Posted by Lethality | 17 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Have You Played TOR Yet?

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!

Seems like a strange topic for a column, considering the game isn’t even out yet, huh? Actually, not really!

It was just about a year ago that the public got their very first hands-on time with Star Wars: The Old Republic at gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Since then, TOR has made an appearance at quite a few other conventions where fans could get their fix. This last week during San Diego Comic-Con, BioWare even had not one but TWO separate locations to play TOR set up!

Or maybe you’re one of the lucky few in Game Testing who have had a chance to play. Perhaps you’re from the media or a fan site. Or maybe even you’re simply on the inside of EA/BioWare or LucasArts and play it every day on your lunch break!

Either way, it’s reasonable to assume that there have been thousands of players so far that have gotten their personal time with the game. So we thought it might be interesting to see how many Ask A Jedi readers have actually had a chance to play TOR so far, one way or another.

Please remember to steer clear of posting any NDA-breaking comments, else the MIB (Men In BioWare) come calling!

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

SDCC 2011 Update: More TOR Hands-On Opportunities

As far as Sundays go for TOR news, this is a pretty good one! And an even better one if you plan on being in San Diego for the upcoming Comic-Con.

BioWare Senior Community Manager David Bass made a post on the official SWTOR.com forums indicating that, in addition to playing the game inside Comic-Con, as well as outside the convention at the Hilton Gaslamp, there is now a 3rd, special opportunity for fans to get their hands on the game:

In addition to our playable demos at the Comic-Con show floor and at BioWare Base at the Hilton Gaslamp, we’re also excited to give some of you the opportunity for an extended play session on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night at the Hilton. We’ve got a limited number of sessions each night to allow for selected fans to play through the first hour of either the Esseles or Black Talon flashpoints. In order to do this in the most fair manner, we’re going to do a random selection from those who RSVP to this event. Here’s how it will work:

1. On Tuesday, July 12th, we’ll make a post on the forums with instructions for how to RSVP. You’ll have exactly 24 hours from that post-time to follow the instructions and email us if you’d like to be considered for an invite. Note that you must be in San Diego during Comic-Con in order to play, so please don’t RSVP if you can’t make it to San Diego.
2. On Wednesday, July 13th, we’ll close invites off, and over the next day we’ll randomly select players from those who RSVP’d. Those people will be contacted, and will have a day to confirm their date/time for a play session.
3. On Friday, July 15th, any remaining open spots will be randomly offered to the remaining pool of applicants.

This is an awesome opportunity for some after-hour TOR gameplay, in one of the first two Flashpoints in the game. The Esseles is for the Republic, and The Black Talon is for the Empire. Having played The Black Talon at the Fan Site Summit, I can tell you this is something you want to do. I promise :) So pay close attention to the schedule that David outlined to have your best chances!

I think I speak for most fans when I say thanks to BioWare for going above and beyond the call of duty battlefield to work out all of these gameplay opportunities!

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

Penny Arcade: TOR Game Testing Hands-On Impressions

If you’re a gamer, you no doubt know and love the Penny Arcade, and the guys that run it – Tycho and Gabe.

And if you’re a fan of TOR, you now have a reason to like them even more: Gabe is in the Game Testing program, and got permission to share some of his impressions!

This is pretty huge because outside of structured media events or immersion days, there really hasn’t been any authorized writeups from Game Testers!

Gabe doesn’t go into a whole lot of detail, but provides his initial impressions just as he promised:

I honestly think they are making something unique and fun here. I’ve enjoyed my time in the beta even more than I expected and it just continues to improve. I’m excited to see what the final product ends up looking like and how people respond to some of its ideas.

Head on over to Penny Arcade now to check out Gabe’s full writeup!

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Posted by Lethality | 6 Comments

E3 2011 – Tatooine Hands-On Impressions

Yes, one last E3 article. Yes, it’s late. But, better late than never, right? :)

I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on Star Wars: The Old Republic on three separate occasions.

This first was at PAX in Seattle last September, where there were a select group of Republic and Empire origin worlds available for play – minus the Jedi classes and Tython – in 15 minute sessions. This wasn’t really enough time to get a true feel for things, and the booth setup was less than optimal for focusing on the game. But I had a great time.

The second time was this past April during the Fan Site Summit held at BioWare’s Austin studio where TOR is being developed. I had 2 solid days of experiencing origin worlds, Warzones, and Flashpoints. It was during this event where I really got a sense for the state of the game, and where it was headed. And boy, was I excited!

So, fast forward to last week… the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. The epicenter (pardon the earthquake pun) of the video game universe for 3 days every year. It was here, playing on a recently released build of the game, with a completely revamped user interface, that I truly felt like I had a feel for what the game might be like when it’s released later this year – and it was a really, really good feeling. Let me explain.

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

FSS 2011: Imperial Agent Hands-On

When all of us fan site-types finally sat down to business at last week’s Fan Site Summit, Stephen Reid gave a short talk on what we’d be seeing while we were down there in Austin. He talked about how much of the information that we were going to see would undoubtedly change by launch, so there was no point in scribbling down every ability name and the percentage of healing or damage it does. Instead, he asked, that we simply play the game. Sit there, as a fan, and just play.

After thinking about what he said, this actually sounded appealing. Trying to play the game at the same time as you’re transcribing every nuance makes the play experience… unfavorable. We’ve done it before. So, while we may not have the most technically detailed writeup of the minutiae out there, I hope that these words resonate with you as a fellow player of this upcoming MMORPG obsession known as Star Wars™: The Old Republic™!

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