This week's Friday update is now online:


You will notice these Starships have been dissected from the Space Combat Video that came out earlier this week. As well as Starships there are new polls available for your perusal. The poll questions are:


As always, we look forward to seeing the results of the new polls.

There is also a Fan Friday featuring artwork from community members Wraloa and Kiuas, a fan-created video from Tukor, a showcase of a community RP thread, and more new avatars.

But most importantly, the Developer Corner outlined everything announced during our Gamescom presention about Advanced Classs (where we failed the "let's see how many data points we can write down in 20 seconds and if we can read our own handwriting" test -- self-depreciating humor there folks, but you can now see why we had some stuff missing), and new concept art that seems to show HK-47, or at the least a model of his same type.

Aurebesh translations after the jump.

We were able to have multiple members of the Darth Hater staff on hand to help compile the following ability stats at Gamescom. With the rushed nature of our hands on time, the consistency from one class to the next is understandably variable. Additionally, it should be noted that we were repeatedly reminded that all in-game text from character sheets to tooltips are considered "placeholder" and may be subject to change.

Note: We played Level 2 characters. Although we previously mentioned many abilities in prior dissections and other content, we included them to contrast and track changes between the various builds. Changes from one build to the next are highlighted in bold.

Although we haven't quite recovered yet from our time at Star Wars Celebration V, Darth Hater is turning its attention to Cologne, Germany for our coverage of Gamescom. The Darth Hater team will bring you interviews, hands-on impressions, and all the breaking Star Wars: The Old Republic news coming out of the convention throughout the week.

Vee have ways of making them talk... stay tuned.

DH Gamescom Content:

UPDATE 8/18: Advanced Class Names Revealed in Press Presentations
UPDATE 8/19: Advanced Class Names Revealed on offiicial site here.

Please note our original post included some inaccuracies specifically with the Trooper descriptions, missing information for the Bounty Hunter, as well as some missing description points. We apologize for any confusion: the slides were shown to us for about 20s each and our priority was to get the accurate names for each Advanced Class.


More information about the Jedi Knight advanced classes:


Blaine Christine gave the presentation, and these were some of the descriptions for each class. As he introduced these slides, he gave the example of how you would turn into Darth Maul: you pick your species as Zabrak, and as you level up, you are presented with the option to become a Sith Assassin. "The Assassin is going to be able to use a double bladed lightsaber just like Darth Maul. He is going to do a lot of damage, so that is his main function." He continued with a description of the Sith Sorcerer: "He is going to be a lot more like the Emperor; more ranged based. He will still use his lightsaber, but he is going to use Force Lightning and focus on that to fry his enemies from afar."

Then as a comparison, the Jedi Knight was touched on. The Sentinel uses dual lightsabers, was compared to Anakin Skywalker, and has a focus on dealing lots of damage with fast moves and action. The Guardian was described as a "traditional MMO tank" by wearing heavier armor, and the ability to soak up lots of damage.

Please note all the Advanced Class names were communicated in English along with the entire presentation, and we will update this post with more details as we receive them. We are committed to bringing you the most accurate official information coming out of Gamescom.

Shortly after the announcement of all the classes, we received another version of the multiplayer group demo that we originally saw at E3 -- but this time, all the Republic characters were playing Advanced Classes. The Jedi Sentinel was the dps off-tank, while the Trooper Commando was ranged tanking the large mob. The Smuggler had the Gunslinger specialization, and used portable cover while dual wielding blasters. The Jedi Consular chose the Wizard advanced class, and provided both healing and light crowd control.

More Updates and Media after the jump

A few weeks ago the Darth Hater team descended on E3 with a ravenous desire to learn about Star Wars: The Old Republic. With so many hands on deck, we were able to gather large quantities of data for the TOR fan community, and we shared much of this information in our articles, a group podcast, and even a packed live Q&A. The best part of this entire experience is that, after all of our coverage, there is still more to share.

This week's DevTracker Highlights discuss what the developers prefer to play, video capturing, hints on upcoming videos, and more after the jump.

Our dissection of the Star Wars: The Old Republic content released during E3 is now online. As in our prior dissections, we will add new content in as we find it, so keep checking back. Feel free to let us know if you notice something we missed, and we will be happy to add it to our dissection with credit. Note: If something is mentioned in a prior dissection, then we do not reiterate it again here. Low bandwidth users should note there are numerous images contained in this article.

To kick off the start of E3 BioWare showcased their new cinematic trailer, "Hope." Since BioWare seemingly never releases content without gameplay hints or marketing designs inside their message, it is appropriate to dissect. Below you will find what we saw and thought and for now, without pictures to ease the load on the site.

Here at Darth Hater, we are known for our painfully thorough dissections of the nuts and bolts that make up Star Wars: The Old Republic. During our hands on time this Tuesday, we furiously scrambled to record as many facts as possible. Our own personal impressions will be coming shortly, but first we wanted to make sure the theorycrafters could get some real facts to sink their teeth into. Here are some of the key facts we discovered with our hands on time with the Imperial Agent, Trooper, Smuggler, Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, and Bounty Hunter.

Gamespot posted an exclusive hands-on article of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The link to the article is located below.

Highlights after the jump.

Although the Star Wars: The Old Republic DevTracker was pretty quiet this week, BioWare Media Designer Robin Khamsi reminded us:


More from Daniel Erickson, Kyle Garner, Sean Dahlberg, and Charles Boyd after the jump.

As reported on Club Jade, Random House revealed a description for the new Star Wars: The Old Republic novel, Fatal Alliance. The Sean Williams novel hits shelves on July 20, 2010. Pre-orders are available through the Random House online store, and the price listed is $27 USD for Del Ray's hardcover edition.

Description after the jump.

Last week, LucasArts & BioWare extended an invitation to Darth Hater for another round of Star Wars: The Old Republic hands-on game play at the beautiful Presidio campus in San Francisco. Eager to take another look, Meg and I left GDC and made our way to Lucasfilm where we were treated to playing Level 6 Troopers on Ord Mantell, and also spoke in depth with Jake Neri of LucasArts and Daniel Erickson of BioWare.