Electronic Arts has announced that, in just a little over a month, sales of Star Wars: The Old Republic topped 2 million units, that’s a lot of SWTOR credits!

CEO John Riccitiello said that “We are pleased to report a strong holiday quarter driven by Battlefield 3, FIFA12 and a strong showing by our digital games and services. Star Wars: The Old Republic is developing a committed community of players with more than 1.7 million active subscribers and growing.”

EA, which lavished more moolah on SWTOR than on any game in its 30-year history, also dismissed reports of mass migrations from the game. Wait times to get on the servers –considerable in the beginning—had suddenly dropped, leading to speculation that players were leaving the game en masse.

Not so, EA insists. They were able to double the number of people they could support per server, letting more folks play, quest, and stock up on SWTOR gold. CFO Eric Brown added that “Star Wars has been an incredibly successful launch.”

(Those not interested in further stock news may skip to the next item or go back to vanquishing Flesh Raiders and saving up SWTOR gold.)

EA reported sales that are much better than forecasted for the December 2011 quarter, narrowing its fiscal losses in Q3. It reported a loss of $205 million (62 cents a share), compared to last year’s loss of $322 million (97 cents a share).

“We recorded our highest operating cash flow in 31 quarters and grew segment share in both Europe and North America,” said Brown. “Third quarter non-GAAP digital revenue grew 79 per cent year-over year, and we achieved our goal of generating over $1 billion in non-GAAP digital revenue on a trailing-12-month basis.”

EA also sold 11 million units of Battlefield 3, released during the holiday season.

What it all means: SWTOR is EA’s cash cow/ golden goose (pick your animal metaphor of choice) and I’ll bet an XS Freighter full of the best SWTOR credits they’ll do what they can to keep us happy and playing!

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SWTOR Guild Summit

When you were a kid, did you ever get those cool party invites to birthday parties and stuff? Well, here’s a cool grownup version:

What: the first ever SWTOR Guild Summit

When: March 4-6 2012

Where: the DoubleTree Hotel, Austin, TX

Activities:

-discuss the state of the game with the developers from BioWare Austin

-participate in Q&A sessions with developers, roundtable feedback discussions

-get a preview of some upcoming game features

According to Bioware:

“The goal of the summit is to facilitate an open discussion between guild leaders and the game design team. This event will provide an opportunity for attendees to voice their feedback directly to the teams responsible for the design of Star Wars: The Old Republic, hear the team’s thoughts and reasons behind design decisions, and discuss the current direction of the game.”

There’s still space left in this by-invitation-only event, so interested Guild Leaders (or an OIC) who are interested should submit an application. Applications will be accepted until February 10^th.

If selected, bring real $$ in addition to your SWTOR gold; you will have to pay for your own travel, food and lodging.

Also, although guild leaders from around the world are invited, the summit will be conducted entirely in Galactic Basic Standard, ie, English.

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.

In sci-fi and fantasies that are geared towards a wide audience, pandering to the lowest common denominator in terms of cuteness often backfires (*cough* Jar Jar Binks *cough*). So hats off to Blizzard for dodging that fate (and the ire of fans) by summarily expunging the too-cute companion pets from Diablo III:

In both cases [Scrolls of Companion and Scrolls of Reforging] these are features we felt were underdeveloped and just not quite good enough for the game in their current state. The companion pets felt like they were mandatory to maximize play efficiency and some of the pets were too cutesy for the gritty, dark world of Sanctuary. Neither of those are issues we felt like we could solve without a lot of additional work, and we’re trying to close in on a solid release date for the game, not move further away. When weighing these systems against releasing the game, we decided to cut these scrolls and stay on track for the game’s release.

We think we can make companion pets into a much cooler system (both mechanically and visually), and evolve the reforging scrolls into a more meaningful system at some point in the future. For the time being, they will not be in the initial release of the game.

While we’re on the topic of excessive cuteness, check out these adorable critters from World of WarCrafts (Hey, I can appreciate cuteness, just not in such proximity to my toons!). World of WarCrafts is a hub for the more artistically minded WoW players to display their talents. They are currently accepting submissions for all WoW-related arts and crafts, including fan art, food, music, fan fiction.

Druid kitties by a WoW player with even more extra time than your average WoW player

In less cute news, the bastion of pure loony goodness that is the Family Research Council has decided to wage open war on BioWare for allowing gay relationships in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Needless to say, we are opposed to such intolerance and stand with BioWare for equality, acceptance and awesome gaming fun.

Speaking of gaming fun,improve your crew skills and level up with cheap SWTOR credits!

This year’s first World of Warcraft: Cataclysm patch is now available! … for the Public Test Realms.  Yes, although it’s been on the PTR since January 3, it won’t go live until… well, we’re not sure, soon, we hope. Here’s the latest.

While 4.3.2  is not a content patch, it will enable the much-vaunted cross realms raids. There’s a caveat, though:

Please note, you will not yet be able to run normal or Heroic Dragon Soul with cross-real Read ID raids.

The patch will also contain updates for some features and fix some bugs. AND it adds the new 64-bit client (about time, too)! Also worth noting: Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.

And oh yeah: players can no longer receive two of same item at same time when winning loot from Raid Finder boss

While we wait for this patch to make it out of the test realms, here’s some other news of note:

No BlizzCon 2012

For the remaining two of you who haven’t heard, there will be no Blizzcon this year. To say it’s a major bummer would be a major understatement. Here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

We’re excited to be showcasing Blizzard eSports on a truly global stage this year. We’re also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

Ascended Weddings in RIFT

Congratulations and best wishes to the nuptial-minded Ascended! RIFT weddings will now be official.  To celebrate, they’ll attempt to break the Guinness World Record for most virtual weddings in 24-hour period.

Imagine the wedding invites: “In lieu of wedding gifts, we would greatly appreciate RIFT platinum to start our life of wedded bliss.” Maybe married life ain’t so bad.

SWTOR Designer Speaks on Faction Imbalance, etc.

And finally, here’s an interview with SWTOR lead designer Gabe Amantangelo in which he talks about what BioWare is doing regarding faction imbalance, and other good stuff.

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]