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 18^th, 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).

The Old Republic’s community has been in a frenzy of activity in the past 12 hours. First leaked information about the space combat has emerged from various sources. First, German fansite got a hold of an issue of PC Action magazine (a German publication) that provided details on space combat. Our friends at Ask a Jedi had the details on this as well as the translation of the most important information in the German article.

A heated discussion ensued on the official forums. All of the space combat discussions are being consolidated by Bioware moderators into one monstrous thread with a poll that asks you “Are you happy with the Space Combat details?” (Yes/No/Need more info).

The biggest news is certainly the appearance of the scans from the upcoming PC Gamer magazine. When space combat was announced it was said that PC Gamer will have the exclusive details on the feature and this is the article that details it. There is a page missing but you can find all the most important info without trouble. The scans were found at Darth Hater’s forums

Here’s the recap of the most important info:

• Space combat is a tunnel shooter mini game (your ship is propelled along a predefined path and always moving forward while you only choose which weapons to fire and at what targets – there is no free flight like in X-Wing vs Tie Fighter)
• There will be 6 different ship types for 8 classes (Jedi Consular and Jedi Knight share the same ship type and so do the Inquisitor and Sith Warrior)
• Space combat is a single player instance (at launch at least)!
• You can collide with asteroids or other ships
• There will be a main quest that will give a token reward you can exchange for items and side quests that will rotate and feature escort missions of different ships or destroy a randomly chosen ship
• Each mission is 2-8 minutes long
• Blasters and missiles only (and only power of these can be upgraded as you earn rewards)
• Character abilities and stats do not affect space combat

That’s it folks. Two to eight minute missions with you moving your ship on X and Y axis while mouse targeting and shooting your enemies. A little action packed mini-game to break the mold. I bet all those that said space combat will resemble KOTOR’s turret mini game are doing their: “I told you so”.

My hunch is that there will be a video of the space combat missions running at GamesCom and since we will be attending we will be bringing you all of the news right from the spot.

A red guy, a green guy, a blind guy and an evil guy walk into a bar… That is how we can sum up the latest Friday update by Sean Dahlberg. Joining the Rattataki, Chiss and Twi’lek are 4 new distinct species. Empire’s fans can be very happy because they will be able to choose to be Sith Pureblood, descendants of the original Sith race and they will be fierce Sith Warriors. Another Empire fan favorite, the Zabrak, are making an appearance. One of the most notable Zabrak is Darth Maul, the double-bladed lightsaber wielding, sharp head horn wearing Sith that killed Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode I. The Zabrak will be awesome Sith Inquisitors.
Republic is not so lucky. They will be able to play wise and mystical, yet somewhat frog looking Mirialans as Jedi Consulars. If you like green, than they are the way to go. To somewhat save the situation there are Miraluka. Although they are blind as bats and sport a hood over their faces, they are very skilled with the force and see their surroundings entirely through the Force. All future Jedi Knights will be able to play as these force masters.
This way each class will have a playable non-human species representative. The prospect of having certain races limited to playing only certain classes is bumming out some of our community friends (Jacob from TorUniverse.com for one) and I hope that this imposed lack of choice will work out fine in the end.

As a special treat we also have a new Timeline entry narrated by everyone’s favorite synthetic, Mr. Lance Henriksen. This one talks about The Mandalorian Wars and we see the beginning of the fall of Revan and Malak, which I am sure all Knights of the Old Republic fans will appreciate. Making his appearance in the video is also Lt. Carth Onasi, one of the most loved characters in the original KOTOR game.

With all the hype and controversy over Star Wars: The Old Republic, a previous mmo evil has returned to dominate BioWare’s latest soon to be blockbuster.  That’s right. The Dark Lord of speculation with the power to pull facts out of his ass. He has returned to such forums as MMORPG.com, Gamasutra, Massively, and even our beloved SWTOR.com forums.

With so many people knowing EXACTLY how space combat will work, the fact this game will be a direct clone of WoW..in space…with lightsabers.. and the notion that there is ZERO endgame content. That’s right. None. Not one drop. When you hit level 40 (which according to many obvious space-scholars is max level) your toon is deleted, you are forced to roll a new toon, and a man drives up to your house and kills your cat with a currently unknown force power. (I’m betting there is a cat choke tree for inquisitors). There is also the off chance you will proc a “death fee” that forces you to buy 11 xp potions and the “Rifle of Jedi Pwnsauce” from the microtransaction store that appears as a big dollar sign right on your HUD until you spend $413 on game breaking items. Oh. There will be a spectral mou…err…jedi starfighter in there for $100 as well that lasts 3 hours. And makes you glow magenta.

Lets set the record straight. They are all utterly, totally, completely, unequivocally wrong.  Even if the game is exactly like they describe, down to space ironforge and strand of the Tattoine ancients, they are still wrong. Here’s the BW/SWTOR rules to live by…

1. Not confirmed, than it doesn’t exist. Admittedly this requires some bending of time and space, but until confirmed by BioWare, it is pure speculation. At the time these short bus heroes make their statements, they know nothing. Guessing, be it accurate or not, is still a guess.

2. Many of these “speculators” (Latin for idiot I believe)  have the attention spans of a sock. They read something out of context, retweeted by snapperheadMcIdiot and leap across 27 sectors of space to land at some random conclusion that usually makes as much sense as a bag of drunk hamsters. If they cannot spell or speak in complete sentences, odds are they know even less than my semi-retarded 4th cousin Ebert about SWTOR.

3. Most are flat out drama queens posting for negative attention, and sadly, 99.9% of the time, they get it. Feeding trolls is seriouz bidnezz.

In all seriousness the best thing we can do as a community is keep our eye on the ball. A dedicated community of players with no desire for anything beyond a well crafted, engrossing, fun SW gaming experience will never be disappointed. BioWare is and remains one of, if not the best studio in the market for telling compelling stories combined with exciting gameplay. They have enough talent for any 20 of us. I for one wish to support and encourage them in this massive undertaking. We must understand that not everything in SWTOR is going to be perfect for every individual player, but the decision comes down to a very simple ideal: Pick your battles. – We can’t always get what we want, but with a little faith and patience, I think we all will get what we need. And then some.

How does all the negativity and wow hate directed at SWTOR make you feel? Are all these allegations about BioWare being overly ambitious with their budgeting, the focus on story, and the obvious and glaring similarities between SWTOR and WoW making  you nervous?

Make your voice heard, but make it heard with the facts. That is the best any of us can do.

/Flagg. -May the force be with you all.

BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk gave an interview to BBC’s Daniel Emery discussing the past of Bioware as well as its Star Wars future. Also mentioned in the interview was that:

The massive multiplayer online role-play game (MMORPG) Star Wars: The Old Republic is nearing completion.

While the Canadian developer BioWare would not be drawn on an exact date, it said that spring 2011 “was not unrealistic”.

“It’s getting closer, it’s coming down the pipe,” the firm’s founder Greg Zeschuk told BBC News.

You can see the video interview below or read the whole article on the BBC’s web site. (thanks to CorrelianRun that shared this news on their Twitter account)

In other news, Dark Horse is starting to ship Threat of Peace Part #2. You can follow the new adventures of Jedi Satele Shan, Master Orgus, and Lieutenant Tavus if you order the comic on this page. News spotted at swtorstrategies.

My attention span is that of a chipmunk. If you hit me with a podcast that lasts for 2 hours I will probably be distracted by the time the opening music is done with. When you start the podcast with a small clip from Robot Chicken Star Wars episode II (that I just watched a few days ago) and your guest host is Scott from Extra Life (one of my bookmarked webcomics that I visit regularly for the past 5 years or something) you might just be able to beat my ADD. This is what Mos Eisley Radio did with their podcast #22 named “Extra Lives”.

It’s a pretty bold move to start a new podcast among so many quality ones already existing in the TOR fansite universe, but when you do it right like TOR Syndicate did we have to tell you about it. The first full fledged podcast episode is available on their site and they talk a lot about what it is like to be doing a fansite for The Old Republic. They also interview the owner of Toruniverse.com and its a great insightful show that lets you inside the fansite creating life.

In other news, we have a merger of two fansites, Dathomir Project and Jedi Archive Online that they announced in their podcast that you can find here. Also, if you are interested in joining the fansite community TOROcast.com is looking for people. You can read more about it in this thread on the official forums.

As a final treat I give you Epicness! It’s a 3D rendered Star Wars space battle made by one man as a school project and it is absolutely amazing. Found this in the forums in this thread.