Darth Hater

Game Director James Ohlen posted a new blog on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic site discussing BioWare's priorities for the first few weeks after launch. He also mentions weekly patches will address bug fixes, balance changes, and exploits. Ohlen states that some bugs are minor and are easy to fix, while others may take more time and attention from the development team.

James Ohlen

In my last two posts, I talked about how we will be adding new game systems and content in future patches. I also mentioned that we will be continuing to put effort toward bug fixing, balance changes and exploit proofing. But I didn't give too much information on what we're doing in that regard. So here are some more details on the topic.

Almost every week we will be releasing a new patch. These weekly patches are almost entirely focused on bug fixes, minor balance changes and fixing any exploits in the game. These issues are the highest priority items at the studio. They are reviewed by senior leadership on a daily basis. Bug fixes usually take longer than a week to get into the game because we need to fix the issue and then test the fix. Some bugs take longer than that because of the complexity of the issue.

There are issues that we will fix immediately. These are rare and not every issue can be fixed in this manner. We usually reserve these "emergency fixes" for bugs that are stopping players from playing the game or to exploits that could unbalance the entire game if not corrected.

Any game as big and as complex as The Old Republic will have bugs. We’re working as hard as we can to find, fix, test and patch the game to eliminate as many of them as possible.

James Ohlen
Game Director

 Feel free to join the discussion on the official forum if you wish to chime in directly.