Posted by Zlatto in News | 6 Comments
Zlatto's Bazaar: Open For Business
Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often. Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…
One might ask “Why would anyone want to be writing a column about the non-combat side of SW:TOR?”
I mean, what use could there be in generating discussions about something that we can’t yet get specifics on? To make credits of course! A Toydarian won’t even break wind without some sort of monetary compensation. [funny side note: since we generate a lighter than air gas to help us in our flight, when I see a human child walking by with a floating balloon I know one of my brethren is making some money.]
Where was I? Oh yeah…
The collective addiction to SW:TOR on Ask A Jedi has drawn me to impose upon Lethality for some web space to start some re-occurring chatter about Crew Skills, SW:TOR economics and the desire to create credits. It is only a matter of time before those who have spent time playing will share their ideas and concepts, so why shouldn’t we all profit?
When I see bits shared like the quote below, I smell credits to be made (I mean, come on, with a snout like mine you know I smell opportunity easily.) The quote below I poached from Swtorcrafter’s interview on Crew Skills (this guy is going to be an economic dynamo, I look forward stealing a lot of ideas and concepts from him):
Damion Schubert: “We try to make it so that hardcore crafters do bring something to the server that they’re on that casual crafters can’t. What we want is the casual crafter is mostly interested in crafting for himself and crafting for his companion characters, but other than that he is not really doing much other than that. And the dedicated crafters, they have access – through special means we haven’t talked about yet – in order to pursue recipes that are very rare on their entire server. We actually think it’s good and exciting and interesting to be the only guy on a shard that can make these kind of pants.”
I cannot wait to hear how we will accomplish these achievements.
Will the SW:TOR system be a WoW-like means to an end where only gold farmers and high end raiders make a profit? Or something closer to EvE and pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies where any player interested in crafting can truly find their place in a game that is interesting, challenging, and fun?
The comments and opinions of those who follow this site have value, and I look forward to cashing in on all of them.
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I hope it doesn’t result into a heartless land of gold farmers devoid of what really makes the SW franchise great. Crafters who really appreciate the game are a must. I agree that there needs to be a middle ground to attract and retain the casual crafters, and it will be interesting to see what SW:TOR has up its sleeves. SW:TOR has the benefit of learning from WoW, so I am optimistic.
Do you think SWTOR will shift more towards WOW crafting because of the volume of players it has been able to keep paying monthly?
Thanks for the comments octoad and Taltos, I hope you continue to check back for more info. Warcraft will be a ruler by which SWTOR will be measured in many ways. My hope is that Bioware can learn about the behavior of MMORPG players but move beyond the grind items of no impact or value efforts seen in many MMO’s. If their quest system is supposed to favor meaning story based chains over kill-grinding then I can only hope the crafting team at Bioware has the same goal.
Another big issue with a crafting ecosystem is how to balance it on different population servers. One thing I have noticed in most games, even in WoW, is crafting requires a high pop server, not just for people to consume the good but also for people to gather them. Gold farmers make out on smaller pop servers because there is less competition and no other way to get the resources but then in turn they do not purchase the goods created. Eventually you see people migrate to the highest pop server/factions and the others become wastelands in part because goods/services are too scarce.
Zlatto, I am very excited to see someone take up the effort to write about things that i am totally interested in. I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us!
Thank you for the nod I appreciate it, it is awesome to know someone is reading what i put the effort into writing.
you couldn’t have picked a better place to preach the word brother, askajedi full of great people and is a awesome site and hopefully you all will go far together!
I have been lurking on http://www.swtor-life.com for a long while. I look forward to great posts, and adding yourself and those who follow your posts to my list of in game ppl to message.
I look forward to you or Lethality getting some face to face time with Schubert, as i know more answers about the non-combat mechanics.
If one of us can just get some in game clicking time, we will be able to get some more fun posts up.