Holy crap. Just got back from Indiana. Me and my sister went all four days, and just... omg. That was the best weekend ever. I took a ton of pictures (and a handful of videos, but not many), I'll have them posted within the next day or two. If someone could provide hosting (or knows of a free hosting service for about 100-200 pictures), It'd be really helpful (I'd rather not stress massassi by attaching them all on the forums)

I just got back, and I'm tired as hell, so I can't think straight at the moment, but I'll tell you all about some of the things I went to (i'll have more information when I can post the pictures, as I'll probably remember things when i'm looking over them)

I was able to see Lucas at the first of his three appearances (had to camp outside at 4 AM in the cold and rain to get in, but hell, it was worth it. more on that later), he only had 20 minutes per appearance so we didn't get to hear much (and there were stormtroopers walking around making sure no one was recording, so I don't have a video of it, but we were allowed to take pictures), but he confirmed the rumors of a Star Wars TV show, and announcing that there's actually going to be two of them; A weekly, half-hour CG-animated series, which I believe he said was a continuation of the clone wars series, but I'm not positive. It sounded like it was pretty well laid out already, so I would expect to hear more about it soon. The second series would start filming in about a year, and will be a live-action spinoff, though not dealing directly with the heroes from the movies (here's hoping for an X-Wing series). He said that he would be in charge of it for the first season to get things set up, but after it got going he wanted to step back and had it off to someone else. That was about all he said, but I mean... This is word from Lucas himself, so I'm confident that means the rumors are absolutely confirmed.


The next notable thing I remember was going to a panel about the future of Star Wars EU. On the panel were two lucasfilm officials (I can't remember their names, unfortunately), Karen Traviss (author of Republic Commando: Hard Contact), Shelly Shapiro (the editor at Del Ray), Aaron Allston (author of the Wraith Squadron series), and Troy Denning (author of Star by Star, Tatooine Ghost, and the upcoming Dark Nest trilogy)

At the panel they announced the opening of a new era: Legacy of the Force. This takes place 37 ABY, a couple of years after the closing of the New Jedi Order. It's going to open with a nine book series (each author will write three books, but they won't be back to back). there will probably be more after the nine-book series, but they havn't gotten that far yet. The series will deal more with the younger characters (the solo twins now being in their twenties, and most of the heroes of the OT being in their sixties), but they say that the original heroes won't be senile old geezers; They promise that we'll still see plenty of action from Han, Luke, and the like in this new series (their catchphrase for the day was "sixty is the new forty"). They weren't giving away much of the story, but there was a projection screen with a vague outline. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, and I don't remember much of it, but I'll see if anyone else I know remembers (or got a better picture than I did). All in all, it was a great panel, and I'm really anticipating the release of this new series. Del Ray sounds very, very interested in getting SWEU organized and back on track (something which Bantam never did), so things look very promising for the future. The first book of the series, currently titled "Betrayel", written by Allston, should be released sometime in 2006.

The second panel I went to was Timothy Zahn discussing his book, Outbound Flight. He mostly talked about what's involved in writing a book, character creation, plot development, and whatnot, so I don't have much to report, but it was very interesting to hear what he had to say nonetheless. He also mentioned that he has another book coming out, I believe also in 2006, with the working title of "Allegiance". He wouldn't give away much, but he said that it would be based between ANH and ESB, revolving around the heroes from the trilogy, and Mara Jade when she was at the height of her power as the Emperor's Hand.

I also stopped by the Lucasarts booth, where they had a couple of shows about Battlefront II, the RotS game, and the new SWG expansion, but unfortunately I didn't have time to stick around for them. I did, however, get some hands-on time with Battlefront II, but I can't say much about it simply because there's not much to say. I only got to play for about ten minutes on the Xbox version (which was awkward for someone who can count on one hand the number of times that he's picked up an xbox controller), and the map it was playing on was the Tantive IV rebels vs imperials. I didn't see any major changes so far, so like I said, not much to say about it. I also entered a Battlefront tournament over at the AMD booth, and that was a bunch of fun (though I lost by three points)

That's about all I can remember for now, but I'll be posting more as I think of it. I'll also see about getting those pictures up. If anyone else attended, feel free to post your experiences here, and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

All in all, though, that was probably like... the best weekend ever. omg. kthxbye.

My friend went. He saw like 30 mins of Episode III or something. He almost crapped himself. :p He was going to get Ackbar to sign 'It's a Trap' for me, but the autograph lines were like 7 hours he said. So he went and saw Lucas instead.

You're the first person I've heard that had a good time.

[url]www.atgig.com[/url] for the hosting. You can host your videos there too.

Dude, that's awesome. Thanks for that

A friend went. Here are some of his pics.

Ol' Georgie Boy.

I call him Mini-Obi.

Ahh! Clones!

Don't we ALL wish?

Some people should NEVER wear costumes.

His head even falls off! What a costume!

TK-421 are you at your pole...err post?!

Han looks angry...His girl got stolen!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa AAAAAhhhhhh ahhagggg!

I love this costume!

Bow down to the Emperor!

I don't know how anyone couldn't have a good time, unless your friends didn't know how to plan anything. The only complaint I've heard, really, is about standing in line, and even that wasn't too bad if you knew how to work around it. We only had to wait maybe 10 minutes to get into the lucasfilm archives, and about 15 for each of the panels. To see lucas, we got there at 4:00 AM to wait outside, but they started letting us into the convention center at 5:00 because it was too cold, and we got into his first appearance, so I imagine people who got there later didn't have to wait very long. The only lines that were unbearable were the line for the store (usually a seven hour wait, and that's only if they don't cut the line off ahead of you), but the store wasn't important enough to bother waiting in line for stuff I was just gonna sell anyway. The other thing that had a long line was the "Star Wars in 30 minutes" show, but that only started getting large lines on Saturday (they were pretty short on thursday and friday). All we needed to do was show up a little early to everything, and we usually got in the first row. It wasn't that bad, unless you didn't know how to plan your time well.

Anyways, thanks for the link, but for some reason atgig isn't working for me... can't load the site, and SAJN's pictures aren't showing up for me. I'll see what I can do to get my pics up ASAP, though

Well the people I heard the experiances from were only able to go for a day. They had to pack-in as much as they could for one day but alot of that included standing in line for the exclusive Vader figure.

My friend wanted to go to the Lucas thing, but he was in line from 7:30am to around 1pm to get the Vader figure and some other stuff. The Lucas tickets sold out by 8am.

Yeah, that's why, then. I didn't even bother with the vader figure; I'm not a collector, so I'd probably just sell it on ebay, and right now I don't really need the money anyway... The lines for the store were insane, though, and the way they were handling it was very inefficient, so yeah, for those that waited it must have been horrible