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Free To Play Questions Answered
- By Jaspor 10/29/2012 2:26:19 PM
- Category IconSWTOR News
- 10
With the upcoming Free to Play system coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic in the near future, BioWare used their official forums to collect questions from the community last week. Senior Producer Blaine Christine has now answered several of those questions. Among the revelations are that Free and Preferred players will be limited to two character slots per server and the credit cap for Preferred players will be 350k credits. (As opposed to 200k credits for F2P players.)

BioWare

VarrusTheEthical: How often can we expect new content to appear on the Cartel Market?

Blaine: You’ll see regular adjustments to the Market that line up with game patches. We plan to make content additions as often as once a month (including new Cartel Packs!), but the major releases will be every 4-6 months.

The full Q&A can be found after the jump.

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Tags Blaine Christine free to play

10 latest comment by Roflmacwaffles
Fan Site Summit: Question and Answer Session Audio
- By darthuser2095 4/28/2011 10:36:48 AM
- Category IconSWTOR News
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During at the Fan Site Summit, BioWare fielded questions from the Fan Site Community in attendance. The question and answer sessions covered a range of topics relevant to the developer answering questions at the time. After the session concluded and the summit ended, BioWare made the audio of the sessions available to fan sites. As such, the sessions are available via links below. A transcription of the sessions will follow soon.
- Georg Zoeller Q&A
- Blaine Christine and Daniel Erickson Q&A
- Damion Schubert Q&A
- Writers Q&A (Recorded by us.)
Embeds of the audio are contained after the jump.
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Tags BioWare Daniel Erickson Q&A Blaine Christine Damion Schubert Georg Zoeller Fan Site Summit

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Friday Update: 'Living the Life of a Live Producer' Developer Blog
- By CherithFel 2/25/2011 4:42:43 PM
- Category IconSWTOR News
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Today's Friday update features a Developer Blog from Live Producer Blaine Christine. He discusses what his job entails and his role in the Star Wars: The Old Republic game testing process. He also included some quotes from various game testers.

Blaine Christine

I work with the development team to ensure that anything released to our fans (read you!) meets the quality standards that are so important to any BioWare product. That means any time a new build of the game makes it into our Game Testing Program, I need to ensure that any content or features that we specifically want to have tested meet the designers needs and don't contain any major bugs.

Update: Stephen Reid explains the reason for the Developer Blog showing up this week and hints at a heroic update incoming next week leading into PAX.

Stephen Reid

A little peek behind the curtain.

This week's blog was originally intended to be part of next Friday's update. We ran into some unexpected issues finalizing this Friday's originally scheduled content, and so chose to move that content out to next Friday. As a result, next week, you'll get an update-and-a-half... and then after that, you'll soon see the cool stuff we've all been hard at work on for PAX East.

Part of the reasoning for this blog was to give you a peek into some of the feedback we got from our Game Testers; on the whole, feedback has been very positive and we're excited to see the response. We also wanted to remind everyone about our Game Testing Program, as feedback from our community so far has been extremely valuable to the development of The Old Republic.

We realize we can't please 'all of the people, all of the time' but we remain committed to giving you regular updates on the development and features of The Old Republic.

More excerpts from the Developer Blog and official yellow post follows after the jump.

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Tags Developer Blog Friday Update Penny Arcade Expo Blaine Christine Testing Alyson Bridge Stephen Reid

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Friday Update: Fan Friday, Studio Insider, and PAX East Announcement
- By CherithFel 1/14/2011 3:40:49 PM
- Category IconSWTOR News
- 48
It's another Fan Friday this week for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Forum member Greighson's Sith-themed propaganda posters act as a throwback to World War II. User Crypticgrrl created portraits of several characters, including a Twi'lek dancing girl. Kharmis wrote a fan fiction about the Republic Troopers. Also, the forums added new smilies and avatars. For more interaction, participate in the two new polls: Whats your favorite part of being in a guild? and What Fan Site is your favorite to regularly visit? Also included in this week's update is a new Studio Insider with Senior Concept Artist Ryan Dening and Senior Environment Artist Christopher Reeves on Starship Creation and a Community Q&A with Senior Producer Blaine Christine.

In addition, BioWare officially announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be present at PAX East in March.

BioWare also released concept art of Dromund Kass, Tatooine, and Belsavis.

UPDATE: Stephen Reid revealed in a conversation post the amount of classes in each faction that can fulfill a healing role increased from two to three:

Stephen Reid

BioWare Austin's policy on info release (which is not, in case you were wondering, a cast iron, legally binding, break-this-rule-and-you're-getting-fired sort of thing*) is to not talk about aspects of the game until we're ready to talk about them. Generally that means when they are, to some degree, finished - but, game development is a constant process and things change.

For instance, until this week, like most of you, I understood that two Advanced Classes (for Republic and Empire) would be able to act as healers. Thanks to the Game Testing program and numerous other factors, Georg Zoeller and his team upped the number to three on each side. They did that because ultimately they felt it was better for the game.

DevTracker posts continue after the jump.

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Tags Community Friday Update Fan Friday Penny Arcade Expo Imperial Agent Blaine Christine X-70B Phantom-Class Prototype Studio Insider Community Q&A Ryan Dening Christopher Reeves

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Details on SWTOR Warzones and Crafting Revealed
- By Snodge 11/5/2010 10:00:00 AM
- Category IconSWTOR News
- 101
Yesterday, Electronic Arts presented its annual Winter Showcase in London, and Darth Hater was there to watch for news on Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare revealed the Imperial Agent at last year's showcase, so our expectation bar raised a few notches. With information on both PvP Warzones and the eagerly anticipated crafting system, this European event did not disappoint.

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Tags Interview PVP Sith Warrior Blaine Christine Alderaan Vette Warzone EA Winter Showcase 2010 Crafting Gathering Missions Gabe Amatangelo Treasure Hunting Bio Analysis Slicing Artifice Biochem Diplomacy

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PAX: Interview With BioWare's Blaine Christine
- By sado 9/4/2010 1:56:59 AM
- Category IconSWTOR News
- 71
To kick off our time at PAX and tide us over until tomorrow's presentation, BioWare's Blaine Christine spoke with us for a bit about the differences and similarities of Advanced Classes, plus the various multi-player aspects of questing, companions, and exploration. Of course, we couldn't resist asking about a few other controversial things such as their view of the community uproar over the naming of the Jedi Wizard, or what drove the decision to implement class trainers.

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Tags Interview Penny Arcade Expo Companion Imperial Agent Blaine Christine Advanced Classes

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E3: Presentation with Blaine Christine
- By darthuser162 6/16/2010 1:03:28 AM
- Category IconSWTOR News
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We were lucky enough to be the first group to see Star Wars: The Old Republic on the E3 show floor today. Before getting our hands on time and interviews were treated to an official presentation by BioWare's Blaine Christine. In addition to seeing the new trailer, we learned all about the marketing focus during this years Electronic Entertainment Expo.

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Tags BioWare Blaine Christine Alderaan E3 Player Ship Warzone Fury Vanguard Corvette Imperial Transport

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Darth Hater's E3 Coverage
- By emlaeh 6/11/2010 6:34:05 AM
- Category IconSite News
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As BioWare's Sean Dahlberg said about Star Wars: The Old Republic activities for E3:

If you mean our updates, yes. We'll be updating the website each day with something new from E3. The daily updates (meaning a new update each day) won't be starting until June 14th (in the afternoon). In fact, if you watch the count-down banner on the homepage, you'll know exactly when we'll first update the news article.

DH E3 Content:
...the Darth Hater team will have coverage from on-site at E3, and in-depth looks at the official updates every day.

Monday, June 21 at 6p PST / 9p EST - Live Q&A with the Darth Hater team on our Vent server to answer all of your questions. Set your Ventrilo client to vent.darthhater.com with port 26166 in order to participate.
No true Hater would be without proper attire, so we decided to make available for purchase to the general public four of the eight shirt designs the team is wearing at E3. Click on your favorite Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG pillar to purchase.

Story

Exploration

Combat
Progression
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Tags Interview Ability Daniel Erickson Blaine Christine E3

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Smuggler Class Trees
- By darthuser162 12/3/2009 8:12:41 AM
- Category IconFeature
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Character advancement and customization are integral parts of all RPGs and many titles have succeeded or failed solely because of their approach to these mechanics. For over a year now, we have waited patiently for the first hints of how we will customize our characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic and now the first official clues are being revealed. During our time at LucasArts we were able to see a small example of how advancement and customization will be handled in TOR.

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Tags Combat Smuggler Jake Neri Class Gameplay Blaine Christine Leland Chee December 3rd

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Companion Characters
- By darthuser162 12/3/2009 8:08:37 AM
- Category IconFeature
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Over the years, MMOs have replicated many aspects of single player RPGs, and BioWare is continuing that trend with the addition of companion characters. A hallmark of BioWares previous titles, these characters are designed to develop story lines and assist in combat. During the presentation in San Francisco we were given two examples of the type of companions we will see in The Old Republic.

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Tags Combat Jake Neri Gameplay Companion Blaine Christine December 3rd Sith Inquisitor Dashade Kim Vaal Xalek Kaleesh

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Misinformation on Microtransactions
- By sado 9/14/2009 10:11:13 AM
- Category IconSWTOR News
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There seems to be quite the amount of misinformation making the rounds on the forum as of late and in an attempt to quell the flames I need to reiterate that Bioware has not made any statements regarding a use of a payment model whatsoever. This discussion started way back when EA Boss Riccitiello stated that The Old Republic's payment model would be microtransaction based. EA then sometime after retracted the statement attributing the comments to a misunderstanding. Flash forward to this last week when LucasArts President Darrell Rodriguez was interviewed by GamesIndustry on the payment model, speculation ensued from one quote:

And on that point of business models, he added: "Yeah, were considering it all, absolutely."

"You start looking at how different communities, territories such as Asia, actually play games, and we start to consider it all especially if we want it to be a worldwide phenomenon."

Many people on the forum then took that comment out of context as a confirmation of a microtransaction model being used in the US and other territories even though the quote does not say or confirm anything near that. Furthermore in an interview with TenTonHammer, Blaine Christine was quick to dismiss the rumor:

Ten Ton Hammer: Rumors persist about microtransactions in The Old Republic. Are the rumors accurate or not?

Blaine Christine: The bottom line with that is that its a total rumor since we havent talked about pricing structure or subscription plans at all. So people dont need to worry about anything if that is a worry we will do whatever makes sense for the game.

You can stop claiming that they're using a microtransaction model from those comments as confirmation now ;) .

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Tags LucasArts Electronic Arts Blaine Christine Payment Microtransaction Darrell Rodriguez Riccitiello

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PAX Review
- By Sleeper 9/9/2009 12:59:14 AM
- Category IconFeature
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Well with PAX coming to a close, it is a sad day Mainly because I had to leave the "Oh so beautiful Seattle, Washington". There is MUCH to cover, and instead of covering JUST the demo, I would much rather cover my experience at PAX

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Tags Donna Prior Planet Nal Hutta Coruscant Sean Dahlberg Penny Arcade Expo Leo Olebe Jake Neri Dallas Dickinson Blaine Christine Tim Temmerman

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Day 1 Developer Q&A Session (Full-Audio)
- By sado 9/4/2009 9:14:14 PM
- Category IconSWTOR News
- 14
We just got out of the day 1 developer Q&A session that Bioware held and it was AWESOME. We asked if we could get confirmation on two force using classes per faction and you could speculate on whether or not they did (not clear from the audio). The audio of the entire Q&A is below. Enjoy ;).

Note: First 2 seconds is really loud, try to have your volume low for that portion.

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Tags LucasArts Video Developer Penny Arcade Expo Audio BioWare Jake Neri Q&A Rob Cowles Blaine Christine

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