During our last month’s visit to Bioware’s studio in Austin, Texas there was one moment I personally enjoyed almost more than playing the game. It was the Q&A session with the writing team of the Old Republic. Seeing all those people creating the awesome stories we’ll be experiencing in the game and hearing them talk about it openly and with clearly visible enthusiasm was just a perfect moment in time. I mean, I am a fan, there is no doubt of that, but, to see these people be just as enthusiastic about the game they are helping create was priceless. With hopes you will get to experience at least a small portion of what was felt in that room we bring you a video of the Q&A session with the writers and all of them talking about the favorite thing they’ve written for the game.
 

Call me Serge the Hutt and be warned that SWTOR Life is my little criminal cartel. After all, I now have three Bounty Hunters present, shooting their articles at the world. That is right, the latest addition to our writer lineup is Dalqak, the Bounty Hunter. He will make a great addition to SWTORCrafter and BorukBH’s Bounty Hunter gang. Judging by his first article he is also a writing force to be reckoned with. We are very honored and humbled he decided to join the gang and I recommend you watch out for this guy, I am expecting great things coming from him.
Here’s a bit of information about Dalqak:
 
“No stranger to the Lucas’ beloved universe, Dalqak spent the formative years of his life mucking about with Star Wars action figures in his parents’ basement. One of his earliest cinematic memories was seeing Return of the Jedi in the theaters, and after that, the rest was history. Thankfully, it’s only slightly less socially acceptable these days to do the same thing as an adult.
 
Dalqak comes to us on loan from the loveable scamps over at Mongbat, where he has been a proud member for over 3 years, and where he currently heads up the SWTOR wing of their gaming enterprise. When not gaming or slaving away behind a desk, you might find him concocting all manner of strange dishes in his kitchen, or polishing his bacta tanks. ”
 
Welcome aboard! (the slave pens are that way and you will be getting your serving or stale bread later in the evening)
 
P.S. If you really want to see what Serge the Hutt would look like click here.
 

With recent events that do not need to be mentioned here, I started thinking how, as players, we can avoid story spoilers that will come along in waves when TOR is finally released.

revan from KOTOR by ~GeneralVyse on deviantART
Continue Reading »

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

Today on twitter and the official SWTOR forums,  David Bass posted the following;

via twitter:

doctordake David Bass

If you’re going to E3 or live in the LA area, would you want to come to a Meet & Greet this year? Vote

and then on the official forums he posted the poll you can see here.

Hi everyone,

Since E3 isn’t open to the public, we’re considering holding a meet and greet in Los Angeles during the expo so that fans who are in the LA area can meet up with us one night and chat with the developers. Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to have the game playable at this meet and greet, but you’d get a chance to chat with those of us who’ll be at the show, and hear about some of the cool things that are happening inside E3.

We’d like to get a better idea of the size of group we’re looking at for an event like this, though. If you’d be interested in coming downtown one night between June 6-9 to meet up with the SW:TOR team, let us know in this thread!

Thanks,
David

Lets hope this comes to fruition because as a attendee of the recent Fan Site Summit at Austin, held by Bioware studios, I can surely tell you that these people would be a total blast to hang out with.  I highly recommend that if you have ever wanted to meet the people behind this game then you need to be here if it happens.  Log on to this thread and make your voice be heard.

Bioware has proven in the past that when the community shows a desire, they will try to make it happen.  If they are asking for your opinion then it’s obvious they think the need to do this is that important.

Rest assured that if it does happen, SWTOR-Life will be there covering it for you the fans of this game!  Be sure to follow us on twitter @Swtorcrafter and @SwtorLife to get the quickest updates about this and E3 2011 live from Los Angeles

Let your voice be heard!

UPDATE: SUNDAY MAY 15TH-EDITOR COMMENT

At the time of this update at mid afternoon Sunday we have seen what has happened so far on the thread and poll.  The thread has had:

1. 5,682  views
2. 161  replies
3. 607  people have voted on the poll
4. 172 of them or 28.34%    voted yes they would attend
5. 435 of them or 71.66%    voted no they would not attend

Within the thread we have seen these replies from the Developers:

In response to this from forum poster Cidran:

Originally Posted by Cidran

guess it really depends, what all does a meet and greet entail? like would it just be casual talk, any reveals? grab bags? interviews? im interested, but i dont know if there will be much there to encourage me to go.

Stephen Reid had this to say:

Well, it could be all of the above, or none of the above. So far we’re just trying to figure out if we should do it at all.

For those of you who can’t make the trip to LA, don’t despair. As I’ve said before, we’ll be at plenty of shows – before and after launch – in a number of different places.

He gives us enough to let us know that it is a important idea to them and that they are serious about possibly doing it now and into the future.  Bioware is a smart company, they know that the more they can make themselves available to the fans, the more the love for the project will grow within the community.  In my opinion that could only be good for the game and company as a whole.

GO VOTE!

UPDATE: TUESDAY MAY 17TH-EDITOR COMMENT

Well folks it seems that via David Bass on the official forums we will get our wish!  (assuming a suitable location can be acquired of course)  It does however seem like this will be an eventuality, I can’t wait to attend.  We will be bringing you coverage from this get together.

Here is what he had to say before closing the thread:

Thanks so much for the votes and the feedback, everyone! I think it’s pretty clear that a meet and greet is definitely doable at E3. I’m going to close this thread and get to work on planning something. We’ll post again once we have details to share.

And one final note for those of you considering dropping everything and flying into LA for this meetup: It’s really exciting to see all the enthusiasm towards this, but keep in mind that we’ll be doing plenty more events this year around the world, most of which are open to the public. You may want to hold off so that you can come to a public event and actually play the game. Just a suggestion.

UPDATE TUESDAY MAY 31ST-EDITOR COMMENT

Posted by Rockjaw aka Stephen Reid on twitter:

Rockjaw Stephen Reid

Looks like we are very close to getting a destination and time folks!

UPDATE TUESDAY JUNE 2ND-EDITOR COMMENT

Well today we got the word finally!  Some of the developers from Bioware will be at:

This week I am going to bring a relatively new thread on the forums out to everyone. I am doing this because it is covering a subject that has to be on everyone’s mind, that is crazy about Swtor right now. The subject is E3 and maybe, just maybe, the off chance that some type of announcement regarding the status of the game, insight into the beta testing or just brand spanking new information on game-play might come out of this venue.

So, first the link. If you notice, this thread is started by GamewizX. If you frequent the forums a lot, especially around big events you notice this person generally has a thread like this up and ready to gather all the information they can for everyone to read. Gwiz (GeeWiz) does a lot more than that as they tend to offer some sound advice, mostly, about other subjects that float around the forums. I tend to like this thread, even though there isn’t any E3 information out yet, because it’s something I will be able to keep going to as soon as E3 starts and be able to get a lot of information on when I am ready.

Twitter is good for instant news flashes, but if you aren’t able to read anything at that moment, you have to read though all your tweeters that you follow to search for the information. Having a thread like this makes it simple to go back and go through all the information that comes out at your leisure. I appreciate the time and effort put into getting a thread like this started and the effort that will be needed to keep it updated.

So when E3 comes along and you need a place to sit down and go through all the glorious Swtor news that comes out, look to this post for that thread. I am sure there will be some type of game information that you will love to read up on listed there.

Electronic Entertainment Expo holds a special place in hearts of all Star Wars: The Old Republic fans. It is the convention where both “Deceived” and “Hope” cinematic trailers were first shared with the world. It is the place where we first saw in-game footage of the Bounty hunter and the smuggler. Black Talon instance, back than known as kill the captain/save the captain scenario, was showcased for the first time at E3 2009 as well. Republic multiplayer demo was also played out by members of the Bioware team showing us what group content looks like in SWTOR. All things considered, it is a great place for The Old Republic fans, and gaming enthusiasts in general, to be at.
 
E3 is the world’s largest gathering of all people involved with the gaming industry and we are happy to report that SWTOR Life will be represented by its co-owner and Editor Derek Green aka SWTORCrafter. We will be live blogging from the show floor, doing interviews with the developers and getting you all the latest news. This being the year when we expect the game to be released, we can imagine there will be a lot of information coming from the show floor. We can speculate all we want about what exactly we can hope to hear, but to be honest, I believe everything to be possible at this point. We might get a flood of information and yet again we might find that devs stayed in Austin to work hard on finishing the game. Whatever the case is, we are happy to report on as much as we can for the SWTOR community. Stay tuned because the show starts on June 7^th and that is less than a month away.
 
Make sure you follow @SWTORCrafter or @SWTORLife on Twitter for live udates once the show starts.
 

Gamespot got an exclusive chance to release a Sith Inquisitor Class trailer before anyone else. We presume this video will be part of a Friday update this or next week when we will be able to download it in full res on the official site. Until then, you can watch it down bellow:

A few minutes ago Star Wars The Old Republic reached another milestone. The number of like the official page on Facebook has reached 300000 likes. As a reward, a new screenshot of a Sith Inquisitor readying his double bladed light saber for battle has been released. For a game not even yet released, not bad to have so many likes.
 

Click for full size (1600x900)

Click for full size (1600x900)