Darth Hater

UPDATE: We recently added images showcasing the Republic faction's Operations gear. You will find these images on their respective class pages.

Three tiers of Level 50 PVE gear appeared in the 11/26 patch: Tionese, Columi, and Rakata. Darth Hater spent some time poking around in-game and analyzing client data to attempt to determine how one could acquire some of the highest item level gear sets. All items included two- and four-piece set bonuses that curiously displayed only when the item is equipped; these set bonuses were mainly buffs to existing abilities and not unique to a particular tier.

So far, set names remain consistent to combat role through item progression, and carry a unified look throughout so you don’t look mismatched or out of place. Armor set names were the same for both factions, and we do provide some low-res preview images of both the Imperial and Republic versions of the sets on each class pairing page. It is confirmed that the Republic versions of the armor sets look different, and keep in mind Imperial Agents use knives while Smugglers use shotguns.

We would like share what we found, and encourage comments if you believe anything is inaccurate or have any additions, as we’re happy to credit you for any legitimate finds.

This week's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update is a dual update consisting of the second portion of Senior Game Designer William Wallace's Companion Characters Developer Blog and a new video dubbed 'Choose Your Side' which features the Jedi Knight and Bounty Hunter character classes.

In the Developer Blog, William Wallace highlights companion artificial intelligence and their function in groups. While discussing companions and their strengths, William makes special note of the ease of which companions can be used if a situation requires it.

A common situation familiar to MMO players is the departure of a member halfway through a quest or instance (As a personal example: I once abandoned a group in the middle of an instance when my washing machine caught fire. These things happen!). This could potentially ruin the game experience for all involved parties, but with the ability to substitute a companion in this situation, an experienced group of players will often be able to mitigate the impact of this event and continue their adventure.

In addition, we now have a new video feature which will likely become a regular one fans can expect to see over the coming weeks. The 'Choose Your Side' video shows off the combat in The Old Republic with the intention of seeing the Jedi Knight and Bounty Hunter duking it out. Senior Writer Hall Hood, Writer Randy Begel, Senior Designer Austin Peckenpaugh, and Senior Designer Pete Warner discuss the motivations behind the character classes and the possible outcome should they ever meet on the battlefield.

Video embed and official DevTracker posts follow the jump.

Today's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update features a character progression video for the Bounty Hunter. Highlights include the general characteristics of the Mercenary and Powertech Advanced Classes, glimpses of various species, and a Jedi getting stabbed in the head.

Our working dissection is available in the media gallery below. As with all of our dissections, items noted in prior dissections will not be mentioned here again unless otherwise important. Make sure to check back throughout the day for more. Feel free to add your thoughts and items you noticed in the video. If we decide to use your find, we will credit you in the dissection.

Video embed and yellow text after the jump.

In the Star Wars universe there is no more famous archetype than that of a lightsaber wielding Jedi or Sith. Among these villains and heroes, there is one category of character who is better described as infamous: The Bounty Hunter. Donning armor, blasters, and all manner of gadgetry, these soldiers for hire give Star Wars fans an alternative to the hokey religions and ancient weapons of Jedi. For these reasons and more, BioWare has included the Bounty Hunter as one of the eight main classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Darth Hater once again sent a substantial team to E3 and experienced a new demonstration of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Several staffers share their personal impressions of various classes on Tatooine in the following pages, and you are welcome to ask them questions about their experiences at tonight's Q&A. Please note that even though Orionark and Emlaeh also attended, they both felt their time spent with the game was too limited comparatively to give substantial written impressions.

Individual Impresssions Pages

• Algiebba


• Infamous


• Mako


• Dover


• Sado

This week's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update is E3 Details, new Advanced Classes Page, and on The Lost Suns with an interview Alexander Freed. As BioWare Austin's Community Manager Stephen Reid hinted at this morning, there are three updates today about SWTOR. This is all in preparation for the Electronic Entertainment Expo that starts June 6 and expectations are massive on the news coming out of the event. Stated in the E3 details post is a tidbit about what fans can expect from E3:

• More to share regarding the stories from the CG trailers


• Belsavis raid content


• Alderaan political intrigue


• Tatooine -- sandpeople and something unknown

As part of this week's Friday Update, MMORPG.com interviewed Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller about the Advanced Classes we will see in Star Wars: The Old Republic. He covers abilities from almost every class including the Jedi Knight's Force Leap, the different stances of the Sith Warrior, the Bounty Hunter's helpful Kolto Missile, and the Smuggler's explosive Shrapnel Bomb.

The Old Republic: The Lost Suns previewed earlier this week on StarWars.com, and today an interview with Senior Writer and Managing Editor Alexander Freed. He covers a brief overview of the comic that follows Theron Shan, a Republic spy set out to discover what the Sith Empire's plans are for the planets newly acquired in the Treaty of Coruscant. The comic canonically at the start of the game, about 10 years after Threat of Peace and 40 years after Blood of the Empire.

Included a bit after the rest of the updates went up was a new Advanced Classes page. The page is a newly redesigned page to fit the place of the older updates. It contains new information about the trees and abilities of the Advanced Classes.

Official Dev Tracker posts follow the jump. Images from today's Friday Update are contained in the Media Gallery below. If higher resolution versions of the images become available, we will update them. Aurebesh Working translation follows the jump as well as in the Media Gallery.

This week's DevTracker Highlights covers everything from skill trees to keyboards. Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert dips behind the scenes and explains a normal day for him at the BioWare Austin studio. Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller discusses dual specs and their place in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Associate Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi answers questions from the French community about item colorization, dark-side healing, and the fate of the Sith soldier class. All of this and more after the break.

This week, Darth Hater attended the much talked about Fan Site Summit. Sado and Dover joined the rest of the fan sites down at BioWare Austin on April 24 through the 26th. The list that follows below is Darth Hater's up to date coverage of the event. Images of us at the event are contained in the media gallery at the bottom of this post. Update: New high quality images are now available in the media gallery below after image 45.

DH Fan Site Summit Content

Darth Hater Exclusive Screenshot

• General Things Learned


• Black Talon Flashpoint Impressions


• Bounty Hunter Impressions


• Imperial Agent Impressions


• Question and Answer Session Audio


• Gabe Amatangelo Interview


• PVP Information Learned


• Gabe Amatangelo Q&A


• PVP Impressions

Carefully examining and dissecting content for Star Wars: The Old Republic is the keystone of our work at Darth Hater. This meticulous approach is seen throughout our articles, but it becomes even more pronounced when we are actually playing the game.The following is our list of new general notes from our multiple hours of game play at the Fan Site Summit earlier this week.

• Crew Skills available for training in Kaas City: Cybertech (Reverse Engineering Tech which leads to creating Tech), Underworld Trading, Slicing, Bio Analysis, Bio Chem, Diplomacy, Investigation Mission, Treasure Hunting, Synthweaving, Archeology, and Artifice.


• Galactic Market Kiosk is the name of the Auction House, and encountered first on Dromund Kaas.

Hit the jump for more.

During the Fan Site Summit, we were able to advance our characters as far as we could in the time allowed. For some of us, that meant completing our class story on Nal Hutta and moving on toward Dromund Kaas. While in transit to the Sith Capital, we were able to take part in the Black Talon Flashpoint. As the first Flashpoint avaliable to Sith players, Black Talon fills the same introductory role as the Esseles will for the Republic. Hit the jump for a closer look at our first full run through a Flashpoint in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The Bounty Hunter is one of those classes that went through much iteration of changes since first introduction almost two years ago. Although the look and core functionality remains the same, we saw the class have its resource mechanic change, it gained an additional role in one of its Advanced Classes, etc. Therefore, I looked forward to playing a Bounty Hunter at BioWare's Fan Site Summit to see how far the class has come. If you wish to not have the Bounty Hunter class story spoiled, do not hit the story pages.

Article Pages:

1. Story


2. Story Continued


3. Combat and Advanced Class

Update: It appears the list PC Gamer UK saw in the latest build is inaccurate.

Daniel Erickson
Hey Folks,

The species/class combo list you're referencing is not accurate. If it does appear in the magazine, that's unfortunate.

My guess is that an enthusiastic member of the press wrote down everything he saw in the character creation screen which, as we've stated often, is nowhere near final. Occasionally we'll have species in odd classes or in all classes because of a bug or testing.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

As with any game in development, everything in any current or past build is subject to change. It is important to note that no species/class combination is final until BioWare announces it. Thanks to Gerbo and Meglivorn for pointing out Daniel Erickson's comment in the Dev Tracker.

This week's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update is the Advanced Classes Update Developer Blog by Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller. The update includes a deep dive from Georg Zoeller on the Advanced Classes in general, talent trees, abilities, and a few interesting tidbits from the testing program. Developer Blogs normally are not huge updates but this one is definitely not a normal Developer Blog.

Two choice quotes from the update:

Georg Zoeller
Jedi Shadow (Roles: Close - Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)
Sith Assassin (Roles: Close - Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)

Plenty more is covered in the Advanced Classes Update. Be sure to check it out and let us know your feedback on it in the comment section of this post. The Official DevTracker post follows after the jump.

The last time we spoke to James Ohlen, Star Wars: The Old Republic Creative Director, it was back at last summer's Gamescom in Germany. He granted us an opportunity to catch up with him at PAX East, and we discussed a bunch of topics ranging from Game Testing and Space Combat to Advanced Classes... and blowing up Alderaan.

Hit the jump for more.

Live from PAX East 2011, BioWare announces this week's Friday Update - New In-game Trailer. The Trailer recaps the high level story -- Peace in the Republic, Empire Returned, War, all set to clips of in-game footage. We're bringing this content live so watch this post for the Friday Update news.

UPDATE 11a PT: We had a chance to chat with Stephen Reid and we will have the full interview up relatively soon, but we wanted to let you know about something you will see tomorrow:

Stephen Reid
We're having a Saturday update; we got something going up tomorrow. I'm not going to spoil it but it is related to Taral V. I think people are going to like it; you're not going to have to work too hard to figure it out but it is something people have been asking for consistently for quite a long time.

No, it isn't a release date. But yeah, we're having an update tomorrow.

Working Dissection of the trailer is in the Media Gallery below. As with all dissections, we will not comment on stuff seen in prior videos. Make sure to keep checking out throughout the weekend for more content for the Dissection as we will add new content as we go. Official DevTracker post follows after the jump.

For this week's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update, BioWare announced additional updates for the Bounty Hunter class. Additional information on the Rattataki species is now available, as well as an analysis of the Kuat Drive Yards D5-Mantis Patrol Craft, and Mako the Bounty Hunter's Slicer Companion receives an update as well. Lastly, the Mercenary and Powertech specializations were added to the Bounty Hunter Holonet page. BioWare also revealed details for PAX East via the Official Forum for fans eagerly waiting the convention.

Yesterday's Dissection of the Bounty Hunter Video is already available for those interested. Aurebesh Translations, Screenshot Dissection, and Screenshots/Concept Art from the update are contained in the Media Galleries below. Hit the jump for official yellow posts, video embeds of both of the trailers, and more after the jump.

Update: Stephen Reid's update-and-a-half comment was right with the announcement of the Deceived Novel Trailer. The post features details on the upcoming Deceived Novel as well as a tidbit of what looks like a new cinematic trailer in the making. Deceived will be available on March 22nd in US Retail Stores but if you are looking to seal your copy you can preorder the book online via Amazon and an assortment of others listed in the article.

Today IGN released an interview with Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer. The article also included the newest class video for the Bounty Hunter.

"The Bounty Hunter is his own man and always needs space to stretch out, so as much as possible missions take you into situations you won't see with other classes," Erickson said.

On the roles a Bounty Hunter can take, Zoeller commented:

The Bounty Hunter's role for the Empire is similar to that of the Trooper on the Republic side. One could say that they are arch enemies. Within the class, the roles are divided as follows : the Mercenary advanced class can take the role of ranged damage dealer or healer [and] the Powertech advanced class can take the role of close range damage dealer or tank. The skill trees for these advanced classes offer various ways of sub-specializing these roles (e.g. burst vs. sustained kind of damage dealing roles, etc.)

Hit the Media Gallery below for the Working Dissection. As with all Dissections we will be avoiding things seen in prior Dissections. Make sure to check back throughout the day and weekend for new images as we will be adding them throughout the weekend. If you notice something that we don't have in the Dissection, feel free to point it out and we will credit you with the find. Video is embedded after the jump.

We've released a second preview of Pro Tips by Steve Hamaker for your visual consumption. As always, give Steve your constructive criticism in the comments section. We'll be launching the weekly comic very soon, along with some other tasty site updates. Stay tuned folks, we've got plans.

Last Friday, Star Wars: The Old Republic's Principal Lead Systems Designer Georg Zoeller provided some insight regarding how BioWare and LucasArts designed the combat aspects of the Advanced Class system. We decided it was time to take a look back at the roles we speculated about prior to the Developer Blog and update our charts with the information gathered.

This post includes details of what we were able to learn from our hands-on time at the Penny Arcade Expo, which included six of the eight classes, and three of the four origin worlds. We invite you to add your own notes to the comments section of if you were at PAX and would like to share about your hands-on experience. As a reminder, we will not be covering things mentioned in prior 'General Information Learned' posts from E3 and Gamescom. Beware: bantha-sized post after the jump.

• Page 1: General Notes, Stat Modifiers, and Character Sheets


• Page 2: Equipment and Loot