SWTOR update 2.1 today sees denizens of both the Republic and the Sith Empire down their blasters and meet in no-man’s land to ask, ‘Who are you wearing?’. And slightly more disconcertingly, ‘Whose face are you wearing?’.
Everybody wants to be a cat. So the song goes, and so it is. In the past, the given reason has been that cats know where it, something, is at - now, it’s that cats are possessed of some of the greatest natural agility and self-discipline in the known galaxy, and consequently make for excellent jedi.
The Old Republic’s take on the cat-person, a fantasy staple for reasons I’ve never been privy to, has been around since launch. Especially if you’re in Republic space, you’ll have regularly come across the Cathar as NPC, companion, or jedi master. But only now are they set to become playable. We think.
The thing about SWTOR’s ongoing free-to-play revival is this: while many justifiably don’t feel like celebrating when a number of punitive systems remain in place, it really has revitalised the game. Two million have joined since its relaunch in Autumn, and thousands more go through the rigmarole of account creation and a many-gig download with every passing day.
Our Spotlight units plug content our journalists have made, that our advertisers want to promote. Sometimes the promotion is paid for, but the content they go to is always independent with no client oversight or approval.
This is extremely good news. You remember the reduced experience rate free-to-play SWTOR players know and suffer? Well, it’s still there. But it’s become much more palatable in the latest update.
SWTOR’s 2.0 patch has blockaded the Public Test Server in anticipation of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel’s arrival in March. As a consequence, level 55 is now something all classes can aspire to, and patch notes rise so steeply from the peak of BioWare’s Austin offices that they risk touching the sun and burning Planet Earth to the ground.
This is Makeb. It's a gay planet. When I say it's a gay planet I don't mean that the planet itself is innately homosexual. Makeb itself is just a genderless, oblate spheroid of rock surrounding a sexy molten iron core, shuffled away in some dark corner of a far away galaxy. When I say that Makeb is a gay planet I mean that it is the only location in Star Wars: The Old Republic in which you can be gay. It's the one planet in the universe where flirtatious dialogue options will appear in conversations with similarly gendered characters. It's the only planet on which you can kiss somebody with similarly shaped genitals as the screen fades to black and "doing it" music starts playing.
That's very strange. Why have all the space-faring homosexuals been exiled to Makeb? Even weirder: why do players have to pay real money to visit this extraterrestrial homo-haven?
Newly-appointed BioWare Austin GM Matthew Bromberg must be a lot of things, but without so much of a glimpse at his CV we can deduce that 'self-assured to the point of bravado' isn’t one of them. When asked whether he was convinced The Old Republic’s free-to-play model would bring in the new player blood it’s so thirsty for, he simply replied: "I don't know."
Between the newly announced Firefall eSports toolkit and a patch so radical its stated aim is to “create fun", Red 5 Studios have had their work cut out for them over the last month. Yet they’ve still managed to spare enough able bodies to hold the door open and let in a stream of talent recently cut loose from 38 Studios and BioWare Austin.
Further layoffs have hit Bioware Austin, the developer of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Amidst the layoffs, it’s been confirmed that Rich Vogel, one of the game’s most senior team members, has left Bioware Austin.
