Features:

• You can now evolve to Onos when your team has three hives.
• The Onos can toss marines with his Gore attack, smash structures and Stomp on the ground, sending a shockwave that disables marine structures for 5 seconds. Upgrades are no longer available, sentries stop firing, Infantry Portals stop spawning, etc.
• Added Prototype Lab and the ability to research and buy Jetpacks
• Added new map: ns2_mineshaft
• Added camera animation and display during count down phase.
• Name tags now appear over the head of nearby teammates.
• Added lines for rally points.
• Mines detonate when hit by Stomp.
• Added an option to enable mouse acceleration (off by default)
• Infestation is now displayed on minimap (dying infestation is indicated red)
• Added some missing Marine structure icons.

Balance

• Reduced Rifle butt range from 1.5 meters to 1 meter (now same as Skulk bite)
• Shotgun damage changed to Light (armor is twice as effective against it). Made it lighter to carry and increased the damage to compensate (# of shots vs. base Skulks, Lerks and Fades should unchanged, 1 extra pellet vs. Gorges). So Shotguns should become less effective against heavily armored targets. (thanks Schimmel!)
• Bile bomb range and splash increased a lot, damage decreased somewhat and energy cost decreased a little (trying to make Gorge less vulnerable on front lines and also more able to do at least some damage to entrenched Marines). He is NASTY now, watch out.
• Increased Hydra health from 500 to 600 and armor from 0 to 75.
• Increased Lerk Spike cost from 1.5 to 2.5. Changed distribution of Command Station health and armor so it’s more resistent vs. Light damage (ie, Lerk Spikes).
• Disabled res for kills to simplify the game, remove confusion about what happens when you make a kill, reduce end-game stalemates with 1 tower and to increase the strategic aspects of the game.
• Armory no longer required to drop med packs (unnecessarily restrictive during rushes)
• Lowered bile bomb damage from 300 to 225.
• Increased repair rate for Marines repairing each others’ armor from 18 to 35 (to make it less annoying and to allow Marines to sustain attacks better).
• Reverted Fade carapace armor buff from 50 to 30.
• Removed Lerk "hide" armor.
• Reduced Shotgun research time from 40 to 20 (it was 0 in NS1). Helps Marines get a foothold with early aggression.
• Increased minimum egg spawn time from 8 to 10 seconds to less that early Alien assault (now it’s the same as Marines)
• Lowered infantry portal build time from 10 seconds to 7, and Armory from 15 to 12 (to try to lessen effectiveness of Skulk rush)

ns2_tram

• Moved warehouse north.
• Removed north-east Warehouse entrance.
• Opened tram tunnel between Server and Warehouse.
• Reworked connecting corridors into Warehouse.
• Fixed drifter pathing issues between Server and Control.

Fixes

• Fixed bug where the Gorge Bile Bomb ability used the Spit ability icon.
• Fixed bug where the Gorge Mini Cyst ability used the Hydra ability icon.
• Fixed script error if a Hive was destroyed while the Gorge that built it as Commander was a rag doll.
• Cleaned up some Client console spam when a Fade blinks.
• Fixed script error caused by a spectating player receiving points by getting a kill with a structure placed when they were not a spectator.
• Added placeholder icons for the Shell and Veil.
• Fixed bug where the game would randomly lockup while placing a Cyst.
• Drifter spawn sound effect will no longer play at world origin.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Skulks from leaping at maximum speed.
• Fixed bug where the physics representations for the Armory and Infantry Portal did not match up with the visual model.
• Weapon secondary attacks can no longer occur at the same time as primary attacks while coming out of a sprint in some cases.
• Armory buy menu will not instantly appear once construction is completed.
• Adjusted Skulk wall walking smoothing rates so that that the 3rd person model rotates more quickly to match the 1st person model (especially while jumping)
• Health and Ammo packs can now be dropped directly on top of a Marine player.
• Restored reloading of script files when they change on disk.
• Fixed Whip ‘grenade whack’
• Bombard projectiles will not collide with the Whip and nearby friendly structures anymore and is created at the correct attach point.
• Alien player names for Hydra kills will no longer appear in blue text in the death message.
• Fixed a bug causing Mini Cysts placed by the Gorge to be disconnected when created even in cases where the ghost model indicated the connection was valid.
• Fixed bug causing dropped weapons to disappear too quickly if they were picked up and dropped again after initially being dropped.
• AI units cannot attack friendly players anymore unless FF is enabled.
• Fixed bug causing script error when a Cyst died due to not being connected to a Hive.
• Fixed crash when too many objects are visible.
• PhysX scene now supports mirrored geometry.
• Initial team starting locations chosen with a more random method.
• Mine will detect enemies more accurately.
• Slime effect during sprinting will not show up in thirdperson anymore.
• The ARC will prioritize other structures before Eggs and Cysts.
• Player turn poses (arms moving with feet planted on the ground) reset once the player starts moving.
• Fixed multi-threading crash when using the o_stats console command.
• The "getting ready to spawn" blue spin effect now disappears immediately upon the Infantry Portal being destroyed.
• Fixed bug where the Spore cloud would be created improperly when a Lerk was not moving.
• Fixed bug where connecting to the localhost would cause the game to go into an infinite loop.
• Fixed bug where Marines would spawn above the Infantry Portal platform.

Improvement

• Added "warp" console command to teleport to a position in space when cheats are on, "warp 0 0 0" for example.
• Improved Skulk wall walking (sticks better to surfaces, thanks matso!)
• Skulks can now leap from mid-air, ala NS1.
• The "locate" Client console command will constantly display the local player’s location on the screen if "true" is given as a parameter.
• Added Mine icon for death messages (Thanks Saba!)
• Reformatted Scoreboard so more player names can fit on the screen at the same time.
• Server name is now displayed at the top of the Scoreboard.
• Improved ScenarioHandler (Thanks Matso!)

Sound

• Removed Bile Bomb hit sound when Gorge creates a structure.

Optimizations

• Optimized network fields in Structure, CloakableMixin, ScriptActor and PowerPoint (thanks Matso!)
• Reserve memory for faceSets (prevents excessive allocation)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Camoflauge by eliminating an unnecessary network field (thanks Matso!)
• Reduced networked bandwidth for Skulks by eliminating wall walking network variables (thanks Matso!)
• Optimized Door auto-opening.
• Reduced number of cells CollisionGrid queries look through.
• Reduced network bandwidth required to send which fields of an Entity changed (uses indexing scheme when only a few fields changed and a bitmask when many changed)
• Reduced network bandwidth usage for entities that have energy.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting attachment points for entities by 26 bits.
• Reduced bandwidth for transmitting angles.
• Eliminated lastTimePlayerMoved networked field in Player.
• Mines require less processing time to check for nearby enemies.
• Reduced bandwidth by 20 bytes per second for each Entity sent to the client.
• Changed particle effects to only update if they were visible last frame.
• Slightly more aggressive compiler optimization options.

SDK

• Added Vector:Add method.
• Added Shared.SortEntitiesByDistance.
• Removed ProximityGrid.
• Added sphere query to CollisionGrid.
• Added EntityQueryManager (fast queries for entities within range, uses CollisionGrid)
• Exposed EntityQueryManager to Lua, started converting script to use new API.
• Added support to ObjectTagQueryManager for testing whether entity has a specific tag.
• Entities get tagged with their class name (and base class names). Tag is prefixed with ‘class:’.
• Added time network variable type.
• Added "private" network fields which are only sent to the client controlling the Entity.
• Added support for networking floating point values as fixed point (specified as float (<min> to <max> by <step>)
• Added Client.GetServerName() function to return the name of the server the client is connected to.
• Added Server.GetName() function to return the name of the server.
• Added Server.GetFrameRate() function to return the current tick rate of the server.
• Added Mersenne twister Randomizer class to Lua, same API as Lua random functions but better generator.

We hope you enjoy this mega-build with us!

And here’s the trailer you can watch whilst the patch downloads:

• Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.

Druids

• The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.

Hunters

• Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
• Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
• Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
• Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.

Mages

• Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
• Pyroblast damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.

Paladins

• Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.

Priests

• Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.

Dungeons & Raids

• You can now form same-faction raids with Real ID friends, allowing you to enter Raid Finder in groups larger than 5, run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds. You will not yet be able to run normal or heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm raids of Real ID friends.
• Several typo fixes and clarified descriptions have been added to the Dungeon Journal entries for Dragon Soul.
• Players can no longer win multiple copies of the same item on a single Raid Finder boss kill. For example, a player who chooses Need on two set piece tokens or two weapons and wins the first, will not be eligible for the second on that particular boss.

1.1.1 Patch Notes — 1/31/2012

Classes and Combat

General

• Fixed a bug that could cause the Global Cooldown to appear as if it has been cancelled when it is actually still in effect, resulting in a feeling of unresponsiveness to input.
• Corrected an issue that could cause an ability icon to appear usable but be unresponsive to clicks or keypresses for several seconds.
• Players revived by other players, including by in-combat revival abilities, now revive with 25% of maximum health.




Jedi Knight




Guardian

• Freezing Force: Now correctly lasts 9 seconds (up from 6 seconds).




Jedi Consular




Sage

• Mental Alacrity: Now correctly costs no Force to activate.
• Salvation: No longer heals targets twice on application. It now correctly heals all affected targets once when applied.




Smuggler




Scoundrel

• Flechette Round: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• K.O.: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Shoot First: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.




Imperial Agent




Operative

• Acid Blade: Now provides 30% armor penetration while active.
• Jarring Strike: This ability now knocks the target down for 1.5 seconds.
• Hidden Strike: The damage output of this ability has been decreased by approximately 20% to control burst damage and because it was enabling significantly faster than intended kills in PvP.




Bounty Hunter




Mercenary

• Sweeping Blasters can now be made free with Thermal Sensor Override.




Powertech

• Oil Slick now correctly costs no heat to activate.

Flashpoints and Operations

Flashpoints




Directive 7

• Bulwark’s Area of Effect cone abilities now properly fire in the direction Bulwark is facing.
• Some of Bulwark’s abilities were incorrectly susceptible to interruption. Bulwark is now immune to interrupts.




The False Emperor

• Fixed a conversation that could cause the cinematic with Arkis Wode to function incorrectly.




The Foundry

• Fixed an issue that could prevent the final fight in this Flashpoint from beginning after the cinematic.
• The final boss can no longer become stuck in an invulnerable state; there was still a small window where this could occur.




The Red Reaper

• Lord Kherus now grants less experience.
• Some of Lord Kherus’s abilities have had their damage values adjusted to be more in line with the level of the Flashpoint.
• Players now enter into melee range with Lord Kherus in order to stop him from throwing crates.




Operations




Eternity Vault

• Players no longer randomly die in this Operation after being in Gharj’s lava.




Karagga’s Palace

• Foreman Crusher’s enrage now includes a movement speed increase, allowing him to catch players who attempt to run.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Materials Disposal Unit’s main control station from becoming useable again after the Operation Group is defeated by the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator on 16-man Hard Mode.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator from deploying the correct number of Proximity Pulse Mines and Security Stun Drones during combat.
• The damage from G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator’s sticky pulse grenade will scales appropriately for the selected Operation difficulty level.
• Karagga no longer fires his Unstable Energy twice in a row.
• Taking the shuttle after defeating Karagga no longer transports players to the incorrect hangar.
• Walls that were missing in Karagga’s Palace are now in place.




Bug Fixes




General

• Fixed an issue that prevented some players in Operations Groups from receiving credit for the missions “[WEEKLY] Deadly Operations,” “[WEEKLY] Galactic Operations,” and “Journey to the Belsavis Depths.” The entire Operations Group now receives credit when the objective is completed.

Items

Bug Fixes

• Comparative tooltips for researched items no longer have their stats reversed.

Missions and NPCs

Missions




Imperial

• Declaration of War: The mission will now progress as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• Debriefing: The ship Holoterminal conversation related to this mission is no longer repeatable.
• The Eagle’s Nest: The Assassin’s Fortress mission is now correctly a prerequisite for this mission.
• Number One with a Bullet: Corrected an issue that prevented Bounty Hunters from leaving The Founder.
• The Mandalorian Killer: Thendys Noori no longer continues to heal Kellian Jarro after she has surrendered.
• Reallocation: The final mission conversation will now begin as intended when players interact with their ship’s holoterminal.
• The Voice of Darkness: Fixed an issue that could cause Class Story mission progression to enter an incorrect state.




Republic

• Death Spiral: Fixed an issue that prevented Jedi Knights who completed the Commander Rayfel encounter from using the shuttle back to Belsavis Orbital Station.




NPCs




Bug Fixes

• Kintan Behemoths no longer occasionally walk on top of trees when in combat.

PvP

Warzones




General

• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from receiving mission rewards for completing Warzones.




Voidstar

• Players are no longer able to climb out of the attacking team spawn area in the hangar before the match starts.




World PvP




Ilum

• Additional base turrets now protect the taxi location inside each faction’s base.

Space Combat

General

• Added two daily mission commendations to the high-level space dailies Operation Ascendant Pride (Imperial) and Operation New Eclipse (Republic).

UI

General

• Attempting to loot an item in a group when the Master Looter is off-planet now generates an error message.




Bug Fixes

• The leader of an Operations Group will no longer receive an incorrect message informing them that their companion has been dismissed.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Special items related to different editions of the game have been re-sent if they were deleted by the mail system prior to being claimed.

Here’s the quote from Blizzard:

Blizzard Entertainment is proud to announce the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a major global eSports event featuring some of the best pro-gaming competition in the world. Slated to take place in Asia toward the end of 2012, the Battle.net World Championship will host this year’s StarCraft II and World of Warcraft Arena World Championship tournaments. Blizzard gamers and eSports fans from around the world will be invited to attend and witness some of the most skilled pro players on the planet battle it out for cash and glory.

We’re excited to be showcasing Blizzard eSports on a truly global stage this year. We’re also heavily focused on getting Diablo III, Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm into players’ hands as soon as possible. In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

More details about the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and BlizzCon 2013, including specific dates and locations, will be coming in the months ahead.

This seems a little odd to me, why completely cancel an extremely popular event. It’s not cheap to host/set-up but it’s great advertising and people are more than willing to pay the hefty fees to attend.
Hopefully though, this will result in us getting Diablo III, Heart of the Swarm and Project: Titan a lot earlier. But this is Blizzard we’re talking about, anything can happen.

More news when we have it!

Interesting stuff, give it a click.

Hi everyone; I wanted to give you all an update on the ability delay situation.

Thanks to constructive feedback from the community, including some great videos, we were able to identify an issue that could cause abilities on global cooldown to appear available to the player, resulting in unresponsive/ignored player input. A fix for the issue is currently scheduled to go to the public test server with our next update.

Additionally, we have located an issue that would cause player input for certain instant abilities to fail in frantic combat situations, resulting in unpredictable and frustrating gameplay issues for the affected player. A fix for the issue is currently scheduled to go to the public test server with our next update.

Finally, our engineers have identified an issue introducing a significant delay between player input and ability execution in certain game situations, most notably (but not limited to) fast paced PvP. The magnitude of the delay varies with a number of factors, including processor hardware, but can, especially on dual core CPUs, result in a very perceivable reduction in game responsiveness. We are in the later stages of testing a fix for the problem and hope to be able to roll it out to the servers very soon.

We’re still investigating a number of additional issues, along with some usability and quality of life improvements for responsiveness regarding player input, but the above mentioned developments should provide a very measurable improvement in combat responsiveness.

Thanks again for your patience and support and we hope to see you on the public test server to help us validate these improvements before pushing them to the live servers.

Georg Zoeller

Things are looking good! BioWare continue to impress me with the consistent feedback they provide and their willingness to let the players shape decisions/design choices with their feedback.

More news soon!

1.1.0a Patch Notes – 1/19/2012

Operations

Karagga’s Palace

• Fixed an issue that caused assigned loot bags in Karagga’s Palace to distribute items with class inappropriate stats.

PvP

Ilum

• Players can no longer enter the opposing faction’s safe base area, thus preventing players from continually “camping” the other faction’s base.
• Turrets inside faction bases were not intended to be destroyed and are now immune to damage.
• The population cap for instances of Ilum has been reduced to improve performance.
• Implemented optimizations to improve performance on Ilum.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Loading screens no longer appear when other players spawn nearby.

The patch will be automatically be downloaded when you next launch The Old Republic.

While working on Diablo III we’ve been called out for messing around with systems too much, that the game is good as-is and we should just release it. I think that’s a fair argument to make, but I also think it’s incorrect. Our job isn’t just to put out a game, it’s to release the next Diablo game. No one will remember if the game is late, only if it’s great. We trust in our ability to put out a great game, but we’re not quite there yet. In addition to finishing and polishing the content of the game we’re continuing to iterate on some of the core game systems. So all that said, I’d like to provide everyone an update on some of the systems we’re currently working on.

There’s much reading to be done, I find it extremely interesting (I particularly like the decision to remove Scrolls of Identification) and Blizzard are doing a good job of keeping the Diablo III hype-machine running at full capacity.

You can read the full blog here:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4325959/Systems_Changes-1_19_2012#blog

As soon as there’s a release date (or even just a release “window”) I’ll let you know.

Here’s one more maintenance/fix patch before we get back to work on the bigger "Gorilla". This fixes some new crashes and improves balance over 191.

Features

• Added map cycling on the server (now you can run ns2_tram!). Use mapcycle.txt file to set up.
• Added Left 4 Dead style animated screen hints to make it more clear when marines should build structures, build power nodes, or guard power nodes.
• Hitting marines with Gorge spit will obscure their view.

Balance

• Removed change in alien armor effectiveness with # of hives. This was supposed to work like NS1, but a recent meant that aliens got _weaker_ with more hives! Now it’s gone completely.
• Added 2 points of "hide" armor to Lerks (every attack does 2 less damage, good vs. groups).
• Added a very small delay between a mine being armed and exploding (*BEEP* … BOOM!!!).
• Increased Fade carapace armor from 30 to 50.
• Increased Gorge bile bomb damage from 200 to 300 and splash radius from 5 meters to 8 meters.
• Increased Mature Whip health/armor from 900/150 to 1,050/175.
• Increased Skulk carapace armor from 15 to 20.
• Increased mine purchase cost from 10 to 15.
• Increased minimum spawn time for eggs from 6 to 8, to try to allow marines to counter-rush after a failed attack (also to compensate for recent egg bug fix).
• Lowered Gorge carapace armor from 60 to 50.
• Lowered Robotics Factory build time from 30 to 25 to be less annoying and closer to other structures.
• When players and structures are on fire, they recover energy at 25% normal rate (was 10% rate, which was very rough for Fade).
• Personal resources have now a limit of 100 per player. Any overflow will be split amongst the other players on the team.
• Whip bombs will not bounce off world geometry anymore.
• Changed corrode damage to deal only a small amount to players armor instead of full damage.

Fixes

• A player will no longer be distress beaconed if they are close enough to the command station being beaconed to already.
• Death messages for Players or Structures killed by Mines that were destroyed by other Mines will now display correctly.
• Don’t invoke collision callback if one of the objects has been destroyed.
• Fixed bug where a client would not properly go back to the main menu when there was an error during connection (e.g. the client doesn’t have the map).
• Fixed bug where aliens used hive1 armor for 3+ hives and hive3 armor for 1 hive…(egads – thanks Jaweese!).
• Fixed bug where clients would not be returned to the main menu if they failed to authenticate.
• Fixed bug where grenades would explode too early depending on your ping time (OnCreate is now called in the world time stream instead of the lag compensated time stream).
• Fixed bug where the game would not display the reason for being disconnect from a server when it returned to the main menu.
• Fixed crash in PhysX on level change (caused by creating too many materials).
• Fixed crash when too many reliable commands were sent at the same time.
• Fixed packet format errors when too many mines explode simultaneously.
• Fixed players not showing up in a server when viewed on Steam Friends.
• Fixed prediction errors when using the speed command.
• Fixed script error caused by giving a rally order to an unbuilt Hive.
• Game freeze when placing cysts.
• Mines detonate each other with some randomness now, for aesthetic effect(thanks Mats!).
• Multiple Whips or ARCs can now be given a root/unroot or deploy/undeploy command.
• No longer ignore damage types when calculating # of health points per point of alien armor.
• Physics transform changes are detected even if they happen in a sub-step.
• The Marine will only be slowed on landing if they jumped first (going down stairs will not artificially slow a player).
• The sound effect that plays when distress beacon is finished will only trigger if at least 1 player was successfully beaconed.
• Updated Lerk weapon spike and spore tooltips.
• Viewer sometimes starts with black screen.
• Whip bombs will now correctly deal damage to players (small amount and armor only).
• Whips will properly attack grenades again.
• Reduced network usage for updating infestation (thanks matso!).
• reserve Fade velocity when coming out of blink.
• Improved spit effect to look less ‘spritey’.
• Don’t create new material instance when the default material matches the friction/restitution settings (physics).

Sound

• Added private 2D sound effect for when a player is distress beaconed to ensure they always hear this effect.
• Better alien vision sounds.
• Better commander scan sound.
• Better powernode destroyed sound.
• Fixed ARC fire sound.
• Hooked up Mine sounds: Drop, Warmup, Explode.
• Hooked up new Alien tooltip sound effect.
• Hooked up private 2D sound for when a player teleports through the Phase Gate (so they hear this effect better).

SDK

• Added support for the Lua IO library (file names use special prefixes "game://", "user://", "temp://", and "cache://" to determine where they are located in the file system).
• Changed console command for collision rep visualization to ‘collision’.
• Cull physics/collision debug drawing to view frustum.
• PhysX scene visualization (using the ‘physics’ console command).
• Table.contains will now return the key of the element when found.

OK, NOW it’s Gorilla time…

Want more Marines vs Aliens goodness? Then head over to official Natural-Selection 2 page:
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2012/1/ns2_build_192_released
(Their forums are well worth a look too!)

So how do you earn the “Founder” title? This reward is only available to players who have completed either one of the following transactions (by March 19th, 2012, 12:01AM EST; Pacific: March 18th, 9:01PM PST; European: 4:01AM GMT, 5:01AM CET):

Billed at least once for an active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription

OR

Redeemed a Star Wars: The Old Republic Pre-Paid Game Time Code

Check out the official blog post here for full information and instructions:
http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20120118-0.

In other The Old Republic-related news, several players (quite a few actually) are claiming that when they attempt to cancel their subscription (didn’t give it much of a chance, did you guys?), the “Cancel” button is missing from the page. Preventing them from completing the cancellation process.
Full info and a reply from BioWare here:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=198479