SWTOR lead spills the beans about the Eternity Vault raid

At Gamescom this past week, Star Wars: The Old Republic concentrated on showing off endgame to prove to players that it is indeed an MMO. At the press conference just prior to the convention, Lead Designer Gabe Amatangelo demonstrated the very first part of the Eternity Vault raid content you will find in TOR. The demonstration group wiped on the second encounter, but we were assured that there was more. But how much more?

Thanks to The-Force.eu, we now know. Amatangelo explained the encounters to the German fansite as follows: "The Eternity Vault has five. It has five encounters. 'Bosses' is such a loose term. One of them, you have to hack this puzzle. You've got to split up the group, and you've got to fight back a bunch of different waves while people are trying to solve a puzzle in tandem." This information should comfort some fans of the game; there is more to this dungeon than a simple tank-and-spank.

More SWTOR information is headed our way as we gear up for PAX. Stay tuned this weekend as we give you the latest information from our reporters on the show floor in Seattle.

Reader Comments (55)

Short and complicated. I like it :)

Thats horse manure!!! i want plain old tank and spank damnit.

@Oskiee

... I guess my sarcasm wasn't taken well :O(

@Oskiee
I enjoyed your sarcasm actually!

However, while I don't mind mechanics in an instance, I have definitely seen over-mechaniced instances. When it's more about moving to x to y to z and back to x and then jumping or dancing in time... I'll just go ahead and pass on that instance. If there's going to be an instance like that, please make it fit within the confines of the story. Because if it steps out of those bounds, I believe the developers have lost their path.

Nice, I was hoping or some kind of group-splitting. I wonder if the "puzzle" will have randomized solutions.

I am raider OMG only 5 bosses, what am i going to do at endgame after i rush to 50 in 2 days? /end sarcasm

any feature/design that pisses off hardcore raiders is +1 in my book

the era of raid-or-die MMOs has to end, and soon

Blizzard said 7 bosses is the staple in order to cater casuals so BW will do the same

@darthades In four years MMO players will look back at Raids and howl with laughter. This is only the first step.

@darthades

"any feature/design that pisses off hardcore raiders is +1 in my book"
You people are so childish. Way more than those raiders you so love to hate.

There's a difference between catering to everyone and just *not having that much actual content.*

What's even more baffling is BioWare want MORE people to raid with accessible content, yet they don't seem to have any plans of exactly how to cater to the demand they want to create. Unless they have more announcements or a lot of unfinished content they're going to pump out in updates after release, the simple fact is they could very well run you of content (and, yes, I am talking about the average player, not someone who plays 40+ hours per week) rather quickly.

It is simply concerning that their first raid only has 5 encounters. That really, really isn't many.

@Ren54

Hohohohohohohohoho

We will see when GW2 with NO RAIDING releases and steals half of the SWTOR/WoW customers.

casuals:
- hey this gw2 game has no subscription fee
- hey this gw2 game has 10 giant 5 man dungeons with different paths, inside events
- hey this gw2 game doesnt have dailies/gear grinds/heavy-scheduled-raids and other mechanism designed to make you miserable in order to keep paying them 15$ a month
- hey this gw2 game has skill based PvP with E-Sport design

Why on earth are we paying for this gear-grind-crack formula designed to keep us slave to a subscription?

No people will not play 2 MMOs, there is no enough time for that

Then the market will realize making a profit exploiting their players is a bad tactic, just look at the recent WoW changes, the trend is already starting, 7 bosses/appearance-tab/less-stat-inflation

@darthades You don't need much time to play GW2. It will be extremely casual, as you say. It will require very little commitment to pick up and play. Most of its gameplay mechanics are drop in/drop out. It's essentially a console game on PC (which is in no way an attack on it - I think it's great).

Of COURSE a lot of people will play both games. Most of the people I know intend to play both games. I myself intend to play both games. SWTOR for my traditional MMO fix and GW2 for its casual accessibility. Don't be silly.

@chauncy

Nop, most people wont play both games because they dont have enough time for 2 MMOs

I think you are confused if you think gw2 is designed to be a short term easy mode adventure, there are 8 dungeons with 3 DIFFERENT explorable modes and variable difficulty right now, maybe more will come at launch, also it will have several elite zones where things are ultra hard, minigames. E-sport PvP and massive world PvP.

GW2 will have a lot of hardcore content and ways several to keep you occupied as other MMOs like WoW, the key difference is that you can keep with it at your own pace.

@darthades I think you've been drinking a little too much kool-aid, but we don't need to argue about it. We'll see how things turn out.

@chauncy

It looks like that but i assure you is not. I despise fanboys as the next guy, and i will critically analyze both games, but the trends are getting semi clear right now, and it may sound funny but: i am not exaggerating i am really not ^_-

@darthades Oh of course! I'm not saying that the stuff you say will be in game won't be there, but I think it's a little bit early to be absolutely sure because the stuff we've seen of GW2 has been far from anything even approaching difficult. The same can also be said for TOR.

My point is really at this stage we just don't know. What devs say and what is released can often be very different things. I hope you're right though, I really do.

@darthades But I still think that there's definitely room to play both games. Both games will (hopefully) have attractions for the casual and hardcore players. Some may find they enjoy the casual elements of GW2 and the hardcore elements of TOR. Some people may play GW2 competitively and treat TOR as a single player RPG with thousands of combined hours of story that never ends.

With multiple ways to play each game, I think it's more likely that people WILL buy - and play - both.

@darthades I hope you are wrong and chauncy is right.

pvp will be evened out, and the item grind in pve will be for cosmetic purposes mostly, won't it?

what got me interested in GW2 was the concept of a console game with a mmo setting, and from what i understand it will be that, with no emphasis on gear grinding at max level, which is great 'case I don't want to spend time in two traditional mmo's =P

@darthades

So far the best thing that GW2 seems to do is flag trolls with Star Wars inferiority complexes. I'd even call it a feature that functions perfectly before launch.

@chauncy

Of course there is time for people to play both games. The majority of players don't spend so much time consumed in one game to not have time for a casual friendly one. It is ridiculous to say theres not time to play both.

@Skiim

Indeed, I had no problem balancing GW1 with WoW.

@darthades The real question is how much those additional dungeons are going to cost in GW2. You know, the feature that was mentioned by an Arenanet-employee and was quickly retracted and changed to ''no current plans'' after the GW2 forums went apeshit. (which is easy to say for a game that's still in beta and will be for a while)

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SWTOR lead spills the beans about the Eternity Vault raid

Reader Comments (55)

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:07PM Equillian said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:14PM Oskiee said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 8:59PM Oskiee said

Posted: Aug 25th 2011 12:22AM Scarecrowe said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:23PM hereafter said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:37PM darthades said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:43PM Dunraven said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 6:53PM Dril said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:13PM darthades said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:23PM chauncy said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:34PM darthades said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:43PM chauncy said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:48PM darthades said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 7:59PM chauncy said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 8:02PM chauncy said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 8:31PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 8:56PM wildcard58 said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 10:26PM Skiim said

Posted: Aug 25th 2011 2:56AM Hurbster said

Posted: Aug 25th 2011 4:42AM Radev said

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