BioWare released a new trailer today detailing some new features coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Game Director James Ohlen shows off some of the the systems being implemented to the game including a new Warzone, PvP ranks, new Legacy details, guild banks, and UI customization. He finishes by saying they'll be listening to the community for feedback and new features to be added in the future. You can see the full video embed past the jump.
Shortly after the deployment of today’s Game Update 1.1, James Ohlen posted his own community blog detailing design notes on the update along with a tease on future content.
James OhlenThis first Game Update will show everyone how serious we are about expanding Star Wars: The Old Republic, and there’s much more to come. We have another major update planned for March and future content arriving throughout 2012 and 2013. We plan to release new Operations, Flashpoints, Warzones, Space Missions, single player content, vehicles, and companion characters. We’ll always be improving our existing game with additions like guild banks, PVP ranked matches and interface customization. Our Legacy system expands in March, bringing more options and a new level of depth to the existing character classes.
Our Game Updates will also include bug fixes, balance changes, performance improvements and exploit-proofing based on your feedback. We review reports from the community every day and compare them to gameplay metrics, QA bugs and our own experiences in the live game—where we’re playing right alongside you. Although we already address critical issues during our weekly updates, the major Game Updates will implement some of the most sweeping changes and fixes.
Expect a few surprises between these Game Updates, too. You never know when the Republic might strike Dromund Kaas, if a mysterious alien fleet could appear in the Core Worlds… or when the Rakghoul plague of Taris might infect the rest of the Galaxy. Changes are coming, and they’ll affect everyone.”
For the post in full, head over to the Community Blog at the Official Star Wars: The Old Republic site.
Game Director James Ohlen recently conducted an interview with PC Gamer and a few interesting points about neutral/grey gear came out of the conversation, most notably its inclusion in a later release.
PCGamer“We knew with the light side/dark side system that there would be an urge, especially for min maxers, to go completely light side or dark side. It happened in Knights of the Old Republic back in 2003. We knew it was going to happen,” said TOR’s game director, James Ohlen.
“We have a system for people who want to stay more in the middle. But that’s something coming up in a later release,” he continued.
“It’ll let you play a “Gray Jedi”. Basically you don’t need to go to the extreme to get rewarded. You can have a different playstyle. We like to call it the “Gray Jedi” playstyle. That’s coming in a future piece of content.”
This should give neutral/grey players something to look forward to soon. To read the interview in full, head over to PC Gamer.
In an interview with Eurogamer, James Ohlen addressed concerns over performance issues players have had since the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
James OhlenHowever, we know that it's important that there is a smaller group of people usually with lower end machines that are having problems in some areas. And one of the most important things for us to grow our service is to continue to bring in more players, including those players who only have low-end machines.
So we have a client team, a team of programmers, whose entire job is to optimise the code, find out where some of the issues are, and then fix that up.
While there may not be a direct mention of performance issues on high-end machines, it should at least ease tensions as BioWare optimizes the code. To read the interview in full, visit Eurogamer.
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 OhlenIn 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.
With Star Wars: The Old Republic past its initial launch day, James Ohlen took the opportunity to tease upcomming post-launch content in the form of a new Flashpoint and an expansion to an existing Operation (Kragga's Palace). Ohlen relayed his comments through the new community news feature that has seen a spree of posts today stating the following:
James OhlenNext month we're going to be releasing a new Flashpoint and an expanded Operation. The new Flashpoint involves a plague that could have significant repercussions across the galaxy. It takes place on a brand new world and involves some pretty epic battles. I can’t go into much detail, but be prepared for something different. The expanded Operation takes the existing Karagga’s palace scenario and more than triples it in size. It includes three new boss monsters and some pretty epic set pieces.
Ohlen also included a little teaser image of one of the bosses which can be viewed after the jump. For the community news feature in full, visit the official SWTOR site.
Several key members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic development team participated in a recent live chat event on the BestBuy.com website. Creative Director James Ohlen, Lead Writer Daniel Erickson and Lead Flashpoints/PvP and Operations Designer Gabe Amatangelo answered several questions from fans regarding general post-release plans, Operation lockout schedules, UI improvements, Ewok companions and Operation tiers.
Best Buy ChatQuestion: Why are there no ewok companions? =[ I know they’re not supposed to be discovered for years…but seriously. Ewoks are totally worth a bit of lore-bending. Also, any chance that the original cantina song from episode 4 will make an appearance in one of the cantinas?
James Ohlen: We have a lot of fans that think the Ewok’s are cute and would make a cuddly companion. We agree that they’re cuddly and cute, perhaps you’ll see them in the future.
Question: What drove me away from all other MMOs was the constantly doing the same raid over and over with no options to switch things up. In SWtoR are there going to be multiple raids per tier or can we expect to be face-rolling them one at a time with months in between each new one releasing?
Gabe Amatangelo: We currently have two different Operations in the same tier (Eternity Vault & Karagga’s Palace) and we will be expanding on this tier as well as releasing other tiers.
A full transcript of the chat is available on the Best Buy site.
As part of today’s launch festivities James Ohlen, Creative Director for The Old Republic, took the time to lay out the broad plan for the game’s future. Touching on nearly every major concern most players had had during pre-launch testing, the outline is well worth the read.
James OhlenMany of you helped make the game what it is today by participating in our testing programs. You’ve watched the game grow over the past year and have been very vocal about things you’d like to see in the game in the future.
A team is never finished building a massively multiplayer game, so we’d like to take this opportunity to reveal a little information on what the team is working on for patches coming in the near future. Our priorities have been, and will continue to be, based off of the feedback we receive from our players.
For the full post, read past the jump.
In the midst of the excitement of early access beginning tomorrow, Curse had an opportunity to speak with James Ohlen, Creative Director for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Among the topics discussed are queue times during early access, the launch events around the world, some of the high priority items for post-launch enhancements to the game and a teaser about improvements to the space game.
Video embed is after the jump.
You had some time for testers to sink their teeth into the game since we last caught up with you. How far along is the game at this point, and are there any big features that are still yet to be implemented in testing?
James Ohlen: At this point you can play from level 1-50. You can play the end-game Operations, and the end-game Flashpoints. We have the whole game in place. We are focused on polishing the experience right now; making all the worlds as high-polished as the beginning worlds and ensuring all the features like Warzones are very well balanced. We're also continuing to balance the big group content like the Flashpoints and the Operations. It is very important those are our most balanced content, because they are going to be used over and over again. Players will obviously play a Warzone dozens and dozens or hundreds of times during the course of the game, so it needs to be really well done. The Flashpoints are also something that a group is going to do multiple times.
TenTonHammer: We are also curious about the banking system. Will players be able to share items between their own characters through the bank on the same server, or even across factions so long as it's on the same account?
James Ohlen: Currently no, you have to do it the old fashioned way through the mailbox, but only if they're the same faction. There are multiple reasons why we don't want the different factions to communicate with each other.
We had the big argument that this isn't like Horde and Alliance, we all speak Galactic Standard so we should just allow it. So we actually did allow it for a little while. The argument against it was that, what happens is people start saying inappropriate things to the other side. That's just the way it is when you're on a different side and you gank each other, people tend to say inappropriate things.
We don't want to give a specific release date until we're absolutely certain that when we launch the game it'll be a smooth launch and a bug-free experience. It would be terrible if we released and the servers fell down or there was a bug that detracted from the overall experience. It'd be terrible for Star Wars fans, they'd be really sad, cause they're excited about it as shown by the pre-order numbers, and it'd be disappointing for team members. People like myself, I've been on this project for six years. I want it to live up to the expectations.
