One of the anticipated things for the 1.2 Legacy patch was the Ranked Warzone Preseason, allowing players to begin matchmaking to prepare for Season 1's ranked slots. Unfortunately, it didn't make it in - BioWare said in a blog post yesterday that they had to delay it. There's no expected time when it will go live, but BioWare said they wanted to make sure it was 'polished and fun.' More as it develops!
A lot of nice improvements were made in a patch yesterday, tweaking a lot of blaster users - most notably, the sniper and the gunslinger. The former's Ambush, Series of Shots, and Takedown powers have had their damage increased by about 5%, and likewise with the gunslinger's Aimed Shot, Speed Shot, and Quickdraw. There's some other bug polishes, but this is a very nice set of tweaks.
At long last - after all of the hype of the new UI, tweaks to crafting, and new battlegrounds overhauls - Patch 1.2 is on the horizon. The TOR site confirms that April 11th late to early morning April 12th is when the servers will be going down, and then the patch will be live, with all the new goodies it comes with. If you weren't stoked already, you will be now.
Swanky! Coming in the 1.2 patch for TOR is a huge change to the layout, which allows customization previously unavailable.
The Lead Interface Artist Michael Voigt explains and breakdowns all of the information, including how they opened up the option to the more conventional UI kit, which looks to be the standard set by World of Warcraft and its ilk. But if it's not to your liking you can completely rearrange all of your interface as you see fit, save it to a file, and even share this among character slots or between friends. And he even says there's more changes planned!
The 1.2 patch is getting even more exciting with all of these features on their way out the door.
At long last, the heavily demanded PvP changes are coming to The Old Republic.
It's almost an unreal amount of content here, but I'll cap off the biggest stuff. Starting with the 1.2 Legacy patch, PvP will be in Pre-Season, giving Bioware time to collect data on it. Ranked will be enabled for players at level fifty. Warzone reward systems will be improved, and it will always place importance on your team's score instead of your personal score. AFK players can be vote kicked. PVP stats will be tracked, such as kills, medals, solo and group ranked wins and losses, and the like. Additionally, a new warzone will be added - Novare Coast, a domination map with three points.
For big fans of PVP, this is great news, bringing a lot of highly requested changes, and it's just the first of many planned. More behind the link!
If you have a friend into TOR and you wanted to give it a shot, it looks like you got your chance - instead of waiting for a free weekend, get him to invite you, as he now has quite a few spares. The original number of free invites allowed were three, and instead that number has been increased to twenty five. So, yeah, you can definitely get a few friends to play.
Uh, wow, this is something I really didn't expect to see in The Old Republic - legacies.
You know how the Skywalkers had an entire family, including Mara Jade and all of their kids? That's something Bioware thought would be cool to implement into this game, so they did. You can now link your characters across a single server, which opens up new options and abilities. That is so cool.
See the video after the jump.
If you missed it the first time, don't worry - there's more where that came from! This weekend is another free shot at the Bioware MMO.
Unfortunately, the account you have to sign up for has to be brand new, meaning no temporary play of your cancelled account, or your free trial from last time. But all the same, more free The Old Republic, between the 22nd and the 25th! Get ready to sign up this Friday.
More patch details for The Old Republic, dealing with the changes to crafting and researching!
Lots of great stuff in this patch, most notably the highly-requested ability to make your weapons (in other words, your lightsaber) any color you want, disconnected to the stats the crystals have. Aside from some more perks added to armor and weapon crafting, more was added to reverse engineering to give more results and make it act more consistent. There's also several tweaks to slicing, making it so slicers have a much higher demand for their products and making them more valuable.
The full breakdown is behind the link. 1.2 is looking to be a pretty excellent update to the game so far!
New developer blog for The Old Republic! Instead of patch notes or game balance, we get more of what we love in Bioware's MMO - story elements, as told by one of the writers, Charles Boyd. Minor spoilers if you want to go into the new content blind.
Three new areas have been opened to all players, and the first is on Corellia - the Black Hole. But instead of being sucked into a vacuum from which your body is stretched and hung in perpetual timespace limbo for decades, you must work to claim the area for your faction for its valuable hypermatter, crucial starship fuel. But in your way is a corrupt Corellian councilor, who seeks to manipulate both sides for his own gain.
The second is the Lost Island Flashpoint, on Kaon, where a rakghoul plague has broken out. But the creator has learned how to spread it to any other species - or planet - and you are tasked with hunting him down. The third and final new area is on the planet Denova, with Operation: Explosive Assault. Its name is indicative of the content, as an explosive material is being contested. Mercenaries and Imperials have combined forces to work with - strangely - the Republic and the Empire. But what's going on behind the scenes? There's more to this than it seems.
No word yet on when 1.2 drops, but with the sheer volume of content they're adding - including interface changes, most notably - this is a big update to everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.
