The Glade 4.0

Some interesting changes.

Lots of love for tanks.. unless you were shadow.

Hutts seized control of the GTN, making it accessible to both factions (this is a good thing IMO).

Some new Legacy stuff character based, instead of account based (not too keen on this one).

Here are the patch notes from PTS as of today.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=463539

Huge boon for my Empire-sided tank right there. Especially since I play with bounty hunters often.


Thank the maker (who, in theepio's case, is Vader). This bugged me a lot on my gunslinger.


I am glad they are putting in a group finder. Honestly, I haven't done any flashpoints or operations since about my mid 20s. I hate and loathe trying to find a group by standing around in one area for hours and broadcasting it out. I do wish it was cross-server, like in WoW. Or that they would just merge servers. I am sure the only reason they haven't merged servers is because of PR. But that only hurts the players paying for the game, in the end.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Well, their stated reason for not having cross server LFG is that they think it will affect the local server communities.

I'm kind of torn on it myself. I would prefer to have a local server friends list, and try to group regularly with people I know and have played with before. On the otherhand, when the guild and friends list are empty night after night, you have to do something... soloing dailies for commendations is getting pretty old. I'd like to start doing some flashpoints or something to break the monotony.

I heard that they were now thinking about consolidating all servers into a "one server to rule them all" model, like Champions or Star Trek. Personally, I think that would appease people like me while still keeping their "community" thing in tact.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

The 'mega server' talk is based on one single comment Daniel Erickson made to pcgamer when asked about the LFG tool..

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/23/the-o ... tive-gear/



I take this to mean they are moving to platforms with more capacity, and opening up server transfers. Nothing has been said to date about forced mergers or a single "mega" platform, or anything of that nature, although it's probably inevitable at some point, if the popularity of the game doesn't recover some.

Here is a screenshot of the LFG tool (at least an early iteration of it) from that PCGamer interview.

I'll be loging in to the PTS later tonight to play with some of the new toys...

YAY

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Raell Kromwell

I would never go near the Fleet again.../shudder

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Raell Kromwell

They already have different layers depending on how many people are online in a single area. I remember back at launch there were 7 or 8 different layers because of how many people were playing.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Ok, I didn't know that. Right on then.

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Raell Kromwell

General chat speaks to all the layers though. I've joined several groups from general chat early on, and had to change instances to meet them.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Patch will be landing the 26th...

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Raell Kromwell

here is a blog post regarding the new legacy perks.
http://www.swtor.com/blog/legacy-perks-game-update-1.3

These experience perks, along with the companion bonuses and dark/light bonuses, are going to remove what little challenge there is to leveling a character in this game. And lets face it, unless you are into crappy PvP, or grinding dailies, there really isn't much else to do in the game but level alts...

I think these are a pretty big mistake.. just my humble opinion...

Here are the patch notes from the current PTS build for 1.3. I suspect they will be similar when it goes live Tuesday night, although there are always a few surprises...

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=479808