One of, if not the biggest, gaming shows in the world is about to take place in Cologne, Germany, from August 17th-21st. With the release date closing in fast, Star Wars: The Old Republic will have a very strong presence at the show this year. First images that are coming in show that the hands on area this year is much larger (three times as large) than last year. There is a kind of excitement in the air as well because the Beta September is just around the corner and everyone is awaiting more news on this as well. For European SWTOR fans this will also be the first chance to meet the new European community managers. We also know from recent news that footage from the Eternity Vault, end game operation (raid), will be shown for the first time as well.
We’ll be watching closely for all the news pouring in from the show floor so you’ll have one place to go to for all SWTOR news from GamesCom. Here’s a preliminary schedule of things to watch out for and a few images we dug up.
The unofficial offical Twitter hashtag for This year’s news from Gamescom and PAX Prime is #ComPAXTOR
There will be some footage about SWTOR on BiowareTV. We’ll update you with details once we find out more.
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
Published by Mikro under E3,video on Jun. 08. 2011.
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).
It is official. Jeff from TorWars.com is a pimp! How else would you describe a guy that went around the E3 show floor and took pictures of himself with the hottest booth babes around and called them all his “best new girlfriend.”? To view this gallery of awesome make sure you visit TorWars.com. They also have some great Day 1 coverage so make sure you stick around their site.
Beside the awesome Live Stream with Daniel Erickson and our very own interview with the man there was another feature that might have gone under the radar for many SWTOR fans. It was Gamepost.com and their live show with DE and for the first time we saw the full King Bouris Ulgo event (this is the Alderaan flashpoint/event/whatchamacallit). Thanks to the ladies of Corellian Run Radio that found this embed, here is a video of the whole thing:
Eternity Vault (the first raid that was ever talked about) trailer was first seen yesterday as well. This was shown during Gabe Amatangelo appearance on Spkie TV / Gametrailers.com. I am sure we will see this trailer in full HD quality very soon on swtor.com, but for now watch the bad TV grab bellow:
