During our last month’s visit to Bioware’s studio in Austin, Texas there was one moment I personally enjoyed almost more than playing the game. It was the Q&A session with the writing team of the Old Republic. Seeing all those people creating the awesome stories we’ll be experiencing in the game and hearing them talk about it openly and with clearly visible enthusiasm was just a perfect moment in time. I mean, I am a fan, there is no doubt of that, but, to see these people be just as enthusiastic about the game they are helping create was priceless. With hopes you will get to experience at least a small portion of what was felt in that room we bring you a video of the Q&A session with the writers and all of them talking about the favorite thing they’ve written for the game.
 

Today on twitter and the official SWTOR forums,  David Bass posted the following;

via twitter:

doctordake David Bass

If you’re going to E3 or live in the LA area, would you want to come to a Meet & Greet this year? Vote

and then on the official forums he posted the poll you can see here.

Hi everyone,

Since E3 isn’t open to the public, we’re considering holding a meet and greet in Los Angeles during the expo so that fans who are in the LA area can meet up with us one night and chat with the developers. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to have the game playable at this meet and greet, but you’d get a chance to chat with those of us who’ll be at the show, and hear about some of the cool things that are happening inside E3.

We’d like to get a better idea of the size of group we’re looking at for an event like this, though. If you’d be interested in coming downtown one night between June 6-9 to meet up with the SW:TOR team, let us know in this thread!

Thanks,
David

Lets hope this comes to fruition because as a attendee of the recent Fan Site Summit at Austin, held by Bioware studios, I can surely tell you that these people would be a total blast to hang out with.  I highly recommend that if you have ever wanted to meet the people behind this game then you need to be here if it happens.  Log on to this thread and make your voice be heard.

Bioware has proven in the past that when the community shows a desire, they will try to make it happen.  If they are asking for your opinion then it’s obvious they think the need to do this is that important.

Rest assured that if it does happen, SWTOR-Life will be there covering it for you the fans of this game!  Be sure to follow us on twitter @Swtorcrafter and @SwtorLife to get the quickest updates about this and E3 2011 live from Los Angeles

Let your voice be heard!

UPDATE: SUNDAY MAY 15TH-EDITOR COMMENT

At the time of this update at mid afternoon Sunday we have seen what has happened so far on the thread and poll.  The thread has had:

1. 5,682  views
2. 161  replies
3. 607  people have voted on the poll
4. 172 of them or 28.34%    voted yes they would attend
5. 435 of them or 71.66%    voted no they would not attend

Within the thread we have seen these replies from the Developers:

In response to this from forum poster Cidran:

Originally Posted by Cidran

guess it really depends, what all does a meet and greet entail? like would it just be casual talk, any reveals? grab bags? interviews? im interested, but i dont know if there will be much there to encourage me to go.

Stephen Reid had this to say:

Well, it could be all of the above, or none of the above. So far we’re just trying to figure out if we should do it at all.

For those of you who can’t make the trip to LA, don’t despair. As I’ve said before, we’ll be at plenty of shows – before and after launch – in a number of different places.

He gives us enough to let us know that it is a important idea to them and that they are serious about possibly doing it now and into the future.  Bioware is a smart company, they know that the more they can make themselves available to the fans, the more the love for the project will grow within the community.  In my opinion that could only be good for the game and company as a whole.

GO VOTE!

UPDATE: TUESDAY MAY 17TH-EDITOR COMMENT

Well folks it seems that via David Bass on the official forums we will get our wish!  (assuming a suitable location can be acquired of course)  It does however seem like this will be an eventuality, I can’t wait to attend.  We will be bringing you coverage from this get together.

Here is what he had to say before closing the thread:

Thanks so much for the votes and the feedback, everyone! I think it’s pretty clear that a meet and greet is definitely doable at E3. I’m going to close this thread and get to work on planning something. We’ll post again once we have details to share.

And one final note for those of you considering dropping everything and flying into LA for this meetup: It’s really exciting to see all the enthusiasm towards this, but keep in mind that we’ll be doing plenty more events this year around the world, most of which are open to the public. You may want to hold off so that you can come to a public event and actually play the game. Just a suggestion.

UPDATE TUESDAY MAY 31ST-EDITOR COMMENT

Posted by Rockjaw aka Stephen Reid on twitter:

Rockjaw Stephen Reid

Looks like we are very close to getting a destination and time folks!

UPDATE TUESDAY JUNE 2ND-EDITOR COMMENT

Well today we got the word finally!  Some of the developers from Bioware will be at:

From the interview that me and Serge had with Damion Schubert and the Developer Q&A we attended with him, I got wind of something that has my ears perked for sure.  The mention or hinting at a new mechanic on the horizon for crew skills in SWTOR.

I was hit by the realization of what I think I understand them to be planning immediately.  In the Q&A with Damion Schubert when the first question of the session was asked to him, he replied with a response that included this little gem about a mystery “research system”

Continue Reading »

On day 2 of the Fan Site Summit in Austin a PvP presentation was scheduled. Unfortunately, Derek and me had to leave early to catch our flights back home so we missed most of the action. We did attend the Q&A with Gabe Amatangelo, but never got to actually participate in PvP. I’ll lay out the most important stuff we heard at the Q&A and link to coverage from other sites that were present and got to fight it out.

• You will be able to cast Crowd Control abilities on an enemy character only a set amount of times before they become immune to CC. There is a thing called resolve bar, that will be visible below each character’s HP bar, that fills up each time a CC ability lands on that character. When the resolve bar is full – character is immune.
• Score in PvP battlegrounds is divided among several categories: Healing done, Damage done and Defending done. Defending is related to the ammount of damage tank characters absorb on behalf of their allies this is done through the “Guard” ability every tank character has
• Guard ability lets you select an ally and cast this ability on him. This will “link” their health to the tank’s and 50% of all damage the “guarded” character receives is damaging the tank instead.
• There will be special PvP zones that once you enter you are automatically flagged for PvP. Even on PvE serves!
• As reward from PvP You get Valor points which are an alternative leveling system that lets you purchase PvP rewards once you reach certain Valor level. These rewards will not be too powerful when compared to PvE gear of similar class; 10-20% at most. This is more of a way of providing players with means to distinguish themselves as PvP players to the general population.
• Once the battleground is over you can actually vote for (commend) one player you think contributed the most. Person that was elected the most useful will get more rewards.
• Players that go on special streaks (like kill 10 enemies in a row without dying) get “badges” and their achievement is announced to everyone in the battleground so you know who is doing well/to avoid.
• Another battleground was revealed and it is called the Voidstar. The objective of this battleground is for one team to attack the enemy’s base objective by objective until they captured them all. At the end teams switch sides and the match continues.

Click here to see all the Fansite coverage we collected so far

During the first Fan Site Summit Bioware organized for members of the Fan Sites that write about their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, we had a chance to sit down for 2 days and play the game. These are impressions from our hands on experience and they are divided into the following segments:

1. Combat
2. Story
3. Exploration
4. General

You should also check out Swtorcrafter’s Bounty Hunter and General Gameplay Impressions for another view of the hands on experience.
 
DISCLAIMER: Everything discussed here is subject to change. The version of the game we played was not even the latest build that was about to hit the beta servers around the time we visited Austin. Please, take all of the things said here with a grain of salt. Through testing and player feedback things drastically change.
 
I will be covering exploration in The Old Republic in this part of my Imperial Agent hands on series of articles. Why exploration? It has become a lost art of MMO design. As developers moved towards creating more accessible games in order to reach the widest audience possible they chose to hold the players’ hand every step of the way and take them down a predefined path. This made exploration a moot point since there was nothing outside that laid out path. Massive Multiplayer games are, however, a perfect setting for exploration. With its massive lands that take hours to walk across you should be able to find things that none else saw before. Little gems of lore and land that game designers left for those inquisitive types of players. Does Bioware provide something like that in The Old Republic?
Click here to read more about my exploring adventures with the Imperial Agent

During the first Fan Site Summit Bioware organized for members of the Fan Sites that write about their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, we had a chance to sit down for 2 days and play the game. These are impressions from our hands on experience and they are divided into the following segments:

1. Combat
2. Story
3. Exploration
4. General

You should also check out Swtorcrafter’s Bounty Hunter and General Gameplay Impressions for another view of the hands on experience.
 

In this article I will talk about the famous Story component BioWare has been focusing on as a main pillar of this MMORPG. If you know Bioware you know their strongest asset is great story. That is why I wanted to fight “The Man” and try and break that aspect of the game. I am an ex World of Warcraft player. Your story does not concern me. Give me quests and point me to where I can shoot stuff. There will be some spoilers in this article, but I will try and spare you as much as I can and warn you upfront when spoiler is incoming.

Click here to read why I think this is the best Bioware game ever made

During the first Fan Site Summit Bioware organized for members of the Fan Sites that write about their upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, we had a chance to sit down for 2 days and play the game. These are impressions from our hands on experience and they are divided into the following segments:

1. Combat
2. Story
3. Exploration
4. General

You should also check out Swtorcrafter’s Bounty Hunter and General Gameplay Impressions for another view of the hands on experience.
 
In this article I will talk about the way combat works in SWTOR. I want to talk in detail about the skills my character had at its disposal during my gameplay and what it felt like to fight different types of enemies. I managed to get to level 6 on my own and I played a flashpoint with a level 9 character.
 
I’ve set a goal on playing the game outside of my usual gaming patterns. I usually read the quest text and do every quest I can find and I really hate to grind. I spend hours exploring and finding groups to do some cool stuff. In this case, I approached the game a bit different. I wanted to skip as much dialogue as I could to see if the game is still fun when I “break” the story element and I went off hunting mobs at random and outside my level range to see what it felt like. With all that in mind I sat at my designated computer and faced my scrawny imperial agent character. I felt sorry for the poor guy, he was in for some pain.
 
Click here to read more about the Imperial Agent and his combat skills

As part of our Fan Site Summit experience at Bioware offices in Austin, Texas, we got a chance to participate in two Q&A sessions that were organized with Damion Schubert, Lead Systems Designer, Daniel Erickson, Lead writer and Blaine Christine, Live Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We managed to ask one question to each of them and I am providing you with a transcripts of these questions and answers along with complete audio recording of the Q&A sessions so you can hear what other sites asked and got answers for.

I would also like to mention that the impression you get when asking these developers questions is that they are really smart and approachable. I thought that the Imperial Agent question (that we actually got asked by one of the community members on the official forums) was going to catch them off-guard, but they had an answer right off the bat. They want to tell you everything about the game that they have been building for so long and it always take an effort for them to constrain themselves to not spilling the beans on not-yet-released information.

Click here to read and listen to the questions and answers we got

I was recently given the opportunity to play the Bounty Hunter class in an origin world experience at the  first ever Bioware Fan Site Summit.  It was a fun time indeed and I am thankful for the opportunity.  It has answered a lot of questions for me personally about more than just the class, but on a broader level of having to do with my views on the game.

Continue Reading »

Crafters!

We are representing for you!

Swtor-Life.com has been given the honor of interviewing Damion Schubert, the Lead Systems Designer for Bioware, as part of the Fan Site Summit 2011.  We gathered the majority of questions for the interview from the community and we thank you for making your voice heard.

Join us now as we dive right into just who Damion is for the company and what he has been involved with in the past, and the goodies we have to look forward to in the Crew Skills system! There are exclusive reveals about the yet unannounced aspects of the Crew Skills system to be found in this interview and we will be providing a transcript shortly.

A big thank you to all who posted questions in this thread on the official forums where we asked the community for their choice of questions to go to Damion, some of you got the answers I hope you were looking for.

Join me in my next Swtorcrafter crafting article where I discuss this information in depth, there is a ton of it to wring out of this interview!