Update no.2: I wanted to make one final update to this news so everything is as clarified as it can be. Here is the full transcript of the SWTOR related part of John Riccitiello’s speech (thanks to swtor.com user Gumstumdar):

From: 20:09

“We’re very confident in the title umm but we did give a range of potential ship dates. It depends really on the beta that we’re now in. We’re in mid-scale beta now, we’ve got a high scale beta at the end of June umm and umm only the foolish assume they know the outcome of beta in terms of uh umm you know whether it’s a six week hit or not. Uhm we intend to make sure that this is a very successful launch and while we’re very very confident umm the reason for range in guidance is to bracket around the possibilities is what we’ve done.”

Stop: 20:40

Stephen Reid, Senior Community Manager at Bioware, had a few things to say about this (you can read his full post on the subject bellow). Game Testing is on-going and they recently started a more long-term, longer-lasting version of it. It is highly likely that the six week comment was in relation to what happens when the game comes out and not how long the beta will last before the game is shipped. In a later post Stephen also said that “European Testing has not fully started yet.”. What all this basically means is that yes, beta is getting bigger and it is changing its shape, which is great news because things seem to be moving towards release. The fact that this is now know publicly changes nothing really, but it is good to hear.
 

During some investor conference (it is called 31st Annual Growth Stock Conference and it was streamed at this URL) that is happening as I write this (8:30 PDT), John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts just announced that SWTOR High Scale Beta will start by the end of June. It was also said that ship date will depend on the beta. If high scale beta goes well there might be NO MORE DELAY before release. This puts possible SWTOR release much closer than most of the more optimistic predictions. I would like to thank the ladies at Corellian Run Radio for spotting this first and the official forum speculation thread on release date that broke the news. We are still waiting for official confirmation or denial of this news. We hope to get it soon and we’ll keep you posted on the developments.
 
I have one thing to say to their marketing department if this turns out to be true. You should have said this at E3!
 
Now I am off to dance naked in the grass from pure joy of knowing things are about to get real, real fast!
 

Update: Stephen Reid, our beloved Community Manager, just made a post on the forums regarding this news. Here’s the complete post. I am not commenting at all on this, better let everyone form their own opinions.

Take a deep breath, everyone…

Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different points in the process, we have invited a number of people to test. Some of those people tested for short periods, some for longer periods.

We’ve recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing. We have more people testing the game now than ever before. We are allowing them to play for longer than ever before. We’re also continuing to invite people to test, so if you haven’t signed up for testing yet – now is a good time.

We will be allowing more and more people to test The Old Republic before launch, and that means occasionally we’ll spike in our invite numbers. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s signed up for testing is going to be invited in one block.

What we’re doing now, essentially, is similar to a ‘Closed Beta’ for other MMORPGs, but we call it Game Testing. It’s invite-only, and it’s limited in size. That gives us the most ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of getting meaningful, actionable feedback. However, we’re still ramping up, we’re getting more people in… and we’re still aiming to launch in 2011.

Razer, maker of various gear for gamers, has presented at this year’s E3 a special set of peripherals they made in association with Bioware and LucasArts that are all themed in The Old Republic fashion. To celebrate this announcement Razer has been running a giveaway on their site for a few days now. The giveaway is called “Choose your allegiance” and lets people choose Republic or Empire and put in their details to be eligible to win some of Razer’s products. The faction that has more members will also have an additional cache of prizes handed out to lucky winners. Today is the last day to enter this giveaway so feel free to hop over to Razer’s site and try your luck.

SWTOR Life also has a special treat for all of you wanting to find out more about the Razer gear that will come out simultaneously with The Old Republic. We were at Razer’s booth during E3 and we managed to shoot some in detail video of the peripherals as well as talk to mr. Hilmar Hahn and Melonie McElhannon about the products. We got to hear about some cool features and the way they are working together with Bioware and LucasArts to present in-game information on the keyboard. I am rather tantalized by that multitouch pad they have there. Seems like part of the game could be moved there.

If this was any other convention other than E3 I would be kind of pleased with what we got from the show.

But this is not just another convention, this is E3 the biggest and most anticipated show of the year.

Even though nothing was promised we expected a banquet of information. What we got started well yet fizzled out like cheap champagne once the cork was removed.

Hopes have been dashed, our banquet was reduced to a $10 meal. Everything started well true enough, per-show reveals as a good starter. The main meal of almost 1 hour of in-game footage (even lack lustre questions did not ruin it completely) then as we were set for the finest of desserts we were left wanting for 2 more days.

These days were filled with mere leftovers and regurgitated  food that we had just digested.

For everyone at E3 they see things differently. It’s amazing how hands on time sways you in favour of TOR. I wish everyone could have at least 1 hour to play along, as this would settle many people’s concerns.

But 99.99%+ of the followers have not even come close to sitting down and playing the game.

Continue Reading »

We had three major reveals and one major trailer released from the Old Republic headquarters during this year’s E3.There were a bunch of interviews by the major media outlets, yet most of the information heard there was already known to the people that follow this game for years now. I tend to look at the fan site interviews and gameplay impressions to get the really interesting information and new reveals.
 
When the first cinematic trailer “Deceived” came out everyone’s minds were blown away. None expected the second trailer “Hope”, because by that time we all knew the game was still some ways off and spending even more money on a super cool trailer would seem unexpected. We all knew that there was going to be a third trailer and since it lacked that element of surprise of the first two it had to be the best in the bunch. What followed was 6 minutes of epic Star Wars cinema and “Return” made all the fans squee like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert.
 
The very first big piece of info came out through a Gamespot live show with Daniel Erickson where Daniel showed what is the last quest in a chain of 10 group quests on Alderaan. This is the fight with Bouris Ulgo, self proclaimed king of Alderaan himself. The interesting thing about this footage is this is not a flashpoint. It is group content that is not like your regular instance. It is just something existing in the world that you can only do with a group. This is fun because it is still a big boss fight, but not as extensive as a flashpoint. I wonder if it is repeatable? UPDATE: Lethality of askajedi.com explained to us that during his talk with Daniel he found out that this is not repeatable and it is a cinematic ending to a long quest chain, yet, you do get your own “phase” or “instance” to do the quest in so others wouldn’t mob steal your boss. Beside what looked like a fun storyline and an OK event we learned that there are item sets (the trooper had what seemed to b e a 7 piece epic gear set) that have bonuses for more pieces you wear. We also see that there are low level epics, because one of the pieces in the set was level 13.
 
What followed was for me the best display of SWTOR at E3. It was a live feed on EA.com with Daniel Erickson playing Tatooine and answering viewers’ questions live. For the first time we saw a Jawa companion called Blizz, which made a lot of people squee until they learned that only Bounty Hunters can have those. We also saw vehicles, a small quest line on Tatooine and just in general some fighting and questing on one of the planets. Turns out Tatooine is really huge, because Daniel spent a better part of the demo just flying on his speeder from one place to another and still, when looking at the big planet map, you could see that he traveled only a portion of the planet’s whole surface. We learned that there is a lot of PvP happening in the Dune sea and it was just fun watching the game being played for a whole hour.
 
The last major reveal was showing for the first time any information about raids (or operations as they are called in TOR) in a form of a teaser trailer. Not much more has been said about raids other than what we see in the trailer. We know that the operation’s name is Eternity Vault. It is located on the planet Belsavis (a prison planet) and the story behind it is that an evil ruler of the universe from 10.000 years ago is locked in that Vault, which is opened by accident. We know for sure that there are 8 player raids and that these represent the “easy mode” versions. There are going to be larger raids than this, and people have been counting the number of players in the trailer until their eyes started to bleed in order to determine exactly what is the number of players we can expect to see in a raid. The current tally is 16, but this is all subject to change through game testing.
 
To learn even more information about the game in its current state you should visit all the fansites that reported from the event. I’ll give you a rundown of the articles I found the most informative.

• Darth Hater did a list of general things learned that sums up a lot of small things from the game they saw while playing or watching others play
• Ask a Jedi grilled Daniel Erickson on Operations and Vehicles in their interview with the man.
• A must see part 3 of TorWars.com interview with Daniel Erickson

Here’s an officially released video of gameplay on Tatooine. This is similar to what we saw Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid play during the live stream event on the first day of E3. You can enjoy it in full HD beauty bellow or even download it from the official site.

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.

I would like to thank Mr. Daniel Erickson for his time and giving us this great interview. We were honored to bring the community questions to him and are happy that we were able to get most of them answered. You can check out this thread on the official forums to see what were all the questions that were asked and which ones did get answers.
 

 
Click here to read the full transcript of this interview

Due to a family emergency our coverage of E3 2011 will have to be cut short. We will try and update the site with the most important news. Our prayers go to the Green family.

Keep an eye out on these other great fan sites for continuing coverage.
Ask a Jedi, Tor Wars, Darth Hater

Latest News

• There is going to be a feature of (what is hoped to be footage of Alderaan boss fight) SWTOR gameplay live on G4tv at 4PM PDT.
• There is going to be a Live Stream of a Boss fight in 15 minutes at 3PM PDT on BiowareTV. Make sure you don’t miss it.
• Imperial Agent Gameplay footage posted on TorWars.com You can clearly see the female droid companion. I wonder if she is romance-able and if lube is involved?
• Eternity Vault trailer we talked about a bit earlier can now be found and downloaded in full HD quality on the official swtor.com site
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  Epic Community Manager is Epic

• SWTOR got nominated by the following companies as best of E3 or most anticipated of E3: Gamespot, multiplayer.it, GamePro and PcGamer. You can check out these nominations in our gallery of exclusive Wednesday images from the show floor
  

• In the same gamespot.com live camera interview with Daniel Erickson it is said that there probably won’t be a Free For All Open Beta, but more of a “Closed Open Beta” (this is my interpretation)
• Gamespot.com has a guy running around E3 recording everything he sees with his live camera. This is being streamed live at this link. He stopped by the SWTOR booth today and the exclusive piece of information I heard from it was that yes, there are certain worlds where Sith and the Republic will be able to talk to each other (in this build at least). This is not 100% confirmed, and you can check the 40:00 minute mark for this reveal. UPDATE: Daniel Erickson later on said this is still undecided and if it turns out griefing is a problem they will turn it off.

After an exhausting first day of E3 we are back for some more punishment today in order to bring you all the latest from the show floor of 2011 E3. SWTORCrafter will also be getting some hands on time with the game today and there is also a meet&greet scheduled for later in the evening and we’ll try and get you as much information from those events as we can.

The trailer that was shown during yesterday;s Gametrailers.com live chat with Gabe Amatangelo is now released on its own in full HD quality on EA’s Youtube chanell. You can view it bellow (thanks to Godtiergaming for the find).

Being the greatest gathering of Electronic Entertainment professionals, E3 surely has a lot to offer. We tried to capture some of the atmosphere from the show floor so you can get a glimpse at just how massive this event is. Here are some images as well as a video of E3 atmosphere with Bioware doctors making a guest appearance.

Image Gallery