While we have not announced a specific date, we can confirm that we are targeting a spring 2011 release for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. We’ve got a lot of exciting updates and reveals planned throughout 2010, including the first-ever hands-on testing for the game. It’s not too late to sign up to be a game tester, so go to www.swtor.com/tester and sign up today. We can’t wait to share more about the game with you as we progress through the year, so make sure you stay tuned to the official website for details.

So much for this year.  And Dave is claiming he was right.  Sigh.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001O9AQT6/ref=s9_sima_gw_s0_p63_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=1EEY38XM651ZF1MA9Y6A&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467198433&pf_rd_i=468294

Dare we hope?

Which makes me what?  That’s right.  The Winner.

Read  more and sign up below.  Make sure you pay careful attention to the FAQ because this does not sound like your typical Everybody-Sign-Up Beta Test.

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20090929_001

P.S.  ITYS

So considering we don’t have much to talk about (two Threat of Peace issues in a row?  Just announce the Sith Agent already, dangit!) I thought I’d kill some time with AsaTJ’s Fightin’ the Man! Yep, it’s my new segment dedicated to combating the military industrial complex conspiracy that has been working ’round the clock to keep me off of the most recent Holocron to keep me quiet about the obvious holes in GM Dave and Fiddleback’s class lineup!  And in case you were wondering, yes.  In my perception of the world, everything does revolve around me.

So here’s what’s pretty much agreed upon for sure by everyone:

Republic
Jedi
Smuggler
Trooper
Some Kinda Diplomat or Something

Empire
Bounty Hunter
Sith Warrior
Spy/Agent/Whatever

Where I take issue is the Mandalorian mercenery.  And I’m saying it here, officially.  This debate is on!

Mando mercenery will NOT be the fourth Sith class.

Bam!  Power to the people!
… Okay, I should probably give some reasons.

Reason #1 (or, The “What Has Everyone Been Smoking When Pairing Class Roles?” Argument)
So this goes after the argument that the Sith need a class to be their counter to the trooper.
Umm…. guys?
They have one.  It’s called the Bounty Hunter.  And I’ve been saying this for months.

Simply put, especially now with the Sith Agent all but confirmed, pairing the Bounty Hunter with the Smuggler (as many have been wont to do) just doesn’t make any sense.  The Bounty Hunter is a heavily armored, in-your-face ranged combatant. And what other class fits that description?  Oh, gosh… the Trooper!

“But AsaTJ, you charming, rebellious crusader, you!” you might say, “How can you be so sure that we’ll even have paired classes?  If your argument hinges on Mando Merc not being plausible because of a ‘mirrored’ class set-up between factions, it holds little water if Bioware takes no heed of that.”

Well I would simply reply thusly: even if we’re not going to see mirrored classes between factions, it really seems like the guys at Bioware are going out of their way to create a patently unique class experience for each class on each side.  Personally, I think it would be very difficult to do that when you have two heavily-armored ranged classes toting a bag and a half of heavy weaponry.  Also consider, storywise, that a Bounty Hunter and a Mercenary are going to be hard to differentiate between.  They’re both tough guys who hate boundaries and kill people for money.  Are we really going to get two deep, separate roleplaying experiences out of the subtle differences between the two?

Reason #2 (or, The “I Can’t Find the Article, But Trust Me I’m Not Just Making This Up” Argument)
So my other solid piece of evidence, as the header suggests, comes from an article I can’t seem to ever find when I need to cite it.  (If you can find it and link it, a Czerka Contest Prize Voucher may be in order…)

I’ll just paraphrase, and you can take my word for it because I’m such a charismatic renegade!  Essentially, one of the developers was asked about the Mandalorians in reference to the Bounty Hunter class, referring to how many of the greatest canon Bounty Hunters were Mandos.  The dev basically responded, very clearly, saying that the Mandos would be a presence, but it hadn’t been specifically written in to the Bounty Hunter PC storyline so as not to put that kind of limitation on the player.  Now, it could have been a misdirection–but I’m more inclined to believe that if that’s true for the Bounty Hunter, it’s likely to be true of all classes across the board.

I see Mandos as being a third faction altogether with shifting goals and allegiances.  Honestly, tying them to one faction or the other would shut down a lot of cool story avenues.

And there you have it.

The Classes Are IN….
And this time, they’re the people’s classes!  Ok, well, technically my classes…. Viva la Revolution!

Republic Diplomat, Sith Officer.  Leia and Tarkin.  They play off each-other, they’re iconic from the films, and they fill story niches their respective factions are missing.  Think I’m crazy?  Feel free to discuss, but remember: You can’t stop the signal!

T.J. Out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtNs4hXRu7I

Once again we have bjbrains to thank for the catch!

It seems certain that Imperial Spies will be available for you to sneak around with in the game, not to mention the fact that we’re mucking about with Crime Lords again.  So let’s see, it’s Spies, Sith Warriors, and Bounty Hunters.  That just leaves one class left to disclose.  Or hint at as the case may be.  Madalorian Mercenaries?  You know it.

Anyway, check out the video entitled “The Empire Changes Strategy” and hoist one up for Master Gnost-Dural while you are at it.

Anyway, looks like I was wrong.  Sean Dahlberg confirmed in a post-Gamescom forum post that “You will be able to play other species, we just have not announced those other species yet.”  That’s all we got, but it has single-handedly ended one of the biggest debates in the TOR community.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1456375

Personally, as I’ve stated before, it would have only affected my opinions of the game negatively to a very small degree if you could 0nly play as humans.  I know virtually all of my characters will be human.  That being said, I applaud Bioware and think it was a smart decision to not put that restriction on players.

However, I think it’s time to realize that the race selection will still be fairly limited.  Remember: all of the classes are voice-acted.  Seeing as I doubt Bioware wants to add another two bazillion lines of dialoge to thier recording schedule, I’m going to come out and say that we will be restricted to races that speak Basic with the same accent and cadence as humans.  So no wookiees, no selkath, no rodians, etc.  That does still leave open quite a few favorites, such as Twi’lek and Togruta- the latter of which we’ve seen in several screenshots.

Discuss.

(Thanks to the incredible AlphaAnt for pointing out the post.)

…On another note, three languages means three times the recorded dialog.  I’m sure they’ll farm it out to studios in France and Germany for recording, but still, that’s A LOT of dialog to record three times.  I’ll be interested to see what the total for just the audio comes up to factoring in all the international versions at launch.

Highlights:
-Saber user in heavy armor (inspired by Vader, so they say.)  Not sure what to think about that, but certainly unexpected.
-Despite using “action points” and being likened to WoW’s Rogue class in previous dev interviews, we have been told for sure that they are not a stealth class.  In fantasy terms, they sound more like a berserker/barbarian than anything else.
-Apparently the storyline gives you the opportunity to be nice and merciful in subtle ways.  I’ll be interested to see how this plays out in game and if eventual redemption will be a path you can follow.

Here’s the link to the article with all the goodness, posted by our own astute creature expert, bjbrains:
http://gamescom.gamespot.com/story/6215526/star-wars-the-old-republic-updated-qanda-the-sith-warrior

And here’s the thread on the Holocron boards where we’ve been talking it up:
http://www.d20radio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=3395

Sounds like we’ll have more details revealed in Friday’s update according to Bioware.  Another interesting tidbit is that they say this is the first class they worked on, which may say something about how far along they are in the overall class design with how much we’ve seen of the other confirmed classes.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they may not have even decided what one or more of the three unanounced classes are.  Meh.

Contest Time!
Alright, first official contest on this blog!  The first person who can post in the comments here correctly identifying the other four monsters depicted in the Fan Friday avatars released last week and listing their original homeworlds will win an official Czerka Corporation Sweepstakes Redemption Certificate, which will be redeemable at a later time when I actually have a cool TOR-related prize to give away.  Don’t worry, it’ll be something worth your time.  I promise.

Have at it!  New RP Cantina on the way tomorrow.