Darth Hater

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan hits store shelves next Tuesday. With the release less than a week away, facts about the novel are rapidly becoming more available. Jay Shephard and Chris Wyman had an interview with the author, Drew Karpyshyn, in their latest episode of The ForceCast: Jedi Journals. During the interview, they discuss Drew's previous Star Wars books, Revan, and the Dark Side. Drew also revealed that his recently announed SWTOR book will take place after SWTOR's in-game story. The episode is available on the podcast's website, as well as iTunes. The intervew begins at 1:14:41 and runs just under 30 minutes.

If you cannot wait for Revan to release, Drew also compiled a list of websites that have posted other interviews and excerpts from the book.

Random House posted an excerpt of Chapter One from Revan, Drew Karpyshyn's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic novel. In the excerpt, the reader learns more about the environment & people of Dromund Kaas and of Lord Scourge, the Sith focal point of the excerpt. As Darth Hater previously reported, the novel synopsis is also available.

Visit the Random House site to read the full excerpt.

At New York Comic Con during the Del Rey Star Wars Books Panel, Drew Karpyshyn revealed that he will pen a second Star Wars: The Old Republic novel in Fall 2012. Unfortunately, Drew did not give any details on the subject of the book or its name. When more information becomes available about the novel, you can be sure we will bring it to you as it happens.

On another note, Drew stated that when fans pick up the Revan novel on November 15, it will include details on how Revan turned to the dark side. He also stated players want the full Revan experience in SWTOR will have to play the Republic and then Empire.

Update: Full audio of the panel is now available for stream and download below.

An excerpt from Drew Karpyshyn's upcoming novel, Revan, was published in the latest issue of Star Wars Insider. The excerpt features Revan in the Ebon Hawk as he navigates the ship down to land. Canderous Ordo gets a mention among others as well. For anyone looking forward to the novel, the excerpt should tide them over.

Star Wars Insider issue #127 will be available on shelves July 26, but you can order the full digital copy now at Zinio Digital Magazines for PC, iPad, and Mac. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan will be available on November 15, but you can pre-order it now on Amazon.

Update: Del Ray Spectra publishing schedule for Comic-Con went up and includes the cover for the upcoming Revan novel.

Make sure to check out the PDF on their website for a high resolution version of the cover.

In what may seem an obvious way of getting information about a pre-release Star Wars: The Old Republic book, Random House made the synopsis of the upcoming Drew Karpyshyn Revan novel available for readers anticipating its release.

Theres something out there:
a juggernaut of evil bearing down to crush the Republic --
unless one lone Jedi, shunned and reviled, can stop it.

Revan: hero, traitor, conqueror, villain, savior. A Jedi who left Coruscant to defeat Mandalorians and returned a disciple of the dark side, bent on destroying the Republic. The Jedi Council gave Revan his life back, but the price of redemption was high. His memories have been erased. All thats left are nightmares and deep, abiding fear.

What exactly happened beyond the Outer Rim? Revan can't quite remember, yet cant entirely forget. Somehow he stumbled across a terrible secret that threatens the very existence of the Republic. With no idea what it is, or how to stop it, Revan may very well fail, for hes never faced a more powerful and diabolic enemy. But only death can stop him from trying.

The Random House listing contains the synopsis above as well as other important details pertaining to the book. Pre-orders are available via Amazon and Random House should you be interested in picking up the novel later this year. Revan by Drew Karpyshyn hits store shelves on November 15, 2011.

Hat tip to RogueJedi86 on the tip via TheForce.net.

Drew Karpyshyn, Senior Writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic took time out to detail some of the points fans will be reading in the upcoming Revan novel. Among several points that were elaborated on were the differences between the players version of Revan in Knights of the Old Republic and Revan's importance.

To put it bluntly, Revan in the book will not be the uber-powered death machine you controlled at the end of the video game. You might have min-maxed your character to smack Darth Malak down in seconds without breaking a sweat, but in a book that battle would have been a brutal, hard fought affair spread over multiple pages. In a video game it's fun to kill hundreds of Sith Masters, but in a book that would just be boring. It would suck out any drama or conflict or tension, and as an author I have no interest in writing that.

Now, I suspect some of you are already getting worked up about how Im ruining SW canon by nerfing the Revan from the game. Well, tough. The game was a game the powers and abilities you had in it were ways to make the game fun. They were representative of Revans power level versus enemies faced in the game, but they weren't a blueprint of his abilities in the persistent fiction of the Star Wars universe.

That doesn't mean Im going to ignore Revans accomplishments as detailed in the game. The high level events and history are canon. Revan did defeat Mandalore and Darth Malak. He was an incredibly powerful Jedi. But a powerful Jedi in story terms (films, TV, books) is very different from a powerful Jedi in game terms.

To catch more of the article, make sure to visit Drew's blog. Pre-orders are also available via Amazon should you be interested in picking up the novel later this year.

Update: According to Del Ray, the Revan novel release date was shifted to November 15th.

STAR WARS: CHOICES OF ONE moves back to July 19, 2011
STAR WARS: HEIR TO THE EMPIRE 20th Anniversary Edition moves to September 6, 2011
STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC: REVAN moves to November 15, 2011

Hat tip to DarthNii on the heads up on the change.

Update 2: Drew Karpyshyn confirmed the shifted release date as the official one via Twitter just moments ago.

Website updated. I'm a day late with the Tweet, so I figure I owe you something else: the official release date for Revan is Nov 15!

This week's Friday Update brings a Fan Friday and a Studio Insider. The Fan Friday features a good selection of avatars, wallpaper, emoticons, and other goodies, while the Studio Insider goes into depth about the design of Coruscant.

The second Community Q & A thread also opened, and once again questions are open, so feel free to head over and ask the developers about whatever parts of The Old Republic you want to hear about. With the opening of the second Q & A thread, the first one has closed, and some of those questions have been answered in the Community Q & A section of today's Studio Insider. More than a few hot button issues were answered in the Q & A, most notably one on PVE and PVP servers. DevTracker posts after the jump.

Scheduled for release in March 2011, Deceived is the second novel based around Star Wars: The Old Republic. We were lucky enough to get our hands on an early copy of the upcoming novel and quickly devoured each and every page. Hit the jump for our review and a special interview with the author of the book, Paul S. Kemp.

Update: Excerpts of Deceived chapters one and two are now online for those interested in getting a sneak peak before release.

After attending the Star Wars: The Old Republic Comic-Con panel, we met up with Sean Williams, the writer of the new Star Wars: The Old Republic novel Fatal Alliance. We were lucky enough to ask the Australian author a few questions about his new book and what it is like to work on the expanding narrative of The Old Republic.

This week's friday update is a Fan Friday which includes some nice screens of Cathars, new avatars, new polls, and fan art from the Star Wars: The Old Republic community:

Take a look at the incredible creations were spotlighting from the Star Wars The Old Republic Community and check out the Developer Corner to see new content the team wants to share with you!

[Read more]

More after the jump.

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance was released today in Hardcover. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is available for purchase at Amazon for $13.50 (as of posting). Working dissection (Warning: Spoilers Ahead) of the book after the jump.

Earlier today, we learned the eagerly awaited Star Wars: The Old Republic novelization Deceived will now be released March 2011. Speaking on his personal blog, the author Paul S. Kemp posted the following statement.

Some of you may already know this, but Deceived, my next Star Wars novel, will be released in March 2011, rather than December 2010. I understand the move was made because there is a desire to time the release of the novel nearer to the release of the Old Republic MMORPG.

This is unfortunate news for everyone patiently waiting to dive head first into the lore and narrative surrounding The Old Republic; just make sure to keep March in your calenders and an open spot on your reading list. Hat tip to Tim

An audiobook excerpt from Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is available on Random House for those interested in learning more about the novel. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is scheduled for release on July 20, 2010 from Del Ray Books. To pre-order Fatal Alliance, visit Random House or Amazon. Hat tip to r2d2arm.

Paul S. Kemp revealed the Dramatis Personae for his upcoming novel, Deceived.

I'm hoping to get approval in July to begin posting excerpts from Deceived, my Star Wars novel set in the The Old Republic. But in the meantime, I thought I'd post the Dramatis Personae for the novel. There are four core characters (these four are either point of view characters, or characters with a lot of screen time) and several important, but non-core characters.

The Core Characters

Darth Malgus, male human Sith lord.

Eleena Daru, female Twi-lek, a trained combatant and Malgus's companion.

Aryn Leneer, female human Jedi Knight and Force Empath.

Zeerid Korr, male human smuggler, former Republic commando

The Non-Core characters

Master Ven Zallow, male human Jedi Master

Darth Angral, male human Sith Lord.

Lord Adraas, male human Sith.

A few of the names should be familiar to fans who have read the Threat of Peace webcomic and the Biographies. The most notable character on the list is Malgus' companion, Eleena Daru, who appeared in the Deceived trailer and until now remained unnamed. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived is due out in hardcover on December 28, 2010. You can pre-order the novel from Amazon.com. Hat tip to r2d2arm.

New details about the second Star Wars: The Old Republic novel, Deceived, were revealed today on StarWars.com:

Hot on the heels of the unveiling of the cover to Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance is this first look at another hardcover set in the time of the eagerly anticipated video game in development by LucasArts and BioWare.

In Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived, readers will learn more about Darth Malgus, the Sith Lord who brought down the Jedi Temple. Star Wars fans first experienced the devastating might of Darth Malgus in last year's epic cinematic trailer to Star Wars: The Old Republic which depicted the Sacking of Coruscant. Readers will learn more about the man behind the mask in this novel by author Paul S. Kemp.

Deceived tells the story of Darth Malgus and gives fascinating insight into his rise to fame and glory as the Sith Lord who destroyed the Jedi Temple. This stunning narrative finds the dark hero battling a veteran Jedi Master, setting the stage for the affairs and betrayals surrounding the last battle of the Great War before the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant.

Also shown in this announcement was the cover art for the book. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived is due out in hardcover on December 28, 2010. You can pre-order the novel from Amazon.com.

Update: Sean Dahlberg just announced the update -

You first experienced the devastating might of Darth Malgus on the day that changed the galaxy forever during the Sacking of Coruscant. Now you can learn more about the man behind the mask in the latest novel set in the same time period as Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Learn More.

As reported on Club Jade, Random House revealed a description for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic novel, Fatal Alliance. The Sean Williams novel hits shelves on July 20, 2010. Pre-orders are available through the Random House online store, and the price listed is $27 USD for Del Ray's hardcover edition.

Description after the jump.

A sly forumer by the name of Rogue77, according to Njoe.com, discovered a summary for the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic tie-in novel 'Fatal Alliance' by Sean Williams. Horizon lists the novel as having an unabridged audiobook which is sure to please audio book fans. For those interested in seeing the summary of the novel early click the show button below to display the quote of the summary.

Three and a half millennia before the Clone Wars, the Treaty of Coruscant has tabled an uneasy peace between the Galactic Republic and the reemerging Sith Empire. However, with new skirmishes becoming a regular occurrence, even on the relatively peaceful planet of Alderaan, the Jedi Order finds itself in an all too familiar position: protecting the Republic from a looming all-out war.

[Link] for the original article at Njoe.com

A recently announced Star Wars: The Old Republic novel by Sean Williams is coming to your local bookstore in 2010:

A listing has shown up in the PubEasy ordering database for a novel titled Star Wars: The Old Republic by Sean Williams (isbn: 9870345511324) to be released July 27, 2010. [Source]

Sue Rostoni offered further information regarding the novel's possible release date along side Star Wars: The Old Republic:

Upon prompting about a novel for non-gamers who would still like to enjoy the story behind Bioware's new MMO, The Old Republic, Sue Rostoni said on Starwars.com's message boards that, "A novel will come out sometime around the game release time and that's all that's been determined so far." [Source]

As much as we would like to speculate on how long "sometime" is from the release of the novel for hints at when the game could be released we have to remember that this is likely Sometime(TM). For those interested in a Star Wars: The Old Republic novel it looks as if you will see one very soon. Hat tip to Dan.