Pardon my absence, but I had very important business to attend to — Wrenz and I were the entire Empire cheering section at a recent Jedi Training Academy at Disneyland. See above for the photographic evidence of Lord Vader giving a fledgling knight a little light saber action.

I was psyched to see @Rockjaw‘s announcement on twitter that BETA weekend invites were going out today, and suffered the crush of disappointment upon not finding one in my mailbox. I shall be crossing my fingers that other Mac Bootcamp users will be in there and testing and documenting any difficulties we may have once the game launches…

And to all of you who got in to play this weekend, I am both happy for you and incredibly jealous. And I can’t wait to hear about it!

Thanks to being on vacation and mostly offline for a week, then catching up with work, I’ve fallen behind in my Star Wars the Old Republic news, but here are some of my recent favorites news bits…

• The Eternity Vault Developer Walkthrough released late last week gave a good idea of what the raiding game play will feel like. And I have to say, I liked what I saw. Especially those adorable little heal bots flitting about healing players. So adorable! And have I mentioned recently just how anxious I am to be shooting out purpley lightning?
• Darth Hater is hosting a live Q&A tomorrow night. Great opportunity to pick the team’s brains about what they learned and played at PAX. Oh yeah– and they also filmed the final day’s PAX SWTOR panel.
• Ask a Jedi had a nice post on how the item modification system will allow RPers and other stylish players to retain the looks they want without sacrificing the power their character level allows.

P.S. This one’s an oldie but goodie (and watching it this weekend made me even more impatient to get started playing):