Saturday June 30th, Bane Guild in association with Empire, Jenari Ascendancy and others will be hosting a pod race on The Ebon Hawk server.

• ~ You must be in an operation group with an ops leader chosen by Suzina. This is so we can monitor racer's positions on the map and broadcast race progress via General chat. If you are late, you can't enter the race after it's started. It's a race, not a time-trial.
• ~ You CAN race with speeder-speed 1 or 2 if you like but you probably won't win prizes versus speeder 3 people. Probably.
• ~ There is no entry fee, prizes are from hard work grinding credits, however prize donations are appreciated.
• ~ You CAN pvp flag and attack other racers. However, you will probably lose to players who didn't attack and stayed on their bikes un-flagged.
• ~ The race rout intentionally offers a slightly faster route through the open-world PVP area "outlaws den". It's about 45 seconds faster if you can stay on your bike as you go through Outlaws Den. I will instruct PVPers to hang out in outlaws den and knock people off their speeders. You are welcome to try the Outlaws Den shortcut, in fact I hope you try for entertainment value, but I will make it a risky venture. Two other locations, Outpost Salara & Dreviad Outpost are obstacles that may contain Republic players. Drive too close and you will be PVP flagged. If you crossed through Outlaws Den, you will still be PVP flagged for Republic players you pass by.
• ~ Only players from the Empire faction can win prizes from me. However, Republic players can participate by racing non-flagged for fun and glory or hang out at spots on the race-track where PVP flagged Empire racers are sure to cross. Outpost Salara and Dreviad may offer chances to kill racers should these PVP racers survive Outlaws Den.
• ~ The race will officially start when Suzina shoots her collector's edition flare gun at 9:30pm EST. The race takes about 11 minutes to complete if you avoid all the obstacles.
• ~ If you don't want to race, spectators, gamblers, and volunteers will be welcome and appreciated come race day. If you do want to race, see you Saturday, June 30th at 9:00pm EST at outpost Zaroshe on Tatooine.

This is a news alert. A rare plague has broken out and is spreading across the galaxy! Empire and Republic players are both encouraged to stay away from Tatooine to avoid becoming involved. If you are on Tatooine, leave immediately and above all avoid the crash site in the north-east corner of the Dune Sea.

Today we receive a rather nice and lengthy post by Emmanuel Lusinchi which details all the changes regarding the item modification system. Throughout the course of the explanation we learn how over the course of the beta the Bioware team has changed the system, a lot of it undergoing drastic updates.

These changes are based upon the feedback and through the use of the modification system throughout the beta. To sum it up, it's been made simpler and easier to manage, while at the same time retaining all the benefits it had originally begun with.

Things to note are:

• Color Coded Gear: Orange (Fully Modifiable), Blue (Rare), Purple  (Epic), & Green (Common)
• Orange Gear can be obtained around level 8 through class quests, space quests and social gear
• Modifications are removable
• Modifications can be done anywhere (a workbench is no longer required)
• Looted / Quest Modifications can now be reverse engineered
• 4 standardized slots

Based on a recent quote from Steven Reid, we are given some clarification as to what Early Game Access entails. As most of us maybe used to, when you pre-order a game, typically you'll be able to login and play a few days early.

Bioware is taking a slightly different approach, while yes all of the pre-orders will be able to login early, it's being based upon a first come first serve strategy. This many seem a bit frustrating to some folks, but don't worry. We are given a clarification as to why in the following quote.

While we understand all of you want to be in Early Game Access on Day One, part of the point of a head start program like this one is to allow us to gradually ramp up the population of our servers so that on launch day, the general play experience is as pleasant as possible. While we're going to be allowing a lot of people into Early Game Access at regular intervals, we cannot allow everyone who pre-orders in at once. That would defeat the point of a gradual head start.

The next obvious question is "I pre-ordered on Day X, when do I get access?" While we cannot answer that for everyone, I will say (as I did in July) that those who pre-ordered early will be getting Early Game Access, well, earliest. At this point we still have pre-orders available and therefore, anyone who pre-orders will still gain Early Game Access, but as they're redeeming their code later, they'll get Early Game Access later. As I've said before the difference between 'early' and 'later' should be a matter of days, not weeks

Today Bioware pulls back the curtain and we are presented with an official release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's been a long few years and the hype extremely high for this major mmorpg. Finally now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The launch date is set for December 20, 2011. We also learn of the pricing structure and model in which it's subscription based. The pricing is fairly standard for the industry with a $14.99/mo subscription and discounts for larger time segements.

Source: swtor.com