The Tantalon News Network (FA Dev Tracker)

[Zooey]

Pet Enthusiasts Trans-Galactic Association PSA

Zooey: The Following is a public service announcement from the Pet Enthusiasts Trans-Galactic Association.

PSA Voiceover:  Thought about bring your Orokeet to Makeb?

PSA Voiceover: DON'T!

PSA Voiceover:  What about your Desert Nekarr Cat on Tatooine?

PSA Voiceover: DON'T!

PSA Voiceover: Gizka on Alderaan?

PSA Voiceover: DON'T!

PSA Voiceover: Your pets don't belong in any combat situation.  They can distract you.  They can distract your companions.It can get... You... KILLED.

Zooey: There you go guys. Keep your pets at home or on your ship.  Powerful stuff.

[Zooey]

Secant to Become Parallel of Tangent

Zooey: Finally, tonight.  TNN is proud to announce the return of the Gree Representatives and the Grey Secant.  Based on the Gray Secant's course, we should see it within the next 4 to 6 weeks.

Zooey: As always we keep up with the news, so you don't have to... Angels, good night.

[Zooey]

Republic Strikes Major Blow on Bothawui

Zooey: This is Zoastria Tantalon with the following new alert.  During a daring raid on an Imperial Intelligence facility on Bothawui.  Republic forces secured a major plan of pending Imperial military action.  The following information has been redacted to protect any sensitive data.  I wish to remind you that many Bothans died to bring us this information:


Star Warsâ„¢: The Old Republicâ„¢
Game Update 2.2 PTS Patch Notes

Last Updated: 5/24/2013


The patch notes published for the Public Test Server are intended to guide testing. They are not final and are subject to change.


The Public Test Server Patch Notes will be provided in English. The final release notes will be provided in English, French, and German when the content is moved to live servers.



General
Characters in a guild will receive an XP and Reputation bonus based on the number of characters from unique accounts in the guild. For every five active unique accounts in a guild, the XP and Reputation bonus increases by 1% (on top of the base 5%) for the entire guild, up to a maximum of 10%.


Classes and Combat

General
All stunbreaks (Determination, Escape, Unbreakable Will, Resolute, etc.) will have their cooldown reset after a character comes back from a defeated state.

Jedi Knight

Guardian
Vigilance
Shien Form now increases movement speed by 15%, in addition to its other effects.

Sith Warrior

Juggernaut
Vengeance
Shien Form now increases movement speed by 15%, in addition to its other effects.

Jedi Consular

Shadow
Infiltration
Breaching Shadows, granted by Shadow Technique, has a new visual effect that persists while 3 charges of Breaching Shadows are active.

Sith Inquisitor

Assassin
Darkness
Dark Ward has a new visual effect that persists while active.
Deception
Static Charge, granted by Surging Charge, has a new visual effect that persists while 3 charges of Static Charge are active.

Bounty Hunter

General
Made visual improvements to Flamethrower.


Crew Skills

Crafting Skills
Underworld gear can now be Reverse Engineered and learned as a schematic.


Operations

Terror From Beyond
Nightmare Mode is now available for Terror from Beyond!
Story Mode drops have been updated to include the following in addition to current rewards:
The Writhing Horror now drops the Arkanian Bracer Token
The Dread Guard now drops an additional random Black Market Item

Scum and Villainy
A PTS sneak preview of nightmare mode is now available for Legions of Scum and Villainy! This will be released as part of Game Update 2.2.2.
Story Mode drops have been updated to include the following in addition to current rewards:
Dash'Roode now drops the Arkanian Waist Token
Titan 6 now drops the Arkanian Implant Token
Thrasher now drops the Arkanian Earpiece Token


Items and Economy

Items
A new sub-tier of gear is available! Kell Dragon gear can be obtained from Nightmare Mode Operations at level 55.
A new vehicle, the Helix Hyperpod, is now dropped in Nightmare Mode Terror from Beyond.
A new vehicle, the Titan 6 Containment Vehicle, is now dropped in Nightmare Mode Scum and Villainy.

Vendors
New vendors have been added to the Gav Daragon and Ziost Shadow where players can exchange unassembled Kell Dragon tokens for gear.
New Rated PvP Weapons have been added to the PvP Ranked Gear Vendor. These new Weapons cost 400 Ranked Commendations, and require a pvp rating of 2400


PvP

Warzones

General
Players that are backfilled into a Warzone will be awarded a Reinforcement Medal that will count toward their total medal count for the match. This also means that backfilled players will no longer be put into a situation where they get backfilled into a match and don't have enough time to get one medal and thus miss out on the warzone rewards at the end of the match.

Alderaan
Turret (Objective Control Points) will no longer be interactable while changing ownership.
Players will no longer be backfilled into Alderaan Civil War Warzone when one team has twice as many points as the enemy team.

Ancient Hypergates
Players will no longer be backfilled into Ancient Hypergate after the 4th explosion.

Denova
Players will no longer be backfilled into Novare Coast Warzone when one team has less than 25% remaining on their shields and the other team has 75% or greater remaining on theirs.

Huttball
Players will no longer be backfilled into Huttball Warzone after 10 minutes have elapsed in the match.



Zooey: Let's hope it was worth the price that we paid.

[Zooey]

Republic War Effort in a Three Month Glance

Zooey: The follow up interview with Republic strategic analyst Bruce Maclean sheds light on the Republics response to this new intelligence:

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 I'm here today to give you all a bit of information about what we're 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. It's got vicious new mechanics and is definitely not for the faint of heart. I'm very excited for you to see the new gear that comes with this, which uses a new appearance system we've 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 don't 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.[/list]

We've seen a lot of requests for a rerun of our Double XP weekends. Well, okay! We'd 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. That's 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 isn't 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 aren't going to release anything unless we feel it is ready to go live and we don't 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 don't hit them we'll just tell you why. Radical thinking, I know. As we get closer we'll 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

Zooey: As always, Angels, we will continue to track the story as more details are revealed.  For us at the Tantalon News Network, good night and have a good weekend.

[Adam]

General
All stunbreaks (Determination, Escape, Unbreakable Will, Resolute, etc.) will have their cooldown reset after a character comes back from a defeated state.

It's about damn time

Crafting Skills
Underworld gear can now be Reverse Engineered and learned as a schematic.

and please let these both go live

[Strod]

Yeah whoever said it wouldn't be a content patch when I said it would. Can suck it.

[Zooey]

2.2 Was always supposed to be a content patch.  Whoever said it wasn't, would not have been listening to Bioware.

[Strod]

Obviously.

[Mharz]

If only we could get Resolve / Too many CCs fixed PvP would be fun.

[Zooey]

Supposedly 2.4... supposedly... or it may not be resolved at all.