Ilum was the ice planet home to many of the Adegan crystals used in the construction of Jedi lightsabers. The caverns containing the crystals were long ago turned into a Jedi temple. Unlike the crystals of other planets, the crystals of Ilum could only produce green and blue lightsaber crystals. History Ilum was first discovered in 22,800 BBY when a Jedi, navigating hyperspace in the Force, felt a strong pull deep from the Unknown Regions. Following the sensation, the scout had found a world rich in Force-strong crystals. The mystique of the discovery added it to the ceremony of lightsaber construction. Establishing a Temple over the Crystal Caves, Ilum became a place of great importance, as sacred as Ossus and Tython. The temple served as a shelter and place of ritual for the Jedi who traveled here. To ensure the security of the planet and the crystals, the planet had…
Video Review: The Force Unleashed
A few days ago we posted Lord Iurus amazing review of Sean Williams new book: The Force Unleashed. “The Lord” has now put together a video Review of the same book. A excellent view, I recommend you to check out – if you plan to read the book or play the game. Edit: “The Lord” informs us that he’s only the editor of the review; it was written and posted by Sith Jammies. You can check out Jammies website Here. Lord Iurus of NJOE.com, maintains an ongoing look back at the Expanded Universe, “A Long Time Ago”, as well as providing Spoiler Free reviews a week before most major Star Wars releases, in addition to the other reviews found at his blog.
What to do on a space date
1950’s space virgins need to know this stuff. I’m going to try to do one Nerdy Instructional Film a month with different movies. Coming in November: office safety.
Ilum: Dark Plans for Power?
Today’s official update is a planet reveal. And a surprising one (to me anyway) at that. After Hoth already having been revealed I’m surprised to see another ice planet. But regardless, BioWare revealed that they have included the ice planet<span< a=””> class=”Apple-style-span” style=”color: #cccccc; font-family: ‘Trebuchet MS’, Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;”> Ilum in the game. Here is the official news: </span<> With the final outcome of the war between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic still undecided, the icy planet Ilum sits squarely in the cross-hairs. The crystals that grow here in abundance are the source of incredible power and possibility. Jedi and Sith alike have long sought them for their Lightsabers, but the ramifications may go much deeper. Recently the Empire launched a major assault against the Jedi on Ilum, destroyed the Order’s sanctuaries, and initiated an ambitious operation of unknown intent. With its forces already spread thin, the Republic…
Daniel Erickson on Quest Content
On the official forums Daniel Erickson made a rather sizable post detailing the kind of quest content that you’ll encounter in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This ranges from your class quests to world quests and beyond. Here’s the entire post: This one can get confusing as there is a great deal of content in the game, all geared for slightly different experiences. So let’s get to it, yes? –There is no repeated content across factions. Easy enough. –Every Class has a completely unique storyline with their own companion characters and quests that takes them from the very first level through the very last and leads them naturally into the end game content. We call these Class Quests. Now the questions and ideas that can be harder to get your head around if you haven’t yet been one of the few lucky ones to actually play the game. –“Is all your…
Sexy Star Wars Halloween costumes
Explore the universe while staying warm with this five-piece sexy costume that includes a cropped top, lace-up mini skirt, hood with attached sleeves, leg warmers and over the shoulder satchel. Gun not included.
GDC Online updates
As this October’s GDC Online — formerly called GDC Austin — prepares for first content announcements, the Texas-based show has added Playfish and Electric Bat execs to BioWare, Nexon, SOE, and Zenimax notables on its Advisory Board. As this is an industry conference for folks who make games, the focus is not actually on playing them, such as at PAX or GamesCom. As such, we don’t expect any SW:TOR related news to come out here. Still a few interesting news has hit the internet. ZAM.com snagged an interview with BioWare’s Gordon Walton and ZeniMax Online Studios’ Matt Firor while at GDC Online in Austin, TX. In this two-part interview Walton and Firor discuss online gaming trends. Read part one here and part two here. ZAM: Gordon, BioWare has so much coming out, but the major game on most players’ radars is Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. Can you give us…
The official gameplay trailer for The Force Unleashed 2
The official gameplay trailer for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 has been released exclusively through Yahoo and looks pretty good. The quality of the video on the other hand is sub-par for some reason. An exclusive release of a video should be of good quality, and I hope no company makes this mistake again. Hopefully we will have a better one soon. The official facebook page also revealed that there will be a Demo on the PSN next Tuesday, Oct. 12th, while the full game will be released on Oct. 26th.
Star Wars trilogy in Two Minutes (as a paper animation)
Jeremy Messsersmith wrote a song about Star Wars and created an accompanying music video animated with paper versions of all the familiar characters. As a creative person, I understand that it’s hard to let go sometimes. God help me if I ever get to the point where I have the time and money to keep re-recording new versions of old songs instead of writing new ones! Unfortunately, George Lucas (in a fate worse than Darth Vader’s) is in the horrible place of having had all of his dreams come true. Now he has total creative control of whatever he wants to do, hence Star Wars in 3D. Anyway, I’ve got a song called Tatooine with a new music video directed by Eric Power over at ericpowerup.net. We are both OT (that’s original trilogy) fanboys so I made a lo-fi song and he made a very 2D music video. You can…
Sean Dahlberg joins UTV True Games
Former BioWare Community Manager Sean Dahlberg announced on his blog that he has taken a position as Senior Designer at UTV True Games. In the future he will be working on a new MMO called Faxion. In his blog, Sean talks about his decision to go back into the developer side of games and what he likes about the company’s vision for Faxion and its emphasis on micro-communities. Break time is over! I requested a few weeks off before starting at my new job and I have to admit, it was nice to have a vacation. I think it’s the first one I’ve had in years that was stress and work free! But, as anyone who knows me can attest to, I can only have so much free time before I start needing to get back into the game. So I’ve made the jump back into the development-side as a…
The Ultimate Star Wars Party!
Yoda Oreos and Blue Milk! Princess Leia cupcakes! Han Solo in Carbonite Jell-O! Double-sided lightsaber hot dogs and bacon-wrapped pretzel lightsabers! This may be the coolest (and tastiest) kids’ Star Wars party we’ve seen yet! StarWars.com chats with Jenn from JustJennRecipes.com about her awesome Star Wars party and how you can throw one of your own!Why did you decide to throw such an awesome Star Wars party?Right now is a funny point in my kids lives, they are really into The Clone Wars and just starting to put two and two together about who Anakin really is in the older movies — “Numbers 4, 5, and 6″ as my youngest son calls them. I’ve been a fan for a long time, so now I feel like we are all on the same page, liking the same things — it’s great! What part of the party got the biggest reaction? People…
Species of Starwars: Wookies
The Wookiees, whose name for themselves translated to the People of the Trees, were a species of hairy bipedal humanoids that were inhabitants of the planet Kashyyyk. Biology and appearance The Wookiees’ natural habitat was the dense forests of the planet Kashyyyk (though one source does contend that they were immigrants to this planet). Kashyyyk was covered with massive wroshyr trees, in which the Wookiees constructed their homes and cities. Reportedly, Wookiees were descended from tree-climbing mammals. They had the ability to easily learn most languages. However, Wookiees lacked the vocal structure to speak anything other than their own languages. Adult Wookiees were tall, in excess of two meters in height, and were covered with a uniform, mid-length coat of thick hair in various shades of brown. Although albino Wookiees were rare, they were not unheard of. However, such a birth was generally held to be a bad omen, as…
Review: The Force Unleashed II by Sean Williams
The following review was written by Lord Iurus of NJOE.com, where he maintains an ongoing look back at the Expanded Universe, “A Long Time Ago”, as well as providing Spoiler Free reviews a week before most major Star Wars releases, in addition to the other reviews found at his blog. The original review was posted here. “A Jedi can sometimes sense visions of the future.” “Have you ever done this before?” “I’ve never been a Jedi before.” I’m sitting here in an underground bunker on Malastare. The Hutts are ticked off. Not my fault they left a copy of The Force Unleashed II lying around where I could find it. Seriously. That’s just poor planning. Never mind how they got it; I’m sure Jabba had a few precogs on his payroll. Or, maybe he didn’t. Maybe Durg- no, no. Okay, well, maybe the copy I stole is a fraud. Or, maybe they…
Upcoming TOR Database Site
The great guys over at Ask A Jedi got an exclusive interview with Aaron Cox, the founder and lead development director of R2-DB.com. This new website will be an upcoming database site for TOR Players just like Thottbot and wowhead is for WoW Players. “I will honestly say wowhead.com has been an inspiration to us for its clear, precise, and speedy presentation of information,” It will be interesting to how this website turns out. As far as I know, Nothing have revealed about the possibility of using Add-ons on SW:TOR. Both Thottbot and Wowhead relied on add-ons that gathers information about loot and quests. If this will be possible in Star Wars: The old republic, I believe this website could becime a huge success, If not, it still might, but it will take a huge clone army to keep it updated.
Spoonful of Star Wars Art Show
Artist Bwana Spoons has made one heck of a tribute with Spoonful of Star Wars – over 100 paintings of vintage Star Wars action figures! So I got this awesome commission to do every standard figure and variations there of… of the classic Star Wars action figure line. These are part still life part/part something else. The first sixty or so are from my personal collection, some of which have even survived with me since childhood. A pretty amazing feat considering what I put them through. Check out some of these amazingly cool portraits of Star Wars action figures here: Check out more of these amazingly cool portraits of Star Wars action figures here: Classic SW Nerd. They will also be displayed in person Nov. 20 at DesignerCon.
BioWare Blog: Designing the Advanced Classes System
To explain some of the choices in BioWare’s approach to the advanced classes system in The Old Republic, this Friday’s update gives us a BioWare blog post from Principal Lead Systems Designer, Georg Zoeller. Here’s an except: Example: The Smuggler Han Solo, Lando, Talon Karrde… There are plenty of different Smuggler personalities to be found in the Star Wars universe to choose from and this is reflected in the versatility of their available Advanced Classes: The Scoundrel The Scoundrel is not afraid of getting his hands dirty, as the ‘Scrapper’ skill-set has an off-hand Scatter Gun, a number of powerful (but not necessarily fair) melee moves and access to a Stealth Field Generator with various possible upgrades for a dramatic entrance … or exit. The ‘Sawbones’ skill-set on the other hand offers ways to dramatically improve the Smuggler’s healing and support-related abilities, including access to the powerful Emergency Medpack. And,…
Hello Star Wars Kitty?
Even though is just illustrations by the talented artist Joseph Senior, we can’t help wonder if this would be the image we see when looking up the word “adorkable” in the dictionary. Senior has also given Hello Kitty makeovers to other Star Wars characters like Darth Vader, Boba Fett, C-3PO and more: Check out his full sets of images here: My Hello Kitty Pop Culture series and Hello Robots collection
Bioware PAX 2010 Presentation in HD
I know it has been a while since PAX, but I recently came across the whole presentation in HD. No more bad sound or pixel’s acting up. The whole presenation of Biowares Star Wars: The old republic is 76 min but it is worth a watch. Video Game – E3 2011
It’s official: Star Wars going 3-D in 2012
Lucasfilm Ltd. announced today that the live-action Star Wars Saga will be converted to 3D! There are few movies that lend themselves more perfectly to 3D; from the Death Star trench run to the Tatooine Podrace, the Star Wars Saga has always delivered an entertainment experience that is completely immersive. Presented by Twentieth Century Fox and Lucasfilm Ltd., the cutting edge conversion will take that immersion to the next thrilling level, with Industrial Light & Magic supervising the project. Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace is expected to be released theatrically in 2012. A release date has not yet been determined. “Getting good results on a stereo conversion is a matter of taking the time and getting it right,” said John Knoll, Visual Effects Supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic. “It takes a critical and artistic eye along with an incredible attention to detail to be successful. It is…
R2-D2 With a Human Inside!
Check out this awesome R2-D2 that’s big enough for a full-size person to fit in! R2-D2’s body is made out of a plastic barrel quipped with sounds, internal fans, LEDs, motors and a rotating dome.
SWTOR – The Comfort of Companions
Can you imagine Luke Skywalker attempting to walk the path of a Jedi without the assistance of Obi-Wan, the Princess, or Han? It is these companions that not only opened doors for Luke in the Star Wars movies, but also the personalities that helped make an IP great. BioWare is attempting to recreate this magic with the companion system in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Will having a built in duo inhibit the group dynamic or will these unique sidekicks add another level of depth and immersion? Ten Ton Hammer, has an interesting editorial on this: Yeah, you might be able to grab your companions butt without fearing an incoming sexual harassment lawsuit, but they have far more uses than a quick tickle and giggle. Companions will be specifically tailored to your class with their own complimentary skills and abilities. If you choose to play ranged damage class, a companion…
How stuff works: Podracing
Podracing was a popular sport in the less developed regions of the galaxy. It has been called “the ultimate test of skill and daring on Tatooine,” and was certainly one of the most dangerous sports ever invented, killing many racers. Podracers were small, one-man repulsorcraft, composed of an anti-gravity pod propelled by one or more pairs of large turbine engines. The engines were not physically connected to each other, being linked instead by power couplings consisting of plasma discharges. The engines were connected to the pods themselves by means of long, Steelton cables. Characterisitics Besides housing the racer’s pilot, each pod contained a repulsorlift engine that kept the craft at a specific, low-level altitude. The turbine engines were incredibly powerful, and were connected by an energy binder that kept them from flying apart. Podracing was popularized in the Outer Rim Territories during the last decades of the Galactic Republic. Its…
Clone Wars Adventures enlists 1 million
Only one week after its release, the free-to-play Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures has already logged in over one million players. In order to celebrate this milestone for Clone Wars Adventures, SOE and LucasArts have rewarded all of the current players with a limited edition Golden Mouse Droid Pet. Also, players will be able to log in this weekend to participate in their first ever in-game party. The party will be held today, and it will be the first of weekly parties on Clone Wars Adventures. It will be a party where players can meet up, accept duels, and chat amongst themselves. A gathering for the Jedi Members will also be held today for all of the exclusive members. The team behind Clone Wars seems very excited about this event. According to John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, they are thrilled with the achievement they have made and “look…
SW:TOR’s new Smuggler Secrets
Admittedly, it looks like the team over at BioWare really want to give you the option to be Han Solo, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just, please, for our sake and yours, think of a unique name to call your own. Partying with a “San Holo” or “Pan Solo,” or even “Haan Sulu” will probably give even the most die-hard fan a headache. Anyway, while we posted a great PAX Smuggler Trailer that came out a few days ago, it seems like the SW:TOR team will not be satisfied until all of their fans are drooling at the possibilities of this dashing class. Thus, in their latest class reveal, BioWare has some more neat information for Smuggler fans around the galaxy. First up, if you want to play a Smuggler with a little pizazz, they suggest that maybe you take a peek over at the ultra-dextrous Twi’leks, known…