And, of course, the Empire and the Republic will be duking it out in the swampy wasteland of Taris.

Will the Sith defeat the Republic? Will the rakghouls and plagues slow progress? I can’t wait to see!

The video covers art, design, lore, background and more. It’s a great little mini-documentary about the game. I love how they’re releasing these kinds of videos!

Enjoy!

Both G4 and Massively are reporting that spring will be the season. Lets just hope they can avoid delays.

I remember waiting for over a year for Wrath of the Lich King the World of Warcraft expansion and the anticipation was palpable. But I’m more excited for SWTOR. It looks like it’ll be a better day.

A long time from now, in a game store probably not too far away… you might be getting your copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Well, all right, spring of 2011 might not be all that far along, but if you’re one of the many eagerly looking forward to Bioware’s entry into the MMO arena, it certainly feels like an eternity. [Massively]

Want to be a tester? BioWare is still accepting applications.

Ask The Gamers: Now that all the player classes have been revealed, do you know which one you want to play? Comment at the bottom!

Well that’s certainly a novel way to make sure you don’t have a huge overpopulation of Jedi Knights and Sith Warriors. The Jedi Consular and Sith Inquisitor are both force-active classes, one fulfilling a support role while the other seems to be more of a DPS class. [ZergWatch]

The final two are:

• Jedi Consular
• Sith Inquisitor

Both of these classes are Force users but focus more on ranged attacks. So if you play an Inquisitor, which is modeled off of Emperor Palpatine, you will be able to sling Force Lightening at the Jedi scum!

Consulars, shown in the picture below, are based on Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda which should make for some amazing skills as well. Best part is that they can still wield lightsabers.

When it comes to combat tactics, BioWare isn’t very descriptive other than saying, “…the Knight is capable of achieving extraordinary feats.” Really? I never could have guessed.

But seriously, the Knight is clearly a melee combat class which will likely include some amount of minor ranged attacks.

From SWTOR.com:

For thousands of years the Knights of the Jedi Order have been the guardians of peace and justice in The Old Republic. Through disciplined training and meditation, the Jedi Knights achieve perfect union of body and mind, allowing them to meet any situation with focused, fearless attention. Strengthened by the Force, they are able to turn this training into brilliant displays of lightsaber combat inspiring allies and disheartening those who would see the Republic fall.

See Also:

• MMO News – Jedi Knight, Defender
• Crispy Gamer – Jedi Knights
• Overly Positive – Excellently Expected

Story’s all well and good, but how does it play? The answer is very well, right from the off. Your attacks are mapped to the number keys so, if you’re playing as a Sith character (as we did), 1 is your standard lightsaber strike, 2 is a harder melee strike, 3 can be used to jump in from above or from a fair distance away, 4 impales your target, 5 hits many foes all around you and 6 is the famous Force Choke, which is time limited, but leaves your foe clutching at their throat, ready to be impaled.

Massively is geeking out about the Threat of Peace update:

Well, that and we’re told they’re working on another big announcement for next week’s update, which is sure to send the Star Wars: The Old Republic fan-base into another string of vociferous nerdgasms.

TOROZ isn’t convinced about the “heroic” nature of SWTOR combat:

Every time you read through or watch a Bioware interview they always talk about how “heroic” their combat is going to be along with all the “heroic” action. I think the story is heroic, but as for the combat shown, it’s not so heroic. I’ll break it down and go through some of the issues I feel need to be addressed.

When it comes to game development, says Dalton, “For any game these days, we have very large teams. For MMOs, in particular, we have a lot of stuff going on. Everything everybody does is challenging. Producing the art, source code… [More from Gamasutra]

Christian Nutt over at Gamasutra delved into how development teams come together on such a massive project. And when it comes to games, it doesn’t get much bigger than an MMO! The article uses SWTOR as a case study.

The deep storyline progression is one of the main ways your character progresses.

Get more information about the story from Jake Neri (courtesy of G4TV).

The demo shows off only a few of the class abilities but it’s nice to see how things might play out in the release. The graphics look good and the sound effects were pretty solid too.

Q: There is a lot of talk about the business model for MMOs – subscription, free-to-play… nothing’s been announced for Old Republic yet, so is everything still on the table in that respect?

Darrell Rodriguez: Yeah, we’re considering it all, absolutely. You start looking at how different communities, territories such as Asia, actually play games, and we start to consider it all – especially if we want it to be a worldwide phenomenon. [More from GamesIndustry.biz]

If the US-market is a mix of subscription with additional micro transaction options, I’m wondering what would be offered that would interest people in voluntarily paying more? Or, would the base-subscription price be low enough (less than the typical $14.99/month) to encourage additional spending. I prefer a simple subscription model. It’s simple, quick and consistent.