Day 3 of PAX brought us 1 Q&A session.. and of course… the BioWare TOR Panel! Info from the Panel is after the ‘more’
Seemed to be a short Q&A, but here’s what I found:
Q: Will Force users overpower non-Force users?
A:Â Everyone has a role to play, and we balance those roles
Q:Â What happens when you make a horrible choice as a Jedi?
A:Â Impact on your Light Side/Dark Side, if you kill someone, they can’t help you later.
Q:Â Can Moddable armor compete with Operations gear:
A:Â Only if you get the mats from Operations
Q:Â When do we get Assassin or Shadow videos?
A:Â You can play one at the booth
Q:Â Different difficulty modes for Operations?
A:Â Normal and Hard for now, working on others.
Q:Â Appearance customization
A:Â No appearance tab, Armor matches to chest piece.
Q:Â Do you always need Tanks/Healers in Flashpoints/Operations
A: More forgiving at lower settings. Need to specialize for harder content
Q:Â Can we group with friends of a different level?
A:Â Warzones bolster you, but no Mentor system at launch
Q:Â Bonus for being neutral?
A:Â Cosmetic options for all three alignments.
Q:Â Do choices in Flashpoints affect your story if you lose the roll? (referring to winning/losing the conversation role to see who’s answer gets used)
A:Â Self contained, won’t affect your story.
Q:Â Will everyone look different at endgame?
A:Â Identity is important, moddable items exist.. you can look like Obi-Wan or Boba Fett if you want.
Q: Player driven economy?
A: Mix of Player and NPC Controlled. Player part is crafting, and auction house.
BioWare TOR Panel from PAX:
Main info to come out of this was Beta Weekends start September 2nd, and Illum is the ‘solo’ questing hub for endgame (and also has the open world pvp objectives).
We have already begun exploring the next content that’s coming after. Obviously it’s going to take a while, but what we’re promising you guys is if you’re coming here, and you’ve admitted to us, we are truly the dream we’ve always, to be an eternal BioWare MMORPG, to do those stories, to have the content to take those characters and give them, forever, and we’re here to tell that’s exactly what we’ve done.
We announced that we are expanding game testing weekends in September, and what do you know that’s right around the corner. As of next weekend, the first weekend of September, we are greatly expanding the testing program and we’re bringing in a whole new group of invitations to a random server, so make sure you guys are signed up for testing, and we’ll continue to expand that as we go through-out September. So we’re going to turn some knobs, poke some switches as we learn some stuff, and then do it all over again, and we’ll continue to add testers and actually have you guys tell us how to create the biggest launch that we can. What I can say is that if you are signed up for testing, even if you don’t get in next weekend, you should be getting in very soon.
All of you know that you can pre-order the game now, if you’ve heard about the idea of limited pre-orders, that is true, I just want to make sure you understand, the reason behind that is because we want to make sure our on-going experience in the first few days goes well, so the reason we restrain the number of pre-orders is literally so that we can have the best launch we possibly can. Arguably, possibly, we’ll have the biggest MMO launch ever so we realize that and if you haven’t pre-ordered yet, please pre-order now.
We’ve talked about how we’ll have open world PvP, we’re going to have obviously PvP servers, various planets where you’ll be able to fight each other, and on top of all that, open world PvP objectives. And, the first one we’re talking about today is, welcome to the planet of Ilum. Ilum is a high-level planet. It is where, some of you might be familiar, the crystals that make lightsabers are, a valuable resource for the Empire and Republic and they have a vested interest in the planet, and so we have territory control going on. Now, so we have two different bases, each of these bases have various PvP defenses… armaments, you can take them and take down PvP defenses like turrets… and ultimately destroy the enemy’s base.
Now, when you’ve got open world PvP and you’ve got an objective, and you’ve got 200 people going up against 100 people, who’s going to win? Two hundred right? So we’ve been really careful designing open world PvP objectives to support the guerilla style, run-and-gun style fight, and so you saw some clips there of taking out turrets, defense mechanisms. Once you do enough of that, the airship can take out the base, so we’re testing, we’re iterating on it, these are some of the different things, of course there’s screenshots of some of the other stuff we’ve got going on in there, but what’s really important is that we make sure this is fun and enjoyable for everyone so we’re taking this seriously, and the player, the side that gets control and takes out the base, obviously they’re going to get valor and bonus rewards and they’ll get lots of that kind of stuff. So territorial control, battle of Ilum is the first one we’re showing, and we’re working on future ones and more. Open world PvP, PvP servers, various different hotspots, Hoth, Tatooine, etc. Players can go fight, they can earn rewards in all those different areas, all different planets, 11 different planets, 11 different areas, earn Mercenary commendation, Warzone commendations. Together they get you the PvP gear. Now of course Warzones for Warzones and Mercenary for open world stuff, if you’re a fan of one more than the other, you can exchange them to get those gears.
