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:

Something I have been wondering about for quite some time is the level of item one can expect to craft after a “crafting crit” takes place during item creation.  Will the created item be on par with raid loot drops, PVP drops, or other drops or rewards from missions?
Read on!

Continue Reading »

My question to you today is:

Based on your normal play style how do you see yourself acquiring the materials you need to craft in SWTOR?

Will you use the auction house mechanic relying on other players to provide the auctions for you to buy, or will you rely on yourself and your companions to gather what you need via the gathering mechanics and the missions?

Read on!

Continue Reading »

Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!

How can a guild best support their crafters in SWTOR, part 2

With the small amount of material available on the crew skills system it is really hard to speculate on what I think will be important for a guild to focus on when trying to support their crafting efforts.  I am going to speculate anyway though because it can’t hurt to guess at this stage.

Read on!

Continue Reading »

Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!

About the author,

Swtorcrafter is a crafter at heart, dating back to the start of the Ultima Online beta.  It was there that he developed his love of massively multiplayer online crafting systems, in game economies and fan site creation.  It was there in that realm that he was first introduced to what it was like to play online with other people instead of just a single player PC game.

It was a grand six years, the longest he has been in any one MMO since.

He has searched countless realms searching for that feeling again, sometimes finding satisfaction, sometimes not.

Now as he grows older he decides it is time to “go all in” one last time to try to find that perfect anvil, the crafting system of his dreams, and the community to share his thoughts and insights with.

*Enter stage right*

The Game:  Star Wars The Old Republic MMO by Bioware.

The Community:  www.swtor-life.com

*fingers crossed*

There is an Electronics Arts event being held in London, and as we reported earlier a big announcement for The Old Republic was anticipated at the event. Bioware delivered in a big way on this promise and gave us details on both crafting and PvP warzones.

SWTOR Crafting

Crafting will have three major groups – Gathering, Crafting, and Missions. For now, we have been presented with two professions in each of the groups:

Crafting system is completely innovated in comparison to what we are used to seeing in other MMOs. You will be able to use your companions for crafting! The “Crew Skill crafting system” means that you will be able to send your companions on crafting tasks and specialize them in certain crafting branches. Sending out your companion on a Treasure Hunt can bring you a rare item based on random number generator. Certain companions will excel better at certain professions than others (the example provided was Vette, Sith warrior companion, who will excel at Treasure Hunting). You will be able to send companions on crafting missions from anywhere in the world and you will be able to queue your tasks for them. It is still unclear whether different companions will be able to have different crafting tasks at the same time or you can have one task at a time (with multiple companions working on it), but I believe we will soon find out.
A very interesting mechanic was mentioned concerning gathering. If you have your companion with you adventuring; once you see something that you can gather, instead of moving your character there to gather, your companion will do it for you while you continue fighting or doing whatever you were doing.

For all you crafting buffs out there here’s a very interesting quote from the event:

It is a very robust system, and there are still some details that we haven’t revealed yet which I know players are going to be excited about. I will just say there are some mechanics to it that will allow players who are more involved in crafting to really get deeply involved in crafting and be appropriately rewarded for it.

SWTOR PvP Warzones

We received details on Alderaan’s warzone that was previously announced at E3 but without going into too much depth. The most important points are:

• 8 vs. 8 combat
• objective-based PvP with a goal of controlling an area
• rewards tokens
• rewards XP

The way this warzone will work is that each team starts at their drop ship in the skies. They have means of transportation to get to the ground. Once there they fight to get control over planetary’s defenses. Whoever controls the defenses starts firing on the other team’s drop ship. The winner is the team that destroys the other team’s dropship.

The other thing we learned is that each warzone will have different objectives and mechanics involved. For example, the next warzone that will be revealed will take place on a derelict starship and will have completely different mechanics than Alderan’s. Here’s a quote from Darth Hater’s original article that I found most interesting:

BioWare’s PvP designer Gabe Amatangelo said they wanted Warzones to fit in with the story element of the game. When they looked at PvP, they decided that banners, flags and points were “too game-y.”

These two reveals have once again changed our way of looking at this game once again. The crafting system is much more intricate than we initially though it will be. The warzones mechanics looks legit and fun from a PvP buff point of view. Everything is starting to fall right into place and we are now more excited about the game than ever before.