It has been two weeks since E3 finished and still there is footage that deserves to be shown or talked about. That is what makes the Electronic Entertainment Expo so epic. Where else would you be able to come across a Space Marine from Warhammer 40000 universe and Boba Fett (and some storm troopers) taking photos together and than initiating what looks like might become the most epic fight since Obi Van and Boba had their little altercation. Watch the video for yourselves and let me know what you think happened next!

Tags: boba Fett, cosplay, E3 2011, Space Marine

It is that time of the month again, time for another Fan Friday. The honor of being featured as a spotlighted Fan Site goes to Ask A Jedi, a great site for all The Old Republic fans to visit regularly. If you don’t have them set in bookmarks and as part of your regular rotation you are at loss. They have some of the best columns out there and are very knowledgable and just nice guys overall. They get my full recommendation. You can read their interview for the official swtor.com site here.
 
As part of the fan friday we also get to enjoy some great fan art, new icons and some surveys. Due to all the recent E3 happening there was no time to do the regular Q&A session with the developers, but we do get a nice article about polishing the world of the Old Republic based on writer’s feedback. Ian Ryan, writer for SWTOR, gets a chance to tells us about the process of improving the overall feel of the worlds player will be able to visit in the game based on writer input. Turns out that writers are the first that finished their job. Based on their writing other teams started working. Once the first version is done, writers go back and give suggestions on how to improve the looks and feel of certain places to better reflect the storyline that they are trying to convey. There are some great before and after screenshots in this article so I wholeheartedly recommend you read it. Personally, I love the huge golden statue of a Hutt on the main promenade of Nar Shaddaa better than what they had before the writer’s input.
 
SWTOR managed to grab a few (well deserved) rewards from the press at this year’s E3. About this and overall impressions from the biggest gathering of gaming professionals you can read in the article on the official site.

Tags: E3 2011, Fan Friday, polish, writer

It’s amazing how a day of two can give you a new view on a given subject. What once was greeted with great anticipation and high hopes falls at the very first hurdle.

I’m thinking about Origin and the new wave of beta invites.

Firstly Origin, EA’s answer to Steam.

I was kind of indifferent to this news when it hit. I don’t have many Steam related games on my account as I tend to play MMO’s and you don’t need a second party platform to enjoy them fully. Also I though having SWTOR exclusive for digital download from Origin made good business sense. After all, doing it yourself gives you a greater income before the more important subs start rolling in.

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Tags: Origin

It seems that the Beta expansion is starting effective immediately. Not long after stating that they “recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing” it was announced yesterday that a batch of survey emails were sent out to people “across the US, UK and EU”. This survey comes from their external testing partner Magid so don’t get confused. These surveys are part of their marketing research and upon completing them you should get a “real” beta invite email if you are eligible for testing.

Just to make things perfectly clear, the order of steps for this latest beta invite is the following.

• You get an email from Magid inviting you to fill out their SWTOR testing related survey.
• Once you complete this (and if you are eligible) you should await for a subsequent email from Bioware telling you you’ve been admited
• Do the jig (warning: graphic violence)

Being that these situations are what phishers love the most please check if your email is really from Magid and don’t go giving out your passwords, credit card numbers of firstborn children if asked to.

Also, here’s a list of steps you should take if your inbox is as empty as mine (or if you are Canadian):

• cry (warning: graphic violence)

Tags: beta invite, magid, survey

Compared to the excitement of the past 10 days it seems as if though today is a rather slow news day when it comes to SWTOR. Being Wednesday we got the above screenshot released on the official TOR Facebook page.
 
In other news … BioWare’s Alexander Freed will be signing his new Dark Horse Comic publication Star Wars: The Lost Suns. Yes, that is the cool one with Satele Shan kicking ass on the cover. The signing will take place in Austin Books & Comics at ‎4:00PM Saturday, June 18^th.
 
There’s a new episode of Mos Eisley Radio out – number 41. They have Larry Everett,SWTOR columnist from massively.com, as a guest. The show is a bit on the long side, two hours, but it is Zach and if you don’t love Zach by now you will after listening to his podcasts.
 
There was a glitch in the official swtor.com forums that redirected you to main page after you post. Trolls were not happy. Let me ask you; when trolling a troll is that a good thing or still a bad thing?
 
Told you … slow news day.

Tags: Alexander Freed, comic, facebook, Mos Eisley Radio, podcast, The Lost Suns

Update no.2: I wanted to make one final update to this news so everything is as clarified as it can be. Here is the full transcript of the SWTOR related part of John Riccitiello’s speech (thanks to swtor.com user Gumstumdar):

From: 20:09

“We’re very confident in the title umm but we did give a range of potential ship dates. It depends really on the beta that we’re now in. We’re in mid-scale beta now, we’ve got a high scale beta at the end of June umm and umm only the foolish assume they know the outcome of beta in terms of uh umm you know whether it’s a six week hit or not. Uhm we intend to make sure that this is a very successful launch and while we’re very very confident umm the reason for range in guidance is to bracket around the possibilities is what we’ve done.”

Stop: 20:40

Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager at Bioware, had a few things to say about this (you can read his full post on the subject bellow). Game Testing is on-going and they recently started a more long-term, longer-lasting version of it. It is highly likely that the six week comment was in relation to what happens when the game comes out and not how long the beta will last before the game is shipped. In a later post Stephen also said that “European Testing has not fully started yet.”. What all this basically means is that yes, beta is getting bigger and it is changing its shape, which is great news because things seem to be moving towards release. The fact that this is now know publicly changes nothing really, but it is good to hear.
 

During some investor conference (it is called 31st Annual Growth Stock Conference and it was streamed at this URL) that is happening as I write this (8:30 PDT), John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts just announced that SWTOR High Scale Beta will start by the end of June. It was also said that ship date will depend on the beta. If high scale beta goes well there might be NO MORE DELAY before release. This puts possible SWTOR release much closer than most of the more optimistic predictions. I would like to thank the ladies at Corellian Run Radio for spotting this first and the official forum speculation thread on release date that broke the news. We are still waiting for official confirmation or denial of this news. We hope to get it soon and we’ll keep you posted on the developments.
 
I have one thing to say to their marketing department if this turns out to be true. You should have said this at E3!
 
Now I am off to dance naked in the grass from pure joy of knowing things are about to get real, real fast!
 

Update: Stephen Reid, our beloved Community Manager, just made a post on the forums regarding this news. Here’s the complete post. I am not commenting at all on this, better let everyone form their own opinions.

Take a deep breath, everyone…

Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different points in the process, we have invited a number of people to test. Some of those people tested for short periods, some for longer periods.

We’ve recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing. We have more people testing the game now than ever before. We are allowing them to play for longer than ever before. We’re also continuing to invite people to test, so if you haven’t signed up for testing yet – now is a good time.

We will be allowing more and more people to test The Old Republic before launch, and that means occasionally we’ll spike in our invite numbers. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s signed up for testing is going to be invited in one block.

What we’re doing now, essentially, is similar to a ‘Closed Beta’ for other MMORPGs, but we call it Game Testing. It’s invite-only, and it’s limited in size. That gives us the most ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of getting meaningful, actionable feedback. However, we’re still ramping up, we’re getting more people in… and we’re still aiming to launch in 2011.

Tags: beta, release date

Razer, maker of various gear for gamers, has presented at this year’s E3 a special set of peripherals they made in association with Bioware and LucasArts that are all themed in The Old Republic fashion. To celebrate this announcement Razer has been running a giveaway on their site for a few days now. The giveaway is called “Choose your allegiance” and lets people choose Republic or Empire and put in their details to be eligible to win some of Razer’s products. The faction that has more members will also have an additional cache of prizes handed out to lucky winners. Today is the last day to enter this giveaway so feel free to hop over to Razer’s site and try your luck.

SWTOR Life also has a special treat for all of you wanting to find out more about the Razer gear that will come out simultaneously with The Old Republic. We were at Razer’s booth during E3 and we managed to shoot some in detail video of the peripherals as well as talk to mr. Hilmar Hahn and Melonie McElhannon about the products. We got to hear about some cool features and the way they are working together with Bioware and LucasArts to present in-game information on the keyboard. I am rather tantalized by that multitouch pad they have there. Seems like part of the game could be moved there.

Tags: interview, peripherals, razer

If this was any other convention other than E3 I would be kind of pleased with what we got from the show.

But this is not just another convention, this is E3 the biggest and most anticipated show of the year.

Even though nothing was promised we expected a banquet of information. What we got started well yet fizzled out like cheap champagne once the cork was removed.

Hopes have been dashed, our banquet was reduced to a $10 meal. Everything started well true enough, per-show reveals as a good starter. The main meal of almost 1 hour of in-game footage (even lack lustre questions did not ruin it completely) then as we were set for the finest of desserts we were left wanting for 2 more days.

These days were filled with mere leftovers and regurgitated  food that we had just digested.

For everyone at E3 they see things differently. It’s amazing how hands on time sways you in favour of TOR. I wish everyone could have at least 1 hour to play along, as this would settle many people’s concerns.

But 99.99%+ of the followers have not even come close to sitting down and playing the game.

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We had three major reveals and one major trailer released from the Old Republic headquarters during this year’s E3.There were a bunch of interviews by the major media outlets, yet most of the information heard there was already known to the people that follow this game for years now. I tend to look at the fan site interviews and gameplay impressions to get the really interesting information and new reveals.
 
When the first cinematic trailer “Deceived” came out everyone’s minds were blown away. None expected the second trailer “Hope”, because by that time we all knew the game was still some ways off and spending even more money on a super cool trailer would seem unexpected. We all knew that there was going to be a third trailer and since it lacked that element of surprise of the first two it had to be the best in the bunch. What followed was 6 minutes of epic Star Wars cinema and “Return” made all the fans squee like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert.
 
The very first big piece of info came out through a Gamespot live show with Daniel Erickson where Daniel showed what is the last quest in a chain of 10 group quests on Alderaan. This is the fight with Bouris Ulgo, self proclaimed king of Alderaan himself. The interesting thing about this footage is this is not a flashpoint. It is group content that is not like your regular instance. It is just something existing in the world that you can only do with a group. This is fun because it is still a big boss fight, but not as extensive as a flashpoint. I wonder if it is repeatable? UPDATE: Lethality of askajedi.com explained to us that during his talk with Daniel he found out that this is not repeatable and it is a cinematic ending to a long quest chain, yet, you do get your own “phase” or “instance” to do the quest in so others wouldn’t mob steal your boss. Beside what looked like a fun storyline and an OK event we learned that there are item sets (the trooper had what seemed to b e a 7 piece epic gear set) that have bonuses for more pieces you wear. We also see that there are low level epics, because one of the pieces in the set was level 13.
 
What followed was for me the best display of SWTOR at E3. It was a live feed on EA.com with Daniel Erickson playing Tatooine and answering viewers’ questions live. For the first time we saw a Jawa companion called Blizz, which made a lot of people squee until they learned that only Bounty Hunters can have those. We also saw vehicles, a small quest line on Tatooine and just in general some fighting and questing on one of the planets. Turns out Tatooine is really huge, because Daniel spent a better part of the demo just flying on his speeder from one place to another and still, when looking at the big planet map, you could see that he traveled only a portion of the planet’s whole surface. We learned that there is a lot of PvP happening in the Dune sea and it was just fun watching the game being played for a whole hour.
 
The last major reveal was showing for the first time any information about raids (or operations as they are called in TOR) in a form of a teaser trailer. Not much more has been said about raids other than what we see in the trailer. We know that the operation’s name is Eternity Vault. It is located on the planet Belsavis (a prison planet) and the story behind it is that an evil ruler of the universe from 10.000 years ago is locked in that Vault, which is opened by accident. We know for sure that there are 8 player raids and that these represent the “easy mode” versions. There are going to be larger raids than this, and people have been counting the number of players in the trailer until their eyes started to bleed in order to determine exactly what is the number of players we can expect to see in a raid. The current tally is 16, but this is all subject to change through game testing.
 
To learn even more information about the game in its current state you should visit all the fansites that reported from the event. I’ll give you a rundown of the articles I found the most informative.

• Darth Hater did a list of general things learned that sums up a lot of small things from the game they saw while playing or watching others play
• Ask a Jedi grilled Daniel Erickson on Operations and Vehicles in their interview with the man.
• A must see part 3 of TorWars.com interview with Daniel Erickson

Tags: Bouris Ulgo, Eternity Vault, gameplay, operations, return, Tatooine, trailer

Here’s an officially released video of gameplay on Tatooine. This is similar to what we saw Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid play during the live stream event on the first day of E3. You can enjoy it in full HD beauty bellow or even download it from the official site.

Tags: developer, gameplay, Tatooine, trailer, walkthrough