idea! Given that it would make our players very happy too, it’s pretty high on the list of things we want to tackle sometime soon., this about something that was promised and being developed a year ago...same as the years of individual class stories they had lined up.

[ariakul]

So what happens if I decide to NOT purchase the expansion?
Do my crew skills increase to 450 still?
I know my level will be locked at 50, what will the new WZ groups be: 1-54 and then a 55?

[Kelimbror]

So what happens if I decide to NOT purchase the expansion?
Do my crew skills increase to 450 still?
I know my level will be locked at 50, what will the new WZ groups be: 1-54 and then a 55?

Unfortunately I don't think any of these specific questions have been addressed, but I could be wrong.

[WarpedAcorn]

I would assume Warzones would be 10-49, 50-54, and 55. Of course they could be uber trolls and make it 50-55 so that all the people who don't buy the Patch will be forced to PvP at a severe disadvantage that will force you to upgrade or quit. Conversely, things could get really interesting if they make the lowbie bracket 10-54. That way people who don't buy the Patch can play forever in the lowbie bracket without ever having to worry about leveling out it, and 54's won't have a distinct advantage due to bolster. It could be a twinks' dream.

[Lathais]

it is a bad business move because it alienates a large portion of mmo users. such as those who are unable to purchase anything online (like myself) due to not having a credit card. if there was a way to purchase the expansion in cash then i would be all for it, but it seems that is not the case.

on a side note, if they were worried about it not being worthy of creating boxes then they could have included more content (at the very least include the cathar in the expansion instead of putting it into the cartel market)

Checking accounts with most banks are free and typically give you a debit card for free as well. Even if this is the only thing you use it for it's free and does not come with fees like the prepaid cards do. I currently bank with a Credit Union and everything is free. As long as my balance stays positive I can keep zero dollars in there and it costs me nothing. I can then deposit $15 at an ATM to my account and use my debit card to pay. This is assuming you live in NA of course, I do not think banks in other areas are much different though.

[ariakul]

I would assume Warzones would be 10-49, 50-54, and 55. Of course they could be uber trolls and make it 50-55 so that all the people who don't buy the Patch will be forced to PvP at a severe disadvantage that will force you to upgrade or quit. Conversely, things could get really interesting if they make the lowbie bracket 10-54. That way people who don't buy the Patch can play forever in the lowbie bracket without ever having to worry about leveling out it, and 54's won't have a distinct advantage due to bolster. It could be a twinks' dream.

I was initially thinking 3 brackets too, but then thought they would probably do 2 to help with queue times. Like you stated, it will be a twinks dream for people. I'm sure they'll pull a WOW then and let you level to 55 realizing this, much like how it was with the burning crusade expansion in WOW with twinks.

[Slugfest]

Side question: Were the APAC servers hosted locally or from the US? Because apparently they're merging them with existing NA servers, meaning APAC players will enjoy populated servers finally, but at the cost of a few hundred ping : /

A brief history of that situation was this: initially, a bunch of APAC guilds banded/allied with each other before launch to take advantage of being placed on the same servers. The biggest groups/alliances ended up on The Harbinger server. At the time I was working 2nd shift and joined up with an AU guild so I could raid but I ended up getting a 1st shift job right before launch. Despite this, I stayed in the AU guild/got placed on the Harbinger and waited to see what happened.

Fast forward a few months and EA/BW decides to open some servers overseas (servers were in AU I believe) due to poor pings or perhaps to open a better market for oceanic players. BW/EA gave free transfers for oceanic players and many of them took it. Several guild left for the new servers as well. I decided not to go, due to the new work shift and tried my luck with other guilds still present on the Harbinger. Fast forward a few months again and, despite having 3 different server types, the new oceanic servers started to bleed players at a high rate. The oceanic community have been asking to have JUST THOSE THREE SERVERS consolidated into one server but it appears that they are being sent back to the US west coast servers again.

The ironic thing about this is that The Harbinger still appears to the highest population of all the remaining servers. I even said something to the effect of "transferring to a brand new server is not necessarily going to solve the problem of overall server populations decreasing."

When I raided in WoW before I left that game, I was on the Aman'Thul server (oceanic). I don't know where the server was physically located but I never had any issues with ping being too high to raid or to PvP occasionally. I guess that 200+ pings for some of the oceanic players while playing on the west coast servers was/is simply too high for them to be 'competitive' in PvE or PvP and many (according to the mega thread on the SWTOR forums) are threatening or have already un-subbed.

No easy solution for this one.

[Orange Joe]

it is a bad business move because it alienates a large portion of mmo users. such as those who are unable to purchase anything online (like myself) due to not having a credit card. if there was a way to purchase the expansion in cash then i would be all for it, but it seems that is not the case.

on a side note, if they were worried about it not being worthy of creating boxes then they could have included more content (at the very least include the cathar in the expansion instead of putting it into the cartel market)

Large portion? You know how easy it is to get a prepaid credit card?

[Deleted]

Great NEW detailed preview from Dulfy, must read!

http://dulfy.net/2013/03/26/swtor-ma...roids-preview/

My personal highlight:

GSI dailies

GSI dailies can be picked up as soon as you start the Macrobinocular/Seeker Droid quest lines. They combine the usage of seeker droid and macrobinoculars and create daily hubs in previously under populated planets. There are GSI daily terminals located on planets such as Alderaan, Hoth, Makeb, and Tatooine. Each planet has their own unique series of solo dailies and [Heroic 2]s.

Amazing! This will distribute 50s-55s to lower levels planets just as it should be! Best news to me so far, more of this Bioware, give new incentives to revisit old planets!

Meanwhile...

Makeb is also the first planet in SWTOR with same sex romance options with quest NPCs. Players can expect female to female flirt options on the Republic side and male to male flirt options on the Empire side.

I see what you did there Bioware...

[Edge-]

Well, getting people back to older planets is nice and all, but dailies -_- The fucking worst.

And is that serious? There isn't one for each gender per faction?... That's not going to go well for them if that is the case.

[Orange Joe]

Well, getting people back to older planets is nice and all, but dailies -_- The fucking worst.

And is that serious? There isn't one for each gender per faction?... That's not going to go well for them if that is the case.

I didn't catch that at first. Kinda stupid to even include them then.

[Deleted]

Well, getting people back to older planets is nice and all, but dailies -_- The fucking worst.

Aren't these dailies for GSI rep only though? At least that's how I understood it. Unless they also provide some end-gearing comms

I didn't catch that at first. Kinda stupid to even include them then.

And the implications... Lesbians only on the good side while gays only on the evil one lol. Let's just hope Dulfy didn't get all info correctly

[Edge-]

So looking through some info on DH/Dulfy now...

Macrobinoculars seem interesting, though I hope that's not one of their "new" systems. Seems like an interesting side-activity while questing, but far from impressive.
Seeker Droids...I'm glad they're still not even bothering to hide the fact that they take most of their inspiration from WoW...It's archeology without much of an attempt to differentiate itself from WoW.
Makeb content apparently 7-9 hours. I know that's not all the content in the "expansion", but that's pretty disappointing, especially since dailies are apparently one thing that is supposed to keep you busy...
Lol again at Republic getting F-F and Empire getting M-M only flirt options.

Hopefully they'll have more info to announce soon, because I'm pretty underwhelmed : /