My character, Chanter, is a failure as a bounty hunter. Oh, she has killing power. She’s got monster dps skills. But she has no guile. She has no evil core. She struggles with making dark side choices because she sees the reasonable side to each argument.

How can she get great Empire loot if she’s a pansy?

For months now, Star Wars: The Old Republic has been in an ever-improving beta test. Build after build has been deployed on the beta servers for testers to tear through, and all the while, the game’s release date has crept closer. Sadly, nothing lasts forever.

Last week, Bioware sent out emails inviting a small group of people to participate in the final beta testing weekend. Shortly afterwards, devs posted an announcement about the end of the entire beta testing program. At 11:59 PM CST on Sunday the 4th of December, beta testing ended. However, with early access less than two weeks away, it won’t be long before people return to a galaxy far, far away.

The beta’s end is a bittersweet event to some though.

There’s no debating the awesomeness of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s class choices. There’s a little something for every fan of the massive Star Wars franchise, and as an added perk, there’s a little something for practically every role, too. Want to play a Trooper, but love to tank? Covered. Veteran healer but Bounty Hunter fan since day 1? Covered. Dream about shooting purple lightning from your fingertips as a DPS? Covered!

For players wishing to follow the path of the healer in SWTOR, there’s a lot to consider when going over the options. The various healing classes play quite a bit differently, although the results are naturally similar. It is BioWare’s goal to make all the of the classes equal at every role. This means that all of the healing classes do a pretty damn fine job. That leaves us with basing our decision off the class playstyles, our preferred allegiance, and the overall style of the classes in general.

The Star Wars universe is vast and serves as a home to a myriad of different species. They can be hard to keep track of sometimes and Bioware has elected to include 9 species as playable. Some of these will already be familiar to you depending on how much Star Wars material you’ve made your way through over the years. If you’re just starting out though, some of them may seem a bit more mysterious or daunting. This last week we’ll take an introductory look at three species available to players; the calculating Chiss, devout Mirialan and the indomitable Cyborg. Feel free to jump back to last week or the week before to get the skinny on the other six species.

Over the past two weeks we’ve had a look at six out of the nine playable species in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This week we’ve got the final entry in the series with the final three species being showcased. They’re a bit of a mixed bag as far as races go. The Chiss have willingly aligned themselved with the Empire, but have strong reservations about its influence. Mirialan are a species that is strongly religious, with a strange pragmatism about their being. Finally, Cyborgs close the ranks. Their presence as a playable species may not seem immediately obvious but we’ll explore that further. Without further ado, let’s explore.

Hey guys and welcome to basic tanking in SWTOR, the new-comers guide to general tanking here in the Old Republic! I’ll be going through a few of the simpler things, from common abbreviations every tank should know to working out how to wieght stats to suit your own characters development. This will be a time consuming W.I.P so please, bear with me, things will get added as time moves ever onward!

The Cybertech crew skill is another one of the six crafting skills that you can learn in SWTOR. This skill is focused on “the technical expertise to construct gadgets and components for Droids and high-tech armors.” Cybertechs will be able to create a vast array of different types of items in comparison to all of the other crew skills. Keep reading to learn about everything this exciting crew skill has to offer.

Once you get past your first planet and onto your faction’s fleet you come across your first set of crew skills trainers. This is where you get to make another important decision that will affect the rest of the game for you. You get to decide what crew skills you want to specialize in. If you decide to choose the Cybertech crew skill it is suggested to also take the gathering crew skill called Scavenging. This will allow you to gather the needed materials to craft your Cybertech items. You will also be needing to pick up a mission skill which will provide you with the more rare materials needed for your crafting. The mission skill that is suggested is called Underworld Trading.

Today’s video focuses on the Preferences tab, and some of the options hidden in there for you to find and make your game experience easier. To help with those who can’t see the details in the video,there is a list of the options mentioned in the video past the cut.

On December 2, 2011 the Pre-Launch Guild Program came to a close. One of the great things about the program was it gave guild leaders and guild seekers some great tools for meeting up. Players had the ability to create guilds, manage guild ranks, accept members, as well as search for guilds based on an extensive set of criteria.

Once created each guild was given a space on the site with public and private forums, and guild leaders had the ability to moderate those forums. BioWare allowed players to do on their site things that could only be accomplished through in-game functions and third-party guild hosting sites.

Now that the Pre-Launch Guild Program is closed, all of the features that were part of the Guild Headquarters site are now gone. The guild sites and forums remain, but not for long. According to the official Guilds FAQ, “approximately 2 weeks after the official release of the game (Dec 20, 2011), the Guild Headquarters will be removed from the web.”

Voidstar is one of three warzones currently implemented in Star Wars The Old Republic. The pvp slug fest is similar to WoW’s Strand of the Ancients minus the vehicles. The warzone requires tactics as well as a strong knowledge of your class’s abilities, to conquer. This video is the second of three, and like The Empire Strikes Back, it is the best of the trilogy.

Screenshots are awesome. The Smuggler class is awesome. In celebration of these two objects of complete awesomeness, here’s a small virtual tour of some of the screenshots I’ve managed to gather during beta thus far. The planets of Ord Mantell, Coruscant, and Taris will be covered in this tour, as well as the Republic Fleet and Esseles. Environment and story screenshots are the general focus in this tour, although I will include some that contain the player UI and feature combat. As a warning, there may be story spoilers in both the screenshots and descriptions.