According to Wikipedia, the first of its kind actually took place way back in 1999, with its main focus being the promotion of Episode I. It was then repeated for the releases of the next two films, and after the franchise's 30th anniversary Lucasfilm started to hold them more regularly, once every one or two years.
It's hard for me to tell how much SWTOR has been featured there in the past. I couldn't really find any mention of it before 2015, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Bioware didn't at least have a booth or something. I found a forum poster complaining in 2012 that SWTOR was "no longer" going to be at Celebration, but I don't know if that means that they were featured before and stopped or whether it was just planned and then cancelled. In 2015 there was at least an associated Community Cantina, but I'm not sure SWTOR was featured on the show floor. This video by an excited SWTOR player talking about his trip to Celebration seems to indicate a no; otherwise it probably would have been mentioned.
2016 was only the second year that Celebration took place in Europe, and also marked the second time that I got to go to a Community Cantina! There, SWTOR was also briefly featured on the actual Celebration stage itself, basically just to promote the game to a wider audience and tease Knights of the Eternal Throne. 2017 it looked like they were back to "just" having a Cantina event though - as far as I could tell from googling it anyway - and 2018 was one of those years when there wasn't a Celebration.
So it looks like this year's event might turn out to be SWTOR's biggest in terms of presence yet! Not only will Bioware be hosting a "special event" that was worthy of being mentioned on the official Star Wars site, there is also going to be a bigger fan presence than ever. Under the leadership of the lovely Swtorista (I feel like such a fangirl, mentioning her three times in one month, haha) this community effort even has its own website under swtorfancommunity.com. While the site was specifically set up for the event, it also contains a lot of "evergreen" content such as links to various fan resources as well as an excellent new guild finder tool which I really need to remember to add to my side bar. (And I don't just say that because this blog is also included among the fan site links.)
While at Celebration, the enthusiastic peeps present at the fan booth are planning to hand out swag, show off some awesome cosplay, and will also try to make those of us feel connected who can't be there in person, both via streaming and things like Twitter updates. There have also been some giveaways and contests via various channels already, such as - again - Twitter or the SWTOR Discord. I've entered a few of them myself, not so much because I desperately want any of the prizes, but simply because it's fun! Can't say I ever felt inspired to write a haiku about trooper-dom before... they are still going on at the time of writing, so just follow some of those links on the official community site and you should be able to join in the fun.
Giveaway stuff starts here!
And the lucky winner, determined by an in-game /roll 7 (the number of entries), is...
Commenter #2, fellow blogger Intisar from Star Forge!
Congratulations! :D
In fact, I've been allowed to join in myself by giving away a 30 day time code for SWTOR! How cool is that? That's the first time I'm holding a giveaway that I didn't have to pay for myself, hah! All you have to do to be in the running to win it is this:
1. Leave a comment in response to this post telling me about what you'd really love to see in SWTOR's next big update/expansion. A new operation? New romanceable companions? Another big showdown between Satele Shan and Darth Malgus? Feel free to go into as much or as little detail as you like.
2. At the end of your comment, leave your character name, faction and server name. This is so I have a way of contacting you if you win! This doesn't have to be your main if you're shy, just somewhere where I can mail the code if you win so that you will actually receive it. Alternatively, if you use Twitter you can leave your Twitter handle instead.
The blog is set up to allow anonymous comments, so as long as you can cope with CAPTCHAs you don't have to sign up with any third party service like OpenID to participate. However, should you still have issues commenting on this post for some reason, feel free to drop me an e-mail with what your comment was supposed to be and I will post it for you.
While I hope that people will leave thoughtful comments that will be enjoyable to read, they won't be rated by quality and the winner will be drawn at random from all eligible participants. You have until 8 am GMT on the 14th of April to enter (you'll have to check yourself when that is in your local time zone), at which point I'll close the comments for this post and announce the winner later in the day. By then we should also know at least some things about what's coming in the next big update, so no need to guess anymore!
