Let's move past our initial disapointment that Star Wars: The Old Republic won't be making the trip to CVI. We're fans, want it to succeed and have simply enjoyed previous convention contributions from the MMO. So let's start today's round-up with news for those who will get to experience TOR in convention-form when BioWare takes the game to Germany's GamesCom from August 16-19. According to the SWTOR.com source post, fans can expect...
?Play the New Warzone: Drop by Booth B-082 in Hall 6 on the show floor where you?ll find 32 PC stations dedicated to playing The Old Republic?. Convention participants will be the first to get hands-on with the new ?Ancient Hypergates? Warzone. We will give people the chance to play their own character or try the game for the first time by signing up for the Free Trial and playing one of the Origin Worlds. Show up at the right time and you might even get to play the new Warzone against members of the Development team!
?Pictures and Prizes: As always, you can also take a picture with some of the colorful Star Wars? characters on hand from the 501st Legion. We?ll also be handing out collectibles and codes for unique in-game items.
?EA Press Conference: Fans and Press should expect to hear some exciting new details about the future of The Old Republic during the presentation on Tuesday, August 14.
?Community Meet & Greet: If you?re in Cologne, why not come by for drinks and lively conversation with the development team? Apply for an invitation here! The Meet & Greet is scheduled for 8pm on Thursday, August 16 at a secret location. We look forward to seeing some of you there, but even if you can?t make the show, we hope you?ll be following closely online to hear about some of the new announcements and reveals we have planned.
The Friday Community Q&A returned this week with an edition geared towards answering questions regarding the new free-to-play option. You can click here to check it out. It seems that this will be the final Friday Q&A installment as is indicated by the following announcement from the end of the post.
"We?ve been listening to your feedback, and as of today, we?ll be discontinuing the Community Q&A blog as a weekly feature. However, this means that going forward, we will be focusing on bringing you more frequent and consistent developer responses in the forums to your questions and concerns. Make sure to watch the dev tracker to make sure you don?t miss anything!
We?ll definitely do a Q&A like this whenever we have big announcements in the future, but again, we won?t be doing a weekly Q&A blog post.
This is a part of our new overall community goal of increasing communication. If you haven?t read Joveth?s recent address to the community, we encourage you to check it out.
And for those of you wondering, you can continue to expect big news and announcements as standalone blogs.
Thanks to everyone who has submitted questions to the Q&A. If you have a question that never got answered (or just have any question you?re curious about), we encourage you to post a thread in the forums. We?ll be looking for good questions and passing them up to our developers very frequently!"
The last of our official TOR links brings us your weekly Community Round-Up featuring Server Events, SWTOR Subreddit, and a Forum round-up.
Before we get to a few links analyzing the state of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Gamasutra reports that BioWares Greg Zeschuk is no longer the general manager of TOR's Austin studio and has moved back to Canada. Zeschuk is still with the company but is now able to spend more time at home with his family who had been living in Edmonton while he worked on the game in Texas. The reigns had been passed to Matthew Bromberg back in May so this news seems to be more about his residential move than a corporate shift. Zeschuk is still quite active with BioWare and will now oversee a number of games as opposed to one. Click here for the article.
Sticking with the same site, Gamasutra also examines just "what went wrong" with the GFFA MMO citing such reasons as a lack of social interaction and innefective monetization.
Time's Techland wonders whether the upcoming free-to-play option will mean a new beginning or if it represents the beginning of the end.
Next up, CinemeBlend.com offers up their reasons to why Star Wars: The Old Republic is losing subscribers.
Finally, GameIndustry.biz reports some analyst optimism for EA and the FTP option.
Rebelscum Breast Cancer Awareness Charity Patch Posted By Philip on November 25, 2014: Thanks to everybody that ordered patches. I sent a check for $1,600.00 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation on Monday. While it's not as much as I hoped for, it's still very much appreciated. They will remain for sale in the store for anybody that still wishes to purchase them. Details after the jump.