When the Pre-Launch Guild Program was announced by Bioware it caused a largely positive response in the community. Bioware provided basic tools for people to organize themselves into guilds so when the game releases you are starting the adventure together with your friends. With tens of thousands of guilds being made within the first months it is clear that the community welcomed the Program with open hands. This great mass of guilds makes it kind of hard to find the right one though. With the launch getting closer and the Guild Program in its third and final phase I thought it would be a good idea to try and present a few prominent guilds so you might find a guild you could call your home. The honor of being the first guild to be presented on SWTOR Life is a guild from my own country. I thought it would be interesting to share a story about what it’s like to create a guild and be in the Red Zone country (countries that are not in the initial launch list) and still manage to gather a fair number of members. Here’s the Guild Story of Balkan Force as told by its founders Branislav and Bojan. Click here to read the interview with Balkan Force founders
He wrote the Imperial Agent story. He wrote Blood of the Empire and The Lost Suns comics. He is one of the nicest guys on the SWTOR writing team (lets face it, they are all cool). He was present at Paris Game Week this year and he talked to Guild Chimaera about SWTOR. For all you US visitors – Guild Chimera is one of the most prominent fansites in France and you can find great footage from the convention held in Paris on their site (click links for day 0 and day 1 footage). I have two questions for them though – does their guild have a large number of French women as members (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and did I see right – did Alexander Freed cut his hair while he was in Paris?
By the way, isn’t that just a great news title? In what other line of work would you be able to write that Chimaera interviewed someone?
One of the nice little tidbits that I just found that came out of PaxPrime this weekend thanks to Kristen Archer of Torwars.com was this tasty little morsel about the possibility for gambling in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO. Courtesy of an interview that Video Nvidia did with Cory Butler. At about 3 minutes in we get this question and very interesting answer from Cory,
According to Cebo in his thread on the official forums for Star Wars the Old Republic MMO, Gamestar Magazine had an exclusive interview with Gabe Amatangelo from Bioware regarding “operations” (Bioware’s term for raiding in it’s MMO) . He talked about different sizes of operations, plus he also revealed that there would be adjustable difficulty levels for you and you group.
One of the things I have really liked about crafting systems in past games I have played was the ability to break items down into raw resources or the ability to “Deconstruct” them. Sure the ability usually was present to just go gather myself and gain the resources I needed that way. Also I could just go to the auction house and buy them, but sometimes it wasn’t practical to do either or economical with crazy server prices and it was just easier to deconstruct stuff I had lying around for the few ingots of a certain type of metal or wooden grips, etc, I needed at the time.
Published by Mikro under E3,video on Jun. 13. 2011.
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.
Published by Mikro under E3,news on Jun. 07. 2011.
News is already starting to come in from E3 although it hasn’t even started yet! Unfortunately, a lot of sites are reporting wrong information so stuff like 4-man raids and experience with the Operation: Eternity Vault are all wrong. This puts a taint on what information is actually correct and what is a product of reporter confusion. My best guess is that some members of the press were invited to play Talar V flashpoint and got to play the Origin worlds (as is said in the machinima.com interview with Daniel Erickson). Everything else you might read is reporters getting confused in between what they played and what they heard will be talked about on the show floor.
The following interview Machinima did with Daniel Erickson is a nice intro into what is happening. Nothing new is revealed but it is always nice hearing DE talk (yes, I’m a fanboi).
The next piece of information I am not sure about. Kotaku released an article about the first impression of the game and mentions the Raid content. There have been some questions raised about the validity of information in this article, but some of it seems valid.
I hope we’ll sort all of this confusion out by this time tomorrow when people that know what they are doing will be reporting from the show floor.
On that note I leave you with an image of our very own SWTORCrafter’s E3 Media badge that he just got at the LA Convention Center.
Published by Mikro under E3,video on Jun. 05. 2011.
Here’s some honest, heartfelt and hopefully friendly advice for #SWTOR fans: take a deep breath and know we’re making an amazing MMO that IS coming. Trust me. It’s coming.
The above was tweeted by Stephen Reid, Community Manager of The Old Republic. Having met the man I can tell you he is the least bulls**t person in marketing I’ve met so far. The quote above, it is actually his honest opinion. After seeing Friday, pre-E3, information blast we come closer to sharing his sentiment.
Information was released through the official site and its Friday Update as well as through Gamespot and MMORPG.com. What we know now from this info blast is what we can expect to find out more about at E3.
End game content (introducing the first raid The Eternity Vault)
High level gameplay on Tatooine with Imperial classes
New Cinematic Trailer (last of the trilogy)
Something about Alderaan (I am thinking PvPvE scenario)
Vehicles (mounts)
Auction house and social hubs
Next big thing is the trailer released on Gamespot that shows all of the game’s systems and for the first time we officially see player mounts, auction house and social hubs. You can see the trailer bellow:
