Sep 15, 2011

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Office Hours: The Perils Of Faction Imbalance

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Star Wars. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh enlighten us all with opinions on lore, design and more in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. 

Greetings my Padawan learners! The Professor is here once again, and this time with a topic that I am empassioned about. But first, I have two disclaimers:

Disclaimer #1

What you are about to read is an opinion piece. It might even be considered controversial. It might even make some readers mad. The point is, I’m a critic. I do what I do and say what I say because criticism, in my eyes, is a better form of feedback than flattery.

I get a lot of flak from some viewers for always “attacking” BioWare. The truth is that there are plenty of things I wholly agree with BioWare on regarding The Old Republic. I, intentionally, focus on controversial hot topics and heated opinions because I feel the dissenting voice is an important thing.

Am I always correct? No. Do people disagree? Yes.

This is what I do though. I’ll never say, “This sucks because I say so.” I’ll always explain why I don’t like something. That, to me, is the essence of what being a critic is all about.

Disclaimer #2

This article is based on a series of forum posts that were made on SWTOR.com in a thread started by Aneu.

I have checked the information as well as I could, and have found it to be accurate. If this information is incorrect, I can only apologize. This article is, however, based on the numbers generated by parsing the Guild Headquarters information.

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Aug 28, 2011

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Ask A Jedi: Heart Attack Over Huttball!

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of Star Wars lore and history, in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Editor’s Note: This is a special edition of Ask A Jedi, where there are no questions from readers. Only a lecture from the Professor!

No. The title isn’t joking; well okay it is, kind of. Yes, I am recovering from a mild heart attack that I suffered a few days ago. People wondered why I suddenly vanished from posting on forums when I did (only a period of about 8 hours when I was in the middle of discussion with people) and that is the answer – the Prof’s health is pretty bad right now.

I joke, because people already found out about my heart issue and everyone knows that I was pretty worked up about Huttball. The fact is, as a designer and a major lore-freak, Huttball bothers me. I don’t like it when lore is pushed aside for gameplay. Though, seriously I don’t think that had anything to do with my heart attack contrary to the sensationalism of this very article.

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Aug 1, 2011

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Ask A Jedi: Holy Kark, That Was Evil!

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of Star Wars lore and history, in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

This week, we’re taking a slight departure from the reader Q&A format, and instead focusing on a recent reveal that I just find too juicy to ignore. This is regarding the Esseles Flashpoint Developer Walkthrough, which was recently unveiled during San Diego Comic Con. Specifically, I am referring to the point where the party makes the choice to… “jettison” the engineers.

If we were formatting this similar to past Ask A Jedi columns, it would go something like this:

Dear Jedi,

How do you feel about the engineers getting spaced in The Esseles Flashpoint?


Dear StarWarsNut,

I am a bit shocked by the event in question.


Now, for the long version

For those of you who have not seen it, you can view it here:

In case you can’t view it, or don’t want to view it, allow me to give you the recap.

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Jun 22, 2011

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Ask A Jedi: Why Do People Think The Jedi Are Good? And That Gnost-Dural Guy

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of Star Wars lore and history, in this sometimes highly-opinionated piece. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Welcome to another edition of Ask A Jedi where we try answer your questions regarding lore and history within the Star Wars universe, of course with a focus on The Old Republic!

This week, reader Judas submitted the following question:

Dear Jedi,

How come people think that the Jedi are actually good? According to BioWare the Republic committed genocide against the Sith.

Thank you for the question Judas. This one is rather complicated, so it is going to take a little time to explain.

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Jun 15, 2011

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Ask A Jedi: Will The Missing Droid Factory Appear In TOR?

If you spend any time on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums, you are sure to have seen his passion and prose regarding all things Jedi. You know him as Professor Walsh. Each week (or thereabouts,) Professor Walsh will answer a few reader-submitted questions in order to enlighten us all with the ways of the Jedi. You can submit your own question at the end of the article!

Welcome once again to another edition of Ask A Jedi! I’m Professor Walsh, and this is where I try to answer any questions about Star Wars lore that you may have.

This interesting one came in recently and I figured I’d go ahead and answer it to the best of my ability…

Dear Jedi,

A friend and I were talking about HK-47 in KotOR2 and we remembered that there was a HK-50 droid factory they edited out of the game. I have tried to look for anything for this but found nothing. Will here be a HK factory in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Or is this one just dead?

Keep Rockin’ the news. You are now my fist place to look for anything TOR. Thanks!

DozingDawg

First off, let me say thank you for your question, and thank you for ranking us as the first place you head for TOR news! It is always nice to receive positive feedback because it gives me the warm fuzzies. Now, onto your question…

A room from inside of the lost Droid Factory

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