Posted by Lethality | 1 Comment

Rooster Teeth Podcast With BioWare’s Blaine Christine And David Bass

Rooster Teeth is a quirky little outfit based in Austin, Texas that creates some hilarious video game shorts such as the now famous Red vs Blue series and more. While they also do live action shorts, their video game work is my personal favorite.

They also have a thriving community and produce an entertaining podcast. And last week, their latest episode featured two fellow Austinite gamers from BioWare – Senior Live Producer Blaine Christine and Senior Community Coordinator David Bass.

The cool thing about this podcast is that it’s just a bunch of gamers talking about TOR… no real “hard hitting” interviews or that kind of thing. The guys from Rooster Teeth really seemed to enjoy their time in the TOR beta!

Give it a listen - it will help you get even more pumped-up for Star Wars: The Old Republic, as if you weren’t already!

Read More

Posted by Sentinel | 2 Comments

The MMO Report: G4's Uncle Casey Talks To BioWare's Uncle Blaine

If you’re more than just a casual MMO gamer, you’re probably familiar with The MMO Report on G4 TV hosted by Casey Schreiner. But if you’re like me and have DirecTV, which has removed G4, you can now only see the MMO Report on the web. But that’s ok, because it’s the same on the web as it is on TV!

So, embedded below is the most recent episode, which appropriately enough is the E3 2011 Special. Since there was no lack of MMO news coming out of E3, it’s an episode chock-full of good info.

But we’re interested in The Old Republic, right? Since that’s the case, you can skip right to 12:40 in the video to see Casey discuss the finer points of TOR with Senior Live Producer Blaine Christine.

For the hardcore followers of TOR, there may not be much new information in here, but we do learn that Tatooine is content that is still considered in the first “chapter” of our class story.

So needless to say, if you’re reading this, you should check it out!

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 5 Comments

FSS 2011: Group Q&A Sessions With Developers

A big part of the Fan Site Summit this week was interaction with the developers whom are all busy working on our upcoming obsession.

While each site had the chance to interview one developer in a one-on-one situation, there were also Group Q&A sessions structured where each site in attendance could ask 1 or 2 questions.

The Group Q&A Sessions were as follows:

• Damion Schubert
• Blaine Christine & Daniel Erickson
• Georg Zoeller

There wre some really great questions asked by all of the fan sites – from roleplaying to crafting to PvP to theorycrafting. In particular, the Georg Zoeller Q&A was great – Georg puts forth the same straight-forward approach he’s become known for on the forums.

Thanks to Brooks for handling the sound recording duties for these sessions, and providing us with quality audio!

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 25 Comments

PAX: Blaine Christine and Daniel Erickson Audio Q&A

Well, day 1 of PAX 2010 has come to an end! But we don’t want to let it go out too quietly… so we’re pleased to present our Audio Q&A with Blaine Christine and Daniel Erickson! Blaine and Daniel were nice enough to take some time out of what can only be described as total mayhem at the LucasArts booth and try to answer some questions for the Ask A Jedi readers, and fans of TOR everywhere.

The audio editing may be a little rough in places, but I think it’s fairly clear and listenable. It is in 2 parts due to YouTube’s 15 minute time limit. You can also find a text transcription below!

This is but a mere appetizer for tomorrow, where we’ll be treated to a special presentation by BioWare and LucasArts that promises to reveal some all-new information about Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Enjoy!

Ask A Jedi: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you do on the project?

Blaine Christine: Sure, I’m a Senior Producer at BioWare based out of Austin, and my primary duty is Live Producer, which basically means I am helping to make sure the game is ready for launch. So I’m in charge of testing efforts, basically anything customer-facing goes through me.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 6 Comments

PAX: Day 1 – Quick Update

Taking a quick break from the very busy show floor, and just wanted to post a few updates, thoughts and pics for everyone!

First, as expected… the TOR booth is pretty crowded, as you can see below. But the system they have set up is pretty good… they have about 30 workstations set up, and have several helpful folks assuring that everyone gets about 15 minutes of hands-on time.

So far, we’ve had a chance to sit down for a Q&A session with Senior Producer Blaine Christine and Lead Writer Daniel Erickson. We’re going to work on getting those posted as soon as possible!  There isn’t any new “reveals” in the interviews of course, but there might be a couple of points just juicy enough for some new speculation ;)   We cover advanced classes, companions, “is it an MMO?” and more.  Some highlights:

• They’ve definitely heard the “feedback” on the Jedi Wizard. My take is that there is more info coming in this regard.
• Companions aren’t going to make players gods above those who choose to play without them, but also players won’t necessarily be able to “spec” their character to make up for lost companion stats, if they choose to play without one.
• Advanced Class choice has been relegated to “still in development” – meaning, very much on the fence as if it will be permanent or not. But the Advanced Class choice you make seems to be the role are likely to be playing.

So I also finally was able to get my hands on the game for the first time. All of my hands-on impressions will be written up for here, and of course I’ll be discussing them on the forums, but my very first take was this (and its an important one):  The game FEELS great.

Of the two classes I’ve played so far (Smuggler and Sith Inquisitor,) both of them felt visceral. I felt very connected to the character’s movement and abilities. There were no disconnected animations that were supposed to be connected to an ability I pressed 3 seconds ago, etc.  There’s lots more to say, but I’ll leave you with that one for now. To me, this is probably the most important thing – that control “feels” right – considering the amount of time we tend to play these games.

So, that’s all for now… just wanted to give a quick update of the day so far.  There is of course lots more to come, including the special presentation tomorrow at 5:00PM PST:

Star Wars Games – REVEALED!

LucasArts and BioWare unite on stage once again to give PAX attendees an exclusive in-depth look at Star Wars: The Old Republic! Don’t miss your chance to be the first to hear and see new details about the MMORPG that everyone is talking about. As an added bonus, attendees will also get an explosive look at a demo of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, the sequel to 2008′s blockbuster best-seller. LucasArts will demonstrate now fugitive Starkiller’s devastating force powers in an exclusive look at this galaxy-altering game.

Stay tune for that one, because I have a feeling we’re going to get some news! Be sure to follow Ask A Jedi on Twitter for the up-to-the-minute tidbits – http://www.twitter.com/askajedi

Read More