Posted by Cormeister | 6 Comments

Yellow Posts: Dark Side Appearance, Guild Names, Companion and Item Customization

First up, you’re weekly disclaimer courtesy of Allison Berryman, Senior Community Coordinator. Responding to the post “Now we know but when is the NDA lifted?” (started by Lazorus), Ms. Berryman cautioned against posting anything about your experience with SW:TOR on the official forums if you are a beta tester (even for beta testing weekends) because the Game Testing Agreement (which includes a non-disclosure agreement) is still in effect:

For those asking about the status of the NDA: At this time, the Game Testing Agreement remains in place, and all testers remain bound by it. We know everyone is eager to share their experiences and learn more about the game, but we ask that all testers continue to observe the terms of the agreement. Keep in mind that posting confidential information here on the official forums is against the rules and can lead to moderation actions. Thank you all for your understanding and patience – we’ll definitely let you know if this changes!

David Bass, Senior Community Coordinator, posted in the thread titled “Guilds with the same names?” by DarthRaylast about guilds names. Responding to his post about what will happen with guilds that currently have the same name as another guild in the Guild Headquarters, Mr. Bass said that they will be placed on different servers:

We allow for guilds with the same name to be created multiple times in the Guild Headquarters because we’ll have lots of servers available at launch. Guilds with the same name will automatically be placed on different servers, as guild names are unique per server.

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 5 Comments

Yellow Posts: Player Choice, The Red Zone, and Global Cooldowns

Responding to a lengthy discussion about class roles in SW:TOR, Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, posted a massive thread about BioWare’s intention for class roles titled “Class Design Philosophy (Georg re-post)”. In a nutshell, the primary reason for picking a class should be the story or fantasy that you want to fulfill when playing the game. BioWare does not want players to be excluded from Flashpoints or Operations just because they picked a class that doesn’t have the “best” DPS so they decided to try balance every DPS role’s damage output to be relatively the same. The main difference between the classes is the gameplay and story; obviously a Smuggler Gunslinger will play very differently from a Jedi Knight Sentinal. But at the end of the day, it will be up to the player to choose how they want to DPS or tank or heal in SW:TOR. BioWare is doing their best not to restrict that choice with theorycrafting concerns.

The post is long but is well worth the read. Here is the TL;DR version from Mr. Zoeller:

Q: ‘Why would I play a DPS only Advanced Class if I can play an Advanced Class that can respec to fill other roles?’
A: If that is your main concern, you shouldn’t play that Advanced Class, because you are going to be unhappy about the fact that you cannot switch roles.

Q: Since I can only fill a DPS role, I should do the absolute best damage in the game!
A: Not in SWTOR. We give you get more variety in your DPS gameplay. We maintain balance between all ACs that can fill a role.

Q: What ever happened to being 5% better thing for pure DPS classes?
A: Given class utility and other considerations of why you might want to have someone in your group, 5% is not considered ‘significant’ for the purpose of this conversation.

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 10 Comments

Yellow Posts: More DoTs, Yes To RP-PvP And Leading Men

For those outside North America and the European Union, the release day announcement must be bittersweet. The game won’t officially release in the “red zone” territories until some time after launch so players in those areas will have to jump through hoops to even purchase the game, and then deal with higher latency on NA and EU servers until the game is officially released.

To help answer a few questions, Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manger, posted an update to the situation in the official BioWare post “For those outside The Old Republic’s initial launch territories“:

We haven’t forgotten about anyone outside of our initial launch territories, in fact far from it. Work is progressing on a number of fronts, with the continuing intention to launch The Old Republic as soon as possible in as many territories as possible. You can call that a ‘non-answer’ if you wish but like it or not, that’s where we stand and that’s all I can tell you.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t sate your desire for information, but until we do have some solid news, there isn’t much point in telling you ‘no news yet’ every day or two. When we have news, we’ll share it.

Next up, forum poster Ariadna is adamant that BioWare include some young and handsome human companions to the game. After all, female gamers need some eye candy too! Responding to her suggestion, Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer, stepped in to talk about the companions:

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 9 Comments

Yellow Posts: Development Cycle, Stealth, + Dual-Spec

The last few days have been really exciting what with that minor detail of the release date being officially confirmed and all. The official post on the forums announcing the release date was penned by none other than Dr. Ray and Dr. Greg, co-founders of BioWare. While that news is still hot off the presses, the other devs have been busy as well with polishing the game and communicating with the community on the forums. Forum poster CameronFrye took time away from “borrowing” his fathers vintage Ferrari to post a thread titled “SW:TOR’s development time is totally normal” in which he argues that the time the game has been in development is appropriate for a MMORPG of this size and quality, but that BioWare “mismanaged the project”.

Based on his post, I don’t think “mismanaged the project” is what he actually means (that term is too all-encompassing to be an accurate reflection of his statements), but that the the marketing campaign started too early and got people’s hopes up too early. The thread gets away from him a little bit with many people disputing him and claiming that the development time has been too long for this game. Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, had to step in and clarify that the development time is about the same as other BioWare games:

I would say that it is not much different from other BioWare games. Dragon Age:Origins and Neverwinter Nights had similar development cycles, and they had a lot less content.

The insight into development cycles is quite interesting. To complete SW:TOR in the same amount of time as another game with less content must mean that they have devoted many more resources to working on SW:TOR than they did for those other games. I don’t think any of us really understand yet just how huge SW:TOR is going to be and what I got from Mr. Zoeller’s quote was another indicator of just how huge and intricate the game will be.

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 1 Comment

GDC Online Speaker Spotlight: Georg Zoeller

GDC Online is happening next month, and there’s a full slate of BioWare Austin developers, writers and designers on tap to provide insight into the process of making games. One of the speakers is none other than Principle Lead Combat Designers Georg Zoeller.

Zoeller’s session is entitled “Rapid MMO Content Iteration and Validation with Spatial Analysis in Star Wars: The Old Republic” and the conference organizers have posted a short interview in anticipation of this talk:

GDC:  Can you discuss BioWare’s ‘HoloProjector’ toolkit? What does it do to aid content generation?

Georg Zoeller: HoloProjector is a toolkit that provides a bird’s eye view on the game’s content, from static geometry, sound volumes, and triggers to creatures and vendors.

It reuses the highly detailed in-game map assets and auto generated terrain heightmaps to project and combine asset locations, test data, user interactions, performance metrics and other spatial data in 2D and 3D space into a single workspace where artists, designers and other groups can easily create and share custom data visualizations relevant to their needs on the project, from performance optimization to player behavior analysis.

This is a great read for anyone interested in learning more about how the proverbial sausage is made! Head on over to the GDC Online blog for the entire interview.

Ask A Jedi will be in Austin next month to cover all of the BioWare panels at GDC Online, and perhaps we’ll get a chance to bring back something extra special as well!

Read More