Folks,

As of now, the non disclosure portion of our Game Testing Agreement is officially lifted. While all players must still accept the Game Testing Agreement, from this point on testers may now freely talk about their experiences this past weekend in the game, as well as post screenshots and gameplay videos of their testing experiences. We encourage you to come join us on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic Forums to share your experiences!

The Star Wars: The Old Republic community site will have a copy of this message on the forums and it will also appear in the Patcher. Players may not talk about nor reprint posts from our testing forums as they are still fully covered by the confidentiality portions of our Game Testing Agreement. And all players who want to participate in the upcoming Beta Test Weekends still have to accept all terms of the Game Testing Agreement. So, other than that, free feel to talk about and share your experiences in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

My thanks go out to everyone who has beta tested and continues to beta test the game. It has been with your help and feedback that Star Wars: The Old Republic is where it is today. We really appreciate your efforts.

May the Force be with you!

Greg Zeschuk

Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo answers a few of your questions about Player-vs-Player Combat in The Old Republic.

Q: How important is the PvP community to BioWare ? – Kryptorchid

A: Very important. The Old Republic’s PvP developers are avid gamers and active, long-time members of the MMO PvP community. We hold preservation and growth of the The Old Republic PvP community near and dear to our hearts.

Q: Will there be any kind of arena system? If so, which brackets will it support? - Inquiescent

A: ‘Arena System’ has come to mean two different things depending on the context: Single Elimination PvP game mode and Ranking/Tournament Systems. Whether or not we add that game mode to The Old Republic’s current lineup (domination, assault and bombing run) is TBD. However, one of the top things on our list for post launch is a rated Warzone system where players can form teams, earn team ratings, earn individual ratings, as well as participate in tournaments, etc.

Q: Are there any plans for non-combat forms of PvP, such as Pazaak or Swoop Racing? - RizzoRatchet

A: We are considering, testing and/or developing several things like that. We’ll let you know as soon as we are sure about what we’re going to add.

Before certain months we read in internet that the most popular video game in the planet this moment wow that it loses 600 thousands subscribers each quarter (source: Google Search).The wow is certain that apart from the most popular game, is perhaps the most completed right now and certainly the number of million subscribers justified by the factor of the [complete game].The players can spend a pleasant time at any moment they decide to enter the game.

But the WoW is already in its seventh year and this "marriage" between the players and the game has become just a habit. Everything in life after some time it can not offer new experiences ,and WoW that it had to give,already gave it. You can see in the chart this drop of interest about Wow !

As long as it wore out wow, new games came to the fore ready to displace it. The two most important were Aoc and Aion. Unfortunately neither of the two did not succeed. The reasons in each case was different. Aoc in the reason was the unstable client, while in Aion was the indifference of Ncsoft against bots.

In this swtor blog i will accommodate the memories from SWG players.Because of this i will keep this blog closed for comments .If you want write something in this blog use the contact link (http://www.swtor-gr.com/contact ) and send me your text.
Here we go ,below is the first of these SWG Love Letters ,enjoy it and with it !!!
Hey, so a little background on me first -

My name is Zion, and I played SWG on the Radiant server. I was a part of the original SWG community before launch that helped contribute to the game, and also a player of Galaxies since Beta 2.

I wanted to post something because I felt that there a lot of people who no longer have active accounts with SWG, but would like to just give it their own "in memorium" and put a nice little bow on their SWG experience. Honestly, there's a lot of people who just need to move on from SWG, and I hope this helps.

Emmanuel Lusinchi is a Bioware 's Associate Lead Designer .

Yesterday, he answered 13 very interesting questions from Michael Bitton about PvP mechanism in Swtor.We have read the whole Q&A article and we choose the most important informations that we found in these answers.

It's getting to be very old that anytime - It's getting to be very old that anytime someone does not agree 110% with story and the journey to max-level being the most important part of what a player wants is the instant barrage of "go back to WoW cause this game is not for you".

Honestly this game is not for you either then, face it, there are differing opinions about what people want in an MMO. I for one really don't want a ME in a SW skin nor do I want WoW with lightsabers.

My point being that anytime anyone asks a question or shares their thoughts the "WoW Sucks" club comes out in force and makes it very hard to have a reasonable discussion.

If there is anything that will make this game fail it will be the community. Yes the community. It's getting very hard to come here and read all the hateful posts pointed at anyone that questions whether there will be options to avoid hours of voice-acting.

I want to play a game and I am relativly sure there are at least 2 more people in the world that want to play a game as well.

So, if I want to play a Star Wars themed game does that mean I should go play WoW instead and close my eyes and RP as a Jedi? Just because I want to play a game?

Raiding in SWTOR? - Ok, so i have been watching the interviews and all that good jazz since TOR was annouced, and i have seen a few videos that the interviewees state "we havent got to much end game, but understand we need a end game" and a ton of blogs that state "end game wont be fighting epic level bosses, but groups of friends fighting waves of mobs" now to me, i have been a WoW player for 5 years now, and raiding is my favorite thing in MMOs, building a guild, getting groups of friends, and going to fight a boss that requires skill, cordination, and special events in the fights make the games pop, to me atleast, and tons of other players, i geuss what im getting at is, how are the guys at BW taking the end game, will it be moreless a wow feel to raiding (my choice, except a little less hack and slash and a little harder and more fun, perhaps longer encounters, fighting spaceships up to moff generals, somthing like that) or will they take the "get 5-6 friends, go fight some troops, get mats, and make player crafted gear as the best end game gear" because all that sponsers is people buying gold for there epic crafted gear, flooding servers, and making the game much less fun, any tips or links that show so, or just general knowledge about what there doi

TOR is not going to fail - Bioware won't allow it. - Well some of that article may be true or "close" to truth. After all it takes as many hours to produce Voice Overs for so many thousands of lines of text. And there are examples of the games with huge budgets that eventually failed because companies valued their investments more than the team working on the actual game. The good example of such a failure was "Tabula Rasa" and "Auto Assault". Company spent so much money (based on that time terms) for developing the game and so much time that eventually they decided to pull the plug because a lot of people who actually worked on the game were laid off.

TOR may not inherit the same fate, but its all up to us players really. We will need to show the devs and especially EA that we love the game by playing it and spending money on our subscriptions. If for some reason subs won't reach a specific number and judging by the amount of money spent on development it has to be millions of subs to allow EA make that money back that they have invested into creating this game. If this number is not reached EA won't invest any more money into game's future development.

The War Effort. Rank, Resources and the liberal use of Propaganda! - Something I really hope that they include in SWTOR is a chance to feel like (if not, actually) effect the the War between the Sith and the Republic. It doesn't have to be the whole game but that conflict seems to be the center of the story and I'd hate to feel like helpless observers , powerless to change its outcome(at least by the end game). There are a few ways I can think of that I feel would, as a player, give me the sense that we could have a real impact on the conflict.

One, Rank. Being able to complete PVP and even PVE quests that could build up our rank in our chosen Faction. If you fight in a PVP match against the enemy and score a victory where you defeated several combatants, that should count towards your rank. Completing a quest for the high command of the Republic or the Imperials, should count towards your next promotion. I do think, unless it is worked into the plot for everyone, players should have to enlist in their Factions military (which would have its own set of advantages and disadvantages to gain points towards raising their rank).