Darth Hater

BioWare introduced Joveth Gonzalez as a new Associate Online Community Manager for the Star Wars: The Old Republic community team. Stephen Reid mentioned him on Twitter amid the Thanksgiving Beta Weekend madness, saying the following:

Stephen ReidA sneaky @joveth appears - say hi: http://t.co/vnEiABVt

Read on for more information about BioWare's newest community team member.

Darth Hater is in Texas at the BioWare Austin studio from November 6 through November 8 for the second Fan Site Summit event. As previously reported, Emlaeh and Sado from the Darth Hater staff are in Austin to gather the latest news and details about Star Wars: The Old Republic for the community. This event is a follow-up to the original Fan Site Summit in April 2011.

Make sure to watch this post for content throughout the event.

DH Fan Site Summit Round 2 Content

• Q&A Audio


• Gabe Amatangelo Q&A


• Voidstar & Ilum PVP Demo

With a little less than two months remaining until launch, BioWare is hosting a Fan Site Summit in Austin, Texas on November 6 through the 8th. Darth Hater is participating in the event, and we will once again provide in-depth coverage of the event. In attendance at this year's Fan Site Summit will be Emlaeh and Sado from our staff. At the summit in April, we were able to interview several developers, get some hands on time with the Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent and take down members of the fan site community during hands on PVP sessions of the Alderaan Warzone.

We look forward to more of the same, and as we approach the games launch, BioWare has new information to reveal as well. Below you will find a list of fan sites who have announced their attendance.

Fan Sites Attending:
Ask A Jedi
Corellian Run Radio
Force Junkies
Frag World
Mos Eisley Radio
R2-DB
Red Rancor
SWTOR-RP
TOR Syndicate
TOROcast
TOR-Talk
TORWars

Look for our round up post of all of the coverage coming out of the event starting on November 6.

Alexander Freed is probably best known for his writing duties on the Imperial Agent class story, but he also authored the Blood of The Empire and The Lost Suns comics as well as Flashpoints, side quests, and other in-game experiences players will encounter in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Darth Hater caught up with him at Paris Games Week to delve a little deeper about what it takes to write engaging interactive dialogue for the game and across different media.

What advice would you give someone who actually wants to make interactive storytelling their career?

Alexander Freed: Obviously learning the basics of storytelling, and more than the basics, because that is the foundation you're working from. So if there isn't a way for you to work in a very strong, very critical environment on game writing, then work in prose, work in film, work in something else where you are going to get feedback and criticism. If you can get that sort of feedback and criticism in a game environment, fantastic! But honing the storytelling basics is huge. Learn how to write dialogue. It doesn't matter what medium you're in. If you can do snappy dialogue, then you can probably adjust to writing snappy dialogue in a different medium.

Hit the jump for the interview in full.

During the first day of Paris Games Week, we had a chance to speak with Chris Collins, European Community Manager for BioWare on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Have you thought of extending the guild testing program to Europe?

Chris Collins: Definitely. It is something we're looking at doing. Stay tuned to swtor.com for more.

UPDATE: David Bass clarified the above answer from Chris Collins on the forums.

David Bass

According to Chris Collins you haven't invited EU guilds yet:

Darth Hater: Have you thought of extending the guild testing program to Europe?

Chris: Definitely. It is something we're looking at doing. Stay tuned to swtor.com for more.

Source: PGW 2011: Chris Collins Interview


So have you or have you not invited EU guilds? Considering we are getting inaccurate information from either David Bass or Chris Collins.

When Chris was asked that question in Paris, he wasn't aware that I had been inviting guilds from all regions in the Guild Headquarters. This was due to a miscommunication on my part, and I apologize for any confusion it's caused.

To be completely clear: There are already a significant number of guilds in the Guild Testing program who have marked themselves as EU guilds on the Guild Headquarters. We no longer restrict our guild testing invites based on the region the guild selects in the Guild HQ.

Hit the jump for the interview in full.

As most fans probably noticed, over the past two days the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website remained down for an extended period. As Twitter and other social media sites buzzed with speculation as to what the downtime meant, and players shared their official SWTOR forum withdrawal symptoms, I began wondering what kind of massive change could take over 24 hours for them to implement. And then a thought occurred to me: Domain name servers (DNS) can often take a full 24 hours to realize changes made to website domains.

For those not familiar with the technical intricacies of how a DNS works, basically a website's domain name (such as "SWTOR.COM" or "Darthhater.com") is associated with an IP address. The IP address represents the physical location of the web servers the website is running on. If the website moves, the DNS entries must update so that the domain name points to the new IP address. The process of getting all the DNS servers across the world to recognize the new IP address can take more than 24 hours.

So I did a ping of the SWTOR.com address yesterday when maintenance started. The IP address was 159.153.92.41, a server owned by EA in Redwood City, California. Performing that same ping today, now that maintenance has ended, shows an IP address of 74.203.191.59, a server located in Austin, Texas.

It appears as though one of the things done during yesterday's downtime was a change in the location of the physical website servers. They are now in Austin, Texas with the rest of the BioWare Austin team.

During the fourth and final day of New York Comic Con, we had a chance to speak with Cory Butler, Live Producer at BioWare on Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the interview, we discuss the team's preparations for launch, goals for testing in targeted regions, the lack of central US servers, approach to dynamic spawning, and more.

As we are a little over 9 weeks away from launch, what's the mood like among the development team?

Cory Butler: Everybody is really excited. We are just kind of heads down, looking to finish things up, tie off some loose ends, and everybody is really pumped to get the game out there and have people start to play it for real.

Hit the jump for the interview in full.

Darth Hater spoke with Star Wars: The Old Republic's Stephen Reid shortly after the doors opened to Eurogamer Expo in London, UK. We gleaned valuable intel during our interrogation of BioWare's Senior Online Community Manager regarding the status of future testing weekends, the team's current focus, and details on what BioWare has in store for fans at the expo.

Hit the jump for the interview in full.

The overlords at GDC Online released their session schedule for the exhibition. BioWare Austin will be represented by Damion Schubert, Rich Vogel, Ken Shuck, Erik Olsen, Blake Rebouche, Hall Hood, Wynne McLaughlin and the previously announced, always entertaining Georg Zoeller. Their topics will be:

• Blake Rebouche, Wynne McLaughlin and Hall Hood - Building a Bridge Between Design and Writing


• Erik Olsen (with Cody Bye of ZAM, Gordon Walton of Playdom and Donovan Duncan of Curse) - Full Immersion: Taking Your Game Everywhere


• Damion Schubert - Double-Coding: Making Online Games for Both the Casual and the Hardcore


• Georg Zoeller - Rapid MMO Content Iteration and Validation with Spatial Analysis in Star Wars: The Old Republic


• Rich Vogel and Ken Shuck - What's Beyond Agile?

GDC Online 2011 will occur from October 10 to October 13 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. For the full schedule of all speakers and panels, please visit the GDC Online website.

UPDATE: Gamasutra spoke with Georg Zoeller about his panel. Head over to Gamasutra to read the full interview.

The description, date, time and location of each BioWare session follows the jump.

This week's update Friday Update for Star Wars: The Old Republic unveils information about BioWare's presence at this year's PAX 2011 and a new trailer for new trailer showing off Huttball in the newest Warzone, 'The Pit.' At PAX, BioWare will hold a panel on August 28th in the Paramount Theater at 2PM, where they plan to have a Q&A session with developers and show a live demonstration of the Eternity Vault. The new Huttball trailer has Director of Production Dallas Dickinson giving us an introduction to the spectator sport organized on Nar Shaddaa.

Our updated dissection of the trailer is in the media gallery below. Video embed and official DevTracker posts follow the jump.

Update: The crew skill list now displays the final crew skills as originally discovered at the fansite summit.

The fourth day of Darth Hater's coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic activities at San Diego Comic-Con kicks off at 4:00p PT/7:00p ET with our coverage of the Panel/Q&A BioWare Base.

• BioWare Base Q&A


• Alexander Freed Interview on The Lost Suns

Make sure to refresh this post for the most up-to-date information coming out of the Q&A and live blog. We will transcribe the audio, post the audio, and update with direct quotes as soon as possible after the conclusion.

The third day of Darth Hater's coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic activities at San Diego Comic-Con kicks off at 2:00p PT/5:00p ET with our coverage of the writer Q&A BioWare Base. Then at 4:00p PT/7:00p ET we will live blog the 'Dark Horse and BioWare: A Comic and Video Game Partnership' panel. The two remaining events have us covering a Q&A at 7:30p PT/10:30p ET and then the developer meet and greet that will last until 10:30p PT/1:00a ET.

• Writer Q&A at BioWare Base


• Dark Horse and BioWare: A Comic and Video Game Partnership Live Blog


• BioWare Base Q&A/Meet and Greet


• Stephen Reid Answers Pre-Order Questions

Make sure to refresh this post for the most up-to-date information coming out of the Q&As and live blogs. We will transcribe the audio and update with direct quotes as soon as possible after the conclusion. We will have the audio of all of the events up as soon as we can after the conclusion of the Q&As and panels as well.

The second day of Darth Hater's coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic activities at San Diego Comic-Con kicks off at 4:00p PT/7:00p ET with our live blog of the Q&A session at BioWare Base.

• BioWare Base Q&A Live Blog


• Gamespot 'Join Us, It Is Your Destiny' Panel Excerpt Video with Working Dissection


• Interview With Dallas Dickinson

Make sure to refresh this post for the most up-to-date information coming out of the Q&A. We will transcribe the audio and update with direct quotes as soon as possible after the conclusion. Live blog and audio of the Q&A follow the jump.

Today, Star Wars: The Old Republic reached 300,000 likes on Facebook. With that feat accomplished, BioWare unveiled a new screenshot, which makes this the second image coming from Facebook this week alone. This screenshot features a Sith Inquisitor on Dromund Kaas rocking a double-bladed lightsaber while listening to the sultry tunes of the latest and greatest of the Empire's bands on his Sith Pod. In all seriousness, it is a great screenshot and shows off the progression of the development of SWTOR quite well. There is also speculation abound as to what Senior Community Coordinator David Bass means when he stated on Twitter "Hmm. Wonder what that screenshot means..." Feel free to hash it out in the comments.

On the Imperial capital world of Dromund Kaas, a Sith Assassin prepares himself for a fight by readying his double-bladed Lightsaber.

For ease of reference, we compiled a Facebook Image of the Week Media Gallery containing all the images which you can view below.

During the Fan Summit, I was able to get my first taste of PVP in Star Wars: The Old Republic. After running through the Imperial Agent origin stories and crushing Black Talon, it was wonderful to get my hands on a brand new game system. Read on to see my personal thoughts on our first hands-on time with PVP in The Old Republic.

While in Austin for BioWare's Fan Site Summit, the developers treated us to several question and answer sessions. With the second embargo now over, we are able to unveil the last session in the series featuring Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo.

Hit the jump for the audio embed as well as the full transcription of the session.

During at the Fan Site Summit, BioWare fielded questions from the Fan Site Community in attendance. The question and answer sessions covered a range of topics relevant to the developer answering questions at the time. After the session concluded and the summit ended, BioWare made the audio of the sessions available to fan sites. As such, the sessions are available via links below. A transcription of the sessions will follow soon.

• Georg Zoeller Q&A


• Blaine Christine and Daniel Erickson Q&A


• Damion Schubert Q&A


• Writers Q&A (Recorded by us.)

Embeds of the audio are contained after the jump.

Carefully examining and dissecting content for Star Wars: The Old Republic is the keystone of our work at Darth Hater. This meticulous approach is seen throughout our articles, but it becomes even more pronounced when we are actually playing the game.The following is our list of new general notes from our multiple hours of game play at the Fan Site Summit earlier this week.

• Crew Skills available for training in Kaas City: Cybertech (Reverse Engineering Tech which leads to creating Tech), Underworld Trading, Slicing, Bio Analysis, Bio Chem, Diplomacy, Investigation Mission, Treasure Hunting, Synthweaving, Archeology, and Artifice.


• Galactic Market Kiosk is the name of the Auction House, and encountered first on Dromund Kaas.

Hit the jump for more.

During the Fan Site Summit, we were able to advance our characters as far as we could in the time allowed. For some of us, that meant completing our class story on Nal Hutta and moving on toward Dromund Kaas. While in transit to the Sith Capital, we were able to take part in the Black Talon Flashpoint. As the first Flashpoint avaliable to Sith players, Black Talon fills the same introductory role as the Esseles will for the Republic. Hit the jump for a closer look at our first full run through a Flashpoint in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

As many of you know, Darth Hater was invited to join a special fan summit this week at BioWare's Austin campus. In addition to presentations and live Q&As, we were able to get more solid hands-on with Star Wars: The Old Republic. While sado was traipsing through Nal Hutta with his Bounty Hunter, I was finally able to get some serious time with a class Ive followed closely since November of 2009: the Imperial Agent. After spending many hours bringing an Agent from level one to Advanced Class and beyond, I finally feel like I can report on this enigmatic, elusive class.

Article Pages:

1. Combat


2. Story


3. Companion


4. Environmental and Conclusion