I would like to thank Mr. Daniel Erickson for his time and giving us this great interview. We were honored to bring the community questions to him and are happy that we were able to get most of them answered. You can check out this thread on the official forums to see what were all the questions that were asked and which ones did get answers.
 

 
Click here to read the full transcript of this interview

Breaking News

• Raid info at Gametrailers.com; Belsavis has various enviroments (Snow, Jungle, Lava); Ancient prison from ancient race is on the planet; Belsavis trailer being shown.; Imperial vs Republic conflict compromised the prison; Guy that got released ruled 20.000 years ago over 10,000 planets; You have to defeat him.
• 4 minutes of gameplay footage from the show floor. This is the full length version of our previous video
  
  

Latest News

• Up next on Gametrailers Live Stream TV is SWTOR. Watch the stream here.
• Razer, maker of gaming peripherals, has created SWTOR themed gaming gear. They have a trailer and images of it on their site and there is also a contest going on. We will have more on this once we talk to Razer ourselves.
• There was a Live Show on Gamepost before Daniel Erickson did his Live Stream for the fans. Here’s a link to the Youtube recording of the Gamespot Live Show (Gameplay and comments included)
• Ask A Jedi has posted their gameplay video footage here
• Massively has an article up about their hands on experience.

Recap of live stream with Daniel Erickson

• Tatooine is absolutely huge. Even with a mount it took a while to get from one place to another
• Blizz is a Jawa companion that only Bounty Hunters receive. He is a DPS gadgeteer.
• Companions have their own equipment screen, but not all of them change their look (like the Jawa companion). Those that don’t change look with gear have special “different look kits” that we’ll here more about soon
• Player mounts (vehicles) have different designs, speeds and cost
• There are Sarlaac in the game and you can chuck people into them. Whether they were thinking PvP or PvE is unclear.
• Droid companions get their own unique type of armor plating, as in the KOTOR series
• There is one more warzone that has not be announced and that people will be excited about because it is “special”.
• Tatooine is visitable by all classes, Dune Sea will be a huge PvP server hotspot
• When you die, there is a Medical Probe option that revives you exactly where you died. Upon revival you have 12 secs of Ultra-Stealth that no one can see.
• You can not level purely through PvP

Due to the previous post getting humongous I have decided to create the Part 2 of our live blog. Hope you stay with us because we still gave about 4 hours of coverage left.

E3PO is the official twitter tag for SWTOR coverage of E3

Today marks the official beginning of the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo. If you think that it will be hard to top the epic SWTOR trailer “Return” you might be wrong. What we have in line from E3 is a full day of end game, vehicle, Tatooine and hands on experience news. Here’s a chronological list of things to expect:

• EAGamer tweeted the following (link):
  

  If you are at #E3 be at the @EA booth at 12:30 sharp on Tues for a special @SWTOR experience you won’t want to miss. @biofeed #E3PO

  None else talked about this early, 12:30, announcement so we are curious if this was a wrong time conversion or a real event.

• There will be a live stream from the show floor and EA booth at 2PM PDT. Being show is SWTOR gameplay and there will be a Q&A session with one of the developers. They are labeling this event as “Exclusive Tatooine reveal” so I am guessing we will see Tatooine gameplay (DUH).
• We are promised images and video from the show floor throughout today from official sources so keep an eye out on our own coverage as well as official swtor.com site.
• Interviews and hands on sessions for fan sites will start at around 5PM PDT and we can expect to hear first impressions at about 7PM PDT.

A lot of people think that the “Return” trailer should not be the only awe inspiring news coming from Bioware about SWTOR. A lot of fan hopes are riding on what will be revealed today. We will be with you every step of the day with our man at the convention and us Live Blogging all the latest news as it happens, so make sure you check back in really soon, because our coverage of 2011 E3 is officially about to start.

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.
 

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 »

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!

In a surprising mid-week update official SWTOR site released a video showcasing the highlights of the Old Republic’s presence at Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. We can see the excitement of the crowds and how awesome the booth looked. If you look closely you can see various well known faces from the SWTOR community and Corellian Run Radio is keeping a list of all that they spotted. Oh, and props to the honeymoon couple and the girl in princess Leia costume.

Welcome to our second day of covering the Penny Arcade Expo and all the Star Wars The Old Republic news that will be pouring out of Boston. Yesterday was a satisfying day for TOR fans because of the officially released trailer and a number of great gameplay videos from both Taral V instance/flashpoint and starting worlds. There was an announcement that we’ll get some more official news today as well so keep refreshing this post for the latest updates.

Latest Video:

Latest News:

• Paraphrasing: Crafting is complex and intricate and involves a lot of social interaction – Daniel Erickson (source: Jen’jidai Guild)
• “There is our own version of the slave leia costume” – James Ohlen (source: Jen’jidai Guild)
• There will be no day/night cycle in the game at release. Some planets have multiple moons/suns – too hard to implement (source: Darth Hater)
• 16 minute Official in-game Taral V Developer Walkthrough video released
• Line at SWTOR booth at PAX is so long that David Bass (senior community manager) just told the tail of the line that they won’t be able to play today!!! It’s 10:15am (tweeted by Jen’jidai Guild)

Images from the show floor:

Click for Full Size

CRR Crew + Erickson = awesome

Torocast, DartHater, MER

You can check out our Day One coverage in the posts bellow:

• SWTOR PAX East 2011 Minute by Minute Coverage Day 1
• 15 minutes of gameplay footage in HD!
• PAX East Gameplay Videos Galore – Day 1

Visitors of Penny Arcade Expo have been busy recording various gameplay sessions all throughout day 1 of the convention and we have gathered all the relevant videos in this one post. There is some more footage of Taral V flashpoint as well as some starting planets gameplay. We also have Daniel Erickson giving a few more presentation of various planets and I suspect we will be seeing all of these videos as downloadable content from the official site. Until then enjoy.

Taral V Jedi Knight group gameplay

Video shows full in-game cinematic for the instance telling us the background story of why are we fighting this hard fight. Flashpoint footage is from the first third of the instance and the person playing is a clicker (you have been warned). Quality is Full HD and the video is worth your bandwidth.

Taral V Jedi Knight group gameplay – Last Boss

Video shows the last third of Taral V instance including the fight (and wipe) with the last boss. *spoiler alert* Last boss seems to have an add so it requires some coordination and unfortunately the Trooper died and Jedi Knight was not able to take aggro from the healers quickly enough (not his fault). The person playing seems to be a veteran MMO player and you can see just how smooth the gameplay is when played by a knowledgeable player. The video is HD and gets 5 stars from me.

Taral V Jedi Sage group gameplay

Jungle part of Taral V from the Jedi Sage perspective. Video is HD with detailed shot of the UI in the end

Bounty Hunter Hutta gameplay

We see the starting zone for Bounty Hunter with some great cutscenes and a chubby BH as our protagonist. HD quality is available and I recommend watching it this way because it brings out the best out of the game footage.

Hoth – presented by Daniel Erickson

We see some areas of Hoth with surprising volcanic activity and future questing grounds set inside ice caves and ship graveyards. Available in HD quality as well. Thanks to Engrey for the footage.

Tatooine – presented by Daniel Erickson

Official trailer showing in-game footage of Tatooine vistas.

Sith Warrior – 14 minutes on Korriban

The video shows all cutscenes and footage from questing inside a cave on Korriban. This is footage similar to the one we’ve see at Gamescom last year, but nice to see it again.

Darth Hater just released a video they shot at the SWTOR booth at Pax East where a demonstration of the Space Combat feature was held live. Presentation was hosted by Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid and the footage is amazing in all of its Full HD glory. The video shows awesome footage of the space map and then shows us space combat inside an asteroid field. Darth Hater is working on one of their famous dissections of the video and you can find it here.