Circling the planet Hutta is its largest moon – Nar Shaddaa, the ultimate corrupt city. Dominated by underworld concerns and owned by the Hutts, this sprawling mass of skyscrapers is considered one of the most dangerous and exciting places in the galaxy, where anything can be had for the right price.

There are things about this moon that are really interesting. Firstly, is BioWare going to create a lot more moons and satellites for different planets? One of the interesting things about Mass Effect was how you could fly from planet to planet, search the planet for resources and occasionally deal with the freaking thresher maw.

Another thing that I wouldn’t mind seeing is the ability to take off from the planet and fly to the moon without having to enter some “loading screen.” Since this goes hand in hand with my space combat article–I discussed how people might have the ability to fly freely around planets–I am hoping that it’ll become a possibility. The extra control really is fun in these games and I’d love to see it pop up in TOR.

While this is a moon, it is categorized in BioWare’s planets. This means that BioWare intends for it to be a large territory for people to appreciate. It differs from satellites and meteors that people can potentially search. I wouldn’t confirm this as an instance, but instead, this is a planet that will have different story arcs–major and minor.

This is an exciting release. We have the vile Hutta and now we have the glamorous Nar Shaddaa. That is really exciting. And, it will be especially exciting for those that play as the Bounty Hunter because I imagine a lot of their early quests are going to be on these two planets.

Pumped about Nar Shaddaa? Not really interested? Maybe I’m wrong. Chime in!

I’ll touch more on the space combat at a later point–PC Gamer is doing an exclusive on it–so for now, let’s focus on what was revealed at “Crafting the Multiplayer Story.”

• Each of the classes in SWTOR have enough content to fill an entire KOTOR. While this is nothing new, it really is amazing to imagine how much content that means. There are currently eight classes and that means, in theory, they’ve created eight KOTORs for this game. That’s pretty sweet in my opinion.
• The story arcs are both worldly and galactic. What this means is that some of the quest arcs that you’ll be doing will be specific to the planet you are on. But, others that you will be doing are galactic.
• Your ship is customizable. This goes hand in hand with everything they’ve been talking about. They want you to truly appreciate your experience. I actually had some notes prepared about Fatal Alliance that fit in with this. There was too much mention of “modified ships,” but we’ll get to that when I finish.
• There is space combat. It should be noted, though, that the space combat doesn’t appear to be free-roaming. So, don’t expect to fly through space, happen upon a Sith/Jedi ship and open fire. Sean described it as, “Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat. In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map. From there, you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.” So, maybe I’ll be sitting in my cockpit dog fighting? We’ll have to wait and see.
• Once you are a part of a faction, you cannot switch. This, too, was also a question of mine. I’m at the part of the book where Shigar Konshi is with Darth Chratis and it’s obvious Chratis is trying to turn Konshi to the dark side. That would suggest faction change, but according to this panel, that is simply not possible.
• Not every class can play every race. This could potentially go against what I wrote about yesterday pertaining to aliens being open to mane different races, but we’ll have to wait and see. It could also suggest that they are, in fact, releasing races that are not force sensitives. We’ll have to wait and see on this. They wouldn’t reveal any other races, though.
• Mandalorians will play a huge part in this game. They are definitely going to be an interesting addition to the game.
• Progression is important. Crafting, tons of gear and other things. There are rewards for all of this.
• When grouping, if the group does something bad, if you choose good, you get light side points. This was an issue some were concerned about. When in a group, if three chose to do an evil act and you chose to do a good act, the evil act would be done. But, you’d get light side points for wanting to do the good act.
• Alderaan’s families are split. Family Organa is on the Republic’s side. Family Thulu is on the Sith side. Easily a great way for there to be serious problems.
• Lightsabers will be visually restricting. Double bladed Jedi Consular is a DPSer. Therefore, if you see a single bladed Jedi Consular, that means that they are geared toward something else.

This whole event turned into a huge Q&A which is always cool. Very little was provided about the overall “multiplayer” experience, but at least we know that there isn’t a problem if you choose to do something light sided and the rest of the team does something dark. This will put some people’s fears to rest. And, most importantly, there’s space combat! Wait until August when PC Gamer’s issue comes out. You can bet I’ll devour that for information for you guys!

The description given to this comic is as followed:

In the seventh issue of Blood of the Empire™, Teneb Kel finds himself beaten and bloodied in the aftermath of the Lenico colony’s destruction. Trapped on a strange planet, he must draw upon the ancient Sith arts in order to ensure his survival–and to learn the secrets he needs to resume his vendetta against Exal Kressh.

One of the things that stands out for me is the page where the Jedi padawan runs into Teneb’s servant on the ship. Warrior class? That is interesting. Could he betray Teneb because the Jedi is so supportive or can we expect to see him to stay loyal to Teneb?

And, what about this new Sith–at least, I presume he is a Sith–that has that across the face mask. The first thing is that the mask looks really cool and might find its way into the game. BioWare doesn’t really release stuff unless they are going to include it in the game, so something as exciting as that in the comic is, chances are, going to pop up. But, you never know.

Over at Darth Hater, they released an image of a future comic where the Jedi Master and Teneb clash with each other. I am pumped to see that because finally, the Jedi catch up with Teneb. I know that the Padawan has been following them, but the fact that they finally caught up is exciting.

What do you think of the new comic? Leave a comment and tell us what you think of it. Any predictions about what is going to happen in the future?

What I am finding very interesting about their testing is that they are doing it in phases. Perhaps other games do it the same way, but I think it is really going to be an effective way of doing it. They had this to say:

Game Testing is an on-going process being rolled out in several phases. These phases began with smaller, more focused tests with community members from North America, and later will expand to other territories. Users selected for the test program will be notified via email with more information on accessing the Game Testing Portal. If you’ve not been chosen yet, you may be selected in the next wave!

They are going to start with very small groups and then expand. So, their first step is to find the large bugs that might not have been found in Alpha testing. So, the small groups will go around and when they find that the big alien can’t be destroyed, they’ll note that so BioWare can go in and fix it. But, these small groups won’t stress the servers at all. The rumors posted a few weeks ago suggested this type of system with only around 200 people testing.

As the game testing expands, they’ll begin to find what levels of people start to stress the servers out. With their latest reveal about Monolith-Monitoring for TOR, they will definitely get the information they need during testing to try and alleviate the launch problems that most games are cursed with.

One of the things that I can truly appreciate about BioWare is that they do reveal amazing games. Because of that, I am confident that this testing is really going to do a good thing. And, when the game is released, while there will be problems–there are always problems–I am confident that the game will be less glitchy than many others.

If you get the email asking you to be a tester, that’s fantastic. If you don’t, that’s alright. Rest easy knowing that those that do get the job will do the best they can to make the game you get to experience that much greater. And, if you are chosen to test, please do your job the best way you can. The better you work, the better the game will be for us. And, the harder you work, the sooner we can get the game.

According to Ohlen, they have a plan for the end game content. “I know some people are worried, for example, about the elder game [and are asking] ‘what happens in the elder game, what happens when you get to the highest level?’ We do have a plan for that and we will be revealing it the future,” he said in the interview.

He’s right. A lot of people have been asking what happens when we reach the highest level and it makes sense. What happens when I reach the highest level? How do I stay motivated to play the game? What is BioWare going to do to make sure I am still addicted to the game even after I have reached the highest level.

He went on to say: “Don’t worry, it’s not like we’re ignoring that. We have a lot of hardcore MMO players who have like five level 80 WoW characters, so it’s not like we don’t have the knowledge of what we need to do in terms of the elder game and other aspects of our game.”

What is exciting in my opinion is that he made it clear that TOR isn’t going to do what other games do. So, while I don’t have an idea of what it will be, it is exciting to know what BioWare is going to do to make their game different than the other games out there. I love when a game is a bit innovative and tries to walk away with some great, new ways of doing things. That’s one of the ways that a game goes from being an average game to an amazing game. But, they have to do the end game right.

Is end game an important topic to you? What do you think the end game content is going to be like? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

What this video provided was a bit of a better understanding on how the four classes would act together. The single most important thing that I saw was that the Jedi Consular wasn’t just a healer. My brother wanted to play as that, but when he saw the last demo and the Jedi Consular was just healing, he was let down. Fortunately, this demo does demonstrate that the Consular does more. She swung her lightsaber once, but she also relied heavily on the force.

The description that Sean from BioWare gave was:

During E3 we gave live demos of multiplayer game play in The Old Republic for the press. Now we want to share the demo with the community! This demo shows how a diverse group of players use their abilities to complement one another in battle.

Commander Narlock readies his troops for an Imperial assault. As he does, all four Republic classes; a Jedi Consular, Jedi Knight, Smuggler, and Trooper join together to assist in fighting off the attack. Watch as each player does his or her part to take on the enemies, and beat the Imperial Troopers and Imperial Breach Droids.

Watch the video and then let us know what you think. We’ll do a more detailed analysis of the video in the next couple of days. Here’s the video.

So, what do you think? Awesome or what? Leave a comment and let us know!

Monolith offers BioWare the chance to “visualize their business at real time by collecting, analyzing and correlating data through powerful, web based dashboards.” Because it is a fault/event management system, it provides the opportunity for BioWare to really pay close attention to what’s occurring on their servers.

According to the article, BioWare chose Monolith because, “its robust feature set and ability to manage the real-time monitoring of multiple thousands of devices across several data centers in the United States and EMEA. The flexibility and scalability of the solution was a fit for BioWare’s IT requirements to support the future growth of the company’s largest electronic entertainment project ever.”

Ruben Cortez, the director of infrastructure and services at BioWare had this to say:

We are building a large game that will be supported by an expansive, complicated IT environment. When you have this complex of an environment for a business reliant on continuous connectivity, you need a monitoring solution that can manage that in real time. We are looking forward to working with Monolith’s rich feature set. It fit into our Linux environment and met all of our requirements, including specific customizations.

This is very important news. The quicker BioWare is able to analyze server information, the faster they can react to a problem. Monolith seems to be the right choice and a choice that will ensure that the servers are being watched continuously. This is definitely some exciting news and confirms the idea that BioWare is really making headway toward releasing this game.

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.

While BioWare is not going to be talking a lot about space flight, a little information was released. This information, specifically, was that every class gets a ship. The type of ship varies from class to class and, more importantly, from sub-class to sub-class. Hillary had this to say about the choice of ships:

Always dreamed of flying a Corellian vessel? Choose the Vanguard class when playing. Or maybe you’ve had some sort of sick dream where you gangster walk through the galaxy aboard an Imperial transport (if so, choose the Sith Fury class).

However, there can only be so many classes. This would normally be a problem, but not in BioWare’s game. They have made it so that you can customize the heck out of your ship. In other words, you can take your ship and make sure that it is unique in some way. There will be thousands and thousands of different looking ships flying through the galaxy. This makes it so that you truly feel unique, something that BioWare was hoping for.

While talking about customization, we move to PvP. Hillary didn’t go into detail about the PvP challenges because BioWare isn’t discussing it yet, but what she did say was that there were specific prizes for participating in PvP. In other words, if you get into a PvP fight–such as a war between Jedi and Sith–you get new stuff. This stuff can be just for looks, but a lot of it can also be useful to your character’s success.

This PvP system provides an interesting experience. This game has been called a MMO, but it also can be played as a single player. Why you’d want to is beyond me, but if that’s your cup of tea, so be it. However, if you want to get the extra goods such as a stronger crystal for your lightsaber or a really cool jetpack–these are just guesses, by the way–then you’ve got to get involved in PvP. This, in other words, makes it very possible for there to be massive PvP battles.

Finally, you can customize the heck out of your PvP stuff as well. So, while I might want to play as a Jedi Knight and I want the armor that goes with it, I won’t look like another Jedi Knight because my armor will look a little different. That way, I really am a unique Jedi.

What do you think? Are you as stoked as I am about space travel, customizations and the slightly forced PvP? Chime in down at the comments. Also check out this great video from IGN that lays out in simple speak what this great game is all about.

To watch it, click this link. We learn about Darth Revan and Darth Malak, the two Jedi turned Sith who pull together all the Star Maps. By doing this, they get access to the Star Forge that gives them access to an infinite number of ships and soldiers to create their armada. However, what I really enjoyed about this video is that it gives just a little insight into where Revan and Malak got the idea to take over the Republic.

From the SWTOR site itself, we get this little bit of information:

BTC 303 – Three hundred years before the Sacking of Coruscant, two prominent Jedi Knights pursued enemy forces into Deep Space at the conclusion of the Mandalorian Wars. When the two Jedi, Revan and Malak, returned to Republic space, they had fallen to the dark side. As Sith Lords, Revan and Malak began searching the galaxy for a powerful ancient artifact known as the Star Forge. During their dark campaign, however, Malak’s ambitions grew and eventually drove him to betray Revan, sparking the bloody Jedi Civil War. Though Revan was ultimately redeemed and restored peace to the galaxy, he disappeared afterward in search of a great darkness in Deep Space. Through his investigation, Master Gnost-Dural now confirms that this great darkness is the Sith Empire the Jedi Order battles today….

Back in January, I wrote an article about the TOR Emperor. In it, I talk specifically about why when Revan and Malak went to the Emperor, they turned around and became the vanguard for his invasion. However, what is revealed to us is more on what the Emperor’s real idea was. In the video, we learn that the Emperor sent Revan and Malak–after they landed on Dromund Kaas–to take over the Star Forge because it would give the Emperor access to unlimited resources. This is obviously something he would want.

But, as I explain in my older article, when Revan and Malak realize that they could have access to a huge empire themselves, they turn their back on the Sith Emperor. In other words, they became typical Sith. And this explains why Revan and Malak kept the military bases on planets in order because they understood that the Emperor was coming sooner or later. And when the Star Forge was finally destroyed, the Emperor knew he’d have to wait a little longer to make his attack.

I don’t want to go into so much detail about the Timeline because there is an entire video for you to watch. But, there are a lot of interesting points involved there. To begin with, the Emperor sent Revan and Malak back. On top of that, there are a few other things that are revealed. Combat in SWTOR is going to be very interesting. We get this because of the way Revan is holding his lightsaber. He’s holding it backward. While I don’t typically agree with this type of fighting stance, a lot of people seem to enjoy it. This could lead to one of the many types of combat.

For many different followers as well as myself, this update wasn’t very informative. However, for many people–and I hope some of you–this will give you an understanding of what’s going on in regard to the Sith Emperor and Revan/Malak. I’m most looking forward to the next one: the Mandalorian Wars.