Next week, Star Wars: The Old Republic will launch (pre-orders should already have access to the virtual world); it is co-developed by Bioware, EA, and Lucasarts.

One virtual world ends while another one begins. This is the apparent immediacy of the Internet-enabled present. However, the transitional switch took years in planning, production, and testing.

More to come soon . . .

Lego’s newest version of the Millennium Falcon is the truest version yet to what we see in the original Star Wars film. Go here for more views of the Falcon’s interior to see why. I will have to save my lunch money to get one of these to build!

From Bricks to Bothans posted pictures of the upcoming Super Star Destroyer set from Lego. Darth Vader’s flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi looks most impressive. It includes minifigs of Darth Vader, Admiral Firmus Piett, IG-88, Dengar, and Bossk. Unfortunately, like the awesome Death Star set, it is priced out of my budget at $399, but I am sure some luck Lego builders will enjoy it regardless of its high cost.

I found this gem on BoingBoing yesterday morning. “George Lucas Strikes Back” is an over-the-top movie idea presented in the form of a movie trailer without a movie. These types of trailers are created by fans and filmmakers as a way to pitch an idea or present a “what if” scenario. They can also be used as leverage for funding to make a full short or long film based on the concept presented in the trailer.

“George Lucas Strikes Back” posits that the real Lucas was kidnapped after Return of the Jedi when he began talking publicly about making smaller budget films. It was, according to the logic of the trailer, an evil, logical mastermind who replaced the real Lucas with a fake Lucas, supported by Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, and Clone Troopers, who went on to create the Star Wars prequels and the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones films. It is irreverent and fun. I recommend checking it out.

I blogged earlier this month that Lucasfilm/Lucasonline plans to shutter forums.starwars.com at the beginning of June 2011.

Today, a commenter asked for help with the Archive Team’s effort to preserve the site–something that they have already done with the Star Wars forums on Yahoo.com. The details are below:

An effort to preserve a public copy of forums.starwars.com is underway by the ArchiveTeam.org. If you are a Linux user (there’s a coordination script) w/ grep 2.6.2, bandwidth to spare and multiple GBs of free harddrive space to save thousands of 4k-12k .html files. Please stop by the irc. #archivestrikesback irc.efnet.org (or the main ArchiveTeam irc #archiveteam)
[or if you can wget, we'll figure something out]

The ArchiveTeam.org in the past preserved starwars.yahoo.com before it’s demise, in addition to non-SW saves like Geocities and currently working on Friendster.

More details of the archiving effort are available on their mediawiki-enabled site here.