It was as I had foreseen,  for some unknown reason the power of the darkside has failed me.

As soon as the second game began I had to watch as my trusty sidekick Jango Fett (my son) has met his match.  On the third turn he was lining up his star craft to make a run at the GO and the prize money, unfortunately for him he rolled too big.  Back to the same Millennium Falcon hovering over Echo Base on Hoth  he has hit 3 times already!  With only 50 credits, and all of his properties mortgaged he is down for the count.

I tried to explain to him that the darkside was a fickle master, but he would have none of it.  He was convinced that there was a plot against us by the rebel scum.  4 turns later I am starting to believe him.  As I carefully work my way around the board I am starting to sense that the makings of a final blow are about to be dealt to me and my minions.

Through the giggling and the whispering, Han had somehow convinced Luke to trade him two yellow ones for one green one.  Conveniently that gave Luke possession of Endor and all of the green ones, while just around the corner Han had somehow gained access to my death star and has control of all the yellows and the Cloud City and the reds now!

As I line up my fury to make a run through the Endor region, I roll the dice and feel the power of the force from my *daughter Luke, beckon me to come to the surface in the Endor Forest to settle this once and for all.  I have finally realized that it’s a trap, and that the dark side has failed me.  To the Endor Forest to make my last stand Vader goes.

High fives all around between the girls, (Mom was secretly watching from the kitchen and had to get one as well.  It was evident at this point that there were plans against us!)  My master plot was for me and Jango to secretly team up to overthrow the Rebel scum.  How dare they have a master plan to counteract my master plan!

When Mom joined in on the high fives Darth Vader and Jango Fett caught each others eyes and at that moment, we both realized who was really in control of the plans.  Luke and Han were just pawns in *her elaborate scheme to see us fall.  This is most disturbing, I will have to contact my master and tell him of this new disturbance in the force.

As I make my escape I give one last moment to a snarky comment directed at her to let her know I am onto her and known her game, she replies with, “I got your force power right here you geek”

Oh noes,  it burns, she got me.  🙂

It played out just like always, I play Darth Vader or I don’t play.  Yeah I know sometimes I can bring the drama, but really, I play Vader.

My trusty sidekick my son, pronounced that he was going to be the bounty hunter, specifically Jango Fett, because he wanted to be aligned with me from the sith side. (I can always count on him to be at my side)

At the sound of this declaration the two girls sitting across from me made their intentions known (rebel scum, I should have known).  My oldest daughter decided upon Luke Skywalker, (she would have rather had a Anakin figure cause she thinks he is cute).  My middle eldest daughter chose to be Han Solo cause she said him and Luke were best friends.

So there we have it, a sith warrior and bounty hunter combo vrs smuggler and jedi knight, this ought to be interesting.  Based on what I think I know about SWTOR game mechanics, even though it seems balanced with some dps/dps-heal combo I am still betting heavily on the dark side at the start of this one, the force is strong with me after all.

We started the game and immediately my oldest daughter within 4 turns had all of the light blue properties.  This is not going well.  Vader and Jango were having a run of bad luck and between the docking tax, and letting the wookie win we were slowly loosing our chance at available property.

Of course on her next turn she immeditley put up 3 Millenium Falcons, rebel scum!  We proceeded for the next few turns where me and Jango began a viscious cycle of having to stay in them every time we went by, we are almost out of credits and we now own barely more than a few utilities and some random property that we cant make work between us. Things are getting dire for my command of this unit.

All the while on the other side of the universe my youngest daughter now has control of all the yellow and is starting on the reds as well!  Who knew that Han Solo could keep his dealings so discreet and fly under the radar like that?

I am not even sure if they will be able to see the master plot unfold in front of them like I had planned.

They may have thwarted me before I even got started.  What started out as a secret plot between Lord Vader and Jango, to destroy Luke Skywalker once and for all and end *her reign of terror (she has won three games in a row) has turned into a what looks like a complete wipe for the forces of the Dark side.

As we start the game for the second night I now have 300 credits and my partner has about the same.   I am not sure that the forces of the darkside will prevail because as it stands now we can barely roll the dice on the board because of all the credits stuck under the rebel side.

I am starting to think about making my way to the escape pods, I will hold on for just a little bit longer…..

Read the continuation of this story in the second part entitled “Confessions of a Star Wars Dad, Vader’s last stand at Endor“.

Thread on the official forums dedicated to Daniel Erickson MeMe we started a while back has had some new hilarious entries and I just wanted to show them to our visitors as well. In honoring this epic thread I also wanted to make another contribution and also add to the forever growing debate of Star Trek vs Star Wars. I bring you an animated gif: Mr. Spock vs Mr. Erickson. It is rather big, but I think it is worth waiting for it to load.

Here’s a couple of user created MeMes:

posted by notinvited

posteb by EtharionTurambar

posted by Droolmouth

February 25. brought a special Friday update to the official SWTOR site. It is a dev blog by The Old Republic’s Live Producer Blaine Christine. He is also well known as host of several SWTOR presentations and a generally funny guy. In his dev blog he talks about what he does as Live Producer and also shares some insight into what the game testers are saying about the game so far. There is one thing in his article that I just couldn’t get out of my head.

… I’m happy to report that all of the mental images you have of us working at a world class RPG development studio are true. Yes, we have rivers of chocolate running down the hallway, yes, a live animatronic ogre lives in the basement and of course, yes, we have LARPing parties from 5PM to midnight every weeknight. (I usually dress up as Princess Amidala and practice my diplomacy skills on Daniel Erickson, who pulls off a very convincing Gungan ambassador.) …

I had to expel the mental images this quote created in my head, so, in spirit of the Daniel Erickson MeMe I did a few months back here are the demotivational posters dedicated to Blaine Christine and his dev blog entry.

Daniel Erickson is not amused

Argument Invalid

Gift of gab - he haz it

Hurrr Durrr

Amidala vs Blaine

In the gallery below you will find all the original images I used to make these, just in case you have some inspiration of your own. You can send me your finished work and I will publish it on the site.

Following last Friday’s update that focused on Crew Skills crafting system, Darth Hater released an interview with Lead Writer for The Old Republic, Daniel Erickson. During this, otherwise informational, interview it just so happened that a question was asked that didn’t make much sense. Did that stop Daniel? Watch the video and see for yourself:

The video was very inspirational for me and I decided to create several demotivational and 4koma comics in style of verydemotivational.com and comixed.com . Hope you enjoy them and I appologize in advance because this is going to be the longest post you will ever see on SWTOR Life. I hope it is worth it :).

Crafting Armor

Crafting Armor 2

Long comic is long

Yoda style

with real Yoda

for those that understand the context

In Soviet Russia version

Carbonite for the end

The above image was found at comixed.com.

With all the hype and controversy over Star Wars: The Old Republic, a previous mmo evil has returned to dominate BioWare’s latest soon to be blockbuster.  That’s right. The Dark Lord of speculation with the power to pull facts out of his ass. He has returned to such forums as MMORPG.com, Gamasutra, Massively, and even our beloved SWTOR.com forums.

With so many people knowing EXACTLY how space combat will work, the fact this game will be a direct clone of WoW..in space…with lightsabers.. and the notion that there is ZERO endgame content. That’s right. None. Not one drop. When you hit level 40 (which according to many obvious space-scholars is max level) your toon is deleted, you are forced to roll a new toon, and a man drives up to your house and kills your cat with a currently unknown force power. (I’m betting there is a cat choke tree for inquisitors). There is also the off chance you will proc a “death fee” that forces you to buy 11 xp potions and the “Rifle of Jedi Pwnsauce” from the microtransaction store that appears as a big dollar sign right on your HUD until you spend $413 on game breaking items. Oh. There will be a spectral mou…err…jedi starfighter in there for $100 as well that lasts 3 hours. And makes you glow magenta.

Lets set the record straight. They are all utterly, totally, completely, unequivocally wrong.  Even if the game is exactly like they describe, down to space ironforge and strand of the Tattoine ancients, they are still wrong. Here’s the BW/SWTOR rules to live by…

1. Not confirmed, than it doesn’t exist. Admittedly this requires some bending of time and space, but until confirmed by BioWare, it is pure speculation. At the time these short bus heroes make their statements, they know nothing. Guessing, be it accurate or not, is still a guess.

2. Many of these “speculators” (Latin for idiot I believe)  have the attention spans of a sock. They read something out of context, retweeted by snapperheadMcIdiot and leap across 27 sectors of space to land at some random conclusion that usually makes as much sense as a bag of drunk hamsters. If they cannot spell or speak in complete sentences, odds are they know even less than my semi-retarded 4th cousin Ebert about SWTOR.

3. Most are flat out drama queens posting for negative attention, and sadly, 99.9% of the time, they get it. Feeding trolls is seriouz bidnezz.

In all seriousness the best thing we can do as a community is keep our eye on the ball. A dedicated community of players with no desire for anything beyond a well crafted, engrossing, fun SW gaming experience will never be disappointed. BioWare is and remains one of, if not the best studio in the market for telling compelling stories combined with exciting gameplay. They have enough talent for any 20 of us. I for one wish to support and encourage them in this massive undertaking. We must understand that not everything in SWTOR is going to be perfect for every individual player, but the decision comes down to a very simple ideal: Pick your battles. – We can’t always get what we want, but with a little faith and patience, I think we all will get what we need. And then some.

How does all the negativity and wow hate directed at SWTOR make you feel? Are all these allegations about BioWare being overly ambitious with their budgeting, the focus on story, and the obvious and glaring similarities between SWTOR and WoW making  you nervous?

Make your voice heard, but make it heard with the facts. That is the best any of us can do.

/Flagg. -May the force be with you all.

We are hard at work with the site. I have a goal of making this little site you are visiting officially launched by the end of this week or, at the latest, start of the next week. We still have some content we want to prepare and release. I am pretty satisfied with the ASCII lightsaber generator and we have a couple more videos and a surprise coming up. This makes releasing news a bit hard to accomplish and there are newsworthy items out there, but, for now, please bare with me while we crunch through this last mile. As a reward for sticking with us here is an absolutely amazing SWTOR wallpaper that I came across at The Galactic Struggle. Enjoy:

Click to see big image

To justify the title of this post here’s a video of Vader doing his thing because he didn’t get his Swtor beta invite (and neither did we 🙁 ).

Welcome to another Monday community watch. I will be trying to make this our regular thing so you have something to read at work to beat the Monday blues :).

Following this Friday update about the sounds and music of SWTOR, community got very excited and a lot of fansites discussed this topic. I would like to especially single out Galactic Holofeed podcast with their vast knowledge of all things Star wars and awesome voice impressions the podcast hosts do. You can enjoy Suzina’s and Kalvod’s podcast if you click here.

Mos Eisley Radio opens their podcast with the Binary Sunset (some know it as the Force) theme (even it is the Family guy version). I always get goose bumps from listening to this theme, don’t you? In any case, you can listen to the guys celebrate their one year of covering TOR by discussing game design, their worries about this being Bioware’s first MMO and the sounds and music of SWTOR along with their guest host, Jeff Cannata of “Totally Rad Show” and “Weekend Confirmed” fame. Listen to the show here.

In the meantime Ithoirans.com has Exclusive leaks from deep inside game testing. They are saying that:

Several players deep undercover in Star Wars: The Old Republic testing have confirmed several revolutionary new MMO features to Ithorians.com.

Specifically:

Another player, who would only identify himself as DarthTerriosity, said that when in game, he had the option to “fight” other beings within game world.

You can read the whole hilarious article here.

If you want to win something this week visit Darth Hater. They are celebrating their 1 year anniversary with a “Choose Your Side Giveaway”. All you have to do is post “HATE ON! GALACTIC REPUBLIC” or “HATE ON! SITH EMPIRE” in a comment in this article before 9:00 AM EST Monday, July 26, 2010. Even Bioware sent them an awesome background image as a gift for their anniversary.

Yesterday was highlighted by two things for me, the World Cup finale (gratz Spain!) and release of more leaked beta footage from SWTOR. None of which I’ll talk about here! World cup is for some other news site and leakz will get you perma-banned.

Instead, I want to tell you about a couple of articles I came across on another fan site – swtorstrategies.com. They wrote an excellent and fun article to commemorate the World Cup finale by humoring the idea of playing football (its called football not soccer) in SWTOR. As a result of the mix they created some images of Star Wars characters playing soccer. Make sure you check out the full article here.

While we’re on a topic of mixing – there is a fan made audio-visual mix posted on Youtube that combines a lot of previously released videos into one cohesive entity. You can watch the video here. News spotted @ SwtorStrategies.

TOROcast has released its 60th episode (!) named “This is NOT a Demo”, which you can listen to just below:

That’s it for now. May you have a great week.