The official website has posted a brand new Developer Blog Entitled: Creating Worlds. Principal Lead Writer Daniel Erickson talks about creating the world of Voss in STAR WARS: The Old Republic! "They're a meditative people. They're communal, not individualistic, and they’d create symbolic art--pattern-based and preferably monochromatic to contrast with their amazingly colorful skin." “For skin colors and patterns, poison dart frogs as a starting point. Something that jumps against the background of the planet. These people don’t blend or quite belong on their world.” "The Gormak are running down a tech path unseen in the galaxy. It's important that we see the ship that they're creating and it jumps out as foreign, wrong for Star Wars™. Anything we see that is Gormak should be slick, impressive and create a sense of wrongness in Players."

"The Voss must at all times feel isolated. Voss-Ka is high above the rest of the planet but it's an island in a sea of Gormak. Every other outpost is overrun or threatened. The Republic and Empire see the Voss as standing on the roof of their last building in a losing war but the Voss never reach out for help. They are not looking to be rescued."

Check out this Image:

We have added this release to our Blog Section. You can read it here, or check out the Blog on the official site here.

What a busy morning this has been so far. From the first post, which actually started last night when DarthMaulUK posted this thread  on the official forums: Heads up for tomorrow - exciting announcement coming. You can check out that thread here. Wow, did that start a whirlwind of activity. The wait started right then for todays big press release. Well the time is now here, and the articles are appearing all over the internet. Community Manager Sean Dahlberg has posted a sticky thread on the official forums to update the information as it is released and discovered today. You can follow that post all day for yourself here. We will be keeping a close eye on that thread ourselves. Lets see what we have so far:

1) TheGalacticStruggle.com has posted an article entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic reveal playable species with our hands on. You can check it out here. That first playable species is the Rattataki. This is a very revealing article, and a great read. We won't speculate here, but you should read the article for yourself and see what they discovered during their hands on game play. They have some great screenshots and information on the Bounty Hunter class.

2) Eurogamer.net has posted 2 articles. The first entitled: SWTOR's Advanced Classes revealed. You can check it out here. The first Advanced Classes to be revealed are those for the Sith Warrior. They are the Juggernaut ( Tank Class ) and the Marauder ( DPS Class )! Yet another very revealing article. They also have some great screenshots and information.

3)EuroGamer.net's second article is entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic hands on report. You can check it out here. They have more great screenshots and information on the Advanced classes as well as the Bounty Hunter class.

4) IncGamers.com has posted an article entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic Bounty Hunter Screens. You can check it out here. They have new screenshots, and also they have new concept art of the Bounty Hunter, including new class specific costumes and weapons. These are some great screenshots and concept art for the Bounty Hunter.

5) StrategyInformer.com has posted an article entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview. You can check it out here. They have new screenshots and a very informative interview with Daniel Erickson.

6) Gamespot.com has posted an article entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic Hands-On - The Bounty Hunter. You can check it out here. They have a sample of the Bounty Hunter class, and the new playable Rattataki species.

7) VG247.com has posted an article entitled: Interview: Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Jake Neri. You can check it out here. They have a great interview and more good information pertaining to the game.

8) IncGamers.com TV has posted a video article entitled: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Lead Writer Interview. You can check it out yourself here. This is a great interview with Lead Writer Daniel Erickson.

9) Edge-Online.com has posted an article entitled: Interview: Daniel Erickson. You can check it out here. This is another great interview with Lead Writer Daniel Erickson.

What a great morning so far. We will be checking back on the official thread on and off through out the day for any more updates. We will update this thread as Sean does on the official forums. But you can also follow it yourself here.

The Developer Blogs section is now complete, and up, here on the website. That was an huge amount of information to post. You can find it under Blogs, in the The Team tab. What an amazing line up of blogs we have so far, with more coming all the time. Its very nice of the Development Team to take the time out of their busy schedules to give us all of these write ups. If you haven't read them all, or you just want to re-read what you haven't in awhile, you should check them out. They are awesome. It's hard to believe how long it has been since the very first Blog from Community Manager Sean Dahlberg. It was posted on Oct. 21, 2008. That was the first month the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website was brought up live for all of us to enjoy. It is entitled: Welcome to the community.

Here it is, the first ever TOR Blog:

Manager Sean Dahlberg introduces some of the BioWare team members. Welcome to the first official Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ (TOR) BioWare Blog. This section will be used by various team members from Star Wars: The Old Republic team to tell you a little bit about themselves; some of their tasks and responsibilities on TOR, what they like to do in their free time, and other interests. Everyone here plays a vital role to the development of the game and we want to give you the opportunity to get to know everyone better.

In this first installment, I'm going to tell you a little bit about some of the people you'll be interacting within the TOR community.

First we have Robert ‘Jedi Rob’ Chestney who is a Senior Writer and has been with BioWare since early 2006. Before moving over to the Community Team, Rob worked on the Design team, developing the setting and backstory for the game as well as the storyline for one of the character classes. Prior to BioWare, Rob worked as a Producer and Writer at CNN where he worked on many projects including an Emmy Award winning newscast.

Next we have Amy Crider, a recent addition to the BioWare family and the Community Team. Amy has worked in the game development industry for over five years in many capacities; from creating In-Game Events to Customer Service and then to Community Management.

And finally, there is me. I’ve been working in the game development industry now for over eight years and prior to that, I was in the U.S. Marine Corps (Semper Fi!). I started off in community management, did double duty in community and game system design for a few years, and now I’m back fully into community management. Back at home.

As with everyone else here, I am a huge Star Wars fan. Working on this game with LucasArts, working at BioWare, and being able to work alongside such a talented and experienced development team… it’s definitely a dream come true.

We at BioWare have four core values that help shape our company and products: Quality in our Workplace, Quality in our Products, Entrepreneurship, and a Commitment to doing it all in a context of Humility and Integrity. I bring this up because I know all of you have numerous questions about the project, many of which we cannot answer at this time. The reason for this is simple. We only want to give you, our fans, fair and accurate information. We don’t want to tell you how we want something to work; we want to tell you how something does work. So, until a system is working as intended or a feature is fully implemented, we will rarely discuss it.

If you have any questions or feedback for us, feel free to post it in the forums. This is an area for the community as a whole to interact and collaborate.

May the Force be with you…

Sean
Community Manager

You can read all the blogs on our site here, or as usual you check them out on the official TOR website here.

Finals are finished for this semester.  I'm glad thats over with. Since I have a little free time on my hands until the next semester starts May 17, I decided to add another section to the site. This is something I have wanted to do for quite awhile, but have been a little to busy. I started yesterday to update the websites breadcrumb links. They are pretty much finished. Today I started to set up the Developer Blogs section. This is the final section left on the Official site to add to our database of Star Wars: The Old Republic information. It is going really well. I hope to have it finished tomorrow, well since its 1:17 am, I guess it is tomorrow, HaHa. I should have it finished today sometime.

I watched the finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with my 2 boys today. Yeah we Tivo a lot around here. We thought it was great ending to the second season. And looking forward to the next. We are going to have to wait to get our next Clone Wars fix for a little while. Watching the clone wars you can draw a lot of resemblances to The Old Republic: Planets, Creatures, Races, Classes etc. I have caught quite a few this season, mostly because of all the information that has been released from The Official site. Keep the information coming Dev. Team.

We took the Family to see Ramp Jam at Busch Gardens this weekend. The ASA Action Sports World Tour. What an outstanding show. It was our first and everyone there was fantastic. They are there for two more weekends. I think were going to watch those shows also. There are a few different professionals showing up at the other shows. I can't wait to see more.

Anyways, back to the site, I hope to be finished soon. Check back Later.

Shyin 

Check out the second issue of the Star Wars: The Old Republic online comic, Blood of the Empire. BioWare and LucasArts have once again teamed up with Dark Horse to create this original comic series published entirely online. Blood of the Empire features a new perspective and strong character-driven story written by BioWare’s Senior Writer Alexander Freed and published by Dark Horse. Act 1: Shades of the Sith: Issue 2: The second issue of Blood of the Empire takes us to the Imperial capital of Dromund Kaas, as the young Sith Teneb Kel and his companion Maggot leave the war's front lines--only to find new tensions awaiting them at home. Meanwhile, a mysterious Force-user sets her plans in motion on a distant, crime-ridden world. Intrigue and danger abound as the story of Imperial powers continues!

Check out this clip of the comic: Act 1: Shades of the Sith: Issue 2:

We have added this issue to our galleries, you can read it here, or read the official release here.

What a crazy week this has been. Well actually a crazy last few weeks. I am a Former Marine with a Son now stationed in Iraq in the Army, hes been there for about three weeks. He is settled in now, which allows all of us back home to settle down. I am also back in school for Web Design / E-Commerce and this semester is winding down. There has been a huge push to get all of our work and testing completed of course. And finals are this week. I will get one week off before the summer semester starts, haha not much of a break. But its enough. I finally have more time to devote to the website, lets see what we can do with that in the future. Keep an eye out here for more information.

What a great last few weeks at the official site. There has been a large amount of information released. Where to start, how about this: First Issue of Blood of the Empire released. Its great to see a new comic in production. I totally enjoyed Threat of Peace. Which is being released in print soon. :) So having another to take its place so quickly gets a big Kudos to the team at TOR. The first release, six pages long. What a great read for all the comic buffs out there. You have to check it out.

The Combat video, wow. It was so enjoyable to get to see many of the classes combat prowess demonstrated just for the fans. I am excited to see if TOR can break the holy trinity of groups. From what we have seen so far from the Dev. Team, it looks as though all classes will be able to handle their own in combat. Whether this stays true is yet to be seen. Lets hope it is,

We have new Biographies added to the Holonet. What a great section they have come with. Learning more about the NPC's that we may have the opportunity to enact with is very cool to me personally. I can't wait to meet some of these characters and grab and complete a few quests from them. Its a great story line builder.

And on to Inhabitants. For me, this section is the one I have been waiting for patiently. The next will be Crafting, but back to Inhabitants. Another great section added to the Holonet. The Gundark look awesome, they are going to harass many of us I'm sure. A mini Rancor that is  about twenty times stronger than the average man. What a fight that is going to be. And the Humanoids, The Gormaks and the Transdoshans, very cool. They sure look like playable races to me. But that's another list, for another time, that we are all waiting to be released.

Shyin