SWTOR Fansite TORWars Q&A

Site name: TORWARS
URL: http://torwars.com
Name: Jeff Hollis
Started: October of 2010
Type: News and opinions, blog, media, Podcast

SWTOR Face: In your words, how would you describe your site? Do you have a particular focus or interest?

TORWARS: We're a SWTOR news site, and we cover every aspect of the game. Not only do we update the site multiple times every day, we also tend to take a very tongue-in-cheek approach to everything. SWTOR is fun, and we think the news about it should be too!

SWTOR Face: How many people work on your blog/site (including writers, editors, webmaster, etc)?
TORWARS: We currently have a staff of seven. (This does not include our Twi'lek dancing girls.)



SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging (about any topic)?
TORWARS: David and Jeff, the co-founders, have been writing on the web for more than ten years. For some of this writing, they actually managed to get paid (much to the amazement of everyone!)

SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging about SWTOR?
TORWARS: They started TORWars a little more than a year before the game launched.

SWTOR Face: What, if any, MMOs have you played?
TORWARS: If you can name an MMO, someone on our staff has played it. This includes big MMOs, small MMOs, old MMOs, and MMOs most sane people have never heard of.

SWTOR Face: Are you attracted to SWTOR because of the gaming experience, Star Wars, or both?
TORWARS: Primarily because it's a BioWare game, and we're big fans of their games. Also, we're huuuuuuuuge MMO fanbois and fangurls, and so this is a very natural fit.

SWTOR Face: What is your most memorable experience in gaming?
TORWARS: Personally, I'm really looking forward to hooking up with a hot Wookiee princess in SWTOR. That will indeed be memorable.

SWTOR Face: What was your first Star Wars experience?
TORWARS: The founders (who are extremely old) both saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977. We then collected Star Wars toys, played a lot of X-Wing, read a lot of Star Wars comics, and generally refused to grow up, even to this very day.

SWTOR Face: Republic or Empire?
TORWARS: Empire. Evil is funner. More funner. Funnerer. Whatever!

SWTOR Face: What excites you most about SWTOR?
TORWARS: We've heard that slave bikinis are in the game. Making a fat male Jedi, and then running around in a slave bikini is pure comedy gold.

SWTOR Fansite Q&A The Niquisition

Site name: The Niquisition
URL: http://theniquisition.com/
Guild Website: N/A
Twitter: @The_Niquisition
Name: Niq Fenstermacher
Started: April 8, 2011
Type: Fan site, Blog, Video: Informational Blog,

SWTOR Face: In your words, how would you describe your site? Do you have a particular focus or interest?
Niq: The Niquisition is a personal blog about my experiences healing in TOR as a Corruption Sorcerer. It's also a "resource" site because, when I'm not ranting about class nerfs or raging about wiping at 1%, I'll be sharing some theorycrafting information as well as other helpful tips/tricks on healing in TOR. I'll be progressing through end-game hard-core so content and tips will be current and "advanced"

SWTOR Face: How many people work on your blog/site (including writers, editors, webmaster, etc)?
Niq: For now, just me. There are some ideas for guest posts in the future, but nothing I could implement until post-launch.

SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging (about any topic)?
Niq: October 31, 2010 is when my first blog post went up on my, now retired, resto druid WoW blog called The Grove. So it's been just over a year now!

SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging about SWTOR?
Niq: April 2011

SWTOR Face: What, if any, MMOs have you played?
Niq: WoW was pretty much my life, my love, and my lady for the past 6+ years. Thought, I dabbled in RIFT and EQ *briefly*

SWTOR Face: Are you attracted to SWTOR because of the gaming experience, Star Wars, or both?
Niq: Both. I've been into Star Wars for as long as I can remember. I didn't see the original trilogy in theaters, sadly, but I did see them before the "changes" and will always remember them as they were.

SWTOR Face: What is your most memorable experience in gaming?
Niq: My first guild, The Returners of Durotan-US. Oh the memories...

SWTOR Face: What was your first Star Wars experience?
Niq: After watching the movies, my older brother and I went to the backyard to have a lightsaber fight with sticks... I lost.

SWTOR Face: Republic or Empire?
Niq: My motivations are my own, but the Empire's resources better serve my needs.

SWTOR Face: What excites you most about SWTOR?
Niq: Lightsabers!!!! And evil healing *cackle*

I'm really looking forward to seeing this site flourish in the community.

SWTOR Fansite Yufmelt Q&A

Site name:  Yumfmelt “You have failed me for the last time.”
URL: http://yufmelt.com/
Guild Website: Paragon-Gaming.com

Twitter: @Yufmelt

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yufmeltcom/204196636282335
Name: Austen Courpet
Started: June 2010
Type: Fan site, Blog, Video,

SWTOR Face: In your words, how would you describe your site? Do you have a particular focus or interest?Austen: Yufmelt.com is a resource site where people can find the latest news and discussion surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic, the first MMO developed by BioWare and LucasArts. It is also a place where people can find articles, video guides, and people who are passionate about both video games and Star Wars. Yufmelt stands for one of our favorite Star Wars quotes: “You have failed me for the last time.” Everyone that works on Yufmelt.com is a diehard Star Wars fan and enjoys the lore, games, films, novels – we love it all! Leading up to the launch of SWTOR we have focused on working out the look and feel of our website, and after launch we will be dedicating our time to creating more videos like our series Yufmelt Shot First and more articles for our readers to enjoy.

SWTOR Face: How many people work on your blog/site (including writers, editors, webmaster, etc)?

Austen: Yufmelt.com started with two gamers who had a vision of creating an awesome website encompassing SWTOR - Austen Courpet and Brian Chapman. Brian tends to handle the webmaster side of things but he is also someone who has great passion for Star Wars, gaming, and graphic design. Austen loves Star Wars, writing, and filmmaking, so it's kind of like a match made in heaven. Yufmelt has also received help from other members in the SWTOR community and from great friends like Eric Day, Patrick Purvis, Rebekah Courpet, and Adam Nelson. We are always willing to add to our staff of writers, video creators, and friends, so anyone interested should always feel welcome to contact us.

SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging (about any topic) and When did you start blogging about SWTOR?

Austen: While the minds behind Yufmelt have always been creative writers, our first foreray into blogging was actually regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic. It has been an interesting experience, and has taught us a lot about social media which plays a vital role in the SWTOR community, especially Twitter. It is amazing to know that while we started blogging about SWTOR in 2010, there have been others who have already been doing it a year or more before us. There are some really passionate people surrounding this game and that is a good thing for everyone. We hope we can contribute to that sense of community in our own way.

SWTOR Face: What, if any, MMOs have you played?Austen: I guess we could give you a long list of MMOs that we have played, but we've probably tested or played over a dozen or so MMOs. Up until this point World of Warcraft has probably been the one that we have played for the longest period of time, but we are quite familiar with all aspects of MMOs including role-playing, PvP, PvE, trading, etc.

SWTOR Face: Are you attracted to SWTOR because of the gaming experience, Star Wars, or both?Austen: Star Wars: The Old Republic looks to be the most awesome gaming experience of our generation. I know some people like to say that, “It's Star Wars, you have to play it,” but that doesn't make a game good. The fact that BioWare is behind it, a company that truly understands Role-Playing Games and creating cinematic experiences, should really entice people to pay attention to this game. Having played the game before launch at conventions, it was clear that BioWare wanted to redefine what it meant to quest in the MMOs genre without breaking away from the conventions that make it so popular. People like a sense of achievement, that's why single player games like Battlefield and Call of Duty have integrated RPG elements and “unlocks” into their games. It's why Xbox Live and Steam track player accomplishments. BioWare is going to be the first MMO that players are going to look back on and tell their friends, “You have to play that game, it has an awesome story.” I can't wait to see what BioWare and LucasArts have in store for us.

SWTOR Face: What is your most memorable experience in gaming?Austen: Sometimes the most painful multiplayer experiences are the longest-lived; however, it's when you experience them with your friends that they become truly memorable. Nothing can erase those memories of Guild Wars where we accomplished a quest with only two people by slowly killing one monster at a time, or the memory of trying to complete the last stage of a Left 4 Dead map with only two human characters for six hours, or the sense of accomplishment for being one of the first teams to take down a Raid Boss in Star Trek Online. If we're talking about single player experiences, completing a Final Fantasy game always seems to make it toward the top, and the Portal and Half-Life games bring gameplay and story to the table. Back in the golden years of LucasArts, games like Jedi Knight and Tie Fighter were also some of the best games around. Now together with BioWare, I think we're going to get the best of both worlds.

SWTOR Face: What was your first Star Wars experience?




Austen: For most of us gamers born in the 80's, the movies were probably our first Star Wars experiences. Because they were rated PG we could watch them at a young age, and because they were on video, it meant we watched them over and over and over and over again. The films left a strong impression on us about the struggle between good and evil, friendship, and of course about lightsabers and the Force. I think it is hard for most of us to imagine that there are people who have never watched the films.







SWTOR Face: Republic or Empire?Austen: FOR THE REPUBLIC!

SWTOR Face: What excites you most about SWTOR?


Austen: What excites us most about Star Wars: The Old Republic is putting together Raid (Operation) teams to take on the hardest challenges in the game. We are proudly sponsored by our affiliated guild Paragon of Paragon-Gaming.com. I think that after we play all of the classes and experience all of the stories that BioWare has created for us, we are going to want to focus on beating up those baddies that threaten the galaxy – and then make videos about them for Yufmelt of course!

Star Wars MMO Q&A

Site name: Star Wars MMO
URL: http://swmmo.blogspot.com/
Name: Dave Seager
Started: April 2011
Type: News and opinions, blog, media


SWTOR Face: In your words, how would you describe your site? Do you have a particular focus or interest?

Dave Seager: The site is really a fan blog about SWTOR. The focus at the moment is just SWTOR news, although I do have an interest in trade skills, making credits and the various classes I am most enamoured with. I try to comment upon what is happening with the news, and give my own views on things. The site also has a bias toward Europe, given that is where I am from, specifically the UK, so I am keenly interested in any news about EU or UK testing.

After release I intend to skew the site more towards the classes I play in SWTOR, and professions and credits-making.

SWTOR Face: How many people work on your blog/site (including writers, editors, webmaster, etc)?

Dave Seager: Just myself and those fine people behind blogger.com.

SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging (about any topic)?

Dave Seager: I started blogging in September 2007 on a blog I never publicized. I started blogging in May 2008 on flameshock.blogspot.com, which was a WoW Shaman blog which got linked a few times here and there, and had various guides and tales of my exploits.
SWTOR Face: When did you start blogging about SWTOR?

Dave Seager: I started Swmmo in April 2011 after getting seriously interested in The Old Republic, and reading a lot of info on sites like Darth Hater. I thought I might want to blog about the game post launch, like I had been doing for WoW, and so thought why wait.

SWTOR Face: What, if any, MMOs have you played?

Dave Seager: The very first MMO I played was Everquest after it had been going for a while. I remember being amazed that I was in this fantasy world, playing with other people all around me. Oh, and that I had fallen down a hole into a high-level area and couldn't get to my corpse to get my stuff back any more. After EQ I played Dark Ages of Camelot a fair bit until I got bored of the grinding, then Star Wars Galaxies where I turned my hand to making profits in the speeder vehicle market. I left SWG before all the changes. Finally I picked up World of Warcraft when it released, and have been playing ever since. I've dabbled in open betas of a lot of games such as Star Trek Online, City of Villains, Lord of the Rings Online, Lego Universe, etc. 

SWTOR Face: Are you attracted to SWTOR because of the gaming experience, Star Wars, or both?

Dave Seager: Mostly because SWTOR promises to be Knights Of The Old Republic but in an MMO. KOTOR is probably my favourite game of all time, and was totally amazing when I played it back in 2003. The promise of an MMO with the sort of story telling and quality that KOTOR had was very enticing.
I have now also played Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins, and I have to say, if TOR is any where near as good as those titles, we're in for a treat.

SWTOR Face: What is your most memorable experience in gaming?

Dave Seager: Probably when it was revealed that you were Revan, in KOTOR. I was not expecting that at all and the twist was awesome.
SWTOR Face: What was your first Star Wars experience?

Dave Seager: Watching the original trilogy on TV over Christmas. In the UK in the 1980s, the TV channels seemed to show one or all of the Star Wars films every single Christmas, so I just had to watch. We also taped them on VHS, so I would watch them during the year too. I don't think I ever had it revealed to me that Darth Vader was Luke's father, I just sort-of knew from years of exposure to ESB.

SWTOR Face: Republic or Empire?


Dave Seager: Empire. I like playing the bad guy, and the Sith in TOR look like they are truly bad(ass). Plus the prequel trilogy is a lot about Palpatine manipulating the Republic so he can form the Empire while the Jedi stand by clueless, he is the man. Training someone who is prophesied to bring balance to the force when you have thousands of light-side force users and only a handful of dark-side force users shouldn't sound appealing to the light-side users, but those Jedi went with it anyway, and look what happened.
SWTOR Face: What excites you most about SWTOR?


Dave Seager: For me, SWTOR is another crack at playing a Star Wars MMO, but a theme park one with Bioware polish rather than the sand box style of SWG. I think Bioware's RPGs are probably the best RPGs I've played, so I have really high hopes for SWTOR.


Cheers,

Dave Seager.

SWTOR Face Q&A

Want to know a little more about SWTOR Face? Check out this interview with the owner/main blogger, John Gatt.

Site name: SWTOR Face

URL: http://www.swtorface.com/

Your name: John Gatt

Started: July 2011

Type: Blog, news feed, community focus

In your words, how would you describe your site? Do you have a particular focus or interest?

The hardest thing about finding news on a particular game is that it’s often spread across many sources. Some sites specialize in particular classes and others might have a guild focus. But sometimes you might find a gem of information on a site that you might not normally visit. Not only do we provide a regular blog on the latest official information, we also have an extensive list of current, active SWTOR sites and an extensive active RSS feed that links the latest news from all of those listed sites. This makes it extremely easy to see a snippet of all the latest news across all the sites covering SWTOR.

Secondly, we are about the community. Who is behind the blogs? What are the news sites about? Who is that person in the podcast I listen to every week? Knowing whose advice you’re getting is get as important as the advice itself. To that end we’ve started contacting bloggers and site owners and providing them with this Q&A, which we will publish on SWTOR Faces, so that readers can get to know a bit more about them.

What’s your role on the site?

Webmaster and blogger.

How many people work on your blog/site (including writers, editors, webmaster, etc)?

Two.

When did you start blogging (about any topic)?

1998. My first blog was on a site called Rogue Squadran, following the X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter and then X-Wing Alliance. My site was then taken over by a large corporation called PlayNow where I blogged for about a year, mainly covering Star Wars related gaming. I had a break from gaming for a few years while I was running a hardware website called VIAArena.com. About three years ago I started a new gaming site called Gaming Face, which I still run. SWTOR Face is a focused version of Gaming Face.

When did you start blogging about SWTOR?

I mentioned SWTOR a few times on my Gaming Face blog in mid-2010 and started to focus fully on it in July 2011 when I launched SWTOR Face.com.

What, if any, MMOs have you played?

My first MMO experience was Star Wars Galaxies. I purchased Galaxies during an extended stay in San Francisco. I was away from home for five weeks and had lots of time in the evenings. I became one of the first Jedi in the server I was playing and spent over five years in the game! I, like many other SWG gamers, was very disappointed with the direction Sony took with the NGE. I then went on to play Word of Warcraft. I spent about three and a half years in WoW, a lot of that time as a guild leader and uber-dps huntard. It wasn’t Star Wars, but it’s definitely a universe I appreciated and became fond of. Over the last few months I have tried out Rift and even gone back to WoW, but I am really only just killing time, waiting for SWTOR.

Are you attracted to SWTOR because of the gaming experience, Star Wars, or both?

For me it’s Star Wars. Yes, I do love MMO games, but I am a massive Star Wars fan. I met my wife at a Star Wars fan club 17 years ago. I have two children named after Star Wars characters, Mara Jade and Teneniel Djo and I have the Rebel logo tattooed on my right arm!

What is your most memorable experience in gaming?

I’d have to say in the early days in Star Wars Galaxies, just after I unlocked Jedi, spending hours grinding experience, only to have Bounty Hunters attempt to gank you. The thrill and rush I got then, knowing I could lose days and even weeks of experience, was unbelievable. I don’t think my heart has ever pounded so much with any other game! No other gaming experience has come close to the whole initial Jedi experience and grinding up to Knight and entering the Force ranking system. When Sony introduced the combat upgrade and the village it definitely changed the whole feel of becoming a Jedi. Even being a Jedi in the SWG world was a different experience. Before the combat upgrade, even pulling out your lightsaber gave you a temporary enemy flag, allowing any player to attack you. It was quite an adrenaline rush.

What was your first Star Wars experience?

In the back of my Dad’s Ford station-wagon at the drive-in. It was 1978, I was 7 and we had gone to see Clash of the Titans and the second movie was this odd flick called Star Wars. I was instantly hooked.

Republic or Empire?

Definitely Republic. I have the Rebel logo tattooed on my arm and I played Rebel all the way through SWG. I love X-Wings and everything to do with being a Jedi. Yoda is the man.

What excites you most about SWTOR?

The story. Being a massive Star Ward fan I am truly excited to hear and read some of the stories. I’ve read some of the comics from this era and it’s fascinating. Not only will I be able to play a game style that interests me, it will provide me with an invigorating storyline.