GamesCom 2010 hands on Swtor booth being built
Although we are in the middle of packing for GamesCom and the excitement is almost palpable we wanted to bring you this week’s community news, at least the short version.
Star Wars Celebration V convention has ended and TOR was present with two panels. Darth Hater had the best coverage of the events and has exclusive interviews with writers Drew Karpyshyn (talked about the Jedi Knight) and Hall Hood (talked about the Smuggler) and concept artist Clint Young (talks about the artsy stuff).
Jedi Knight update was very exciting, especially with the cool trailer video that was released as well. Our friends at Jedi Archive Online did a very good dissection of the video, which you can find here.
Tor Syndicate, which we will be joining shortly, has their PodCast no.2 up and they yet again manage to provide loads of good information for anyone considering to make a SWTOR fansite or guild site. As if that wasn’t enough, they have an interview with ex SWTOR community manager Erick Adams. You can listen to “The Revenge of Darth Meow Meow” if you visit this page.
The sweetest thing as last. There is another SWTOR fan webcomic being created. Outer Rim stories just posted their first panel up and it is exactly the same idea I had for our comic when I heard about the details on space combat (including the Emo Darth Vader “Nooooooo”). Go, check them out here.
There is a live camera you can watch on Electronic Arts GamesCom dedicated website. It is broadcasting even now although it is well past midnight in Cologne. There are actually workers still building the Crysis 2 booth. The interesting thing is that you can see what SWTOR booth will look like. This, my friends, is where first people outside of the “inner circle” will get their hands on the game. People passing by will be able to witness the awesomeness of their game playing abilities.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? Gamescom will be the first event in the world where TOR will be available to the general public. The news was revealed by Sean Dahlberg a few days ago, but I was so excited that I forgot to post it on the site. Duh! In any case here’s the official announcement:
Touting 245,000 attendees last year, GamesCom is known as the world’s largest gaming convention. We’re excited to be presenting The Old Republic at this year’s GamesCom in Cologne, Germany for our first worldwide consumer hands-on event! It’s going to be incredible – Don’t miss it!
Visit the Star Wars: The Old Republic booth in Hall 6.1 at Booth B066 to get another look at “Hope” on the big screen, and to see all the exciting things we’re showing off. The trailer will also be shown multiple times per day at the EA booth, so be sure to stop by!
The Old Republic Booth Schedule – Hall6.1, Booth B066
* Wednesday, August 18th, 9AM – 7PM CET (Press Only)
* Thursday, August 19th, 10AM – 8PM CET
* Friday, August 20th, 10AM – 8PM CET
* Saturday, August 21st, 9AM – 8PM CET
* Sunday, August 22nd, 9AM – 6PM CET
EA released a press statement about its upcoming GamesCom appearance that includes heavy Star Wars The Old Republic presence. Here’s the interesting part for SWTOR fans:
Five EA and EA Partner titles at gamescom have already received early recognition for their outstanding quality. The gamescom 2010 award nominations were announced today and include:
- FIFA 11 — Best Console
- Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ — Best Online and Best of gamescom
- Crysis(R) 2 — Best PC, Best of gamescom
- The Sims(TM) 3 console — Best Mobile title
- Rock Band(R) 3 instruments — Best Hardware
Another important thing to know is that there will be a Press Briefing on Tuesday, August 17th, at 4:00pm CET (that is 7am PST) held by Electronic Arts. A live stream of the press conference will be available at http://live-event.ea.com/gamescom/live/ . We’ll try and record it so you can view it at a more convenient time :).
News spotted at MarketWatch.
Electronic Arts will be occupying a huge area at hall 6 with multiple games on display. There is a whole subsection reserved for Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA’s German site has a map of booth configurations as well as the schedule of events in the EA area. What I found interesting is that when you zoom in the SWTOR area you can clearly see 3 round tables with seats for 12 and computers all around. This looks like you will be able to get some hands-on experience with the game. Whether this will be the same demo people at E3 were able to play or we will be seeing new areas of the game (space combat perhaps?) remains to be seen.
Star Wars: The Old Republic show will be held each day at these times on the central EA stage:
11:25-11:40
13:30-13:45
17:10-17:25
You can download the full schedule in PDF here.
We are very proud to announce that we’ll be attending this year’s GamesCom gaming convention in Cologne, Germany. It is the biggest gathering of game makers and gamers in Europe. Last year it was visited by 245,000 people, which made it one of the largest games trade fairs in the world.
We will be there to bring you the best coverage of all the Star Wars The Old Republic related events. You can expect all kinds of coverage, from news and show floor gossip to live blogging and videos from the SWTOR booth. Things will kick off on Wednesday, August 18th, which is press only day, and we’ll try and get you as much info as possible starting noon.
Make sure you keep checking our site for all the latest updates as well as our Twitter account and YouTube page (for fresh videos from the show).
We would also like to share the excitement of attending Gamescom with the SWTOR community. For all of those that will not be able to be there in person we would like you to use our site as the vessel to take your message to the Bioware people at the show. We will pick a few of the best community questions and try and get an answer from Bioware. You can submit your questions in the comment section bellow or in this thread on the official forums!
Please refrain from questions that you know will be answered with a “No comment” and no, we will not ask if they will create a Twi’lek stripper class. If everything goes as planned we plan on rewarding the best questions with swag we pick up at the show so make sure you leave a valid email.
Also, we would love to meet other SWTOR fans so anyone attending just drop us a message and we can meet and talk about the game and have some German drinks while we’re at it (I hear Cologne is a beautiful town).
