http://www.tigforums.org/forum/ The Imperial Guard - A Sith Aligned Guild for Star Wars: The Old Republic en Sat, 19 May 2012 19:31:49 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/images/holonet/misc/rss.jpg http://www.tigforums.org/forum/ http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20674&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 19:10:35 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/No-Moon-John-Goldenwolf-500x313.png ... Long time artist and recently delving into digital arts with some charming Star Wars pieces, this week’s artist, John Goldenwolf, is sure to win brownie points with fans of Vette and the Bounty Hunter. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? My name’s John GoldenWolf, originally from the small town of Dixon Illinois, [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20674 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20673&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 18:33:02 GMT Between the minions of hell and the dreaded Error 37, hardcore players have it rough. One of the largest struggles has been the sheer lack of... Between the minions of hell and the dreaded Error 37, hardcore players have it rough. One of the largest struggles has been the sheer lack of information – many abilities and character builds that work well in softcore simply aren’t terribly viable in the hardcore realm where small mistakes can mean death.

The Incgamers strategy team has been pushing forward and have compiled some observations to help you stay alive in hardcore mode. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge, read on.



Equipment is king
Most of the time we found ourselves struggling it was because we were vastly undergeared. If your gear isn’t within a few levels of your character, take some time to shop vendors, farm content, and check the auction house for new items.

Move slowly
Identify elite and champion spawns before they are on top of you when possible and react accordingly. Have a safe route available to kite mobs and, if things get hairy, try to make sure you have an exit strategy. Most importantly, be patient and methodical.

Positioning and kiting
If you can avoid taking damage, do so. Just because you think you can burn a monster down before it kills you doesn’t mean you should try; whenever possible, keep monsters at a distance. Snare them, slow them, stun them and keep kiting until they die.

Wait for defensive cooldowns
If you have an emergency button (e.g. Ignore Pain, Spirit Vessel, etc.), always have it available. After it gets used, wait a minute or so for it to be available again – you want it there when you need it, and there’s no telling what’s around the next corner.

The best defense is a good offense
Around the middle of nightmare, things got rough – we were undergeared and getting into a number of sticky situations simply because we couldn’t kill things very quickly due to heavily prioritizing defense at the cost of damage. While it’s important to prioritize defensive abilities and lots of vitality, remember that it’s a fine balance. The faster you kill things the less time there is for something to go wrong. If you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall, try (carefully!) testing a build with a bit more damage output.

The dangers of playing with friends
We have anecdotally confirmed the numbers posted in our previous article, but multi-player feels more difficult than solo throughout most of nightmare. Make sure to synergize well with your partner(s). If you’re having a hard time progressing, give solo play a shot. You may be more effective alone.

Use abilities that make sense
Despite having “billions of options”, many abilities are simply bad. Here’s a quick list of abilities that we found to work best. Keep in mind, these aren’t necessarily the “best” builds, but they have been working fairly well for us so far:

Barbarian: AOE Tank, Boss
Demon Hunter: Offensive
Monk – We haven’t played one, sorry!
Witch Doctor: Balanced
Wizard: Offensive AOE, Arcane, Bosses

Most dangerous monster abilities

• Vortex/Jailer + Frozen
• Molten/Plagued/Desecrator
• Shielding

Notice a theme? Things that keep you from moving and acting while damaging you are dangerous – keep an eye out for these.

Lag!
Latency and server stability has been rough this week. At the first sign of things acting up, go to town and take a few minutes to stretch your legs, grab a bite to eat, or do whatever else it is you do. Don’t try to play through it.



More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20673 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20663&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT Image: http://traffic.libsyn.com/sunnysdiner/MER-banner_ep27.png Sometimes its fun to take a look back at what you were like a year ago and say,...

Sometimes its fun to take a look back at what you were like a year ago and say, “Man. My hair was awesome.” Well, maybe that’s not quite as applicable here, but we sure had a lot of fun with the doggy bag about what we thought a year ago when prediciting where the game would be now. That’s a tough sentence to write.

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More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20663 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20669&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/spy-game-islot-online-spy-guy-500x400.png ... Greetings TORWarriors and welcome to another edition of the Imperial Agent Weekly! This week I thought I’d take a little detour from the usual fact finding and information gathering we do and talk a bit about play styles. When SWTOR launched it seemed like the Imperial Agent class was fairly low on the radar for [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20669 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20670&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Mod-Table1-500x395.jpg ... With every major new feature announced for Star Wars: The Old Republic, players will of course have a few questions. Today, BioWare’s David Hunt has answered over a dozen questions about adding augment slots to gear with Game Update 1.3. I’ve included the conversation below, but if you still have questions, head over to the [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20670 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20671&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Holovid-Heroes-Furious-Angels-500x373.png ... Often the videos we have a look at in Holovid Heroes are 3, 5 sometimes even 10 minutes long or more. But is that really*necessary*and how much can you communicate about your guild in a video that’s less than a minute long? Have a look at how Adad from Furious Angels answered that question. Since [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20671 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20672&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/huttball-125x125.jpg ... Inquisitors have abilities which make them key players in death sports like Huttball. *Even members of the Dark Council have been spotted entering the arena to revel in the fear and pain they inflict with their unique talents. *This article is all about the gifts Inquisitors use to win Huttball matches. First and foremost, we [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20672 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20664&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT In addition to the slew (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-launch-night-coverage-interviews) of quickie video interviews... In addition to the slew of quickie video interviews, the recent days have seen some more substantive interviews with the Diablo 3 developers.

Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. A lengthy conversation recorded on launch day, this transcript covers numerous issues including the pleasures of co-op, better story integration, character balance, and much more.

RPS: And what difficulties does it raise, in design terms, that the randomness is controlled to a great extent?</p>Love: The greatest difficulty is in testing it. You create all this content and then randomise it with all these permutations and it’s a testing nightmare. If you’re not too careful and you create too many dimensions of randomness – and it seems impossible that it would be this way – but you can literally create more permutations than the human mind can cope with.

So you have to make sure that you’re only doing the stuff that’s going to be meaningful, right? The stuff that’s going to lead to making the gameplay experience better but not detract from the development process.

Boyarsky: And keep it controlled that’s it’s humanly possible to test it.
Entertainment Weekly has an interview with story guy Chris Metzen in which he goes into some interesting detail about the Diablo III story and progression.

You say this is the end of the Diablo “trilogy”? Does that mean we can’t expect more games set this in this universe from you guys?
Not at all. I see this as the ending of a specific storyline. It’s not at all the end of Diablo, the end of a particular age or era, but it is the end of a series of machinations that have been playing out on Sanctuary for the last couple centuries. If Diablo ever really had a plan to mess people up, to bring about doom and destruction, this game really illustrates how grand that design has always been. Before, we didn’t have all the information. This game shows just how smart and cunning he’s been over the arc of time and why he’s the series’ unique villain. In the first couple games there wasn’t a whole lot more detail to that character other than that he was a big red dude who kicked the s— out of people. So why is the series named after him and not Baal or Mephisto? Is Diablo stronger? I would argue that he’s just really clever, he thinks laterally in a way that his brothers do not. He’s not just one of the seven big Evils. He’s Doctor Doom. And Diablo III is the culmination of his machinations, even if it’s not the end to potential stories we could tell in that universe.
GamaSutra grabbed Jay Wilson for a long chat about his past game development, crunching to the deadline in Diablo III, Blizzard’s standard of game quality, and some very interesting stuff about his initial Diablo III design presentations (not documents).

Design is a real, real gray area. So I think it’s better to make a strong, bold choice for a more interesting game. I think if you look at any of the games that people really, really love, there’s some very, very strong choices there. I really love Skyrim, but there’s a whole different design paradigm at work in a game like that than in a Blizzard game.

You never see a game like [Bethesda's] Skyrim come out of Blizzard — just because. And it doesn’t mean [Bethesda is] wrong. Their design philosophy has been extremely successful for them, but it’s a very different one, and it has its own pros and cons. And it’s the fact that they focused on it is what made them successful, and we’re the same way.

For us, good design has a lot of depth and is very approachable. That’s always our first priority. And the problem that you run into is we attract a very hardcore audience, and hardcore audiences don’t like things to be approachable. They like their hardcore game. They like their elitism. And that’s just not what Blizzard’s ever been about.


It’s not that we’re not about our hardcore audience. If anything, we think we’re more about our hardcore audience, because our goal is to make more people become them. But we don’t do that by making our games obtuse and hard to get into.
Great interviews all. I’m not sure why Blizzard PR thought it was a great idea to ship all these, and dozens more, out on release or in the days right after, when all the fans are busy playing the game and not reading interviews. I guess it’s just their goal of media saturation, to get features everywhere and draw all eyes to Diablo III… but didn’t news about the launch do that anyway? (In largely negative terms.)



More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20664 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20665&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT We already posted a huge slab of Launch Night interviews (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-launch-night-coverage-interviews), and... We already posted a huge slab of Launch Night interviews, and thanks to fmulder and his GoogleFu, here are a bunch more. These are all quickies filmed from various launch night events, so don’t expect a great deal of introspection and detailed insight into the creative process.

Jay Wilson video interview with RPad TV.
Christian Lichtner video interview with RPad TV.
Noel Wolfman video interview with Gamereactor.
Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky video interview with PC Gamer:
Julian Love & Leonard Boyarsky video interview with ZoominGames.
Kevin Martens & Jason Regier video interview with GamonaDE.


More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20665 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20666&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT We posted the first (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/here-come-the-first-diablo-3-reviews) very early Image:... We posted the first very early Diablo III reviews a few days ago, and here are some more that have popped up since then. News is very busy, so I’ll just link and score to keep this post short.

Reghardware: 85%.
The Escapist: 4/5 stars.
The Toronto Sun: 4.5/5 stars.
Wanderson 75: 4/5 stars.
We’re going to be updating every legit Diablo III review on a wiki article, so check there for a complete listing. There are currently 16 reviews on Metacritic, and the game has an 88% rating, with reviews ranging from 100% down to a low of 80%.

Skewing a bit higher than the user-submitted ones, you’ll note…



More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20666 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20667&goto=newpost Sat, 19 May 2012 15:42:11 GMT How did Diablo III’s launch go for you guys? The feeling I’ve gotten, from reading comments and forum threads, is that most of us (the hardcore fans) were expecting technical problems and B.net issues, and that we just hoped they wouldn’t go on all week (or month). When the log in problems only lasted a few hours, with a few other buggy flare ups over the next few days, I was actually quite relieved. Obviously the launch didn’t go fantastically well, but it could have been a lot worse, and honestly, I expected that it would be.

Eve Online jabs at Diablo III's error codes.


If the preceding paragraph is at all an accurate summation of your opinions on Diablo III’s launch, you are far off the curve, since the mainstream consensus is firmly decided that it was a debacle. I collected more than a dozen typical headlines in a big post on Wednesday, and it only takes a glance at those to see what I’m talking about. Error37 even went viral as a #Error37 hashtag on Twitter.

In some ways, I think Blizzard might have made an error by issuing that apology letter, since all the media observing from a distance took it as an admission of failure that ramified the “terrible launch” meme.

I titled this post Phase Two, since now that the disaster has been firmly established in the minds of non-players and media critics, they’ve move on to apportioning blame, weighing the fallout, and using the “terrible” launch as a hammer to beat on their own pet issues. The biggest focus of media coverage/hate has been Diablo III’s online-only requirement, which has become the whipping boy for all of Battle.net’s problems, and even a flash point for gamers who hate any sort of anti-piracy or DRM effort.

A few of the more moderate samples:

Wired UK’s Editor says he won’t buy Diablo 3 due to the online-only requirement and thinks that sort of intrusive DRM is unacceptable.
Has Diablo 3′s rocky launch hurt PC gaming? Yes, says Indie designer Jeff Vogel.
A thoughtful editorial on Stuff NZ ponders the issue of DRM in the digital age and whether or not requiring online-only is a valid piracy prevention technique.
A post on Forbes tech blog uses Diablo III’s launch problems as a leaping point into a longer piece about DRM issues in general.
Diablo III’s DRM is the focus of most of the zero-bombing user reviews on Metacritic, and while the vast majority of those posts are clearly from haters who would have given D3 a zero for some other reason (such as the “pay to win” RMAH) even if the launch had gone perfectly, the bad launch and online-only requirement has served up their argument on a silver platter. Numerous articles have commented unfavorably on D3′s launch and features by citing the 2.5/5 Amazon score and 3.5/10 Metacritic average. These articles all follow roughly the same path: “Sure those Metacritic hates are dicks, but they have a point…” See Forbes blog, Unleash the Fanboy, MYCE, Digitally Downloaded, and 8 Bit Envy.

Some of the other media offerings on this issue:

Time’s Swampland blog: Online Gaming Bad for Us and Here to Stay?
GameRanx: Online-only DRM “sets a dangerous precedent.”
Goozer Nation: What constitutes an “acceptable” release?
Forbes: Diablo 3′s Launch and the perils of online-only.
Venture Beat: Other game characters speak about Diablo 3′s launch.
Now Gamer: Quotes an “industry analyst” who says this was embarrassing for Blizzard.
AtomicPC: Is a bad launch the end of the world? And if not, why not?
Technabob: EveOnline pokes fun at Diablo 3′s launch.
It’ll be interesting to see if this controversy has legs. I doubt it, and next week when D3′s no longer the flavor of the moment and the Battle.net servers have performed well for some days, the gaming blogosphere will move on to some other circle jerk. One thing will remain forever, though. The mass media (mis)impression that Diablo 3′s launch was a complete and utter debacle. We’ll be reading and hearing references to that for years.



More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20667 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20662&goto=newpost Fri, 18 May 2012 02:58:57 GMT Image: http://diablo.incgamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/mqdefault.jpg We all had a blast on launch night talking to you guys, and as...

We all had a blast on launch night talking to you guys, and as promised, we can now bring you the video interviews we did with the ARPG developers from Runic Games (Torchlight 2), Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) and Crate Entertainment (Grim Dawn).

If you missed the interviews, we asked the developers how the Diablo franchise has influenced them in creating their upcoming ARPG projects and they also discuss their titles. On the night we couldn’t run the interview with Max Schaefer due to a few technical issues so we have it right here for you now.

Read on after the break to watch all the interviews.













More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20662 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20661&goto=newpost Fri, 18 May 2012 01:57:06 GMT Blizzard has announced (http://blues.incgamers.com/Posts/10/1/40/819/161485/battletag-free-name-change-update) a one-time amnesty to free you from a... Blizzard has announced a one-time amnesty to free you from a bad BattleTag. Everyone has now had their account reset with one BattleTag change, even if you’ve already used your one change. Choose wisely, this time.

During the Diablo III Open Beta Weekend in April, a number of players opted to use their one free BattleTag nickname change in order to try to participate in the beta test. We recognize that in their excitement to try to get into the game, some players did not fully realize how BattleTags would integrate with Diablo III or that the number of free changes was limited, and they ended up choosing nicknames that they weren’t happy with.</p>To help address these concerns, we’ve done a one-time refresh of the free BattleTag name change feature on all Battle.net accounts, so that everyone once again has one free BattleTag name change to use at their discretion.

This means that if you already used your original free change, you will now have another opportunity to change your BattleTag nickname. If you did not use your free BattleTag name change or have not yet created a BattleTag, you will still only be able to change your BattleTag once for free.

To set or change your BattleTag nickname, log in to Battle.net Account Management, head to the Account > Summary page, and look for the Create or Change option under Account Details. As a reminder, BattleTags aren’t unique, so you can pick any name you like as long as it adheres to the BattleTag Naming Policy. For more information, see the BattleTag FAQ and Battle.net website page.


Remember, your BattleTag serves as your public identity when playing Diablo III, meaning you’ll be identified in groups and in chat by your BattleTag — choose your BattleTag wisely!
This post was made on the EU forums, so those links point to the EU server. If you’re on the US server you’ll want to use this link, or just log into your account via Battle.net and proceed from there.

If you’re new to BattleTags, you’ll want to check out the article in Diablowiki.net. I just updated it with today’s news and it’s got info about the creation of BattleTags, past fan comments and votes on them, and much more. Also note that there are a *lot* of restrictions on what you set for your BattleTag, and most fans found their first choice(s) getting rejected for no apparent discernible reason. Prepare a list of possibilities, since you’ll probably have to try several before you find one that’s accepted by Battle.net.



More... ]]> Diablo 3 Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20661 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20660&goto=newpost Thu, 17 May 2012 23:48:27 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/quesh-125x125.jpg ... When chatting in our guild channel last night, the subject of the Quesh Consular class quest came up, specifically the part where Consulars have to save the Revival Specialists. One of our guildmates had been tackling it this week, and we all agreed that it was very tough. This was one of the hardest quests [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20660 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20659&goto=newpost Thu, 17 May 2012 22:01:45 GMT Image: http://torwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/jabba_s_palace_gate02-125x125.jpg ... With the reported drop in Star Wars: The Old Republic subscribers, and the relatively low number of developer comments on the official forums, the player base is once again wondering what’s going on with the BioWare Devs, and of course, Game Update 1.3. A forum thread started by Lord Karsk titled: Hello Anyone Home Hellooooo [...]

More... ]]> SW:TOR Operative 2396 http://www.tigforums.org/forum/showthread.php?t=20659