Ben & Boba

Ben isn’t a journalist but I think you’ll agree his hands-on report is fun and well-worth a read. Especially since the lucky so-and-so was chosen at random to try out The Eternity Vault Operation and has provided us eagerly watching and waiting at home with some cool photos from the show floor. Take it away, Ben!
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Gamescom Day One by Ben “Kromotor” Smith

I finally made it to GC11 today. Unfortunately due to bad weather and a couple of wrecks on the AutoBahn we got there late. I was not able to play an origin world today. The good news is I was able to play THE ETERNITY VAULT. We went to the booth at 2 p.m. just to watch the actual footage of people playing the Operation. We did know that they were picking people from the crowd to play. The group of guys I was with all had our fingers crossed that we would get to play.

Snowball the Wampa
They came out and made a short announcement in German. Then they brought out a Wampa. They had a short contest where they brought up three members of the audience and they were allowed to pick a name. The audience then voted. The name that won was “Snowball”. The three guys on stage weren’t really that creative. SWTOR staff then threw out t-shirts to the crowd.

Snowball the Wampa stands guard while Empire shirts are tossed out to the crowd.

Following that they introduced a short cutscene to the Eternity Vault. There were three players actually talking to the NPC and one was holocaming in on the cutscene. I have included a picture (below). The fourth player was allowed to actually take part in the cutscene even though he was not actually there. Pretty cool feature that I didn’t know about. Once the cutscene was over they began picking people from the crowd.

Great friends don’t even describe the ones that were with me. They knew how badly I wanted to play. So, instead of trying to get picked themselves, they picked me up and hoisted me above the crowd. At that point I was very noticeable, especially since I was yelling and waving my hat like a mad man. The last person picked was me. I dashed into the gaming area and jumped onto the last computer.

Eternity Vault Multiplayer Conversation with Holo participation

Killing Taun-Tauns and Rockin’ The Vault

I have to admit I had no idea what I was doing. I have been studying mostly Republic classes. The last spot open was the Sith Maruader. Which is really a fun class to play. The whole time you are playing there is a person from BioWare helping you out. I know how to play a MMO but I didn’t know any of the abilities and how they were mapped. The cool thing is they had both a Razer mouse and keyboard for us to use, which I use on my own PC.

So, I jump in my escape pod and it goes to a cutscene of the pod falling. Once I am down I see a Taun-Taun. I couldn’t help myself, I killed it and so did any other player that saw one. We have six members of the audience and two people from BioWare in the Operation. For the first wave the Bio guys tell you what to do. I had the awesome job of destroying the power cells on the right turret. Can’t recall all the actual names of the abilities that I used. I know I Force jumped to the turret after I threw my lightsaber. Which was so awesome. I then began to just run through all the abilities trying to see which one did the most damage. Did a couple of AOE’s and Force Choked a power cell. Don’t really know if that last move helped any. So, we get the first wave down. The Juggernaut wasn’t paying attention and before we could get healed he aggro’ed the boss. We lasted all of about a minute.

BioWare then asked the crowd if we should get another shot. They graciously allowed us another attempt, while saying something in German about wiping again. This time everyone had a good idea of what to do. The first wave went down fast with no problems. We were able to fully heal before the next pull. The Juggernaut pulled and it was on. It was kinda hard. I was still trying to see what ability to use, while trying to watch the boss. Yeah I stood in the fire once or twice or rather missile barrage. The Bio guy next to me was really helpful. Except when I died and he said you shouldn’t have stood there. LOL. Reallly. I was battle rezzed. Learned the mechanics of the boss pretty well. Pretty sure I could lead an Operation right now. At about the last ten percent or so, we lost the Bounty Hunter and I pulled agro and died. We got the boss down though. We all got T-shirts and a poster.

Swifty, Ben and Alene (Athene?) checking out Razer - Gamescom 2011

The game was awesome. I am so ready to get the game at home. The graphics were absolutely just beautiful. I don’t know if the server was local or what but the load times were amazingly quick. The detail was just crazy. It sucks ’cause I only a had little bit of time to play and I was like a kid with ADD. =I was looking at all the background and the UI and there just so much to take in. I am still giddy from actually getting to play the game. It was just so much fun. I mean if you got any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. I am just still reeling from all the excitement. I am headed back tomorrow and I am leaving early so that I can be the first in line. Really looking forward to playing the origin worlds tomorrow. I can’t even describe how much fun it was and how excited I am to actually get the game and play.

Extra-Credit Photo From Ben

Razer appealing to the target audience?

A Razer BumBoard. A real attention-grabber.