This concludes our live coverage of the EA Press Conference. We hope you enjoyed it. Keep a look out for more because we will have our very own SWTORCrafter reporting from the show floor starting tomorrow early morning.

Here is the trailer that was shown at the EA press conference and that you can currently view at Origin.com.

Breaking News

• Stephen Reid just made a post on the official forums about the “Return” Trailer, about Origin service and its “Choose” trailer and the release date. Click here to read.
• On the “Return” trailer that you can download from swtor.com there are words Intro Cinematic written on it. I guess this is what we will see when we first start the game
• The name of the new SWTOR cinematic trailer is “Return” and you can view it HERE
• There is an exclusive video featuring excerpts of footage from the new SWTOR cinematic trailer on www.origin.com! (12:06 PDT)

Here are some screenshots from the “Return” trailer while it uploads to Youtube so I can embed it properly onto the page.

For the rest please watch the trailer on the official site ;).

Latest News

• While talking about SWTOR Greg zeschuk gave us a honest, heartfelt and personal view on the game. Ended his speech saying how they live The Old Republic. Coincidently, our site’s motto is living the Old Republic
• What is being show now at the conference is NOT the new trialer, but a mashup of all three trailers. The new trailer “Return can be found on the official site.
• Mass Effect 3 trailer starting the conference (12:30 PDT)
• TorWars.com reports: 15 mins to EA showtime. CEO John Rittichello chatting with execs in front of stage. (12:27 PM PDT)
• TorWars.com is live blogging directly from the theatre where EA press conference is happening
• The name of the new SWTOR cinematic trailer is Choose(12:06 PDT) This turns out not to be true. Stephen Reid corrected us promptly.
• Concerning that E3PO tag. It was first recommended to Stephen Reid by Adaram, avid SWTOR fan. Here’s a shout out to him!
• TorWars.com is inside the Theatre where the Press conference will take place. Here’s a link to the image they posted on Twitter http://yfrog.com/h0tbpsusj
• Stephen Reid and his friend E3PO (this is the official tag for all The Old Republic news on Twitter). http://twitpic.com/57xe2s (11:49AM PDT)
• TorWars.com just tweeted an image of people waiting in line for the EA conference. I think I see the guys from AskAJedi.com and that one guy in the front is Zirak from Darth Hater (11:41AM PDT)
• If you are at #E3 be at the @EA booth at 12:30 sharp on Tues for a special @SWTOR experience you won’t want to miss. @biofeed #E3PO (9:30PM PDT) Source

Image from AskAJedi.com
Click here to follow their live coverage of the event
 
This is the page you will want to follow in the next couple of hours. We will be posting all the news we found before, during and after the EA press conference. News will be sorted latest on top of the post to older at the bottom of the page. We will be automatically refreshing the page every 5 minutes, but if you want to do it manually you can do that by using CTRL+F5 or CTRL+SHIFT+R in your internet browser.

The biggest Electronic Entertainement Expo in the world is only 24 hours away, yet things seem to have started already. Companies have already started their big pre-show press conferences and first major announcements will be made there. The most interesting conference for The Old Republic fans is the Electronic Arts conference that starts in roughly 3 hours. SWTOR Life will try and bring you all the news form various sources. We will be looking for any SWTOR related news from both the SWTOR team as well as EA team, major press and fansite representatives at the event. All of that coverage will be presented in an comprehensible form in a live blog right here on the site so make sure you check back often. Here is the latest news about what we can expect to happen.
 

Breaking News

• @masseffect, official Mass Effect Bioware game Twitter account, just mentioned that “new BioWare online feature (will be) making its debut” at the press conference.
• All of the head Bioware people have been calling this “Mass Effect Monday”. This is in line with the fact that the first major trailer for Mass Effect 3 will be shown at the press conference and more news will be revealed. We will also be reporting on this in a separate news item, because we love Mass Effect just as much :).

Stephen Reid, our beloved Community Manager, had a few things to say about the whole press conference thing and SWTOR.

• Press conference should start about 12:30pm PDT, 3:30pm EDT, 8:30pm/9:30pm UK/EU time and lasts an hour.
• During said press conference, you will see… something. I want to warn you that said ‘thing’ may spoil you for another ‘thing’.
• Basically, I think you may enjoy the ‘thing’ more if you don’t watch the press conference. With the thing. That spoils the thing.
• Sigh. Look – here’s the best advice. Make sure you’re following @SWTOR … that’s about the best advice I can give you. 🙂
• I will say with some certainty that apart from #SWTOR, there’s other cool stuff to see during the EA presser, so tune in if you can. 🙂
• Origin (Editor note: new digital distribution service by Electronic Arts) will be hosting many CONTENT exclusives from today. Think videos. Including a #SWTOR one. (Editor note: once the press conference ends it is expected that you will be able to find all the shown trailers at the origin.com website)

You sholud also all keep an eye out on the Officially unofficial E3 thread on the swtor.com forums where all the news will be gathered as well.
 

Electronic Entertainment Expo holds a special place in hearts of all Star Wars: The Old Republic fans. It is the convention where both “Deceived” and “Hope” cinematic trailers were first shared with the world. It is the place where we first saw in-game footage of the Bounty hunter and the smuggler. Black Talon instance, back than known as kill the captain/save the captain scenario, was showcased for the first time at E3 2009 as well. Republic multiplayer demo was also played out by members of the Bioware team showing us what group content looks like in SWTOR. All things considered, it is a great place for The Old Republic fans, and gaming enthusiasts in general, to be at.
 
E3 is the world’s largest gathering of all people involved with the gaming industry and we are happy to report that SWTOR Life will be represented by its co-owner and Editor Derek Green aka SWTORCrafter. We will be live blogging from the show floor, doing interviews with the developers and getting you all the latest news. This being the year when we expect the game to be released, we can imagine there will be a lot of information coming from the show floor. We can speculate all we want about what exactly we can hope to hear, but to be honest, I believe everything to be possible at this point. We might get a flood of information and yet again we might find that devs stayed in Austin to work hard on finishing the game. Whatever the case is, we are happy to report on as much as we can for the SWTOR community. Stay tuned because the show starts on June 7^th and that is less than a month away.
 
Make sure you follow @SWTORCrafter or @SWTORLife on Twitter for live udates once the show starts.
 

During the first Fan Site Summit Bioware organized for members of the Fan Sites that write about their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, we had a chance to sit down for 2 days and play the game. These are impressions from our hands on experience and they are divided into the following segments:

1. Combat
2. Story
3. Exploration
4. General

You should also check out Swtorcrafter’s Bounty Hunter and General Gameplay Impressions for another view of the hands on experience.
 

In this article I will talk about the famous Story component BioWare has been focusing on as a main pillar of this MMORPG. If you know Bioware you know their strongest asset is great story. That is why I wanted to fight “The Man” and try and break that aspect of the game. I am an ex World of Warcraft player. Your story does not concern me. Give me quests and point me to where I can shoot stuff. There will be some spoilers in this article, but I will try and spare you as much as I can and warn you upfront when spoiler is incoming.

Click here to read why I think this is the best Bioware game ever made

Here’s a list of preliminary thing that we can share about the upcoming Fan Site Summit Event Bioware is hosting in their offices in Austin, Texas.

• This is the first such event where only fan sites are invited.
• There are as many European as there are US based fan sites attending.
• The official Twitter hash tag is #SWTOUR (Stephen Reid is responsible for the pun).
• We will be interviewing developers.
• We will be taken on a tour through Bioware’s offices and we hope to share that experience with you.
• There is a schedule for releasing information so do not expect everything to be heard day one.
• I would not get my hopes up on seeing additional gameplay footage. Impressions are OK though.
• You can follow all of our coverage, including live blogs and image feeds by visiting the official Fan Site Summit page here on SWTOR Life
• You can already start posting your questions and requests on what you want us to find out by commenting in this post.

Click here to find the list of attending sites

 

Floodgates have opened and it is now widely known in the SWTOR community that there will be an event held this weekend at Bioware’s offices in Austin, Texas. The participants – fan site representatives. Fifteen fan sites will be attending. This seems to be an extension of events that were organized for regular press members at the recent UK event and for PC Gamer (they said in their article that they too were flown to Austin for two day SWTOR bonanza). Click here to read my full mission statement about the upcoming event

 

As it is finally the 18th in my time zone, I can now officially announce that representation from   www.swtor-life.com will be going to Bioware headquarters in Austin, Texas to take part in an on site, fan site event held by Bioware. The event will start on the 24^th and last through the 26^th of April and Bioware has graciously offered to bring us there for this grand time.

 

Me, Derek “Swtorcrafter” Green and my partner in this grand adventure,  Serge “Swtorlife” Stanarevic will do our very best, to bring you, the fans of the Old Republic, the best coverage and information we can. Our goal is to bring you all as close to the action as we are allowed to. We have interviews planned, live picture blogs of our journey through this adventure via Twitter, and of course you can count on our witty and informative articles to satiate your appetite for Star Wars The Old Republic information!

 

Although we are probably going to have to hide from Daniel Erickson cause we know he wants to kick our butts for our portrayal of him in gungan attire,

 

 

and we might just have to hide from Blaine Christine as well so he doesn’t try to drag us into a LARP game!

 

 

 

Be sure to stay tuned to this site and also through Twitter for all the action from the fan sites and the Developers using the hashtag #SWTOUR (great name!  -credit to @rockjaw -aka- Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager for Bioware)

 

You can follow the Swtor-Life team through Twitter at the following accounts, @SwtorLife, @SWTORCRAFTER, @MrWarlock_, @Grant__D, @ForceMeridian and @BorukBH

 

We hope that you will follow us and join us in this grand adventure!

 

I would like to make a personal thank you to Bioware for this opportunity!  They have done much more for me and my partner Serge than provide a way for us to enjoy what is to be one of the most awesome events in SWTOR pre-release history, they have given friends the opportunity to meet in real life.

 

Some of you that know us here, may know that I am located in the Central United States and Serge is located In Serbia.  While we are fully committed to making this fan site one of the best in the community for SWTOR, we never actually thought we would get the chance to meet in real life because of obvious distance issues.  Bioware, thank you, you have made our dream of one day meeting a reality, we will never forget this!

 

WOOT LET’s GET READY TO PARTY!

 

BIOWARE,

 

WE R IN UR BASE!

 

(almost 😛 )

It has been a week since fans of the Old Republic were able to play the game at the London event. As with any hands-on event, we were flooded with impressions and information from people that got to play the game. The cool thing is that most of these impressions come from your regular gamers and not the gaming press or fansites since very few got to be there (or are under an embargo). What I found encouraging that most impressions were very positive, even from people that used to be skeptics before. Here’s a compilation of the most important things we’ve learned from the event and surprisingly most of these are rather big and brand new revelations. Sources for most of these are the transcript of the Q&A after the event by DogHouseGamer and player impressions found in this thread on the official forum. I would also suggest visiting Moon Over Endor and reading their great hands-on impressions, or listening to Aartan Away podcast as they were also at the event.

• At this time companion characters are allowed in flashpoints and they occupy a live player’s spot (so if you have two players with one companion each in a group none else will be able to join unless a companion is “de-summoned”). It was said at the event that:
  

  CCs are powerful but they are not the same as having smart humans nor are they equal in power. So on a less difficult Flashpoint with amazing players or players that had a couple extra levels it’s likely possible to two man or three man them but I will say that when Alex and I (*Daniel Erickson) tried to two-man the Heroics on Dromund Kaas with our CCs we got stomped flat.

• There is a Social points mechanic. You get social points when you win multiplayer dialogue stuff. They’re things that say “hey, I’m a social guy. I talk to other players.” Social points will be used to purchase “thing you can use to socialize with”.
• In hard to reach or seldom visited places on planets there are Datacrons that can be collected and that will permanently increase one of your base stats. There are very few of these on each planet and are designed as an exploration reward. Kandycane is the first person ever seen to get one at an event.
• Daniel Erickson confirmed that players will earn titles as they progress through The Old Republic. Often cited examples were titles for Sith players including Darth and Lord.
• There are light side and dark side icons on the dialogue wheel if you are using the mouse. If you are using number keys to pick dialogue options, you’ll never see them. So if you hate the idea of choosing wrong, you’re going to be a mouse user for dialogue. If you hate the idea of hand holding you’ll be a number key player. Best of both worlds.
• The number of slots in a player’s inventory will be upgradeable, though it may take some saving in order to afford increasing your total slots. Reports tell that the first inventory upgrade costs 15,000 credits. For context, the average low-level mob drops about 20 credits.
• Codex entries will automatically fill in as players enter new areas, these will be essential for both the completionist and the lore-lover.
• Swimming is not implemented in the game and is not planned for launch! The explanation behind this is that there is no content associated to water surfaces and the feature needs a lot of man hours to be made properly, so they chose to put more important stuff in the game for launch instead. (Read the full explanation by Georg Zoeller here)
• Class quest answers are not arranged by Dark Side/Light Side but by class appropriateness. So the most “Boba Fett” response (curt, professional, all business) goes on the top of the Bounty Hunter. The most “Vader” on top of the Sith Warrior etc. So if you’re playing purely to your class fantasy you can just keep moving along easily. So in similar situations a Sith Warrior might have a “[Kill Him]” option as a first response but an Inquisitor might have it second and the first response might be trying to look deeper at the situation and discover what’s really going on.

Pure joy on their faces

As we reported earlier today, there is a hands-on event being held in London today where lucky people that applied for a pass at the official forums are now enjoying all SWTOR has to offer. They all get to visit the Origin worlds and here are the first impressions from the gamers.

deanogee @ official forums said:

I thought the (Jedi Knight) gameplay was pretty smooth and the story progressed nicely as your were immersed straight away into a “heroes” role. Despite playing for an hour It felt like I was only a small percentage of the way through the sub plot upon the orgin world Typhon, progressing only 2-3 levels in the process. Nevertheless with the whole game being bigger than every single previous BioWare project put together I see this story lasting a very long time and loads of tiny sub-plots along the way.

p.s Titles are confimed (i.e Darth’s, Lord’s etc) and you apparently hit the advanced classes around lv 10.

I also found the two Jedi Knight buffs at the start allowed either you to buff yourself so you did more damage, or/and buff players around you.

Plus in pretty much every fight you are in – an enemy drops something which you can pick up.

Darth-Reaver @ official forums said:

Ok so i just want to say it was great to meet and chat to Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid

So i played the Sith Warrior for half my time and the other half i played a Bounty
Hunter, the game runs nice and smooth quest system was easy to follow.

Combat is very similar to WOW both mele and ranged, i did find vendors, trainers and a taxi system on my short travels.

the games is looking very good, however i did notice some very minor bugs while i was playing.

But very fun to play.

We had a small Q&A after with Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid and as others have said Darth Titles are confirmed I asked if there was still going to be an open Beta before release and i was told “No Comment”

We got a cool poster that i got signed and choice of T-Shirt, i got the Sith one

Ilmarian @ Twitter said:

Had an awesome evening at #SWTORGB Big thanks to everyone at Bioware for making this happen. I think #SWTOR is the first true mmoRPG!

qmyn @ Twitter said:

#swtorgb was totally surreal. The BioWare guys are truly inspiring. Amazing game coming to a galaxy near you soon.

aartanaway @ Twitter said:

• Play time is nearly over, having fun but there is just not enough time!!!
• Smuggler – fun play quite a lot of ducking/diving, fun ranged stuff. Game isnt too buggy but there are a few annoying things.
• Jedi guardian – much more fun opening area IMHO, some beautiful graphics. Combat feels great with the test sabre 🙂

You can find more impressions as they come in on the official forum thread or on Twitter.

Update with more impressions and pics:

Dariel at the official forums said:

Played a Sith Inquisitor tonight at the event.

Only got to level 4 but I absolutely loved the voice over. Even the random NPCs standing around which don’t have much of a purpose are talking to each other and they have voice over too whilst they chat, continuously found my self stopping and listening to what they had to gossip about.

The phased story areas were pretty awesome definitely felt very cinematic and heroic every time you went into one. I had one scenario where I was interrogating a guy and had the options to reason with him, talk trash or just straight up electrocute him . There were some traditional kill x and collect y but nothing in terms of having to grind mobs as you were usually leading yourself to the next part of a story or phased area.

At level 4 i had 4 attack abilities and 1 buff, i only learned from the trainer twice and peeked at what i could expect, i can truly say i was always excited to level in that respect. I had learned force lightning at level 3 and overload which was a AOE knockback at 4.

Combat did feel a little button smashy at first until i did get overload which sort of put me into a bit of a rotation but can’t comment much past that with only being so few levels in.

Questions were answered in the last 15 minutes, highlights of that were : No companions in Warzones, there will be titles e.g Darth / Lord etc Daniel Erickson briefly explained they were ranks you gain but nothing else on that, no more planet announcements, flashpoints can have companions but only filling the main 4 group spots.

At the end of the event we all got decieved posters (choice of malgus or the jedi) which Daniel Erickson, Stephen Reid and Gabe Amatangelo signed and a choice of Empire and Republic Shirts.

matteh at the official forums said:

I played the trooper, had a great time playing grouped with another 2 troopers

One thing mentioned is that we were playing off the NA servers and there are no European servers currently (I could stand corrected on how far along they are) but could show how far/close are from release or open beta.

Took me about an hour and a half to get to level 5.5 skipping a few conversations to get a bit further. Also there is a queue group/solo button for joining warzones don’t know if its been mentioned before. I ejoyed the mini map and the whole transparent part of it. The questing as a group was well put together. Any of other questions about the trooper or the gameplay I’ll be happy to answer

Nighthaunterz at the official forums had a very long post that you can read in its entirety here. Here are the most important things to know:

There is no swimming in the game.
There is a maximum of 4 characters in a flashpoint, this limit includes companions.
There is auto facing, it is odd.
NPCs could shoot through solid objects, maybe a bug.
There will be no other major planets announced (planets whith 10+ hours gameplay).
Staying alive is pretty easy, you can handle 5+ mobs at once.
There were class specific areas in certain buildings.
There was a clear indication of when you were choosing a light side or dark side answer prior to getting points.
You can refuse quests through conversations.
The voice acting is very good.
There is an ear equipment slot…
I didn’t notice any weather.

In a surprising mid-week update official SWTOR site released a video showcasing the highlights of the Old Republic’s presence at Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. We can see the excitement of the crowds and how awesome the booth looked. If you look closely you can see various well known faces from the SWTOR community and Corellian Run Radio is keeping a list of all that they spotted. Oh, and props to the honeymoon couple and the girl in princess Leia costume.