Tag: the old republic (mmo)

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Star Wars makes an appearance at Yuletide

KarrdeputerYuletide, the annual rare-fandoms fanfic gift exchange, had a rule change this year that suddenly made it relevant to our interests – they allowed requests from lesser-ficed parts of large fandoms like Star Wars. So, for the first time, we’re seeing Star Wars fanfics among the offerings. 32 of them, in fact, including a whooping 13 X-Wing fics. Other requests included the Thrawn trilogy and The Old Republic.

EU-based fanfic has never been exactly rare, but it does tend to focus on the big ‘ships (ahem) so if you’ve been looking for something a little different, check out the listings. The authors are all currently anonymous, but will be revealed on January 1st, per Yuletide tradition.

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Star Wars in the news: Opposition scuttles Lucasfilm studio project, Michael Fassbender’s toy collection

Last week, Lucasfilm shocked Marin by pulling out of their plan to build a film studio on their Grady Ranch property. The studio project had faced opposition from the nearby Lucas Valley Estates. Others in Marin begged the company to reconsider, but Lucasfilm is standing firm. Lucasfilm is hoping to sell the property for use as low income housing, something I’m sure the Lucas Valley Estate folks will just love. Meanwhile, I’m sure that Lucasfilm will have no trouble finding another Bay Area community to welcome a film studio.

Michael Fassbender loves Star Wars toys. Of course he does. “‘Star Wars’ was really the only sci-fi sort of fascination I had as a youngster,” he told Absolute Radio while doing promotion for Prometheus. “I collected and I’ve still got the AT-AT and the Millennium Falcon and the Ewok village.”

Lucasfilm is among those named in a burgeoning antitrust case that alleges companies stiffed “lucrative job movement in Silicon Valley by agreeing not to raid their rivals for employees.” Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe and Pixar are also named.

Is The Old Republic already losing subscribers? The analysts say TOR has lost about 10% of it’s subscribers in the last month, and they project an average of 1.25M subscribers through the year. (I’m no expert, but isn’t that kind of how an MMO launch works? Not everyone is going to stick around?)

The game has had a good share of controversy – an anti-gay campaign and a free game time giveaway that alienanted some players (Though Bioware did expand upon the giveaway.) Let the course of gaming never go smooth, or something to that effect….

Wired’s Kathy Ceceri and her family got a sneak preview of the Star Wars Identities exhibit in Montréal, and shares quite a bit about what you can see there. It opened on the 19th.

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Ridiculous merchandise: Life-size Darth Malgus

Now, if you’ve paid any attention around here, you’d no I have little to no use for anything having to do with Star Wars gaming. So, needless to say, I am not particularly impressed with this $6000 life-sized statue of Old Republic Vader wannabee Darth Malgus. This goes beyond wacky, right into Frames territory. Though, honestly, if I had that much money to waste on absurdly expensive Star Wars merchandise, I’d rather have a set of Frames. Or two.

Malgus, for what it’s worth, was the star of a novel, Paul Kemp’s The Old Republic: Deceived.

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EUbits: Delving into Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse, again

Fate of the Jedi. If you haven’t finished Apocalypse yet, don’t click any of the links in this section, because they are chock-full of spoilers! Over at Lightsaber Rattling, Pete Morrison takes a look at the state of the Expanded Universe post-Fate of the Jedi. (Always-relevant musical interlude: Where do we go from here?)

There are also some new reviews from The Galactic Drift, Fantasy & SciFi Lovin’, and The EU, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Also, if you’re in the mood for some snark, I live-tweeted my reading of the book, and then rambled at length about it on my Livejournal. My review, in brief: Meh.

Namesake corner A custom Clone Wars style Mara Jade action figure! I’ve made no secret of not being a fan of the style, but this is pretty nifty, I must admit. And she doesn’t look like Giada DeLaurentiis!

Author talk. Dan Wallace posts his endnotes for the Book of Sith.

Excerpts. A mini for Jeff Grubb’s Scourge. It’s our next new novel release, coming April in paperback.

Gaming. One of our readers, Annalee, has a good write-up at the Geek Feminism blog on issues in The Old Republic.

Comics. James gives a thumbs up to the twists in Agent of the Empire: Iron Eclipse #4, and Zayne digging himself in deep in Knights of the Old Republic: War #3.

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In the news: Jake Lloyd denies negative article

Untruths! An article about Jake Lloyd has been floating around in which claims he called his post-Star War childhood a “living hell.” Lloyd took to Facebook on Sunday to deny it: “The quotes in the article do not accurately reflect my feelings for the time I spent on Star Wars or the time I spent in high school.” The article says the quotes came from “a magazine” and also attributes comments from his mother to a (defunct) domain similar to Sci Fi Channel Australia, which did do an interview with Lloyd (though not his mother) in 2009.

Culture. In The New York Times, Matt Richtel takes a look at how Star Wars is still captivating kids. (Did no one tell him about The Clone Wars, which doesn’t get a single mention?) Last week in the NYT: The New York Jedi. Pity about the headline fail. (Jedi is the plural. Tell your copy editors.)

Interview. George Lucas chatted with Sen. Bill Bradley on his “American Voices” radio program last week. Topics included filmmaking technology,Red Tails, good and evil in Star Wars and education.’

Randomly… Actor Topher Grace (That 70’s Show) edited all three prequels into one 85-minute film. The cut was shown only to “a private gathering of Topher’s industry friends.” There are no plans to show or release it publicly – Grace refuses to do so without permission, which seems unlikely.

Also: Play The Old Republic for free this weekend | Amanda Lucas on ESPN | What Star Wars teaches us about creativity.

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EUbits: Fate of the Jedi is ending, have you heard?

Fate of the Jedi. Apocalypse is only days away, and so there is a book trailer. (Naturally.) And a mini-excerpt. And a 50-page excerpt. And Troy Denning on a podcast. And, of course, another spoiler-free review at Star Wars Report. Will it ever end? (Well, yes. Presumably, Tuesday. And then, the arguing. Yay!)

Comics. John Jackson Miller talks about Knight Errant’s next arc, ‘Escape,’ with io9’s Cyriaque Lamar.

Upcoming. DK will be releasing The Old Republic Encyclopedia this fall, Roqoo Depot discovered.

The blogside. Roqoo Depot’s Skuldren speaks out against super-powered characters in video games and the EU. In my book, that’s a very big reason why certain streams should no be crossing… Meanwhile, io9 makes a valiant effort to connect the Star Wars timeline to Earth’s timeline – pity that the comic tale they’re using as a cornerstone is kind of, a little bit, well, actually entirely Infinities, aka a non-canon AU. Which they admit. But still.

Okay, fine. If it’s an actual EU timeline you’re looking for (sorry, no Earth,) here’s an official one from Del Rey.

Review. James gives the latest Clone Wars digest, The Enemy Within, a thumbs-up for its Dirty Dozen meets L.A. Confidential in space storyline.

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EUbits: Darth Maul is coming to comics as well

The year of Maul, indeed. Dark Horse’s Randy Stradley announced two upcoming projects featuring Darth Maul yesterday. Up in August will be a digest, The Sith Hunters, from Henry Gilroy and Steven Melching. There’s also an four-issue mini-series from Tom Taylor that we’ll learn about in “the near future.” (Celebration, maybe?) Stradley also reveals that the Maul storyline will bridge S4 and S5 of The Clone Wars.

Authors. Drew Karpyshyn has retired from Bioware, where he worked on The Old Republic, to “focus more time and energy on my novels and other non-video game related projects.” Karpyshyn is currently working on the fourth Old Republic novel.

Curious… A new book appeared on the Random House site this week: Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars by author and cultural critic Camille Paglia. It’s set for an October release.

Excerpt. This week’s mini-excerpt is from Jeff Grubb’s Scourge. It features Wookiees slapping droids around a bunch of other people I’ve never heard of.

Interviews. Graphic Novel Reporter talks to John Jackson Miller about Knights of the Old Republic: War. On that note, the last standalone Lost Tribe of the Sith story is now available for preorder. (Yes, it’s still free, it just won’t be out until March 5.)

Review. James has good stuff to say about Dawn of the Jedi #1.

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LEGO extends Star Wars license for another decade

LEGO announced at Toy Fair that they have extended their license with Lucasfilm for Star Wars-themed toys, video games, etc. for another ten years. So not only will there be twenty new Star Wars LEGO building sets released in 2012, we’ll be seeing lots of LEGO Star Wars merchandise until 2022 (or probably longer).

As part of the announcement, they released some stats including that the LEGO Star Wars video game franchise has sold more than 30 million units with their four titles (and Joystiq seems to think they have a sequel in the works to their 2011 The Clone Wars video game). Also, from Toy Fair, Kotaku has some photos of some The Old Republic building sets and The Lord of the Rings sets (a new license for LEGO) and Collider’s got images of The Avengers sets. And for those who want to drool over all the revealed sets, FBTB has your full LEGO Star Wars set coverage from Toy Fair.