Star Wars

This week's Friday Update was pushed out over the course of the week, with the last bits coming out today. Today's update revealed the Chiss and Twi'lek as two new playable species in Star Wars: The Old Republic and also features information on the game's War Zone PvP offering. The Blood of the Empire webcomic series also continued today with the release of issue #5.

A number of new screenshots of the two new races as well as War Zones are also available in our Star Wars: The Old Republic gallery.

In other SW:TOR news, Community Manager Sean "AshenTemper" Dahlberg confirmed today that classes will be limited in some way when it comes to class selection, confirming a suspicion I raised in our recent hands-on with the game regarding the Chiss, which are an extremely isolationist species. When questioning Bioware Lead Writer Daniel Erickson on how Bioware will make sense of Chiss being everywhere in the galaxy he teased that they wouldn't be as prevalent as I'd originally thought. Today's update from Sean makes it pretty clear that we won't have access to every race as every class:

SIDE NOTE: While we aren't talking about it yet (and I know many of you dislike More >

MMORPG.com's Michael Bitton had some hands on time with Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3. Today, he brings us his experiences playing the Imperial Agent.

We met with the Bioware and LucasArts folks in an E3 meeting room tucked far away from the chaotic and absolutely gigantic EA booth that was down on the show floor, where we were assailed with all sorts of The Old Republic awesome, including a demo of the game's armor progression, the awesome "Hope" cinematic, a group gameplay demo, and more. While all this was going on, the room adjacent to us could be seen through the glass wall separating us, which contained two rows of machines set up with the actual game running live. Needless to say, all I could do was think about the moment I'd finally get to get my hands on the game. That day has come, and I chose to spend my first live experience with Star Wars: The Old Republic as a female Chiss Imperial Agent.

If you read the series of possible playable races articles we ran in recent weeks, you'd know I was pretty keen on the idea of Chiss being in the game, however, I felt More >

While not at the show with us, our Star Wars columnist Eric Barnett offers his take from the outside looking in on this year's Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 coverage.

After watching G4's coverage of The Old Republic so far, I have to admit that I'm not sure if I should be excited, or a bit disappointed. I feel a wide range of emotions after seeing the extremely skimped interview, which went over a brief rundown of the game and some of its mechanics. After a great amount of anticipation for any news about the game at E3, I am left with a very bittersweet taste in my mouth. Let's discuss the ups and downs of the lackluster E3 showing thus far.

Initially, the week started off with The Old Republic website releasing a new webisode of its galactic time line series. This was a nice little snack while we waited for the smorgasbord that is E3. Right at the beginning of the event however, we were force thrown by the amazing new CG video released from Bioware entitled “Hope”. As per their usual fashion, Bioware dazzled us with their stellar storytelling (leaving most of us hoping that they will get More >

MMORPG.com just left the EA E3 Press Conference where two new tidbits of information were released. The first is that starships will be available to players. The second is that PvP will take place in "War Zones."

Not a great deal of information was released on either. The starships, we are told, will be similar to player housing in that they will be persnalizable and will serve as your character's base of operations. We were also told that this is how your player travels across the galaxy. What wasn't mentioned, however, is the means by which this is accomplished and the announcement should at this time in no way be construed as to be confirmation of traditional space flight and/or combat.

War zones, it would seem, are contested areas that pitt the Empire and the Repulic against one another in ground based PvP battle. The impression that I was left with after hearing what they had to say and the way that it was presented was that the War Zones would function in a style similar to Battlegrounds or Warhammer Online's scenarios. HOwever, as was the case with startship, this has not yet been confirmed.

In the news slow week before E3, MMORPG.com Star Wars: The Old Republic columnist Eric Barnett sets his mind to wandering about what might happen if Bioware were to take two routes that seem to be popular among developers recently: moving to a Free 2 Play model and ignoring the IP's niche in favor of a larger audience.

Due to the abundant lack of news this week in The Old Republic universe (aside from a new chapter in the Blood of the Empire comic), I'd like to play the role of chaos theorist. We've seen the F2P market creeping up on us for some time now, and it seems that many companies are starting to become the little spoon in its bed. With more companies trying to copy the "Golden Formula" of MMOs we have seen a major lull in retention and heck, over all fun. I have found myself re-subbing many old accounts just to see if I could rekindle some sort of spark, only to cancel them a few days later. Have certain games caused a ripple effect that has made studio heads worry more about quarterly revenue numbers, than the actual fun factor of their games? This week, More >