Crafters!

We are representing for you!

Swtor-Life.com has been given the honor of interviewing Damion Schubert, the Lead Systems Designer for Bioware, as part of the Fan Site Summit 2011.  We gathered the majority of questions for the interview from the community and we thank you for making your voice heard.

Join us now as we dive right into just who Damion is for the company and what he has been involved with in the past, and the goodies we have to look forward to in the Crew Skills system! There are exclusive reveals about the yet unannounced aspects of the Crew Skills system to be found in this interview and we will be providing a transcript shortly.

A big thank you to all who posted questions in this thread on the official forums where we asked the community for their choice of questions to go to Damion, some of you got the answers I hope you were looking for.

Join me in my next Swtorcrafter crafting article where I discuss this information in depth, there is a ton of it to wring out of this interview!

It was like a dream come true, the fact that I was part of a site that was recognized by Bioware as worthy of attending their first ever “Fan Site Summit of 2011”.  I am still having a hard time comprehending it all, and I think the events of the last few days are just now starting to soak in now that I am finally at home and can pause long enough to reflect.

Please click here to read SWTORCrafter’s Full impressions about the Fan Site Summit

We proudly present an exclusive screenshot from within Star Wars the Old Republic. Make sure you click on the image to see it in full size.

Click on the image to see it in Full Size

We had the pleasure of attending the recording of show no. 100 of the longest lasting SWTOR podcast around – TOROCast. Here’s the unedited recording of the last 10 minutes of the event. I just wanted to put this out, even if it is raw footage, because I can not imagine us having any time for doing this in the next 24-48 hours.

Best to TOROCast.com and thanks for having us during such an important show. You can also find the recording of the whole show at justin.tv. Guys from TOR Syndicate broadcast-ed it live through there.  There doing it live!

I feel like a participant of a certain road trip movie. Destination: creator of a Star Wars Universe; time of departure: right about now. Comic relief best buddies and a potential love interest are missing because I am flying this one Solo (Millenium Falcon not included).
 
What sounded like a dream of a distant future is now a hard hitting reality and I am about to call a cab to take me to the airport, where the adventure called Fan Site Summit in Austin, Texas will begin. My journey will take me across 6033 miles (that is 9709 km for you metric people out there) and four airports (3 flights to get me from Belgrade, Serbia to Austin, Texas). Twenty hours later I will be basking in hot Texan sun with my family hopelessly far away and days full of wonder ahead.
 
This site was created with fans of the Old Republic in mind. We exist for this SWTOR community as part of that community. As such, I wanted to share as much as I can about this completely unexpected experience Bioware provided me with, hoping that, at least in some capacity, you will be able to live it with me. I will be updating this post through every leg of the journey up to the doors of Bioware’s studio. There will be impressions and images posted in this very post about anything remotely interesting I encounter on the way. Although I imagine the truly interesting stuff begins once I pass through those doors in Austin, as with every journey, there is a beginning and a path to cross and I want to share it with you guys every step of the way.
 
Click here to read the trip blog (images included)

So with this week at work being crazy, packing for my non-SWTOUR trip into North Carolina country, this weeks Forum Friday has been pushed back a week. I hope I didn’t disappoint anyone too much, but I think there will be enough talk and chatter from whatever happens on the Update today.

To all the Fan-sites headed to Bioware this weekend, I hope everyone has safe travels and gets to have an enjoyable time. we are all looking forward to hear how much fun it was for you all once you return!

Happy Easter everyone!

As part of the upcoming Fansite event Bioware is hosting at their offices in Austin, Texas, we will be interviewing developers during the day. Having a crafting expert among our ranks dictates that we get as much information about Crew Skills as they’ll let us have. This, in turn, pointed us in a direction of a person that can also answer about Flashpoints as a game mechanic so our questions will gravitate towards those two topics. We have such luck that one of our writers, Mr. Warlock is also attending the show, on behalf of his own fansite, and he will focus mainly on PvP. Being in the offices with the devs will also result in being able to throw random questions their way, so I suppose questions of a general type will get answers as well.
Click here to read about how you can get your questions answered

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 😛 )