Author: Soeren Kamper

Star Wars: The Old Republic VIP Interview

Public interest in all things Star Wars: The Old Republic related is at an all time high. While there are some gameplay elements that couldn’t be discussed too in-depth as of yet – for example what type of crafting system the game will have (personally I’m anxious to find out if we’ll need to craft 20 lightcutlasses before moving up to lightsabers) – Blaine and Jake did their best to provide as much detail for our readers as possible. What was your biggest hurdle in making the move to an MMO? (Annache) Blaine Christine: I think really it comes down to scope. Obviously it’s much, much bigger; we’ve talked a lot about how each class has their own story and each of those stories is essentially a full game. It’s literally 100s of hours of story, questing and all of the secondary activities. So when you factor that in with…

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Interview with Community Manager Sean Dahlberg

The folks over at SWTOR-Station had the chance to talk with Bioware Community Manager, Sean Dahlberg, at Gamescom in Cologne If you don’t know who Sean Dahlberg is, here is a quick heads up. Sean is the guy that looks after us every day in the official forums. I this interview he tells us about his vision of good community management, and about him self. It is a pretty interesting interview as we get an impression who the man is. A few quick points we learn about him is that he rather tends to the dark side of power, what his favourite class is, and that he loves German food. Talking about Germany, I am pretty sure the the German and French fans will be happy to hear that they get there own servers. Have fun

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Star Wars The Old Republic GamesCom 2009 Interview with Lead Writer Daniel Erickson

The below tekst is a direct translation from German to English – done by google translate. So sorry about the bad gramma, I still hope you get the main points. Lead writer of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Daniel Erickson, answers a few questions. In this interview he actually have some interesting information to share with us, like Whether healer class, Companion Characters, Sith-Warrior, fractions, German servers, etc. One can not stress that BioWare employees are all super friendly and Daniel Erickson has no problem to agree to our questions to answer and not just the standard answers. So now we know for example that is not yet determined whether there is a healer class or not, since it is still hard-tested, and in any case some of the Companion Characters can heal. In this context, however, is actually much more interesting that we have clearly confirmed that the crew…

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Star Wars the Old Republic Release Date?

According to what was reported by a French fansite, Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a bit far away from being launched; in fact, the website claims that it will not be launched before October 2010. So far the game seems in a pretty damn good condition. The dialogs look great, and the world itself looks amazing from what ive seen on official E3 Stage Demos. So pray for a good development and in a year we will be able to zoom about in the star wars universe and make our own way thru the galaxy, the proper way. We will ofc keep you updated on the release date as updates come in.

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Fan Friday for August 2009

Happy Friday everyone! We hope you en joy these community spotlights for the month of August. Star Wars ASCII Art Much like a Trooper and his gun, Star Wars™ and ASCII Art make a great combination. Check out some great ASCII creations inspired by iconic Star Wars images in this ASCII art thread created by ilsabay. Maybe you can try your hand at an ASCII creation in the community! Smuggler’s Alliance Icon It’s undeniable that a Smuggler likes to show off, and needs an impressive icon to represent his group. VannikDesh created these three awesome Smuggler Alliance icons for the TOR community to use in their signatures. The first image combines the Aurebesh letters “S” and “A” to create a dagger hilt and includes the downturned wings of The Old Republic logo. The second and third versions used The Old Republic blaster concept art with the Aurebesh dagger in blue…

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Threat of Peace, Chapter 2, Issue #13

The thirteenth issue of Threat of Peace™ begins with Lieutenant Tavus deftly maneuvering his starship to destroy the Mandalorian Raiders and rescue Satele and SP-99. As Tavus, Satele, and Orgus discuss the attack on the Envoy and what to do next, a darker series of events unfolds on the Imperial Transport ship. Learning of the Bounty Hunter’s escape, Captain Sivill orders the Wookiee Mercenary Dalborra to execute Master Dar’Nala… Check out the latest issue of Threat of Peace now.

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Fastest Hunk of Junk Realty

The trilogy’s Millennium Falcon. KOTOR’s Ebon Hawk. These weren’t just vehicles shuttling folks to and fro in the Star Wars universe — they were as much of a locale as any planet or base that our heroes visited. We got to know the inner workings of these freighters, and grew to love them for all their blocky, chunky, low-tech hominess. I might have mentioned this before, but I sincerely hope that The Old Republic not only institutes player housing upon launch, but that the housing is a player’s ship. The more I played through KOTOR again, the more I love this concept, because it really does work on a MMO level: It solves the problem of “How do we move players from planet to planet without resorting to Star Wars Galaxies’ shuttle system?” by handing players permanent transport and leaving it up to them to use it. The acquisition of…

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Star Wars: Sneaky, Sneaky

Since a great deal of TOR’s Holonet — the game’s official repository for info and features — is still hidden, fans have been hacking away at entering in random words into the URL to see if any might match and unconver potential secrets that BioWare is holding close to their chest. So far, the community has found a number of pages that do not give a “Requested Page Not Found” error, but merely a blank page — a placeholder, if you will. So what are the pages? http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/combat http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/pvp http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/professions http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/space http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/story http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/characters http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/guild http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/equipment http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/enemies Okay, so nothing eye-opening in the extreme, but it does make one curious for what they might be revealing in the future — especially under the “space” and “professions” pages.

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A Tribiute to Knights of the old republic

This video will remember us why we played it. Why we keep playing it. Why this game will never be exceeded. Why this game is a Legend. After a week of long days behind my computer while combining videos from the game, it’s finally done. I’ve put parts of my best vids and others from the game and Youtube in one final vid which should remember us of this legendary game. Though I think it still surpasses any other KOTOR tribute on Youtube, I failt you guys, and myself. I tried to make a video worthy of the game’s glory, but that seems impossible. Still, I did my best. This should be my last KOTOR video. At least for some time. Until I have enough inspiration to overthrow this one. Please rate, and comment.

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Threat of Peace, Issue #12

The twelfth issue of Threat of Peace™ keeps us on board the Imperial transport ship, where Captain Sivill’s brutal interrogation tactics have nearly killed Master Dar’Nala. Foreseeing her fate, Dar’Nala helps Braden escape from the ship in exchange for a promise that he will deliver an important message. Meanwhile, the escape pod carrying Jedi Knight Satele Shan and the Imperial Protocol droid SP-99 is detected by a passing vessel… Check out the latest issue of Threat of Peace now.

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Fan Friday and Summer Events Schedule

This Fan Friday includes details for our upcoming conventions and spotlights from the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ community! Don’t forget to participate in the latest poll and check out our new forum avatars. TOR at GamesCom and Penny Arcade Expo Star Wars: The Old Republic will be will be bringing the power of the Force to two more conventions this year, GamesCom (Cologne, Germany; August 19-24 ) and Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) (Seattle, Washington; September 4 – 6). During the conventions, the team we will be showcasing the first public gameplay demo as well as giving away Star Wars™ goodies to attendees. Stop by the community cantina and hang out with some of the members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic team. If you can’t make the shows, don’t worry! We will have the gameplay demo footage available to the community on our official website. To stay up-to-date…

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Star Wars the Old Republic: Video Documentary #3 – The Voice of the Old Republic

As revealed during E3, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will be a fully voiced massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. Watch our third Video Documentary where we explore how voice-over conversations deliver a deeper level of immersion and connection to the story and characters. Every playable character and every non-playable character in the game will be brought to life by voice actors – resulting in several thousand speaking roles and hundreds of thousands of recorded lines of dialogue!

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Interview with Bioware’s Richard Vogel

Check out this Star Wars: The Old Republic interview from Bioware’s Co-GM Richard Vogel. Please excuse the bad audio. Transcript: I am Richard Vogel and I am the co-GM at Bioware-Austin. Basically this story, umm, takes place 300 years after the original KotOR, which is what it’s based on. Uh, Knights of the Old Republic. And, uh, 2700 years before the movies. So gives us a lot of leeway to a lot of stuff we couldn’t do if we were near the movies. So, there are a lot of Jedi, for instance, in our game. But as far as classes go, we announced the Bounty Hunter, and we announced the Trooper, and we announced the Smuggler. We have been developing for about three years. We’re, uh, not ready, still not ready to release yet. We have a ways to go. Well, basically what we did is, we did, uh, we…

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The Return of the Mandalorians

The Keeper of the Jedi Archives has entered a new holorecord. Continuing his investigation, Master Gnost-Dural delves deeper into the history of the galaxy after discovering that the blockade that Hylo Visz helped end was a result of the actions of the new Mandalore. BTC 8 – During a Republic resurgence in the Great War, a bold young warrior rose to fame in the Gladiatorial arenas on Geonosis. Adopting the ancient and infamous title of Mandalore, this young leader amassed an army of Mandalorian mercenaries and bounty hunters. The new Mandalore led his forces to form a blockade and challenge the Jedi Order, effectively turning the tide of the war back in the Sith Empire’s favor. Watch the third Timeline holorecord, The Return of the Mandalorians, narrated by actor Lance Henriksen.

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STAR WARS™: The Old Republic™ E3 Highlights

Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) kicked off at E3 with the help of the local 501st Legion. Championed by costumed Jedi and Sith from the Old Republic era, Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., and Darrell Rodriguez, President of LucasArts, revealed the first TOR cinematic trailer, “Deceived”, at the 2009 EA Press conference. At the TOR booth, the team took E3ers through the first live demo featuring a closer look at the game’s newly revealed class, the Smuggler, as well as the combat, flashpoint, cover, and multiplayer dialogue systems. Highlighted features from the demo: TOR will be the first fully voiced MMO – Every playable character (male and female) and every non-playable character in the game will be brought to life by voice actors – resulting in several thousand speaking roles and hundreds of thousands of recorded lines…

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Star Wars The Old Republic Ingame Gameplay Footage + what we know so far

Info General: * Only being released for PC, no consoles * Seems that the Game has PvE Mode and a PvP Mode – SifiWire * Graphics are great and smooth – Mentioned in Multiple Reviews * The interface seems standardised. Hot keys on a UI Bar. – 1UP * The Majority of the Game can be done without Any help from anyone else – StarWarsMMO Demo * Space Experience will be in game, its still being worked on – Machinima * Subtitles for alien speech. – EuroGamer * BioWare is currently indicating that it will be unwilling to let players skip or read dialogue scenes- EuroGamer * The UI Can be customised!- StarWarsMMO * Naming Filters include not being able to have numbers, special characters or Star Wars names – StarWarsMMO Demo * Full Voice overs for all NPC, Companions and some extent our characters (There is a mention in…

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Star Wars The Old Republic Timeline #1 The Treaty of Coruscant

The Treaty of Coruscant marked the end of the Great Galactic War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire. The two factions met on Alderaan to discuss the terms of peace, while the treacherous Sith launched a simultaneous attack against the Republic on their home world of Coruscant. The sacking and occupation of Coruscant allowed the Empire to force the Republic into a completely helpless position, leaving them no choice but to surrender to the Empire’s terms. The Republic gave up control of multiple star systems and trade routes to the Sith Empire and gained little to nothing in return. This treaty marked the beginning of a Cold War. Transcript Greetings. I am Master Gnost-Dural, keeper of the Jedi archives. The Jedi Council requests I perform a daunting task: to revise the order’s historical records in light of new revelations about the formation of the Sith Empire. Specifically, I am to trace the conflict between the Empire and the Republic,…

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