UPDATE - 7th. February 2009 (Threat of Peace Announced)

ALL NEW STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC COMIC SERIES TO BE PUBLISHED EXCLUSIVELY ONLINE
Star Wars: The Old Republic – Threat of Peace Set to Debut in February at www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com

FEBRUARY 6, NEW YORK – Dark Horse has joined forces with LucasArts and BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), to create a new comic series, published entirely online, to introduce both the gaming and comics worlds to the upcoming massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Debuting this month, Star Wars: The Old Republic - Threat of Peace will feature action-packed, character-driven episodes written by BioWare’s Rob Chestney and published by Dark Horse. The stories will span the three decades from the pivotal signing of the Treaty of Coruscant to critical events at the beginning of the game.

War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire has gripped the galaxy for generations, but the sacking of Coruscant and a subsequent peace treaty are changing everything. As the Republic scrambles to re-establish order, the Sith Empire moves quickly to consolidate power within its new dominion. Behind closed doors, however, individual Sith Lords engage in a quiet but deadly power struggle, and discord breaks out among the Jedi as they wrestle with the moral implications of the new galactic balance. During these chaotic days, the stories of several critical characters interweave as they pursue their passions, stand up for their convictions and ultimately lead the galaxy back to the brink of a catastrophic conflict.

“The Old Republic time frame is ripe for creating epic, galaxy-spanning storylines with provocative moral themes,” says Rob Chestney. “Not only will readers get a preview of the game, they’ll also meet some of the game’s most compelling characters.”

“The comic offers a unique perspective on an era in the Star Wars galaxy unseen outside the game,” explains Dark Horse series editor Dave Marshall. “It will be an integral companion to the online experience, and a compelling adventure on its own, accessible to every Star Wars fan.”

This new ongoing series begins in February, featuring story by Rob Chestney and art by Alex Sanchez. Sanchez is an artist who has done work on comics such as Marvel Age Hulk, X-Men, and various Dark Horse comics. New issues of Star Wars: The Old Republic - Threat of Peace will appear every other Friday exclusively on www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a story-driven massively multiplayer online PC game set in the timeframe of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise. Developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, Star Wars: The Old Republic represents an innovative approach to interactive entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat and intelligent companion characters.

In Star Wars: The Old Republic players will explore an age thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire divides the galaxy. Players can choose to play as Jedi, Sith, or a variety of other classic Star Wars roles, defining their personal story and determining their path down the light or dark side of the Force. Along the way, players will befriend courageous companions who will fight at their side or possibly betray them, based on the players’ actions. Players can also choose to team up with friends to battle enemies and overcome incredible challenges using dynamic Star Wars combat.



To see the brand new webcomic on these forums as it's released please click here.

Oh and before I forget you may find this interesting too:

Quote :

What, exactly, does a “Senior Content Producer” do, you may well ask? My job is to make sure that everyone on the different groups that make up the Content Team is working together, communicating clearly and all focused on a single goal. This translates into lots and lots of planning meetings followed by lots and lots of Bug Triage to ensure that we fix the bugs that are most critical to getting a smooth gameplay experience.

How do you make sure that the largest BioWare/LucasArts game ever made happens on time, at the level of quality that people expect from BioWare? Various members of our team have said this in the press before, but I think that folks have generally thought we were being glib. Let me be clear. We aren’t kidding. Building Star Wars: The Old Republic is essentially building Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) 3 through KOTOR 10, and then shipping them all at once. There is as much story content here as in all BioWare games combined. As you might imagine, making sure this content all gets done, tested and tuned is a massive undertaking, and it requires the dedication and focus of everyone on the content team to make it all happen.

Our Content Team actually consists of many sub-teams: Writing, Worldbuilding, Scripting, Environmental Art, Combat Design, Combat Art (animations and f/x), Combat Programming, Gameplay Systems Design, UI Art, Gameplay Systems Programming, Audio and of course Quality Assurance. Each of these teams has a huge amount of work to get done, and they all need to coordinate on a per-planet basis. We are very committed to early playability and testing to make sure we are making a fun, complete game.

For instance, the planet of Korriban (home world of the Sith) went through the following process:

• First the Writing team researched every single detail about Korriban. Having the lead designer from KOTOR as our lead designer helped a great deal but there’s been plenty of fantastic fiction written about the planet since then and it’s important to our fiction teams that we are accurate and embrace the legacy of the great content creators that came before us.

• Reams of history and look & feel documents in hand, the Writing team then set out to create the basic stories and quests for the planet. This involved first a high level overview document that detailed exactly what was happening politically and socially on the planet, as well as what experience we wanted the Players to have and what Classes were going to be adventuring there.

• After the prep work came the real writing, rewriting, peer reviews and more rewriting until we knew Korriban was exactly what we wanted it to be. Good writing comes from rewriting and the same fearless commitment to quality over ego that the entire creation team has to have. Though we knew more changes would come later, we finally had something to start the rest of the process with.

• Next the Concept Art team painted concepts for all of the major areas and art assets for the planet. Every single piece of Korriban from the furniture to the interrogation rooms has to have a particular look and the Concept team worked tirelessly to make sure they had captured the essence of the Sith Empire and what their most sacred planet would feel like.

• While Concept was working the Scripting team hooked up the stories and quests in a basic, box test level, so that a first round of feedback could be assessed. Revisions were made for pacing and structure. Interactive storytelling is far more than dialogue writing and at each stage we have to reevaluate how the experience feels.

• Once we were happy with the test level scripting, the Worldbuilding team laid out a simple version of the planet in our game engine (basic look, proper layout and size), ran through the grey world to plan game flow and visual storytelling. Again there were many revisions and whole sections of Korriban that needed to be rearranged because they didn’t pass muster. Only then was it handed off to the Environmental Art team.

• The Environmental artists then took that simple grey planet and lovingly painted it, filled it with objects, created the terrain and brought it to life, finally lighting it to match the concept art exactly.

• Then came the Combat Systems team (design, art and programming) to build and test all of the character classes (abilities, combat effects, pathing, NPC behaviors, etc) that would be on Korriban and make sure they specifically played well on the planet that had been built. Spawns were moved, skills adjusted, to make the experience the best it could be.

• At the same time the Gameplay systems team (design, UI art and programming) built all of the complex RPG systems you would expect (looting, inventory, quest journals, maps, etc) that make it a complete game.

• Once everything was running as expected, the Audio team had to come in and add the sound effects and music that give Korriban its mood and style.

• And finally, the QA team had to play through the game at every single step and make sure it was all functioning as designed—despite all of the groups above tweaking with things constantly. That’s a huge job by itself.

This doesn’t even take into account all the work that the Client and Server programming teams are doing to add features, optimize the way the game runs, and ensure that the game looks good and runs fast with all of the constraints that a MMO puts on its technology and hardware.

All of this has to happen at essentially the same time, and it has to be done in a way such that a) nobody is stepping on anyone else’s toes and b) the end result is a complete, playable experience that we feel comfortable putting in front of people who weren’t working directly on the game. And did I mention that this is just one planet? We have multiple planets being worked on at any given time, so that we have a constant flow of testable content finishing up every few weeks for internal testing.

This is what my job entails. Luckily, it also means that I “have to” play the game a lot. I’m thrilled to be a part of a company with the legacy of quality that BioWare has. On top of that, to be working on a project that is the successor to KOTOR is like the icing on the cake.

Dallas Dickinson
Senior Content Producer