February 1

Next update February 15

Lots of Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic news to get to today, so let’s jump right in.

Since my focus is on SWTOR right now, we’ll start there. There have been a lot of rumors about the actual sales/subscriptions for our little MMO. (And by little I mean the biggest game ever made – the VO alone dwarfs anything else ever produced.) A lot of people have been preaching doom and gloom, but BioWare hasn’t been allowed to give out any numbers to refute them because of the SEC. Basically, the folks that regulate the stock exchanges felt that releasing the numbers before the EA Quarterly report would violate insider trading rules, so we had to stay quiet while speculation ran amok. Lo and behold, it turns out all the nay-sayers were wrong. Kind of like all those rumors about my Revan novel. Or the ending of Dynasty of Evil. Or… well, just about anything on the internet. (Except my website. All Drew, all the time – all truth!)

So now that we’re finally free to talk about this, here are some cool numbers – 2 million units sold, and 1.7 million subscribers so far. I’m expecting those numbers to rise as we continue to churn out expansions and extra content for the game. Click on the link to read the official BioWare release.

And there’s even more exciting news coming out of BioWare – we’re announcing our first ever Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Summit. BioWare loves interacting with our fans, so we’re arranging a special event from March 4-6 in Austin to meet face-to-face. But space is limited, so you have to apply now to get your invitation – just go to the link and follow the instructions in the article.

But Star Wars isn’t the only BioWare franchise making headlines right now. Mass Effect just released this cool video giving you a glimpse of the incredible high-end voice acting talent recruited for ME3. I’m actually very excited about ME3, because it’s the first Mass Effect game that I wasn’t involved in developing. Although I know how the trilogy ends (since we planned it out from the start), I’m really looking forward to seeing all the cool details the Mac Walters and the rest of the writing team have put together to tell the story.

I’ve also been getting a lot of e-mails about the newest Mass Effect novel, asking me what I think. I understand why people want to know, but I wasn’t involved in the creative process for the fourth ME novel, since I was busy working on SWTOR and writing the Revan novel while it was being made. I still haven’t had a chance to read it – my focus is on SWTOR and the new Old Republic novel I’m working on (which I still can’t talk about). And it would be pretty hypocritical of me to post comments on something I haven’t read, considering how often I rant against that exact thing. So if you send me an e-mail asking about Mass Effect: Deception you’ll get a polite “Sorry, but I haven’t read it so I can’t comment.”

Okay, that’s all for this update. Next update – big news. REALLY BIG NEWS. ‘Nuff said.

Drew