Star Wars: The Old Republic is a rad game. You all know how much I was looking forward to it because of the fifty other articles I’ve written about it. It absolutely delivers in every way and is even better than I’d hoped. I’m not going to bore you with more talk about the game today, though. No, I’ve been taking screenshots since I started playing on December 13th (Early Access what whaaat) and I wanted to share them with you. My character is a Mirialan Jedi Knight named Zetharis.

There won’t be any plot spoilers or anything for the Jedi Knight class story, but there will be location spoilers (spoiler alert: You go to Tatooine like in every other Star Wars game!). These are all shrunk down, so click to see them full size. Enjoy!

There’s been three big games released recently, and I’m a lazy good-for-nothing so I haven’t written about them yet. Let me rectify that, as a Christmas gift to you, my handful of loyal readers.

I haven’t written much lately. Looking at this front page, I’ve hardly written anything of substance in the past month! Sorry about that. That’s just like me, saying I’m not going to stop writing and then doing exactly that. In my defense Christina and I have been very busy, she’s been sick and those Blogimations that no one watches are a LOT of work.

Rather than spend another day doing nothing and complaining that I don’t know what to write about, here’s a few quick thoughts on what I’ve been up to.

I read the Star Wars: The Old Republic boards pretty regularly, as I’m obsessed with the game and have more free time at work than I should. A lot of it is just people discussing the game, getting opinions on character classes and generally just passing the time until launch.

I’m mostly on the board for the Sith Warrior class, as it’s the class I’ll be playing and I like to see what other people are saying about it and keep on top of any new information. When I made the decision to play an Imperial character so I could play with friends I knew I’d be in for more than my fair share of immaturity from teenagers who are all about being GRIMDARK and listening to songs that make their mom mad, but sometimes what’s said on the boards is simply appalling.

Because it is ALL STAR WARS ALL THE TIME for me I decided to bring out my old lightsaber prop I made and make a cool picture. Click to embiggen!

Only the baddest mothas carry purple lightsabers.

Here’s a close up of the hilt. I made it back in 2002 or so, using a sink pipe, rubber O-rings, PVC and the button from an NES controller.

I’m writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic again. Considering that literally about 85% of my day is spent thinking about it, you’d better get used to me talking about it!

Anyway, what I’m writing about today is the decision I’ve made regarding what class and faction I’ll be playing. I had originally planned on playing on the Republic side as a Jedi Consular, because hey, it’s Star Wars, who DOESN’T want to be a heroic Jedi character? I had been talking to my friend Matt, trying to coordinate things since we planned on playing together, and he had mentioned that some of his coworkers would be playing as well. He later informed me that they’d be playing Imperial characters.

Bam, another fanfilm clip, this time with Jedi training remotes!

We actually already had this scene “in the can” as they say, with music, special effects and sound but the lighting was terrible and as a result the scene looked like washed out bantha poop. We re-filmed it, but it never got finished.

You guys know I’m a huge nerd, but I don’t think you really know HOW huge until now.

That clip is from a Star Wars fanfilm my friend Matt and I worked on our senior year of high school. We stumbled onto the Fanfilms section of the Star Wars site TheForce.net and decided we wanted to make one. I wrote the script, he directed it, and we got some of our friends to star in it.

We never finished it, though, as dreams are always lofty and reality is a cruel mistress. I’m not going to post any more clips or anything, because let me tell you, this has NOT aged well. I’m not going to talk much about the plot, either, but it took place about 40 years after Return of the Jedi. One of Luke Skywalker’s former students founded a new Jedi academy on Dantooine, using the old abandoned Rebel base referenced in A New Hope I NEED TO STOP TALKING.

But yeah, that’s my 18 year old self swinging a lightsaber around, deflecting blaster bolts. That’s still cool.

This post is about Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Despite my best efforts, I’m stoked for Old Republic. I deliberately didn’t pay much attention to it until this point, but the trailer shown at E3 (which I guess is the opening movie) blew me away. From there I read into what the game actually entailed, and I’m sold.

My original intent was to just ignore the game and let it go by. There were a lot of reasons for this, and at the forefront was my experience with Star Wars Galaxies.