The gathering of SWTOR fansites in Bioware’s offices in Austin is in progress. 13 of the most prominent sites have been invited to spend time with the developers “in their natural habitat”. We are not sure what is in store during the visit, but we wanted to point out the most exciting news that come out of the event. First off the girls from Corellian Run Radio, Kathy and Roxanne, have had some solo time with Lord Malgus:

At one point the fansites were apparently shown what the CE edition looks like in real life (as opposed to the “unboxing video” we’ve seen a few weeks ago). That box – me wants it.

During their lunch, the fansites had a chance to chat with James Ohlen, the game director and the only man that is more cool than Daniel Erickson. Tor Wars managed to tweet to everyone the following:

• Lunch chat with James Ohlen. Achievements re-confirmed for launch and will be expanded upon after launch.
• Companion affection system is almost identical to Dragon Age system.
• Cyborg race confirmed for SWTOR

Here’s a photo from the Q&A event also provided by Tor Wars:

Then later TorWars.com posted a awesome video of the interview where we learned the following,

(thanks to TorWars.com for their awesome efforts!)

 

•  We got confirmation that there will be a live server to test patches and builds before going live after release.

• Achievements will be in game for ship but that they will be limited in their scope at release and will be expanded upon later.
• There will be no guild calendar or other similar feature in at ship to help with organizing guild or community events, it is something they are doing post launch whether in game or on the site is unclear.
• We found out that Stephen Reid is very concerned that James Ohlen is now on twitter and is afraid of what he might let slip there.

 

From the Q&A with Georg and the Ilum reveal later on we learned that,

 

• From Kathy at CRR we learned that Ilum has: control nodes, take down bases and walkers, shoulder rocket launchers, turrets you aim and shoot manually.

From Stephen Reid @rockjaw and @monstein via twitter we learned confirmation about,

@monstein: can we make bothe empire and republic toons on the same server?

@rockjaw: yes.