After an amazing week with E3, on Friday, Sean found time to release the latest issue of Blood of the Empire and, remarkably, talked to us for a bit about what was going on in regard to the wrap up for E3 2010. First, we’ll look at the comic.

Blood of the Empire: Issue Five

Issue five of Blood of the Empire was released on Friday and had this little tidbit of information to go along with it.

In the fifth issue of Blood of the Empire, Teneb Kel comes face to face with Exal Kressh, the Emperor’s apprentice! But what power does she possess, and what secrets will she reveal to the man sent to kill her? Meanwhile, Maggot’s night off continues, and new faces observe from the shadows. It’s the beginning of a night full of revelations….

Check out the latest issue Blood of the Empire now!

If you’re like me, you probably have read or will read it at least another three or four times as you break it apart looking for any hints and clues. I’m looking forward for more information on this trap that was sprung. I find it a little too convenient that the Emperor’s own apprentice would turn her back on him. There has got to be more in there. Either way, check out the comic. It’s the first issue in Act Two, The Broken World. What do you think of the comic so far?

E3 Wrap Up

I think we can all say that E3 was an exciting time and that it really provided a lot of information. Some people were disappointed and let down that there wasn’t a lot of information. I was as well, but then I got to thinking, “Well, wait a second…We got confirmation on ships. We got confirmation on more playable species. We saw live game play footage. We got confirmation on how PvP will work. We got confirmation about customization. We got a great trailer.” And I realized, we really did rather well for ourselves.

But, some people were obviously upset and others were confused about some things. While he didn’t have to–having just gotten back to Austin from his work in Los Angeles–Sean posted an update that provided BioWare’s reasoning for releasing what they did, when they did. I’ll post it below.

I got up at 4am this morning to get back to Austin so I’ll make this short and sweet instead of rambling on as I tend to.

We’ve talked about this before but it bears mentioning again; the updates we do are for the entire TOR Community. We have everything from people who read the site almost every minute to people who visit the site once a week; people who scour the web for data and people who like to be directed to what and where our updates are. So when we do our big broadcast messages, it is directed towards the entire TOR Community.

This week’s Fan Friday was special. We’ve never had a Fan Friday that was updated every day of the week nor have we ever had a Fan Friday that announced any major systems. And from day one, last week, we called out very specifically that we would have an update every day (for this week) instead of just throwing it all out on a Friday.

Some of you knew about all of our updates come Monday. Some found out about the various updates all through the week. But some people won’t find out about the War Zones and the Chiss Imperial Agent or Twi’lek Smuggler until today and some won’t even see that info until we post it on our other social networks. Some won’t even see it until next week.

SIDE NOTE: While we aren’t talking about it yet (and I know many of you dislike this but there are various and valid reasons why we do this), we are not saying that you can ONLY be a Twi’lek as a Smuggler. What we are saying is that we are CONFIRMING that as a Smuggler, you can choose Twi’lek as a species. Will there be limitations? Yes, there will be. What are they? We aren’t talking about that yet because we haven’t come to a final conclusion on some things yet. When we do, you will definitely know but in the meanwhile we are only confirming what we know will not change between now and launch. Back to the point…

We all think it’s awesome that we have so many dedicated fans. We really do. We only get to meet a fraction of them and the ones we do are amazing. Just this last week I got to personally meet a wide variety of people who participate in these forums on a consistent basis and it was great to see their excitement for TOR. And it’s great to see everyone pull together and share all the information they gleamed from each and every interview they could find across the web (and sorry that my interview didn’t really have any big reveals or anything in it).

But, like I said, our updates are crafted for the entire community and while a segment may learn everything before even the first day of E-3 (and some even before the Pre-E3 Press Event, ack!), a large portion of our community doesn’t learn about things until later and usually when we are informing them of the updates by posting them on our website and the social networks we participate in.

Now, I know some of you will disagree with me (I have been reading the threads and posts between shifts when doing demos and at night), I personally believe we revealed a lot this week:

• Hope – A new cinematic trailer.
• Player Ships – Announcing a mobile base of operations and even showing two of them.
• Armor Progression – Showed off a few new outfits and gave a small peek at how a character might progress.
• Live Gameplay – We’ve never shown that yet and not only did we show a single-player experience we also showed a group experience. On live television where anything could happen.
• Species reveals – Announced two more species; Chiss and Twi’lek.
• War Zones – Talked a little about our PvP system; granted, we have a lot more details to give out on that but we have to refine and test things first to make sure we’re giving out great and accurate information
• Hands-On Demos – We let a lot of people come to our booths and play TOR; yes some were mainstream press and we had a few celebs come by, but we also had quite a few community members come through that work on various fan sites and podcasts (and many that aren’t even TOR specific).

And that’s not even counting all the information and things talked about during the various interviews. Granted, I’m seeing things from my point of view, but I think we did a lot over the last five days.

Hmm, and maybe I should go back and remove the part about me not rambling… because I think I ended up doing that after all.

Quick Edit: And no, not asking for you guys to thank us or anything else. I am just trying to give a little more information on why things are they way they are based on some of the posts I have been reading over the last week.

So there you have it. We know that some of the species will be able to do more than just one class. That leaves me with the question of: Can I play as a Wookiee Bounty Hunter or smuggler? George Lucas always said that there would never be another Wookiee Jedi, but if there are going to be species and there are going to be some class-specific species, perhaps I can be a Wookiee.

Anyway…What do you think? Liking the comic so far? Like Sean’s dialogue? I think it helps to ease people’s frustrations. Leave a comment and let me know what you think about it all.