Tag Archives: Star Wars The Old Republic

The LA Times has posted a retrospective on Star Wars: The Old Republic, and in it, the piece revealed that quite a lot of work from many sectors went into creating the game. So much so, that Bioware co-founder Greg Zeschuck likened coordinating the efforts to “teaching elephants to do ballet.”

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AbleGamers has given Star Wars: The Old Republic its 2011 Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year award due to its strong performance when put through a string of accessibility tests for the disabled.

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Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter has said concerns over sales figures for Star Wars: The Old Republic and the resulting drop in EA stock prices are due to outside “speculation”, as NPD’s sales figures don’t show a complete picture. According to Schachter, the majority sales for the MMO were likely through Origin, and since NPD doesn’t track the service, the figures weren’t taken into account. The analyst believes around 1.5 million copies of the game were sold through Origin, but until EA releases its financials for Q4 and FY11, the exact figures will remain speculative. Another analyst, Wedbush Securities’ Michael Pachter, is of the same opinion as Schachter, but said the figure is likely closer to 800,000 through both retail and Origin, and the game will have sold 2 million units by the time its first anniversary comes around. Thanks, Gamasutra.

Bioware has released a video discussing the plans it has in place for Star Wars: The Old Republic over the next few months. As previously promised, UI customization, more Flahpoints, Warzones, and an updated Legacy system are in the works, along with Guild features such as a Guild Bank The storyline introduced with Update 1.1 storyline will also be concluded in the March update, and it will bring with it ranked Warzone matches, abilities earned through the Legacy system and more. Check out game director James Ohlen discussing the changes and upcoming content below.

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Investors have been scared away from EA by an analyst’s prediction that Star Wars: The Old republic won’t live up to prior expectations.

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A PvP exploit was brought to the attention of Bioware with SWTOR Update 1.1 forced the developer to issue an emergency fix today, along with a stern warning to players who used the exploit to their advantage.

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Bioware has released Update 1.1 for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rise of the Rakghouls, which the game’s director said will “show everyone how serious we are about expanding” the game’s universe.

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After announcing an initial delay for SWTOR Update 1.1, Rise of the Rakghouls due to “issues requiring additional testing,” Bioware has announced it intends to bring servers offline in order to apply the patch during the wee hours on January 18.

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Cowen & Co analyst Doug Creutz has estimated that EA has invested close to half a billion dollars in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Speaking with MarketWatch, Creutz said he believes EA has “minimized its risks as much as it can” on the MMO, “but it’s still a risky bet” and how well the investment pays off will rely on “how Star Wars performs.” Last year, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter estimated that in the end, EA would have invested $80 million in the game. SWTOR was released on December 20 and shortly thereafter, EA announced that 1 million users had signed up, garnering over 60 million hours of in-game play time. Thanks, Spong.

BioWare has significant, immediate plans for the future of Star Wars: The Old Republic – and an even bigger strategy beyond that.

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Bioware has announced a few details regarding upcoming additions to the Legacy System in Star Wars: The Old Republic, which allows users to create relationships between their characters, and develop a family tree of sorts.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic’s director, James Ohlen, has said he disagrees with the “unfair” assessment that the MMO is an adequate effort, but one lacking in innovation.

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Bioware has announced game Update 1.1, Rise of the Rakghouls, will be released for Star Wars: The Old Republic next week.

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James Ohlen, game director for Star Wars: The Old Republic, has said that some of those playing the MMO have gone to great lengths to reach max level on their characters.

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Purely neutral Star Wars: The Old Republic players will eventually have access to exclusive sweet loot, just like their hardcore light and dark side brethren.

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Bioware’s community manager Stephen Reid, as promised, as gotten to the bottom of discrepancies between the “low,” “medium,” and “high” texture options in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Turns out, the “medium” choice was never meant to exist in the game, meaning only “low” and “high” were actually implemented. So, the choice of “medium” was a bug. Interesting. Reid explains everything in lovely technical detail, and much better than we could, through here.

Bioware has said only a small percentage of Star Wars: The Old Republic players are experiencing performance issues with the MMO, and the majority are running the game on a low-end PC.

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“I think we would definitely do it over again given the opportunity, or a time machine. I think we can see a lot of things we could have done differently given the benefit of retrospective vision, but I also don’t think we would have changed many decisions. It would more have been a process of refinement and fine tuning to our plans.Certainly testing even more than we did, and doing so earlier would have been a good goal. I also think in retrospect we would have been able to weight some of our technical decisions differently given that we ultimately knew what worked after the fact and what needed a lot of work; there was no way of knowing that in advance, but in retrospect that would have helped quite a bit.” – BioWare’s Greg Zeschuk, speaking to TORWars on the difficulties of launching an MMO such as Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The MMO’s out now.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is officially the most ambitious entertainment product in terms of voice acting.

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James Ohlen has said SWTOR players can expect patches to fix bugs and exploits found in the newly launched MMO “almost every week”.

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