Next month, lucky members of the press will get a sneak peek at Mists of Pandaria. The upcoming WoW expansion pack is set to bring a glut of new raids, bosses, armor sets, quests, trinkets and enough WoW gold to sate even the most ardent adventurer’s hunger.

According to Blizzard:

“Since the announcement of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria at BlizzCon 2011, we’ve been hard at work on all of the new game features, environments, dungeons, and other content that awaits adventurers. Today, we’re inviting members of the press worldwide to get an updated sneak peek and some hands-on time with the latest version of World of Warcraft’s fourth expansion at an event taking place March 13 – 15.”

For three days those lucky press peepz will get to test out, drool over and get their greasy gamer hands all over Pandaria. I’d trade my left arm (ok, maybe just a pinkie) and a sack-full of cheap WoW gold to get in on that action!

Sidenote: Am I the only one who thinks the names are kinda hokey? The new continent, Pandaria is home to a new playable race, the Pandarens, which are, gosh, pandas! It’s like Harry’s school being called “Wizardia” instead of Hogwarts; it’s obvious and dare I say it, kind of lazy and unimaginative. Having said all that, I wish I wish I wish I were invited to that press event. (No really, that sack of cheap WoW gold is yours, Blizz, for an invite!

In other WoW news, Patch 4.3.2 is now live on all realms, with some pleasantly unexpected fixes. An unintended consequence of Patch 4.3 prevented druids leaving flight form from performing their trademark graceful arcs over mountainsides. Instead, they dropped straight down as soon as they left flight form, hitting the earth like a ton of WoW gold falling from the sky. But now patch 4.3.2 has corrected that and druids can go back to enjoying the aerodynamics of Newtonian physics. All’s well that ends well.

More news soon. In the meantime, keep your friends close and your WoW gold closer.

After some scheduled maintenance on the servers, Patch 1.1.1 is now live; here are the fixes that have been issued:

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Global Cooldown to appear as if it has been cancelled when it is actually still in effect, resulting in a feeling of unresponsiveness to input.
• Corrected an issue that could cause an ability icon to appear usable but be unresponsive to clicks or keypresses for several seconds.
• Players revived by other players, including by in-combat revival abilities, now revive with 25% of maximum health.
• Fixed an issue that prevented some players in Operations Groups from receiving credit for the missions “[WEEKLY] Deadly Operations,” “[WEEKLY] Galactic Operations,” and “Journey to the Belsavis Depths.” The entire Operations Group now receives credit when the objective is completed.
  • Tip: Get the best SWTOR credits to purchase weapons and armor to power through your raids.
• Comparative tooltips for researched items no longer have their stats reversed.
• Kintan Behemoths no longer occasionally walk on top of trees when in combat.
• The leader of an Operations Group will no longer receive an incorrect message informing them that their companion has been dismissed.
• Special items related to different editions of the game have been re-sent if they were deleted by the mail system prior to being claimed.
• In the FP The Foundry, the final boss can no longer become stuck in an invulnerable state.
  • Tip: Clear out your cluttered inventory* and use SWTOR credits to purchase new equipment for you and your crew to stand a chance against your enemies.

*You earn more SWTOR gold if you sell items to another player on the GTN than if you sell to a vendor.

Read the full patch notes on the official site.

Proving that you can’t please everybody all the time, many players welcomed the much-needed fixes, while others continue to flood the forums with complaints, leading exec producer Rich Vogel to take to the blog with a behind-the-scenes peek at how devs pinpoint bugs and go about fixing them. His meandering –but informative– post explained how they prioritize efforts when it comes to bug-fixing and developing new content. Here’s a distilled version:

On their priorities:

The live game service comes first, fixing bugs is our team’s first priority. Everything else is secondary.

On exploits:

Our extensive in-game metric tools are always monitoring the game and generating reports, meaning that if anyone is exploiting, we are going to find out about it. Our main goal is to ensure you have a fun, balanced and fair gameplay experience.

Admitting that fixing bugs is a bit trickier, he went on to say that they “want to fix as many bugs that affect players as we can.”

Why only a few bugs are addressed with each patch:

The more bugs we fix with each publish, the higher the risk of breaking things, as we’ve changed more game code. That is why we try to limit the number and types of bugs we address with each patch.

And some rather vague statements about developing new content:

We are committed to publishing new features and content on a regular basis. We have a huge list of features and content we want to put into the game and we are constantly adding to it based on feedback we get from the community.

Aside from stating their first priority, Vogel also gave two “most important” goals:

Our most important goal is to remove as many annoying bugs as fast as we can; currently we aim to push out patches which help fix bugs weekly but that can change depending on the severity of the bugs.

Our most important goal is to make sure you continue to have fun playing our game and we will continue to do everything in our power to make you feel that you are getting your money’s worth every month.

This just in. proving that they do indeed respond quickly to bugs, here’s Patch 1.1.1a:

• Made a configuration change to resolve hitching/freezing issues seen on some clients after patch 1.1.1.

After a bit of a delay, the first major patch for SWTOR, Patch 1.1.0, Rise of the Rakghouls has been released.  It includes a new level 50 Flashpoint, ‘Kaon Under Siege’ for play in Normal and Hard Mode.

‘Kaon Under Siege’ takes place in Kaon in the Tion Hegemony. Rakghoul plague has decimated the population (killing most but turning some into grotesque monsters), leaving a small group of survivors that have miraculously been able to fend off the attacking Rackghouls. Your goal/ mission is to rescue the survivors with three Imperial or Republic allies and get to the bottom of the Rakghoul plague.

“Operation: Karagga’s Palace, part II” is an expansion of the earlier operation wherein you test your mettle against Karagga’s army of bounty hunters and Battle Droids. Victory will get you powerful weapons and armor; even better rewards (more SWTOR Credits!) await those who play in Hard Mode.

Major issues with Patch 1.1.0 led to the quick subsequent release of Patch 1.1.0a, which corrected bugs that had players up in arms. Exploitative farming of turrets is no longer possible; they are now immune to damage. Players clamoring for a mass rollback of Valor will be disappointed, though, as no such rollback will be enacted. However, accounts that seemingly exploited the bug will be monitored/investigated for possible Valor adjustments or account actions. Also, those who were frustrated by PvP on Ilum can rejoice now that players can no longer “camp” on the opposing faction’s base.

Game Director James Ohlen said that their priorities continue to be “bug fixing, balance changes and exploit-proofing.”

—-

1.1.0a Patch Notes – 1/19/2012

• Fixed an issue that caused assigned loot bags in Karagga’s Palace to distribute items with class inappropriate stats.
• Players can no longer enter the opposing faction’s safe base area, thus preventing players from continually “camping” the other faction’s base.
• Turrets inside faction bases were not intended to be destroyed and are now immune to damage.
• The population cap for instances of Ilum has been reduced to improve performance.
• Implemented optimizations to improve performance on Ilum.
• Loading screens no longer appear when other players spawn nearby.

—–

Next time we’ll discuss what’s coming up on SWTOR — new content and game systems, expanded Legacy system, UI customization, information on new Warzones and Flashpoints

Do you have burning questions you’d like answered in Star Wars: the Old Republic?

Well then prepare for a fun inquisition because this December 28 SWTOR community manager Stephen Reid will be hosting the Ask Me Anything (AMA) Q&A on social media site Reddit.com.

All topics should be fair game during the Q&A, so don’t hesitate to badger Mr. Reid about the lack of midi-chlorian love or what fancy items we can expect to purchase with SWTOR Credits in future patches.

Here’s the official announcement for your guidance:

Hey /r/swtor – I hope everyone has had a great time with the game so far. We’re excited to announce a really great opportunity here for everyone: Stephen Reid, the Community Manager for Star War: The Old Republic, known to many of you as @rockjaw, has agreed to do an AMA here in /r/swtor!

The format is simple: Ask Mr. Reid a question and he will do his best to respond to as many as possible within his area of expertise; he is not a game designer but still has many interesting things to share about the game.

Look for Stephen’s post in the announcement section here on Wednesday, December 28th at 2pm CST and submit your questions then. This will be a typical AMA so submit questions in the comments on his post and he’ll answer as many as humanly possible.

This is a great opportunity /r/swtor, and it’s thanks to you all being an awesome community that it’s possible. Thanks everyone!

Date: This Wednesday, December 28th

Time: 2pm CST/1pm EST/12pm PST/20 GMT)

Questions posted here will be removed. Please wait for the AMA this Wednesday.

Less than a week after its super successful launch, Star Wars the Old Republic is getting ready to roll out with more content.

Creative director James Ohlen revealed that in January BioWare will introduce an additional Flashpoint dungeon and will triple the size of a current Operation raid, Karagga’s Palace.

The still-unnamed new Flashpoint “involves a plague that could have significant repercussions across the galaxy” and “takes place on a brand new world and involves some pretty epic battles.”

Meanwhile, the expanded Operation “takes the existing Karagga’s palace scenario and more than triples its size.” It will also feature three new boss monsters, “some pretty epic set pieces” and a larger SWTOR Credits haul with each finished run.

BioWare threw in a screenshot of the last boss which a TorWars reader has pointed out looks like a Hutt commanding a destructive droid!

Star Wars the Old Republic voice actors have been praised for bringing questing and mission running to a whole higher dimension, but they’re no slouches either in enticing millions of television viewers!

BioWare and company have crafted, in our opinion, one of the most compellingly chilling TV ads for an MMO. In just 30 seconds and with the help of a sultry voiceover, it managed to convince me to roll a Bounty Hunter.

The beginning stretch – where four classes utter their singular purpose in the game – is a master class on how to make the most uninterested Joe to sit up, Google search what “SWTOR” is all about, and go purchasing a game box as if his SWTOR Credits depended on it.

Another great thing about this SWTOR TV spot, aside from its brilliant pacing and editing, is it has zero references to World of Warcraft. Compare this to RIFT’s co-opting of “the Horde” and potshots of “We’re not in Azeroth anymore” seen below:

RIFT ads have a mysterious fantasy quality to them, but it’s fantastic to see that SWTOR doesn’t feel the need to piggyback on the popularity of the Blizzard title.

The SWTOR ad is confident and hits the right emotional cords, proving to us that that there’s always an extra bit of magic when a great marketing team is let loose on an insanely popular IP.

To say there are long queues in the newly opened Star Wars the Old Republic servers would be an understatement.

Humongously long is a more apt description, so BioWare is capping server populations to shorten the wait and get everyone playing ASAP.

It’s not unusual for BioWare to implement this kind of workaround for the SWTOR launch day rush. Other previous games like RIFT and DCUO have done so to ensure player loads are spread out more evenly.

Senior online community manager Stephen Reid said the population caps will be a temporary workaround, and that they are working hard to accommodate those who want to join their buddies on already packed servers.

“We’re monitoring all of our servers around the clock, and we’re raising server population caps where required. However, to ensure our long-term goals of server stability and healthy populations, we do not want to raise population caps too rapidly,” Mr. Reid said in a forum post.

“We want incoming players to populate lower population servers. At the same time, higher population servers will not be ‘locked’ because we want to allow people to join a server to play with their friends if they wish to,” he added.

What Servers to Avoid

Mr. Reid is now dissuading players from stuffing themselves into close-to-capacity servers, if they do not want to wait in long queues. These servers include:

US-based servers

• The Harbinger – US West Coast – PvE
• The Swiftsure – US West Coast – PvP
• The Fatman – US East Coast – PvP

EU-based servers

• Bloodworthy – EU English – PvP
• Frostclaw – EU English – PvE
• Legions of Lettow – EU English – PvP
• The Red Eclipse – EU English – PvE
• Tomb of Freedom Nadd – EU English – PvP
• Darth Revan’s Mask – EU German – PvP
• Darth Traya – EU German – PvP
• Jar’Kai Sword – EU German – PvP
• Hrakert Rift – EU French – PvP

Mr. Reid makes it clear that developers “do not expect queues to alleviate on these servers for the foreseeable future.” This means those itching for minimum downtime to earn maximum SWTOR credits should consider settling in less populated but more conveniently playable servers.

Star Wars the Old Republic is raring to launch, but it wouldn’t hurt to read through these final pit stop reminders from BioWare, just so you don’t find yourself fumbling and fuming on release day.

Know the maintenance downtimes. Two dates to remember:

• December 20 launch day – Game servers and SWTOR.com offline from 6PM CST (4PM PST/7PM EST/12AM GMT/1AM CET) to 11PM CST (8PM PST/12AM EST/5AM GMT/6AM CET).

• December 22 end of “grace period” – Game servers and SWTOR.com offline from 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to unspecified time.

Keep “wait rage” in check. December 20 will be one of the biggest worldwide launches of any MMO in history. Savor that for a minute. You’re part of a record-breaking number of gamers supporting a game five years and 150-200 million dollars in the making. (ET bonus tip: Bust out an iPhone/3DS/PSP distraction when you begin envying early entrants who are probably racking up SWTOR credits while you stare at a queue screen.)

Avoid creating characters in Full servers. Doing so is akin to pulling teeth. It will be a painful experience, so those with Early Game Access are encouraged to roll a toon now to see if there is still room for their young Sith or Jedi, and change servers if there is none. (Bonus tip: TorStatus.Net helps you spot the Full servers at once.)

Don’t lose your game code. You will need to enter the game code to activate your 30 days of game time, and additional digital items for SWTOR Collector’s Edition and Digital Deluxe pre-order buyers.

via [TorWars.com]

While it’s sort of meta for us to report on awards given out by our fellow news site MMORPG.com, it nevertheless warms our heart to see the hardworking RIFT and ambitious Star Wars the Old Republic get full nods from the industry.

“Rift had an incredibly smooth launch, a stellar sales record, and oh yeah… it actually was good too.  Like, really good,” MMORPG.com said in its awards announcement.

“On top of a complete and polished piece of MMORPG goodness, Trion has continually improved the game and added heaps of content in the nine months since it was birthed in a manner heretofore unheard of in the industry.  It may have some stiff competition in 2012, but there’s no doubt for us: Rift is the game of 2011,” it added for good measure to appease dissidents.

Of course SWTOR and Guild Wars 2 weren’t far behind from the podium stand, with both nabbing a shared spot as Most Anticipated. MMORPG.com gamely explains that even though SWTOR may have been dominating coverage everywhere and set to launch tomorrow, “eleven days of service doesn’t exactly cut it” for GoTY eligibility.

Still, it’s a fair bet of SWTOR credits that the sci-fi opus will be the contender to beat in 2012, should Guild Wars 2 fail to amass the same hype and critical back patting.

Here’s the full list of awardees:

• Game of the Year: RIFT (Winner), Eve Online (Runner-up)

• Most Anticipated: SWTOR and GW2 (Co-winners), TERA (RU)

• Most Innovative: DC Universe Online (W), Final Fantasy XIV (RU)

• Rising Star: Secret World (W), Glitch (RU)

• Best Hybrid MMO: League of Legends (W), World of Tanks (RU)

They’re finally here!

Star Wars the Old Republic Collector’s Edition game boxes are being sent out by Amazon and other retailers, and fans who received theirs ahead of time are already flooding the internet with unboxing videos.

Swedish fan and YouTube user TENGILL showed us the main contents of the SWTOR CE as advertised in the game pre-orders, with a loveable accent and rundown of items.

Here are the items you’ll find in a SWTOR CE in order of unboxing:

- Hardcover journal with gold print accents and lore annotations by Satele Shan. Lots of concept art drawings.

- Soundtrack CD with a hard paper case with embossed print.

- Star Wars galaxy map poster with a list of a dozen-plus playable planets.

- Key authenticator, which offers the same account protection benefits and easy-to-use functionality of a WoW Authenticator. Regardless if you’re buying a SWTOR CE or not, this is one of the first peripherals you should consider purchasing.

- Registration and game DVDs, complete with quick start installation and keyboard guides.

- And the piece de resistance, a Darth Malgus statue that measures about a foot high and comes with two attachable components — a dark lightsaber and an engraved heavy base for stability.

These will also unlock the digital items that come with the SWTOR Collector’s Edition, specifically the Droid Mouse companion pet and access to the digital VIP store where you can buy special virtual items (probably with a mix of real life cash and SWTOR credits currency).

Did the video make you salivate enough to make you grab one in time for the launch day or will you be sticking to the cheaper and more utilitarian Digital and Standard editions?