Two huge events happened in the world a couple of weeks back: first off, and most importantly, LucasFilm announced the details of the forthcoming Star Wars complete saga blu-ray release to predictable fanfare (and the even more predictable dissent from some circles). And then there was the piffling matter of the wedding of the UK’s own monarch in waiting Prince William to his commoner beloved Kate Middleton. At one point, as the celebrations neared, and the hysteria that spread across the world reached a crescendo, you couldn’t get moved for garish merchandise, swaths of Union Jacks and all manner of useless tat with the faces of the future King and his bride plastered all over it. So it was only a matter of time until someone brought together the Royal Wedding, and the most famous cross-cultural works of art, like Star Wars for instance. See that? Full circle, almost effortlessly……
Know Your Lore: Tott Doneeta
Tott Doneeta, also known as Tottdon’eeta, was a Twi’lek Jedi Knight who was an apprentice to Master Arca Jeth, together with his Jedi brothers Ulic and Cay Qel-Droma, on Arkania. He assisted in ending the crisis on Iziz and fought in the Great Sith War. He was a competent pilot, and learned to fly one of the Beast Rider’s war beasts. Doneeta was present at both the Jedi Convocation on Exis Station and the Convocation at Mount Meru. Tott Doneeta was also present when his Jedi brother Ulic fell to the Dark Side, and the subsequent action of Nomi Sunrider’s robbing Ulic of the Force. Later, he saved Vima Sunrider by grappling onto her escape pod as it drifted towards a star, due to his delayed arrival at the latter Convocation. Later in life, he attempted to help Cathar Jedi Sylvar free herself from her anger; however, he realized he…
Star Wars: The Old Republic Introduces the Codex
This week BioWare’s Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert introduced the Codex. If you’ve played some of BioWare’s other projects like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, you’re probably familiar with the Codex system, which allows players to discover key bits of lore throughout the game by exploring or accomplishing different tasks. This story can help enhance the lore of the world or offer additional narrative to a player’s chosen profession. This feature isn’t just about being another way to deliver story to the player. As Lead Systems Designer, I’m mostly concerned about bringing the fun. Delivering story and context isn’t enough for me – I also want to be sure that we add new activities for players to do and goals for him to achieve. In particular, we saw the codex as a way to reward exploration Here are some more of the highlights: The team had two design goals:…
Star Wars: The Old Republic development cost Could Exceed $80 Million
According to Wedbush Securities analyst – Michael Pachter, the development costs of Star Wars: The Old Republic, could exceed $80 million, especially if you factor in all the marketing and distribution costs. “The contribution from the Star Wars MMO is significant. Under the terms of its deal with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game. We estimate that LucasArts’ share is 33% of revenues, AFTER EA recoups its investment in game development. Given that the game was in development for over four years, with an estimated 200 full-time developers working on it, we estimate that EA’s investment exceeds $80 million,” EA has mentioned that it doesn’t need a whole lot of subscribes to make all that profit back and by having about 500,000 subscribers…
SWTOUR PvP Impressions
The SWTOUR PvP news broke yesterday and there are so many great, exciting stories that it’s hard to know where to begin. Here’s a recap of the top breaking stories that came out today about the PvP experience from SWTOUR. Mos Eisley Radio New article posted by Evan Lewis on the site. He discusses his PvP experience while at SWTOUR. Evan says himself, “As I have stated many times over, I am NOT a PvP kinda guy. At least, I wasn’t.” His write-up gives a good comparison of PvP in World of Warcraft and SW:TOR. He goes on to say: “Now, while I can’t comment on the world-PvP aspects of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I can certainly say that the organized PvP portions, the Warzones, are such an improvement over what has been featured in previous games that I am now a PvP fan.” MMORPG.com Star Wars: The Old…
The Guild Sphere: The Sons of Light
This week I sat down with one of the admissions officials with the Sons of Light, a republic RP guild guild focusing on PvE and some PvP Where did your guilds name come from? Our former leader, who has since left, chose the name for our guild back in July of 2010 when the Sons of Light was first formed. Our name reflects our dedication to what is true, righteous and honorable. Our motto “Dum Vita Est Spes Est” meaning “While there is Life there is Hope” is a constant remainder of the principles we will uphold in game play. Can you give me a quick 2-3 sentence description of your guild? The Sons of Light is a heavily community-based Republic guild that holds our individuals above everything else. We are continuously forming new outlets for our members to exercise their talents and leadership abilities as we wait for the…
Hundar Presents Old Republic’s Daniel Ericson
And a great new format for YouTube videos/interviews… Here is an awesome video interview with Daniel Erickson from Hundar. In this format, you can choose the questions and you can skip right to the answers you want to see the most. The video covers a variety of topics, including: TOR Dev Team A Love Letter to Star Wars Dragon Age? Party Comp Class Rivalries Release Date? Good vs Evil Player Choices Working with EA BioWare in Austin Class Balance The Dark Side Kill Your Companions KOTOR Answers Some highlights from the video interview include: You don’t have to have played KOTOR to understand TOR but there will be unanswered questions for previous KOTOR players that are answered in TOR, bringing some closure to the story and tying it all in neatly for the timeline. All of the questions about all of the major characters of KOTOR will be covered but…
Free comic book day is coming
Free Comic Book Day is a single day that happens each year on the first Saturday of May. On this day, participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE to anyone who comes into their stores! How cool is that! You should check with your local comic book shop for their participation and rules. Free Comic Book Day in L.A. with have Geoff Johns, Robert Kirkman, Mike Mignola, Steve Niles signings The Core in Cedar Falls is celebrating their 10th year of the event. Owner Mike Blanchard will donate $400 worth of graphic novels to the school best represented at his shop Saturday. The Bay City Times -On free comic day, Cashman’s Comics will have 100 Green Lantern HeroClix game pieces to give away. What is your area comic book store doing? There’s also a Free Comic Book Day app available…
How Much Storyline will SWTOR Have?
Here’s an interesting topic for SWTOR fans, especially those who also played KOTOR. Daniel Erickson speaks out on the forums about the length of the chapters for the classes of SWTOR. This was mentioned briefly in the interviews from the fan site summit and left many of us confused about what it actually meant. First, you have to understand what BioWare mean when they talk about “length” of the game, as this can be defined in different ways. Erickson says, “The whole critical path of the game is the length. The walking, the combat, the travel on your ship, world quests, everything you’d have to do to come out the other end the right level. When we say the story of Chapter 1 is X long we do not mean if you somehow took all the conversations and ran them together.” He goes on to clarify: “So all the content…
Mass Effect 3 delayed to Q1 2012
Interesting news for Mass Effect fans today. BioWare says that Mass Effect 3 will need to wait a little longer to be ready for release. While it was a much anticipated release for fourth-quarter, they have now announced that it will be bumped up to the first three months of 2012 for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. So no ME3 for Christmas guys, sorry. Could this delay have anything to do with the push of SWTOR MMO and the attempts and expectations to get it out before the end of 2011? It’s quite possible as it’s apparent that BioWare is putting most of their eggs in the Star Wars basket. However, another thing to remember is that pushing up the release date on Mass Effect 3 will put it right in the same timeline as the release of Mass Effect 2 in January 2010, bringing the 3rd installment…
SWTOR Beta testing to hit Europe
According to a report by fansite, ToRWars.com, SWTOR beta testing will soon be on its way to Europe. They report getting an email with the headline: “Prepare for European game testing!” Well, that’s about as simple as it gets, right? The email goes on to clarify: Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will soon begin a new round of game testing in Europe. Want to be a part of BioWare’s most anticipated game ever? Sign up at swtor.com/tester. So there you go. If you’re reading this from Europe, it’s time to go sign up for the beta. Remember that you need to be 18 years of age and you have to accept the Game Testing agreement. You also have to complete the Game Testing registration process. If you haven’t yet signed up for beta testing and you live in Europe, now would be a good time to do so. No word…
No Addons for SWTOR at launch
It’s been asked before, back when we were discussing the SWTOR UI and now it’s been officially stated by BioWare, there will be no addons for SWTOR at launch. Georg Zoeller popped into the forums to clear up confusion on the matter, stating: “What we’ve said is, regarding the question ‘Will there be addons at launch’ is “no, not at launch”. This statement indicates nothing more than that there will not be addons at launch. Nothing more, nothing less.” So there you have it, the official word on addons at launch. So as a gamer, this brings up some interesting questions for me. I wonder what features that could be potential addons will make it into the initial launch of the game. As a long time WoW player (since beta), I saw many addons eventually become implemented into the UI itself. Scrolling combat text was an early one and quest…
Electronic Arts Q4 Earnings Live Blog
Electronic Arts Q4 Earnings Live Blog. At 2:00PM PDT (5:00PM EDT) today, Electronics Arts gave their quarterly call for investors to report results. I joined the call as a member of the media and got the inside scoop on what’s happening with EA. There was a lot of great info in this call so I’m bringing you the highlights right here. First, they reaffirmed that Star Wars: The Old Republic will ship in CY 2011. Additionally: Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launched as a Digital Service. Subscription revenue expected to rise with the launch of SWTOR. SWTOR was mentioned as a Subscription based MMO Over 1 million testers (signed up) Server infrastructure for Star Wars: The Old Republic is a significant FY12 cost investment. There was also an interesting Q&A involving SWTOR: Question: On the beta test for SWTOR, how long can a test like that last before…
Facebook Image Of The Week #11
BioWare released a new screenshot on their Facebook page for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This time it reads: After a catastrophic systems failure on Tatooine, these Imperial troops must find another way to transport their prisoners securely off-world. May the Fourth be with you!
Snark Wars: The Most Sarcastic Star Wars Animation Ever
This being May the Fourth, it was always going to be a big day for Star Wars, and as well as that great big announcement that threatened to break the entire internet earlier on today, some new stuff did indeed appear. One of my favourites, which I literally stumbled across on YouTube, is this sarcasm heavy, snarky MS Paint animation that offers a heavily abridged, but actually very funny version of Star Wars VI: A New Hope. Watch below, I think you’ll agree that the sarcasm is strong in this one. Congratulations MechOrangeStudios, you’ve just passed Sarcasm 101.
Star Wars Republic Commando Sequel?
SWTOR is quite possibly the most anticipated MMO ever, but what about those gamers who don’t really dig the MMORPG scene? Could there be something else in the works for Star Wars fans? If you remember, we recently wrote about Lucas Arts getting the license for Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games but no one has any idea why, right? Well could it possibly be for a Star Wars Republic Commando Sequel? It’s been on our wish list for years but recent news developments say it just might be true. I’m a big fan of first-person-shooters: a long time admin of some of the biggest TF2 servers and a Counter-Strike girl since before the hackers took over. :p I played Battlefront and while I enjoyed it, the game just didn’t quite hit the standards set by other shooters. But Republic Commando, now that was…
Drew Karpyshyn Q&A about New Book Revan
“This is it. No more delays. No more mystery. The novel I’ve been working on has been officially announced. The title pretty much says it all: Revan.” – Drew Karpyshyn on his blog, about his new book. Drew Karpyshyn has a brief Q&A on his site about the upcoming book Revan, which we wrote about before. Karpyshyn himself realized the extreme scrutiny he would be under by some hardcore fans. He says in his blog, “I realize in taking on this task that I’m opening myself up for a lot of potential criticism from the KOTOR and Revan fans.” Boy do we understand that Drew! So he decided to address these concerns in a Q&A on his blog. Some issues addressed include: Hey – you said in your FAQ that you didn’t want to write a novel about Revan because books on video games don’t work. Remember all that stuff…
Michael Myers’ Star Wars Pixel Posters
It’s all about posters for this column recently, and today I have some more for you, thanks to Michael Myers, who has clearly taken a break from slaying teenagers and babysitters in a grubby Captain Kirk mask to turn his hand to some pixellated goodness in the name of Star Wars. The success of any pixel art project is capturing the character (and their spirit somehow) in but a few colourful blocks, and Myers has achieved it without question. Myers, who operates under the artistic name Drawsgood Illustrative Design (and is on Twitter as @drawsgood) was already on my radar thanks to his awesome comic book related art – and chiefly his Avengers Headshots project – and he has once again put a massive smile on my face with the Star Wars posters below. So go on, follow him on Twitter, and show him some love, or even better head…
The Guild Sphere: The Dark
This week I sat down with the largest guild in all of ToR, The Dark, a great bunch of Sith PvE’ers, that even though they are so big, is still closely knit. Where did your guilds name come from? We wanted to keep it simple and after many ideas we realized most of them included “dark” so we just stuck with that. Can you give me a quick 2-3 sentance description of your guild? Were a Sith guild that basically just wants to have fun and enjoy the games story. Were PVE and endgame Raiding focuesed but were also very diverse. How did your guild come about? Our leader started the guild with him and one of his friends started the guild by themselves and within 1 day had 60 people with no recruiting! After a week the guild had 200 members, so basically by freak occurrence. What kind of…
SWTOUR Roundup part 1 –
Now that the embargo is lifted on the Austin Fan Site Summit, people are talking and fans are anxiously awaiting all of the exciting news to come of the event. There is so much information out already that it can be difficult to make sense of it all. Unless you have hours to pour over it all (like me) then here are some recaps of the top, must-see info in our very own SWTOUR Roundup: Audio: Blaine Christine and Daniel Erickson via youtube, via darthhater.com Right from the start, this audio covers one question we all have which is what they are doing to prepare for the expected huge launch of the game and to prevent servers from crashing/experiencing downtime during this much-anticipated launch. Next they speak about Datachrons and the reward involved as well as other concepts of the Datahrons and the mini games and space content that will…
SWTOR Art by Diana Mezzina
In this weeks fan art spotlight we take a look at French artist Daennika or Diana Mezzina wich is her real name. Daennika art style is much more cheerful then last weeks art by StandAlone-Complex and has been quite popular on the official forums, were she has been drawing members ideas to female characters. Daennika also does Sci-fi writing and have so far done 5 short stories over at fanfiction.net. You cen check out ms. Mezzinas website here, and her deviantart profile here. And if you wanner check out her writing, do so here Sith Inquisitor Mirialan engineer/Bounty Hunter. Let the Sith win Young Zabrak Jedi Dar Kyram Tara-Willow’s Seren No Escape
Pitchblack Games seeking testers for new HeroEngine MMO
I love to beta games. It’s been a hobby of mine since I was a young girl. As soon as I had my own gaming PC, I signed up for each and every beta I could get and I have found myself accepted to a great number of them. So when I heard that Pitchblack Games was seeking testers for a new HeroEngine MMO, I was intrigued. There’s really not a lot of information about the game yet, which as of now, has no title, but it seems like it’s really in the alpha-alpha stages of development and far from what you would call a beta test. Other than the potential Sci-Fi theme, it could be anything. They’re calling it an MMORPG and not an MMOFPS but that’s about all the hint we get as this stage in the game. So if you’re looking to get in on the ground…
The Best Alternative Star Wars Movie Posters
Last week or so, I mentioned in a post on Strong Stuff’s new retro Star Wars poster that the culture of fan-made alternate movie posters is one of my favourite developments of the internet era, and the article got me thinking. A while back, over at ObsessedWithFilm (where you can find my movie related ramblings) I compiled a list of the best alternative Pixar posters, and was surprised at the sheer number to be found online. That surprise was nothing compared with what I felt when I started getting down to the serious business of researching this column, as I uncovered and rediscovered hundreds (probably more like thousands in fact) of fan- and artist-made alternative Star Wars movie posters. This then, is the first fruit of that “research”. I plan this to be a regular column looking at the best in alternative Star Wars posters, some infamous, some we’ve seen…
Fan Site Summit screenshot collection.
At last weeks fan´site summit, all the attending websites was given there own unique screenshot to show on their website. Since it has been out for about a week I thought it was OK for us to post them here also. So for your viewing pleasure, I give you the complete collection of Fan site screens: ToR-Talks screenshot: Nikto on Nar Shaddaa SWTOR-UK got a screenshot of Coruscant TORWars shows off Balmorra SWTOR-Life shows of Nal Hutta? SWTOR-FR got a screenshot of Nar Shaddaa Torcast shows some Jedi vs. Sith combat SWTOR.eu got another screenshot of the same combat … And so did Darth Hater Old Rep.de got a nice screenshot of Nar Shaddaa … And so did Corellian Run Radio TORSyndicate got Trooper and Smuggler action … And so did Ask a Jedi And I think that’s it Via TorWars
