New in this patch: Corso finally shuts up. Build notes after the jump. Also important to note - the known issues list.

General

• Experience gains on Origin Worlds have been adjusted to help solo players reach level 10 more easily.

• Improved the overall performance of vanity pets.

• Using the /stuck command will no longer kill the player unless a safe location cannot be determined. Players can now only use /stuck every 120 seconds.

• Moving to a new planet instance no longer uses the player’s Quick Travel cooldown.

• Mail sent to another player will now have a 30 minute delay.

Classes and Combat

General

• Further improved and balanced all class content above level 30.

• Slightly improved mouse targeting distance.

• Implemented improvements that increase the responsiveness of combat actions.

• Tab targeting now more accurately takes into account which enemies are on screen.

• Tab targeting can now select enemies at a longer range.

• Players can now use ground-targeted area of effect attacks in a 360 degree area around their character.

Jedi Knight

• General

  • Jedi Knights can now obtain the Master title.

• Sentinel

  • Healing done by Zen has been decreased to 1% per tick while Juyo Form is active.

• Bug Fixes

  • Force critical bonuses conferred by Focused Resonance now display properly on the character sheet.

Sith Warrior

• General

  • Sith Warriors can now obtain the Darth title.

• Marauder

  • Healing done by Berserk has been decreased to 1% per tick while Juyo Form is active.

• Bug Fixes

  • Force critical bonuses conferred by Dark Resonance now display properly on the character sheet.

Jedi Consular

• General

  • Force Potency now increases the range of Telekinetic Throw.

  • Each use of Telekinetic Throw now uses a charge of Force Potency.

  • Players are no longer able to cancel Force Lift’s debuff by right-clicking it.

• Shadow - Infiltration

  • Situational Awareness now reduces the Force cost of Whirling Blow and no longer reduces the cooldown of Cloud Mind.

Sith Inquisitor

• General

  • Recklessness now increases the range of Force Lightning.

  • Each use of Force Lightning now uses a charge of Recklessness.

  • Players are no longer able to cancel Whirlwind’s debuff by right-clicking it.

• Assassin - Deception

  • Resourcefulness now reduces the Force cost of Lacerate and no longer reduces the cooldown of Cloud Mind.

Smuggler

• General

  • Cover now has a 1-second cooldown.

  • Recuperate can no longer be used from cover.

• Scoundrel - Scrapper

  • Flechette Round now causes the next Shoot First or Back Blast to deal additional bleed damage and increases armor penetration by 50% for a moderate duration. It is not affected by the global cooldown and does not break stealth.

  • Sucker Punch now requires 15 energy and has had its damage output decreased by 15%.

  • Flying Fists’ damage output has been decreased by 15%.

  • Sawed-Off now affects Flechette Round instead of Blaster Whip.

Imperial Agent

• General

  • Cover now has a 1-second cooldown.

  • Explosive Probe’s animation now correctly displays when the probe is resisted by an enemy.

  • Recuperate can no longer be used from cover.

• Operative - Concealment

  • Acid Blade now causes the next Hidden Strike or Backstab to deal additional poison damage and increases armor penetration by 50% for a moderate duration. It is not affected by the global cooldown and does not break stealth.

  • Laceration now requires 15 energy and has had its damage output decreased by 15%.

  • Collateral Strikes’ damage output has been decreased by 15%.

  • Waylay now affects Acid Blade instead of Shiv.

Trooper

• General

  • Adjusted resource bar visuals for ammo gain and use.

• Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue that prevented the skill Kolto Recharge from healing as intended.

  • Concussive Force now properly increases the knockback damage of Concussive Charge.

General Combat Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused multi-hit attacks to sometimes deal damage upon miss or deflect from the enemy.

• Calling a Medical Probe upon death now properly applies damage to equipment the players is wearing.

• The cooldown for calling a Medical Probe will now properly increase in phased areas.

Companion Characters

• General

  • Companion Characters now vocalize less frequently during combat.

  • Companion Characters are now silent when entering stealth modes.

  • Companion names now display as PLAYERNAME’s Companion.

Crew Skills

• General

  • Added implants to the schematic filter for the crafting window and to trainers.

  • Slightly increased critical chance for crafting and missions for Orange difficulty tasks.

• Crafting Skills

  • Cybertechs can now craft modifiable Droid armor.

  • Cybertech and Artifice modifications an enhancements have been updated.

  • Crafted relics and space upgrades now bind to the character when equipped.

  • Crafted items are no longer created with pre-slotted modifications.

• Gathering Skills

  • The highest-level gathering nodes now spawn more regularly on Corellia and in the high-level mission area on Belsavis.

• Mission Skills

  • Adjusted mission costs across all skill levels.

  • Treasure Hunting relics now bind to the character when equipped.

  • Luxury Fabrics and Underworld Metals are now obtained through different missions.

  • Investigation Mission Discoveries now yield Researched Compounds.

  • Rich yields no longer always provide Artifact quality resources.

  • Mission rewards now include higher quantities of Prototype quality crafted materials.

• Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue where Crafting schematics were no properly updating within the schematic trainer.

  • Learned Biochem schematics no longer disappear from the Crafting window.

  • Prototype and Artifact quality crafted weapons now have the correct weapon damage values.

  • Reverse engineering mode no longer toggles off after reverse engineering an item.

  • Items of less than Premium quality can no longer be reverse engineered.

  • Corrected refresh and mission tier issues.

  • Weapon damage and armor ratings listed on schematics now indicate those values on the resulting crafted items correctly.

  • Certain Prototype quality schematics for Artifice are no longer assigned to Synthweaving.

Flashpoints and Operations

• General

  • Flashpoint missions can now be obtained at level-appropriate locations on most planets with complementary shuttle service to the Republic or Imperial Fleet.

  • Flashpoint mission levels have been adjusted to more accurately reflect their difficulty.

  • Early-level Flashpoint bosses are now slightly less difficult.

  • Nightmare Mode Operations are now significantly more challenging.

  • Corrected an issue that prevented Codex entries associated with Nightmare Mode from unlocking.

• Flashpoints

  •  The Black Talon

    • Yadira Ban’s difficulty in Hard Mode has been increased.

  • Bringing Down the Hammer

    • Battlelord Kreshan now drops loot.

  • Colicoid War Games

    • This Flashpoint has undergone a difficulty balance pass.

    • The final boss no longer continually respawns.

  • Directive 7

    • Bulwark’s mechanics now function properly.

  • The Esseles

    • Vokk’s difficulty in Hard Mode has been increased.

    • Lieutenant Isric’s difficulty has been corrected in Hard Mode.

  • The False Emperor

    • Normal Mode bosses now inflict less burst damage.

    • Boss mechanics in this Flashpoint now function properly in Normal and Hard mode.

  • The Foundry

    • A normal enemy NPC in this Flashpoint no longer drops boss loot

• Operations

  • General

    • The Operations lockout window now displays the current boss lockouts for your group members.

  • Eternity Vault

    • Nightmare Mode chests now contain loot.

    • Enrage timers have been added to Annihilator Droid XRR-3 and Gharj.

    • The Ancient Pylon puzzle enemies now spawn.

    • Button use timing for the Ancient Pylon puzzle has been corrected.

    • The Infernal Council fight no longer resets as soon as the fight begins.

  • Karagga’s Palace

    • Bonethrasher no longer enters a state that causes him to cease executing his combat mechanics.

Items

• General

  • Custom items now appear with an orange border in the inventory. All Custom items are modifiable.

  • The Lhosan Racer is now a level 40 vehicle.

  • Increased the stat diversity of medium armor drops on Origin Worlds.

  • The cost of Droid armor is now comparable to the cost of other armor.

  • Random relics now bind to the character when equipped.

  • Modifiable Artifact quality items now only feature modification and enhancement slots.

  • Some redundant random shield generators with Force stats have been replaced by random foci.

  • Decreased the chance for lockboxes to contain higher-quality loot.

• Vendors

  • All standard modification vendors now sell a basic set of base modifications.

  • All modification vendors that accept commendations now provide a consistent set of modification upgrades for each class.

  • Prototype quality items sold by specialty goods vendors that accept credits can now also be found on the corresponding light, medium, and heavy armor vendors and weapon vendors.

  • Republic Fleet commendation vendors now sell the special ability items that their Imperial Counterparts sell.

• Bug Fixes

  • The speeder vendor on the Imperial Fleet now properly displays the vehicles for sale.

  • Heavy Force armor no longer drops from levels one through nine.

  • Some items with Social rank requirements can no longer be equipped without meeting the requirement.

  • Many high-level items now have the correct appearance when worn.

  • Droid armor can now be auctioned.

  • Some Earpieces and Implants purchased with commendations are no longer mislabeled.

Legacy

• Advancement through Legacy Levels has been adjusted; it is now slower early on and does not increase dramatically as levels are gained.

• Legacy surnames are now displayed by default.

Missions and NPCs

• General

  • Experience gained from completing missions has been increased.

  • Taris (Republic) and Balmorra (Imperial) Bonus Series mission rewards are now the appropriate level.

• Missions

  • Republic

    • Most Wanted: The weapon cache now provides a companion weapon.

  • Bug Fixes

    • Corrected several missions that failed to grant item rewards correctly.

• NPCs

  • General

    • Decreased the difficulty level of several high-level class story bosses.

    • NPCs will now attempt to enter cover when fired upon.

  • Bug Fixes

    • Standard and Weak toughness enemies no longer regenerate health while under the effect of any 60-second crowd control abilities (such as Force Lift, Concussion Missile, etc.)

PvP

• General

  • The center-screen message associated with the Deserter debuff now occurs after 50 seconds.

  • The decay time for Resolve has been significantly reduced, making characters susceptible to fewer crowd control effects over short periods of time.

  • The Glacial Fissure Imperial Mid Center is now a safe area for Empire Characters.

• PvP Items

  • Added two new, exclusive vehicles to rare spawn Outlaw’s Den vendors.

  • Level 20 and level 40 PvP gear is now available from vendors on the Republic and Imperial Fleets.

  • Battlemaster Gear Bags are now only available from daily and weekly PvP missions.

  • Battlemaster implants and earpieces can now be purchased for Warzone and Mercenary Commendations.

  • PvP vehicles now have Valor rank requirements.

  • PvP lockboxes under level 50 now cost 30 Warzone Commendations.

  • The Overcharge consumable now increases expertise by 15% for 20 seconds.

  • The PvP Heal consumable now restores 35% of maximum health.

  • Valor rank requirements on items now function properly.

  • Expertise has been added to many endgame PvP items.

• Warzones

  • General

    • The Combatant medal is now awarded at 75k damage.

    • The Healer medal is now awarded at 75k healing.

  • Alderaan Civil War

    • Reduced the interaction time for the targeting console to 8 seconds.

    • The scoreboard now indicates which team score belongs to the player.

    • The large installation cannon now fires at the end of a match.

    • Scoring blasts from cannons now occur at roughly 20-second intervals and now remove 10 points of shield strength.

    • Art for the sky in this Warzone has been improved.

    • Bug Fixes

      • Corrected an issue that caused Republic players to see misaligned scores.

      • Small body type characters can no longer move behind the pipes near the side control nodes.

      • Small body type characters no longer become stuck in some areas of this Warzone.

      • Turret shots no longer hit invisible collision areas while firing at the Imperial dropship.

      • Players no longer receive a development debug message while interacting with turret control consoles.

      • A visual error during the destruction animation for dropships has been corrected.

  • Huttball

    • The ball now returns to a player in the combat space (or the middle if no player is in range) if a player uses Force Pull on a character carrying the ball to bring them into the safe area.

    • Players can no longer hold the ball on the edge of their respawn zone.

    • Performance inside the Huttball Warzone has been increased.

    • Bug Fixes

      • Players on the Frogdog team now properly lose the Deserter Detection debuff when they enter the combat area.

  • Voidstar

    • The interaction time to plant bombs, extend the bridge, and lower fields has been reduced to 8 seconds.

    • The detonation countdown time has been increased to 20 seconds.

    • Attackers will not advance to the next respawn point until at least one attacker reaches the next room.

    • Extending the bridges and lowering the forcefields now count as progress when determining tiebreakers for matches where neither team reached the datacore.

    • A platform has been added to the reactor room attacker spawn location to prevent fall damage.

    • The Voidstar intro cinematic has been improved.

    • Environmental visual effects have been added to this Warzone.

    • Radio transmission and broadcast audio (instructional and ambient) have been added.

    • Bug Fixes

      • Players now teleport to the correct respawn location for their side when joining the Warzone after it has started.

      • A crate that allowed players to bypass a forcefield has been removed.

      • Mapnotes now use the appropriate bomb planted icons when a bomb is placed on a door.

      • The bridges now appear extended correctly to players who were in the hangar room as the bridges were extended.

      • The Voidstar map on the loading screen is now correct.

      • Voidstar maps now take recent geometry changes into account and have bene updated.

      • The Revive window now closes properly between rounds.

      • Fixed an issue that could cause players to be teleported to the wrong location during the round transition.

      • Fixed an issue that could cause level matching in the matchmaking system to function improperly.

      • Corrected an issue that caused players that were unflagged upon entering a Warzone to remain flagged after leaving one.

• World PvP

  • Battle for Ilum

    • The War Effort buffs now have a new icon.

    • Ambient music now plays during various events during the Battle of Ilum.

    • Bug Fixes

      • Corrected an issue that could cause objectives to become stuck in the “secured” state.

      • Corrected text inconsistencies in Battle for Ilum missions and objective notes.

      • Players who load directly into the Western Shelf PvP area now properly receive the area status effect if a faction controls the area.

      • The Republic and Imperial Bases now properly play aerial bombardment explosions when a faction controls the zone.

  • The Outlaw’s Den (Tatooine)

    • Added two new, exclusive vehicles to the Outlaw’s Den vendors.

    • Chests in Outlaw’s Den now drop 20 Mercenary Commendations.

    • Bug Fixes

      • Mercenary Commendation chests no longer appear empty on being opened.

      • The text associated with the mission for Outlaw’s Den has been corrected.

• Bug Fixes

  • Alacrity no longer reduces the channel time of interacting with objects inside Warzones.

  • Characters now receive appropriate stat bonuses when bolstered.

  • Players are no longer awarded additional stealth time when reviving if they die inside an exhaustion area.

  • Players can no longer toggle their PvP flag while in contested, Team Free-for-All, Free-for-All, or opposing faction regions.

  • Corrected an issue that could cause characters to remain in combat longer than intended.

Space Combat

• General

  • Player and companion voiceovers now sound like they are coming from the ship intercom.

  • EMP Generator damage is no longer scaled by the setting of your power conversion module.

  • Decreased the experience gained from daily Space Combat missions.

UI

• General

  • When the Group Leader changes to the Master Loot setting, a message will now display to all members of the group or team.

  • The server select screen now more accurately indicates the population of each server.

  • Servers that are currently offline are now displayed at the bottom of the server list.

  • Removed the /bug button from the User Interface. Players should now submit bugs using the Customer Service Portal.

  • The Inspect feature now shows some stats and other information that was previously missing.

  • Clicking on an item will now attach it to the mouse cursor.

  • Added the ability to right-click to add/remove item modifications.

  • Mail can now be opened using a single click.

  • The loot window will now close if players select Take All, regardless of whether or not items require a group roll.

  • Removed the Show Coverbar button from the main UI.

  • Nameplate health bars now match their color to the text instead of always displaying as red.

  • Added a Character Stuck button to the upper right corner of the Help Window.

  • The Trainer window no longer displays empty tabs.

  • Icons for high-level Commendation items now indicate the item type they provide.

  • The visual and sound effects for a player duel challenge have been updated.

  • Stackable items are now grouped together in the loot window.

  • Character limitations will now display in the error message when players enter a name that is too long.

  • The game credits can now be viewed by pressing the Credits button while on the character select screen.

  • The cinematics menu on the character select screen now functions properly.

  • Operations

    • The Operations lockout window now displays the current boss lockouts for your group members.

    • Information available on the Operation lockout window is now easier to understand and displays correctly.

    • Announcements in Operations are now more distinct.

    • Operation raidframes can now be toggled on and off.

  • Quickslots

    • Players will no longer be asked for confirmation when dragging items off the quickslot bar.

    • Quickslot bars will no longer duplicate when activating extended bars.

    • Passive abilities can no longer be moved to the quickslot bar.

  • Chat

    • Using /group in chat will now send communication to the highest group level (i.e. Operations Teams will take precedence over groups).

    • Chat channel input now defaults to /general instead of /say.

    • Some chat commands have been changed. The following commands now work when used followed by player-created chat channel names: /cjoin, /cleave, /cinvite, /ckick, /mute, and /unmute.

  • Codex

    • Added or corrected images for many Codex entries and tutorials.

    • Added several new Codex entries for Ilum.

  • Tooltips

    • Added several new tooltips.

    • Improved the explanation of rested experience in the experience tooltip.

    • Repair tooltips no longer display stats if the values are 0.

    • Player tooltips now display when a player is marked as Looking For Group.

    • Space Combat ability items now have tooltips.

  • Social

    • The Social Center will now update Looking For Group status more frequently and displays Looking For Group comments by default.

    • The UI no longer displays the Quick Group button when players select a character from the opposite faction.

    • Updated the art for Social Center notifications.

    • Inspecting other players now displays their values for Valor.

    • Reduced the number of available titles from alignment, social, and some missions.

  • Tutorials

    • Added level requirements to some tutorials.

    • Clarified the wording of many tutorials.

    • Closing the tutorial window now closes all read tutorials.

    • Added new tips to loading screens and adjusted many tips such that they will display at more relevant times.

  • Galactic Trade Network

    • Improved the overall UI for the GTN.

    • Added many new category and subcategory filter choices.

    • Fixed category issues that could cause incorrect listings or other GTN problems.

  • Preferences

    • Players can now map the mouse wheel up and down to any game function, and the Camera Zoom In/Out can be mapped to keys.

    • Removed several obsolete entries from the Preferences Menu.

    • Moved some preferences to make them easier to find.

    • Preference tooltips will now include which options will result in better performance.

    • Chat fade is now toggled off by default.

    • The Social Invites as Social Center messages preference is now toggled off by default.

    • Players will now have fifteen seconds to confirm after changing the game resolution.

    • The Automatic Cover bar can now be disabled via the Preferences Menu.

    • Added a preference that will cause the map to flash red while in combat.

    • Added a preference to toggle off the Legacy Bar.

  • Maps

    • Updated the appearance of the minimap filter toggle buttons.

    • Unusable enemy vendors no longer display on the map.

    • Crew Skill trainers now show up correctly on the map and minimap

  • PvP

    • The UI no longer enters a bad state when it is reloaded at the end of a Warzone match.

    • The Warzone Invitation window now reappears if it is active when the player loads into another area.

    • The character sheet now properly displays bolstered weapon damage inside Warzones.

    • PvP Codex images have bene added for PvP unlockable entries.

  • Bug Fixes

    • The server login queue now displays more accurate estimations.

    • The maximum count of Codex entries now displays correctly for all planets.

    • Corrected several incorrect preference tooltips.

    • Preferences defaults now have the correct initial settings.

    • Shift+F12 can now be remapped.

    • Fixed an issue that caused chat to be unviewable when switching from portrait to widescreen.

    • Players no longer lose their chat reply target upon area transition.

    • The active companion bar no longer remains occasionally after unsummoning a companion.

    • The Looking for Group icon no longer displays on the nameplates of players that are not looking for groups.

    • Fixed an issue that could cause a player’s Legacy to incorrectly display other player characters’ Legacy.

    • The players castbar can no longer incorrectly display another character’s castbar.

    • Addressed an issue that caused the minimap arrow to sometimes point in the wrong direction and display an incorrect location.

    • The Friends List now updates properly to display friends who are online.

    • Trades are now cancelled when the trade window is closed.

    • The character sheet now resets when reloading the UI with Ctrl-U.

    • Fixed an issue with character rotation in the item preview window.

    • Fixed an issue that caused inventory tabs to incorrectly display their capacity.

    • Social notifications (like group invitations) now display and behave properly.

    • Fixed a tooltip bug that could cause “Main Hand” to incorrectly display in red text.

    • Many incorrect icons have been replaced.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Dark Side appearances should now always be visible to other players.

• Players who initially lose conversation rolls will now correctly gain bonuses to future rolls until a roll is won.

• Characters now face forward and move at full speed when strafing left or right.

• Players will no longer be dismounted when speaking to a vendor.

• Players are no longer invulnerable after surrendering in a duel.

• Fixed an issue that was causing lag in Warzones and Flashpoints.

• Using strafe after using backwards strafe will now allow the character to move at full speed.

• Players no longer receive rewards for participating in a single-player conversation with quests.

• Fixed several issues that caused weapons to not sheath or unsheath properly.

• Groupmates that are too far away or are in another phase when a chest is looted are no longer eligible to roll on that chest’s loot.

• Made overall improvements to the profanity filter.

• French and German game clients now have their own profanity filters.

• Invalid names can no longer be created by the random name generator.

I googled “star wars crafting” and this came up - repeatedly - in the results.

Puttin’ ‘em to work

The crafting/gathering system in Star Wars: The Old Republic is called the Crew Skills system, which confused a few people right off the bat when it was introduced. Your companions once again prove to be invaluable in SWTOR because they will do all your crafting for you - but you only have one general level for that skill across your entire crew, not a separate skill level for every crew member. And no, you yourself do not get to do any crafting - in fact, the only thing you can do for yourself is gather (a situation you can still work to your advantage even before getting a companion, as touched on by Zlatto’s Bazaar at Ask a Jedi the other day). There are a couple tasks for you, as well - such as Reverse Engineering, a concept everyone should really read about as it’s vital to getting better stuff for the crafting process - but for the most part, Crew Skills live up to their names, as it’s your crew doing the crafting.

1. You choose the schematic or schematics you wish to produce - up to about five items at a time - or the mission you wish to go on, whether it’s from a gathering or mission skill.

2. Choose the companion you want to perform the mission or craft - noting their bonuses (more on that in just a second).

3. Pay the nominal fee if you’re sending them on a gathering mission or mission skill mission - these are set so that you can’t just send a companion on infinite gathering or skill missions and vendor the results for constant profit.

4. Your companion vanishes to go craft the item or perform the mission. After a set period of time, they come back with rewards or the item you built.

There are some other interesting features with this companion-centric mode of crafting. For instance, if you see a gathering node in the world (be it a sliceable safe or a dead creature for bioanalysis), you can actually send your companion to gather it, without even needing to get into range to gather it yourself! You can even set that to be the default action when you right-click on a gatherable thing, thus never actually gathering anything yourself.

While any crew member can perform any crew skill with no penalty, most of them provide a bonus to an associated crew skill. Most of them are pretty straightforward - for instance, Mako, a slicer, has bonuses to slicing - but some are unexpected, such as T7-01 having a bonus to bioanalysis. SWTOR Spy has a full list of these bonuses!

A long time ago, in a job fair far, far away

So with that said, what are the Crew Skills? The skills are divided into three general categories - Crafting Skills, Gathering Skills, and Mission Skills.

• Gathering Skills - Pretty much exactly what they sound like. Gathering skills are used to gather materials for crafting skills, and they can be used on associated gatherable items in the world as well as sending your companion on gathering missions. Each gathering skill provides raw materials for one to three crafts; Slicing is the odd duck.

  • Archaeology studies crystal formations and archaeological finds. The crystals are used by Artifice to build lightsaber modifications and Force-user items; the archaeology fragments are used by Artifice and Synthweaving.

  • Bioanalysis is the art of collecting genetic material from creatures and vegetation, usually wildlife that you’ve defeated in combat. This includes cell fibers, bacterial strains, toxins, and medicinal fluids. These items are used solely by Biochem.

  • Scavenging is the practice of taking apart robots, among other things. Scavengers can pick apart defeated robotic enemies, abandoned cargo, piles of junk, broken-down vehicles, and more. Scavenging parts are used by Armormech, Armstech, and Cybertech.

  • Slicing is the last of the gathering skills. Slicing is Star Wars speak for hacking, and that’s basically what you do - you slice electronic safes, data terminals, mainframes, and locked footlockers. Slicing has a very varied set of rewards - it can yield credits (sometimes quite a few), rare schematics for Cybertech gadgets, vehicle and space upgrades for the space combat minigame, and mission discovery objects that unlock challenging missions for great rewards. Additionally, sending your companions on slicing missions can return augments for craftable items, or items potentially related to any crafting skill!

• Crafting Skills - also fairly self-explanatory. Crafting skills make stuff out of the things you get from gathering and mission skills. The most important thing to note is that while any number of your Crew Skills can be gathering or mission skills, you may only have one crafting skill per character. Another thing that may take getting used to if you’re used to other games’ crafting systems is that a lot of the time, most of what you’re going to be crafting are actually either unaugmented items, or item augments. The item augmentation system can be touched on at another time, but basically what it amounts to is this - if you build a set of armor using Armormech, you might actually build an item with four empty augmentation slots - but then you can fill those augmentation slots with other items built by Armormech to create a piece of armor uniquely suited to your class or role.

  • Armstech is the fine art of building guns. It’s weaponsmithing for the tech users - Troopers, Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and Imperial Agents. If it goes ‘pew pew,’ an Armstech can build it. Armstech uses the metal gathered from Scavenging, as well as prototype schematics and compounds from Investigation.

  • Armormech is the armor counterpart to Armstech - it builds armor for tech users. It uses the same materials, too - metals from Scavenging and random goodies from Investigation Underworld Metals from Underworld Trading.

  • Artifice is used to create Force-user wieldable dealies, such as lightsabers and lightsaber enhancements, color crystals, generators, and Force focii. They can also create color cartridges for non-lightsaber weapons, such as blasters, according to their codex entry. You’ll see an absolute ton of Force-users take this so they can try to get a differently-colored lightsaber crystal, I guarantee it. Artifice uses the power crystals, color crystals, and fragments from Archaeology, as well as the gemstones from Treasure Hunting.

  • Biochem keeps you healthy and on the good drugs. No, really! Biochem creates both temporary use items (such as health-restore medpacs and stat-buffing stimulants), as well as creating items for the Implant equipment slot for basically any class or role. Biochem uses the biochemical samples from Bioanalysis, as well as the medical supplies returned by Diplomacy.

  • Cybertech builds an odd collection of goodies - droid armor (for your droid companions), earpieces (for you), grenades, armor, armor mods, and miscellaneous gadgets. They create the items you’ll be popping into your Earpiece equipment slot. Cybertech crafting is fueled by the scavenged metals from Scavenging, as well as the rare illicit metals gathered from Underworld Trading.

  • Synthweaving is the Force-user equivalent of Armormech, to put it simply. Synthweavers create items that the Force-sensitive classes can wear, created using the crystals and fragments from Archaeology and the luxury fabrics and underworld metals provided by Underworld Trading.

• Mission Skills can be viewed as the “high risk, high reward” category. Mission Skills have absolutely no gatherable nodes - essentially they consist entirely of missions, and given the broad range of possible rewards for each, you’re rolling the dice as to whether you’ll get something you need or not. However, each one has its appeal, and the rewards from Mission Skills tend to be kind of nice, even if they’re not quite what you wanted - you can always go pop them on the Galactic Trade Market, after all.

  • Diplomacy is for those who truly want to max out their Light Side or Dark Side morality, even moreso than what quests will allow you to do. Diplomatic missions are all clearly marked as Light Side or Dark Side aligned if they can shift your morality, and sending your companions on these missions can yield morality points, medical materials for use in the Biochem craft, medpacs, stims, adrenals, and companion gifts. (The last one is a common thread of all the Mission Skills - they’re a constant source of companion gifts to raise companion affection.)

  • Investigation turns you into, well, an investigator. Your companion will be out researching, gathering, analyzing, and decoding secret information. You can receive various items involved with Armstech such as rare compounds or weapon parts, prototype schematics for any craft, or companion gifts.

  • Treasure Hunting is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Your companion hunts down caches of treasure, returning with rare gemstones used for the prototype and artiact schematics in Artifice, lockboxes containing items or credits, and companion gifts.

  • Underworld Trading is the shadiest of the Mission Skills, but don’t worry, it won’t affect your reputation - or your morality. Underworld Trading deals with the galactic black market, and can yield luxury fabrics (for Synthweaving), underworld metals (for Synthweaving, Cybertech, and Armormech), space upgrades for the space combat minigame, and weapon/armor modifications, as well as - say it with me - companion gifts!

Putting it all together (pun fully intended)

Taking all that in could be a real task. What if you just want an easy list of things to pick up on your character? The easiest way is to start with figuring out a Crafting Skill that appeals to you, as each Crafting Skill comes with one associated Gathering Skill and Mission Skill, so you get the full taste of the Crew Skills system. You can also replace any Mission Skill with Slicing, if you want - you’ll miss out on some of the varied rewards from Mission Skills, but you’re guaranteed at least a constant steady trickle of credits from slicing open boxes in the world. Here’s some ideas on how best to set up your Crew Skills.

• The Moneymaker - Slicing, Scavenging, and Archaeology. You could potentially take Bioanalysis instead of Archaeology, but since Bioanalysis only feeds one Crafting Skill, demand for its goods is theoretically slightly lower. This setup is basically designed to gather materials and sell them on the Galactic Trade Market, while supplementing that income with credits from Slicing. Maybe not a bad idea if you find yourself perpetually low on cash, although you’re entirely dependent on others for modifications - but if you’re rich, who cares? Buy that lightsaber with caaash!

• The Self-Sufficient Force User - Archaeology, Artifice, and Treasure Hunting for a weapon-focused crafter, or Archaeology, Synthweaving, and Underworld Trading for a Force armorsmith. As usual, you can also substitute Slicing for the mission skill in each setup. These setups are designed around having maximum self-efficiency in crafting one kind of modification for your Force-using self, either weapons or armor. Better yet, roll two different characters - maybe both Force classes on your chosen faction? - and be able to deck them both out with crafted goodies.

• The Self-Sufficient Tech User - Armstech, Scavenging, and Investigation for a weapon maker, or Armormech, Scavenging, and Underworld Trading for armor. Basically the same as the Self-Sufficient Force User setup, but designed for those who prefer their weapons to go “pew pew pew.”

• The Pusher - Biochem, Bioanalysis, and Diplomacy. Having a never-ending supply of stims and medpacs is good enough on its own, especially if you’re a class that doesn’t do so well on the frontlines. Always having the newest implant and being able to max out your morality (or immorality) is even better. You’ll probably be selling a good supply of stat boosters to Operation runners after a while, but in the meantime, keep gathering that Green Goo.

• The Droid Fixer-Upper - Cybertech, Scavenging, and Slicing or Cybertech, Scavenging, and Underworld Trading. It really depends whether you want the constant supply of goods from Slicing, or the more high-risk, high-reward output of Underworld Trading. You’ll be able to create a variety of droid parts - even if you don’t have a droid companion yourself, you can always sell them on the market - as well as earpieces and a variety of mods.

• Money to Burn - Pick any three Mission Skills. You’ll get a wide variety of schematics and parts that you’ll have to sell, and sell often, just to keep your wallet afloat - because you are going to be burning cash on these, big time. I wouldn’t suggest this unless you’re already independently credit-wealthy, and probably not even then. But hey, your companions are going to love you to death.

New game, new stats, new numbers to stack - isn’t that how the story always goes?SWTOR’s no different, fundamentally, from many other MMOs. Plus, to make things a little simple for the new player, each class basically has its own stat, so you won’t spend a lot of time fighting with people who share your armor type - just people who share your class.

SWTOR actually does a lot better of a job recently as far as getting you used to seeing a certain stat on your gear. Early on in beta, quest rewards would sometimes offer you one stat or another, and unless you really enjoyed reading tooltips, it was kind of hard to tell what each stat actually did - so as a fledgling adventurer, you’re left wondering, what stat do I want? I’m wielding a dual-bladed lightsaber - do I want Willpower or Strength? Troopers and Smugglers both use guns - but do I want Cunning or Aim? Or both? Those kind of questions naturally arose early on, but a lot of the gear from quests now passively points you in the right direction.

Here’s a short rundown of what each of the stats you’ll see means - most of them should look pretty familiar if you’ve got any MMO experience (and if you don’t… welcome!).

(Reminder: this is beta, this is technically still subject to change, yadda yadda. Also my familiarity with the tank stats is pretty low; it’s been my least-played role in the beta.)

Any screenshot below can be clicked to embiggen. Also, these screenshots were taken on a Smuggler, so some of the tooltips contain extra info that only applies to Smugglers (and Imperial Agents) - but it never hurts to look.

Primary Stats

Strength - the choice of melee beatsticks everywhere. The primary stat of Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors, this increases your aptitude in melee combat. It could be considered a secondary stat for Jedi Shadows and Sith Assassins, but certainly not at the expense of their primary stat, Willpower - and finding both together on one item is rare. For those classes for whom it is a primary stat, Strength will increase the damage and crit chance of their melee abilities. Sample Item: Ascendant Warlord’s Lightsaber, a weapon geared towards melee DPS.

Presence - the amazing solo stat. Presence, as you can see, enhances your companion’s damage, health, and healing - it’s the all-purpose companion stat. Mostly useful for soloing, but I could see it having some use if, say, you needed your companion to fill a role in a flashpoint for a missing player character. Notable in the above screenshot is that Presence is one of the few stats that doesn’t increase crit chance - your companion’s crit chance is improved by their own stats & gear, most likely. Sample item: Advanced Command Augment 14, which isn’t actually a piece of gear so much as it is an augment to upgrade other pieces of weapons and armor.

Aim - it comes between “ready” and “fire” for a reason. Largely the purview of Republic Troopers and Bounty Hunters, this is also an occasional secondary stat for Imperial Agents and Smugglers. Aim, as it says, increases aptitude with ranged weapons, and for the troopers and hunters, it increases the damage, crit chance, and healing (yes, healing) of their abilities. Sample item: M-008 Deadeye, a ranged DPS blaster rifle. Healers would probably look to replace the accuracy with alacrity or crit rating - heals can’t miss, after all.

Cunning - for those of us who use our brains… to tell us when to shoot first. Cunning is the primary stat, as you can probably tell from the info in the screenshots, of Smugglers and Imperial Agents, and a secondary stat for Troopers and Bounty Hunters. Cunning covers ranged damage/crit and tech damage/crit - and tech is what Smugglers and Agents do best. Sample item: Ace in the Hole, an off-hand blaster pistol (meant entirely for the Gunslinger class, more or less).

Endurance - it’s what keeps you alive, literally. Endurance shows up on almost all your gear, and serves to increase both health and out-of-combat health regen. Everyone will get some of it pretty much by default, but the six tank specs (that’s Vanguards, Powertechs, Sith Juggernauts, Jedi Guardians, Sith Assassins, and Jedi Shadows, for those of you keeping track at home) will probably want the most of it. Sample item: Ascendant Guardian’s Lightsaber, a tank’s lightsaber, with high amounts of endurance, a threat stat (accuracy), and a defense stat (absorption).

Willpower - for our Force-using friends. The primary stat for the Jedi Consular and Sith Inquisitor - yes, even the melee Advanced Classes in each of these! - and the (very rarely used) secondary stat for the Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight. These increase the Force damage and healing of your Consular and Inquisitor powers - and if you’re a Shadow or Assassin, they’ll increase your melee effectiveness too. Sample item: Ascendant Consular’s Lightsaber, meant for our caster-type Force-users - the alacrity is a good indicator of this.

Expertise - the vaguest stat in the land. “Increases your effectiveness in PvP combat” - what does that mean exactly? Well, as it turns out, Expertise makes you better at everything in PvP combat, as these three screenshots show - dealing damage, healing, and resisting damage to and from other players in PvP only. Sample item: Battlemaster Combat Medic’s Cannon, a trooper assault cannon meant for healers.

Secondary Stats

Power - overwhelming? Power (which can show up on items as the more generic “power” or occasionally the more specific “Force power” or “tech power”) is a simple statistic that increases tech or Force powers’… power. Redundant much? Basically power makes you better at whatever it is you do - more damage, more healing. Sample item: Colicoid Watchman Scattergun, an off-hand item for Scoundrels which would improve either their damage or their healing, depending on how they’ve allocated talents. (The accuracy is better for damage-dealing scoundrels, though.)

Crit Rating and Surge - two closely related stats. Crit increases your crit chance, while surge increases the effect of your crits. Simple enough. Sample item: Battlemaster Force-Master’s Focus, sporting both crit and surge, meant for PvP casters or healers of the Sage or Sorcerer variety.

Alacrity - it’s like someone checked the thesaurus for “haste” and just used the first one they found. Alacrity increases the activation time of non-instant abilities. It does not affect the global cooldown, which seems to be constant.  Sample item: Ultratech Combat Medic’s Enhancer.

Accuracy - straightforward, although unfortunately lacking in good screenshottage. Accuracy helps you hit. But there’s a plus side - once you pass 100% accuracy, accuracy also helps you start bypassing armor and resistance! The concept of a ‘hit cap’ is thus somewhat lessened - more hit will still help you do damage, even past 100% hit.

Tank Stats - sadly, I do not have a good screenshot for these, largely on account of not having any of those stats. Here’s a quick rundown, though.

• Shield Rating - the chance that a shield will be triggered in reaction to an attack. Shielding is useful for all tanks (even the Assassin and Shadow, who somehow have an invisible third hand to use a shield generator - maybe they’re holding it with the Force).

• Absorption Rating - the amount of damage absorbed when your shield activates. Easy-peasy.

• Defense Rating - increases parry (turning aside ranged attacks) and deflection (turning aside ranged attacks) at an equal rate.

• Resistance - applicable to any one of TOR’s four damage types, which are Kinetic, Elemental, Internal, and Energy. Elemental and Internal damage bypasses armor. Kinetic and Energy do not seem to do so. If an attack doesn’t say what it is, thus far, you can safely assume it’s Kinetic.

• Glance Rating - to be honest, I have no idea what this is. It’s possible it’s one of the other stats under a new name.

That just about wraps it up for stats. Special thanks to Gankstah’s Tanking: A Primer -  FAQs for help in deciphering the tank stats. It’s a good read if you’re interested in the meat and potatoes of tanking - it actually contains a good deal of the formulas for deciphering how to convert from rating to chance of resistance, shield, et cetera.

NDA’s up, which means I can actually talk about The Old Republic now.

Thank goodness, I was getting tired of not talking about The Old Republic.

Got questions? Fire away in the comments. I’ll answer as best I can. I’ve got a wide-ranged smattering of experience with the class types (i.e. I may not have played the Agent for long, but I did play a Smuggler, so I can generalize - things like that), low-to-mid-level content, and general game systems.

Just doing a little site moving around. Again. Migratory blogs? Don’t mind if I do.

Now it’s time to hunt down themes for all 3 of my blogs.

The recurring mantra about betas is that the sum total of what you’re allowed to disclose under the non-disclosure agreement is this:

1. There is a beta.

2. I am in it.

Well, as such, it’s going to get a little quiet around here, because yes, there is a beta, and yes, I am in it, and therefore I’m bound by Bioware’s NDA. I’ll have to watch what I write here from now on to make sure I don’t accidentally slip in some fact that is under NDA and get myself kicked out - and so I’ll probably write less for a while.

Unrelated fun fact: the most oppressive NDA I ever tested under was Square-Enix’s NDA for Final Fantasy XIV, under which you were not allowed to acknowledge that you were in the beta, acknowledge that the beta existed, or acknowledge that the NDA existed.

I’ll still be available for non-SWTOR writings on Midboss, of course, and TSF will resume its usual lackadaisical posting schedule later on (whether that be non-NDA-violating posts, or posting after the NDA is lifted).

Perhaps you think this is about the “loot bag” announcement from this week. Afraid not. My feelings on that (I’m for it!) hardly justify an entire post to themselves. No, this is something else entirely - gaming personality types, and their relationship to SWTOR.

Have you heard of the Bartle Test? In 1996, a professor by the name of Richard Bartle wrote a paper - specifically mentioning MUDs, but still highly applicable today - called “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” It’s available to read online, if you wish. Bartle’s personality categorization was converted into an online test in the late 90s by Erwin Andreasen and Brandon Downey, and later - due to popularity and infeasibility of scaling the database side - moved to gamerDNA, where it resides today.

The four card suits mentioned in Bartle’s title align with four “gaming personality” types. See if they sound like you or anyone you know:

• Diamonds are Achievers. They love concrete signs of advancement. Scores, money, points, achievements, gear - if it can be collected and/or improved upon, a Diamond will do it. Diamonds are notable for pursuing in-game challenges or rewards that are of no actual use to them simply for the notability of having done so. MMO creators love Achievers, for obvious reasons. Someone who levels characters for the love of leveling, or your typical achievement hounds (guilty as charged) are, to some extent, Diamonds.

• Spades are Explorers. They got their suit due to their tendency to “dig around.” Seen someone post a vid where they were exploring in a closed-off region of a game just because it was there to be explored? You’ve seen someone with some Spade leanings in action. Spades delight in new areas, Easter eggs, and sometimes new glitches. Explorers are the most likely to dig into a game, but are the most likely to leave when a game transitions from fun to chore. Once again, yours truly is a prime example.

• Hearts are Socializers. Hearts are there for the people. Maybe they never advance above level 20 because they’re roleplaying. Maybe they’re those people who genuinely do raid for the people - not the boss-killing, or the loot, but the people. Hearts are usually the most helpful to other players, and are usually that person that everyone gets along with because that’s just how a Heart rolls. Most people who play online games are, to some extent, Hearts - even if it’s just a little bit - and their relationships don’t necessarily have to be with people! A Warlock who’s attached to her minions, or those people asking about relationships with companions in SWTOR, are to some extent a little Heart-y.

• Clubs are Killers. (There’s an obvious joke here about clubbing people.) The “Killer” archetype often seems to have a lot of negative aspects associated with it, but at the heart of it, Clubs are just extremely competitive. A lot of Killers are focused on PvP, true to their name, but sometimes Killers can be found in other aspects of the game - controlling markets on the Auction House, for instance, or guiding their guild to World First Boss Kills. Don’t take the name to mean they’re griefers or trolls - many Killers are very nice people who just happen to thrive in a competitive environment. Bored Killers are usually bad news, though; ‘bad’ Killers will turn into trolls, while ‘good’ Killers will often seek environments that give them the competition they can’t find in their current environment. Cynwise is a Club who competes with players directly, Basil Berntsen does it in the auction house, and anyone leading a bleeding-edge progression raid guild is more than a little bit Clubby.

So now that you’ve read that summary - and perhaps you’ve taken the test yourself, so you know what your gaming personality looks like (yours truly comes in as 73% Explorer, 60% Socializer, 53% Achiever, 13% Killer) - you might be wondering what TOR has to offer for each aspect.

• Diamonds may have been a little disappointed to discover that there wasn’t an actual Achievement system in the game, but there’s still all those hallmarks of MMOs that you’ve come to love - leveling, stats, cash, skills, et cetera. You may not have actual capital-A Achievements, but there’s still plenty of things for an Achiever to point at and say, “I did this.”

• Spades will have intricate stories to play through and enormous frickin’ planets to traverse, and lots of lore to delve into - including the Bioware Codex. Plus, for the first time in a long time (outside of Rift’s placement of artifacts and cairns far off the beaten path), SWTOR is set to reward Spades with an actual, tangible reward for exploring - Holocrons, which give nice permanent stat bonuses to a character, fill in a spot in the Codex, and most are said to be solely findable by dedicated and crafty Explorers.

• Hearts will find all the usual tools they’re used to in order to foster kinship - guilds, et cetera. In fact, Bioware’s gotten a head start with its guilds with their Guild HQ site. Go ahead and form your guild now! (We certainly did, and you’re welcome to join us!) Declare other guilds as friends or enemies, and Bioware will do their level best to get you onto the same server and everything. In addition, SWTOR should help Socializers with relationships with non-player characters, too - each class gets its own, unique set of Companion Characters who travel with you, respond to your conversations, and (in some cases) can grow into an actual relationship with your character. (However, for Jedi, that’s more than likely the road to some Dark Side points. Choose carefully!)

• Clubs will likewise find the aspects they’ve always been used to competing in. Raids, aka Operations? Check. PvP, aka Warzones? Check. Auction house, aka Galactic Market? Check. Whether you’re killing threats to the galaxy or just beating up those pesky Imperials/Republicans, you too can flex your inner Killer. World PvP is available on PvP realms for those who enjoy that aspect of the game, as well.

I, for one, will be hunting Holocrons til the cows come home - after I dive into the storyline Bioware’s put before us, probably several times over. What’s your “gaming personality” like - and what aspect of the game are you most looking forward to? Do those fit with one another?

I noticed that the Systems Requirement Lab has taken the minimum requirements from the SWTOR pre-order FAQ and added the game as an option in ”Can You Run It?” So yeah, now you can see if your creaky old computer will run TOR.

Keep in mind it’s just the minimum requirements, not recommended - this is just to see if you can get off the ground at all, not to see if you can fly at top speed, so to speak.

As for me - well, as you can see by clicking the results pic to the right, I think I’ll be okay.

Yeah, the physical collector’s edition. I’m that guy.

Pre-orders are now available. I woke up early with stomach issues and sat down on the computer to screw around just in time to get the email about it. Collector’s Edition pre-order is go!

One of the most important aspects of any MMO is its user interface, or UI. The story could be fantastic, the gameplay engaging, and the player base friendly, but if the interface through which you interact with that world is clunky or ill-designed, the game itself becomes a laborious chore. A lot of SWTOR’s UI will probably need to be played for its functionality to be seen; fortunately, SWTOR does seem to have solved one of the major problems of MMO UIs: information placement, and that we can talk about now.

Days of Yore

I’d like to take this examination further back than WoW, but to be honest, I wouldn’t know an unmodded EQ, EQ2, or UO user interface from Adam, having never played any of them. Instead I’ll start with the first MMO I sank a lot of time into: Final Fantasy XI.

Picture from 1up’s “The Grind” column; click to embiggenThere are a lot of things we can say about FFXI’s UI, and none of them are very nice most of them can be summed up in one sentence: this was a console user interface developed by a primarily-console developer and shoehorned onto an online game.

• Menu-driven. Combing through menus to find spells you needed to cast was your only option besides a palette of six-line macros.

• Battle, chat, and everything else combined into one windows.

• Lots of unclear little icons. I mean, I know why there’s a pic of a hamburger, two music notes, some swirly arrows, and two different kinds of muddy-colored crystals, but that’s six years of experience talkin.

• Oh, and don’t expect to mouse over those icons and see what they mean, either. FFXI would rather pretend you don’t have a mouse - the primary audience, for all intents and purposes, is the Japanese PS2-playing FFXI audience.

But it’s also a prime example of terrible spacing of UI elements. One thing that’s consistent about MMOs is that your character, as your viewpoint into the world (so to speak), is the center of the screen - and the rest of the info is scattered to varying degrees around them.

It’s an established fact in design (and art, too) that the less the eye has to travel to reach a piece of information, the easier it is to comprehend and use. You might think of it as a basic design principle; it’s certainly been studied. So with that in mind, let’s look at that FFXI interface again.

My arrows are boss. Click to embiggen.

It really almost seems like work was put into making your eye roam as far as possible.

• Your party’s health and the enemy’s health are all the way to the lower right.

• Your own HP, MP, and TP are as far away from that as possible, in the top left.

• The buff/debuff bar is next to your own statistics, but as mentioned, actually viewing the info on them can be a task if you’re not using Windower plugins (which, as far as I know, still break the game’s Terms of Service).

• The menu from which you select your actions if you’re not using macros is on the lower right…

• …while the tooltip that actually shows that the menu item you’re on does is almost as far away as it can be - at the very top of the screen.

These are all pieces of info that are crucial to know at any given time, and even in FFXI’s sparse user interface, they are as poorly placed as they could possibly be.

It Gets Better… But How Much?

Now let’s move on to the interface that gets copied time and time and time again, the interface of World of Warcraft. Yes, I know, WoW’s addons allow an unlimited amount of customizability, but let’s assume for a second they didn’t - remember, there was an era before addons - and take a look at the UI a new user gets (mostly) confronted with.

Pic courtesy of @noelove. Click to see full-size.WoW’s UI has some serious improvements over the previous example. (And how.)

• (Some) movable elements. The chat log, in particular, can be fine-tuned to only show certain elements, and then moved around.

• Hotbars. Buttons! ALL THE BUTTONS!

• WoW acknowleges that you have a mouse, and sometimes you’d like to use it to do things. Just about anything you can interact with - be it button, boss, or buff - has a mouseover tooltip.

• Certain amounts of in-UI data are moved in-world so as to be closer to the visual center - such as enemy health, which can be a bar over the enemy’s head, if you so desire.

For all that, though, WoW has a lot of stylistic fluff - and a lot of info people would prefer to see spelled out is left to vague visual cues - I mean, how red does the boss’ portrait have to be before I pull threat again? And some of its placement leaves… something to be desired.

Click to embiggen.It’s not the best thing in the world, but WoW’s default UI is leaps and bounds ahead of FFXI’s. Let’s look at the ups and downs.

• In its favor: the arrow pointing to the chat log? That could be anywhere. As mentioned, you can pull out your battle log - which would be considered more crucial on short notice - and move it closer to your character, or at least away from distracting chatter. Your chat can also be separated from battle and thus not get spammed away!

• Also, all your buttons are in one place, and the distance you’d need your eye to go to get from mousing over a button to reading its effect is relatively low - from the button-pointing arrow to the arrow that seemingly points to nothing in the lower right.

• However, once again, your own health/mana/runic power/rage/holy power/focus/energy/ALL THE RESOURCES are in the top-left. I almost wonder - why did this become the convenient default placement for all your info? It’s really quite far from your character as far as eye tracking is concerned, and is going to just get farther away as monitors grow.

• The top-right is a mix of good and bad. Good: the minimap, highly non-crucial info, is out of the way up there where you only need to track your eye to it when you need it. But…

• Bad: the buff/debuff bar, which often contains info you need to react to, is up there too. (Of course, Blizzard did help with this a little bit by blatantly copying the Power Auras addon and introducing UI elements that appear around your character to indicate things you need to react to, pronto - and adds a gold sparkly edge to the button that triggers whatever it’s glowing about. But these are non-configurable outside of “on” or “off,” and sometimes Blizzard implements them without a corresponding button to press - the initial indicator for an elemental shaman’s Lava Surge is a good example - and some of them are maddeningly inconsistent between classes.)

Slip-sliding around

Incidentally, WoW isn’t the only one guilty of that scattered mess. Does this look familiar?

Pic courtesy of… me. Click to embiggen.Or rather, should I say…

Still me. Click to embiggen. As usual.It’s almost a carbon copy of WoW’s UI placement, but there’s one important difference: - you can move literally every piece of that visible UI, scale it, and so on. (I haven’t bothered yet… but the more I write about UIs in this post, the more I think maybe I should work on that.) Being able to move elements around - if the UI by default isn’t the greatest - is a good compromise.

Another game set in a galaxy far, far away let you do just that…

Customized UI pic courtesy of @asros. Click to embiggen.Star Wars Galaxies permitted movement and (presumably) resizing of UI elements. Asros sent me this screenshot (and several others) of his UI, which displays a good principle of UI layout - clustering of essential vs. non-essential, and related, elements. Let’s arrow it up:

As usual, click to see full-size.In this case, the red arrows represent crucial information - related to combat, if I’m not mistaken - while the green arrows point to non-crucial information - chat, the minimap, et cetera. Elements of the UI that are related to each other are near each other, though there’s still a lot of eye-tracking involved - things that Bioware would take into account while creating TOR’s UI.

Trains vs. Sports Cars

First, go read this developer blog entry on designing the SWTOR UI. I’ll wait. A lot of the philosophy that went into the SWTOR UI (including the mess-of-jumbled-dials “train” vs. sleek-dashboard “sports car” analogy) and its current design is contained therein.

SWTOR’s UI development seems to have been guided by a couple important factors.

• Minimalism. TOR does not waste a lot of space on unnecessary fluff like WoW’s gryphons, nor (now) does it have a ton of unnecessary, unused graphic black space. The UI takes up as little room as absolutely necessary (an important feature of several WoW addon packages, as well, like Lui).

• Grouping. Michael Voigt actually points out in the developer blog post that they grouped UI elements by function, as well - combat systems in one place, party in another, and social elements in their own corner. The unspoken rule seems to be that the quicker you’d need to react to a UI element, the closer it is to the player model/center of the screen.

• “Star Wars”-y. While a tertiary concern at best, TOR’s UI still - despite its minimalism - maintains a feel of being something that belongs in a Star Wars game.

Let’s take a look at a screenshot from the Tatooine walkthrough from E3.

Taken directly from the Tatooine walkthrough. Click to embiggen.Here we can see clearly pick out the grouping elements that Voigt talked about, as well as examples of the importance-to-distance ratio. Shall we? Yes, let’s.

You know what to do to see a full-sized picture by this point in the article.

• Our important, must-be-seen-quickly elements are close to the center - or at least close to each other. Combat - basically all combat info - is front-and-center at the bottom of the screen. Even buffs and debuffs are condensed down here - notice the buff above Zurr’s level at the bottom.

• Your opponent’s combat info remains right next to yours - but whereas in most MMOs this would be at the top-center of the screen, here it’s a short distance from the player’s own combat info. Handy!

• Companion info, while not immediately at hand, is right next to your own combat info. If Zurr was in a party, that would be immediately above the companion.

• The low-importance info is rendered even farther away - the minimap (and popup tooltip immediately above it) are at the bottom right (a seemingly unusual placement for MMOs - then again, most MMOs don’t seem to have any idea what to do with this particular space), while the quest tracker, social info, and menu bars are all along the top of the screen.

Is this revolutionary? Not necessarily. Is it different from normal MMO UIs? Enough to take notice of, yes. Bioware seems to have given special attention to clustering of related info, placement of UI elements to (for the most part) reduce eye tracking, and has done a decent job of making important elements bigger and less-important elements smaller. Time will tell if this was wise planning, but right now?

It looks damn good to me.