Now that mostly everyone that worked on the creation of Star Wars: The Old Republic is fired or left and that sufficient time has passed to have enough distance to talk about everything that transpired I want to list the top 5 things that, in my opinion, caused SWTOR to fail. TOR is not a bad game by any measure, but considering the fact it lost at least 75% of its initial players (and if we are to be honest the number is now closer to 95%) and sold less copies than most AAA single player games do, I feel confident enough to call it a failure. If John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, called it that I see no reason why I shouldn’t. For the past couple of months I considered hard whether to call it the biggest failure in the history of MMORPGs since Age of Conan, but the jury is still out there on that one so I’ll stick to just calling it a general failure.
  

1. Tech/Hero engine – Bioware chose to use a 3rd party engine to create SWTOR. Most companies out there invested in having a developer team that created their own engine. I am guessing that Bioware wanted to shorten the development time by using an already available engine called – Hero engine. On paper it looked like it would accomplish everything it needed to do. In reality things worked out a bit different.

   As seen on Ilum, large scale PvP is impossible in SWTOR, because once more than 40 people showed up in the same place things would become a lag fest with the graphics simply killing your computer no matter how strong it was. What kind of MMO is it if large number of people can’t be in the same place?

   The engine seems to be incredibly difficult to modify and implement initially unsupported features. It took them months to create a dungeon finder and server merges. Talking to the developers I heard over and over again how hard it was to put in features that were not already in the engine. … and than the bugs… oh my God the bugs.

   There seems to be something incredibly hard or wrong with the scripting part of the Hero engine because even the simplest events initially had bugs.

   Can you say loading times? It takes upwards of five minutes to load Belsavis! Higher the level the more loading screens you would see by moving from your ship to another planet and back to the fleet. Every time I had to go somewhere I cringed a bit.

   The game was not broken at launch per se. However, due to being faced with modifying other people’s tech it took months to do things that should have taken weeks. Which brings us to our no. 2

2. Failure to react on time/initial number of servers/empty servers – Bioware decided to be generous with the number of servers they had at launch. Someone over there thought that queues at launch are much worse than having empty servers a month later. After all the beta testing they went with a very conservative server cap and I am not sure if they had more than 2000 concurrent players per server allowed before queue started to kick in. That is how it felt, because rarely you would see more than 50 players per planet on a moderately populated server with the most people being on fleet (100-150 max on med server). As with every MMO that launched in the past 10 years we had 25% of players leave within the first three months. In SWTOR’s case this meant 500.000 players left. You know what that did to the medium population servers? They became low pop and we had 10 people per planet and 30-50 players on fleet … in a Massive Multiplayer Online game. Can you say “single player MMO“?

   It took them 6 months to initiate the first server transfers (not merges – no). By then they lost 50+ percent of their subscribers. Someone over there did not think a technology for moving player characters between servers will be necessary so they had to develop it… You know, it is unheard of for a MMO to need to reshuffle its population in between servers post launch…

   This inability to react to things players demanded was visible in other areas as well, but nowhere did it hurt the game as much as the empty servers did. Next time your players tell you the servers are empty do not reply with snark comments how “the galaxy is a big place” mkay? If they had done server merges and extended the pop cap back in March we would have seen a much lower churn rate and the game would probably be in a much better state now.

   Can you also say group finder? How could it take so long to make such an essential tool available?

3. Inability to communicate – the corporate rules imposed on Bioware have made communication with the players just a bunch of “soon” and “happy thoughts” statements. When things were the most critical the players were kept in the dark, which caused them to lose faith, which caused them to move on. There is a lot of faith involved in MMORPGs. Faith that the developer will continue to produce content for the virtual world you chose to participate in and pay subscription for and that the developer will fix the current bugs or systems that are not up to par in quality. That faith is best reinforced with honest communication and delivering on promises. Instead we had weeks and months of silence.

   The most incredible display of how grossly awkward the rules of silence are in Bioware was during GamesCom 2012. I was at the SWTOR booth because they were showing the new warzone – Ancient Hypergates. I was filming the gameplay with my camera and a person from Bioware came to me demanding to stop filming! Why? Why would you want to stop your players and fans from seeing the new stuff that will be coming to the game. Are you freaking insane? Out of 10 or so games and companies I filmed during GamesCom – none of them asked me not to record. None, except Bioware! And it was at a public booth where everyone could play the new warzone!

   I always understood that there are delicate forces at work with Lucas Arts overseeing all of the things happening and EA having their own policies about public presentation. What we got in the end is a community team that was let go for following company rules and bunch of angry players that left due to not having confidence in “we are working on it” sentences. Also – server merges are server merges and not server transfers.

4. Electronic Arts – I feel pretty confident saying now that EA killed SWTOR. Now that the good Doctors retired from Bioware the last piece of the puzzle fell in. I do not think Bioware intended to launch SWTOR in the state it was ultimately launched in. They had to release it in 2011 (and if any of you remember, it was John Riccitiello, CEO of EA, who first said SWTOR will launch in 2011) so that EA honchos had something to show to the investors in that year. Just remember the rushed announcement of the launch at Eurogamer Expo 2011 and the terrible date of the launch (launch a few days before Christmas – nice). From my last interview with Gabe Amatangelo we heard that Ilum PvP was rushed due to launch and I assume the same stands for other parts of the game that looked rushed (semi-functional GTN; basic chat functions; basic UI; bugs in end game). That was the first thing that hurt SWTOR a lot. It is almost a consensus now that if the game launched with 1.2 features things would have played out a lot different.

   The second thing that EA did to kill SWTOR was pull the rug under its feet way too early. We now learned that the good doctors gave notice in April and in May we had the first wave of layoffs in SWTOR studio in Austin, TX. This means that EA pronounced SWTOR a failure 4 months after launch and I think consequently Greg Zeschuck gave notice and Ray followed. This reduced the studio’s ability to fix bugs and create new content and directed the game towards free to play and scraping the bottom of the barrel.

   With those two moves there is nothing left of Bioware’s vision of this game that we were fans of and the we followed for years; instead, we have a new Electornic Arts’ SWTOR

5. Fear of innovation/playing it safe – It was pretty apparent Bioware will create a themepark MMO with familiar game mechanics right of the bat. When I first played the game back in 2010 I jumped right in and did not need a tutorial or anything. Everything was done in a well established manner and where they tried to innovate was quality. The quests were improved by voiceovers, cutscenes and some primetime writing. The companions had better AI and more personality than similar “systems” in other games. The worlds had more lore and very rich environments. Were any of these things an innovation? In my opinion – no. They were an evolution perhaps, but not an innovation and obviously players did not appreciate this.

   As a matter of fact, they started picking on everything that was not on par with the quality in other games. You have no dungeon finder? Fail. You have no customizable UI? Fail. There’s a lesson to be had here. If you are not going to bring anything innovative and new to the table, at least have everything on par with the competition. That is, if you are planning to be a top contender on the market.

  
Bonus fail – Red Zone – I will never forget the fact that Bioware allowed to have players segregated by the country they live or were born in. They only allowed players in the West to purchase the game initially. This meant the United States, Canada and most (but not all) of Europe (oh and Russia too). Games are a great medium that is (mostly) race, gender and class agnostic. Whoever you are and wherever you live you can sit down and play a game and you would play it the same as any other person out there in the world. In MMOs this is even more so because you would have a chance to meet and communicate with people from different cultures and different continents as if they were right there in your room. Bioware decided to split us up into prime time countries and the rest – the Red Zone. Guild Wars 2 at least let everyone purchase the game while “they had copies”. They stopped sales for everyone once they wanted to stop the pressure on the servers. That is what means being race, gender, country and class agnostic and what games should be all about.
  
The game was not all fail though and that is what makes this fail hurt even more. SWTOR did some things exceptionally well and I think it would only be fair to list them here as well.
  

• Story telling – after SWTOR it will be difficult, to say at least, to enjoy storytelling in any other MMO. I tried several MMOs since SWTOR launched and it was hard to “swallow” Guild Wars 2 static dialogues and The Secret World’s lack of voiceovers for all quests. There will probably never again be a game that invests so much into storytelling and its presentation as SWTOR did and that’s a real shame.
• Companions – the first “pet” system that provided you with a genuine buddy. Companion stories made you feel connected to some of the companions and their AI wasn’t half bad. Choosing a different companion gave you an option to fine tune your game style more towards survivability or DPS or whatever you like.
• Warzones – I believe SWTOR had some of the best PvP arenas out there. Huttball is one of the best designed PvP maps ever (pity some classes had such clear advantage). The fact that more than 50% of SWTOR players actively participate in Warzones speaks for itself.
• Classes – I like SWTOR classes. Maybe I am influenced by playing an Assassin most of the time and it was able to provide me with different play styles for a very long time. In any case I think that the classes represented well classic Star Wars prototypes and provided distinctly different ways to play your character based on the build you chose. It was not exactly groundbreaking or anything, but it was not bad
• some of the raiding – I loved the fact I could kill a Rancor. I liked the SOA fight when they fixed all the bugs. I liked the Karagga fight. I liked the accessibility of raids so that most players could do them. I hated the puzzle events because they presented a barrier for groups without voice communication. I thought that having so many trash mobs is retarded.

I would like to offer my sincerest apologies to anyone that ever decided to buy or spend any money on Star Wars: The Old Republic on account of my fansite influencing them to do so. I am sorry, I have deceived you into giving money for something that will be free in a few months. I chose to believe everything Bioware was telling me about SWTOR and I supported it wholeheartedly by telling people it is a great product that will last for years and years to come and that investing money into it will bring joy into your gaming life. It will still bring joy to gamers, as a free offering, and that is a huge difference.
  
We, the first customers of SWTOR, have given about $90 to EA and Bioware on average (game cost + three month subscription to average things). Money none of the people playing from November 1. will have to pay. That is why I feel like I deceived you.
  
I have supported and recommended SWTOR to everyone for one simple reason. All along we were promised a top notch product that will justify paying a monthly fee. We have seen many MMORPGs of the past not reach the highest quality at release. Age of Conan was unfinished past level 20, Warhammer Online was boringly easy, Star Trek Online had only the space combat done well out of all the parts of the game and so on. Star Wars: The Old Republic was not to repeat these mistakes. It had 200 million in funding, it had people that brought us KOTOR, Dragon Age, DAOC, Ultima and many other great games working on the project. It was hailed as a pivotal product for Electronic Arts. Some of the people working on the game even got permanent tattoos displaying their full commitment to the game.
  
We were all deceived.
  
Past the first month subscription numbers started to plummet. There were things that needed to be done in the game that took way too long to be done (more on that in another article) and people simply voted with their wallets. Apparently, SWTOR did not warrant a monthly subscription. The game is not half that bad to be honest. Maybe the subscription model is dead. If anyone should have known this it was Bioware and Electronic Arts. They should not have deceived us by saying they have something we will want to pay a monthly subscription for.
  
Not even six months after release we saw the first people from Bioware, Austin get fired. Electronic Arts started cutting expenses and changing direction for SWTOR. John Riccitiello labeled SWTOR as one of the top 10 products for EA (but not a top 5 product) and started firing people. So much for Electronic Arts’ full support for the project and the game. What was to be an ongoing service for years to come was being crippled 6 months into the service going live. Bioware was deceived into believing they have time to fix the problems and take SWTOR in the right direction. I am guessing month 3 was when support stopped. By month 8 not many original people are in Bioware, Austin anymore and EA has changed its stance towards SWTOR from flagship product to disappointing. In MMORPG world this is a very short time and going F2P after 10.5 months is like straight to DVD for movies.
  
Sticking to that movie analogy, SWTOR is the Waterworld of the gaming industry.
  
I can understand Electronic Arts’ logic. They were deceived into believing that Bioware is capable of delivering a world class product that will create over a million subscribers in years to come. Obviously that did not happen within the timeframe EA thought as comfortable for them.
  
I feel that I need to make one thing very clear. This article is not about SWTOR being a good or bad game or about Free to play model and what it means for SWTOR (it is a very natural progression and a very good thing for gamers). This is about everyone being deceived and the announcement about Free to play bringing that to light. If you check out this Gamespy article they have a very nice layout of all the Bioware quotes from past talking about free to play. What Bioware has been telling us all along (for the past two years) is that free to play might be the future, but they have a product that warrants a subscription. They back-paddled only 8 months into release and switched their story completely (firing half the staff along the way). This tells us that they are capable of deception , or are completely incompetent. Either way, it is now obvious the only price you should have been paying for SWTOR is FREE.
  
P.S. I had the honor of having dinner with Stephen Reid and David Bass in Austin. I had the privilege of interviewing James Ohlen and asking questions to Damion Schubert, Daniel Erickson and Blaine Christine. I chatted with the writers of the Old Republic. All of those people were very passionate about the game they were making. They loved it very much and they lived and breathed that game. That is why I believed them and believed in them. That is why I wholeheartedly supported SWTOR for the past 2 years and recommended it to everyone. That is why I find this a bit tragic, because apparently loving your work does not necessarily translate into success and than all the love is forgotten and everyone is just feeling deceived.
  
DISCLAIMER: All the opinions and conclusions in this article are that of its author. The author reserves the right to be proved he is wrong and is willing to hear the opinions of others on the subject. Please leave your comments in the comment section bellow.
  
UPDATE: You can hear me talk about this article and the reasons I wrote what I wrote in a podcast with SWATHRadio.com You can find the podcast on their website or download it here
  

Before going in deep into making an educated opinion about SWTOR’s conversion to a F2P model I wanted to go over what happened at yesterday’s EA Earnings call. You can find the recording of the call as well as all the documentation at http://investor.ea.com/ . I will try and list the facts as they happened and offer my analysis of the events.
  

1. 1 hour before the earnings call began it was announced that SWTOR will be adopting a F2P model alongside its regular subscription model and that it will be introducing a cash shop
2. John Ricitello, CEO of EA, said the following in his fourth sentence of his speech to the investors: “The disappointing results of Star Wars: The Old Republic were largely offset by a powerful performance from Battlefield 3 Premium service“
3. No exact number of subscribers was revealed but this was said: “Mentioned break even point was 500,000, SWTOR is well above that but under 1 million total subscribers. Offering two-tiered pricing plan in November.”
4. SWTOR and BF3 were mentioned again in the following sentence: “Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3)”
5. EA lowered their expected revenue and profit margins for the quarter and this is what they said about why they did it: “Star Wars is the primary driver for adjusted guidance to a lower number.”
6. There was a question near the end about the future of Star Wars and this is what Frank Gibeau had to say: “The idea with F2P is to open the funnel and get some of the players back that we lost to churn. We anticipate that the mix between subscriptions and free to play are going to be balanced but we don’t foresee free to play revenues as incremental to anything that we discussed in the call.”

  
Lets analyze this information. Less than an hour before the investors call we find out that SWTOR is going F2P only 8 months after its launch. This is a major change of strategy and direction only 11 months after the game launched. Never has there been so much money invested, nor strategy about the subscription plan so quickly changed in the history of MMORPG games. The closest to come to this time frame is DC Universe Online by Sony Online Entertainment.
  
The next thing that happened is that CEO of Electronic Arts, owner of Bioware and the one that paid for development and marketing of Star Wars: The Old Republic, said in his fourth sentence of the address to the investors that SWTOR had disappointing results. The CEO of EA chose not to downplay how bad SWTOR is doing and basically opened his address to the investors by blaming SWTOR for disappointing results. Further into the investors call we also learned that they blame SWTOR for not reaching their revenue guidelines. This is huge in every way. When a CEO says something like this about one of company’s products this probably means the product is being discontinued at best. Combined with the fact that they fired half the people in Bioware, Austin, including higher-up staff, we see a company blaming and punishing everyone involved in a project for bad results and acting accordingly.
  
The subscriber numbers were not explicitly mentioned. We were given a range of bellow 1 million (which means out of 2 mil boxes sold they retained less than 50% customers), but well above the 500.000 bottom line they mentioned during their last investors call. This statement makes no sense when we calculate in the facts that they fired half the staff and announced one of the fastest conversions to F2P in MMO history. The moves they are making tell us that SWTOR is trending towards well bellow their bottom line and they are doing damage control right away. Their actions tell us that EA has labeled SWTOR a failure and is now just salvaging what can be salvaged.
  
The last thing I wanted to discuss is the statement by Frank Gibeau on what they expect in SWTOR’s future. This part is important “we don’t foresee free to play revenues as incremental to anything that we discussed in the call“. This tells us that EA does not believe in the Free to Play model as the one that will bring them significant increase in revenue and that they are probably doing it just to salvage the situation the best they can and perhaps get a few more dollars in the process.
  
Conclusions:

• EA blames SWTOR for not meeting its Q1 goals and calls SWTOR’s performance disappointing
• EA anticipates that at current trends the subscribers would go bellow the bottom-line number of subscribers needed for the game to keep operating
• EA is making moves to salvage the situation and is now doing damage control and not trying to “fix” the game or “improve” the gaming experience
• EA does not believe in the F2P model for SWTOR

  
These are all terrifying conclusions for any fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I will be discussing the impact of these conclusions on the game itself and its future in my next article tomorrow. In the meantime please share with me your opinions in the comments section. I would love to hear everyone’s take on what happened during the investors call yesterday and what impact it will have on SWTOR’s future.
  
DISCLAIMER: All the opinions and conclusions in this article are that of its author. The author reserves the right to be proved he is wrong and is willing to hear the opinions of others on the subject. Please leave your comments in the comment section bellow.
  

  
There are moments in your gaming life when all you can say is “Epic”. That is what I muttered when I opened the box Razer was so kind to send us. It contained the gear seen on the image above; SWTOR themed, high quality, gaming peripherals. We already reviewed the SWTOR Mouse and I, personally, find it an invaluable tool for my PvP sessions. Thanks to Razer we are able to provide our visitors with a chance to get one of these great peripherals for free by entering our giveaway. We will not make you run through hoops or anything. You can enter the giveaway by logging in with your Facebook account or email in the form bellow and than using that very same form to follow us on Twitter or Like our SWTOR Spy Facebook page or you can post an image of your character from SWTOR on our SWTOR Spy forums. You can do one or all of these things, you will be eligible to win. Check out the full rules on our giveaway page and good luck to everyone.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

When it comes to peripherals, us PC gamers really love our keyboard and mouse combo. It is what separates us from our console brethren and gives us the possibility to play games like complex MMORPGs. If you take your gaming even slightly serious you probably considered getting a higher quality mouse or keyboard at some point. Razer is a manufacturer of such high quality gaming peripherals. They have been making true advancements in the field of PC gaming peripherals over the years, but this time they have something special made for Star Wars: The Old Republic fans – SWTOR themed keyboard, mouse and headset combo.
  
Razer was kind enough to provide us with:

• SWTOR mouse
• SWTOR mouse pad (review soon)
• SWTOR headset (review soon)

to test them out while actually playing The Old Republic. Here are our impressions.
  

Packaging

  
The mouse comes in a SWTOR themed box that is part see through so you can see the mouse right away. Beside the mouse you get a good length, high quality braided USB cable, the charging dock for when you go wireless and the Republic/Empire logos that you can put on the mouse to customize its looks. You can see the full contents of the package in our unboxing video below.
  

  

Technical specification

  
Those familiar with Razer’s Naga line of mice will instantly recognize this mouse. This is a SWTOR skinned Naga with wireless capabilities included (like the Naga Epic). This means that you can charge it on the provided base and use it as a wireless mouse. When you run out of battery power you can plug in the USB cord and flip a switch to make it a wired mouse instantly. This provides you with an uninterrupted gaming experience at all times. It has the 5600DPI Razer’s 3.5G Laser Sensor with 1000Hz polling rate maximum to ensure top precision and response times among gaming mice today. It also has customizable LED backlight illumination so you will really stand out at a LAN party.
  

  

First impressions

  
I was really confused with this mouse the first moment I held it in my hand. It felt small. I had no idea how to make use of the extra 12 buttons on the sides. One thing was for sure, I have never held a mouse like this in my hand before. The manual said that it might take up to 18 hours to get used to the extra buttons and I was starting to think that his might be entirely true. The first adjustment was the placement of my hand on the mouse. The center of my palm was almost not on the mouse and I had to “skew” the mouse a bit to have the thumb positioned over the extra buttons properly. Without using the extra buttons, and using the mouse regularly I adapted to this hand position surprisingly quickly. Although it didn’t feel like my hand is entirely supported by the mouse I felt no discomfort after prolonged usage so I guess the ergonomics of this mouse are not bad, although it felt small at first touch. It was time to face the extra buttons.
  

  

Hands On

  
The twelve extra buttons basically represent the twelve keys on your keyboard (1 through = ). The idea is not to move your left hand to reach all 12 keys but rather use your right hand thumb to get to all of them. I decided to take it slow and do some PvE for a few hours to get accustomed to using the mouse buttons instead of the keyboard. I immediately noticed that I reach the bottom two rows of extra buttons more naturally and easily than the third, highest, row. This called for remapping my skills to accommodate for this fact. I’ve put the most used skills on 1,2,4,5,7,8,0,- keys and the less used skill (or with higher cooldown) on the third row keys (3,6,9,=). When engaging mobs I would usually start with 1,2, 4,4,5 skill combo and within five minutes I was accustomed to using the mouse in simple PvE encounters. I had a bit of trouble at first with higher level encounters because I needed to use a wider range of skills and I couldn’t remember which key was mapped to which skill. After perhaps an hour you get everything figured out and regular PvE feels alright. I felt that the true test for this mouse was going to be PvP in warzones. When the adrenaline is pumping and where hesitation can result in defeat, trying to figure out which button to press can be devastating. This is exactly what happened to me the first few PvP matches. I was standing there looking at the healers casting their heals unable to find the button to disrupt it (mapped to 10). You then start getting into the flow of things and you finally realize that you are a lot quicker with your reactions and your skill usage is much more streamlined. When using a keyboard you can map perhaps 5 skills in the vicinity of your movement keys and access those very quickly without the need to move your fingers away from the movement buttons. With the Razer mouse you can reach 8 skills easily with your thumb and 4 more with some effort, all the time without moving your hand from your movement buttons. After several days of playing the game with the Razer SWTOR mouse I have started fully utilizing both my hands and all the skills in my arsenal. After a week I went back to my old mouse to test the difference. It felt like somebody severed my right hand thumb, because it was useless now. Searching for skills on my keyboard felt like I was a “clicker” in comparison to using the skills with my thumb on the mouse. I have been assimilated and I felt like I can never go back.
  

  

The bad and the wireless

  
There are a few small things I disliked about this mouse. It is a plug and play USB mouse that works in both wired and wireless mode out of the box. However, to fully utilize all of its settings you need to download and use the Synapse 2.0 software provided by Razer. This software requires you to create your synapse account and it will store all your mouse settings in the Razer cloud. Personally I dislike the idea of having to log into a service to be able to access my mouse profiles and settings. I would much rather prefer if it had an offline feature as well and than syncing with the cloud when I allow it to go online. To be fair, the software did automatically update my mouse and headphones firmware and drivers and it is the only way you can generate the code to get the cool green color crystal for you SWTOR character.   
I had very bad experiences with wireless gaming mice over the years. With other wireless mice I tried wireless mode was laggy and uncontrollable even in regular PvE play. I must say that I didn’t have any of those problems with the Razer SWTOR mouse in wireless mode. I guess Razer advanced its wireless technology enough to be comparable to wired mouse performance. In MMOs you will not feel much difference between the two modes. I doubt though that serious FPS gamers will be using the wireless mode for quite some time. The mouse still feels more responsive in wired mode. Luckily, it is just a matter of plugging in the USB cable and you are good to go.
  

Conclusion

  
There is no doubt that Razer SWTOR mouse requires a certain period of adjustment. What it rewards you with in the end surpasses the difficulties of its high learning curve by a large margin. You will learn to utilize your mouse to its full potential and possibly improve your in-game performance along the way. There will always be those that will instantly dislike this mouse and will not want to adapt. Those that give it a chance will surely have a better gaming experience with it than without it. For SWTOR players and fans this feels like a must have item. With its unique The Old Republic style combined with high quality and innovation it will enrich your SWTOR experience considerably. It may be a big investment at first, but I doubt you will need another mouse for years to come.
  

So, I have been trying PvP in pretty much all its formats since launch. I have to say that I am happy with it overall. Continue Reading »

On December 20th Star Wars: The Old Republic finally officially went live. To make sure players experience as few queue times as possible they rolled out a bunch of new servers on launch day. Keeping with the tradition of the two previous articles you can find the lore explantion of all these new servers listed below.

Continue Reading »

In response to long queue times and the need for servers, the folks over at BioWare having been bring up new servers of all types for both the European community and the US since the start of early access. Here are a list of the new servers and the lore explanation for their names. As with my previous list I will not provide a lore explanation for a server if the name is drawn from SWTOR itself to avoid spoilers.

You can find the first list of server names and the lore explanations for them here Continue Reading »

In less than 5 minutes servers for Star Wars: The Old Republic will go live and people will be able to create their permanent characters for the first time. This marks the end of an era. More than 3 years ago it was announced for the first time that a Star Wars MMO is in the making and that it is being made by Bioware. Ever since then I have been watching closely what is happening with this project. As time went by and more information became available I was sure that this is the next game I will devote myself to fully. I had no idea how much exactly. I made the first post about the Deceived trailer back in 2009 on a now defunct blog. June 2010 is when SWTOR Life officially went live. This means that we have been waiting for this moment for year and a half now.
 
In this time we managed to interview developers, visit Bioware in their HQ, report from conventions and we even managed to expand and bring you a fully functional SWTOR Database. There are two things I am proud of the most. One is the SWTOR Life crew. These are the people that decided to be a part of this site for no benefit at all except participating actively in the SWTOR community. I thank you so very much and love you with all my heart. This site would be a speck of dust in the desert if it wasn’t for you. Thank you Grant, Mick, Michael, Dalqak, Joshua, Rosie, Hawk and Morgaine. I would also like to thank James aka BorukBH that is not part of the staff anymore but contributed a great deal when he was. Thank you for being as awesome as you are!
 
I would also like to thank Derek aka SWTORCrafter for taking the plunge and deciding to partner up with me in this crazy endeavor.
 
With all of these people the future just looks brighter.
 
And the future holds lots and lots of playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. We will try and continue to bring high quality coverage of the game. Together with our Database we will be a complete source for all your SWTOR needs.
 
The second most important thing are you, our visitors. There have been more than half a million people that visited SWTOR Life while we all waited for the game. I thank each and every one of you and I hope you’ll stick around because the best is yet to come.
 
Now, start pressing that F5 key to see if the email for Early access has arrived. While you wait feel free to watch this fan made video that will set the mood perfectly and once you get in enjoy the wonderful worlds and stories Bioware created for us.
 
Yours Truly,
 
Srdjan and Nada Stanarevic
SWTOR Life Founders
 

So we have seen the easy ones here, now lets see about something that may take, if not more time, a bit more brain power.

The following few recipes are ones my family enjoys. We tend to make popovers for breakfast when we have a bunch of guests, and if we are having a party we tend to make deviled eggs. I am going to type out one of the recipes, but there are a total of three that we will use interchangeable. Continue Reading »