My name is Bruce Maclean and I am a Senior Producer here at BioWare Austin. I know there have been a lot of questions around the forums about what kind of content you can expect from us this year and so Im here today to give you all a bit of information about what were working on bringing to you this summer!
First up, Game Update 2.2, which is currently targeted for launch on June 11th:
Nightmare Mode Terror From Beyond. Its got vicious new mechanics and is definitely not for the faint of heart. Im very excited for you to see the new gear that comes with this, which uses a new appearance system weve developed for armor and weapons called Scrolling UVs.
New Guild Bonuses! Players in guilds currently receive a +5% experience bonus, but now every 5 active players in the guild will add an additional 1% bonus to XP and reputation, up to a maximum bonus of 10% each.
Crafters can now craft Underworld gear! But dont RE that piece if you are still using it
Unified fleet chat channel for each faction, for easier group finding without having to hop between instances.
Weve seen a lot of requests for a rerun of our Double XP weekends. Well, okay! Wed like to help you stay cool in the heat of the summer with three weekends starting June 22nd and continuing through July 7th. The third and last weekend will actually start early on Thursday the 4th of July, in case you are enjoying a long Independence Day weekend.
By July 9th Ops groups will have had four weeks to cut their teeth on Nightmare Mode Terror From Beyond. Thats when we will launch Nightmare Mode Scum and Villainy as a part of Game Update 2.2.2! New mechanics and unique loot for you.
July 23rd look for a return of the Relics of the Gree Event for a nice two week long run. Per community request the Event will scaled up to level 55 on this next run!
August 6th is our target date for Game Update 2.3, which we are working on right now and will be our biggest update since 2.0. Some of the bigger parts of this update are:
New Flashpoints
New Daily Area
New Recurring Event
Significant graphical upgrades
This isnt an exhaustive list, and we are also working on some longer term stuff. Sometimes we have been averse to discussing specific dates well in advance, because we arent going to release anything unless we feel it is ready to go live and we dont want to upset folks if we move a date back. Well I think we should just tell you what date the teams are shooting for, and if we dont hit them well just tell you why. Radical thinking, I know. As we get closer well have a lot more juicy details on these - keep your eyes peeled to the forums and SWTOR.com for more information. Also, for those who are curious about the next updates to PvP, I will just say apart from minor tweaks (like stunbreak abilities cooldown being reset on death in 2.2) you should look forward to Game Update 2.4. /rubshands
Nightmare Mode Terror From Beyond. Its got vicious new mechanics and is definitely not for the faint of heart. Im very excited for you to see the new gear that comes with this, which uses a new appearance system weve developed for armor and weapons called Scrolling UVs.
Are we getting scrolling neo letters on the gear? :D
I wanted to give you a quick update on Game Update 2.1.1 which, as you know from an earlier post I made, was scheduled to release tomorrow on 5/29. I am sure many of you already noticed we haven't posted maintenance messaging yet either. The reason is that during the QA process with 2.1.1 we found some pretty nasty bugs which will unfortunately be delaying the release of 2.1.1. I am still not sure when 2.1.1 will be released, but we are working to resolve the issues as fast as we can. What I can tell you is that there will not be a maintenance tomorrow morning, 5/28, to deploy 2.1.1.
Just to give you a bit of insight, one of the issues we ran into was that there were some critical Class mission blockers. We clearly don't want to release an update and have you unable to complete some class quests!
I will give you more information as soon as I have it. Specifically, when Game Update 2.1.1 will be released.
