Darth Hater

Star Wars: The Old Republic News, Interviews, Media & Podcast

  • BioWare Introduces Jeff Hickman As Executive Producer, Live Services

    In the wake of BioWare Austin's Co-Studio General Manager Gordon Walton leaving Star Wars: The Old Republic developer for Playdom, there were big shoes to fill. Many wondered who would fill Gordon Walton's shoes and now we know. During the Fan Site Summit event, Stephen Reid explained that Jeff Hickman joined BioWare to take on the role left open by Gordon Walton's departure. Many of you may know Jeff Hickman from Mythic Entertainment where he worked on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and Dark Age of Camelot. By completing the transition to BioWare, Jeff Hickman's new title becomes Executive Producer, Live Services for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

    From all of us at Darth Hater, we wish him the best during his time with BioWare on SWTOR and look forward to interviewing him in the future.

  • GDC: Localizing Star Wars: The Old Republic

    The 2011 Game Developer Conference takes place this week and as scheduled, the first of BioWare's panels discusses Localizing Star Wars: The Old Republic called "Localization and Development: A Love Story...That Leads to Great Business!" Gamasutra brings us the details of this talk on Localization lead by Gordon Walton of Playdom (formerly Co-Studio Director of BioWare Austin) and BioWare's Localization Representative Ian Mitchell.

    "We have dedicated teams building our localization toolsets," he said. "I can't stress enough how important it is to have good tools. [If not], your process can't be facilitated and it makes it impossible" to get the development team to work with you.

    The tools are built "to empower the localization team"; it's a cross-project tool suite because this "encourages reuse and helps sharing of knowledge" He describes BioWare's localization tools as "an organic construction of tools that build on one another."

    Check out Gamasutra for the article in its entirety.

  • Friday Update: Fan Friday



    Today's update is a Fan Friday, which of course brings with it a Studio Insider: an in-depth look at Concept Artist Diego Almazan's creation of a Sith Temple. The Fan Friday includes some new concept art scenes that look to include pieces from Alderaan, Taris, Voss, Nar Shaddaa, and Hutta; a selection of new emoticons, and some new creature avatars. Fan site Mos Eisley Radio got the spotlight shone on them, and the chance to answer some questions from BioWare.

    The Community Q&A thread to go along with the Fan Friday is focused on Flashpoints, which should mean plenty of answers about TOR's answers to dungeons coming down the pipe in a few weeks. Head on over to the official thread and ask the devs some of those burning and insightful questions you have!

    As usual for a Fan Friday, there's a couple of new polls up on the forums. The first is Where do you spend most of your time on the forums, and the second is Which Flashpoint are you most interested in so far?

    As we mentioned on Tuesday, Gordon Walton, BioWare Austin's co-Studio General Manager, has left BioWare. Stephen Reid stepped in to the forums to talk about Walton's recent departure--or more accurately, to pass along Gordon's own words about his departure. Stephen reports that "Gordon's a great guy and left us on great terms, we thought we'd give him one last right of reply." His quote, along with lots of juicy tidbits from the Studio Insider, available after the jump. You can also find our Media Gallery of the update below.

    Gallery: 2.18.10 Fan Friday Concept Art

    Sith Temple Concept
    Voss Concept
    Taris Concept
    Nar Shaddaa Concept

  • Gordon Walton Leaves BioWare

    BioWare Austin's Co-Studio General Manager Gordon Walton parted ways with the Star Wars: The Old Republic developer and is now at Playdom. According to Walton's LinkedIn page, the MMO industry veteran departed the company after five years at some point in January.

    Stephen Reid
    With great thanks and appreciation, we say goodbye to Gordon Walton for helping bring the game to the phenomenal state it is in today. Rich Vogel remains the Executive Producer and VP of Production, while Greg Zeschuk continues to oversee the entire project as General Manager along with Ray Muzyka as BioWare Group General Manager and we remain confident that the game will excite and delight players worldwide.

    It is business as usual at all BioWare studios, where we remain committed to creating, delivering and evolving the most emotionally engaging games in the world.


    All of us here at Darth Hater wish Walton the best success in his new endeavor.

    Update: Gordon Walton's statement follows after the jump.

  • GDC: Zam Interview with Gordon Walton and Matt Firor

    Zam has a two part interview with BioWare Austin's Co-Studio Director Gordon Walton and President of ZeniMax Online Studios Matt Firor straight from GDC Online 2010. The interview covers a slew of topics on developing MMOs and offers a rare glimpse at how the industry approaches the genre.

    ZAM: Fair enough! Gordon, BioWare has so much coming out, but the major game on most players' radars is Star Wars: The Old Republic. Can you give us any updates?

    Gordon: We are getting toward the end of it, which is the good news. BioWare is known for extended periods of polish to really make the game all it can be. What you'll see us doing between now and next year is really working on making sure that we have not just a game, but hopefully the right game that really delivers not only on the BioWare brand values but on the Star Wars brand values. The shipping window is in the spring of next year. It' been quite a challenging project. I've never done one this big, and I don't think very many people have, either. If you think about the Mass Effect trilogy of games, we're basically building eight of those in one game. We're having fun with it, but it's also extremely challenging.

    Catch the full interview in parts one and two at Zam.

  • Darth Hater @ GDC Online

    Darth Hater returns to Game Developers Conference again this week, but this time we head to Austin, TX. Below is a short list of the panels we'll attend to look for potential clues about Star Wars: The Old Republic:

    DH GDC Content




    External GDC Content




    How Online Gaming Has Adopted the Grind
    Speaker/s: Damion Schubert (BioWare Austin)
    Day / Time: Thursday 11:00-12:00
    Description: 'The grind' isn't just whacking rats in men-in-tights fantasy MMOs anymore. Like a plague, it has escaped that genre, and now infects other genres, ranging from Web and Facebook games all the way to triple-A XBox titles. This talk will explore the grind, why so many designers turn to it like a crutch, and in what situations grindy gameplay may actually improve your game.

    Lessons Learned Creating Team Cultures
    Speaker/s: Gordon Walton (BioWare Austin)
    Day / Time: Thursday 11:00-12:00
    Description: Every team has its own unique culture, and culture will have a material effect on the results your team produces. Environment and context combined with how you acculturate incoming people will affect how your team culture evolves. This roundtable is for sharing experiences in creating and shaping team cultures.

    Strategies for Successfully Running an MMO from Launch and Beyond
    Speaker/s: Rich Vogel (BioWare), Jeffrey Steefel (Turbine, Inc), Jeff Hickman (EA Mythic), Lorin Jameson (Sony Online Entertainment) and Nathan Richardsson (CCP)
    Day / Time: Friday 9:30-10:30
    Description: Launching MMOs is hard enough, much less keeping them viable after their first year. Acquisition and retention are the two most important levers that are used to keep an online game alive and viable. This panel will discuss strategies that help move these two levers. On the panel are people who have been running MMOs for more than five years. What are their secrets to successfully running and maintaining these MMOs for so long?

    You Studied Game Design, Now What?
    Speaker/s: Elizabeth Stringer (The Guildhall at SMU), Leigh Alexander (Gamasutra.com), Kyle Garner (BioWare), Jeremy Roden (Richland College, Game Technology) and Eric Weiss (Madison and Minneapolis Media Institutes)
    Day / Time: Friday 1:30- 2:30
    Track / Format: Game Career Seminar / Panel
    Description: A program of game design-related studies is only one piece of the puzzle when developing a career in games. A panel of design professors and professionals from Guildhall, Richland College, Bioware and Madison Media Institute will discuss what students need to know during and following their education to enter the game industry.

    It will be interesting to keep watching and see if Blizzard's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm release date of December 7, 2010 has any impact on Star Wars: The Old Republic's 4Q marketing or testing schedule. (thanks to TIIME for the head's up)

  • Friday Update: Corellia and Blood of the Empire

    This week's Friday update is the reveal of Corellia, the fifteenth playable planet, and Blood of the Empire Issue 11. A few months ago, there was a dissected image of a music sheet with the word "Corellia" as part of the title during the "Music of The Old Republic" video, and we speculated this meant Corellia was in the game.

    For those keeping track, out of the 15 revealed planets, we have the following tally going regarding political alignment: five Republic, two Neutral, six Independent (including the "no government" Hoth), and only two Sith planets so far.



    Translation of the Corellia HoloNet page incoming and DevTracker comments after the jump.

  • Retention as it Relates to Star Wars: The Old Republic

    We previously touched on our opinion regarding BioWare and LucasArts focusing on avoiding common MMO problems as a basis of our speculation articles. Many of the common problems relating to the retention success and failures were highlighted in BioWare Austin's Co-Studio Director Gordon Walton and consultant Scott Hartsman's GDC session, "MMO Retention -- Learning From The First 25 Years." During the talk, these industry veterans provided some insight into possible retention strategies in Star Wars: The Old Republic. We spent over a month listening to this presentation, debating all of its points, and dissecting it to find all the clues we believe are hidden within.

  • GDC: BioWare's Walton on Adding Space Combat to Star Wars Galaxies & Customer Retention

    One of larger portions of BioWare Austin's Co-Studio Director Gordon Walton and consultant Scott Hartsman's GDC session, "MMO Retention -- Learning From The First 25 Years," highlighted some of the game change management issues MMO developers encountered trying to retain existing customers. Although we plan on issuing a more comprehensive article on how some of the topics discussed in this session may relate to Star Wars: The Old Republic, we decided to release this very telling quote about Walton's experience with introducing space combat in an expansion for Star Wars Galaxies.

  • Charting a Path to Class Customization

    As the news coming out of Austin continues to pick up speed, mining information is becoming much more exciting. The response to our recent speculation articles inspired us to delve deeper into what we were previously told about Star Wars: The Old Republic with surprising results. We used our recently acquired knowledge to give context to older news items, and realized BioWare was giving us hard facts all along.

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