Mar 19, 2012

Posted by in Ask A Jedi | 41 Comments

Important News About Ask A Jedi: The Sith Did It!

Although I knew the day to write this post would come, I didn’t expect it to sneak up on me so quickly!

Recently, my personal and professional life has gotten more demanding on several fronts, and I found that I was struggling to put the time into Ask A Jedi that it needed and deserved. Unfortunately I just could not work it out to my satisfaction, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. So,  rather than letting Ask A Jedi wither and die on the vine, I decided to stop publishing the site all together as of today, March 19, 2012.

I understand that this might come as a shock to some fans, as we remain one of the largest and longest-running Star Wars: The Old Republic fan sites. This wasn’t an easy decision in the first place, and that’s entirely due to all of the members of the AAJ Army! We’ve grown quite a community over the 2 years we’ve been doing this, and many of the friends I made extend outside of the game.

Turn The Page

So what’s next? Glad you asked!

I’ve become really good buds with the guys over at TORWars during our incessant chase of TOR during it’s development. If for some reason you’ve never visited TORWars.com before, you should be ashamed. It is easily the highest-quality, most professionally written Star Wars: The Old Republic site out there. Thanks to Jeff and Co. over there, I’ll be a guest poster and editor on TORWars from time to time going forward, which will give me an opportunity to stay involved with the community at the same time dealing with the increased workload at work. I can’t thank Jeff enough for this opportunity, and want everyone in the AAJ Army to now consider themselves TOR Warriors and make themselves at home over there!

A Million Thanks

I’d like to thank BioWare, LucasArts and Electronic Arts on the behalf of Ask A Jedi, all of our staff, and myself for all of the support and generosity they’ve shown us over the years. The incredible accessibility to developers, gameplay at conventions and not to mention being invited to Austin on several occasions made the dream possible. The dynamic duo of David Bass and Stephen Reid are easily the best 1-2 punch in community management in the games industry. I’d call them Batman and Robin except I think Stephen’s more of a Marvel guy. I can’t call out everyone else on the community teams and the development teams by name, but suffice it to so I was blown away time and time again how nice and accommodating everyone was. And on the several occasions I got to meet and chat with BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, they inspired me to be better at what I did and to never let go of your dream! Doctors – thank you.

I’d also like to thank the AAJ staff… Momus, Zlatto, Kray, Lady Republic, Reedyn, Cormeister, Professor Walsh, Lord Paladin, Twin Hits, Sa’Chi, Cealog, ReDDoT as well as all previous staffers and contributors for helping to make Ask A Jedi what it is today, and that is nothing less than a top-quality narrative-driven fan site. I owe all of you big time.

And last but definitely not least, I want to thank you, the readers – the AAJ Army! I never in a million years that I’d be able to start some blog and have several hundred thousand visitors read it every month. Meeting many of you either virtually or physically has made this one of the more rewarding things I’ve done.

Please let me know if you have any question or concern about any of this in the comments below… and please visit TORWars.com every day for all of your TOR needs, including class guides, videos, opinons and more… and as I mentioned, I’ll even show up there from time to time so come and flame be over there instead! :)

May the Force be with you. Always.

– Bill
(Lethality)

 

  1. Lethality I put my foot down here I can take over I can do AAJ all i have to do i school. Lethality I will not Stand for this no one not even the people who somehow hate AAJ I’v lost more than I ever wanted to In my life and Im not going to let this die to. Just let me have this site I LOVE AAJ and all who are in it. So lethality what do you say let me take over it and let all the others do there things at there convective I can still do friday updates and BM&C. Sure I know it will one day die on its own and on one can help that. So what do ya say let me take over?

  2. Thanks for the great blog you provided everyone. You will be missed.

  3. Lethality. Great Job on the site. Be proud of what you were able to do here. Good luck on your future quests.
    Pashtun

  4. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

    Shocked to say the least, But my hopes and wishes go with you brother. Thank you for making my mornings tolerable and boredline enjoyable. You will be missed.

    Loyal reader,
    Truth

  5. gstommylee says:

    Is the site going away or is someone else taking over to run it?

    • It’s going away seems to be the current plan unfortunately. You will be able to go to torwars.com to find any future posts from Lethality.

    • Lady Republic says:

      I know at least one of us (me) did offer, but – it’s Leth’s site, he’s invested huge amounts of his time and energy into it, and I don’t think he was comfortable parting ways and letting someone else man the helm. Trust me though, we tried! Sometimes though, that’s just not an option – so you make do with the options you do have.

  6. Bill! No! This is very sad news :(

    You guys have been my FAVORITE site for TOR news for years :( I’m a very sad Trooper today :(

    Wish you and all the AAJ staff success in your future endeavors. Please stay in touch.

    /salute

  7. I’ll miss you, guys. I’ve been following this fansite (from the shadows) almost on a daily basis since I knew about it a year ago.

    I admit I visited TORWars a bit more lately (yes, they are awesome), so no that big of a change, but I’m still a bit sad.

    Great job and good luck, Lethality & co.

  8. a big loss – great site. thanks for everything :D

  9. :( Gonna miss this site. This was always my first (and most of the time only) stop for any TOR news. Thanks for the long run of info! Glad that Torwars is gonna stay up for now though. Guess I can start visiting there more often.

  10. Thanks, Bill, for all the wonderful work you’ve done here; and of course to the other ‘little helper-bloggers’ in your team, too.
    You will definitely be missed over here in Europe, too!

    So, if you’re ever in Germany.. :D

    Greetings,
    Sepp

  11. Morrgans says:

    *head hitting table*
    *quiet mourning*
    *shuffling over to Torwars to find a shoulder to cry on*
    Take care Lethality!

  12. mariofos says:

    Miss this site soo much. I have been on this site for over a year and have allways got my lattes SWTOR news from this. to bad.

    Greetings from Norway
    Mariofos

  13. Thanks for everything! This has been my fan site of choice throughout pre-release. Sad to see it go and I’ll miss it, but I think you’re doing a good thing, Lethality.

    Good luck and take care!

  14. Thanks for all the great work ,you where my one go-to swtor news site.

  15. Hate to see ya go, been a good run though. Good luck man.

    Can I have your things…;)

  16. Really enjoyed the website, and I’m sad to see it go. Hopefully it gets resurrected in the future sometime :-)

  17. Hate to see ya go, been a good run though. Really enjoyed the site. Good luck man.

    Can I have your things…;)

  18. Thank you for everything Bill!

  19. A huge loss.. seriously! WTF! OMG! This is some early April Fool’s joke, right? :-(

  20. I just now saw this post.

    Bill,

    I would like to thank you for everything you did for the SWTOR community. AAJ was hands down one of the best fansites out there and this is a big loss for all of us. Still, I can fully understand what you are going through.

    It was a big honor for me to meet you in person and I hope we’ll get together again sometime. Have fun at TorWars.com and be good!

  21. Jae Onasi says:

    Thank you to the AAJ team for great stuff and all your hard work!

    Welcome to the TORWars.com family, Lethality, and special welcome to all AAJ readers. :)

  22. Wow Bill this sounds SO similar to what I’m going through in my life and why I’ve had to give up SWTOR Unlimited. Will miss the site.

  23. Hey Bill and Gang –

    It has been a good run and I personally am happy that I don’t have to say ‘goodbye’ to the valuable friendship I’ve made with you guys over the years. We here at TORWars welcome you all and look forward to working with you on a regular basis, you will always have a place to stay with us. Here’s to a job well done. **holds up beer** Cheers!

  24. Best of luck in your future endeavors! Loved your site! Sad day. Crying tears into my blue milk. ;)

  25. I too will miss the blue milk. Thanks for all of the information and giving me a great start on my blog. You guys are the best.

  26. Lady Republic says:

    As far as where you can follow some of the writers, if anyone wants:

    – You can keep up with Reedyn over at Forceheal.com to learn tons about healing and what he’s up to

    – At least one of our writers is now an active member of the Sith Warrior Theorycrafting community, so for the DPS folks out there – feel free to check sithwarrior.com for that

    – As for me – I’m doing Trampeta’s Star Guide on TORWars.com (as well as any other work they have for me), and I’m going to try moving Council Chambers to its own blog – http://council-chambers.blogspot.com/.

    Unfortunately, I’m not a graphics designer, so it looks pretty crummy right now. But eventually, I’m hoping to continue the work I’ve been doing on Council Chambers with guild and leadership advice, and then adding some content concerning Crew Skills/Companions too. It’ll never be an AAJ, but if anyone needs guild advice – feel free to look it up!

    I’m really going to miss writing for AAJ, as I think they did a fantastic job of really deep, analytic examinations of the game and its aspects. I’ll do what I can to keep my segments alive at TORWars and my CC blog, and hope to run across many of you in the blogosphere!

    In the meantime, I’ll keep haranguing Lethality every chance I get

    /salute

  27. Cellblock1138 says:

    Thanks for providing me with all the latest rumors and news, the last 6 months leading up to the games release saw me constantly checking between AAJ and ToRwars. So thanks for fueling my love of Star Wars!

  28. Thank you Lethality :)

  29. thedarkknight says:

    It was great to see you guys at the various conventions. Your site was one of the few that I tagged as reliable as I updated my thread back in the day.

    All the best to everyone involved for your future endeavours.

    Gregg (TheDarkKnight)

  30. Much thanks to you Bill and everyone who contributes! Fantastic site to delve into the aspects of playing and being apart of swtor. you have done the community a great service.
    again
    thank you

  31. Best of luck in the future, Ask A Jedi has been my main source for The Old Republic news for a while now.

  32. This game sucks, so suck it. The star wars universe is the best out there and all they did was to make a wow clone. Guild Wars 2. Fuck D3, D3 is bound to be the worst release blizz has ever had. Guild Wars 2 is the next big thing folks!

  33. That is how MMO’s community works… ppl come and go, the game and community have got its good and bad moments. The population on servers is lower now, at launch Veela used to have 170 at the fleet, now it is about 90. When 1.2 goes live that should increase, and then decrease, it is normal. Dont worry, keep walking.

  34. Late – but just wanted to say you’ve done a great job with this site over it’s life and glad to see you’ll still be active in the SWTOR community.

  35. man a bit more than 4 months and im still coming back here. I love this place.

  36. OneCharacter says:

    Damn. So many good memories of this site during pre-launch. Blue Milk and Cereal was my favorite!

    Who would have thought the game turned out to be a bust.

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