Tonight was supposed to be a display of Imperial wealth and power. A gala event hosted by the Ambassador Kruven Medlem and his staff was to give the locals a taste of life under our glorious Emperor. 

Instead it has turned into a night of tragedy! Agents of the Republic Strategic Information Service snuck up to the Ambassador under the guise of merchants and stabbed him. Lord Medlem was rushed to the med center in the Imperial Quarter of Voss-Ka, but no official statement has yet been given on his status. 

The agents who carried out this brutish attack were gunned down, and the streets are clear of revelers for the night, but only time will tell where this leads. The Minister of War is expected to give a speech soon on this brazen Republic attack. 

The Rakghoul plague outbreak on the planet Tatooine has been contained. Imperial forces based in Mos Ila report that all known infestations have been eradicated. At this time the Ministry of Logistics has released the travel ban on Tatooine, but visitors are still urged to be cautious. 

Due to the possibility of lingering infections, medical stations across the Empire will continue to stock the plague vaccine in the ongoing effort to eliminate the Rakghoul plague completley. 

If you or anyone you know exhibit symptoms of the Rakghoul plague, it is your duty to help contain the outbreak. Report any infected to the nearest Imperial Military Outpost. Failure to comply is treason.

The planet Tatooine has been the site of a major Rakghoul plague outbreak. Authorities believe the Rakghoul threat has spread to densely populated areas. 

Do not land on Tatooine. 

Furthermore, do not answer distress calls or other communications from the planet without official clearance. The Ministry of Logistics will advise when this travel ban has expired. Until then, remain vigilant, keep calm, and avoid Tatooine.

It's finally here! Game Update 1.2 is finally available along with a whole host of features and improvements to The Old Republic. There is a new Operation, a new Warzone, and even features for roleplayers like color matching on player armor. There's so many new features that it's almost mind boggling just how much BioWare managed to cram into one update, even if some things like Ranked Warzones had to be postponed. In celebration of the launch of Game Update 1.2, BioWare has announced a number of gifts to TOR's community.

First is an adorable little Tauntaun pet. Anyone who had an active subscription when the patch went live got one of these adorable little critters to follow you around in your adventures. Along with the handful of droids that came with launch, this little furball represents a future area of expansion for TOR, with more pets and even pet shops scheduled to be added sometime in the future.

One thing you may be excited or infuriated to know is that anyone who had a level 50 character when the patch went live will get a full month of game time free! Sorry altaholics, but any account that doesn't have a level 50 character will be left out in the cold. Speaking of free game time though, if you cancelled your TOR subscription before, you now have a full week of free time to come back and check out all the new additions, and hopefully decide to rejoin the game. Let us know what you think of this little celebration, and enjoy the new content!

Greg Zeschuk has updated the Legacy free thirty day offer after a community outcry. Those that have reached level 6 of the Legacy grind will now also enjoy 30 complimentary days on BioWare. 

View the forum post here. 

Longtime readers will remember we covered this topic almost a year ago when BioWare first confirmed that same-gender romances would be in The Old Republic, reversing an earlier statement by a now-fired employee who said there was no such thing as homosexuality in the Star Wars universe. Even if that were true, BioWare has already shown their ability to disregard canon. George Lucas told Carrie Fischer on the set of Return of a Jedi that there were no bras in space, and yet if you undress a female character, and lets face it you have, you'll see them wearing a simple sports bra. Back at the Guild Summit I got to talk to some of the writing staff about this issue too, so let's dive in and talk about it in this week's edition of The Darker Side of Life.

Topping the list is a mention in Friday's panel that the development team is working on additional races for the game, and we may see them before the end of the year. At Saturday's panel, one person even got to ask about a possible Voss playable race. Not right now, but a great idea was the response. Just as exciting is news that space will become more free-form and come off the rails. We know excruciatingly little about the future of space other than guild capital ships are still a go. Still, it will be exciting to see what the future may hold for us. Keep reading after the break to see what else I've got for you.

Another week, another round of question and answer by the BioWare staff! As with the previous few editions of the Community Q&A, this week's centers around the immenent Game Update 1.2, which according to some of the talk coming out of PAX East this weekend may be coming out as soon as next week. While there's not too much in the way of roleplaying interest to talk about from this week's edition, I do have one clarification I personally got from David Bass yesterday. Legacy Unlocks will require a minimum level and either credits, or a special other unlock. For instance, you can unlock a race for all classes by obtaining a minimum legacy level and a character of that race at level 50 or  a fee of 1-2 million credits. Unfortunately, ship unlocks don't have a special way to earn them; you'll be paying 500,000 credits for a mailbox and a whopping 5 Million credits for a shipboard GTN. 

Anyways, onto the real meat. PvP gear will have its stats re-worked to favor expertise over traditional stats. This is to discourage people from using them in PvE content. The current commendations will be depreciated, so spend them now. In the future you'll be able to stack up to 2,000 Warzone Commendations. Reverse Engineering is also getting an overhaul and a tooltip to tell you the chances of getting a schematic, if any. You'll also get some character titles if you've been levelling on the Test Server. That's really it for this week, so tell us what you think now in the comments section!

It's time again for another of SWTOR-RP's monthly Guild Spotlight series! For this month, I sat down with a few officers of Shien's The Jade Company. As our first spotlight on the Shien server, it's a great look into the fledgling roleplay community there. In addition, this is a bit late. It's because our original interview time got interrupted when I was at the Guild Summit. One of the things I learned there was that there are many more Imperial than Republic players, and Republic-side roleplay is struggling on almost every server. Shien seems to be doing fine though, and as you'll see in this article, they've got one hell of a guild leading the way and helping to establish storylines and roleplay on their server for Republic players.

The Jade Company is a Republic-aligned paramilitary organization that takes both Jedi and non-Force Sensitives. One of their officers, Sebastian Kyle, also works on SWTOR-RP's staff as one of our Wiki Editors, and is responsible for most of the formatting on the wiki, as well as the page creators that make getting started easy. If you're on the Shien server, or considering moving to look for Republic roleplay, The Jade Company certainly seems dedicated to the community, and as you'll read in a moment, committed to good storytelling as well.