Only a few days are left before Boston hosts the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo – East coast edition. This is a big deal in the SWTOR community because Bioware seems to love PAX and always does something special at these events. This event is also special because for the first time there will be an organized gathering of SWTOR fansites and fans at two community events. Here’s a list of important things you can expect from PAX East this year.

The Old Republic booth is 912 and that is where visitors will be able to sit down and play the game. For the first time the general public will be able to experience flashpoint content. Taral V, the flashpoint we’ve seen footage of several weeks ago, is what people will be able to play through at the show. Those that lean towards the dark side can avoid playing this Republic only instance and choose to play one of the Sith Empire classes and their starting planets. Never fear my Jedi friends, you get a treat as well because for the first time the general public will be able to play on Tython and try Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular. Just to make things even more awesome James Ohlen (Lead Designer) and Daniel Erickson (Lead Writer) will be hanging at the booth all throughout the event and will be available for Q&A sessions.

The things I hate missing out on are two community gatherings that will happen at PAX. There is the Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Cantina organized by SWTOR fansites (I think the main sponsor is Darth Hater). Here are the details:
Date & Time: Friday March 11th, 2011, 7PM
Location: The Times Irish Pub & Restaurant, 112 Broad St. (Between High st & Wendell St.) Boston, MA 02110
Confirmed Participants:
Ask A Jedi
Corellian Run Radio
Curse
Darth Hater
Massively
Mos Eisley Radio
TORSyndicate

The second event is officially organized by Bioware and it is by invitation only. You can get your invitations at the SWTOR booth and if you do you will be able to attend the Community Meet and Greet hosted by SWTOR community team. The details are as follows:

Date & Time: March 12th, 2011
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront hotel
Confirmed Participants:
SWTOR Community team (meaning Stephen Reid, David Bass and Allison Berryman to name a few)
Developers (depending on how tired they are we might see James Ohlen and Daniel Erickson)

Remember that you can queue for the event up to an hour early so make sure you arrive there on time because the capacity is limited!

I have a lot of convention news withdrawal. I was spoiled by the convention season and the constant stream of news coming our way. It fed the hole created by not being in the SWTOR beta. Luckily, SWTOR fansites are plentiful and have great articles and content for you to browse through on a dreaded Monday and we are here to list it all for you.

Fansite Mentions

Lets get all the PAX info out of the way first.

TOROCast has released several quality articles created based on info they gathered at PAX. They took notes on Stats and what they do and shared it in a very informative article.

Darth Hater has its own PAX article that sums up all the General info they learned from the hands on experience. Two page article covers all the General Notes, Stat Modifiers, Character Sheets, Equipment and Loot they were able to record.

To round up the convention related news we have a bit of late news from SWTOR Station and their Gamescom coverage. They just released a new video from Gamescom that shows Daniela & Hergen (French/German Community Manager) and some speeders in action as well as Hutta’s spaceport video footage. Visit SWTOR Station for the full article and you can watch the video bellow:

Blog Mentions

Our Friends at Scary Booster have a great blog post “Let’s talk planets”, discussing how multiple planets and travel and story between them will work in a MMO environment. Check out their article and join the discussion in the comments here.

Podcast Mentions

Galactic Holofeed has entered its 1 year of SWTOR podcasts. Suzina and Kalvod guide us through their impressions of the Designing the Light Side Developer Dispatch and speculate in their knowledgeable and informed way about the Smuggler abilities. Clicking here will take you to their site and the Transmission 52 article.

Corellian Run Radio discusses PAX and all the info we got from there.

TOROCast just released their Episode 69 “Jedi do it with the Lights on”

The biggest event for The Old Republic fans was SWTOR panel. We got loads of new media and information and AskAJedi.com was there to cover the whole event and provide us with a video showing all the great stuff revealed. Here are some of the things you can see in the videos below:

• Jedi gameplay and backstory on Tython (Part 2 video)
• Awesome footage of your Jedi character’s lightsaber being created (reminiscent of the deleted scene shown at this year’s Celebration V) (Part 2 video)
• More Republic group gameplay and dialogue footage (Part 2 video)
• Empire group gameplay and dialogue (Part 3 video)
• Companions seen in group action (Part 3 video)
• PvP(vE)? There is some Empire group footage that ends with Empire group meeting up with Republic group after some PvE content (Part 3 video)
• Live multiplayer demo with members of the SWTOR fan site community controlling the characters. Darth Hater, TOROCast and LordHammer representing Guild Umbra and TORSyndicate were the ones involved (Part 3 video)

I would like to point you to Ask A Jedi’s article on the whole thing here. They deserve a visit.

Doors of the Penny Arcade Expo have officially opened and North American gamers can finally sink their teeth into Star Wars: The Old Republic. Covering the event are several SWTOR fansites. Darth Hater continues with their excellent coverage where they update their PAX dedicated page constantly throughout the day with new info. These are some of the more interesting things they noticed with their hands on experience:

• All classes except the two Jedi ones are playable to the public at low level for approximately 15m.
• The line to play is at least an hour.
• Sith Warrior was a human female with cybernetics on face.

You can read the rest of their updates here.

Ask a Jedi is also covering the event live with a constantly updated page. They had a chance to do a quick Q&A with Senior Producer Blaine Christine and Lead Writer Daniel Erickson. They covered advanced classes, companions, “is it an MMO?” and more. We’ll let you know as soon as they post this on their site. In the meantime you can read some highlights here. The same page also holds some hands on impressions and good screenshots. Also, they tweeted that:

Nothing new revealed today, but the inside word is that tomorrow will bring some GREAT news.

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.