The patch notes from last night’s maintenance are now up. As you might expect, they’re mostly bug fixes and minor tweaks of various kinds. Without further ado, here they are, right from BioWare. Is there anything in this patch that intrigued you? Anything that was a thorn in your side, and you’re glad they [...]

The servers are up, and so are the patch notes for 1.1.1, take a look after the jump!

Photo-Receptor Focus on:  Eternity Vault: My First TOR Ops

by Maer

A little over a week ago I had my first SWTOR raid experience.  It took me awhile to get to level 50, but I finally made it and geared up my Sorc for operations.  I was excited to see how raiding in TOR would compare to other games (which shall remain nameless) that I used to play.

More after the jump…

I love raiding.  I’ve been a raider for almost six years now and it’s an important part of my gaming play style.

Wondering what TOR operations were going to be like, I was thrilled to be raiding again and hoping ops would meet my expectations.  I love the chance to work with other people in a large group and take out bosses.  The social aspect, as well as the chance to progress in endgame content, fascinates me.  Being an experienced raider, I wanted to be sure I was as ready as possible.

Gear as high as I could get it?  Check.

Stims?  Check.

Medpaks?  Check.

We gathered outside the entrance to Eternity Vault and waited for our ops leader to give us the go-ahead to enter.  Sixteen people stood still or danced or chatted or hit up a guild crafter for extra consumables.  You could feel the anticipation and excitement.

Then it was time to go in.  I won’t spoil the fun, so I’ll leave out specifics and just talk about my general experience.

Being back in raid felt like coming home.  It didn’t matter that I’d never raided with the folks in my new guild before.  Because we had people who had never raided much before, I was ahead in that department and felt comfortable in my role.

We listened as our raid leader went over our rules, explained the first fights and gave out assignments.

Then it was time to buff up and begin. As first ops go, it went pretty well.  We had some wipes in the beginning, as everyone settled in and adjusted to each other.  But folks learned their limits and boss mechanics and we got that first boss down.

The second boss went much smoother.  We wiped once, discovered the “fire bug” (no spoilers, so I’m leaving it at that) and then downed that bad boy.

All in all, it was a fun night.  However, the quest is bugged and only those in the group who had the kill shot got credit for completion.  Tickets were opened.  It’s a known issue, so they got closed pretty fast.

I can tell I’m going to love ops and I’m quite excited about the new ops group I’ve joined.  TOR definitely meets my raiding expectations and I look forward to progressively more difficult fights.

That’s my two credits on my first raid.  How was yours?

Ready…set…discuss…

Early this morning (midnight PST) the good people at BioWare performed their weekly maintenance. Although the scheduled the maintenance was “expected to take no more than eight hours, but could be extended”, in fact it took only half that amount of time. Once again, BioWare overdelivered on maintenance to their players. Gotta tell you, friends, [...]

BioWare pushed out patch 1.1.1 this morning, and with it quite a few more fixes and items than the previous patch!

The full patch notes can be found below, and of course you can always get these and all previous patch notes on BioWare’s official page dedicated to the topic

Classes and Combat

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Global Cooldown to appear as if it has been cancelled when it is actually still in effect, resulting in a feeling of unresponsiveness to input.
• Corrected an issue that could cause an ability icon to appear usable but be unresponsive to clicks or keypresses for several seconds.
• Players revived by other players, including by in-combat revival abilities, now revive with 25% of maximum health.

Jedi Knight

Guardian

• Freezing Force: Now correctly lasts 9 seconds (up from 6 seconds).

Jedi Consular

Sage

• Mental Alacrity: Now correctly costs no Force to activate.
• Salvation: No longer heals targets twice on application. It now correctly heals all affected targets once when applied.

Smuggler

Scoundrel

• Flechette Round: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• K.O.: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Shoot First: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.

Imperial Agent

Operative

• Acid Blade: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• Jarring Strike: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Hidden Strike: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.

Bounty Hunter

Mercenary

• Sweeping Blasters can now be made free with Thermal Sensor Override.

Powertech

• Oil Slick now correctly costs no heat to activate.

Flashpoints and Operations

Flashpoints

Directive 7

• Bulwark’s Area of Effect cone abilities now properly fire in the direction Bulwark is facing.
• Some of Bulwark’s abilities were incorrectly susceptible to interruption. Bulwark is now immune to interrupts.

The False Emperor

• Fixed a conversation that could cause the cinematic with Arkis Wode to function incorrectly.

The Foundry

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the final fight in this Flashpoint from beginning after the cinematic.
• The final boss can no longer become stuck in an invulnerable state; there was still a small window where this could occur.

The Red Reaper

• Lord Kherus now grants less experience.
• Some of Lord Kherus’s abilities have had their damage values adjusted to be more in line with the level of the Flashpoint.
• Players now enter into melee range with Lord Kherus in order to stop him from throwing crates.

Operations

Eternity Vault

• Players no longer randomly die in this Operation after being in Gharj’s lava.

Karagga’s Palace

• Foreman Crusher’s enrage now includes a movement speed increase, allowing him to catch players who attempt to run.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Materials Disposal Unit’s main control station from becoming useable again after the Operation Group is defeated by the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator on 16-man Hard Mode.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator from deploying the correct number of Proximity Pulse Mines and Security Stun Drones during combat.
• The damage from G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator’s sticky pulse grenade will scales appropriately for the selected Operation difficulty level.
• Karagga no longer fires his Unstable Energy twice in a row.
• Taking the shuttle after defeating Karagga no longer transports players to the incorrect hangar.
• Walls that were missing in Karagga’s Palace are now in place.

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue that prevented some players in Operations Groups from receiving credit for the missions “[WEEKLY] Deadly Operations,” “[WEEKLY] Galactic Operations,” and “Journey to the Belsavis Depths.” The entire Operations Group now receives credit when the objective is completed.

Items

Bug Fixes

• Comparative tooltips for researched items no longer have their stats reversed.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

Imperial

• Declaration of War: The mission will now progress as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• Debriefing: The ship Holoterminal conversation related to this mission is no longer repeatable.
• The Eagle’s Nest: The Assassin’s Fortress mission is now correctly a prerequisite for this mission.
• Number One with a Bullet: Corrected an issue that prevented Bounty Hunters from leaving The Founder.
• The Mandalorian Killer: Thendys Noori no longer continues to heal Kellian Jarro after she has surrendered.
• Reallocation: The final mission conversation will now begin as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• The Voice of Darkness: Fixed an issue that could cause Class Story mission progression to enter an incorrect state.

Republic

• Death Spiral: Fixed an issue that prevented Jedi Knights who completed the Commander Rayfel encounter from using the shuttle back to Belsavis Orbital Station.

NPCs

Bug Fixes

• Kintan Behemoths no longer occasionally walk on top of trees when in combat.

PvP

Warzones

General

• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from receiving mission rewards for completing Warzones.

Voidstar

• Players are no longer able to climb out of the attacking team spawn area in the hangar before the match starts.

World PvP

Ilum

• Additional base turrets now protect the taxi location inside each faction’s base.

Space Combat

General

• Added two daily mission commendations to the high-level space dailies Operation Ascendant Pride (Imperial) and Operation New Eclipse (Republic).

UI

General

• Attempting to loot an item in a group when the Master Looter is off-planet now generates an error message.

Bug Fixes

• The leader of an Operations Group will no longer receive an incorrect message informing them that their companion has been dismissed.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Special items related to different editions of the game have been re-sent if they were deleted by the mail system prior to being claimed.

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Editor’s Note: Today we take another stroll back in time, and re-ask a question that we asked long before Star Wars: The Old Republic was in the hands of players. This time, it’s all about reputation systems. 

Learning that there wasn’t going to be any sort of reputation system in Star Wars: The Old Republic was sort of a let down for me. This revelation came as a bit of a surprise, since this type of system has been an MMO staple almost since the beginning of time. The ability to gain (or lose) favor with a given group of NPCs to unlock content or rewards presents an opportunity for interesting dynamics, especially in the Star Wars galaxy where political undertones play such a big part in the story. As a matter of fact, this page has been on the Holonet since the site launched in 2008. It looked ripe for expansion, but nothing ever came of it. That page sure made it look like a reputation system in waiting!

On the down side of these systems, the implementation of these reputations or factions in other games tended to lean toward the “grindy” side of available activities, and we know BioWare is interested in removing that aspect of the genre as much as possible. Now, you might be able to make the argument that the companion system is a type of “reputation” system, but I think that is a stretch.

Still, I think with a little creativity and ingenuity, a reputation system could work in a game like The Old Republic. What if it were called “diplomacy” as opposed to reputation? It suddenly takes on a whole new life. Perhaps this is something that BioWare would add to the game through an expansion, or maybe we’ll never see it at all.

How about you? What do you think of the absence of a reputation system in TOR? Do you miss it? What ideas do you have to make one that isn’t so “grindy”? Let’s hear ‘em!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

EA will have their Q3 2012 Earnings Call on Wednesday, Darth Hater will cover this with our normal live blog at 2 PM PST.

We hope that EA will announce subscription numbers in additon to the total number of box sales YTD.

In the meantime, a look at VGChartz gives us some idea of what the sales numbers may look like for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We tracked the pre-order numbers using this site and now we can look at it from the post-launch sales perspective. Here are the numbers for the week ending January 21:

• Title: Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Weeks Since Release: 5
• Platform: PC
• Global Total Sales: 2,061,403
• Global Weekly Sales: 61,708
• Global Weekly Rank: #10

Note: Sales numbers come from retailers only and may not include digital. Due to this, the numbers above are not 100% accurate and may be under or over-represented. 

Now that it’s well over 6 weeks into the life of SWTOR, there’s no shortage of Level 50s running around. Unlike those who levelled up in the first week or so, most of those who’ve reached end-game will have actually experienced the storyline in at least a brief sense. Some will have put in a [...]

Breakdown is designed to to fill that stressful void while Star Wars: The Old Republic is down for maintenance. Each Tuesday morning, we’ll look at a topic and try to break it down to the basics. In the end, we hope to educate, entertain, and prevent you from having your own Breakdown!

If you follow the official TOR forums at all, you will see more than a few threads repeating themselves trying to clarify some of the basic features of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Here in Breakdown, we’ll try to present all the currently known facts about how the game works in an easy to read format. Hopefully, we can clear up a few misconceptions, and answer a few questions; maybe we will even fill you in on something you didn’t know.

This week’s Breakdown is about Enhancements! If you’re an Artificer or a player over level 30, you know that the enhancements go from only having a few options, to having several dozen (about 56 at my last count). Enhancements come in almost every arrangement of secondary stats you could want, and they come in multiple quality grades; each one more difficult to craft than the next. This week, we’re going to break down all the different types available to you, so that you know which ones you want to slot into your favorite set of custom gear.

First, let’s start with some definitions:

Primary Stats: These are things like Strength, Endurance, Willpower, etc… They have a direct relation to how your character performs. Each class has a primary stat which increases almost everything they do.

Secondary Stats: These are derivative stats like Crit Rating, Surge, Power, etc.. and they are merely bonuses to your character’s performance. Secondary Stats, unlike Primary, are affected by diminishing returns. It has also been rumored that Power is not affected by diminishing returns.

Enhancement: This is the name of a specific modification slot in gear. Enhancements are universal, in that they are on both weapons and armor. Enhancements themselves can be purchased for commendations, or bought from an Artifice Crafter.

Enhancements can come in [Premium], [Prototype], and [Artifact] quality; they will always have Endurance on them, and then 2 other Secondary stats. The reason there are so many different combinations is due to the fact that you can get those 3 stats in different values.

Here is an example:

Acute vs. Finesse

Both of these enhancements have the same 3 stats, but each has a different value. The important thing when choosing an Enhancement is to figure out which stat is most important to you.

Now, let’s get on to the list! I am using the green version, because they are the most widely available. Higher quality versions will have higher values, but the proportions will remain the same. (Also note there are duplicates in here which I will show, but strike out. These are covered elsewhere on the list.)

As you can see, there are many duplicates, and with time maybe this will be fixed to help fill in a few of the missing combos.

Hopefully this will help you next time you decide to peruse the Galactic Trade Market (and remember that the one on Nar Shaddaa is cross faction), or the next time you hit up your local Artificer. As always, I hope I’ve helped educate you on more of the basics, and I hope you’ll join me next week when the servers are down for another Breakdown!

Greetings fellow Hunters, and welcome to another installment of Bounty Hunter Weekly – where we’ll look at all the various aspects of what it means to be the best Hired Gun in the Galaxy. This week we’ll be taking a look at the Advanced Class the Mercenary, and specifically – basic healing with the Bodyguard [...]