Welcome to our regular Monday community watch. It’s here so you can fight them Monday blues with some Swtor reading.

Previous week was one of those extremely exciting weeks. Comic Con is behind us and with it the announcement of space combat and player ship customization. This brought mostly positive reactions by the community and speculations are also running rampant, until we get more information scheduled to appear in the PC Gamer magazine.

Preceding the space combat announcement Friday update was Fan Friday displaying some impressive fan made art and renders of Cathar race (not sure if playable or NPC only). There is also a Darth Rasp 3D animationabsolutely worth watching. For the rest of the goodies visit the Fan Friday page.

Also, last week, we saw the release of Fatal Alliance, a novel placed in the Swtor timeline. It is speculated that the game will have a lot of things mentioned in the book. Therefore, you might be interested in reading Darth Hater’s dissection of the book as well as the interview with the author, guys at SwtorStrategies did. You can also read a part of Chapter 1 on the official site.

Podcasts seem to be a big deal in the Star Wars The Old Republic community. There are numerous quality shows and its hard to single out just a few to showcase in our community news. I must mention the always entertaining ToroCast and their episode 62 in which they are joined by a female co-host. Episode two of the Correlian Run Podcast is also available and the girls are super excited with the possibility of Corellia being a playable planet.

How Will You Play? That is the discussion in the official forum started by the developers. Are you a “soloer” or a “raider”. Go here to join in on the constructive discussion here.

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.