Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Morreion]

SWTOR Launches!

'Little risk of failure': Analysts predict SWTOR will turn a healthy profit (Massively)

Pachter's predictions for the title are sizable yet reasonable; he thinks that SWTOR will get 1.5 million subscribers. This translates to $270 million per year in revenue, $80 million of which will be pure profit for EA after LucasArts and operating costs take their share. Even if SWTOR only draws in -- or sustains -- merely 500,000 subscribers, Pachter says the game will be sitting pretty.


IMHO, it'll do well with box sales and initial subscriptions, but I'm not so sure that it'll keep those subscriptions like WoW has. I could be wrong!

Star Wars: The Old Republic beta test attracts 2 million players (Massively)

The game's publisher, EA, announced that the SWTOR test phase drew in over 2 million players, and of those 2 million, 750,000 unique players jumped into the game over the Thanksgiving weekend alone.

EA also shared some interesting statistics about the game's test players. Over the holiday weekend, players averaged about 12 hours of game time each for a grand total of over 9 million hours of playtime across the playerbase.

Some SWTOR Hub guides:

New Player Handbook
Character Stats
Combat Basics
Planetside Travel
Space Travel
Jedi Knight
Bounty Hunter
Smuggler

Massively Exclusive: The Force ghosts of past, present, and future with SWTOR's James Ohlen [Updated]

How about sitting in your chairs other than your ship?

It's hard to say on that one. That one may be an easier one. That may be one we can do soon or very soon. It involves content changes but pretty safe content changes. That's another thing -- a lot of this stuff that we do will be based on the feedback that we will be getting from people. If people are demanding more chairs, then we will up the priority on that one. The chairs on the ship was kind of our prototype, but it came in late. I know chair-sitting should be complex, but we didn't wanna go around and touch every level.


Even WoW allowed you to sit in chairs...has there even been a game released since then that allowed you to sit in a chair? Sad.

Exclusive Legacy System Interview (SWTOR Hub)

At launch, it is simply a system that you unlock at a higher level to give you a different form of experience, and it allows you to unlock a surname that you create for your ongoing legacy. Star Wars is all about these family legacies; the Skywalker family legacy, or the Organa family legacy. All of those are really integral to a great Star Wars experience, and so the system is our nod to that.

BioWare's Emmanuel Lusinchi Explains What Happened to SWTOR's Unify Color to Chest Piece Feature (Ten Ton Hammer)

The bad news is... well, this won't be in for launch. The system we are currently working on isn't quite done yet and has many dependencies. After taking a hard look, we decided it would be preferable to keep Color Matching turned off for launch rather than try to do a potentially messy post-launch conversion. If anything, the live changes we made during testing to other systems (like the cover system or the item modification system) have shown us how confusing switching things under people's noses can be.

Exclusive Interview - The Future of PvP in The Old Republic (SWTOR Hut)

Swtorhub: Do you think normalized power levels has helped increase accessibility for new or more casual PvP players vs. slicing warzones into individual level range brackets?

Dallas: Yeah, and I do think there are some pros and cons to that. We’re certainly listening to player feedback because there are valid arguments on either side.

For the base of the system, which is to say, if I want to play a warzone right now, I can always get into one. I think the way that we’re currently implemented is great, but there are some edge cases there that we’re trying to address. They may not be addressed immediately, but in future launches we might change the system a little bit to address some of the feelings of imbalance that I think people are already talking about; especially when you get really, really high end players in there.


By the way, 'normalized power levels' mean that there is no level restrictions in instanced PvP- everyone from 1 to 50 plays in the same instance, with damage and hit point boosts for non-50s.

BioWare updates fans on staggered SWTOR launch (Massively)

You'll see more servers coming online tomorrow, and almost certainly there will be some queuing. That was always expected. As a reminder, our plan here is to maintain healthy server populations post launch, and during the excitement of launch that will mean queues. That said, we'll be working hard to keep those queues reasonable.

BioWare announces SWTOR grace period, scheduled maintenance windows (Massively)

BioWare has granted players a two-day grace period from launch. What this means is that players have from the beginning of launch on December 20th until 12:01 a.m. EST on December 22nd to enter their game registration codes.

SWTOR brings up six new servers to match demand (Massively)

They've been bringing up servers left an right. I think the total yesterday was like 18 in NA and EU. Lots of peeps playing and it's not even live yet (though I did just redeem my retail codes so maybe it is ).

SWTOR welcomes Collector's Edition arrivals and suffers credit farmers (Massively)

It was the best of times in The Old Republic, it was the worst of times. Even though BioWare's freshman MMO has yet to officially launch, so-called "credit farmers" are already hard at work setting up operations to sell in-game currency via third party sources...On a brighter note, the Collector's Edition of the game has already shipped to many (but not all) customers, and Darth Hater has a massive 20-minute unboxing video to show off all of the physical goodies that come inside.

BioWare taking SWTOR queues 'seriously' (Massively)

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Hugely anticipated MMO struggles to balance lengthy launch queues with long-term server and community stability. Yes, BioWare is slogging down the same slippery supply and demand slope that many AAA MMOs have trod before, and a report at Eurogamer suggests that the lines have only just begun.

There were 140 servers open for business this past weekend (a pre-launch period in which BioWare staggered waves of invites to legions of early release customers), and more are being added due to queue times approaching two hours.

Analyst claims SWTOR could already have 1.5 million players (Massively)

This conclusion comes about based on the fact that EA had 140 servers running by last Saturday. If that's the population right now, we can assuredly expect that the game's official launch will see big numbers indeed.

Top 10 Things to Do While Waiting in the Server Queue (SWTOR Hub)

2. Go complain on the forums. Get flamed. Flame back. You know the drill.

First day of SWTOR and plenty more to go (Keen & Graev's Gaming Blog)

To sum it up, mostly positive experiences so far in SWTOR. The majority of my problems right now are lag on my 4 year old backup comp that has issues running the game. When I pull myself away from the game tonight, I’ll write up my thoughts more on specific features/mechanics.

SWTOR Warzones have no level brackets (Keen & Graev's Gaming Blog)

I didn’t know that SWTOR’s battlegrounds, or warzones as they a called, are not level restricted. I thought they were your standard 1-9, 10-19, etc, but nope, anyone level 1-50 can be put into a war zone together.

Like in Warhammer Online, players are bolstered up to make them competitive. This did not work well in WAR at all...

I’m curious why Bioware chose this route. Less time in queues? Avoiding cross-server queues? The result for me is no more battlegrounds until level 50 when the disparity between players isn’t augmented by level gap. I might reconsider as I get into my late 30′s or early 40′s but for now it feels silly to go against level 50′s.

Star Wars: The Old Republic goes dark in preparation for launch (Massively)

BioWare says that as the game comes back online at midnight, the studio will be adding "a large number of new servers" to facilitate the influx of launch players. Even so, the studio predicts that queues on popular servers will be present and urges players to consider rolling characters on lesser-populated realms.

Stephen Reid addresses SWTOR server load issues (Massively)

Star Wars: The Old Republic continues to prove itself overwhelmingly popular as the official launch day progresses. Perhaps a little too popular, in fact. Stephen Reid stopped by the official forums today to post a short warning on high-population servers. Many players are experiencing extended queues to log in to their servers, but Reid focuses on a few "consistently high-population servers... [which] are closing in on their absolute population cap." These servers have reached or nearly reached the maximum amount of players the server can handle and "will likely have a queue to enter even at off-peak playtimes."

Star Wars: The Old Republic's hype train barrels onward (Massively)

December 20th is finally here, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is as live as it's going to get...Meanwhile, MSNBC sits down with SWTOR's Lead Writer, Daniel Erickson, about BioWare's much-touted story pillar. He claims that the game's 20 writers worked together for a total of over 60 man-years of labor on the game's story and writing.

Hyperspace Beacon: Top five SWTOR launch day secrets (Massively)

5. Jukeboxes

As a last-minute addition to beta, these little machines have turned out to be a lot of fun. The one pictured above sits in the Fort Garnik cantina on Ord Mantell, but nearly every cantina has one of these. Speak to the cantina vendor and he will sell you a token for 100 credits to play the song you'd like. All the songs have that Star Warsy space-band feel to them. The community team released some of them on its YouTube channel, like Average Brown Wookiee and Kayfoundo Naweea. Just the names of some of them are awesome. I don't know about you, but for me, these little nuggets make the game a bit more fun and immersing.

Yes, someone made a SWTOR hip-hop song already (Massively)

So you have the Star Wars: The Old Republic Collector's Edition, the lunchbox, the action figures, the pajamas, and the bedsheets*. The game launched 12 hours ago and you have two level 50s. What else would you possibly need to make your life complete? How about a hip-hop song based on your new obsession?



The Daily Grind: Are you glad to see the end of the SWTOR pre-launch frenzy? (Massively)

It's going to be a few more weeks or months before the euphoria settles and we'll be able to talk about it objectively without a flame war beginning at the mere mention of it, and I'm glad we're getting closer to that.

And, perhaps the most interesting news of the day:

Star Wars: The Old Republic could have been A Game of Thrones MMO (PC Gamer)

We caught up with game director James Ohlen to discover to discover what The Old Republic could have been, and how Bioware decided on Star Wars.

“We had backup plans,” said Ohlen. “In all the design team was like three of us at that point, in total. So we were looking at doing a Lord of the Rings MMO, a Silmarillion MMO, a kind of a Gunslinger-esque Dark Tower MMO, a Game of Thrones MMO.”

[Laethaka]

saw this today:

[Morreion]

Hah! ;D

[Morreion]

Star Wars: The Old Republic Review (Ten Ton Hammer)

Overall score: 88/100 Great

Pros

* BioWare is at the top of its game when it comes to story, which is perhaps SWTOR's greatest strength.
* Companions and their associated assortment of crew skills greatly enhance the overall gameplay experience
* The decision to go all in with fully voiced player characters and NPCs has paid off in a big way.

Cons

+ As amazingly written as the class stories are, each faction only offers one unique path through content up to the endgame.
+ The advanced class selection system does a pretty poor job of offering enough information to players about a (currently) irreversible decision, where the only recourse is to start over again on a new character if you're unhappy with your first pick.
+ Warzones can be great fun for both casual and hardcore PvP players, but sorely need to be broken down into smaller level range brackets, and a wider variety of maps.

The Emperor is stuck in a queue? BioWare shall redouble its efforts! (Massively)

We've also being doing our best to get every little bit of possible performance on our servers to increase capacity: We've "turned them up to 11" to do our very best to get you in and playing as quickly as possible. As a result - you should now be seeing significant improvement versus waiting times at the end of last week.

Even SWTOR's website has a queue! [Updated] (Massively)

The irony of launching a game in tiers only to have a forced bottleneck at this point isn't lost on us, but BioWare reassures its players that relief is coming soon: "Due to the high volume of new game codes being redeemed on SWTOR.com, some users may currently be seeing a waiting page. We are intentionally controlling the flow of traffic and letting as many people through as possible."

Star Wars: The Old Republic launches Android authenticator and upcoming test server (Massively)

The mobile authenticator for Android devices is also now available, meaning that you have a multitude of ways to ensure that the only threats to your characters are those of the blaster-wielding variety.

BioWare defends its decision to not have individual SWTOR server forums (Massively)

Instead, BioWare hopes that server communities create and moderate their own server-specific sites and forums. "This is also a great opportunity for the community to come together in their own ways – on fan sites and through other resources," Barryman said. "Of course, we want people to visit the official forums, and will use them to provide information that's of specific interest to the community, but we also love to see the community coming up with cool stuff on their own."

BioWare hints at new SWTOR content, tops one million players (Massively)

Ohlen says that's just the beginning, too, and BioWare plans on releasing similar new content with regularity. Finally, players concerned over the company's ability to add new story (and voiceover content) will want to check out writer Alexander Freed's post on the official forums. In a nutshell, he says not to worry, as BioWare does have voice actors under contract and can proceed with development without adding much time to the content creation process.

Finally, our sister site reports that TOR has topped one million registered players and over 28 million hours played!


This is going to be the make-or-break factor with this game IMHO- they're going to need plenty of content.

The Old Republic diaries: a newbie to MMOs learns dungeon basics at level 20 (Ars Technica)

I died during one climactic battle, and then re-entered the fight. What I didn't understand was that my actions led to the boss's health being reset. This, in turn, led to groans from the people who already had ten minutes sunk into this one fight, but I salved the wound by promising not to try for any of the loot. This seemed to put a little extra "oomph" into the attacks of my buddies as they realized their chances for some high-quality equipment just went up 25 percent.

BioWare: SWTOR is 'one of the greatest and most ambitious achievements in video game history' (Massively)

Star Wars: The Old Republic is officially a hit according to the latest BioWare press release. The lengthy blurb trumpets impressive first-week numbers including some 28 million in-game hours logged, as well as over 3.8 million characters created (nearly 1.1 million of which are Jedi Knights or Sith Warriors).

Star Wars: The Old Republic to receive combat log parsing, other analysis features (Massively)

During the talk, Zoeller claimed that combat log parsing and other such performance analysis features were "very high on [BioWare's] priority list." For the full details, and to listen to the full session yourself, head on over to the SWTOR official forums.

The Guild Counsel: Guild life in SWTOR (Massively)

In some ways, the game has made for more fun with guildies, but in others, it's actually made guild life more problematic. Flashpoints are a blast so far, and we've gotten a great laugh out of some of the responses from our characters during the dialogues. Orko, a longtime gaming friend of mine, decided to roll a trooper who's gunning for dark points. Add in the fact that he created a rather portly Mirialan with bright green skin and a Justin Bieber haircut, and you can imagine the laughs. It's nice to see that even within the groups, one player's reply choices can be completely different from another's, based on the amount of light or dark points each has. It definitely adds to the replayability of flashpoints, and there were times when the dialogue was more entertaining and compelling than the actual combat.

Top 5 Ways to Improve Warzones (SWTOR Hub)

1. Diminishing Returns and Crowd Control Immunity

Perhaps the worst offender when it comes to warzone mechanics is a distinct lack of diminishing returns or immunity to crowd control. MMO developers learned years ago that it simply isn’t fun to lose control of your character – however briefly – and infuriating to be killed because of it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say crowd control has no place in PvP, because it absolutely does. But anything more than 4 seconds is a recipe for disaster.


I'm sympathetic to this view- DAoC's CC could be quite long!

Star Wars: The Old Republic - The Story so Far (SWTOR Hub)

Our story begins with “The Great Hyperspace War” which happened in 1357 BTC or 5,000 BBY (mystical moon dates, BTC is “Before the Battle of Coruscant” or shortly before the game starts and BBY is “Before the Battle of Yavin” which is the movies). The Sith Empire was founded roughly 2,000 years beforehand by a group of Dark Jedis that were cast out by the Republic. They found themselves on Korriban, where a native tribal species known as the Sith resided. This is where much of the “Sith Worship” begins as the Dark Jedi were much more technologically advanced and cooler than the native Sith and were seen more as gods than men.

BioWare docs defend subscription model, tease free-to-play iteration of classic IP (Joystiq)

"I'm not saying it's better or worse. It just doesn't supplant the other things. 'Cause we can do some things no one else can," Zeschuk added. In his eyes, a free-to-play dev isn't able to throw the same amount of resources and time at an MMO project, and that marks a big differentiation between the two business models. "The free-to-play people can't invest to the level we can invest, and can't create something of the size and scale of something we can create," he said. The idea that free-to-play will take over all other MMO business models, he said is, "from a business perspective, ridiculous."

Star Wars: TOR Points To 'Healthy' MMO Market - Analyst (Gamasutra)

Star Wars: The Old Republic, developed by Electronic Arts-owned BioWare Austin, is an ambitious, story-driven PC MMORPG that EA said gained over 1 million users within three days after its December 20 launch. That makes it the fastest-growing subscription MMO in history, according to Sebastian.

The analyst said he expects the game to sell around 3 million units by the end of EA's fiscal year, ending in March 2012. But he added, "We think Street expectations for 1.5-2 million paid monthly users through 2012 may be too optimistic."

The Guild Counsel: Does SWTOR need a better LFG tool? (Massively)

If the hue and cry is high enough, there's a good chance that we'll see a more proactive LFG tool put in place, similar to a dungeon finder. Players, of course, always will have the option of using it or making groups on their own. And while it will help piece together many more groups overall, that's balanced out by the fact that the quality of those groups might not be as good.

The Soapbox: Adding story to SWTOR (Massively)

This is great- Jef Reahard talks down SWTOR and 185 comments of angry hate boil over at him!

I agree with him, by the way. Us sandbox guys have to stick together.

Your average TOR fan, and BioWare's target audience, is probably in his early thirties, with a wife, kid(s), and a mortgage, and 200 hours multiplied by eight is going to take him a couple of years. At the end of that two years -- when the game has already paid for itself many times over -- what is BioWare's incentive to crank out some expensive new story content for the post-level 50 crowd?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but is it likely? Or is it more likely that TOR will do what all themeparks do, which is let a couple of junior content designers loose with the dungeon maker tools and fall back on the the raid-to-get-gear-to-raid-to-get-gear model?

...My point is that TOR's stories are relatively enjoyable, but you'd best make them last. Stories, particularly the high-gloss Hollywood type that BioWare has built its reputation on, are quite expensive and time-consuming to produce even when you're not bolting them onto an ancient MMO framework that wasn't designed to support them. Also, unlike many successful MMOs, good stories need to end.

[Loendal]

My ex-wife said that she hit the level cap already. The game's only been out for 11 days. This is working a full time job and other outside-of-games things she does. I thought SW:TOR was supposed to be deeper and more engaging? She's been a power gamer for a while, I suppose, but I would have though it would take more then 11 days to cap out. That's 4.45 levels a day.

Any insiders want to share info?

[Morreion]

That's sad...I can't see SWTOR keeping a lot of subscriptions after 6-12 months of that kind of play. It seems that MMOs constantly repeat designs that are both expensive and short-term.

[Morreion]

Star Wars: The Old Republic Review: The Official SWTOR Review
The day has finally arrived and we are ready to publish our official MMORPG.com review of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Sit back and get ready to read THE most comprehensive and authoritative review of the game that has taken the world by storm. Enjoy!

Final Score
8.7
Great

Pros
Crafting is fun and accessible
Full voice-overs and cinematics
Incredible story features
Visceral Star Wars combat

Cons
Customer service experience is hit-or-miss
Guild features are anemic at best
UI is inflexible

Every couple of years we get an MMO whose level of hype and expectations are greater than the game could ever aspire to be and the same remains true for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Even so, the game is simply exceptional. If you’re a Star Wars fan, a fan of BioWare RPGs, and you don’t mind a themepark styled MMO, you will undoubtedly have a great time in the world BioWare has created with Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare has successfully fused the foundation of a solid MMO with their industry-leading story telling capabilities to create a final product that convincingly makes the case that as great as many MMOs have been, we’ve definitely been missing a significant piece of the puzzle for all these years.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Review (Ten Ton Hammer)

Overall 88/100 Great

Pros

* BioWare is at the top of its game when it comes to story, which is perhaps SWTOR's greatest strength.
* Companions and their associated assortment of crew skills greatly enhance the overall gameplay experience
* The decision to go all in with fully voiced player characters and NPCs has paid off in a big way.
Cons
+ As amazingly written as the class stories are, each faction only offers one unique path through content up to the endgame.
+ The advanced class selection system does a pretty poor job of offering enough information to players about a (currently) irreversible decision, where the only recourse is to start over again on a new character if you're unhappy with your first pick.
+ Warzones can be great fun for both casual and hardcore PvP players, but sorely need to be broken down into smaller level range brackets, and a wider variety of maps.

A WoW player's guide to The Old Republic (Massively)

One of the more interesting (and at times, confusing) features introduced by Star Wars: The Old Republic is the gear modification system. Modifiable gear is equipment that contains a number of modification slots that can be filled with a variety of mods in order to confer stat bonuses upon the item in question, akin to slotting gems in World of Warcraft. However, unlike World of Warcraft's gem system (in which you can slot any gem into any socket), SWTOR's modifications will only fit in specific pieces of equipment with the appropriate types of slots. For instance, many pieces of customizable armor have an Armoring slot, a Mod slot, an Augment slot, and an Enhancement slot. An Enhancement modification can only be placed in an Enhancement slot, a Mod in a Mod slot, and so forth.

SWTOR 1-40 Commentary (Keen & Graev)

SWTOR’s PvE is mediocre, at best. There’s a lot of “Kill X bad guys” and “blow up X machines”. The unoriginality and repetition are cleverly masked in story, but even the story begins to wear thin as it becomes clear even the writers themselves tired of the same old thing. Graev and I have started to notice A LOT of re-used dialog. His character says the same 2-3 lines over and over. “This will be no challenge for a Jedi.” It’s not the best PvE, but it’s definitely not the worst and still enjoyable. We’re going to hit level 40 tonight and hopefully 50 by next weekend.

SWTOR PvP falls short, my suggestions (Keen & Graev)

Like the PvE, PvP is not horrible. It’s not beyond repair. PvP is actually full of potential. WoW’s PvP underwent numerous changes until Blizzard finally arrived at the current system. My suggestions above for open-world PvP would not be hard (from a design perspective) to implement and they would make sense given the direction I feel SWTOR will go. SWTOR won’t fit into the E-sport PvP scene. Their best bet is to capitalize on the faction struggle inherent to their story and make a big show of it.



Intro Guide to Crafting in The Old Republic (SWTORhub)

The most cost effective strategy, in my opinion, is not to craft at all until you're level 40. Load up on three gathering skills, farm out every node you can find, and sell off stacks of raw components from the gathering skills unrelated to the crafting skill you want to pursue. Unless you're going for one of the armor-producing professions, your opportunities to reverse engineer will be relatively scant during leveling up - you might loot a weapon or two each level if you're Armstech or Artifice, but credits are far more handy than components for most of the game.

Addressing the Tiered Warzone Problem (SWTORhub)

One solution that many players would feel comfortable with is to just break the warzones down into 5 or 10 level brackets. So levels 10-19, 20-29, etc. would be grouped together and able to fight with one another without a bolstering system. This would mean that level, gear, and more would matter in PvP and give players a big incentive to go out and improve their gear for PvP.

The Force is with SWTOR: EA stock bounces back, budget revealed (Massively)

Apparently, Star Wars: The Old Republic cost $200 million. Other interesting details from the Times' investigation into what it calls a "galactic gamble" include the fact that it was made by 800 people on four continents with an additional 1,000 voice actors (doing three languages) handling 4,000 characters.

Research firm: SWTOR has 350,000 peak concurrent users (Massively)

The firm estimates that TOR has approximately 350,000 peak concurrent users spread across 215 servers (124 in America and 91 in Europe).

BioWare Takes Action Against a Number of SWTOR Accounts for Loot Container Exploit (Ten Ton Hammer)

Over the weekend a Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) player posted a supposed email from BioWare stating that their account had been suspended for looting items from chests on the high level world of Ilum with lower level characters. Naturally this sparked a huge discussion on the Reddit forum as well as the official SWTOR forums. Some players felt that BioWare was taking action against accounts for a poor design choice that some players took advantage of, while others felt that it was simply a gold farming (or credit farming in this case) exploit.

SWTOR's 1.1 patch adds anti-aliasing, level 50 Flashpoint (Massively)

New stuff includes a level 50 Flashpoint (Kaon Under Siege) and four new bosses for Operation: Karagga's Palace. Also of note is an anti-aliasing option in the preferences menu and a correction for the problems plaguing Kira Carsen's affection conversations

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: Do you skip dialogue? (Massively)

A very clever Massively poster once remarked that BioWare is indeed famous for story -- the same story, over and over. OK, so he was exaggerating for effect, but even I sometimes feel as if I've seen this scene before once or twice in BioWare's storygames. That hasn't driven me to skip over cutscenes or dialogue, not yet, but judging by how many gamers are already sitting in the endgame of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I have to wonder whether that's exactly what everyone else is doing.

A typical comment:

Up until a week ago I was hanging on every last word.... now I kinda feel like the novelty has wore out. Threw the subs on and space bar after reading.....

I figured this would happen. Many of those 'story rocks' people are probably jaded by this now. Since story was Bioware's big (and expensive with all of that voice acting) selling point for the game, it looks like it'll end up not having as much staying power as they hoped. I'm expecting something like a typical MMO lifecycle for this one, although the Star Wars brand will be worth a slight premium in customer numbers, and perhaps they'll have a decent amount of new players too. But this isn't the new WoW IMHO.

[Rakul]

I don't disagree with you, Rego.... just based on their past performance.

[Morreion]

Star Wars: The Old Republic — the story behind a galactic gamble (Los Angeles Times)

It may be the largest entertainment production in history. More than 800 people on four continents have spent six years and nearly $200 million creating it. The story runs 1,600 hours, with hundreds of additional hours still being written. Nearly 1,000 actors have recorded dialogue for 4,000 characters in three languages.

The narrative is so huge that writers created a 1,000-page “bible” to keep the details straight, and the director recently asked a colleague not to spoil moments he hadn’t yet seen.

It’s not a movie or a TV series. It’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, the most expensive, ambitious and riskiest video game ever produced.

EA reveals SWTOR subscription and sales numbers, beats financial predictions [Updated] (Massively)

[Update: Darth Hater has compiled some additional TOR-related statistics and Q&A from today's EA earnings call: "2,000,000+ copies sold, 40% sold through Origin; 1,700,000+ active subscribers, 1 million concurrent." The company also notes that "Active subscribers means anyone paying OR in their trial period. MOST of those 1.7m are paying at this point."]

Star Wars: The Old Republic Column: The Dorkside - An Honest Review (MMORPG.com)
There are two things that are always sure to twitter-pate our readership: Coyote Sharptongue's pithy MMO commentary and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Today we bring you the best of both in our latest Coyote's Howling. Read on!

Star Wars: The Old Republic is just plain fun.

Ignoring the bugs and glitches that plague all new releases, and the peanut gallery cries of "there's no endgame” six weeks after a game is released, there really isn’t a lot to say negative about the game at this point.

Yes, the endgame is admittedly lacking, but that’s based mostly on the fact that the majority of players haven’t had the time to reach it yet. Playing 20 hours a day, every day, to reach max level while skipping past every cut scene and scripted event to get to the fight might make you hit cap faster than anyone else ; but is that three seconds of “awe” from your friends worth the experience that you’re robbing yourself of?

This game is so story driven, and puts you in the spotlight to such a degree that it is no longer about the destination – you’re supposed to be enjoying the journey. And if that isn’t a good enough reason to slow down and stop to smell the roses…consider this: My level 33 smuggler has nailed five NPC’s so far.

SWTOR’s $300 Million Virtual Bridge to Nowhere (Wolfshead Online)

To me, SWTOR feels like another predictable and soulless experience. It’s akin to a slick Hollywood blockbuster movie with cardboard good guys and bad guys with copious amounts of explosions and special effects thrown in for good measure.

No longer are MMOs are created with the expectation that anything can happen. Those days are long past. If players were left to forge their own destinies it would result in chaos and conflict which would be unacceptable to the story obsessed new breed of video game designer who insists that every aspect of what a player does should be tightly controlled and scripted. You see, you as a player can’t be trusted.

Instead MMOs have become virtual sausage factories where the spectator-like player sits back and enjoys the ride. Game design has been reduced to process of crafting every moment of the player experience — nothing is left to chance — a philosophy that would make amusement park tycoon Walt Disney proud.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Players Average At Least Four Hours Per Session, Love Sundays (Kotaku)

"The other thing that's really funny is you can tell when things are going really well in the game," Zeshuck said, "because the amount of forum chatter drops. People don't go to forums. They just play."

Hyperspace Beacon: Call the exterminator (Massively)

There is a trend among the bugs: They occur primarily at endgame. If there had been more endgame testing, then it's quite possible that we would not see these bugs at all. I cannot speak to pre-launch endgame testing other than to say that I didn't know anyone who was a part of it. I can, however, say that post-launch endgame testing is extremely sparse because the public test server does not allow you to character copy from a live server.

Players manipulate SWTOR's guild system to create a premature Oceanic server (Massively)

Many MMOs have unofficial servers for regions and rulesets, but pulling them together can take an incredible amount of work and still end up halfway done. However, Oceanic and Asian players wanted to make sure that they all rolled on the same server right on launch day, so guilds began to get in contact with each other and use BioWare's own guild registration system to link Republic and Empire groups together in an Oceanic "daisy chain." Because the system was designed to put as many allied and adversary guilds together on a server, the entire daisy chain was planted on a NA west coast server, Swiftsure. In one smart move, the Oceanic and Asian population had their own place to call home.