Gamespot just released their full video of the SWTOR panel that was held during San Diego Comic Con where it was officially announced for the first time that there will be Space Combat and Ship customization. This is the version with excellent quality and you can see it below or visit Gamespot’s video page to download it or view it in full HD.

P.S. Morgan Webb looks great in HD 😛

Finally we can see and hear for ourselves what it was like at the San Diego Comic Con this year. Sean Dahlberg tweeted about a thread on the official forums that holds all the links to the youtube videos. We thank Lukery for posting these links in this thread on the forums. Enjoy!

Thanks to this thread on the official forums we became aware of the video below. Apparently, the engine Bioware is using to create SWTOR is capable of producing space combat experiences. The video below is a demonstration of such capabilities by a small developer studio using the same “Hero” engine to create their own Space combat MMO. Whether Space combat in SWTOR will resemble the video below in any way is completely speculative and I must warn against making any conclusions based on the footage you are about to see. I just think this is an interesting find and wanted to share it with you.

The long awaited panel “Beyond Solo” at this year’s Comic Con convention held in San Diego has finally happened and boy, what a newsworthy event it was. Thanks to our fansite compadres at Darth Hater and Ask a Jedi we were able to read the news as they happened. Here’s a recapitulation of the most important thing we have learned during the panel.

• Ship customization and space combat
• Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat.
• You fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map (Speculation: no free roam space flight exists but rather “instanced” hot spots)
• In these hot spots you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles
• The story arcs are both worldly and galactic. (You will have quests arcs specific to a single planet and more global, galactic, story arcs)
• You can not switch factions.
• World quests, “flashpoints” (?) and story arcs are included
• You can customize your companions with gear similar to Mass Effect
• Only one companion can join you on missions.
• Your player name is in your companion’s nameplate
• Each class story as big as original KoTOR, and no one shares content! (that is 8 KOTOR games right there)
• Mandalorians play a large part in the game.
• Some alien race restrictions when picking classes
• Progression will be very important and can be achieved through tons of gear and crafting, etc. (you will need to “work” for these rewards)
• You will be able to determine the build of a character based on visual style (Jedi consular with double bladed lightsaber is DPS while single bladed consular is healer)

We expect videos and images to pour in from the event and we’ll update this post accordingly. There is also a Dev meet later on today and we expect more tidbits from there, but I am guessing not as big as the space combat reveal.

There is a live blog of the SWTOR Comic Con panel in progress at Darth Hater. The first thing mentioned from the panel is this:

1:03PM PST – James Ohlen: You can customize your ship and engage in space combat. October PC Gamer will reveal more details.

You can follow the updates on Darth Hater as they happen at this location.

Also worth mentioning is that world quests, flashpoints, and story arcs included. We’ll update this post as more information becomes available.

UPDATE: Ask a Jedi is also following the panel live and you can read their impressions here.
Sean Dahlberg just confirmed Space combat on the official forums.

UPDATE 2: Mos Eisley Radio reports:

Space combat is going to be “an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat” …
We’ll be using our personal ships to “blast through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles”

UPDATE 3: Alex Freed: Can customize companion via equipment similar to Mass Effect; one companion out at a time, and your player name is in your companion’s nameplate.
Each class story as big as original KoTOR, and no one shares content! (from Ask a Jedi)

UPDATE 4:
(from Darth Hater live blog)

• If you are interested in Mandalorians, they play a large part in the game.
• Not every class can play every race.

(from Ask a Jedi)

• Another Question about progression, they view it extremely important and there will be a lot of it. Specifically mentions crafting in that vein
• Ironically, nothing more about the multiplayer story other than mentioning there is one 🙁

The panel has apparently ended and we’ll be bringing order to this post and getting all the impressions from the attendees of the panel for you to read.

San Diego Comic Con 2010 is about to begin. Companies have been up all night setting up the booths and most devoted fans have been gathering since last night. We will be covering all The Old Republic news as they happen. Tomorrow is The Old Republic day with Bioware talking about writing the multi-player story for the Old Republic. There will also be a chance to meet Bioware devs at Dick’s Last Resort later in the day. In the meantime people setting up the booth have managed to set off the fire alarm according to their tweet. You can see some preview images we found at the official starwars.com site. If you are wondering who the redhead is – its Shae Vizsla, the bad ass Bounty Hunter from the “Deceived” trailer.

UPDATE: Meet the devs will not be held at a previously announced location. It has been moved to Fred’s Mexican Cafe in the Gaslamp district just a few blocks from the San Diego Convention Center.

There has been a steady stream of news coming from Bioware in the past few days with the latest being the most interesting. As most of the fans already know, The Old Republic team will be attending San Diego Comic Con with their Friday, July 23rd, panel “Beyond Solo: Crafting the Multiplayer Story”. Sean Dahlberg, TOR community manager, just announced that they have something special to reveal, but in order to do so they are asking their fans to spread the word and have people “Like” their Facebook page or follow them on Twitter. The target numbers are 200,000 “Likes” on their Facebook page and 30,000 Followers on their Twitter. You can find the pages at:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/starwarstheoldrepublic
Twitter: http://twitter.com/swtor

Go, spread the word, tell your friends and subscribers to follow SWTOR. Do it for us poor fans thirsty of new information and while you are at it, you can find us on twitter at:

http://twitter.com/SwtorLife