It's Our Launch Year.....

Today we wanted to focus on two huge media releases from some of the key guys at BioWare.  Daniel Erikson and Stephen Reid.  Daniel is the lead writer for BioWare on the SWTOR project.  Stephen Reid is the lead community manager for BioWare on the SWTOR project.

There is now a movie on youtube and other fan sites from a crew of crazy Europeans called GameReactor.TV.  They have probably pulled off the best interview from E3 asking some great questions that no-one has covered before.  Covering story elements such as divorce and some odd information about the back story and how it ties into the original Star Wars. BioWare has actually put thought into how the accents of their voice actors would play into the story of TOR.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!! That's just crazy insane impressive. 

Erikson: "It's Our Launch Year....."

You can find the interview on youtube along with other content from GameReactor.TV at their  youtube channel.

Erikson and Reid probably playing TF2*

Stephen Reid was featured in a very impressive SWTOR interview on the 36 episode of the TORWars podcast.  One of the leading fan sites for The Old Republic.  The interview covers a wide range of topics from the San Diego Comic Con to the polish process.   He even gets into the current class he is playing and how is trying to play the light-side.

Reid goes on to indicate that while testers may not have experienced many bugs the game is still not to the point that BioWare considers polished.  If you have played a BioWare game before you know that they value the level of quality in their final product as much as companies like Bungie, Blizzard, and Valve. 

Reid: "The Release date is like a train.  Polish is like a battleship"

If you're desperate to apply your power of speculation on the release date for SWTOR I highly recommend watching the interview and listening to the TORWars pod.  Both offter a interesting balance to fuel your desire for information until #HandDiego. 

*Image from the Torreport.

Paul S Kemp!!! PEOPLE Paul S Kemp!!!

For those of you wondering who Paul is..... ?  For those of you that already know . . . . Great news!

Paul S. Kemp author of our favorite Star Wars Novel "The Old Repiblic: Deceived" will release his next Star Wars novels "Star Wars: Riptide". 

Riptide!!! No, not the sword

"When a ship full of Sith warriors arrived in Galactic Alliance space, the fight to destroy it accidentally uncovered a hidden menace: a long-hidden group of clones, secretly created as insidious weapons capable of wielding the Force and heedless of the differences between light side and dark side. Now the clones have escaped—and evidence suggests that they are flawed by genetic disease and violent madness.

Jedi Knight Jaden Korr pursues the clones, hoping to heal them but prepared to destroy them. What he doesn’t know is that Sith agents are hot on his heels, determined not only to recover the clones for their Master but to capture Jaden for their own dark-side purposes. In a life-or-death battle, Jaden will confront a shocking reality that will rock him to his core and bring him face-to-face with the question of what makes a man . . . and a Jedi."

This is great news for those that need something to read around October 25th 2011.  You may want to read "Star Wars: Crosscurrent" first.  Both appear to be eReader friendly now.  In addition you can actually read part of "Riptide" now.

Gamebreak TV The Republic! Tonight at 6

July 12: 6pm-7pm* The Republic

Great news.  The Republic is back on the air tonight.  Starting at 6pm Game Breaker TV in its new studio will broadcast a show called "The Republic".  Basically a great LIVE summary show that covers that latest news for The Old Republic. 

If your up for it the show can be watched  live.  Or downloaded later via your standard selection of itunes and zune. 

The Republic features Larry Everett from Massively.  A site dedicated to MMO'ing.  Larry is the senior Star Wars writer.  In addition the show is hosted by Gary Gannon who brings his own unique perspective to the show as your standard fair Star Wars fan - much like most of us. 

Larry's article's can be found here.

*Events shown in time zone: Pacific Time

Zoller Drops The Bomb on Death!!!

Before we dive into Greg Z's bomb we must first explain how death works in SWTOR:  Once dead you will have the option to rez at a medical center in town or use the aid of a medical droid that will appear and rez you.  And there fellow TOR fans is where the Grim Reaper meets the root of the challenge.

The challenge from the fan base (keep in mind without having played the game) "BioWare! Your game is to easy!" Or in this case ""Hard" setting for game going to include a better "Death System" !?"

In one giant wall of yellow text Greg Z lays it out in clear English for all to see BioWare's stance on death in SWTOR:

A harsh death penalty causes players to play risk averse and conservatively, which is not our goal. 

In many ways this is great for people that want to just have fun and see the content:

The goal for us is to offer entertainment to our players. That means reducing incidents where players quit in frustration because they have to re-run the same content over and over. (Note that they may occasionally still quit in frustration because the actual encounter was too hard for them, but at least then the frustration is directly related to the encounter, not the penalty after it.)

Which many players can understand as they want to see the content and hate fighting their way through mob after mob again just to die and start over.  While that might be good for XP it may not be fun.

There might be both hate and love for this system think about the constant PvP that will go one.  Basically less wait between each fight.

In addition BioWare is will not be changing the system:

If that's not acceptable, well, to put it after Obi Wan: "This might not be the punishing experience you are looking for", because that system is not going away 

Just remember the system does not work in Ops, Raids, and Flash-points(instances).  And like other MMO's you will suffer equipment damage that requires credits to repair.

For more information I recommend reading the wall of yellow.  I think it's a great read and provides a great example of what to expect in the game.

Winter Reading

First Look: Darth Plagueis Novel
Planning some epic reading for the coming winter month of December?  Well look no further Del Ray have James Luceno working on Star Wars: Darth Plagueis.  Luceno has created 12 different Star Wars books covering the Falcon, Maul, and the Darth Vader. 

The book will of course cover the interesting relationship between Sidious and Plagueis prior to the movies.  I would imagine this could server as a great catapult into episode 1. 

Author James Luceno delves into the secrets of the dark side to find out more about Darth Sidious and Darth Plagueis...

What more could you ask for this winter?  For those interested it sounds like this will be a hardbook release and eread release at the same time. 

Fan Friday is Fan Map Day!!!

Star Wars: The Old Republic Developer Blogs
A Path to Success: Maps, and their Making.

While BioWare's title sounds better, I have to ask - Anyone up for some Geo caching?

It would appear that BioWare is indeed learning from the trials and mistakes of other MMO games. Looking to WoW as we so often do we can see the many changes Blizzard has made to their MAP interface over the life of the game. These changes ended in the final culmination of a 'Quest Tracker' version that some would agree rivals created MODS.

BioWare have taken these lessons one step further using what appear to be their own custom tools in addition to photoshop

"The end result is that we have maps that can show astonishing details about the game world. Chairs, crates, statues – all manner of items show up on the map from a birds-eye view, giving the player a real sense of where they are in the world. "

Look the Sith Fury in all its SWTOR map glory

Fury comparison shot.

The entire process sounds very impressive and from recall almost unheard of for an MMO.  The article continues on with features that help track party quests in addition to routs for public transport. 

 

The following image  however begs further review:

 

That's no Segway!

Comments made by BioWare earlier in the week about the 'Segway Speeders' could almost be confirmed.  While BioWare has said public transport would use speeder bikes, it makes you wonder if the above shot was our first taste of the new speeder models for personal transport in the game. 

Anyway, I think its another great update from BioWare that should be indulged in full by the fans.

SWTOR Getting a Release Date?

STAR WARS: The Old Republic - Release date speculation!!!

As always speculation is on the rise in the TOR forums. It would appear Mr. Stephen Reid is up to his usual antics. The following post:

'Wait and see' means... drum roll please...


Wait...


... and see.


Remember, I have said many many times that there are certain things you're going to get before a release date.


Two weeks to wait; then you'll see.

found here. Comes hot off the heels of linking this bad boy in his twitter feed:

Understood, and we're very aware of this.


Right now, we're sticking with a wide window (the second half of 2011). Obviously every day that goes by narrows that window slightly.


It's possible in the future we'll narrow that window. For example, we may say "We're aiming at [quarter]" or "We're aiming at [month]. It's also possible we'll jump right to a specific date. There are pros and cons to each scenario.


Exactly what we do (narrow the window or announce a date) is a decision that's quite a way above my head, but we monitor all the feedback we have on this, and we give it to the people who make those decisions. In other words, we're very aware of this.

Clearly something is afoot in the SWTOR forums. Or I am just reading way into this. Which is what our boy Reid probably wants. OHHH that clever guy.