We’ve heard that it was demoed the first day of GamesCom 2011. Now we get to see the demo video by ourselves in glorious HD. The pit is the latest PvP warzone we are hearing about and it is the place where Huttball matches are being held. Hutball is a vicious sport played where two sides try to pass the ball across the opponents goal line. All moves are allowed including force lightning, stabbing and cheating. See for yourselves in this fun little video showcase of the Pit. I wonder if this is the PvP arena Daniel Erickson told us about in an interview at E3. He mentioned that it is so much fun punting your opponents into fire.
 

 
There are also two pieces of news you should all check out. First is a Q&A with Bioware’s good doctors Ray and Greg. They talk about beta weekends and raids and you can check it all out at Ask A Jedi.
 
There was apparently an impromptu Q&A session held on Twitter with Stephen Reid and Gabe Amatangelo straght from Germany. You can check out the full transcript at Tor Wars
 

Tags: huttball, PvP, the pit, trailer, warzone

There is a special day dedicated to press members only and this is one of the best things I remember about GamesCom. The crowds are much more manageable and if you scheduled ahead you can get most of your work done that first day; fill in the gaps during the other days. This day also is filled with new information and this year is no different.
 
First we have the video of the presentation held yesterday during the EA Press Conference reorded and posted on youtube by instarwars.de Grman SWTOR fansite:
 

 
Next is video of SWTOR booth brought to you by SWTOR EU fansite:
 

 
The juiciest piece that came out of GamesCom so far is this video by Darth Hater crew showing The Pit. It is a PvP arena with Capture the Flag rules, only you control a ball and not a flag and you can pass it around. It is a kind of deadly football with lightsabers and blasters and in game it is called Huttball.
 

 
We would also like to congratulate Bioware for Winning the Best Online Game of the show at GamesCom this year. It is very well deserved.

Tags: gc2011, huttball, the pit, video

Electronic Arts Press Conference, that is traditionally held a day prior to GamesCom’s start, is one of those huge media events that always brings fresh news. There is a live stream available of this event, but as with all the other events so far we will be covering the happening live here on SWTOR Life. We will be updating this post with news as they become available so stay tuned and refresh those browsers. There will be other EA games showcased at the event but SWTOR will have a prominent spot. The conference is only 20 minutes away so stay tuned.

• Dr. Ray Muzyka will be holding a live presentation of SWTOR during the EA press conference
• 

  image of rehersal

• The conference is about to begin
• We will see 10 games that we will play this year *wink wink – nudge nudge*
• We are seeing Fifa Street and Need For Speed titles and their presentations
• Dr. Ray is here talking about Dragon Age: Legends and Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, a new PvP Play4Free game for the PC.
• gearing up for smooth launch. Record breaking pre-orders of SWTOR. Quest sequence in German being shown now.

Open testing beta weekends upcoming

• Talking about end-game Operations (raids) – showing live demo of Eternity Vault
• 8-16 players in raids
• Eternity vault is an ancient prison and we are seeing turrets attacking the team and Agent healing the Juggernaut tank
• I am seeing Rockjaw among the people playing the raid.
• We are seeing a lot of AoE skills from different classes
• Turrets are destroyed and after cutscene a huge annihilation droid boss lands and we are seeing a nice boss fight.
• New Eternity Vault footage trailer being shown
• That is it for SWTOR. Talking about MAss Effect 3 now. I ust say that footage looked good. The only real reveal is 8-16 people in raids. Whether this will be normal raid size is 8 and heroic raid version is 16 – remains to be seen

That is it for our live coverage of EA’s press conference. Stay tuned for more news from GamesCom as we cover all the incoming information.

Tags: gc2011, live blog

One of, if not the biggest, gaming shows in the world is about to take place in Cologne, Germany, from August 17th-21st. With the release date closing in fast, Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a very strong presence at the show this year. First images that are coming in show that the hands on area this year is much larger (three times as large) than last year. There is a kind of excitement in the air as well because the Beta September is just around the corner and everyone is awaiting more news on this as well. For European SWTOR fans this will also be the first chance to meet the new European community managers. We also know from recent news that footage from the Eternity Vault, end game operation (raid), will be shown for the first time as well.

We’ll be watching closely for all the news pouring in from the show floor so you’ll have one place to go to for all SWTOR news from GamesCom. Here’s a preliminary schedule of things to watch out for and a few images we dug up.

• The unofficial offical Twitter hashtag for This year’s news from Gamescom and PAX Prime is #ComPAXTOR
• There will be some footage about SWTOR on BiowareTV. We’ll update you with details once we find out more.
• Tuesday, August 16th. – EA press conference – streaming live starting 4PM CET.
• Thursday, August 18th – 12:45 To 13:00 CET – SWTOR: Producer Presentation
• Friday, August 19th – 12:45 To 13:00 CET – SWTOR: Producer Presentation
• Saturday, August 20th – 12:45 To 13:00 CET – SWTOR: Show
• Sunday, August 21st – 12:45 To 13:00 CET – SWTOR: Show

EA Press Conference preaprations	SWTOR Booth
Chris Collins - EU Community manager	Release date tease

Here’s a livestream of all EA booths at Gamescom, including SWTOR.

Tags: booth, ComPAXTOR, Eternity Vault, press conference

Lets Meet and Greet!

You might ought to seriously pay attention to this post or on twitter for this information as it drops because there is the possibility that with the crowds that will be in attendance, that this event could be RSVP only.  That has not been stated yet however but it is a possibility.  GamesCom is the biggest games convention in the world and there will be metric tons of people there!

From Twitter this morning we got confirmation of the day that it will be happening:

RockjawStephen Reid said: GamesCom attendees: we’re working out final meet ‘n’ greet details, but keep Friday night free if you want to come.

As we previously mentioned, we’ll be holding a Star Wars: The Old Republic Meet & Greet event during GamesCom!

For those that are attending the show, if you want to take a bit of a break from the mayhem, feel free to come join the team for drinks, food and music on Friday 19th August from 8PM at The Renaissance Hotel in Cologne! Details of how to get to the hotel can be found on their site.

Attendance is strictly limited, so we’ll be letting people in on a first-come, first served basis. The event is strictly over 18’s only, so you will need to bring a form of identification that displays your date of birth, such as a Drivers License or passport.

So if you can, why not come and join some of the team from Star Wars: The Old Republic for an evening general merriment and relaxation!

Tags: bioware, event, gamescom, gamescon, gc2011, group, meet and greet, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

Star Wars is in your town, invading your cons

Gamescom and PAX Prime. Two of the biggest gaming conventions in the world that happen back to back and mark “the end” of big convention season. Two locations where Bioware traditionally releases the biggest announcements, or at least the most footage and information. It is also two weeks (and some change) before September when the Pre-Order Beta Testing should start as well. Could this be the greatest two weeks for all us dedicated SWTOR Fans? It sure looks promising.
 
In today’s Friday update we found out that at GamesCom we’ll see small presentations of Eternity Vault, the only raid in SWTOR at launch (as far as we know for now). There will be hands-on stations of origin worlds, similar to the ones setup last year (this was done for the first time at Cologne last year). There will also be an invitation only Alderaan PvP experience like the one we’ve seen at ComicCon. It also seems that BiowareTV will be live streaming from the show extensively, so even us not being there will be able to get a glimpse of the happenings. This will surely not be the only news from the show floor, but we’ll have to wait and see.
 
Pax Prime will be happening only a few days later on Aug 26th-28th. TTo be honest I have no idea what to expect from Bioware at this show. There will surely be hands on stations and all that jazz. The question remaining is what other big news are left to be told? We now know that Release date will not be talked about until 4-6 weeks prior to release itself (which is scheduled for Holiday 2011) so I doubt that is what we’ll hear about at PAX Prime. Perhaps the Legacy system will have its details revealed or the Crafting system will be talked about in its entirety or some other unrevealed system will be on the table. All we know is that this is the devs’ favorite convention and I beleive we’ll here something exciting.
 
This makes the next two weeks something I am eagerly waiting for. Unfortunately, SWTOR Life will not have any on site reporters from these events (unlike last year). We broke the bank with our E3 attendance . We will be following the happenings closely and you can expect all the news in one place as always. If you are going to one of the shows and would like to have an article about your experience published, feel free to contact us.
 

Erika Christine from Bioware just announced on the BiowareCommunityChannel  a cosplay costume contest starting now to celebrate Bioware being at Gamescom 2011 this year! 

This video has all the details and it sounds like a real hoot!  I can not wait to see what the community comes up with for this.  If you remember the recent San Diego Comic Con you may have seen some of the footage of all the awesome cosplay costumes that came out in full force for this event. Hopefully this contest will bring out some of those along with new costumes never before seen.

The details of the contest include…..

• reply with your video submission to  this video
• deadline is August 20th at midnight EST
• you must be in costume in your video to be able to be judged
• must be safe for TV

Prizes for lucky first place winner include:

• $500.00 gift card to the Bioware Store
• mass effect hoodie signed by dev team

Second place prizes include:

• Second place prize is a $250 Gift Certificate to the store and a figurine signed by the BioWare founders Dr. Greg Zeschuk and Dr. Ray Muzyka

Third place prizes include:

• Third place prize is $100 to the BioWare store and a signed lithograph

There will also be prizes for innovation, best group, fan favorite, etc!

If you have any questions about the event you can ask them to @biofeed on twitter and Erika will do her best to answer them.  Now get out there and COSPLAY!

Tags: bioware, community, contest, cosplay, gamescom, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor, video

Wait, what’s that you say?  Another “probable release date” rumor is spreading like wildfire through the SWTOR forums?  Well then by golly, we need to spring to action and report on this!

The “report” that’s making the rounds currently goes a little something like this:

We are officially moving the expected Star Wars launch from September to November. PopCap is not the key to getting ERTS right. We like this acquisition, but this is not going to make or break your ERTS trade this year. The success of Star Wars and Battlefield, on the other hand, will. All eyes now shift to them.

So aside from sounding like it was ripped straight out of a Nostradamus quatrain, what does this mean?

Well for starters, this was put out on Barron’s via Pacific Crest, an investment/research firm.  Some folks are thinking that this came straight from EA/BioWare, and this is not the case.  The “we” here in question is Pacific Crest.  So this is essentially their best guess, based on other factors (such as EA’s acquisition of PopCap).

November sounds like a reasonable guess, but it’s still just that.  I don’t think we’ll be seeing a release date announcement coming out of Comic Con next week either.  I imagine the chances of hearing anything out of Gamescom are still pretty slim, but I’m kind of holding out hope that we’ll hear something by Pax Prime.  At any rate, it seems like we have a ways to go before the train starts to move…

We’ve followed this thing for a long time so far, almost three years now?  Knowing that we’re potentially at the finish line, are you starting to get antsy?

Within the next few hours Penny Arcade Expo, one of the biggest gaming conventions in the North America is about to begin. It is a very big convention for all the Star Wars: The Old Republic fans because, traditionally, it is the place where big reveals happen. Last year we got some gameplay footage and all attendees of the SWTOR panel got a copy of Knights of the Old Republic game. This year we’ll be having the first hands on event in the North America and all the PAX visitors will get what is called the SWTOR virus that can only be cured by more “gameplaytimis”. Some gamers will be lucky enough to get the elusive “betainvitis”, but for all of you out there that lack any of these rare and expensive medicine, we bring you the last of our gameplay videos we shot at this year’s GamesCom. This is the longest video we have and it features gameplay from most of the classes. You can see some cool Inquisitor action where he one shots some enemies with force lightning (at around 1:50). Present are also cutscenes and some more combat.

We’ll continue to monitor all the information pouring in from PAX and we’ll keep you updated with the most important news and footage. For now I would like to draw your attention to Jedi Archive Online, that have their man Lordhammer, from Guild Umbra, on the spot. They have the first images from PAX available here. Also covering the event are Darth Hater and ToroCast.

Tags: gameplay, gamescom, gc2010, hands on, pax, Penny Arcade Expo, video

GamesCom 2010 ended over the weekend and I can’t say that I won’t miss it. You get drawn in into the whole convention madness. Free swag, people doing crazy cosplay, meeting Darth Vader in person and games, games, games everywhere. If you are a gamer in heart (like me) you surely would appreciate the atmosphere. To share some of the atmosphere of the show we present you with a video of the crowds at the SWTOR booth (that is the place we hung out the most after all) and a gallery of images. We hope you enjoy them.

Tags: gallery, gamescom, gc2010, video