[SWTOR] Next chapter of KotFE coming March 10: Disavowed

Cambiata

Guild information: the server with the most dense PA population at the moment is Jedi Covenant. There are no official PA guilds here, but I am an officer in the active Republic guild <Dominus Nihil> and will invite if asked (sign up at http://www.dominusnihil.com/forums required)

The PA guilds at launch were on Shadowlands, <Rigorous Scholarship> for Republic, <Remarkable Circumference> for Imperial, however these guilds are mostly inactive. Ask in thread for specifics on an invite.

For either Jedi Covenant or Shadowlands server, type /cjoin PennyArcade to chat with other PA folks (not available to free to play, sadly)

Classes

Jedi Knight, Republic/Sith Warrior, Imperial: Melee DPS or Tank. Heavy or Medium Armor, dependent on AC.

Jedi Consular, Republic/Sith Inquisitor, Imperial: Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Tank or Healer. Light Armor.

Smuggler, Republic/Imperial Agent, Imperial: Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, or Healer. Medium Armor.

Trooper, Republic/Bounty Hunter, Imperial: Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Healer or Tank. Heavy Armor.

Advanced Classes

Jedi Knight Guardian, Republic/Sith Warrior Juggernaut, Imperial: Tank or Melee DPS. Has more defensive cooldowns than any other class, with no DPS based cooldowns at all. Wears heavy armor. Both Knight and Warrior stories are two of the best in the game. Force leap and push can get this class into trouble (pushing and leaping too close to a second group and doubling the attackers, for example). Weapon: Single lightsaber/vibrosword.

Jedi Knight Sentinel, Republic/Sith Warrior Marauder, Imperial: Melee DPS only. Possibly the highest DPS in the game if played correctly, but more complicated than other DPS classes and therefore frequently not played correctly. Very agressive play style and medium armor class leaves many assuming they are really tanks (they are not). Like all melee classes, can be made to suffer in operations due to being melee. Weapon: Dual wield lightsabers/vibroswords.

Jedi Consular Sage, Republic/Sith Inquisitor Sorceror, Imperial: Can be either an excellent Healer or above average ranged DPS, making it a very versatile class. One of the easiest classes to play. Heal spec has the best AOE heal in the game. Despite light armor, fairly survivable class due to self heals and defensive skills. Downsides: ease of play makes it boring to some. Consular class story is universally considered the worst in the game. Players in both factions have an inexplicable tendency to use group push back to knock mobs out of other people's AOEs. Weapon: Single lightsaber/vibrosword.

Jedi Consular Shadow, Republic/Sith Inquisitor Assassin, Imperial : Tank or Melee DPS. Stealth class. Most difficult tank to play due to skill juggling required, but brings specific skills to the table that makes having one desirable in ops. Only tank in the game in light armor. Only tank with a CC. Most skilled tank at aoe mob control. Weapon: Double-bladed lightsaber/vibrosword

Smuggler Scoundrel, Republic/Imperial Agent Operative, Imperial: Can be Heals or melee DPS. Stealth class. Heal spec is best single-target healing in the game. Melee DPS spec has a visceral appeal due to kicks to the nuts (Republic) and stabby mc-stab stab action (Imperial). Also evil giggling. Imperial Agent story is widely accepted as the best in the game. Smuggler is one of the best stories on the Republic side. Weapon: Varies by faction. Republic: Pistol mainhand, shotgun offhand. Imperial: Rifle mainhand, Vibroknife offhand.

Smuggler Gunslinger, Republic/Imperial Agent Sniper, Imperial: Ranged DPS class. Rivals Sentinel/Marauder for highest DPS class. Uses cover, which annoys some people, but I have never found it to be a problem but it helps if you use the 'cover in place' key bind instead of the 'move to nearby hard cover' key bind. Also recent class updates have made the class far less cover-dependant. Very good AOE damage. Weapon: varies by faction. Republic: Dual wield pistols. Imperial: Sniper Rifle with vibroknife offhand.

Trooper Vanguard, Republic/Bounty Hunter Powertech, Imperial: Tank or Melee DPS. Good solid tank. Powertech has better visual interest due to the skill animations. Since 3.0, the Tactics/Advanced Prototype DPS skill tree has the highest burst DPS in the game, look for it to be nerfed soon. Both Trooper and BH story rates an 'ok.' Fem Trooper is Commander Shepard (aka Jennifer Hale). Weapon: varies by faction. Republic: Rifle. Imperial: Pistol.

Trooper Commando, Republic/Bounty Hunter Mercenary, Imperial Ranged DPS or Healer. Currently one of the best DPS in the game, both for damage output as well as utility skills. Good healer as well. As with any ranged dps, it's a desirable class for operations. Weapon: varies by faction. Republic: Autocannon. Imperial: Dual wield pistols.

Crafting

Crafting skills:
Biochemistry, Cybertech, Armstech, Armormech, Synthweaving, Artifice

Gathering skills:
Bioanalysis, Scavenging, Archeology, Slicing

Mission skills:
Diplomacy, Underworld Trading, Investigation, Treasure Hunting

Biochemistry Requires Bionanalysis and Diplomacy. Very useful skill, both in leveling and in endgame. Pretty much required for operation Tanks. Can craft heal, stim, and adrenals for the crafter that are not consumed on use, though top level crafting no longer has the infinite use utility. Can also craft high-level consumables for sharing with alts, friends, and selling on the GTN. Also crafts implants. Because enemy beasts can be gathered after kills, there are always plentiful gathering sources for Bioanalysis.

Cybertech Requires Scavenging and Underworld Trading. As a leveling skill this craft became less useful once the supplies vendors were reorganized to make them more useful, but still useful at top level for learning and selling operations mods and for crafting bombs that can be used in both pvp and operations. Lets you craft armors and mods for armor shells. Also can craft droid armor, ear pieces, and unconsumable grenades for crafter use only. Like Bionanalysis, scavenging allows you to gather killed mobs in flashpoints and operations, droids in this case.

Armstech Requires Scavenging and Underworld Trading. Some of the more important schematics require Slicing mats, but the skill limit is 3 in this game, so you'll either need to buy the mats or have an alt dedicated to slicing. This skill is useful for two things, Barrels and Augments. Augments (and augmentation kits) are what the slicing mats are required for. The skill also crafts weapons and offhands, but since most of the weapons you can craft are unmodable this ultimately unprofitable. You can't even craft modable offhands, which would especially useful for leveling alts. Since level 55 augments are required for endgame progression groups, being able to craft them can be a solid profit skill.

Armormech Requires Scavenging and Investigation. Slicing mats requried for augments. This skill allows you to craft armor shells and augments, but with the cartel market dropping new armors all the time, only the augments are really useful anymore.

Synthweaving Requires Archeology and Underworld Trading. Slicing mats required for augments. This is the jedi version of Armormech, allows you to craft jedi-style armor shells. As with Armormech, only really useful for the augments.

Artifice Requires Archeology and Treasure Hunting. Useful crafting here is hilts, enhancements and dyes. Can also craft crystals, but the ability to buy cartel market crystals and spawn them indefinitely from the collections tab has made the crafting of crystals obsolete. Like Armstech this skill is for crafting weapons and offhands, but the lack of modable items means that part of the crafting has always been near useless. Because this skill has no augments to craft, it's less useful than Armstech. Also unlike Armstech, you can't gather mats while in ops and flashpoints. However, if you can learn the schematics for the hilts and relics from endgame content, you can make a killing.

Gearing up while leveling has become much easier, thanks to changes in the supplies vendors. Here's a gearing guide for 12x leveling.


Many convenience features have been added to the game recently, notably:
- All taxis now automatically unlock when you first land on a planet
- Quick travel points no longer need to be clicked, they unlock when you come near them
- armor vendors from 1 - 50 have been redesigned to be more useful, so Cybertech crafting is no longer required to help keep a leveling toon in the correct gear.
- Skills no longer cost credits
- Outfit designer permits you to keep outfit designs as skins, regardless of what mismatched/ugly armor you might be wearing. Though if you like your gear's look, you can make that the default or create an outfit for it.


@Henroid has thoughtfully provided the following F2P guide:

Henroid's Free-to-Play Tips. Or Rules.

Rule number one: If you have $5 to drop on Cartel Coins, go for it. You unlock a couple of character slots, have a larger cap on credits, can send mail, have an extra skill bar, have bank access, and aren't limited to one post per minute in the game channels. There's some other benefits too, but those kinda stand out the most.

Rule number two: The auction house (Galactic Market) has things available that you would normally have to purchase with real-world dollars, including most of the stuff mentioned in rule number one. Use these to your advantage. I'd recommend unlocking 10 inventory slots as your first purchase, which will give you enough breathing room to play the game without being constrained on space. Just remember there's two types of unlocks - individual character an account-wide. It's often better to get the latter, as it tends to cost no more than double the price for individual unlocks. You can also get some "Legacy" unlocks for cheap here (example: the Legacy menu has race unlocks at 1.5 million credits; you can sometimes find these on the AH for cheaper). Whether you're absolutely F2P or Preferred Status, you will be relying on this.

Rule number three: Currency flows in a particular way, and it's important to understand how it tends to flow.
- Levels 1 - 10: The first system you won't see much currency at all, like a couple thousand. Try not to spend it, except on skills. This is a couple hours of gameplay.
- Levels 11 - 17: The second system (the capital of your faction) should send you off with 20k to 30k. This is a few hours of gameplay.
- Levels 18 to 24: The first couple systems beyond the prologue for any class will start rewarding you with money that you can spend on unlocks from the auction house. Though, it isn't a huge comfortable amount. Again, a few hours of gameplay here.
- Levels 30 to 40: Yeah I put in a gap, but I wanted to note that in this range you're easily getting 100k for a small amount of game time invested (like 2 to 3 hours of questing). At this point in the game unlocks from the auction house should be no problem (depending on your server's economy or just the latest trends), and later on you should be able to start funding your escrow account. See below.

I'll also note that auction house micro-management for income doesn't work out so well in this game. I'm sure this can be chalked up to anecdotal, but really the fastest means of making money is to just do missions.

Rule number four: This is the most important thing for F2P users, and neither the game nor the website make much of an effort to explain it to you (presumably because they want your dollars). The game only allows F2P users 200,000 credits max - 350,000 if you're a 'preferred' user (have spent real world dollars at least once). There's a LOT of stuff that costs more than that amount in the game, whether it be on the auction house or vendors, which can be extremely discouraging to see.

But there's a way around it. When you go over your credit cap, money you make starts to slide into 'escrow.' You can't use that money unless you get a pass to withdraw an amount. This is normally an item you have to buy with real-world dollars, but it turns out people put these on the auction house. You can work up 5,000,000 into your escrow account and then buy a pass (or well, a few passes) to withdraw the full amount. It'll sit on your character, surpassing the cap, and allowing you to purchase in-game stuffs (or auctions). Sure, it'll set you back credits to unlock a ton of credits, but late enough in the game that can be negligible.

Rule number five: Passes, passes, passes. Passes exist to do things like have access to space missions for a whole week and such. If you don't feel the need to unlock anything, you can find these on the auction house too. Hey, who needs spending real world dollars for a week's worth of dungeon rewards and such?

Some helpful tips from @Fixer40000 for starting out in Galactic Starfighter space PvP:

Fixer40000 wrote: »

Agent Jellico's tips:

• Manage your crew, make sure you have the crew members that give the best boosts to each ship, of those crew you can pick one that is your co-pilot and gives you an additional ability.
• Make sure you fly the tutorial, you can access that by clicking the question mark top right of the hangar window
• Before you finish the tutorial practise flying close to the satellites to capture them and to get a feeling for the controls.
• When using blasters you need to bullseye the center of the circular target reticule. It's an extremely small target, so it will be tricky to pick up.
• When trying to dogfight, you can slow your ship (by pressing S) to give yourself a tighter turn.
• When turning to catch someone, get ready to move your mouse to center just before the hit the screen so you don't overshoot and you get another precious second of cannon/lock on time.
• Cluster missiles are the dogfighting missiles of choice. Short lock on time, plenty of ammo, drawbacks are low damage and short range.
• If you're flying a strike fighter get some Ion cannons. They do great damage Vs shields, then you can swap to cannons or missiles to crack the hull.
• Check out some of the upgrade abilities too. Ion cannons drain engine power at level 4, Concussion missiles can get a slow effect at level 5, gunship ion rails are nasty.
• Save your fleet requisition for new ships at first. My personal favourite is the S-13 Sting/Flashfire

Cambiata

Quoting the expansion info from the last thread:

Owenashi wrote: »

Get hyped for Monday:

Dulfy.net wrote:

According to the EA press release released today, SWTOR’s next expansion will be called Knights of the Fallen Empire with more details to be revealed on monday.

The E3 presentation will start on 1 PM PDT/3 PM CDT/4 PM EDT on Monday June 15.

• Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – The largest story-driven expansion to date, Knights of the Fallen Empire, marks a renewed focus on cinematic storytelling in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The expansion will deliver on the hallmarks of what makes a great BioWare™ game: new worlds to explore, new companions to recruit, and a dynamic story that players will be able to shape based on the choices they make.

Cambiata

Also for those who haven't seen it, here's the live stream showing the playable Togruta (female in this case) as well as the Yavin 4 stronghold, both of which will be added on the 3.3 patch on July 25:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psvK7NlZVKs

Owenashi

Here's one of the two teaser-screenshots of what's presumably from the KotFE trailer.

Shadowen

Is it me, or do the two people standing

look like they're in exactly the same pose while wearing exactly the same model of clothing, just differently textured/colored?

I'd comment about the identical hairlines and similar features making it look like they're twins, too, and so OH NOES CLONE WAR--holy shit, interesting thought, Vitiate unleashing an army of clones of himself that he controls puppetmaster-like on the galaxy, possibly in a mashup of the plots of the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire--but anyone with sense keeps their hair short in a war anyway...

...but hmm, now I can't let go of the Vitiate-clone-army thought. Knights of the Fallen Empire? That makes it sound like the Empire gets dissolved with any Sith who try for redemption instead of going into hiding becoming Jedi, but that makes no sense with the way the story has been unspooling and Imperial players would be piiiissed. But what if the clones are those knights, and the fallen Empire is the deposed Emperor? i.e. "L'etat, c'est moi?"

Cambiata

So, watching that Yavin 4 Stronghold video, I really want one of them now. I already own all four of the existing strongholds at full unlock, so I had to think about which one I'd be willing to delete. I'm going to delete Dromund Kaas. My imp side toons can use Tatooine for bank transfer, mail and gtn stuff. I don't do imp side stuff enough to need a Dromund kaas transport, and the floor plan is exactly the same as the Coruscant apartment. I hope we automatically get returned all of our decorations when we deactivate a stronghold, I don't want to have to go through and individually remove everything.

htm

Shadowen wrote: »

Knights of the Fallen Empire? That makes it sound like the Empire gets dissolved with any Sith who try for redemption instead of going into hiding becoming Jedi, but that makes no sense with the way the story has been unspooling and Imperial players would be piiiissed.

Yeah, I'm thinking it should probably be titled Lords of the Fallen Empire. That'd be the obvious opposite of Knights of the Old Republic

Shadowen

Cambiata wrote: »

So, watching that Yavin 4 Stronghold video, I really want one of them now. I already own all four of the existing strongholds at full unlock, so I had to think about which one I'd be willing to delete. I'm going to delete Dromund Kaas. My imp side toons can use Tatooine for bank transfer, mail and gtn stuff. I don't do imp side stuff enough to need a Dromund kaas transport, and the floor plan is exactly the same as the Coruscant apartment. I hope we automatically get returned all of our decorations when we deactivate a stronghold, I don't want to have to go through and individually remove everything.

...wait.

You don't just get a fifth stronghold?

That's some bullshit.

Commodore75

They told us about the 4 stronghold limit way back when they first released strongholds. (I think performance concerns were mentioned.)
I just assumed they would have addressed that by the time they would roll out a fifth stronghold.
I was wrong.

Cambiata

If you watch the Yavin 4 video they talk about it a little. They did try to fix the performance issues so that you could have 5 strongholds, but were not successful. Another example of how they should never, ever have built the game on the Hero engine.

Regina Fong

Cambiata wrote: »

Well I just started a thread to complain about it if anyone wants to post in it: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8243572#post8243572

Added my comments to the thread.

Support buttflap hate. Promote random violence against buttflaps. Buttflap bigotry is OK.

Regina Fong

Riding the jawa balloon.

Pray for me.

Skwigelf

I balloons!

Regina Fong

Jawa balloon trip was successful in one go, no vanishing balloon and no missing the ledge to the second datacron. I did have to wait pretty much the maximum time for the balloon to show up in the first place, but you can't have everything.

Strikor

I really want to label that screenshot as "I have candy, get in the balloon!"

Regina Fong

Once again I'm reminded about how god damn ridiculous the Imperial policy of executing anyone who fails at anything is. Talking to this quest dude who is imperial special forces, begs me to complete his mission because otherwise he'll be executed.

You know how expensive it is to train a special forces anything? It's just so unrealistic. There's no way to parse it where it doesn't lead to the empire collapsing in on itself in a matter of months.

NEO|Phyte

It's an endless and thankless task for the handful of non mouthbreathers in the Empire to hold it all together in the face of sith morons.

Regina Fong

NEO|Phyte wrote: »

It's an endless and thankless task for the handful of non mouthbreathers in the Empire to hold it all together in the face of sith morons.

It's not just the sith though, all signs point to execution being an automatic sentence for anyone surviving any failed mission as imperial policy.

That's not just a bad policy, it's an impossible policy, as in - it couldn't work. It's one of those things the EU blew up because Vader killed a couple dudes.

NEO|Phyte

Regina Fong wrote: »

NEO|Phyte wrote: »

It's an endless and thankless task for the handful of non mouthbreathers in the Empire to hold it all together in the face of sith morons.

It's not just the sith though, all signs point to execution being an automatic sentence for anyone surviving any failed mission as imperial policy.

It's the Sith who set policy.

Regina Fong

One of the simplest logical results that would follow such a policy is that you'd have whole squads and teams who would simply go awol and desert when given particularly difficult assignments. That would be happening daily.

Owenashi

So I was checking out Something Awful's SWTOR thread and apparently someone caught an accidental leak of what looks to be the KotFE area of SWTOR.com. Guess we'll know for sure in a few days if it's true or not but in the meantime, here's said leak, copied and pasted onto the thread there before Bioware caught wise and shut the area down. Naturally don't read it if you don't want to take the chance of this all being true and thus spoiled.

Something Awful's SWTOR Thread wrote:

So apparently this was just leaked by accident on SWTOR.com and quickly taken down -

A man can have anything... If he's willing to sacrifice everything. Step into an epic story-driven adventure as your character becomes The Outlander, a veteran of the Great Galactic War. A third faction threatens the galaxy as we know it, and your choices will determine the fate of both the Sith Empire and Galactic Republic. Knights of the Fallen Empire includes the first nine chapters, fueled by BioWare-style cinematic storytelling, that kicks off a new player-driven story arc that puts you at the center of a conflict where your choices have impact on outcomes including unexpected twists and betrayals. Choose your path…join or betray companions, old and new…and shape the future of the entire galaxy as well as your own. Best of all, this is only the beginning…

THE ADVENTURE BEGINS ON OCTOBER 27TH, FREE FOR ALL SUBSCRIBERS! READY TO SACRIFICE EVERYTHING? SUBSCRIBE NOW ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER OF STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBULIC? GET REWARDS NOW Continuous Storyline. Choices that matter. BioWare Storytelling. And MORE. CHOICES THAT MATTER Be at the center of a personal Star Wars™ story where choices matter and impact outcomes.

START AT LEVEL 60 You will become The Outlander, a Level 60 veteran of the Great Galactic War.

BUILD AN ALLIANCE Build a team of hand-picked allies to join your alliance; meet new companions and reunite with existing companions ready to offer you their loyalty.

YOUR PERSONAL SAGA Play one of eight class stories enhanced to offer a deeper, more accessible experience purely focused on immersing you in a personal Star Wars story.

CONTINUOUS STORY This is only the beginning of an evolving Star Wars story, new chapters released on a regular basis.


SUBSCRIBER REWARDS PROGRAM PREPARE TO FACE YOUR DESTINY. BE A SUBSCRIBER ON THE DATES BELOW TO EARN REWARDS IN-GAME AT LAUNCH*
-Nico Okarr Companion JUL 31 When you travel with Nico Okarr, the legendary gunslinger from Star Wars: The Old Republic's "Return" cinematic trailer, you can be sure that he will always have your back.
-Nico Okarr Blaster Set AUG 31 A stylish weapon set for the enthusiastic gunslinger; keep it for yourself or give to your Companion.
-Nico Okarr Duster Coat SEP 30 Impressive is the only word that describes Nico’s swashbuckling duster; you can be sure that wearing this duster sets you apart from other heroes.
-Star Wars™: Knights of the Old Republic™ - Inspired Swoop Bike OCT 19 Escape your enemies in epic style on your custom Star Wars™: Knights of the Old Republic™-inspired Swoop Bike

Early Access JUL 31 – OCT 19 Choose to be a Subscriber from July 31 to October 19 to receive the Early Access Bonus Reward! Be one of the first to jump in and get access to Knights of the Fallen Empire seven days prior to live launch. ALL SUBSCRIBERS RECEIVE THE ADVANTAGE OF THE EPIC STORY XP BOOST THROUGH OCTOBER 19, 2015!** The Epic Story XP Boost allows all subscribers to level from 1 – 50 by playing only the Class Story Missions and offers just over 12x XP boost to your leveling progress.

SUBSCRIBE NOW
Cast of Characters
-Arcann Valkorion
-Lana Beniko
-Vaylin
-Koth Vortena
-Senya
-HK-55

-ARCANN The Dark Prince. "Destiny is a lie." Destiny is a lie. Fate is the falsest of hopes. I am beyond prophecy. I forge my own path by making the difficult choices. Now, it is your turn.
I am not without mercy. Surrender and you may live. Stand against me, and I will turn you into a monument for fools who believe their victory is preordained. Choose wisely.

-VALKORION The Immortal Emperor. "I can make you powerful beyond reason…if you will only kneel." Everything until now has been the means to an end. I forged the Empire of Zakuul to surmount all of my previous works. It will span eternity.
Do not presume there are limits to my power. The Eternal Throne commands a fleet that will reshape the galaxy into any image I choose. Whatever you hope to achieve by opposing me, know that you will never succeed.

-LANA BENIKO The Dark Advisor. "I deemed you a worthy ally once. I hope I wasn't wrong." The Sith Empire and Galactic Republic have fallen. The Jedi and Sith have retreated to their temples. No one remains to stand between the Eternal Throne and the utter destruction of all we hold dear. It has to be you. Find the strength within yourself to persevere and sacrifice your own needs for those of the galaxy. You're our last hope.

-VAYLIN The Remorseless Prodigy. "Rules are for people who lack the creativity to break them." I have always been held back. All my life, my power has been restrained for fear of the chaos and bloodshed that I might inflict on a whim. But our whims represent our truest selves. And now that my power is fully my own, I intend to be very truthful.

-KOTH VORTENA The Exiled General. "We're going to win this thing. I’m telling you, its destiny." I grew up on Zakuul, served in the military. I know its potential for greatness, but all I see is the bleak reality of what it's become. Someone has to stand up to tyranny, right here and now. To make it clear that we reject this twisted vision for the galaxy. Someone has to own up to their destiny and fight.

-SENYA The Vengeful Enforcer. "Even Emperors must answer to the law." I have served with honor. I have upheld the law and pursued offenders to the far corners of the galaxy. And I have lost everyone I ever held close. The worst among us now rule over us. Their laws will never bring justice to the monsters who betray our ideals and murder our children. But I will.

-HK-55 The Loyal Bodyguard. "Declaration: Meatbag defense protocols engaged." Lament: I am programmed for your maximum protection, but hostile meatbags continually demand I reactivate my termination subroutines. Reassurance: I have no particular wish to harm the stupid meatbags. I was merely designed to be especially good at it. Affirmation: Anything that threatens you will wish it had never existed, master.

Chapters
Chapter 1 The Hunt
Chapter 2 A Dream of Empire
Chapter 3 Outlander
Chapter 4 The Gravestone
Chapter 5 From the Grave
Chapter 6 Asylum
Chapter 7 Lady of Sorrows
Chapter 8 Taking Flight
Chapter 9 The Alliance
Chapter 10 Anarchy In Paradise
Chapter 11 Disavowed
Chapter 12 Coming Soon
Chapter 13 Coming Soon
Chapter 14 Coming Soon
Chapter 15 Coming Soon
Chapter 16 Coming Soon

Terms and Conditions To qualify for the Knights of the Fallen Empire Subscriber Rewards, the account must be in a Subscriber status as of 11:59PM PDT//6:59AM GMT on the date listed by the reward. Knights of the Fallen Empire rewards are delivered through in-game mail and are redeemable as of the launch of the expansion upon login on October 27, 2015. To qualify for the Early Access Bonus, you must have qualified for each of the four rewards by being a subscriber on each of the 4 listed reward dates. Once you qualify you may enter and play Knights of the Fallen Empire on October 20, 2015, seven (7) days prior to live launch on October 27, 2015. *The Subscriber Epic Story XP Boost offers a significant enhancement of about 12x normal rate to the class story progression experience and includes: Increased commendations to support gear needs along the way Quick travel points unlocked as soon as they are revealed on the map Reduced cool down on quick travel options For questions on the Epic Story XP Boost visit: http://www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com/blog/epic-story-xp-boost

EDIT: Checking up on other forums to see if anyone else caught a look at this possible site-leak led me to this link of a long picture taken by someone of the KotFE area with broken image-links.

Strikor

Sounds a bit too good to be true. But also too detailed to be a hoax.

Regina Fong

People were getting super excited about this in fleet chatter. The possibility of finally air-locking Quinn had some people practically dancing.

Transporter

Yeah, I think that's legit.

Spoilers

I had long thought the end of the Old Republic series would be the complete destruction of the Republic and Sith Empires.

I am totes glad they are doing that

Veagle

Yeah, if that is real, that sounds like an absolutely massive expansion. And that first companion listed is someone I've always wanted to see in the game. If he could replace Skadge that would be fantastic.

I was so disappointed when I found out that the smuggler from the first trailer wasn't actually in the game. Why would they go and get John DiMaggio to voice a character for they first video and not put him in the game?!

Shadowen

Transporter wrote: »

Yeah, I think that's legit.

Spoilers

I had long thought the end of the Old Republic series would be the complete destruction of the Republic and Sith Empires.

I am totes glad they are doing that

Well, I don't think it's ever been detailed before, but one of the theories (maybe just a fan idea) about the Legends continuity to explain the weird technology levels

was that there was a dark age at some point between the KotOR era and the Battle of Ruusan, which ended the old Sith Order about a thousand years before the prequels.

This would also explain why no one knows what the fuck a Chiss is in the prequel and later eras--which always bothered me about TOR, even though I am a total Chiss fanboy.

Cambiata

I was discussing it with Strikor, and I wondered if this expansion, which seems to be what everyone has been clamoring for since launch, might be a result of the new movies coming out and the invisible hand of Disney. If that leak is true, of course. I guess we'll know for sure in two days.

Veagle

Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. The movies coming out would be a good reason for them to sink a lot of cash into Swtor development. That makes the size and scope a bit more reasonable.

Owenashi

A third shot from what's likely the KotFE trailer's popped up.

Dulfy.net wrote:

Shadowen

I was partly right!

Twins/clones dressed in palette-swapped clothes!

Regina Fong

Everything I'd heard was that EA was in profit-taking mode as far as this game was concerned, and not planning to sink any more major development money into it. Which is unfortunate, but certainly reasonable given the huge initial cost of the game and massive falloff in subscribers early on.

I can see why any company, having finally arrived at the point where the game was functioning as a revenue generating F2P game would say "Ok... don't fiddle with the formula lets make money plz".

Of course I will be very happy if this is all true, but I will remain skeptical.

DarkPrimus

I am forcing myself to finish up the Consular storyline tonight, then I'll move on to either Bounty Hunter or Smuggler, both of which I have started but haven't gotten very far in. Maybe I'll go to my Agent and try out the Hutt Cartel content - I haven't played my Agent for so long though, trying out Illum with her just made me get my ass kicked...

Cambiata

Regina Fong wrote: »

Everything I'd heard was that EA was in profit-taking mode as far as this game was concerned, and not planning to sink any more major development money into it. Which is unfortunate, but certainly reasonable given the huge initial cost of the game and massive falloff in subscribers early on.

I can see why any company, having finally arrived at the point where the game was functioning as a revenue generating F2P game would say "Ok... don't fiddle with the formula lets make money plz".

Of course I will be very happy if this is all true, but I will remain skeptical.

The last time I heard that about the company was maybe 2 years ago, when they were hemorrhaging people because of the lack of new content. If anything I think that since the prelude to Shadow of Revan they've been clearly upping their game to enrich the user experience. The prelude to shadow of Revan was filled with what Bioware is good at - introducing us to new characters that we like (and that can be romanced), and those characters being the vehicle that makes us care about the plot. Though the flashpoints were not class specific, they did at least involve a story and cutscenes, something they hadn't included on new flashpoints for a while. TOS and Ravagers, though they were disappointing in some ways, at least satisfyingly tied into the story arc they'd been crafting. I cared more about the story than i had about the dread masters, for example. To the point that right now I still don't really know nor care about the Dread Masters.

Since Shadow of Revan, they have continued to add content - Ziost, though again disappointing in some ways, still expanded on those character relationships they'd introduced previously, instead of sending us yet another faceless NPC that we were meant to forget about as soon as the content was done. To again to compare it to a previous op, I can still hear "Captain Dannik" (I think his name was) from Explosive Conflict introducing the op and later telling us "there are some Drouks headed your way", but we never found out shit about who Captain Dannik was, and he disappeared from the game as soon as that op was done. That they're carefully bringing characters along and then retaining them after the op is done says a lot about a change in mindset.

Besides all this, they've finally been adding features that people have begged for, stuff that seemed stingy for them to hold back - shorter cooldowns on QT, easier access to planets through instant taxi unlock, faster xp. They no longer feel like they're punishing people for trying to explore content more quickly.

And now, way faster than they ever have before, they're going to announce an expansion. And not an "expansion" where they just announce that nightmare mode bosses are coming at the end of the year - they're announcing a real expansion. Something has definitely changed.

Owenashi

Shadowen wrote: »

I was partly right!

Twins/clones dressed in palette-swapped clothes!

What's more interesting to me is...

...the soldiers carrying what looks to be actual shields. Have we ever seen that anywhere in SWTOR before?

Shadowen

Owenashi wrote: »

Shadowen wrote: »

I was partly right!

Twins/clones dressed in palette-swapped clothes!

What's more interesting to me is...

...the soldiers carrying what looks to be actual shields. Have we ever seen that anywhere in SWTOR before?

Not in TOR, no.

The last time I saw that was with Gungans in episode 1...

Transporter

Cambiata wrote: »

Regina Fong wrote: »

Everything I'd heard was that EA was in profit-taking mode as far as this game was concerned, and not planning to sink any more major development money into it. Which is unfortunate, but certainly reasonable given the huge initial cost of the game and massive falloff in subscribers early on.

I can see why any company, having finally arrived at the point where the game was functioning as a revenue generating F2P game would say "Ok... don't fiddle with the formula lets make money plz".

Of course I will be very happy if this is all true, but I will remain skeptical.

The last time I heard that about the company was maybe 2 years ago, when they were hemorrhaging people because of the lack of new content. If anything I think that since the prelude to Shadow of Revan they've been clearly upping their game to enrich the user experience. The prelude to shadow of Revan was filled with what Bioware is good at - introducing us to new characters that we like (and that can be romanced), and those characters being the vehicle that makes us care about the plot. Though the flashpoints were not class specific, they did at least involve a story and cutscenes, something they hadn't included on new flashpoints for a while. TOS and Ravagers, though they were disappointing in some ways, at least satisfyingly tied into the story arc they'd been crafting. I cared more about the story than i had about the dread masters, for example. To the point that right now I still don't really know nor care about the Dread Masters.

Since Shadow of Revan, they have continued to add content - Ziost, though again disappointing in some ways, still expanded on those character relationships they'd introduced previously, instead of sending us yet another faceless NPC that we were meant to forget about as soon as the content was done. To again to compare it to a previous op, I can still hear "Captain Dannik" (I think his name was) from Explosive Conflict introducing the op and later telling us "there are some Drouks headed your way", but we never found out shit about who Captain Dannik was, and he disappeared from the game as soon as that op was done. That they're carefully bringing characters along and then retaining them after the op is done says a lot about a change in mindset.

Besides all this, they've finally been adding features that people have begged for, stuff that seemed stingy for them to hold back - shorter cooldowns on QT, easier access to planets through instant taxi unlock, faster xp. They no longer feel like they're punishing people for trying to explore content more quickly.

And now, way faster than they ever have before, they're going to announce an expansion. And not an "expansion" where they just announce that nightmare mode bosses are coming at the end of the year - they're announcing a real expansion. Something has definitely changed.

DAT

EPISODE 7

CASH IN.

I would wager a guess that as soon as EA got a word that Disney was buying the Star Wars brand they smelled that cash in money and has been tossing bags of cash at Bioware to get SwToR up to snuff for the legion of people who would flood their servers.

Tulabelle

Cambiata wrote: »

Regina Fong wrote: »

Everything I'd heard was that EA was in profit-taking mode as far as this game was concerned, and not planning to sink any more major development money into it. Which is unfortunate, but certainly reasonable given the huge initial cost of the game and massive falloff in subscribers early on.

I can see why any company, having finally arrived at the point where the game was functioning as a revenue generating F2P game would say "Ok... don't fiddle with the formula lets make money plz".

Of course I will be very happy if this is all true, but I will remain skeptical.

The last time I heard that about the company was maybe 2 years ago, when they were hemorrhaging people because of the lack of new content. If anything I think that since the prelude to Shadow of Revan they've been clearly upping their game to enrich the user experience. The prelude to shadow of Revan was filled with what Bioware is good at - introducing us to new characters that we like (and that can be romanced), and those characters being the vehicle that makes us care about the plot. Though the flashpoints were not class specific, they did at least involve a story and cutscenes, something they hadn't included on new flashpoints for a while. TOS and Ravagers, though they were disappointing in some ways, at least satisfyingly tied into the story arc they'd been crafting. I cared more about the story than i had about the dread masters, for example. To the point that right now I still don't really know nor care about the Dread Masters.

Since Shadow of Revan, they have continued to add content - Ziost, though again disappointing in some ways, still expanded on those character relationships they'd introduced previously, instead of sending us yet another faceless NPC that we were meant to forget about as soon as the content was done. To again to compare it to a previous op, I can still hear "Captain Dannik" (I think his name was) from Explosive Conflict introducing the op and later telling us "there are some Drouks headed your way", but we never found out shit about who Captain Dannik was, and he disappeared from the game as soon as that op was done. That they're carefully bringing characters along and then retaining them after the op is done says a lot about a change in mindset.

Besides all this, they've finally been adding features that people have begged for, stuff that seemed stingy for them to hold back - shorter cooldowns on QT, easier access to planets through instant taxi unlock, faster xp. They no longer feel like they're punishing people for trying to explore content more quickly.

And now, way faster than they ever have before, they're going to announce an expansion. And not an "expansion" where they just announce that nightmare mode bosses are coming at the end of the year - they're announcing a real expansion. Something has definitely changed.

Seems like a major expansion right before the new movie would be an EXCELLENT idea.

Also, this epic story EXP sounds fun. Maybe I'll try out some new characters to see the story!

EnclaveofGnomes

I don't think I could level and stay sane without this 12x exp...there's just so many mobs between you and your objectives, often with annoying knockbacks.

Owenashi

On the topic of one of the first items seen in the SWTOR site-leak...

...anyone have any guesses what the Outlander is supposed to be exactly? A simple change in title when it comes to characters speaking to you in KotFE-dialogue to cut down on line-space? Something akin to WoW's Death Knight seeing as the Outlander's said to be a veteran of the Great Galactic War? And if it is, what sort of elite class could it be? We know via the Inquisitor/Consular and the Bounty Hunter/Trooper that it's possible for a class to have the option to DPS, tank and/or heal depending on their AC choice but what sort of fighter would the Outlander be? Could it be, if this IS the game's first elite class, that SWTOR plans to go a little deeper with the Outlander character creation and allow players to choose if they're a Force-user or not?

Tulabelle

I think

They are using Outsider so they don't have to have Imperial and Rebel dialog, locations, etc.

Regina Fong

Tulabelle wrote: »

I think

They are using Outsider so they don't have to have Imperial and Rebel dialog, locations, etc.

Beyond that, it's so npcs can call you "Outsider" (ala Outlander in TES games) instead of every random npc having to have lines to call you "jedi", "sith", "hunter", "agent", "captain".

It's VA conservation.

No doubt just enough npcs will call you jedi/sith/hunter/agent/captain that you probably won't even notice unless you're really paying attention.

-edit-

Oh I think I misread something, didn't realize there is allegedly going to be a class called "outsider". And why are we spoilering this? Are people really this sensitive? Who wants to live in an information black hole but still insists on reading video game forums about the video games they wish to remain utterly surprised by?