Dromund Kaas, the seat of the Sith Empire, is the second world Imperial players will visit on their trek to level 50. The Dromund Kaas spaceport is the first accessible location on this dark and stormy world, and is located some distance East of Kaas City. Dromund Kaas spaceport houses the ship hangers for each of the four Imperial classes, as well as a taxi service and a few basic vendors.
-
-
Fan Site Summit: Coruscant Impressions
Coruscant is the first planet Republic players will reach after completing their origin world. It is, by comparison, much larger in scale and size than either Ord Mantell or Tython. The first thing that players will experience on Coruscant is the Senate Tower and Plaza area; the social hub of the world and the location for all the primary trainers; crew skill contacts; vendors; and associated support NPCs. The skill respec contact is here, as well as the Galactic Trade Network terminals -- TOR's version of the auction house. Beyond the mundane functions this area provides, it also serves as the primary introduction to the scale that TOR uses.
-
Fan Site Summit: Directive 7 Flashpoint Impressions
At last week’s Fan Site Summit, we were lucky enough to get our hands on some Flashpoints in Star Wars: The Old Republic. One of the Flashpoints we played through was new, entitled Directive 7. In this level 47 Flashpoint, players of both factions fight to destroy a group of renegade droids that threaten to exterminate all forms of biological life in the galaxy. For the story behind this Flashpoint, boss strategies and our impressions of the Flashpoint overall, follow the jump.
Caution: This article contains spoilers. If that offends you, do not continue.
-
Fan Site Summit: Hammer Station Flashpoint Impressions
At last week’s Fan Site Summit, we were lucky enough to get our hands on some of the game’s flashpoints. One of the new Flashpoints we spent time with is Hammer Station, associated with the quest named “Bring down the Hammer.” In this level 16-18 Flashpoint, players of both factions find themselves inside a fully operational battle station that could be a key to winning the coming war. For the story behind this Flashpoint, boss strategies and our impressions overall, follow the jump.
Caution: This article contains spoilers. If that offends you, do not continue.
-
Fan Site Summit: Outlaw's Den Impressions
During Gabe Amatangelo’s presentation at the Fan Site Summit, BioWare revealed a new Open World PVP area. Normally this would not be huge news, but what Outlaw’s Den entails is news indeed. Outlaw’s Den is Star Wars: The Old Republic’s first Guild versus Guild, Free for All, Open World PVP area. To find out everything you need to know about this exciting and altogether new area, hit the jump.
-
Fan Site Summit 2: Q&A Audio
During this week's Fan Site Summit, BioWare held several Q&As with the community there at the event. Developers such as Gabe Amatangelo, Georg Zoeller and James Ohlen all gave their own unique Q&As. Thanks to BioWare, we now have some very swanky audio to listen to and enjoy. The Q&As are consolidated on this page for your convience.
Download
Download
Download
The full presentation of Georg Zoeller's GDC panel is available via his personal site. -
Fan Site Summit 2: Voidstar & Ilum PVP Demo
BioWare's Gabe Amatangelo finished off the first day of the Fan Site Summit with a presentation of Star Wars: The Old Republic's PVP aspects such as the Voidstar Warzone and the Ilum open world PVP zone. In an effort to convey a few of the highlights, we consolidated our impressions of the talk after the jump. -
Fan Site Summit 2: Gabe Amatangelo Q&A
During the first day of the Fan Site Summit, Gabe Amatangelo answered questions about Ilum's Open World PvP zone, Voidstar, Flashpoints, and Operations. We include a transcript below in the order of the questions asked; there are some repeated questions with expanded answers as well as follow-ups out of immediate order.
Is there a size limit for guild vs. guild, could you theoretically be in a party of, a couple hundred if you have a big guild against a couple hundred, if you're all in parties?
Gabe Amatangelo: No. Right now, it is the Operations group limit which is going to be 24. We're going back and forth on that, but it's 24 right now.
In the open world zones, how are you doing population balance? For example, one side is really outnumbered than the other.
So that's why the mechanics is what it is. We went through and tested a bunch of different mechanics. It's five captures so you have to keep all five. If you're 100 vs 20, that 20 is going to get in somewhere. You have to spread out to keep them off, and the sort of war effort buff that you get. You get stacks and it gradually increases. How much you get for killing and how much you can get out of Warzones happens from defending at a place that you have and you can keep stacking it when you take new ones. So if there is a group of 20 vs. 100, they're sitting at one, they're keeping one, and if that whole 100 decides, hey, they're at the northern assault, they all start moving there, you guys can move elsewhere, so keep it spread out. But obviously we want to keep killing players because that's where the Valor is coming from.
More after the jump.
-
Darth Hater Fan Site Summit Round 2 Coverage
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
-
Darth Hater at Fan Site Summit Round 2
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. -
The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of PvP
Player-versus-player gameplay is an integral part of most modern MMORPGs. However, even some of the most experienced MMORPG players may have reservations when it comes to participating in this facet of the game. There are several factors that make PvP an entirely different (and sometimes very intimidating) experience, and in some of the worst cases, players who traditionally focus on PvE may feel completely alienated by a game's PvP mechanics. By examining some of these dynamics and BioWare's proposals regarding how they will be handled, perhaps we can make PvP in Star Wars: The Old Republic a little less intimidating and a lot more appealing for players who typically wouldn't participate otherwise.
-
Friday Update: Fan Friday, Studio Insider, and Fan Site Summit Report
This week's Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update is a Fan Friday. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman posted two new polls: Which companion character are you looking forward to meeting most? and What is your favorite area of the HoloNet?
Kelzak, Nick of Time and SteveTwo's fan art, new avatars and new icons round out Fan Friday. BioWare also included new concept art for Hutta. BioWare featured SWTOR-Life in this week's Fan Site Spotlight. BioWare announced their schedule of events for the next convention season. Check it out on their Events page.
Also in this week's Friday Update, Audio Designer Scott Morton guides us through the process of creating the perfect mix of music and sound effects to complement the combat experience, from the initial conceptualization to the final implementation. Check out the Studio Insider for more details. Additionally, BioWare created a new thread for community members to submit questions for the next Q&A. The topic of next month's Q&A is sound and music in the Old Republic.
Lastly, BioWare provided a new video from last month's Fan Site Summit.
Official DevTracker posts follow the jump. -
Fan Site Summit Live Q&A Audio
The Fan Site Summit Q&A audio is now live. Check the bottom of the post for the stream and download links. Thank you to all that were able to attend as well as those who submitted questions via the forum thread.
Download -
Fan Site Summit: PvP Impressions
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. -
Fan Site Summit: Gabe Amatangelo Interview
Many improvements and changes made their way into various PvP systems since we last spoke to Star Wars: The Old Republic's Gabe Amatangelo. Last month's Fan Site Summit provided an opportunity to catch up with BioWare's Lead PvP Designer to discuss Warzone reward systems, what we can expect if we choose to use PvP as our leveling method of choice, the favorite topic of crowd control in PvP, and much more after a small skirmish with the third rail of interview topics:Gabe Amatangelo: I want to touch on open world PvP. We're going to have PvP servers, and on the PvE servers there will be designated PvP areas. On a PvE server, you aren't going to flag unless you want to flag yourself, or unless you go into a designated PvP area that is going to be completely isolated from quests and story lines and that kind of stuff. Now, we're not talking about the goals inside those areas today, but we are saying that it is there. People can go and fight each other there.
Are these Open World PvP areas guild- or faction-based?
We're not talking about the goals of those areas. I know Darth Hater and all the people who follow you are really group conscious. You guys are guilds. We want to do everything we can to accommodate that type of game play.
Today we're focusing on a few systems that we haven't talked about before. The focus of them is promoting a good, healthy PvP community and allowing players to play the role they want in PvP. There are a number of systems that roll into those two points.
Hit the jump for more interview PvP. -
Fan Site Summit: PvP Information Learned
Following the tradition of being on the lookout for new tidbits in the game, we now have PvP Information Learned. During the Fan Site Summit, we were able to pull out a few items of interest for fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Since this is the first time we could PvP at a hands-on event, many of the concepts and mechanics are new to us on the battlefield. Join us by hitting the jump to learn more on the PvP in The Old Republic. -
Fan Site Summit: Gabe Amatangelo Q&A
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. -
Darth Hater Live Q&A Weds May 11 at 6p PT
Join the Darth Hater team on Wednesday, May 11 for a Live Q&A at 6 pm PT / 9 pm ET at our Typefrag Ventrilo server. Bring your Fan Site Summit questions and we'll give you our honest answers and individual opinions. If you can't make it, then feel free to post your questions in our forum thread and we'll select a few to answer during the event. As always, we'll make the recording available within a few days of the Live Q&A. 
Point your Ventrilo client to vent.darthhater.com port 26166 and hit the chat button on the client once you successfully connect. We're deathly allergic to key clicks enabled, so make sure that and any TTS/WAV binds are disabled prior to attending the event and the after party. -
Fan Site Summit: Question and Answer Session Audio
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. -
Darth Hater's Coverage of BioWare Austin's Fan Site Summit
This week, Darth Hater attended the much talked about Fan Site Summit. Sado and Dover joined the rest of the fan sites down at BioWare Austin on April 24 through the 26th. The list that follows below is Darth Hater's up to date coverage of the event. Images of us at the event are contained in the media gallery at the bottom of this post. Update: New high quality images are now available in the media gallery below after image 45.DH Fan Site Summit Content 
Darth Hater Exclusive Screenshot
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Latest Topics
Tag Cloud
- Austin Peckenpaugh
- Bioanalysis
- Codex
- Community
- Community Poll
- Community Q&A
- Courtney Woods
- Crew Skills
- Crowd Control
- Damion Schubert
- Daniel Erickson
- Datacron
- David Bass
- David Hunt
- Drew Karpyshyn
- Gabe Amatangelo
- Georg Zoeller
- Group Finder
- Guide
- Guild Bank
- Gunslinger
- Interview
- Joveth Gonzalez
- Legacy
- Maintenance
- map
- Novel
- Open Forum
- Patch Notes
- Patrick Malott
- PvP
- Rakghoul
- Server Transfer
- Stephen Reid
- Survey
- UI
- Update 1.2
- Update 1.3
- Weekend Pass
- World Event
Most Commented
BioWare Layoffs
Update 1.3 Details Revealed at IGN
Darth Hater Interview: Game Update ...
Daniel Erickson on Server Changes
Level 50 PvE Starter Guide