New World Event - The Grand Acquisition Race

[Ingmar]

Don't know much about it yet, myself, but looks like a scavenger hunt sort of thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUsLhGnYV-U&feature=youtu.be

[Sjofn]

Will we be scavenging tonight?

[Ingmar]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5024300#edit5024300

Apparently hasn't started just yet, but soon? Post-maintenance seems like a good guess.

[Nevermore]

Good guess but there's no maintenance tonight apparently.

[Ingmar]

Hit midnight server time and I don't see anything going on yet - does look like they mailed out the transfer rewards though.

EDIT: From my little mini-survey of zones as I logged on to collect my commendation boxes from the mail, it looks like pop numbers are still healthy/stable, after midnight server time and hundreds of people on the fleet, 150+ on Dromund Kaas, 50+ in other leveling zones, etc. Probably a good sign for numbers to start to go back up with F2P.

[Amaron]

There's some fairly involved threads on sever pops that I check often.   The game is still getting slight server growth actually.   The F2P announcement will likely stunt that sometime soon though when subs run out.

[Rokal]

World event is now active, starts by interacting with News Terminals around the fleet.

[Amaron]

Dulfy page on the event:

http://dulfy.net/2012/08/13/swtor-live-event-chevin-grand-acquisitions-race-coverage/

WHOA is that a bowcaster reward!?

http://i.imgur.com/dc0sJ.jpg

 

[Nevermore]

does look like they mailed out the transfer rewards though.

Yeah, six days ago Mr. Never-Logs-In. 

[Ingmar]

I can't control when the Skyrim expansions happen. 

[Amaron]

Pretty disappointed that the speeder is a piece of junk.  Hopefully they'll add more rewards as the event goes on or something.

[Ingmar]

Also if you are planning to buy the pet, wait until the end of the event to do so because I've read there's a small chance you'll get one just in the course of opening some of the crates during questing.

[Raguel]

how long does it last? and is it for all levels or just 50s?

[Ingmar]

So far I think the hardest area it sends you to is the Nar Shaddaa bonus area, which is low 30s I think.

[koro]

Also if you just want a bowcaster for one of your classes (they're bind on legacy, so you finally have a thing that can move crystals back and forth across factions), just do the main questline involved with the thing, which nets you 40 tokens by itself; enough for one of the level 35 bowcasters.

[Ingmar]

Yeah one thing that isn't evident from Amaron's screenshot is that those bowcasters (which are all sniper rifles or blaster rifles in game rules terms) are all customizable, despite not having orange names.

[Amaron]

They're actually "legendary" color which apparently means absolutely nothing since they have the same stats as purples would I believe.

[Ingmar]

It's the barrel mods, and they're better than purples (of the same level) looks like. 130 rating on the level 50 bowcasters, which is better than you can get with just crafting or daily tokens.

[Amaron]

So apparently you can do 6 items as of the first day and another "unlocked" today.   That's the one you get from the lead quest that comes in the mail.   The quests are a bit buggy but they are just hints on where to go and you don't need them.

[koro]

Of interest:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5035803#edit5035803

I asked Systems Designer David Hunt why the Sand People Bloodguard outfit is currently bind on pickup instead of bind on Legacy, and he let me know that it will be changed to bind on Legacy in the future - this will also affect the Imperial and Republic Containment Officer outfits from the Rakghoul event.

[Sjofn]

Ooh, that's cool, then.

[Raguel]

if it's bind on legacy does that mean it's available for all your alts?

nvm I googled it :p

[Amaron]

More info:  The event ends tuesday.

Also I only now realized but the tokens are tradeable.  You can do the mission on alts for 40 and just send them to your main.

if it's bind on legacy does that mean it's available for all your alts?

nvm I googled it :p

Even better than that.  It means you can put in mods from raid drops and send them to alts.   Say the boss drops something nobody needs.  You can pull the armoring/mods/etc out and send them to your alt.

[Ingmar]

At a bit of a premium of course, since you are paying to extract the mods from a piece of gear twice. Still, handy.

[DraconianOne]

Is it just me or are a couple of the missions really tedious in the "wait for every other fucker to do it first and hope you get to click the object before the next guy does" department?

[Ingmar]

Not just you.

[Amaron]

At a bit of a premium of course, since you are paying to extract the mods from a piece of gear twice. Still, handy.

At least with this set you can just chose to use the set since it's social armor.

[koro]

Is it just me or are a couple of the missions really tedious in the "wait for every other fucker to do it first and hope you get to click the object before the next guy does" department?

A lot of these missions were very poorly planned out, especially in light of the server merges. You can group for most of them, but it's still a pain. The "sniffer droid" from A Lead was probably the worst; the entire instance of Dromund Kaas can only have a single droid out and active at once, when you have 200 people trying to do it. Plus it's possible to "steal" someone else's droid by repairing it at the midway point before they can, leading to them having to steal the next group's, and so on. It's a mess.

[Nevermore]

Or just wait a day or two since you can't 'fall behind' on this event, as long as you get it done before Tuesday.

[Raguel]

Here's my question: if they can make this event scale to the character's level, why can't they do that with all the other instances?

[Ingmar]

EDIT: From my little mini-survey of zones as I logged on to collect my commendation boxes from the mail, it looks like pop numbers are still healthy/stable, after midnight server time and hundreds of people on the fleet, 150+ on Dromund Kaas, 50+ in other leveling zones, etc. Probably a good sign for numbers to start to go back up with F2P.

I massively UNDERestimated the population. There are multipe instances of a lot of these planets. 2 200 person Coruscants right now, there were 4 50 person Nar Shaddaas (and that's just Republic people), etc.

[Amaron]

I massively UNDERestimated the population. There are multipe instances of a lot of these planets. 2 200 person Coruscants right now, there were 4 50 person Nar Shaddaas (and that's just Republic people), etc.

Well part of that is the event in those zones.  But yea in general they are definitely getting growth lately.  That's why I still feel the F2P is rather crazy.

[Evildrider]

EDIT: From my little mini-survey of zones as I logged on to collect my commendation boxes from the mail, it looks like pop numbers are still healthy/stable, after midnight server time and hundreds of people on the fleet, 150+ on Dromund Kaas, 50+ in other leveling zones, etc. Probably a good sign for numbers to start to go back up with F2P.

I massively UNDERestimated the population. There are multipe instances of a lot of these planets. 2 200 person Coruscants right now, there were 4 50 person Nar Shaddaas (and that's just Republic people), etc.

We had 6 Nar Shadda's, 2 Dromund Kass, and 2 Imperial fleets the other night, it was pretty packed.

[Ingmar]

Got one of everything (minus the lower level bowcasters) although I wouldn't have the mount if Sjofn didn't have a bunch of leftover tokens she didn't need.

Fugly frog pet is fugly, but it runs like a gorilla which makes it cuter somehow.

[Amaron]

That pet was simply too ugly for me to bother.  They need to bring back the mini droid pet they had for a bit in beta.