In the excitement of last week's free to play announcement, the mention of a new world event coming this month was somewhat overlooked. The EA press release, however, mentioned new content coming in August:
BioWare will be increasing the frequency of game content updates, with the first of many new releases coming in August.
An MMORPG.com interview with Jeff Hickman and Matthew Bromberg presents a more specific description of what to expect:
They also have a brand new event for all subscribers coming in August which is a public world event like the Rhakgoul Invasion.
As players eagerly await the start of the new event, Darth Hater takes a look back at the timeline of the Rakghoul plague, discusses how that event unfolded, explores what to expect with this next event and examines some possible quests and items involved.
A Rakghoul Event Timeline
Looking back at how the previous world event unfolded reveals a few details that could hint at what we can expect for the next event. The 1.2 game update was pushed to the live servers on Thursday, April 12. A small patch the following day -- Friday, April 13 -- had the unfortunate side effect of reverting some of the 1.2 changes, and caused servers to be down for several hours. The in-game news reports directing people to Tatooine for the beginning of the event appeared on the morning of Sunday, April 15. There was no maintenance period immediately before the event began.
As far as advance notice went, the event appeared to happen without any warning. However, Twitter provided a few clues that something would be happening on April 15. Community member Asros sent the following Tweet on the afternoon of April 13, providing clues obtained during an interview with Stephen Reid:
From our interview - “Make sure you are on the servers on sunday morning. Tatooine in particular.” - @rockjaw #SWTOR
Brax Kedren asked Stephen Reid for a more specific timeframe, and got the following response:
@Rockjaw @Asros So do we have a time frame where it would be a good idea to be in-game and maybe on Tattoine Sunday Morning?
@BraxKedren I'd say before midday. IE, in the morning. ;)
Other than those messages on Twitter, there was no advance warning that an event was about to start.
What To Look For
BioWare Lead Writer Hall Hood recently got people excited with a tweet that hinted at some future content:
#SWTOR SIS Intel Report: Rumors indicate Czerka research vessel "Theoretika" has been located by deep-space salvage team. Investigating.
Players quickly began speculating that this could mean the next live event would soon be arriving. However, Hall Hood shot down such speculation with follow-up tweets:
Just to clarify: I was only giving a little preview of future content. I would never announce an in-game event on Twitter. #SWTOR
"World event?!?!?!" - All will be revealed, in time. Let's just say it's part of some content I think you'll enjoy.
Do not leave work early. It is NOT a world event.
Trust me, when there is a new in-game event, you will have *plenty* of advance warning.
While Hood seems to indicate that there will be advance notice of the next event, the previous event had very little advance warning, and the hints BioWare did provide for the Rakghoul event were communicated in a way that was not widely noticed by players.
Essentially, the best way to keep an eye out for the start of the next event is to be alert for new things appearing in-game -- new items, news desks, audio announcements, visual clues, etc. No doubt news will spread quickly on the official forums and across social media as soon as the first players realize the event has started.
What To Expect
While the start of the Rakghoul plague event seemed to come out of nowhere, word of it spread quickly. From the very beginning of the event on April 15 to its end after maintenance on Tuesday, April 24, the Rakghoul event lasted a total of nine days. This gave most players plenty of time to participate in some capacity.
The previous event did allow players to unlock new quests each day for six days, rewarding a different piece of Containment Officer armor for each quest. This meant that players did not have a whole lot of extra time to complete all of the quests and collect the full set of Containment gear. Participation and completion of missions was required on six of the allotted nine days -- a high percentage.
The upcoming event will likely be of a similar duration or longer. A shorter duration would mean more players could potentially miss the event, especially during the summer season when many people go away on vacation. It seems beneficial for BioWare to get as many players as possible involved in upcoming events considering the development time and effort spent on them, as well as the positive feedback from the last event.
The Rakghoul plague did an excellent job of engaging the entire player base. Even players who had no interest were exposed to possible contamination from other players. The Rakghoul vaccine was made easily available to those who wanted to avoid becoming infected and chose to go about their usual business without exploding into a green mess. Still, even those players knew what was going on around them, and were therefore involved. How future events choose to engage the players remains to be seen, but creative use of game mechanics coupled with appealing incentives and rewards for participating seems like the best way to encourage player involvement.
The previous event succeeded in drawing attention to two features that are often overlooked: world bosses and open world PVP. By including three different world bosses on Tatooine as part of the event's mission objectives, BioWare encouraged players to team up and defeat challenging bosses they may never have encountered otherwise. The mission objectives were located in areas shared by both Imperial and Republic players, leading to frequent spontaneous PVP fighting -- something far too rare in SWTOR. It seems likely that future events will try to draw upon these aspects again.
Lastly, what good is a limited time event without limited time rewards? The Rakghoul event provided some desirable incentives in the form of unique moddable Containment armor, specially colored lightsaber crystals, mini Rakghoul vanity pets in a variety of colors, and an original title. The rewards were no longer available when the event ended. It can be expected that future events will also have similar rewards that are available only for the duration of the event.
The previous event did not require maintenance immediately before it launched, and started on a weekend. That means that the next event could literally start any day now. Stay tuned to Darth Hater for the latest coverage and guides as the excitement unfolds.
New Missions and Items
The following section may contain some spoilers as to the quests and rewards involved in the next world event. This information was discovered through data mining when the 1.3 update was applied to the Public Test Server. These are new items and quests available in the game data that have not made an appearance in-game as of yet. The idea that these are actually part of the next world event is only speculation, and plans can and do change before content appears on the live servers.
Note: If you do not wish to read potential spoilers, please skip the next section.
Missions
- On Your Marks
- The Grand Acquisitions Race
- Quesionable Motives
- Dubious Motives
- Vandrayk's Tuning Apparatus
- Shard of Harterra
- Rakata Eating Utensils
- Preserved Colicoid Queen Egg
- Fossilized Krayt Dragon Pearl
- Collected Writings of Tiethiagg
- Black and Orange Sphere
- A Lead
- Another Lead
- A Mysterious Contact
Items
- Token of Enrichment
- Akar Kesh Meditation Mask
- Black and Orange Sphere
- Fossilized Krayt Dragon Pearl
- Plasma Sealed Jar
- Shard of Harterra
- Chevin Data
- Vandrayk's Tuning Apparatus
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Posted 8/13/2012 9:10:46 PMWoot! World event!
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Posted 8/13/2012 7:07:03 PMBottom line; people are still playing SWTOR and enjoying it. It's not you? well so what. Go play your game of choice. Keep flaming SWTOR, but at the end of the day frankly who gives a fuck. Just you.
End of.
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Posted 8/13/2012 10:33:43 PMI endorse and/or approve this comment.
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Posted 8/13/2012 3:30:58 PMMore haters then usual on Darthhater... Well I know there is several hot argument in this article. But If you don't like it don't post comments. I personally hope that this upcoming event is gonna be epic and way more interesting then Rakghouls.
I tried to avoid last one but this time I'm gonna try to be a part of it. Sounds like a really nice plot for my Smuggler.
Imperial Agent: Check,Trooper: Check,Bounty Hunter: Check,Smuggler: Check!!Who needs force powers when you got a Blaster at your side.
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Posted 8/13/2012 1:46:22 PMLooks like alot of rifles and snipers but no weapons for other classes yet
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Posted 8/11/2012 2:08:32 PMBioware has something against me... everytime there is a world event I'm not at home... gosh!!!!!
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Posted 8/10/2012 6:31:21 PMHmmm, I am thinking this likely has something to do with the Dread Masters, so Bioware can introduce the new dailies.
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Posted 8/10/2012 2:52:01 PMheres my prediction
imps/reps will pvp a little
imps/reps will do a truce and agree to trade kill each other for loot items that the world event vendor will have.
thats exctly what happened at the rakghoul event even larry everrt of the gamebreaker was mad about that lol. /shakes head
I would have a good laugh if this was on the 28th of aug like look at us we have a world event. No world event is going to compete with gw2 pvp setup i dont care if they have expertise crystals with 500 expertise and 10000 endurance lol
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Posted 8/10/2012 10:29:06 PMI do care, you can take your silly arguments to any GW2 board, there is no need to share them here, you know, on a TOR related site (since you don't care). Now gtfo, there is the door >>
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Posted 8/11/2012 1:25:40 AMIll say my viewpoint and what i think. Ill discuss swtor/gw2 and whatever else i feel like here. If you dont like it you can gtfo and theres the door--->
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Posted 8/12/2012 7:43:44 AMOh dear are you swarming gw2 forums with all your love for that game just as much as you swarm darthhater.com with your hate for swtor?.... you are just boring but hopefully we'll be rid of you by 28th of august... wish you a lot of fun.
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Posted 8/12/2012 1:27:28 PMWhats a matter cant handle criticism of your perfect game? Someone has a different opinion its the end of the world must defend swtors honor!! /carebear mode on!!!.Ill still be posting here after the 28 b/c ill be playing the early start of gw2 the 25th.
Hey why did your perfect game go f2p and lose close to 600k subs? If its that good why did they lose that much?
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Posted 8/12/2012 3:28:07 PMOh come on. By now you know the answer to that one. Look at how the rabid fanboys got when you had a different opinion or concern before the game came out, lol. Look at how the fanboys had seizures for their failed f2p game got insulted by saying the servers were dead before the transfers. Although this is the biggest failure in gaming history with out a doubt the fanboys will deny it and some how bring in other games in a discussion to justify this failure, lol.
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Posted 8/12/2012 4:13:30 PMYeah tell me about it lol. Its ok for them to positively troll but when i say anything in return its oh you have recieved an infraction for trolling when all i did was respond to there qq and fanboi rage go figure.
The fanbois are whats keeping this turd from bieng flushed thier settling for kotor 3 with multiplayer add ons when if they stopped playing like the rest of us EA would either shut it down or give us the f'n game we wanted not what they wanted. It wont happen though when you had fanbois excited about a ewok pet or having there friends join for 1 month off a trial so they can get a speeder then the friend unsubs lol.
People are going to be shocked when they see gw2 VO when thier cut scenes in gw2 look "realistic" and non puppety and there mouths dont look like puppets when they talk swtor is gonna be even more screwed b/c that was swtors whole selling point with the VO and gw2 does it 1000000 better. /Shakes head
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Posted 8/12/2012 4:27:42 PMlol I don't even bothering up my inbox at all when they you got a message. I figure it's some autmated message I won't even read anyway. The amusing thing about the fanboys is that they still say this game is doing amazingly well.. LOL You even got one tard on the swtor forums claiming this is the second biggest mmo.. I remember when I began noticing the servers dying the guild would say nah it's not dying and give the lame excuse of it's late and we are on eastern server, lol. I mean the excuses and fanboyismt for this game is really amusing at times. GW2 does look really good and I see my time eaten up heavily with that game. I already unistalled this trash and letting my account expire because I barely wanna play it now and when gw2 comes out I am gonna wanna play it even less. The VO was the only thing good going for this game but from what I am seeing in videos of gw stuff does look really exciting.