Korriban Council

Slicing has been nerfed to bring it "in line" to rewards similar to other gathering skills. The problem with this is that slicing doesn't help gain materials for crafting, so should be higher. Regardless, I just wanted you to be aware of the change. Other changes can be seen here.

Due to the outrageous queue times for Dark Reaper, we've re-rolled on the West Coast PvE server Fa'athra. If we missed you tonight and didn't send you an invite to the guild, look for Memnoch, Xano, Sola or Praedus online, and we'll get you invited and promoted up appropriately.

New members of the guild, remember to apply to the guild so you can get access to the TS3 server and forums.

Due to a lot of retailers not being able to get your games into your hands by tomorrow, there's a two-day grace period. This means that if you don't have your retail box (or e-mail if you ordered a digital copy) yet, you don't have to put the code in tomorrow, and you don't have to put it in Wednesday. You will need to put it in Thursday to play, however.

This doesn't affect billing, but if you're confused and want to be more confused, take a look at the official release here.

The forums have been restored. There's a slight glitch still where comments are showing their proper time/date stamp when you read them, but when they're listed on the Forum Topic List, they're showing their restore time/date stamp, and are out of order. Anyway. You can go talk there (or here) again while waiting an HOUR to get into Dark Reaper.

We've finally been assigned our server! I haven't gotten an e-mail yet, but BioWare promised us we'd know our server name before Early Access. As Early Access starts tomorrow, I've been refreshing my browser on the guild page all morning long. It paid off. We're officially launching on Dark Reaper.

Additionally, if you go to our Guild Page on SWTOR, it says that we were successfully imported, and that Web Support for our guild will be removed on January 3, 2012. I have no idea what this means, but I couldn't care less, since we've got this guild page.

Even though the FAQ pages on SWTOR had said "Up to 5 days ..." for their Early Access period for weeks, nobody at BioWare had confirmed this information, just saying that the Early Access plan had never changed.

Those who pre-ordered (and received/entered a pre-order code on swtor.com) can now download the game client! As they've only mentioned a possible 5 days of early access, they're giving us a minimum of 8 days to get our downloading done. Head over to SWTOR.com, click "Account" at the top, sign in, click "Pre-order" in the right-hand column, then click the big "Download Game Client" button. (It's kind of in the middle of the screen, right next to the "Color Stone (Virtual Item)" link.)

[Edit: BioWare announced a retraction shortly after this information was released. Initially, they stated that Legacy Last Names affected characters across all servers. The retraction changes this to state that it affects only the characters on that server. Please disregard conclusions below that were drawn from this retracted information.]

As the title says, the NDA has been lifted without reservation. (Well, almost without reservation. The GTA, or Game Test Agreement, is still in place, but that doesn't really cover discussion. Mostly now it says I'm not entitled to anything and can't reverse-engineer the game.) We're now allowed to discuss specifics about our Beta Testing experiences.

Also, the broad details of the Legacy System have finally been revealed, and they're fantastic ... But only if you play through Chapter One on your first character quickly. It will affect how others see all your characters on all the servers for the life of your account (or until a microtransaction is invented to allow changes), and it's first-come, first-served. (Click the "Read more" button below for the long version.)

Last week, BioWare announced that everybody who had previously signed up for beta testing would be able to participate in an upcoming giant stress test beta test weekend. This was not the beta test weekend that just concluded, which guild member DANimal took part in, so there was some confusion. It will be at a future date. If you haven't yet signed up for beta testing, you can apply for a beta code at any of a zillion partner fan sites, such as IGN. (See swtor.com for more details.) Don't confuse it for an Open Beta. There is no Open Beta. That's what they say, anyway. I have no idea how it's not an Open Beta.

Anyway, once again, no long version. Just the short version. My money's on Thanksgiving weekend, since it's a long weekend and will most closely parallel a holiday (read: Christmas) launch.