TOR Nexus Updates

While most of my free time has been playing games for the last two weeks, I did make some TOR Nexus changes recently.  The TOR Nexus is a portal to SWTOR community content, official news and videos.  It could also be described as a rss and video aggregator focused on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Tabs.  This is probably the most most noticeable change.  I've move all of the data into tabs based on topic.  This makes the site much easier to navigate and cleaner.

Blog.  I've added BioWare's new community blog to the front page.

PvE.  There is now a PvE section which includes tabs for Flashpoints, Operations, World Bosses and Crew Skills.

Moderation.  I now have the ability to remove links from a topic.  It's made the information which gets displayed much more relevant.

Blue Cross. You will see a blue cross after some links.  If you click on it, it will expand and show more information.  Currently, it shows embedded videos.

You can find the TOR Nexus at:  http://www.tornexus.com/

Let me know if you have any problems or ideas, thanks!

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Introducing the TOR Nexus

Lately, I've been having trouble keeping up with all the the Star Wars: The Old Republic news and content being generated by the community.  I needed a better (and quicker) way of dealing with them, so the TOR Nexus was born.

What is it?  The TOR Nexus is basically an aggregator, but takes in a bunch of different sources.  Currently, it looks for TOR content at a number of blogs, fansites, BioWare, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Live Streams.  My goal for the project is to keep it simple, quick and useful.

As a blogger, I really don't want to take any views away from someones site.  That's why the TOR Nexus is mostly focused on providing links.  At most a few sentences from an article will be shown.  The goal here is to drive visitors to the content creators.

Main Page.  On the front page, you will the see latest news from nearly all of the sources the nexus uses.

Class Pages.  Each class in TOR gets its own page.  Here you will find the latest community posts, videos and forum threads having to do with the class. For example, check out the Troopers page.

Live Feed.  This page will show you content as it comes into the TOR Nexus.  It automatically updates, so no need to refresh.  Right now this also will show SWTOR related youtube videos as they are uploaded.

You can find the TOR Nexus here:  http://www.tornexus.com/

Please let me know if you have any problems, ideas or questions about the new site.  I still have a bunch more to add, but I hope it proves useful.  A link for the TOR nexus can also be found on my menu bar above.

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Werit conquers The Nexus

As you will recall, I have had some trouble with completing The Nexus. Well, no more! This weekend I managed to complete it... it's a Christmas miracle! Well, maybe not, but still I am pretty happy.

I logged on in the morning and on a lark went looking for a group. I actually found a bunch of random folks willing to go and all of them level appropriate. The group was great and we had no afkers! In fact, there were only 2 deaths and both were not in combat. I was one of them... got myself stuck on a ledge and had to take a leap into the Nexus.

This was the first time I had tanked in many months. Overall I think I did decent, but there is always room for improvement. I am a keyboard user for skills, so I have found myself getting confused with my WAR key mappings. I pretty quickly fall into the tanking habit though. I see there is a built in threat meter now. I wonder if I can get that view above the mobs head (with the nameplate). Some notes:

• Grand Magus Telestra: That Gravity Well spell is very annoying, as it playes tether ball with the party. I also found her split to be pretty annoying, as for some reason I have trouble seeing them. Maybe it is all the spell effects going off? The fun part of this is when I reflected a polymorph spell, turning one of her images into a cat.
• Anomalus: This fight way pretty easy, although it reminded my of the Curator (without an immunity time). Just tanked him, then attacked his adds when they spawned.
• Ormorok the Tree-Shaper: This big fella was also pretty simple. His main trick is to lay out ice spike, which will propel you into the air. There were actually a pretty good amount of spikes, so it took me a couple of trips into the air to figure it out. Just move slightly off the spikes.
• Keristrasza: She was not very difficult for a final boss. Her trick is a nasty DoT, Intense Cold, which you can break by moving. So I just tanked her in one spot while jumping. That was pretty much it.

Overall I did like the dungeon. The atmosphere was right up my alley with it's sci-fi aspects. I was disappointed after I turned in the quests and found out nothing more of the story. it just stopped cold.

What did I walk away with?

• The Nexus achievement.
• A Monarch Topaz from mining Ormorok. It is worth about 70g on the AH. I think I'll hang onto it though.
• Several greens, which I figure will amount to around 50g.
• No loot drops. There was a single plate drop, but it was more for DPS and not tanking.
• A Small Dream Shard, thankfully we had a DE'er with us. I'll hang on to this as well.
• 3 Stone Keeper's Shards. Lake Wintergrasp was in Alliance control, only 197 more to go until something like this!

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