All Bioware Twitter accounts just broad-casted links to images containing bar codes that you can scan with your mobile phone. You can find them at http://yfrog.com/b737bp and http://yfrog.com/7bj78p . Codes, when scanned provide a string of binary numbers
Bioware fans pay attention RT @geoffkeighley VGA rumors…We’ll share two world premiere announcements on Wednesday with many more to come.
Some assumed that this might be related to some Dragon Age or Mass Effect announcements, but the following tweet hints that it will be about The Old Republic:
I’m at BioWare Austin in Austin, TX http://gowal.la/c/2UCma
Two world premier announcements … here’s my speculation – Release date and Beta related announcements (just writing that down gives me a fangasm). So, what do you think will be announced in the next couple of hours?
(Cheers to Ask A Jedi for first spotting the tweets).
We are still digesting all the official news on crafting and PvP we got last week. Personally, I am content for at least a few more weeks because the last week reveal was just so major. Still, there are a lot of great SWTOR related, community created content out there that I had to bring your attention to some of the more important ones.
One of the people I follow on Twitter is Patrick Lambert aka. Darth Dendory and he has his own blog as well. The reason I want to mention him is the very cool SWTOR comic he is making. He is actually creating his comic with 3D models of a super sexy Twil’ek Sith and I would recommend you go through his comics because they are a lot of fun and he puts out a new one quite often.
Ask a Jedi stumbled across some really great news posted on a French site http://www.jeuxvideo.com. Apparently those guys sat down for 6 hours and played Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular. The exciting part of this is that this is the first time (as far as I know) that anyone got a chance to play these Jedi classes. The amazing thing is that the article describing the experience got pulled because the embargo on information is not lifted yet. Luckily, Ask a Jedi saved the article and they even translated it from French. You can read the full article here.
For the first time in months, I am anxious and wondering about what will the official Friday update bring tomorrow? In the meantime make sure to check out the SWTOR community created content.
There is a feeling of slight unrest within The Old Republic community as of late. We discussed the causes for this in the previous part of this article (which I recommend reading if you haven’t already, otherwise this part will not be so clear) and we’ll try to address some of the concerns in as unbiased manner as possible.
Is there really not enough time to release all information before release?
Lets assume that we have 22 weeks left before the game hits open beta and information is then released by everyone. I have made a list of things we should be receiving info on in the time left, based on what Bioware released so far and new game mechanics we all expect to see in the game:
The Old Republic fans are a bunch of people in love. They are in love with the concept behind the game Bioware is making. Star Wars universe populated by you and your friends in which everyone gets to be a hero. How can you blame them? That is why the moment someone mentions that there could be any kind of trouble with the game there are cries of terror showing up all over the official forums and fansites. There are several things that happened simultaneously these past few weeks that caused the current wave of doomsayers. We wanted to address these in this two part editorial describing the causes in part one, that you are reading now, and offering some explanations and suggestions in part two that will follow shortly.
Causes
During the convention season we were treated with loads of new game information. For the first time people were able to sit down and play the game. We also saw some higher level gameplay footage for the first time and were shown Revan’s dungeon. Space ships and advanced classes were also explained in detail. Following up on all that info we were also given a lot of info about the Smuggler and the Jedi Knight. Next three updates were about a planet, biographies and a timeline. If it was any other time of the year these would be enough, but after the eventful convention season all of it feels lackluster.
Advertised release date is getting very close. Here’s the math that is scaring fans. Everyone is expecting the game to come out in April, May the latest. Any date later than that is unexpected (even May is cutting it close) because summer is dead season. This gives us 6 months tops before the game’s release. Based on Bioware’s own policy that they don’t talk about it before its done people are thinking the following: “If they are not talking about so many core systems that means they are not done yet. Will they be done by release (in such a short period of time)?”. And MMORPG gamers are already tired of all those rushed out releases that ruined so many potentially great projects (who said Warhammer online, Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, APB – OMG are there that many?)
EA Louse. He is a “whistle blower” from inside Mythic (the makers of Warhammer online) that whines about how life ain’t fair and how management is to blame for WAR failing and him losing his job. Since Bioware and Mythic are both parts of EA and some parts of Mythic started helping out with SWTOR some time ago he made a statement about SWTOR. According to him the project already spent 300 million dollars and that it will be the biggest failure in the history of video games. This coming from a guy that works on a game that spent $50 million and has 100k subscribers right now.
There is a rumor floating around that at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference people were saying that there is trouble in TOR land and Bioware is flying people into Austin office to help out.
Enough to put anyone caring about the game into full on panic mode, right? Fear not fellow TOR fans, there are two sides to every story and we will be going in depth on The Cures in our Part 2 of this article tomorrow.
Electronic Arts will be occupying a huge area at hall 6 with multiple games on display. There is a whole subsection reserved for Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA’s German site has a map of booth configurations as well as the schedule of events in the EA area. What I found interesting is that when you zoom in the SWTOR area you can clearly see 3 round tables with seats for 12 and computers all around. This looks like you will be able to get some hands-on experience with the game. Whether this will be the same demo people at E3 were able to play or we will be seeing new areas of the game (space combat perhaps?) remains to be seen.
Star Wars: The Old Republic show will be held each day at these times on the central EA stage:
The Old Republic’s community has been in a frenzy of activity in the past 12 hours. First leaked information about the space combat has emerged from various sources. First, German fansite got a hold of an issue of PC Action magazine (a German publication) that provided details on space combat. Our friends at Ask a Jedi had the details on this as well as the translation of the most important information in the German article.
A heated discussion ensued on the official forums. All of the space combat discussions are being consolidated by Bioware moderators into one monstrous thread with a poll that asks you “Are you happy with the Space Combat details?” (Yes/No/Need more info).
The biggest news is certainly the appearance of the scans from the upcoming PC Gamer magazine. When space combat was announced it was said that PC Gamer will have the exclusive details on the feature and this is the article that details it. There is a page missing but you can find all the most important info without trouble. The scans were found at Darth Hater’s forums
Here’s the recap of the most important info:
Space combat is a tunnel shooter mini game (your ship is propelled along a predefined path and always moving forward while you only choose which weapons to fire and at what targets – there is no free flight like in X-Wing vs Tie Fighter)
There will be 6 different ship types for 8 classes (Jedi Consular and Jedi Knight share the same ship type and so do the Inquisitor and Sith Warrior)
Space combat is a single player instance (at launch at least)!
You can collide with asteroids or other ships
There will be a main quest that will give a token reward you can exchange for items and side quests that will rotate and feature escort missions of different ships or destroy a randomly chosen ship
Each mission is 2-8 minutes long
Blasters and missiles only (and only power of these can be upgraded as you earn rewards)
Character abilities and stats do not affect space combat
That’s it folks. Two to eight minute missions with you moving your ship on X and Y axis while mouse targeting and shooting your enemies. A little action packed mini-game to break the mold. I bet all those that said space combat will resemble KOTOR’s turret mini game are doing their: “I told you so”.
My hunch is that there will be a video of the space combat missions running at GamesCom and since we will be attending we will be bringing you all of the news right from the spot.
Thanks to this thread on the official forums we became aware of the video below. Apparently, the engine Bioware is using to create SWTOR is capable of producing space combat experiences. The video below is a demonstration of such capabilities by a small developer studio using the same “Hero” engine to create their own Space combat MMO. Whether Space combat in SWTOR will resemble the video below in any way is completely speculative and I must warn against making any conclusions based on the footage you are about to see. I just think this is an interesting find and wanted to share it with you.
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Gamespot released an exclusive video entitled “Composing the Music of Star Wars: The Old Republic”. It was released short after this Friday’s update that covered game’s music creation through a developer diary. More observant forum members noticed something special in the Gamespot video. There is a music sheet with clearly visible title “Corellia intro (of) Corellia bkgrnd_03”. It is being speculated that this means Corellia will definitely be a playable planet. I am sure this will be a thrill for our friends at http://www.corellianrun.com/ :).
The video itself talks about having 5 composers working on the game’s music, each composing for an entire planet and you can watch it bellow (let us know if you notice any other revealing details 🙂
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James Ohlen, lead designer in Bioware, talked to IncGamers and gave us some food for speculation (I swear, they have fed our speculations so much I will miss it once the game goes live) concerning endgame content. The full interview is expected later on this week but it is interesting to read what he had to say on the subject:
I know some people are worried, for example, about the elder game [and are asking] ‘what happens in the elder game, what happens when you get to the highest level?’ We do have a plan for that and we will be revealing it in the future.
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Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re ignoring that. We have a lot of hardcore MMO players who have like five level 80 WoW characters, so it’s not like we don’t have the knowledge of what we need to do in terms of the elder game and other aspects of our game.
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