We all know Bioware has some of the smartest and funniest people in the industry. They were smart to put some of them up in front of cameras, because only that way we get things like this:

Just to prove that this is not shopped here’s a link to the video interview during which DE wears this hat.

To prove our point further here are some more images from this year’s E3 featuring Daniel Erickson in additional interesting situations.

Torwars.com has created the most awesome picture gallery in the history of humorous E3 posts ever. Make sure you check out their Bioware Booth Babes of E3 2011, guest starring Daniel Erickson:

 
Next up is something that was actually “shopped”. It is an image from last night’s meet & greet that Darth Hater posted. Commentary was added by a person called @C_Kaes

Best for last. Two Tor Gamers (And Some Microphones) is a podcast by members of the Beskar guild with a female and a male host. Blueneko , the female host, has been saying for a few weeks now how she’s gonna go to E3 and rub Daniel Erickson’s head. So, she went to E3 and rubbed DE’s head. Pictures as proof:

UPDATE: This one was sent in by Yufmelt.com (You have failed me for the last time SWTOR blog). Make sure you check out their impressions from the Meet & Greet last night.

Ah springtime, when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of… number crunching?

Gabe Amatangelo, SWTOR’s Lead PvP Designer and purveyor of mirth, stopped by the forums today mostly to quash the fun we might have otherwise had PvP’ing in the buff, but also to shed some rough insight into how Bolster may work in practice.

Those who dreamed of fighting bravely in their skivvies may want to take a few deep breaths before continuing… Continue Reading »

This year’s only Friday the 13th finally brought us full details about the Sith Inquisitor class in Star Wars: The Old Republic. From all the excitement in the official forums and on Twitter it is obvious that a lot of people were really looking forward to this update. Who doesn’t dream about roasting their enemies with some Force Lightning anyways? As it always seem to happen with these class updates, a lot of people suddenly changed their mind about what class they want to play at release. I personally, didn’t. In fact, this class update gave me so much comedic inspiration that I will have things to make fun of for days.

Lets get the important information out of the way first. One of the Inquisitor’s companions was revealed to be a genuine bad-ass called Khem Val. His species, the Dashade, are force-resistant and they actually feed on force users. This particular individual devoured over a thousand Jedi at the battles of Yn and Chabosh and you can read this and much more on his official page.
 
The Inquisitor, just like his force using brethren, Sith Warriors, will be using the Fury starship for traveling the galaxy. There is also a class video available that we posted about a few days ago. Below you will find a gallery of newly released in-game Inquisitor screenshots.

Now onto the more important stuff. SWTOR Life’s very first dissection of this Friday’s update. We’re doing it SWTOR Life style, meaning it has no sense at all and we make wild assumptions and insane connections.
Click here to read what’s in common for iPods, World of Warcraft race Arakkoa and Sith Inquisitors

First off let me start off this little article with the props so due to SWTORCRAFTER and SERGE for the awesome interviews and hands-on reports from the fan summit.   I was as happy as a Sarlacc full of Boba when I got all those articles and reports.  Well done guys. Remind me to send you both a nice can of nuts, and a $50 space hooker for Festivus this year.

Today’s topic of whine:   Game systems.   That’s right. You read it right. I’m gonna go off on a tangent about something I have absolutely no clue about, have never heard about, and have never seen.   Why you ask in a perplexed and angry tone?  Simple: I have way to much time on my hands and very little to do.  I also enjoy bitching about crap for no good reason.

 
Need moar epic SWTOR rant? Click here to read the full article

As part of our Fan Site Summit experience at Bioware offices in Austin, Texas, we got a chance to participate in two Q&A sessions that were organized with Damion Schubert, Lead Systems Designer, Daniel Erickson, Lead writer and Blaine Christine, Live Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We managed to ask one question to each of them and I am providing you with a transcripts of these questions and answers along with complete audio recording of the Q&A sessions so you can hear what other sites asked and got answers for.

I would also like to mention that the impression you get when asking these developers questions is that they are really smart and approachable. I thought that the Imperial Agent question (that we actually got asked by one of the community members on the official forums) was going to catch them off-guard, but they had an answer right off the bat. They want to tell you everything about the game that they have been building for so long and it always take an effort for them to constrain themselves to not spilling the beans on not-yet-released information.

Click here to read and listen to the questions and answers we got

Usually when I wake up in a good mood and begin pouring over twitter, facebook, swtor, swtor-life, darth hater, CRR, MER, etc…  it only takes about 15-20 minutes of reading before my mood is shot to shit and I develop an urge to commit homicide by tossing swtor forum members into a Sarlacc.  Today, I am unusually surprised to find one hell of a gem buried in the pile of rehashed shit and whipped to death horses.  This of course got me thinking, and well all know how badly that usually turns out.

The Official SWTOR forum user Revchong posted a GREAT idea and topic.  A mobile Pazzak App.    Thats right.  A WoW inspired idea that doesn’t make me want to pour acid on Jawas until my rage subsides.

There are tons of possibilities that I personally hadn’t thought of.

• Crafting Monitor App.
• Jawa Punting.
• Space Darts
• Space Donkey Shows
• etc…

This would provide BioWare with a micro-transaction or as they like to call it “service” (which I believe is Latin for “gimme all your money dumbass”) option that didn’t make them appear to be greedy money whoring, space bitches.  They would be extra services that really add functionality to the game that really only affect people who give a crap about that particular section of BW/SW cannon.  The rest of us would never know it was even there.  Nor would most of us even care.  God knows I wouldn’t.  Well maybe the Space Donkey show idea…

Now as much as I hate the idea of micro-transactions and people running around with little flying Jawas or pet Wamprats that do cute little things like OD on death-sticks every 30 seconds or nibble your bum when you stand still, this idea I think is sound.  Additional revenue for game funding without impacting a subscription plan and forcing us to endure a glowing button ingame that flashes every time they release a new pet Mini-Wookie [mini-wookie 2011 Flagg – Patent pending] that glitters like a barbie doll after a 3 day crack binge.

We all know BioWare and EA are on this moronic and silly yet persistent “social networking” kick to exploit the huge market of internet stalkers and pedophiles around the world (THANKS FACEBOOK!) because, well, lets face it.  The majority of them are idiots and have more money than common sense.  I guess in retrospect I would milk them for every penny too.  In the immortal words of my hero Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does”.    If they choose to implement something like this, the sheer volume of  “tweens”  (once again, latin for “to young to have a job but old enough to spend money”) that will bolster the games income could be justified, not to even mention adults that think $50 for  pixels of a see through wanna-be pegasus is a sound investment.  I have some great beachfront property on Hoth if you are interested…

In conclusion I would like to point out that I am an opinionated bastard with a lot of issues pent up having to do with my uncle forcing micro-transactions on me at a very young age.  I think he works for Cryptic now.  Anyway….

If I had my way I would go to BioWare and smack a release date out of them, then proceed to hide all the office snacks until I got a beta invite, but as much is in life: It just ain’t like that.  So I wait and seethe.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me, that I despise micro-transactions and simply will not play games based on pay-to-win.  So why do I think this is a good idea?  Simple.  I don’t have to see it, experience it, or deal with it in any way.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I respect BioWare and their talent and skill, but I remain steadfast in one opinion. Someone should force-pimpslap their   PR department.  With less than 8 months until the announced window closes, we know exactly enough to cover less than 4 minutes worth of commentary on G4.   That’s so sad I think i’m gonna go adopt a kid from one of those Sally Struthers countries.  At least that way I can meet Jabba and get a cheap lawn service while I wait.

Georg Zoller made, what is probably, the funniest post on the official forums in weeks (or evah!). It was a response to one of the people that commented something about Stephen Reid cutting the swimming feature out of the HERO engine while Bioware modified it for SWTOR. I don’t know if the person that made this “accusation” ever again appeared on the forum, since I can’t think of a comback to this post.

Let me fill you in on a secret.

Stephen, in his function as Community Manager, prints the source code of the game engine we are using onto giant paper sheets. Daily. He then proceeds to personally use a pair of oversized, green scissors to cut out vital parts of it. We then scan the results, run them through optical character recognition, synthesize the output into wave files and feed them to the lip synching program that outputs the result using a mockup of Admiral Ackbar placed in an empty test level.

Our valiant IT department has set up a webcam pointed onto a giant 50′ monitor, focused on Admiral Ackbars lips. The image from the webcam is translated to a programmer equally skilled in COBOL and lip reading, who inputs the resulting source code directly from the screen into the source code repository, where it is stored on magnetic cards that are swiped by several dozen interns and flown via pigeon to London, UK, to deliver the latest and greatest demo to the showfloor.

This estemeed gentlemen and ladies, is how games are made.

(In other words – Stephen didn’t cut anything, and decisions on swimming were made long before he even arrived in the building.)

Should I Tank, Or Should I Heal ?

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Don’t you love Fridays? Not only is it the last day of the week for work, for most of us, it is also the day we look forward to for updates from Swtor. Now, I love those updates and can’t wait until I see it every week, but don’t they leave you itchy?

By itchy I mean wanting to just be able to get in the game and finally play. It does me, and makes anything else mundane compared to the desire I have for the game. It doesn’t get better either. Not when you have fan sites, such as Swtor Life, that do their best to keep that itch going and even spread it around more.

Darth Hater is such a fan site, with all their updates to news and updates on updates. They are probably the best at really dissecting information as it comes out and if you want to see how, you really should check out some of their galleries. If you have an itch after getting the Friday update and then check out DH and let that itch becomes a rash!

Mos Eisley Radio is another fan site that does nothing to cure that itch. Their pod-casts are really great at showing how fans of the game are getting into the game their own way. They interview people and Developers to get more information for people to watch and listen too. They discuss the things and ideas we are all having about the game. Even though Brooks has left for a job with Bioware, and we hates him we does Precious, I am sure MER is still going to be the place to turn our itch, now rash, pretty infectious.

Still not enough to sate that appetite for the game and every ounce of information you can gather or go over since none of us are actually playing the game? Good, it isn’t for me either. Fortunately for us, there is TORSyndicate. They bring us stuff from other fan sites, all over the web, in one easy location. Everyone has a voice about the game and this play gives us a speaker-phone to make those voices heard a little bit easier. Still scratching? Good.

So if those Friday Updates make you itch to play and that itch has gone bubonic by now, join the club. There are even more places on the web that you can check out for fans talking about the game and their hopes they have for it. It’s alright, you aren’t alone, scratch away.

I’m so glad the SWTORGB event went ahead, and we got some tips of information from it, for I was kind of stumped on this weeks article.

The announcement that Darth and Lord Titles, would indeed be used in-game got me thinking about, well, mini games and other titles that could be available.

Of course, these titles are down to the individual players to choose, Darth Chocolate and Lord Of-The-Dance, would turn most of us into a crazy nerd rage, and rightly so. But lets think about the non player generated titles that  may be available.

First and foremost, in-game titles can come from a number of events as you play through the game.

For instance, killing 200 Womp rats may give you the option of using a “Womp Rat Slayer” Title.  Ok, this may not be the greatest title to have, but it’s a start at least. Killing X amount of mobs as well as players is one of the most common in-game title achievements, that MMO’s have used over the years. Continue Reading »