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Bioware Director of Production Dallas Dickinson and Fragworld.Org Correspondent Brad Whelen
This is the Bioware base .. We have Star Wars The Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age here
What is your favorite other MMO?
Star Wars The Old Republic ...Besides that...
I think I am contractually obligated not to say anything else
Now I will say if you want to kick it old school.. I was a huge fan in fact of Planetside
So that was one of my favorite MMOs from back in the day
Now what makes Star Wars similar to the other MMOs out there?
Well we don't want to throw away what works
There are a lot of elements familiar if you are a veteran MMO gamer
When you talk about operations its very much a raid oriented game. You get multiple groups together to do the highest level content in the game and try and get the highest rewards
that you can find in the game. I think that's something mmo fans are familiar with and expect.
Our flashpoints are specific heroic things that you can run with your party maybe several times to get all the awesome loot
PvP, our warzones are something that you have seen in a lot of other MMOs
We just had an Epic Box Drop here It went over and under, pretty awesome.
What we are trying to do that is different is bring in Bioware Storytelling, the kind of story you expect from a bioware RPG
where you are making significant decisions for your character that give you a very personal story
that is very different from some story of someone else playing the game
I understand so the experience is very individualized and unique for each person
So Beta testing has been going on for a while now. How has that gamer feedback been brought into game development?
A couple of the announcements we have made this week our very much based on community feedback.
One of the things we hears loud and clear was that players want to customize their companions.
Its something we hotly debated within the design team but in the end we decided the community was right.
If your playing a sith warrior your first companion you get is vette. Being able to change the way she looks is pretty important so you feel that she is yours
You can change her features you can give her yellow skin, red skin so that makes more sense
We also talked about our speeder bikes. We announced them at E3 and people got to play it on Tatooine
The feedback we got was it feels really slow and therefore it doesn't fell like the experience you would expect from a star wars game.
So looked at that again and said they were right. The bikes in Star Wars are fast and you want the heroic star wars experience
Not only did we up the base speed of the bikes we actually made it so there are ones you can upgrade to that looks really fast.
Speeder bikes that you me recognize from the forest moon of endor. We have several that look kinda like that one.
We in fact have put in landscape kinda similar to Luke's ride.
Again this is from playtime we put the game out there we let the community play it and we are taking their feedback and taking it very seriously.
Thats great. So now what do you have in the game that makes it Massive.
Boy hopefully its doing all the hard work we are putting into it
One of the ways in which its massive is just the amount of content. We talk a lot about the fact that it has full voiceover. Something no one has done in an MMO before.
Its not just voiceover its in the Bioware sense. So when you play the game you get hundreds of hours of unique story.
so if you play the entire game as a Jedi Knight, several hundred hours of unique story.
You want to start again as a Bounty Hunter you may not see a single duplicate
So again hundreds of hours of unique replay
Now what are you guys with PvP how big can the battles get?
I don' t think we have a max cap yet. WE have shown a couple different PvP things
Gabe is the one that actually is showing the hands on. People are actually checking it out. WE are setting up 8v8 right now.
Now where are you guys at with the guild features of the game?
That is actually mostly to show off the advanced classes. So you can actually see the way both smuggler classes play.
that is what we are showing off right now the 8v8 but I don't think we have revealed all the details about all the PVP Warzones and what their limits are
So you can sign up on the web with your guild.
The intention is that you can be in with your guild you can be already associated with your guild at launch
You will be able to be in the game. You can associate and interact with your guild in the game and on the website.
Its one of the things we are really committed to. give you a social experience.
Its one of the great things that really brings people together and binds them tightly we want to make sure thats supported.
We are allowing people to set up rivalries. We had talked a little bit about that.
Is there any Guild vs Guild Capabilities at all?
There aren't any specific in game mechanics there right now that we are talking about. We expect thats the way its going to be.
The bigger guild out there that play other games we expect them to bring their rivalries with them.
Tell us about after launch content. How often do you see adding new features and content?
I don't think I can give you a full answer on that. I can say there will absolutely going to be post release content that comes into the game.
The average player is constantly getting new fun stuff. Periodically there will be larger updates.
Even some features that we really just want to get into the game
right now we are just focusing on getting everything into release. We are holding some stuff until we finish.
So what are some stuff that you are working on?
I am trying to make sure I am playing each class end to end.
I'm done with the sage right now its getting down to the wire. I need to know the game inside out.
I have to know the classes end to end so I can have intelligent discussions.
Thats really the best part of my job.
Now whats the hardest part of your job?
Making tough calls and making tough decisions.
We have all sorts of lists. We have all these awesome ideas and great designs.
the Litttlest minature designs that we would love to add to the game.
Having to be one of the people that decides if we put it into the game.
Sometimes we have to say that is a really awesome idea but we need to hold that off because we need to focus on making sure whats in the game is super polished.
We do a lot of that in Triage. We say that will be in right after launch.
Yea but then it stays in development and goes on even longer.
Exactly but its hard there a lot of things that you are like but it would be awesome .
You can't put everything in. Exactly. Well thats all the questions we have. Thanks for the interview.
