Although we are in the middle of packing for GamesCom and the excitement is almost palpable we wanted to bring you this week’s community news, at least the short version.
Star Wars Celebration V convention has ended and TOR was present with two panels. Darth Hater had the best coverage of the events and has exclusive interviews with writers Drew Karpyshyn (talked about the Jedi Knight) and Hall Hood (talked about the Smuggler) and concept artist Clint Young (talks about the artsy stuff).
Jedi Knight update was very exciting, especially with the cool trailer video that was released as well. Our friends at Jedi Archive Online did a very good dissection of the video, which you can find here.
Tor Syndicate, which we will be joining shortly, has their PodCast no.2 up and they yet again manage to provide loads of good information for anyone considering to make a SWTOR fansite or guild site. As if that wasn’t enough, they have an interview with ex SWTOR community manager Erick Adams. You can listen to “The Revenge of Darth Meow Meow” if you visit this page.
The sweetest thing as last. There is another SWTOR fan webcomic being created. Outer Rim stories just posted their first panel up and it is exactly the same idea I had for our comic when I heard about the details on space combat (including the Emo Darth Vader “Nooooooo”). Go, check them out here.
There is a live camera you can watch on Electronic Arts GamesCom dedicated website. It is broadcasting even now although it is well past midnight in Cologne. There are actually workers still building the Crysis 2 booth. The interesting thing is that you can see what SWTOR booth will look like. This, my friends, is where first people outside of the “inner circle” will get their hands on the game. People passing by will be able to witness the awesomeness of their game playing abilities.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? Gamescom will be the first event in the world where TOR will be available to the general public. The news was revealed by Sean Dahlberg a few days ago, but I was so excited that I forgot to post it on the site. Duh! In any case here’s the official announcement:
Touting 245,000 attendees last year, GamesCom is known as the world’s largest gaming convention. We’re excited to be presenting The Old Republic at this year’s GamesCom in Cologne, Germany for our first worldwide consumer hands-on event! It’s going to be incredible – Don’t miss it!
Visit the Star Wars: The Old Republic booth in Hall 6.1 at Booth B066 to get another look at “Hope” on the big screen, and to see all the exciting things we’re showing off. The trailer will also be shown multiple times per day at the EA booth, so be sure to stop by!
The Old Republic Booth Schedule – Hall6.1, Booth B066
* Wednesday, August 18th, 9AM – 7PM CET (Press Only)
* Thursday, August 19th, 10AM – 8PM CET
* Friday, August 20th, 10AM – 8PM CET
* Saturday, August 21st, 9AM – 8PM CET
* Sunday, August 22nd, 9AM – 6PM CET
“The Art and Writing of The Old Republic” panel was held during Star Wars Celebration V convention on Friday and Saturday. Drew Karpyshyn (Principal Writer, BioWare), Hall Hood (Senior Writer, BioWare), Arnie Jorgensen (Lead Concept Artist, BioWare) and Clint Young (Senior Concept Artist (Environments), BioWare) discussed what goes into creating the art and story in Star Wars: The Old Republic. There is a summary article on what was talked about at the panel at starwars.com. There are not that many new things revealed, but there is a great piece of art that was made during the panel by Clint and you can see that above (click on the thumbnail to make it bigger). Darth hater also covered both events with live blogging and you can read their Friday and Saturday coverage.
One very cool thing that happened at the convention, and not related to SWTOR, is the announcement of the original trilogy coming out on Blu Ray and it will include some of the deleted scenes. One such scene was showed during he announcement and its an epic one. It shows Luke Skywalker building his lightsaber while Darth Vader tries to push him to the dark side. True fans were ecstatic (and I am too I must admit). You can see the scene below:
This Friday’s update has provided us with details on the advanced class choice you can make as a Jedi Knight. As seen in the scanned PC Gamer footage the advanced specializations are the Sentinel (dual lightsaber wielding damage dealer) and the Guardian (tank and buffer). Official’s site Holonet Jedi Knight page has been update with the new information. It has also been revealed that the associate for Jedi Knights will be the Astromech T7-01 droid. He got his own Holonet page as well in the biographies section.
The awesome trailer of the Jedi Knight class, that has been released alongside this update, shows that Jedi Knights will start on Tython. They will have some sort of force jump ability to get them up close and personal with their enemies (sort of like a warrior charge in WoW). There seems to be some sort of a buff ability for troops around the Knight (in that trooper scene). Saber deflection of laser fire is probably higher if you are a Guardian. Saber throw is another skill seen in the video as well as some sort of Chuck Norris high kick! I also must note that the graphics are looking mighty sweet and things look a lot more polished. From the look of things this is the class I personally will be going for.
EA released a press statement about its upcoming GamesCom appearance that includes heavy Star Wars The Old Republic presence. Here’s the interesting part for SWTOR fans:
Five EA and EA Partner titles at gamescom have already received early recognition for their outstanding quality. The gamescom 2010 award nominations were announced today and include:
FIFA 11 — Best Console
Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ — Best Online and Best of gamescom
Crysis(R) 2 — Best PC, Best of gamescom
The Sims(TM) 3 console — Best Mobile title
Rock Band(R) 3 instruments — Best Hardware
Another important thing to know is that there will be a Press Briefing on Tuesday, August 17th, at 4:00pm CET (that is 7am PST) held by Electronic Arts. A live stream of the press conference will be available at http://live-event.ea.com/gamescom/live/ . We’ll try and record it so you can view it at a more convenient time :).
Electronic Arts will be occupying a huge area at hall 6 with multiple games on display. There is a whole subsection reserved for Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA’s German site has a map of booth configurations as well as the schedule of events in the EA area. What I found interesting is that when you zoom in the SWTOR area you can clearly see 3 round tables with seats for 12 and computers all around. This looks like you will be able to get some hands-on experience with the game. Whether this will be the same demo people at E3 were able to play or we will be seeing new areas of the game (space combat perhaps?) remains to be seen.
Star Wars: The Old Republic show will be held each day at these times on the central EA stage:
Today marks the beginning of another convention dedicated entirely to Star Wars – Celebration V. It is being held in ‘Lando, Florida from August 12-15. There will be George Lucas and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Mark Hammil (Luke Skywalker) himself will be appearing as well. Darth Vader, on the other hand, seems to have been slain by the corporate forces and will not be permitted on the premises. The Old Republic, being Star Wars themed and all, will make its appearance as well. Darth Sean Dahlberg posted about it on the official forums and here’s the excerpt:
Check out The Art and Writing of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ panel on Friday, August 13th from 2PM to 3PM, and Saturday, August 14th from 4PM to 5PM at the Digital Stage (Valencia A). Drew Karpyshyn (Principal Writer, BioWare), Hall Hood (Senior Writer, BioWare), Arnie Jorgensen (Lead Concept Artist, BioWare) and Clint Young (Senior Concept Artist (Environments), BioWare) will be discussing what goes into creating the art and story in Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming story-driven massively-multiplayer online role-playing game in development by BioWare and LucasArts.
As an added bonus, Clint and Arnie will be creating an entirely original piece of concept art live during the panel, giving attendees a rare and exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. Don’t miss your chance to hear first-hand from the developers!
Also, to relax from all the craziness, we’re putting together a community event to celebrate our love of Star Wars with you. Meet The Old Republic developers Friday, August 13th and Saturday, August 14th from 5PM to 7PM at the Hoth Bar inside the convention center!
Friday 13th is the SWTOR panel day. Hope none of them are superstitious.
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 18th, 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.
Published by Mikro under Species on Aug. 07. 2010.
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.
