After the flood of info from San Diego Comic Con came in I decided to have some fun with it and ponder just what was my top ten info releases for me personally. I start with number ten and work my way to the one I felt to be personally the coolest. I wonder if your interests are similar to mine, or if you have even seen all this stuff yet?
I wanted to give you an overview of news that have come out of this year’s San Diego Comic Con and SWTOR’s presence at the event. As all of you probably know Bioware held a panel dedicated to The Old Republic on the first day of ComicCon and there is also a Bioware Base setup in a hotel near by the convention center where many fans are able to get their hands on the game and experience other games Bioware has to offer. I would like to suggest that you closely monitor www.torwars.com and www.darthhater.com because they are the only fansites reporting live from the event and they have the most up-to-date news available. Here’s a summary of things we’ve learned so far.
Official SWTOR site had a pre-order page made available with all the details on how to obtain a copy of digital standard or collector’s editions of the game or standard and CE boxed version. A number of well known MMORPG sites have had an advertising campaign for the pre-orders launched at the same time.
This compilation of information was done thanks to articles and live blogs by Newsarama and TorWars.
For everyone waiting for this game for 2+ years, making it available for pre-ordering was a dream come true and a sign that finally, the wait is over. Unfortunately, things have not been as satisfying for all the fans around the world. Here’s the story. If you want to purchase SWTOR in digital form, you can only do that from Electronic Arts’ online store called Origin. For boxed version you can order online or go to many of the major retailers around the world, full list to be found here by clicking on the pre-order button.
The problem is that if you do not live in one of the 22 countries listed here you will not be able to make a purchase of the digital version on Origin. Retailers in your country might, or might not carry any copies of The Old Republic come launch day. Retailers in countries listed on the links provided above might not ship to your country or you will not get the game on time because of shipping abroad. In short, everyone not in the countries that are in the “Green zone” might encounter significant troubles in acquiring a copy of the game.
This has made a lot of people angry and there has been a thread going on in the official forums that reached several incarnations (because of the 1000 posts per thread limit) and had more then several hundred thousand views so far. In all honesty there is a lot of trolling going on, but there are some legitimate concerns and posts there as well.
Now that the initial tantrum has passed most people outside the “Green zone” are looking for alternate ways to get their hands on the copy of the game. Australians have been making orders through Amazon.com, although shipping to them will probably be delayed and the game will arrive post-launch. European countries that have been left out are mostly ordering through European version of Amazon sites like amazon.co.uk, amazon.de (which still has boxed collector’s editions available) and amazon.it. I must warn all that Amazon has its own shipping policies and you should look at their help pages to see if they will ship PC games to your country! There is currently no info available on how Brazilian (and South American in general), Asian and African gamers can successfully get their hands on the game right now. If any of you have any valid methods of getting SWTOR to those areas of the world please let me know and I will update this article with new info.
What remains to be seen is whether they will go as far as blocking the countries outside the “green zone” from accessing the game servers or being able to pay with local credit cards. This is highly unlikely, but just to be safe I’d recommend everyone to monitor the situation closely until official information on this has been made available.
I would also recommend patience and not being tempted to look at unverified and shady offerings that are bound to pop up to take advantage of this situation. Your credit card info, game account info and other sensitive and personal information may be put at risk if you succumb to some random offer by some unknown web store or retailer.
In their well known fashion Bioware released another enticing video trailer to celebrate the start of their pre-orders and their presence at San Diego Comic Con. Trailer features all the playable classes delivering great one-liners that tell you straight away what that each class is about. As always, they get me excited about the game no matter what.
Comments Off on ComicCon trailer – Join the Fight
Today marks the day when Star Wars: The Old Republic pre orders have been made available on swtor.com. There are three different editions available in 22 countries for initial pre-order of the game. It has also been unveiled on Electornic Arts investors site that Dr. Ray Muzyka, Group General Manager and Co-Founder, BioWare and Senior Vice President, Electronic Arts, said that:
We are targeting Star Wars: The Old Republic to be one of the biggest launches of holiday 2011
Beside these two huge announcements there is also this:
As anticipation grows, BioWare also proudly announced today that Star Wars: The Old Republic will open “Beta Test Weekends” starting this September.
We are guessing that those that pre-order will have access to these beta weekends, but I am sure most questions will be answered today at a panel Bioware will be holding during San Diego Comic Con, which is scheduled to start today.
After years of speculation, end is in sight.
Source: http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=593263
The title of this article makes no sense to you? Let me explain. David Bass, SWTOR’s community manager, tweeted these two gems yesterday:
OH MY GOD. Has anyone seen this leaked info that’s all over the web? About the Avengers and Spider-Man trailers?!
Really excited to watch them, but I kind of feel like I should hold off until they’re officially released in theaters.
If you don’t know what this is all about, you should spend more time on the SWTOR related interwebs. If you do, please take David’s advice.
To make things a bit more interesting, here’s a random Star Wars image:
I am not sure how this skipped everyone’s radar, but this last Friday update, entitled “The Old Republic at Comic-Con“, said that there will be some sort of announcements at the show. Here’s the exact quote:
This year is looking to be another big year for the event and both BioWare and LucasArts will be there to make some announcements about Star Wars™: The Old Republic™
It might be that people have grown tired of catching every little glimpse of what might possibly turn into big news, but I am still a sucker for hype and I will take this bait with open arms and share a few of my thoughts on what these announcements might be.
read more of my SWTOR geek out
With so little real usable info about TOR since E3 I have gone to a place I did not expect to go. That is thinking of a back story for my main class when the game hits. I guess playing other mmo’s I have thought of the class I was playing to have a defined role, but nothing so deep to the point that crashed my thinking process as it has the past few weeks.
So for the first time ever (and maybe the last depending on how this goes) I will layout my back story of my main in TOR.
Setting – Forward patrol Alpha 2.
30 miles east of Anchorhead.
Wait, what’s that you say? Another “probable release date” rumor is spreading like wildfire through the SWTOR forums? Well then by golly, we need to spring to action and report on this!
The “report” that’s making the rounds currently goes a little something like this:
We are officially moving the expected Star Wars launch from September to November. PopCap is not the key to getting ERTS right. We like this acquisition, but this is not going to make or break your ERTS trade this year. The success of Star Wars and Battlefield, on the other hand, will. All eyes now shift to them.
So aside from sounding like it was ripped straight out of a Nostradamus quatrain, what does this mean?
