Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

Fail Hunter Web Comic #21

There’s no shortage of web comics based on Star Wars: The Old Republic. There might even be more web comics than podcasts!  But one web comic has recently caught my eye and I believe it’s one of the better ones out there!

Fail Hunter is a web comic series from the mind of Cartoonist Tim Yates, created exclusively for the guys over at TORWars (which should be bookmarked right next to Ask A Jedi on your “list of sites to visit”!). This time, main character Traxle Pein gets his first taste of BioWare’d medical droid…

I recommend you go back and check out ALL of the past episodes of Fail Hunter, starting with Episode 1!

 

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Posted by Cormeister | 1 Comment

Wild Space: Release Date(!) And Developer Interviews

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have an official release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic. December 20, 2011 cannot get here fast enough! To start us off on Wild Space, here are a couple of release date articles and features from a few fansites that you may have heard of before.

– Darth Hater has an article with a bunch of information about the release date. It includes an interview with Stephen Reid, highlights of the actual announcement from the BioWare doctors, and an audio/media gallery of the whole thing. I highly recommend the interview with Stephen Reid about SW:TOR’s release, Early Game access, and the ongoing beta.

– TORWars has a short phone interview with Stephen Reid that they transcribed on their website, a breakdown of the SW:TOR pricing model, and a video of the BioWare doctors making the announcement.

It’s tough to contain my personal excitement since I have been looking forward to this game for a long time (as I’m sure a lot of you have). I have been wanting to play a sci-fi MMO for some time and it looks like my wish is finally going to come true on December 20th. Congrats to BioWare on this amazing milestone!

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

Why TOR Needs Huttball

No matter you you slice it, Huttball has gotten a lot of attention. When BioWare announced it during gamescom in August, many didn’t know what to make of it at first.

Initially, most players were stunned. The Jedi and Sith are playing a GAME together? How can that be? Our own Professor even weighed in on the topic.

Then we heard from the man with the abs, Writing Director Daniel Erickson, that he had been asked to specifically craft a story around the game to allow same-faction players to compete against each other.

Slowly, once players started to get their hands on Huttball at various conventions, it’s clear it was a hit and quite fun to play, despite the canonical bastardization. I personally played through 2 or 3 matches during PAX last month, and it was a blast!

The guys over at TORWars have their own take. TOR Warrior Marshal Carr gives his thoughts on why TOR needs Huttball. Here’s an excerpt:

Now that I’ve ranted a little about PvP, and my love of CoD, I’m going to attempt to make a point. TOR needs Huttball, just as much as Americans need football. Life is stressful. There’s work stress, family stresses, and the ever-crushing weight of being a “success” to deal with everyday. When I sit down to watch a football game, I can forget about my everyday stresses and focus my energy (and money) on a game that is just plain fun to watch.

And as usual, the article is chock full of Star Wars related pictures the likes of only TORWars seems to be able to dig up! So head over and check out the whole piece!

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

Georg Zoeller Q&A From TORWars

Good news everyone! The fine gentlemen over at TORWars have managed to score an exclusive Q&A with BioWare’s Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Systems Designer on Star Wars: The Old Republic. During the interview, Zoeller hits on a few hot-button topics that are sure to make future TOR players happy.

In regards to what BioWare will do to keep players interested and motivated over the long term, Zoeller had this to say:

Of course, any game that wants to hold player interest over a period measured in years needs to have continuous content and systems additions, and we’re already working hard making sure that we can meet and exceed our player’s expectations in that regard.

Mr. Zoeller also expands on what we know about the “group stealth” ability of the cover classes on both sides of the fence:

Scoundrels and Operatives get, at higher level, the ability to temporarily overload their personal stealth field generator to cover an area of X meters around them, effectively cloaking every member of their 4-player group, but not an entire Operation party.

He goes on to say that Snipers and Gunslingers also had the ability, but for balance purposes they changed it to more of an AoE defensive screen ability… which might prove interesting in objective-based PvP!

Head on over to TORWars for the full read!

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Posted by Cormeister | 0 Comments

Wild Space: PAX Prime

It’s a big galaxy out there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

This has been a crazy good week for SW:TOR fans! We started off at the amazing Eurpoean show gamescom and will end at PAX Prime, which takes place in my former hometown of Seattle. Tons of information has come out about Warzones and Operations from gamescom and it appears that the trend will continue with PAX. Since this week, most fansites have been busy either recuperating from gamescom or preparing for PAX (or both), I thought that it would be appropriate to continue my theme from last week and focus on the PAX information that is already starting to trickle out from the fansite community.

Darth Hater has continued with their popular theme of live blogging the official BioWare presentations and Q&A’s. The two live blog transcripts from today’s two developer presentations can be found on the Darth Hater website. Some noteworthy pieces of information to come out of those presentations:

You will not be able to enter Warzones with premade groups of eight people. Eventually, they might add “multiple group queues” to the game. Do I detect “rated battlegrounds” (or rated Warzones) in our future?

“[BioWare] is working on a system that prompts you to friend people after grouping with them.”

Further clarification of Huttball team mechanics (Republic can fight Republic and Empire can fight Empire; the two factions cannot combine onto the same team).

In addition to keeping us up to date on their twitter feed, the ladies from Corellian Run Radio coaxed some raid lockout information from the lead Operations man himself, Gabe Amatangelo. For instance:

“Easy mode and hard mode raids will NOT share a lockout.”

A potential third difficulty mode was teased: “medium”. Definitely won’t be in the game for launch (and might not be in the game at all).

TORWars always does a great job of getting exclusive video of the conventions and getting them up quickly and PAX Prime is no exception. As of this writing, there are three PvP gameplay videos available:

Exclusive PAX Video: Alderaan Warzone – Jedi Sentinel vs Marauder, Juggernaut
Exclusive PAX Video: Alderaan Warzone – Trooper vs. Sith Assassin
Exclusive PAX Video: Huttball Play-by-Play With Stephen Reid

Be sure to check out all of this great content courtesy of the awesome SW:TOR fansite community!

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