My attention span is that of a chipmunk. If you hit me with a podcast that lasts for 2 hours I will probably be distracted by the time the opening music is done with. When you start the podcast with a small clip from Robot Chicken Star Wars episode II (that I just watched a few days ago) and your guest host is Scott from Extra Life (one of my bookmarked webcomics that I visit regularly for the past 5 years or something) you might just be able to beat my ADD. This is what Mos Eisley Radio did with their podcast #22 named “Extra Lives”.

It’s a pretty bold move to start a new podcast among so many quality ones already existing in the TOR fansite universe, but when you do it right like TOR Syndicate did we have to tell you about it. The first full fledged podcast episode is available on their site and they talk a lot about what it is like to be doing a fansite for The Old Republic. They also interview the owner of Toruniverse.com and its a great insightful show that lets you inside the fansite creating life.

In other news, we have a merger of two fansites, Dathomir Project and Jedi Archive Online that they announced in their podcast that you can find here. Also, if you are interested in joining the fansite community TOROcast.com is looking for people. You can read more about it in this thread on the official forums.

As a final treat I give you Epicness! It’s a 3D rendered Star Wars space battle made by one man as a school project and it is absolutely amazing. Found this in the forums in this thread.

Release of Star Wars The Old Republic is still some months away and at this point nobody but the people at Bioware know what it looks like or what it plays like in its entirety. Bioware has been releasing a lot of information in this past year about what the game will consist of, but what we always seem to lack are completely detailed descriptions of the announced features. I guess playing the game and seeing that feature in action is the only way to fully understand it.

There are, however, other games that Bioware released over the years and are playable. They even have some features that are announced for SWTOR. To try and understand to the full extent some of the announced aspects of SWTOR, we have decided to play Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect series and try and draw conclusions on what we can expect in SW: The Old Republic. It is only reasonable to assume that Bioware will base some of the game elements in their new game on success of that feature in the old games.

Spaceships have played a great role in the Star Wars Universe. It can be argued that space scenes and scenes in spaceships are as important as those happening in more “conventional” environments. It is a Space Opera after all. Millenium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy according to Han Solo, is an equally important character as the Droids or the Wookies. In Knights of the Old Republic we, as players, had a chance to own our ship – the Ebon Hawk. It is our means of transportation, our storage facility, it is the place where some major plot-lines are resolved. During 2010 E3 gaming convention Bioware announced that players will also be able to own ships and released a video showcasing the ship’s interior and exterior. In difference to KOTOR, there will be different class ships available. We have created a video pitching KOTOR’s Ebon Hawk versus the ships seen in the SWTOR video.

Click here to read the full Editorial article on player ships and what we can expect

Gamespot just released their full video of the SWTOR panel that was held during San Diego Comic Con where it was officially announced for the first time that there will be Space Combat and Ship customization. This is the version with excellent quality and you can see it below or visit Gamespot’s video page to download it or view it in full HD.

P.S. Morgan Webb looks great in HD 😛

Finally we can see and hear for ourselves what it was like at the San Diego Comic Con this year. Sean Dahlberg tweeted about a thread on the official forums that holds all the links to the youtube videos. We thank Lukery for posting these links in this thread on the forums. Enjoy!

Thanks to this thread on the official forums we became aware of the video below. Apparently, the engine Bioware is using to create SWTOR is capable of producing space combat experiences. The video below is a demonstration of such capabilities by a small developer studio using the same “Hero” engine to create their own Space combat MMO. Whether Space combat in SWTOR will resemble the video below in any way is completely speculative and I must warn against making any conclusions based on the footage you are about to see. I just think this is an interesting find and wanted to share it with you.

Another Friday means another update from our friendly community manager. This week we get another Developer dispatch video (no.7) discussing the music of The Old Republic. Beside creating 5+ hours of original music for the game we will also be able to enjoy some classics from the Knights of the Old Republic game as well as some of the legendary themes from John Williams. You can visit the official page here or read an excerpt from the article bellow:

The emotional experience of Star Wars™ comes to life in new music created exclusively for The Old Republic™. From soft melodies that ring in the forest of Alderaan to the magnificent booming of a battle scene on Ord Mantell, a talented team of composers, musicians and developers came together to create a magical score for the game.

As part of their regular Friday update swtor.com released a video of the gameplay showcasing a group of 4 facing some early level group content. All 4 Republic classes are
present and we can see different roles they have within a group. It is not too far off the MMORPG standard. I like how the tank is actually ranged (Trooper carries a massive laser cannon thing) while smuggler’s ability to help just a bit with healing stands out from a “rogue” like role.

Another thing to notice would certainly be how the quest is fully voiced and the group respond mechanics. It seems that when a group initiates a voiced quest each of them picks a response an than the game does a silent roll and picks one of the responses. Social points everyone’s been mentioning and that none seem to know what they are for probably have some role in this whole matter.

You can view the video bellow or on the official site. I also recommend you visit Darth Hater because they did a great dissection of the video here.

Prior to this year’s E3 a new SW:TOR cinematic trailer called “Hope” got leaked to the internetz. Let me tell you, it makes fanboys and fangirlshave to change their undies. In my personal opinion it is not as epic as the “Deceived” trailer, but it is very epic in its own right. Enjoy it in its full HD greatness below and we’ll go into detail in the days to come.

The latest developer dispatch has been released. It’s the fifth in the series and showcases the Sith Inquisitor and Sith Warrior, the last two classes of the dark side. The video is of great quality and in HD and we can see a few people actually playing the game, among other things. You can see the interface and “spellcasting” (is the proper term forcecasting?) and how all that works at around 3:50. There seems to be a possibility of adding extra action bars. The bottom of the screen seems to be reserved for all your game info, from character and target HP and MP bars to basic action bar and buffs. Even the radar is placed in the bottom right. I bet there will be many changes to this setup by the time game actually makes an appearance (or we can customize our little hearths out of it … hopefully). Anyways, enjoy the video:

I am at loss of words. I have images of explosions and light sabers and bullet time effects permanently burned into my brain. The cinematic trailer Bioware released at the E3 expo is probably the most epic piece of media ever to be unleashed on the world. I haven’t been this excited about something since I first saw the WoW trailer 5 years ago. Could it be that Blizzard, the master of cinematic trailers, has finally found its match. Judge for yourself from the video below. If I were you I would go to the official SW:tOR site and download the trailer in HD resolution – it is worth every megabyte. The trailer can be found here (to download use that little arrow pointing down).