Another friday, another dev post from the team over at BioWare! This week, BioWare decided to focus on their interesting addition of Space Combat to their highly anticipated Star Wars MMO: The Old Republic. You can follow the link to their uploaded video, which showcases some impressive cinematics and game play of ships blowing up other ships, although for fans who are craving some free-wheeling exploration, it does seem like these are more "guided" missions than just blasting out into the middle of space (and really, that's a lot of work to do!). In the dev post, the team notes that there will be faction-based missions involving "epic space battles," with the core focus on space combat. Those flight scenarios look pretty darn nice!

Aimee "Ashlanne" Rekoske posted on the Station Community Forums:

Account services, including account maintenance, all commerce, and Station Store will be down for maintenance for 3 hours on Thursday, September 2, 2010, from 5:00 am PDT to 8:00 am PDT.

The Station Store and all commerce avenues will be unavailable for the duration of maintenance. This may also affect the performance of the forums and any or all accounts' abilities to log in.

Here's our handy Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan!

According to a post by Aimee "Ashlanne" Rekoske on the Station forums, there will be an estimated five hour downtime at SOE on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010, at 2:00 AM PDT.  The services impacted are:

• EQII Voice Chat
• EQOA
• Star Wars Galaxies all servers
• Vanguard log in
• EQ Marketplace
• The EQPlayers Website

The SOE Fan Faire schedule was updated today, and now includes "an informal Community Address" by John Smedley to kick off the festivities Thursday night.  Fan Faires past have included a Community Address with high production values and players were disappointed to find it missing from the schedule.  Fear not, SOE fans, Smed will be addressing the masses!  See the revised schedule on the Fan Faire site.

SOE has announced that the Executive Producer of ABC’s “V” television series, veteran video game developer and ultra personality Jason “Jace” Hall, as the master of ceremonies of Fan Faire 2010 at Bally’s Las Vegas from August 5-8. Jace Hall wowed the attendees of the 2009 Fan Faire with a preview of the SOE documentary EverCracked. 

Hall will maintain the flow of the show by hosting the annual Kickoff Reception, Grand Banquet and Costume Contest. "I’m honored that SOE chose me as their official emcee for Fan Faire," says Hall. "Giving the show a bit of my own flavor and personality and mixing it with traditions from the past will be just the right combination to make this event PWN 4LL n00bs!"

source:  SOE Press Release

Have you registered for Fan Faire yet?  It's less than a month away and registration closes in two weeks. That means it's time for my annual Fan Faire Tips!  This is stuff I and other Fan Faire veterans have learned attending past Fan Faires and other conventions.  All this may mean nothing if you're the type who can toss a change of undies in a bag and be good for a week, but me, I need to plan a bit.

On the heels of today's announcement about Free Realms reaching the 12 million player landmark, SOE also mentioned that there will be another Double Station Cash Weekend coming up to celebrate the 4th of July. Additionally, non-members will get a taste of membership, when a free trial period will be activated to last through the holiday weekend.

To celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, SOE is running a Double Station Cash Weekend where players can purchase Station Cash^TM cards, excluding Starter Cards, from local retailers, which can be redeemed from Friday, July 2 at 12p.m. PDT to Monday, July 5 at 12a.m. PDT for double their value in Station Cash, which can be used to buy virtual goodies or upgrade to a Membership status in the game. Also, for those who have wanted to see what the buzz is all about, SOE is offering a free trial membership all weekend long. All players will have access to the membership content during the trial period and at the end of the weekend, players will have the option to keep their member status through a variety of multi-month membership payment options.

Double SC will only be rewarded for retail Station Cash cards (excluding the starter cards), which can be found at a variety of vendors. Only game cards redeemed between July 2nd at 12PM PDT and July 5th at 12AM PDT will have their value doubled.