Wars

Analyst Says Star Wars: The Old Republic Undersold Expectations, EA Stock Drops

by Salat on January 20, 2012 · 0 comments

For some reason, it seems Electronic Arts investors are a fickle bunch (who may not really understand what they’re investing in). Analysts keep up their doomsaying over Star Wars: The Old Republic despite quite a reception and a lot of people playing it, and when those analysts say spooky things, investors sell their shares.

That’s what happened on Jan. 19, as CVG reports, when EA shares dropped 3.8 percent after Brean Murray Curret & Co. analyst Todd Mitchell speculated that SWTOR sales would come in “below expectations.” Mitchell cut his price on EA stock from $ 28 to $ 22, saying, “Specifically, initial sales appear to be below expectations, and casual observation of early play is causing us to rethink our churn assumptions.”

Another analyst, on the other hand, calls the outcries over SWTOR’s sales figures “overdone.” As Gamasutra reports, Macquarie Securities’ Ben Schachter says that it’s outside speculation that’s knocking down EA’s stock price, which has dropped 30 percent since Nov. 4 last year, and while he acknowledges that sales for SWTOR might have been under expectations, EA still maintains that it’s among the fastest-growing MMOs ever in its first month.

Earlier this week, another analyst speculated that EA invested some $ 500 million to make SWTOR (a number that seems…inflated), but EA has said it only needs about 500,000 subscribers for the game to turn a profit.

Sounds like a lot of negative attention for SWTOR when the game is barely a month old and still seems to be performing admirably. Guess we’ll see next month after the first month’s subscription numbers are in.

Source: Gaming Today

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Star Wars: The Old Republic — GameFront Impressions (Part 3)

by Salat on January 15, 2012 · 0 comments

Table of Contents
Ron Whitaker
Ben Richardson
C.J. Miozzi

The holiday season no doubt has you wondering whether or not to pick up the latest Star Wars MMORPG. To help you with that decision, we’ve publishing a three-part Impressions series that offers the opinions of a few GameFront writers on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The article that follows continues to explore the TOR’s mid-level experience. Each writer will present his take on Flashpoints, Warzones, and conclude with a final assessment of the game. Keep reading to find out what we thought!

Ron Whitaker

Full disclosure: Played a Sith Warrior (Marauder) to Level 30

Previous MMO experience: WoW, RIFT, LotRO, DDO, WAR, and more.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game that has, quite honestly, surprised me. I played in the beta, and came away thinking that it would be a competent game, but a relatively uninspiring one. When the release date rolled around, I pulled on my reviewer’s hat and dove in, expecting much of the same. To my surprise, I found myself drawn into the game in a way that the beta didn’t prepare me for. Why? Well, let’s come back to that.

The first thing you should understand about The Old Republic is that it’s a Bioware RPG at heart. If you’ve played their games through the years, you’ll feel right at home here. In fact, the game feels like it could be a stellar singleplayer game much of the time. Sure, you can’t do the Heroic quests, Flashpoints, or PvP by yourself, but the vast majority of the game feels like you could strike out on your own and be just fine.

I’m not sure that’s entirely a good thing, though. After all, MMOs are all about community and groups. The main reason I played World of Warcraft as long as I did was that I was playing with an amazingly fun group of people along the way, and they kept the game exciting for me far longer than WoW itself did. Hopefully, the higher level content in ToR will bring people together in the same way.

Graphically, ToR captures a great aesthetic “feel” of Star Wars. Dromann Kaas just feels like a Sith planet. It’s somehow “right.” I don’t know exactly how to enunciate it except to say that you’ll know when you see it. Unfortunately, there are a ton of questions right now about just what Bioware’s doing with the high-res textures. To be honest, I’m not even sure they know at this point. They need to return a high-res option to players, as being able to bring your rig to its knees is a time-honored rite of PC passage.

Gameplay in ToR is about what you would expect. You activate skills with the click of a button, and chain multiple skills together to take out enemies. One thing that may catch MMO veterans off guard is the lack of an auto-attack. This is important to note, especially early on when not pressing buttons leads to your character standing still and getting pummeled. The combat is actually fun, with lightsaber attacks intermingling with Force powers to create a wide array of options to utilize. Plus, you don’t have to make the lightsaber sounds with your mouth anymore.

One thing I really appreciated was the way leveling zones were broken into planets. The break to return to your ship, do a couple of space missions (more on these later), and then head off to the next planet was a welcome one. It makes much more sense than the dramatically different terrains of the zones in other MMOs being separated by an imaginary line on an in-game map. However, Tatooine is a place you will want off of before you’re done there. My Sith Warrior wanted off there so badly that he felt like Luke Skywalker.

Space missions. I’m actually kind of torn here. The space missions were a blast at first, even though they’re basically just third-person rail shooters. Unfortunately, it seems that the number of missions is extremely limited, and you end up doing them over and over if you want to amass fleet commendations. You’ll also want to spend some time and credits upgrading your ship if you want to be successful in space. The missions still kind of neat, but only if you limit them to just breaking up the time between planets.

I’m not a big PvPer in MMOs, but the PvP in ToR was actually enjoyable. Partly that’s because it was just generally fun, but it’s also partly due to the fact that it’s very rewarding. Even if you’re stuck on a bad team or just unlucky, you’ll still earn rewards and experience for your efforts.

Crafting is one of my favorite new systems in ToR, mostly because you don’t have to deal with any of the tedium involved in it. No longer will you spend hours standing at a workbench to craft items. That’s what your companions are for! Need a bunch of crafting materials? Send a companion on a run! The fact that crafted gear is actually quite good is a bonus, but removing the feeling of tedious grinding from crafting is a masterstroke for Bioware.

All of these things are a part of what makes up ToR, but we haven’t touched on the biggest element of the game just yet: Story. It’s the story that makes come alive, and that’s what’s drawn me further into it than I would have thought possible. Why? I can’t really put a finger on it. It could be the voice acting. Having every quest interaction voice acted puts a value on that time that you almost feel compelled to respect. It could be watching my character slowly morph into the powerful, Dark Side weilding Sith Lord that he’s becoming. It could be that I’m just a huge Star Wars fan.

Any of these could be the reason, but I’m going to go with this: the story is compelling. Chasing around the galaxy to eliminate threats to my Sith Master? It meshes so well with what we expect from the Star Wars universe that it’s almost frightening. Bioware has given all the Star Wars fans out there (and there are a lot of them) a chance to live and take part in one of their favorite fictional experiences. That’s a powerful thing, and not one that you should scoff at.

Overall, ToR does a lot of things right. Sure, there are bugs, glitches and the like. Every MMO has them at launch. The high-res texture issue and the responses to it are also big issues. However, these issues shouldn’t keep you from playing SWToR, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. It’s a technically competent game that runs pretty darn well on even older systems, and more importantly, it’s a lot of fun. It’s not going to re-imagine the way MMOs are played (except for the crafting changes, every MMO needs those), but it’s a great entry into the genre. It’s certainly going to be around for years to come, and will only get better as Bioware refines its systems. If you’re an MMO fan, or just a fan of Star Wars, odds are you’ll enjoy giving The Old Republic a try.

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Source: Gaming Today

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Players Have Already Put 60 Million Game Hours Into Star Wars: The Old Republic

by Salat on December 30, 2011 · 0 comments

For all the complaining I’ve been seeing and reading about bugs in Star Wars: The Old Republic, you’d think no one was playing it. Surprise, however — they are. Electronic Arts has kicked out a press release breaking down a bunch of goofy numbers about the game, and as one might expect, they’re all pretty impressively huge.

For starters:

As of Dec. 26, players have already logged 60 million hours in the game in total.
850,000 Sith Warriors have been created; 810,000 Jedi Knights have been created.
Players have completed more than 260 million quests.
Players have fought more than 44 million PvP battles.
More than 9 million space combat missions have been completed.

And back on Dec. 23, EA sent out another numbers release that said more than 3.8 million characters had been created, including 510,000 Jedi Knights and 550,000 Sith Warriors. One guesses that since, three days later, those numbers had jumped up drastically, the number of characters in the game has probably gone up considerably too.

I can’t wait to find out how many subscriptions the game holds down in a month or two. Personally, I’m having a blast.

Source: Gaming Today

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Still Mourning? Get The Star Wars: Galaxies Memory Book

by Salat on December 24, 2011 · 0 comments

Gone but not forgotten, Star Wars: Galaxies will long live in our hearts and minds. If, that is, you played it. 8 years is a long time for an MMO, particularly one that often struggled, and though the word is that The Old Republic is awesome, it’s bittersweet for fans of the game TOR killed. Which is why Sony Online Entertainment have created a massive, 253 page book chronicling the game’s long run with screenshots, comprehensive lore and even a timeline. They book closes with a tribute to the community that says it better than we can:

The explosions marking the Empire’s end could be seen across the galaxy in the skies above the planets, and the celebrations that followed were unmatched. Peace reigned as Star Destroyers and dark lords became memories of another era, of a time long past, of galaxies long gone.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Indeed. You can view the whole thing or download the Pdf directly from SOE.

You can also cope with Galaxies withdrawal with our handy beginner’s guide to The Old Republic.

Via Massively

Source: Gaming Today

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Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes Down Ahead of Midnight EST Launch

by Salat on December 20, 2011 · 0 comments

Like those of us over here at Game Front, you’ve probably been enjoying your early access to Star Wars: The Old Republic. And you may have noticed that at about 7 p.m. Eastern Standard time, SWTOR went down. That’s okay — it’s supposed to do that.

Electronic Arts has taken the game down ahead of its midnight launch tonight in order to put up more servers and generally get prepared for the crush of new players that’s about to join the game. If you thought waiting in queues for servers during the pre-order period was bad, well…prime your “Noooooo” button.

Things will be back up and running at 12:01 a.m. tonight — that’s 9 p.m. for us West Coasters — when the game officially launches. EA says you might want to consider rolling your brand-new bounty hunter with a secret heart of gold but a penchant for murder or your merciless Sith warrior who really values justice (get off, that one’s mine!) on a different server in order to avoid line-ups. Just a heads-up.

Let us know how your first night in SWTOR goes in the comments.

Via Joystiq.

Source: Gaming Today

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Star Wars: The Old Republic Launch Bugs – Black Screen, Error Codes and FPS Drops

by Salat on December 20, 2011 · 0 comments

For the most part, it seems like users jumping into Star Wars: The Old Republic are joining BioWare’s brand-new MMO without too much difficulty. But a few players are seeing some troubles as they load up the game for the first time. There aren’t too many solutions just yet, but BioWare is keeping track of problems on its forums so they can be dealt with.

Black Screen of Death

Some users are complaining of an issue in which they’re stuck with a blank black screen while playing. It doesn’t seem to be a driver issue, either — some players say they have two copies in their households on two systems with the same specs, and one system will suffer from the issue while the other one skirts it. Updating drivers doesn’t seem to help the issue for the ones dealing with the black screen issue.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of help from BioWare on the issue just yet, but users are piling their complaints in this forum post.

FPS Drops

Here’s another one that is getting a lot of reports but hasn’t been picked up by BioWare or Electronic Arts just yet. Users are saying that they’re loading up the game and seeing some massive frame-rate slowdown on the game, especially compared to other games like World of Warcraft or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There also doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a common thread for users, either — some people are just having some FPS problems with the game. This isn’t a problem for everybody, though, but a lot of people are having trouble with the issue.

Again, BioWare hasn’t jumped on board of this one, but if you want to report the issue, a lot of people are doing so on this thread.

Error 9000

Sounds like Error 9000, a connection problem that finds players unable to connect or kicked out of SWTOR mid-session. The forum thread in which people are throwing down this trouble makes it sound like it could be a router or firewall issue. There are some possible fixes listed on the forum thread, and we’re including a few steps that might help below:

1. running the launcher in compatibility mode for Windows XP Service Pack 3 / Vista service pack 2 as an administrator.
2. Reset your router to fabric settings. / set your firewall settings to low.
3. Open your Ports router/ firewall. The port numbers that are required are 8995, 12000-12999 and 20000-30000 (TCP).

If that doesn’t help, hit this forum thread and try some of the other solutions, or leave your own troubles and wait for a response from BioWare.

Error 7

It seems Error Code 7 is an issue with DirectX, from BioWare’s response to the issue. BioWare says that if you’re having this trouble with the game, you should post your DXDiag file in this forum thread. First off, BioWare says you should follow these steps to make sure you’re up to date:

You should make sure that you have the latest version of DirectX installed on your system. For further details please check here.
Check that your Graphics card and Sound card have the most recent drivers installed. For instructions on how to update your Graphics card please see here, for Sound cards please see here.
You should check that you have the latest Service Pack and Windows Updates installed for your operating system, including optional updates such as .NET Framework and Visual C++ features.
Check the minimum specifications of the game, to determine whether your computer may experience difficulties running the game.

After that, hit the forum and follow the steps listed to gather your DXDiag file, then post it on the forum thread.

If you’ve got other issues — or better yet, if you find some solutions to these ones — share them in the comments so other players can benefit from your wisdom.

Source: Gaming Today

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The Star Wars Gaming Universe – In Context (GRAPHIC)

by Salat on December 18, 2011 · 0 comments

Click image to view full-size version.

To celebrate the upcoming full release of The Old Repbulic — and the partial pre-order access — we put together this graphic showing the four major eras of the Star Wars universe and where the franchise’s games fall into place.

The timeline isn’t to scale — view the lightsaber sidebar to understand why — but the relative positioning of sequential titles and events are accurately depicted. To keep this graphic a reasonable size, we had to cut roughly half of the Star Wars games from our list — mostly expansion packs, handheld-exclusives, educational titles, or games excessively geared toward children.

Source: Gaming Today

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Star Wars: The Old Republic Beginner’s Guide

by Salat on December 18, 2011 · 0 comments

The Sith Empire has returned to Republic space in Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA’s powerhouse MMORPG. In what might be the most expensive game ever produced, Bioware joins the Star Wars franchise to tackle that timeline a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Before Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, before the Empire, there was the Old Republic, where Jedi and Sith (Evil Jedi) fight for supremacy of the civilized galaxy. The war is about to heat up, and for every player wanting to get in on the lightsaber swinging action, you’ll want to know all about where to start in this massive game.

Here you’ll find all the information you need to get started. Learn more about the early missions and classes available to you, that way you can jump in and start playing the way you want to. For extra content related to The Old Republic, check out our cheats page.

Check back soon for new updates.

Table of Contents

Choosing Your Class