Freedon Nadd was an ancient Jedi apprentice. He later fell to the dark side of the Force and apprenticed himself to Naga Sadow, an ancient Dark Lord of the Sith. Freedon Nadd claimed the rank of Dark Lord by murdering his Master, and crowned himself as the King of Onderon. After his physical death, Nadd’s spirit attempted to resurrect himself and have revenge on the Jedi. Nadd was completely destroyed on Yavin 4 by Exar Kun, the would-be Dark Lord. Freedon Nadd was the first Dark Lord of the Sith after the fall of the Old Sith Empire. Biography Freedon Nadd as seen in Vodo Siosk Baas’s Holocron Ambitious Jedi Freedon Nadd was a Jedi student trained at the Jedi Temple on Ossus around 4,400 BBY. He was amazingly open and willing to touch the Force, which may have inevitably led him down the dark path. While strong in the…
Riding Hyperspace Into SWTOR
Lagwa has an excellent article on the wait for Star Wars: The old Republic and their take on the hype/anticipation buildup. A great read, and for the most part, I tend to agree. We’ve seen this stuff a thousand times before — get your expectations too high, too unrealistic, and it doesn’t matter how the game actually ends up, it’s going to suck for you. What especially caught my attention is that he commented on a possible parallel marketing strategy-slash-hype train to Warhammer Online. This is s a perspective that’s worthwhile to examine, although I don’t think SW:TOR’s current buildup exactly mirrors Warhammer online. WAR came out of the gate swinging. These guys had a hype machine to match no other. They called out everything MMO gamers railed against, said they had a better way. There were videos, big personalities, high production values. Prominently displayed on their front page was…
SWTOR – Crafting and Crew Skill Interviews [Update]
Both Massively and Darth Hater, spoke to Lead Writer Daniel Erickson about the Crew Skills and the Crafting component of Star Wars – The Old Republic. Bioware revealed a new Trailer yesterday, which was introducing the main facts that were announced at EA’s Winter Showcase last week. On Darthhater, Daniel Erickson is speaking about everything from the video with some ingame references while the massively interview is more like a Question and Answer talksession with a comparison of SWTOR and SWG crafting , and more insight in PvP and Recipes. So we would get recipes that are super rare? Yes. There are elite, rare recipes. People who want to dabble in crafting, can, and can be successful in it and make themselves a little bit better. People who are not terribly interested in crafting can do the mission system and still get some cool stuff out of their companion characters….
New Reviewer – MizzeeOH
Hello! My name’s MizzeeOH – or Opal – and I’m going to be reviewing all kinds of things for the site soon. I’ve always loved Star Wars, with Empire Strikes Back being my favorite movie – in fact, the thing that got me into the EU was the original Knights of the Old Republic game. I’ve been interested in The Old Republic for quite some time now, so you can definitely count me in to play that when it comes out. I like to consider myself both a gamer and a book worm, as both of those fronts have drawn me into the EU so much (and of course, I like other non-Star Wars games and books too), but I tend to gravitate towards the novels more, such as the New Jedi Order series. I do reviews for Man in Black Reviews and NJOE as well. May the Force be…
Damion Schubert Clarifies on crafting
Yesterdays update on on crew skills has fueled a hefty debate about the games most important non-combat activity. With yesterdays new information about the system, comes many new questions. Luckily Damion Schubert took some time to answer some last night: To be more precise, players can have up to three crew skills but only one of those can be a crafting skill. The fictional reason is that you only can have room for one crafting table on your ship, but the real reason is that we don’t want all players to be self-sufficient. We call the system Crew Skills because they are skills possessed by your amorphous crew as a whole. If your crew can go treasure hunting, you can order any of your crew members to run treasure hunting missions. Vette may have a bonus to treasure hunting (being a native treasure hunter and all), but to be honest we currently…
New Planet Nelvaan ?
The guys over at thegalacticstruggle.com has some sharp eyes as they discovered something really interesting (that might not have been intended to be discovered) in the video from yesterdays Friday update. In one of the diplomatic missions – the planet Nelvaan can be seen as a mission in the log. A new planet reveal soon? In the brand new Crew Skills video, at 1.53, you can see one of the diplomatic missions is to the planet Nelvaan. According to starwars.wiki – the planet is – A planet in the Koobi star system, Nelvaan is a primitive world of low gravity experiencing the onset of an ice age. Three moons orbit Nelvaan. It was in close proximity to Tythe. A world without a terrible amount of gravity, it was home to several massive life forms, including the vicious Horax. Nelvaan is also dominated by a landscape of precarious mesas that would have fallen in standard gravity…
New SWTOR Community Manager: Stephen Reid
Back in September we reported that former community manager Sean “AshenTemper” Dahlberg departed Bioware to join UTV True Game’s Faxion. Until now duties have been filled by other community representatives like Joanne Laroche and Alyson Bridge. Yesterday we learned who would be taking the place after Mr. Dahlberg as Community Manager, and this is no other then Stephen “Rockjaw” Reid. Hi. My name’s Stephen Reid, and I’m your new Community Manager. Like probably all of you, I’ve been a Star Wars™ fan for almost my entire life – starting with the original Star Wars in 1977. When that Star Destroyer came thundering into frame, the unforgettable John Williams’ score blasting out in futuristic Dolby Stereo… well my 5-year-old mind was well and truly blown. Fast forward to 1999, and I made a pilgrimage to Portland, Oregon (of all places) to see The Phantom Menace on opening night – midnight showing, natch. When Darth…
Friday Update: Crew Skills Revealed!
Crafting is a legit form of gameplay for many MMOG players and the guys over at BioWare know this! Today’s Friday update covers Star Wars: The Old Republic crafting and other tasks that your crew will be able to perform. The galaxy is full of resources and opportunities for your character to benefit and profit. The Crew Skills system allows you to gather those valuable resources, craft a wide range of useful items, and send your crew out on their own missions to retrieve rewards. With Crew Skills, you’ll be able to do all these things while your character stays in the action or even if you have to log off! Crew Skills are a unique approach to a crafting system, built to suit the tastes of a broad range of players and to maximize your time spent adventuring and experiencing your character’s story while still earning useful benefits. Put…
May the schwartz be with you: Darth Vader Vs Hitler. Epic Rap Battles of History
First I thought it would be retarded, but the battle was actually hilarious, and it gets more funny each time I watch it. So, who wins? Hitler or Vader? I guess there’s no real competition going on… the choice should be fairly evident to us geeks
Star Wars Rarities: The Mythology of Star Wars (1999)
In an oasis of calm, far, far away from the tumult of excitement that was leading up to the premiere of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, Bill Moyers joined George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch in northern California to talk about the ancient myths and personal values that have synthesized into Star Wars. The epic themes in Lucas’ cinematic stories are a springboard for a candid conversation about family, fatherhood, spiritual beliefs, and the importance of moral tales for every generation. Intercut with movie footage from the original trilogy as well as the newly-released prequel, The Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas and Bill Moyers provides a revealing journey in the company of the filmmaker through some of the most famous scenes of the Star Wars saga.
EA and LucasArts Enter Into New Global Publishing Agreement for Star Wars: The Old Republic
In what amounts to a bit of publisher houscleaning, Electronic Arts has announced that it has entered into a new agreement with LucasArts that basically has EA taking over most of the publishing and marketing duties for the upcoming MMO Star Wars The Old Republic. Under the new agreement, LucasArts will continue to collaborate with EA and the game’s developer BioWare on the “design and marketing” for the game in addition to LucasArts’ basic role as the licensor of the Star Wars property itself. Financial terms of this new deal were not disclosed. BioWare and LucasArts first entered into an agreement to collaborate on Star Wars The Old Republic back in 2007 before the game itself was announced and just before BioWare was acquired by EA. The game itself was announced in October 2008. EA and Lucasfilm Ltd, announced today an updated global publishing agreement for the highly anticipated massively multiplayer…
Jedi classes hands-on preview
Eurogamer, Gamespot and pcgamer weren’t the only gaming websites visiting this years EA Winter Showcase. Apparently the frensh gaming website jeuxvideo also took a trip to London to cover the show. Hopefully there will be even more media outlets reportingfrom the show the comming days. The entire article on jeuxvideo is in French so you have to turn on the google translator if you don’t read this language. I wtill recoment you to check it out, as it gives lot’s of new info on the Jedi classes: The impression of power generated by his avataris in fact what immediately jumps to the face. Graphically, the game is doing quite well indeed. The lighting effects and animations accompanying the blows of the Jedi give thanks to their power. Special mention to one of Knight’s attack which allows him to make a leap of fifteen feet with air to spin the key…
New crafting screenshots
pcgamer has released a few new screenhots of crafting in SWTOR. The screenshots comes with an article about the new crafting informatin we discussed a few days ago. Here is a snip: BioWare’s Blaine Christine was more cagey on TOR’s crafting skills, but unveiled two subsets of the overarching ability: ‘artifice’, presumably used to make weapons and armour, and ‘biochem’ that provides medical and stim-packs. The image of a Sith Warrior beavering away at a workbench packing band-aids into a first-aid kit clearly doesn’t work within Star Wars’ fiction – instead, you can stand at the back and bellow “WORK HARDER” at your friends and minions as they do your nit-picky work for you. Or just leave them to it and get on with other missions. The Old Republic only lets you take one computer friend down with you on missions, and when you’ve packed a buddy off to complete…
The Story of Bioware
Over the years, BioWare has earned a reputation as one of gaming’s greatest storytellers with titles like ‘Knights Of The Old Republic’ and ‘Mass Effect’. Find out how they did it. If you don’t want to read a wall of Text, you can just watch the videos. Greg Zeschuk, Ray Muzyka, and Augustine Yip, medical students at the University of Alberta, played video games to relieve stress and relax. The three went on to meld their medical knowledge with their computer savvy, developing patient simulation software. Their small operation, BioWare, took off in another direction when publisher Interplay advanced funding to develop a game demo. Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka 2002 Shattered Chain was released in 1996. BioWare re-signed with Interplay and spent three years developing Baldur’s Gate for the Irvine, California, company. Zeschuk and Muzyka headed up the company as co-CEOs and practiced medicine on a part-time basis. Yip’s…
From Star Wars to Star Wars: The Story of Industrial Light & Magic
The incredible evolution of George Lucas’ special effects dream factory, including an inside look at “Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace.” I am always interested in behind the scenes programs. “”Star Wars to Star Wars: The Story of Industrial Light & Magic” gives a good behind the scenes look at Star Wars plus many other movies that ILM has been involved with over the years. It is fascinating to see the way special effects have evolved from the original models used in Star Wars to the modern computer generated images. It is also reasonably entertaining without being too distracting. I do have one really big problem with this show. They showed special effects from many ILM movies (Star Wars, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Men In Black, Forrest Gump, etc…). However, they did not even mention the Star Trek movies. ILM have done the special effects for all but…
Bigpoint CEO claims SWTOR won’t be profitable
Bigpoint is one of the Biggest Publishers for F2P and Browser Games and CEO Heiko Hubertz recently stated that he believes that Star Wars – The Old Republic will never be profitable with it’s current financial concept. “If you look in the traditional industry there are still a lot of big bets there,” said Hubertz, keynoting the London Games Conference this evening. “Still there are companies investing $20-40 million for a game. These companies have to be profitable after one or two months. They don’t have 12 months or even more. I think these companies are really in trouble in the future if a user can play online games for free. “If you look at a game like Star Wars from EA and BioWare, they estimated a development budget of more than $100 million. This is an online game for many million of subscribers, so a big publisher does not…
Knights of the Old Republic Volume 1: Commencement Review
Was Commencement a good starter for the entire Knights of the Old Republic series? Read on to find out! Going into Commencement, you may think that you need to have played the actual Knights of the Old Republic games to understand what’s going on in the comic. But almost as soon as Commencement begins, it becomes obvious that this is not the case; Knights of the Old Republic stands so well on it’s own feet that even if you have never heard of the games or played, you can read this and understand what’s going on incredibly easily. There are references that only the people who have played the games will get, but understanding these isn’t absolutely necessary – it’s only an added bonus. One aspect of Commencement I just loved was the characters; they were all so entertaining, and the interaction between them all is great. Zayne and Gryph…
SWTOR Release date and EA Lousegate
Eurogamer has an lengthy interview up with Doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk from BioWare. They talk about a number of things, including Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 2, and more importantly for MMORPG fans, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Regardign SWTOR they discuss that EA Louse business from a while back, But what’s most interesting is that they’re asked about a release date and oddly no longer seem to want to commit to a spring 2011 release date: Eurogamer: When will Star Wars: The Old Republic be out? Ray Muzyka: Next year. Eurogamer: Can you at least say whether it’ll be the first half or the second half of the year? Ray Muzyka: No. We’re just saying 2011. That is quite different from what they’ve been saying in the past where they’ve always stated “spring 2011″”. Signs of the release having slipped perhaps? Regarding EA Louse gate, Zeschuk and…
Friday Update: Warzones, and (voting for) a new name for the Jedi Wizard.
Warzones, crafting and (voting for) a new name for the Jedi Wizard. That’s what BioWare has for us today. This week was EA’s annual winter showcase in London, during which they revealed details on warzones in The Old Republic as well as details on crafting. With the warzones BioWare released a new video showing some PvP; here is the official news: We’ll be offering more insight into how Warzones work in the near future, but for now, we hope this video will give you a good sense of the Warzone experience in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™! Also, be sure to check the screenshot section to see how this battle is heating up. Next to all that BioWare is showing that it’s listening to the community. After the massive outcry over the “Jedi Wizard” advanced class name they’ve now selected three names (plus “Jedi Wizard”) for the community to vote on, saying that the winning…
EA Winter Showcase Update: Crafting Revealed
Gamespot is present at this years EA Winter Showcase in England. Earlier this morning they published an interview with Blaine Christine and Gabe Amatangelo from Bioware about crafting, collecting and PVP. Here is a snip of the crafting part: The crafting and collecting, for starters, is designed to fit the player’s experience in a way that is credible in relation to fiction. As Christine puts it, more or less, it does not make sense for a badass Darth Vader-like Sith skin WOMP rats in a new pair of boots in between conquering worlds. And yes, the coherent fictional basis for the low, the crew skills system. “You are the hero,” says Christine. “You make your crew work for you.” The crew consists of companion characters work as you play with your spaceship as their base of operations. From the ship, your comrades sent to collect materials and commanded to crafts while you go…
EA Winter Showcase: Big Update Tomorrow?
Electronic Arts and Bioware are back in Europe again with the yearly EA Winter Showcase. The last time we saw the Star Wars: The Old Republic team on this site of the Atlantic, was way back in May this year. Last night, BioWare’s community team took to the social networks to tease fans about “juicy” new information: We’re in Europe where we’ll be announcing new details about The Old Republic™! Stay tuned to http://www.swtor.com/ this Friday for juicy details. Is this announcement directly linked to Europe? Will they announce European testing – wich we all over here desperately are waiting for? Maby.. Details on Crafting and for many, pvp are yet to be revealed also. What they got for us time will tell, but since we normally get updates each Friday, and they’re making a special callout for this one, we hope that it might be something special.
SWTOR Spacecraft Wallpaper
With the X70B-Phantom-Prototype, bioware revealed one of the modern spacecrafts from SW TOR last friday. The Ship that you can control when you choose to become an imperial Agent is equipped with a smooth, radarabsorbing cover and a modern navigationdevice. In Addition to last week’s official video about the Phantom, there is a new Wallpaper from the X700B Phantom on the official website. There can also be found some older but not less interesting wallpapers that show the jedi’s ” Defender” and the Sith’s ” Furry ” Among the Pictures that show the outer layer of the ship , there are also Pictures that give you an impression of the interior.
Know your lore: Darth Bandon
Darth Bandon was a male Human Sith Lord, and the first known apprentice of Darth Malak during the Jedi Civil War. Once a Jedi Knight, he eventually became one of the the Sith Empire’s most dangerous hunters. Biography Though trained in his early life as a Jedi, Bandon was never at peace with the ideas inherent in the Jedi Code. He lusted for power and influence, and the peaceful ideals of the Jedi way angered him, as he felt that he was never in control of his destiny and that his life would be ruled by the Jedi Code. Longing for independence, Bandon relied heavily on his emotions, especially the rage that flowed through him, and, as a result, fled the Jedi Order to join the Sith Academy on Korriban as the Sith, under the command of Darth Revan and Malak, rose to power. Bandon completely embraced the dark side…
Star Wars Revisionism: it was all Jar-Jar’s fault
LEGO® STAR WARS™: BOMBAD BOUNTY answers the question no one was asking: What if Jar Jar Binks had appeared in the original trilogy?