SW:TOR has Blizzard upping the ante. But is a little to late?

What Blizzard has to say about SW:TOR seems to be true.

What has Blizzard had to say about SWTOR?



"It's "a fact" that BioWare's recently announced MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic will be great, Blizzard has said."

http://www.videogamer.com/pc/wow/new..._blizzard.html



"World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment has wished their soon to be MMO rivals, EA and LucasArts, good luck with its forthcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. Blizzard are banking on the BioWare-developed SW:TOR to breathe new life into the MMO genre, benefiting everyone.



The company’s co-founder and Executive Vice President, Frank Pearce, tells MCV in an interview that, "This is a game that has an opportunity to grow the MMO market if done right and therefore is very important to the industry as a whole, not just EA."

http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/8...s-mmo-success/

SW:TOR seems to have Blizzard on it's toes, I have never seen Blizzard pump out this much content in such a short period of time, but will it be a little to late?

Patch 4.3 - Deathwing, Transmogrifier, Void Storage

Tom Chilton (Kalgan) answered a couple of questions from Gamona.de on Patch 4.3, and we got a bunch of very interesting news out of it. Patch 4.3 will feature:

• 
  New Raid - The Deathwing raid, making it very likely to be the last patch before the next expansion.
• 
  3 new 5-man instances - Including one in the Caverns of Time. (War of the Ancients was mentioned as a cataclysm instance a few years ago, but a lot of things have changed since then, who knows!)
• 
  The Transmogrifier NPC, which will let you change the appearance of any armor piece on you, while retaining the stats of your current gear. (= T12 stats, but with the Tier 2 look!)
• 
  Players won't be able to change the appearance of their armor into another armor type or class armor set, and you might have to own the armor before you can use it to swap the appearance of your existing armor.
• 
  The Void Storage is a new type of bank where players will be able to store their old armors in order to free up space in their regular bank.
• 
  The Abyssal Maw dungeon is gone for the moment, the storyline wasn't convincing enough/fitting.

If someone feels like adding information or even translating the article completely, post in comments!



Translation of the original article on gamona.de

We're at GamesCon in Cologne, Germany, and just did an interview with Tom Chilton, Lead Game Developer and Chris Robinson, Lead Art Director, in which they revealed a lot of details regarding patch 4.3 - and it seems that the announcement of it being huge was no joke:



Patch 4.3 will bring us the Deathwing raid instance! This means it's likely that we'll be able to fight the Aspect of Death in an epic encounter within this year. The raid that was originally expected for this patch, the "Abyssal Maw", was cut from the schedule because, as Chilton states, the setting and the story were not convincing enough.



Furthermore, 4.3 will also bring three entirely new 5-man instances - Chilton assured us that these won't contain any re-vamped content, but instead be brand new with unique design and models. Chilton also hinted at one of those being within the Caverns of Time, allowing players to experience another great moment of Warcraft Lore first-hand.



The interview also revealed the purpose of the "mystery ethereals" in Stormwind (and likely other cities, too). The "Transmogrifier" NPC will allow players to change the displayed model of equipment to that of another item while keeping the original attributes: Transmogrification is only possible within an armor class - Plate armor can only assume the looks of other Plate armor, for example.

• 
  Class restrictions apply to Transmogrification - Warriors cannot transmogrify their armor to look like Death Knight tier sets.
• 
  The developers are considering whether they should only allow using the models of equipment that has already been obtained

The "Void Storage" is a very large bank-esque storage which allows old equipment to be stored, freeing up inventory/bank slots for players. The developers aren't sure yet about the definition of "old equipment". The cost of the storage (and whether there even is one) is another thing that is not yet decided



Another possible feature that was hinted at is the possibility of "void stored" equipment being available to other characters on the account (NOTE: That part might be speculation from Gamona, not cross-server transfers actually confirmed. Hard to tell.) 



Overall, it seems that we've got a huge patch ahead of us - a new raid, three brand new instances, Transmogrification and Void Storage.