Star Wars: The Old Republic

While the game's official web site has not posted this news year, Eurogamer is reporting that BioWare has revealed the latest player class for their long awaited MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. During a press event for the game, it was revealed that the Imperial Agent will be one of the eight player classed in the game.

The Imperial Agent, who obviously is with the Empire faction, sounds like the game's version of a super-spy as they have access to lots of high technology and do their work behind the scenes. The Imperial Agent joins the previously revealed classes of Jedi Knights, Smugglers and Troopers on the Republic side and the Sith Warriors and Bounty Hunters working for the Empire. Two more classes are unrevealed.

Well here's a shocker. Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming MMO from BioWare, EA and LucasArts will have . . . Jedi Knights as a playable class. We have to admit that we didn't see that development coming a mile away. Ok, we did. In fact we think there would be an uproar if Jedi Knights were not in the game that would make the current Modern Warfare 2 debates look pale by comparison.

In any case the game's official web site now has the Jedi Knight listed as a playable class in the upcoming MMO and we suspect there will be lots of battles between that class and the previously announced Sith Warrior faction. There's still no release date for the game but many expect it might launch in late 2010.

BioWare Austin's work on Star Wars: The Old Republic is looking better every time they reveal some new screenshot or piece of into. Today the upcoming MMO's web site has revealed yet another planet players will get to check out in the full game. This time it's Balmorra, a planet from the Expanded Universe side of Star Wars (in fact it was first mentioned in the Dark Horse Comics series Star Wars: Dark Empire II).

In Star Wars: The Old Republic, Balmorra is a prime location for droid and weapons manufactoring (as you can tell from the above screenshot with the massive ion cannons show). As such the Republic and the Sith Empire would love to control it. We are betting there will be lots of blood spilled in the game over this location.

Over a year ago we did a feature article about all those games that were currently known to be in development but were unannounced (and did a sequel adding even more of those games a few months later). We referred to them as "Black Ops Games".

Since those two articles have been released there have been lots of developments. So it seems appropriate to look back now on our previous two articles to find out which games on the list have been revealed, which ones are still secret and which ones we can now add to the "Black Ops" list. First, we will take a look back at the games on our first two Black Ops game lists that have since been officially announced or now known to have been canceled.

You might want to get some soda and popcorn before sitting down to watch this developer walkthrough for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Senior Content Producer Dallas Dickinson takes viewers through a 20 minute preview of the upcoming MMO, highlighting the fact that the game is completely voiced. The Old Republic will be the first MMO to feature completely voiced characters, and you'll also get to see how your characters will be able to make light/dark side choices while interacting with the NPC's.

Download HD Star Wars: The Old Republic Developer Walkthrough Video (696 MB)
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BioWare must have known that announcing beta test sign-ups for Star Wars: The Old Republic would likely generate a huge response. But apparently the appeal of trying out the upcoming MMO was so big for so many people that the game's official web site went crashing down after the beta sign-up reveal was made earlier this week.

In an update on the game's official blog, BioWare states, "While we are still experiencing a high degree of traffic, we have brought the service back up and are accepting new accounts and Game Tester applications." If you are still having issues with the sign-up form, this forum thread on BioWare's message board has some answers to some of the bigger problems. So far BioWare has not yet revealed exactly how many people have signed up to beta test the game.

It's one of the most anticipated, if not the most anticipated, announced future MMOs and now it appears it has move one step further to its release. Today BioWare's official web site for Star Wars: The Old Republic has announced that it has begun taking sign-ups from folks who are interested in beta testing the long awaited game.

Of course, there's no word yet on when beta testing will actually begin but the fact that BioWare is now accepting applications for the test is a sure sign that they are getting closer to giving folks a chance to play the game for themselves. Community members for the game are apparently getting first crack at the beta test so you might want to sign up to become a member before you put in your application.

Update: Looks like the site is getting slammed with all the folks trying to sign up for the beta. We suggest coming back in a few hours; that beta test page isn't going anywhere.

One of the most important planets to be include in the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic is Coruscant, the planet that's one giant mega city and the capitol of the Republic. It is generally regarded in tge Star Wars universe as the most important planet in the galaxy, so it's very important for the developers at BioWare to properly capture its look at feel. This in-game footage, shown at PAX 2009, should put any doubts to rest.

Download HD Star Wars: The Old Republic 'Coruscant Revealed' Video (130 MB)
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Last week, the folks at BioWare revealed during their PAX 2009 Star Wars: The Old Republic presentation that one of the planets in their upcoming MMO will be (no surprise) the city-planet of Coruscant. Now the game's official web page has posted up more info on the game's version of the center of the Republic government along with some new in-game screenshots.

Even though the game is set 3,000 years before the start of the Star Wars movies, Coruscant looks pretty much the same in the Old Republic's timeline. We are betting that the setting will be a popular one when the MMO launches . . . someday.

This fourth Star Wars: The Old Republic timeline video goes into further detail regarding The Return of the Mandalorians, a group of the most ruthless fighters the galaxy has ever seen. Imperial agents, acting behind the scenes, played a great role in their eventual rise to power and support of the Empire. However, being excellent at their jobs, there's no concrete evidence left behind that ties imperial manipulation to the Mandelorians.

Download HD Star Wars: The Old Republic Timeline Video #4 (142 MB)
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PAX 2009 hosted two theater presentations from developers from BioWare as they talked about their long awaited MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. The second presentation this morning had the team show off the first ever live playable footage of one of their character classed, the Trooper. The Imperial Stormtrooper like character was shown using his big guns and special abilties such as full auto which caused his gun to rapidly fire to take out enemies quickly.

The presentation also repeated the new footage and info from Saturday's PAX 2009 demo; the reveal of the female bounty hunter class, a demo of the full voice NPC presentation and the Sith Warrior class that showed the Force powered character using two light sabers and abilities such as using the Force to sprint to targets quickly and a way to fight using the light saber to attack one enemy while blocking two more.

The final reveal wasn't much of a shock since it appeared in the game's CGI reveal earlier this year but BioWare announced at PAX 2009 that Coruscant, the city-covered center of the Republic, will be one of the planets players get to visit in the game. Naturally a release date is still not announced

Yeah, yeah . . . the good guys always win in the end but let's face it; the bad guys have more fun. BioWare and LucasArts know this which is why they are adding the Sith Warrior as the latest playable class in their upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Hey, just look at the image of the example Sith Warrior above. Everyone knows that two light sabers is better than one. Fear and hatred rule their lives. Unlike the wimpy Jedi who try to use their mind tricks all the time the Sith Warrior is straightforward with you. He or she will simple run you through or use its offensive powers. Now if we could just play online with that character tomorrow . . . . but we can't. Oh well.

Back at E3, developer BioWare shocked many in the MMO game industry by announcing that every single NPC encountered in their upcoming title Star Wars: The Old Republic would have a unique voice rather than deal with text dialog. Today at Gamescom, BioWare announced that the voice acting experience would be expanded to include other languages.

In addition to English, the game will be translated to both French and German and that includes full voice acting for the NPCs as well. The game's official web site has also been translated into the French and German languages. In fact EA's Gamescom press event showed the E3 cinematic trailer for the game in German. Alas, there is still no release date for the game.

This third Star Wars: The Old Republic video documentary goes in-depth on the voice acting that will be included in the game. The amount of voiced dialog in the game will exceed that of all other MMO's, and even many single player RPG's. According to the developers at BioWare, there are more spoken lines in The Old Republic than all of BioWare's other RPG's combined. The lines will change dynamically according to the player's actions and class, which will completely immerse players into the Star Wars universe.

While fully voiced interactive characters are common among single player RPG's, we're not so sure how well it'll work with MMO's - especially when there could be several other people standing around waiting for the party leader to make light/dark side decisions. We'll just have to find out when the game goes into beta.

Download HD Star Wars: The Old Republic Documentary #3 (208 MB)
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We've already reported that BioWare's upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to go absolutely nuts and have all of the game's NPCs have unique voices. Now a new article on the game's official web site goes into some detail as to how they plan to pull this particular accomplishment off in the final game.

While BioWare itself is writing the massive script for the game, its co-publisher LucasArts is in charge of hiring all the voice actors and recording their dialogue. So far the recording has taken place in five separate cities (Los Angeles , London, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto) and hundreds of actors will eventually be used to record voices for a game that will have a script that is longer than 40 novels. Whew!