Although it is not technically a planet, it still is a celestial body we’ll be able to quest on. The largest moon of planet Hutta is also home for the smugglers of the Exchange. Put the Hutts and the Exchange on a moon full of casinos, bars and a black market located deep bellow the shining lights of the city’s exterior and you have a perfect place for a shady adventure. Nar Shaddaa is the next “planet” reveal we got during this Friday update. You can see its official HoloNet page here and you can view the planet gallery below.

This Friday also brought the continuation of the Blood of the Empire Comic.

Teneb Kel is confronted with a strange and frightening vision of the past, the future, and of his greatest enemy. As he lies broken in the Lenico wasteland, he must seek the truth about Exal Kressh and the Emperor’s goals within his mystical dream–or be utterly destroyed when he returns to reality.

Check out the latest issue of Blood of the Empire now!

Videogamer.com has an interview with Bioware co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk published on their site. They cover a range of topics concerning Bioware games. What cought our eye is the following statement:

Well, we need to sell 10 million units. That’s actually the new target, right? We do Top 10 games, our stuff is quite successful.
…
We always joke that if we only do half as well as Blizzard on Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’ll be quite satisfied. We’ve been very fortunate. I always joke about that, but…

You can read the full interview here.

Release of Star Wars The Old Republic is still some months away and at this point nobody but the people at Bioware know what it looks like or what it plays like in its entirety. Bioware has been releasing a lot of information in this past year about what the game will consist of, but what we always seem to lack are completely detailed descriptions of the announced features. I guess playing the game and seeing that feature in action is the only way to fully understand it.

There are, however, other games that Bioware released over the years and are playable. They even have some features that are announced for SWTOR. To try and understand to the full extent some of the announced aspects of SWTOR, we have decided to play Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect series and try and draw conclusions on what we can expect in SW: The Old Republic. It is only reasonable to assume that Bioware will base some of the game elements in their new game on success of that feature in the old games.

Spaceships have played a great role in the Star Wars Universe. It can be argued that space scenes and scenes in spaceships are as important as those happening in more “conventional” environments. It is a Space Opera after all. Millenium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy according to Han Solo, is an equally important character as the Droids or the Wookies. In Knights of the Old Republic we, as players, had a chance to own our ship – the Ebon Hawk. It is our means of transportation, our storage facility, it is the place where some major plot-lines are resolved. During 2010 E3 gaming convention Bioware announced that players will also be able to own ships and released a video showcasing the ship’s interior and exterior. In difference to KOTOR, there will be different class ships available. We have created a video pitching KOTOR’s Ebon Hawk versus the ships seen in the SWTOR video.

Click here to read the full Editorial article on player ships and what we can expect

Welcome to our regular Monday community watch. It’s here so you can fight them Monday blues with some Swtor reading.

Previous week was one of those extremely exciting weeks. Comic Con is behind us and with it the announcement of space combat and player ship customization. This brought mostly positive reactions by the community and speculations are also running rampant, until we get more information scheduled to appear in the PC Gamer magazine.

Preceding the space combat announcement Friday update was Fan Friday displaying some impressive fan made art and renders of Cathar race (not sure if playable or NPC only). There is also a Darth Rasp 3D animationabsolutely worth watching. For the rest of the goodies visit the Fan Friday page.

Also, last week, we saw the release of Fatal Alliance, a novel placed in the Swtor timeline. It is speculated that the game will have a lot of things mentioned in the book. Therefore, you might be interested in reading Darth Hater’s dissection of the book as well as the interview with the author, guys at SwtorStrategies did. You can also read a part of Chapter 1 on the official site.

Podcasts seem to be a big deal in the Star Wars The Old Republic community. There are numerous quality shows and its hard to single out just a few to showcase in our community news. I must mention the always entertaining ToroCast and their episode 62 in which they are joined by a female co-host. Episode two of the Correlian Run Podcast is also available and the girls are super excited with the possibility of Corellia being a playable planet.

How Will You Play? That is the discussion in the official forum started by the developers. Are you a “soloer” or a “raider”. Go here to join in on the constructive discussion here.

Gamespot just released their full video of the SWTOR panel that was held during San Diego Comic Con where it was officially announced for the first time that there will be Space Combat and Ship customization. This is the version with excellent quality and you can see it below or visit Gamespot’s video page to download it or view it in full HD.

P.S. Morgan Webb looks great in HD 😛

Finally we can see and hear for ourselves what it was like at the San Diego Comic Con this year. Sean Dahlberg tweeted about a thread on the official forums that holds all the links to the youtube videos. We thank Lukery for posting these links in this thread on the forums. Enjoy!

Click the image for full size

Following yesterday’s announcement of the existence of space battles in The Old republic the whole community is very excited and is eagerly awaiting more details on the feature. What we know for sure is that PC Gamer magazine will have an exclusive insider look at the feature in their August 17th issue. Above you can see what the cover will look like. We’re scouring the net for more information and we’re eagerly awaiting the rumored video from G4TV.

Thanks to this thread on the official forums we became aware of the video below. Apparently, the engine Bioware is using to create SWTOR is capable of producing space combat experiences. The video below is a demonstration of such capabilities by a small developer studio using the same “Hero” engine to create their own Space combat MMO. Whether Space combat in SWTOR will resemble the video below in any way is completely speculative and I must warn against making any conclusions based on the footage you are about to see. I just think this is an interesting find and wanted to share it with you.

The long awaited panel “Beyond Solo” at this year’s Comic Con convention held in San Diego has finally happened and boy, what a newsworthy event it was. Thanks to our fansite compadres at Darth Hater and Ask a Jedi we were able to read the news as they happened. Here’s a recapitulation of the most important thing we have learned during the panel.

• Ship customization and space combat
• Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat.
• You fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map (Speculation: no free roam space flight exists but rather “instanced” hot spots)
• In these hot spots you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles
• The story arcs are both worldly and galactic. (You will have quests arcs specific to a single planet and more global, galactic, story arcs)
• You can not switch factions.
• World quests, “flashpoints” (?) and story arcs are included
• You can customize your companions with gear similar to Mass Effect
• Only one companion can join you on missions.
• Your player name is in your companion’s nameplate
• Each class story as big as original KoTOR, and no one shares content! (that is 8 KOTOR games right there)
• Mandalorians play a large part in the game.
• Some alien race restrictions when picking classes
• Progression will be very important and can be achieved through tons of gear and crafting, etc. (you will need to “work” for these rewards)
• You will be able to determine the build of a character based on visual style (Jedi consular with double bladed lightsaber is DPS while single bladed consular is healer)

We expect videos and images to pour in from the event and we’ll update this post accordingly. There is also a Dev meet later on today and we expect more tidbits from there, but I am guessing not as big as the space combat reveal.

There is a live blog of the SWTOR Comic Con panel in progress at Darth Hater. The first thing mentioned from the panel is this:

1:03PM PST – James Ohlen: You can customize your ship and engage in space combat. October PC Gamer will reveal more details.

You can follow the updates on Darth Hater as they happen at this location.

Also worth mentioning is that world quests, flashpoints, and story arcs included. We’ll update this post as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Ask a Jedi is also following the panel live and you can read their impressions here.
Sean Dahlberg just confirmed Space combat on the official forums.

UPDATE 2: Mos Eisley Radio reports:

Space combat is going to be “an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat” …
We’ll be using our personal ships to “blast through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles”

UPDATE 3: Alex Freed: Can customize companion via equipment similar to Mass Effect; one companion out at a time, and your player name is in your companion’s nameplate.
Each class story as big as original KoTOR, and no one shares content! (from Ask a Jedi)

UPDATE 4:
(from Darth Hater live blog)

• If you are interested in Mandalorians, they play a large part in the game.
• Not every class can play every race.

(from Ask a Jedi)

• Another Question about progression, they view it extremely important and there will be a lot of it. Specifically mentions crafting in that vein
• Ironically, nothing more about the multiplayer story other than mentioning there is one 🙁

The panel has apparently ended and we’ll be bringing order to this post and getting all the impressions from the attendees of the panel for you to read.