While it saw a bit of a dip in the month of November, SWTOR is still in the top 20 most played games, according to Raptr. It was ranked at number 14 for this past month, just below Guild Wars 2 and above Diablo III. It’s above StarCraft II on the list for that month and only beat by behemoths like World of Warcraft, DOTA 2 and Minecraft. League of Legends still dominates the top of the list and CS:GO is also hanging on to a top spot. So what does this mean and why should you care? Well, honestly it gives us a great look at how SWTOR is still holding its own in the gaming scene, especially as an MMORPG. There are many who will try to say that SWTOR is dead or has died but the stats don’t really line up with this. Seeing the game still…
Month: December 2015
An Absolutely AMAZING SWTOR Christmas Present!
If you wanted something really awesome for Christmas, this would have made a killer present! How about the idea of having an action figure/ model of your own SWTOR character? As you can see, that is a 3D printed version of this person’s character that was given as a surprise gift. After Redditors begged to know where and how this was done, the poster, Dentface, provided a little more info about it. “Details are scare, since it was a surprise gift. All they told me was it was 3D printed then hand-painted.” He then added later, “Update: They contacted people at 3D hubs, who referred some local people who hand-painted and printed the figure.” If you really want one of these for yourself, you can gather up some reference shots of your character from different angles and then look up companies near you (or anywhere if they ship to you) and…
Star Wars Galaxies – Returned
Released in 2003, Star Wars Galaxies was a Star Wars themed MMORPG by Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts for Microsoft Windows. For those who can remember when the game first came out, it was unlike other games of this genre we had seen. This game put the player in the driver’s seat and gave you more control of things, like never before. Over the years, we’ve seen SWG rise in popularity and fanbase, then fall (and many would say it had failed) and then return and rise again, a big part in thanks to the volunteers who keep the project going since it is no longer officially sponsored. In “The rise, fall and return of Star Wars Galaxies”, Dennis Scimeca talks about Doug Rush and his history with the game. It’s an interesting look at someone who saw the Star Wars films but didn’t consider themselves a die-hard fan, and someone who also didn’t…
Star Wars: Battlefront with Toddyhancer
If you’re looking for an awesome mod for Star Wars: Battlefront, we’ve got it right here for you. Be warned, however, this looks like it might take a toll on your resources. We can’t tell if this is a mod or live action role play. Many commenters have echoed our sentiments that it looks like they brought Star Wars to real life. This is the quality that all PC games should be from launch, honestly. How awesome would it be to play your favorite games (especially a shooter) and have it look this realistic? Seriously, check out these screenies and tell us what you think. Some people find it so impressive they are skeptical, calling him a fake and demanding to see video (which he supplied). Others are family with Toddyhancer mods and are just happy to see it on a Star Wars game. Still others say this is why…
Star Wars Smuggler’s Bounty
The Star Wars franchise, in conjunction with Funko, have put together a subscription box featuring exclusive Star Wars themed merchandise and it’s not too late for you to get your hands on them for yourself. This also makes a great gift for any Star Wars fan in your life. My guess is that with the new film just recently released, we’ll see the popularity of things like this only continue to grow. These boxes from Funko are sent out every other month and packed full of cool stuff with themes focused around different parts of the Star Wars universe. The first theme was “The First Order”. Total value for the items in each box is around $50, but the cost of the subscription is $25 plus shipping, handling, and tax. There’s no fluff here as each box comes with high quality products including apparel, accessories, toys and other memorabilia. Some examples of…
SWTOR in Retrospect: 4 Years of Struggle
I remember that initial launch date of SWTOR very vividly. Here at the site, we had been preparing for December 20, 2011 for quite some time. I was also anticipating the birth of a child and at that point, we were wondering which would come first – my baby or SWTOR. Turns out SWTOR launched just two days before my little one was born and I was back home and ready to enjoy some gaming in between feedings along with everyone else who had been anxiously awaiting the big premiere. Any of you who were around four years ago in the beginning will remember that SWTOR had a rocky start. There were many problems at launch and quite a few issues that had to be resolved to get us to where we are now. Here, our pal Vulkk has written an excellent two-part series of memories of SWTOR for the…
Insider Look at the Cancelled Darth Maul Game
A game starring Darth Maul, the popular Sith Lord who debuted in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace… it sounded fantastic. So what happened? Many fans were left disappointed to hear that the Darth Maul Star Wars game would never be. Austin-based developer Red Fly Studio wanted to give a new experience and perspective to the Star Wars story. They wanted to show a dark coming-of-age tale, where players would witness and experience Maul as a young boy being forced into the Sith hierarchy. “We wanted people to see him as a kid kidnapped by emperor Palpatine and tortured – physically, mentally, and emotionally – becoming this powerful Sith Lord,” says a developer who worked on the project but wishes to remain anonymous. “You got angry, you got frustrated, and you made the same mistakes he did. No one has ever seen Sith training up close. No one has ever seen…
SWG How To Series from SWG Restoration
SWG Restoration is a completely redesigned SWG server with improved balance, new content, items, effects and abilities all in the pre cu engine. There are several SWG servers out there today growing in popularity but they are not all created equally. We know that SWG fans want to find the best servers, maintained by devs who know what they are doing and also who love the game, and where they have enough fellow fanbase to have people to enjoy the game with. So if you have not already, Restoration might be one to look into. They also have some useful guides up on YouTube as part of a SWG How-to series. Here you can find the full list of SWG Restoration Jedi guides. Here are a couple of the guides: And: Just some things the server has: -Perma death Jedi -Jedi are automatically TEF’d to the world when lightsaber is equipped…
Mel Brooks Says Spaceballs Sequel is a Go
People have been asking for it and it seems we just might be getting it! The movie Spaceballs was famous for spoofing the Star Wars franchise and is nearly as iconic as the Star Wars movies themselves. It only begs the question then, will we see a new Spaceballs now that a new Star Wars movie was released? Well, comedic genius Mel Brooks says it’s going to happen. Brooks was on Adam Carolla’s Take A Knee podcast earlier this year and confirmed the sequel was in early stages of development. Filming will begin in 2016 and Brooks plans to try to bring back as much of the original cast as possible. The working title as of now is Spaceballs: The Search For More Money. There are some challenges, particularly with trying to bring back the original cast. John Candy, who played Barfolomew, sadly passed in 1994. Most fans agree they’d rather not see that character return than have it brought back…
Petition for Group Content in SWTOR
Many fans of SWTOR have expressed their interest in seeing Bioware give us more group content. Some want to see it so badly, they’ve started a petition to Bioware to add more new group content to the game. While some fans argue that Bioware has been listening on the forums and even on Reddit, always staying in tune with what the players want, so a petition isn’t really needed, it still appears the petition was done with respect toward Bioware and not at all bashing them. A the time of this post, it has 911 supporters. It reads as follows: BioWare Austin, First and foremost, we are here to say this because we LOVE Star Wars: The Old Republic. You need to recognize this is coming from a good place. We want to tell you that enough is enough. We want to see change. We want to work towards transparency…
Stormtroopers and R2D2 Visit the White House
On Friday, the White House had some special visitors and it would appear they had a very grand welcome also. Even the President has Star Wars fever with the release of the hot new film. Dark and Light Sides would come together in peace at a press briefing this past week. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was photographed with Stormtroopers and R2D2. President Obama gave his year-end press conference. Then, everyone went off to watch a very special movie premiere. The screening on Friday was for members of Gold Star families, an organization of family members who lost relatives in military combat. The family theater doubles as a cloak room when not is use and has showed screenings in the past such as “Lincoln” and “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”. What a wonderful memory for those families and right during the holidays, which can be especially tough for those…
Reddit Gives Lonely Gamer Many Star Wars: Battlefront Partners
Ask Reddit and ye shall receive. While not always a good thing, the statement is certainly true of Reddit. It definitely has the ability to create a large number of people centered on a single topic or cause. While Reddit haters will be quick to tell you how bad this is, there have been many, many times the community has stood together to do something great. No matter how big or how small, Redditors are waiting for the opportunity to put their collective minds together to do good. Such is the case of Brody Taylor. The sophomore at Louisiana State University was feeling a bit lonely before finals with no one to play Star Wars: Battlefront with him and so he took out a personals ad in the LSU newspaper. Little did he know, that little ad was about to blow up big time when someone saw it and posted it to Reddit….
SWTOR: Changes to the Cartel Market — Tuesday December 22 – 2015
Here are the weekly cartel market items on sale for the week of December 22 – 29 december 22 2015 New Items Price Helpful links BATTLEFIELD COMMANDER’S ARMOR SET 1440 Price Change Old Price New Price Percent Change Normal Price Helpful links BLACK AND BLACK DYE MODULE 1600 1500 –7% 1500 WHITE AND WHITE DYE MODULE 800 750 –7% 750
Bounty Contract Week wont happen until January 2016
Just like the Rakghoul event, the Bounty Contract week is also has issues and won’t be fixed this year. Hey folks, We have identified the issues that caused the Bounty Contract Week to not activate as expected. Due to the nature of the issues and the impending holiday, we will not be fixing the event and it will return as scheduled in January. I apologize for any inconvenience, and hope you enjoy Life Day and the Double XP event! Thanks! -Tait
Star Wars Cast Does A Cappella Version of Opening Theme
Jimmy Fallon, The Roots & “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Cast Sing “Star Wars” Medley (A Cappella) Thank you Jimmy Fallon for another awesome a cappella feature with The Roots. I thought the Adele cover of Hello with classroom instruments was cool but this is even better. Jimmy and The Roots join Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie, Lupita Nyong’o, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford for an a cappella tribute to “Star Wars.” If you haven’t seen it yet (or just feel like listening and watching again), here it is. How awesome is that? Okay first, it sounds really awesome. Like seriously, the quality is good and it’s fun to listen to. Secondly, the attitudes the actors bring to the video are great. It’s so much fun to watch it while you listen. It has a Hollywood Squares/Brady Bunch feel to it and we can’t help but…
TOR TV: SWTOR: Love & Lust – Imperial one-nighters
“Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?” Oh yeah, he went there. One big appeal to SWTOR is the story. You’ve heard it time and time again, you’ve probably said it yourself, we’ve said it here on the site. When a game has a good story, it has immersion. We you can lose yourself in the characters, in the plot and even in the passion, you have the makings of a very good game. One thing Bioware does well is story and one thing they’ve never been afraid of is adding love and sex to their games, when relevant. SWTOR is no exception. So here is a video that gives us a compilation of romance scenes throughout SWTOR. You’ll notice they really do love their “private time” here. You might recognize some of these scenes yourself. Maybe others are new. It’s an hour long so it’s not a…
Will Next Star Wars Game Be Open World RPG?
Shut up and take my money! It’s all but confirmed at this point but it would seem the world is getting another Star Wars game (squee!) In a job listing for a senior game designer posted through EA developer Visceral Games, more information has been revealed about the next title and we’re excited. Leading up the project we have Ubisoft producer Jade Raymond and Uncharted writer Amy Hennig. From the job listing: THE CHALLENGE AHEAD: BRING YOUR SYSTEM GAME DESIGN SKILLS AND SAVVY AND YOUR LOVE OF STAR WARS TO VISCERAL GAMES, EMBRACING AND CONTRIBUTING TO THE PROJECT VISION IN AREAS OF HERO CONTROL/MECHANICS, AI BEHAVIORS, COMBAT/WEAPONS, CLASS DESIGN, SKILLS/PROGRESSION, ENEMY DESIGN, STORY AND BOSS ENCOUNTERS. If that doesn’t get you excited, we don’t know what will. Basically, the job description confirms that this will be an open world action RPG. With a great team behind the project and an awesome idea in…
SWGEMU: Vendors Disappearing and Basilisk Rollback
Something bad happened over with SWGEMU today recently. They were quick to update to the forums and Facebook to let members know what was going on. No excuses, no twisting of the facts but just a simply notification of what was happening and how they intended to fix it. As many members of the community have said, a roll back is better than vendor loss. They worked hard and quickly to try to correct the issue. Here’s the update in case you missed it. From SWGEMU forums: Well something got messed up pretty bad. Unfortunately bunch of vendors, shuttleports and starports went poof. While we are investigating the issue, we are making backups and trying to find the underlying cause. At the moment the worst case scenario would be a rollback. If that happens, and we are hoping it wont have to come to that, all characters created in the…
Still Hope for Star Wars 1313
While it might seem that Star Wars 1313 is shelved forever, there might still be hope for the game. In an interview with Slashfilm, head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, told the site that Lucasfilm is still looking at George Lucas’ live action Star Wars TV show, as well as Star Wars 1313. This is good news for fans of Star Wars games (like us!) who have feared the third-person action adventure was dead forever. Speaking of the TV show and the game, Kennedy said there is still hope. “We don’t want to throw any of that stuff away,” Kennedy told Slashfilm. “It’s gold. And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time looking at, pouring through, discussing, and we may very well develop those things further. We definitely want to.” The game was originally announced just before E3 in 2012, and some of you might remember us telling you about it. Then they showed…
Star Wars Fans Get Married in Movie Premiere Queue
Caroline Ritter and Andrew Porters of Hunter Valley, Australia did what no other Star Wars fan has ever done. They got married while standing in line waiting to see the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie premiere. Can you think of a better way to start your new life together as a married couple? On Thursday, December 17, these dedicated Star Wars fans had a wedding ceremony they will never forget. After camping out near the front of the line at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood for twelve days, the couple said their I do’s. After the ceremony they went inside for one of the most exciting and unique wedding receptions in history. It was the theater’s idea. They wanted to do something special and unique for the fans viewing the movie at their establishment, so they asked if anyone wanted to get married on premiere day. Of…
Havok Trooper Cosplay by LazyAardvark
You know how we love to bring you fan-created stuff and cosplay. (I live for reporting on these things!) So here’s another we adore. A SWTOR fan named LazyAardvark posted a great Havok Trooper cosplay that we really wanted to share with you. He says he’s been working on it for a few months and we can definitely see why. This armor is so realistic, it looks like it should be on the set of a movie. One thing we really liked was the worn, battled look it has. LazyAardvark explains how this was achieved: “The battleworn look was done with pastel chalk and a magic wash which comprised of acryllic paint, floor polish, and water, i also did some low lighting in the recesses to make the details pop out.” We think This is pretty awesome! It’s amazing to see what serious fans can and do come up with….
Star Wars: Battlefront Fails to Impress Some
Not everyone is smitten with Star Wars: Battlefront. This is not news to us and not news to you. We’ve even written about it here on the site before. But have you spent any time to delve into why some people don’t like the game? Let’s go beyond the “haters” who just want to complain about things, or who oppose anything EA/DICE and look to some real critique of Battlefront. There have been about 100 Star Wars video games released since the first film premiered in 1977. Of those, only a handful can really be considered good. But the thing about most Star Wars and gamer fans is that we love them both so much, we’ll be willing to try anything, at least once. We’ve bought and played some pretty terrible Star Wars games over the years, all in our quest to find the right games we want to play. When we…
I Played 13 Star Wars Mobile Games. Here are the Best.
Over the past couple years, we’ve seen a lot of new Star Wars games, just not where you might expect them: on your phone. There have been tons of new mobile games that have come out since Disney took over the franchise, from Rebels-themed kids’ games and puzzlers to tower defense and shooters. But are any of them any good? Do they stand up to the classics, like Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire? I had to find out, so I sat down and played 13 of them. It took me a while, but here’s what I found out. The Best: Knights of the Old Republic It’s getting old now, but this game has translated remarkably well to mobile platforms. The controls are really easy to use, the gameplay is intuitive, and the story is a classic one that stands the test of time. The graphics are what you’d expect for a game that’s…
When The Star Wars Slot Machines Stopped Spinning
The (un)told story of how Disney decided that Star Wars Slot Machines weren’t family-friendly enough and the Force lost the casino battle Two major celebrations are in the air. First, it is the fourth anniversary for SWTOR! Congrats all around and hope for many, many more anniversaries ahead. The second, needless to say, is that the Force Awakens, once again. It is no small wonder. After the last reboot (1999-2005) there was a heavy feeling in the air that it might just have been the last one. Many even pondered that it might be for the best. But not really. Because the question must be asked – would you rather live in a galaxy that stars don’t war, or in one that they do? Don’t even bother to answer that. So spirits are high, and lines outside movie theatres are long. And not to spoil the fun, but it is…