Nov 9, 2011

Posted by | 3 Comments

Fan Site Summit: TORWars Un-Podcast With Corellian Run, Fragworld and Ask A Jedi!

As you know, Ask A Jedi currently doesn’t have any sort of podcast. But if they’re always as fun as this one was, we’re really missing out!

The guys over at TORWars invited Kathy and Carla from Corellian Run Radio, Jaro from Fragworld and us to sit down and discuss the events of Fan Site Summit day 1, and what a discussion it was! It was a pretty solid re-cap of the various events including details on Ilum and The Voidstar Warzone, as well as some other odds and ends.

It should be noted that we were fresh off of a victory in a game of Laser Tag against some very formidable 6th grade students from a nearby elementary school. It was close, but the Star Wars team prevailed in the end (otherwise we would never live it down!)

Anyway, give a listen to the cast over on TORWars. It’s only about 30 minutes long, highly entertaining, and you’ll learn what the ladies can do to contribute to the launch effort instead of growing a launch beard. Listen here.

 

The round table. Literally.

The round table. Literally.

Read More
Nov 9, 2011

Posted by | 10 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You An Over-Achiever?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

On Monday, at the Second Fan Site Summit (#SWTOUR on Twitter), Game Director James Ohlen, responding to a question by our very own Lethality, re-confirmed that an achievement system will be in place when SW:TOR launches on December 20th. With the pervasiveness of achievement systems in what seems like every game nowadays, it comes as no surprise that BioWare will be including the system in SW:TOR.

Services like Gamerscore on the Xbox, Trophies on the PS3, and achievements in other MMOs are so second nature to us now, that we expect them to be present in every game that we play. So from that point of view, I’m glad that BioWare was able to get them in for launch.

Personally, I’m not out to gather every achievement point that I can find in order to get my total as high as it can go. I think my Xbox Gamerscore and World of Warcraft Achievement point total on my best character are both around 3000 or so (disgraceful, I know). However, what I do like is getting those rare achievements, the ones that are difficult to complete and that not everyone has. It is nice to be able to point to those achievements and say “Yeah, that’s right. I did that.”

So how about you? Do you all try to complete every achievement out there and get the best score possible? Do you complete them if you can, but you don’t go out of your way to find them? Or do you just not care about achievements at all? Let us know!

Do you consider yourself an over-Achiever?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Read More
Nov 8, 2011

Posted by | 4 Comments

Fan Site Summit: Photo Gallery

We just wanted to provide a small smattering of snapshots to document our first day at the Fan Site Summit here in Austin this week. While the pictures might be entertaining, they don’t contain all of the stuff that you’re most likely wanting to see – and you will soon! For now though, enjoy!

Read More
Nov 8, 2011

Posted by | 17 Comments

Fan Site Summit: Ilum Open World PvP Detailed

So here we are at the end of a long day one of the Fan Site Summit. Games were played, secrets were shared, lasers were tagged. It was another incredible day at BioWare’s Austin studio learning all we can about everyone’s favorite upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Though there was a full slate of activity today, for this report, I want to talk about Ilum. As you may recall, BioWare introduced the planet Ilum as the first open world objective-based PvP zone at PAX Prime in August. Though brief, the glimpse we saw then of walker vehicles traversing the frozen tundra and legions of troops charging into The Battle of Ilum was enough to get the PvP juices flowing.

We were excited today when BioWare’s Gabe Amatangelo, Lead Endgame Designer for Star Wars: The Old Republic came in to talk to us about this resource-rich planet. He was able to provide some details and answer some very specific questions that have been on the mind of the community. Although we can’t show you any new screenshots or other visuals we saw, we just wanted to give a recap of the highlights here:

  • Ilum is a level 50 end-game zone
  • About half of the planet’s size is used for the world PvP objective, and it’s a large planet
  • There are 5 control points in the zone: a Republic and Empire base at the north and south, as well as 3 central resources
  • All 5 points must be under control simultaneously for victory
  • Certain control points engage/deploy walkers that can and need to be take down by special shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, and perhaps other means. It takes a good 10 seconds to fire one of these rockets
  • Victory conditions award a buff that can stack, which awards extra Valor points (earned during other forms of PvP such as Warzones)
  • This buff is faction-wide
  • The status is persistent, no timers for the game to artificially start or “reset” – it’s always on
  • There are rare crafting resources available throughout the zone
  • Zone can hold hundreds of players
  • Design accounts for population differences
  • Operation (raid) group size is 24 players. (Note: PvE Operation instanced content is designed for 8 or 16, but the group itself can have 24 people in it.)

You can get a sneak-peek at Ilum from our video at the Star Wars: The Old Republic panel at PAX Prime this year. I can tell you that as exciting as this video makes it look, it’s 10x more impressive on every level seeing it live!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below and it may jog some other facts we learned today loose :)


Read More
Nov 7, 2011

Posted by | 29 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: What Info Do You Hope Comes Out Of The Fan Site Summit?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

It’s early-morning Texas time on November 7th. The sun is peaking over the horizon thanks to the time change over the weekend, but not even this unholy hour can quell the excitement – The Fan Site Summit starts today!

As you may have heard, BioWare is hosting another Fan Site Summit (the last one was in April of 2011,) and Ask A Jedi is honored to be here for it! Last night, the pre-Summit festivities kicked off in style with the customary drinks in the Westin lobby bar, followed by a true Texas BBQ experience at County Line (transported by a calvary of taxis, it was a sight to behold.) The night was capped by a few more drinks at the w xyz bar at the nearby aloft hotel. Our buddys over at TORWars have a great gallery covering all the shenanigans if you’d like to catch up!

However, the reason we’re REALLY here begins today. We’ve come to find out what BioWare has in store for all of us who are so patiently (?) waiting for TOR to arrive on December 20th. The itinerary shows that we’ll be playing the game a LOT, but the specifics are murky. There are also some developer Q&A sessions in which we hope to data-mine their brains so we can bring the info right back here for you all to devour.

Which brings us to today’s topic. What exactly is it that you hope to hear coming out of the Fan Site Summit? Are you looking for new reveals? Or maybe more detail on something we already know about? Obviously, a poll on this kind of question can only take us so far – let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below!

And be quick about it – maybe we can take some of these demands across the street to the BioWare Austin studio with us in an hour or so!

What info do you hope comes out of the Fan Site Summit?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Read More