Within the next few hours Penny Arcade Expo, one of the biggest gaming conventions in the North America is about to begin. It is a very big convention for all the Star Wars: The Old Republic fans because, traditionally, it is the place where big reveals happen. Last year we got some gameplay footage and all attendees of the SWTOR panel got a copy of Knights of the Old Republic game. This year we’ll be having the first hands on event in the North America and all the PAX visitors will get what is called the SWTOR virus that can only be cured by more “gameplaytimis”. Some gamers will be lucky enough to get the elusive “betainvitis”, but for all of you out there that lack any of these rare and expensive medicine, we bring you the last of our gameplay videos we shot at this year’s GamesCom. This is the longest video we have and it features gameplay from most of the classes. You can see some cool Inquisitor action where he one shots some enemies with force lightning (at around 1:50). Present are also cutscenes and some more combat.

We’ll continue to monitor all the information pouring in from PAX and we’ll keep you updated with the most important news and footage. For now I would like to draw your attention to Jedi Archive Online, that have their man Lordhammer, from Guild Umbra, on the spot. They have the first images from PAX available here. Also covering the event are Darth Hater and ToroCast.

By popular request, we bring you another video from Gamescom 2010 hands on experience. It shows some gameplay from the trooper and smuggler as well as a cutscene of the Sith Inquisitor. There is a brief glimpse of very cool feature where the map goes transparent when you move your character. Hope you enjoy it.

Above video shows what was happening at the Star Wars The Old republic booth at this year’s GamesCom. This is the first time the general public was able to get some hands on with the game. We were able to capture some of the atmosphere there during the press only day (that is why there are not that many people). You can also see some of the people still playing, and then there is a change of gamers (every 15 minutes a new group was showed in). We will be releasing more of these in the coming days.

You will be able to get some hands on gameplay with The Old Republic this year at the GamesCom convention in Cologne, Germany. The whole experience is divided into sections where you are taken through three introductory 15 minute videos, where you are given general information about the game and shown the Hope trailer. The last 15 minute section describes how to play the game and than you are taken into the open area with various characters already setup for you to play with.

Jedi Knight and Consular are still not available. There are the Republic table and the Sith table so there is some competition going on.

We’ll give you our impressions on the gameplay later on, for now here are the images we took at the booth.

Me neither … but people at Darth Hater certainly do. The whole staff attended E3 this year and have been able to summarize their impressions in one 5 pages long article. This is so far the most concise gathering of interesting, hands on, information available on the whole internet. They got to play for a few hours and through several levels and were able to each play a different class. This gives us the chance to read their impressions on UI, flow of combat for each of the classes (5 total), AI, graphics and art style and much more. I especially was interested in how they felt about the Dialogue System since that is the biggest venture out of the MMORPG standards we are used to. You can see them being kind of careful in their comments on the dialogue system, but overall with positive opinions. I guess it is going to be one of those love it or hate it things.
Make sure you don’t miss this article.

While I’m on the subject of community news, there is a new podcast in the swtor universe (like we don’t have enough of those 😛 ). I liked it though because we have two girl gamers discussing the game instead of your regular geeky male Star Wars fans (don’t look at me). Corellian Run podcast Episode 1 has hit the interwebz. Good luck with the podcast girls.

As part of their regular Friday update swtor.com released a video of the gameplay showcasing a group of 4 facing some early level group content. All 4 Republic classes are
present and we can see different roles they have within a group. It is not too far off the MMORPG standard. I like how the tank is actually ranged (Trooper carries a massive laser cannon thing) while smuggler’s ability to help just a bit with healing stands out from a “rogue” like role.

Another thing to notice would certainly be how the quest is fully voiced and the group respond mechanics. It seems that when a group initiates a voiced quest each of them picks a response an than the game does a silent roll and picks one of the responses. Social points everyone’s been mentioning and that none seem to know what they are for probably have some role in this whole matter.

You can view the video bellow or on the official site. I also recommend you visit Darth Hater because they did a great dissection of the video here.