DARKSIDE DEFENDERS

How is terrain interactive and protective?
JO:The Cover mechanic is crucial. You can destroy objects like barrels in the Taral V flashpoint. Worlds feel alive - shuttles flying by, etc.
DE: Objects block blaster shots and break line of sight.

Equipment repair gold sink?
JO: Repairs and mounts are gold sinks.

Are there rewards for going one way or another alignment-wise?
DE: Yes, I was really evil as a Sith Inquisitor but then there was a pair of gloves that was light-only that I wanted. Kim Vaal was NOT happy with me.
JO: Faction-switching was talked about but it was passed on for story reasons. Three factions were also considered but it would have been too expensive.

Does player manufacturing have a place in the game economy?
DE: Crafting is a passion of mine. We're not EVE. We're loot based, but we're past WoW, more complex and a lot of social of interaction. To get gear, you'll either be pounding end game or gathering a network of crafters.

How much is instanced?
JO: The game is not linear single-player. Alderaan is 7-8 World of Warcraft Zones in size. Phasing is used, but it is not everywhere.
DE: Phasing is used to ensure pivotal plot points are immersive. No lines to fight bosses. Everything to Cloud City an example - Luke goes off to fight Vader alone. (cloud city not mentioned as in game, only as example)

Are dialogue options always the same for flashpoints?
DE: Dialogue not randomized, but it does branch so there are multiple ways to play the conversation. Group content tends to be more wild because of that.
HH: Every conversation has 3 choices, so branching will take multiple playthroughs to discover.
JS: Gender/race effects dialogue options and results.

The more light/dark you are, how does that change player interactions?
DE: Players can't sense alignment. In kotor, you got Dark Side points for being snarky, which I didn't like. In tor, your actions are what count. Eventually, the jedi council will notice.
HH: Hey, you saved that planet but you killed a lot of people.
DE: There will be restrictions on your late game choices based on your early choices.

Daniel Erickson mentioned that flashpoints replayable, but everything else is play as it is.

[color=#FFBF00]Damion Schubert | Lead Systems Designer[/color] hat geschrieben:
A common mistake in MMO design is to pursue worlds and land masses that are ‘realistically’ big. I see this a lot in the press releases and demos of other MMOs, usually indie MMOs trying to make a name for themselves somehow. This is not the design philosophy that we’re following.

What makes a quality gameplay experience is not how much time you spend running through dead space or randomly generated noise, but the density of good experiences. This includes the density not just of quality worldbuilding points of interest and well-crafted quest content, but also in an MMO, the density of player population. MMOs are interesting largely because other people are there. Make your worlds too large and diffuse, and the population is too spread out, and you feel lonely in your MMO – an irony that proves inescapable over time.

Size in MMOs is incredibly deceiving. WoW has a world that feels huge, but in actuality you can run from the northern tip of Azeroth to the southern tip in about 45 minutes – whereas in real life I could barely get to the supermarket in that timeframe. Similarly, if you had a fully 3D rotateable camera in the original Ultima Online, you can see the walls of Trinsic from the southern entrance of Britain – I know this because I know a player did so. This is not to knock these two games – they are great games with great virtual worlds that are sized appropriately for their gameplay.

Our worlds are big – plenty big – but we didn’t use some notion of how big Alderaan really is to make that determination. We instead built a world big enough to feel expansive, but still not so large that we couldn’t ensure that all of the content was handcrafted up to a BioWare level of quality. There’s not as much random empty space for the explorers as some of you seem to be hoping for, but they’re still plenty big, and we take great strides to ensure that the worldbuilding teams fill the worlds with secrets for our explorers to find.

And trust me when I say you can still get plenty lost in Alderaan.

[ALERT] Game Testing Program Scams! | Heute , 04:11 PM

It has come to our attention that there are multiple individuals and sites claiming to sell testing accounts, “beta keys,” or other offers of access to our Game Testing Program. All of these offers are false. BioWare is not issuing invites to Game Testing via any method other than those we outline here on SWTOR.com.

We must caution you that these offers are often scams designed to steal your money, credit card information, or identity. While we understand that you are eager to participate in Game Testing, your security is extremely important, and attempting to participate in these offers could put you in very real danger.

Furthermore, the sale of accounts with access to the Game Testing Program is strictly prohibited by the Game Testing Agreement. We closely monitor the activities of all accounts involved in the Game Testing Program, and are quick to notice accounts that change hands. In the event that an account in the Game Testing Program does change ownership, we immediately take action to the fullest extent possible, including permanently banning the account from the Service.

When we send out invites to the Game Testing Program, the first step is receiving an e-mail from no-reply@bioware.swtor.com. After you receive this e-mail, you will also be able to see the invitation and further instructions at http://www.swtor.com/tester (if you are logged in to your account). You may encounter e-mail scams that indicate you have been invited to the Game Testing Program - please make sure to thoroughly examine the e-mail and don't click any links unless you are sure it is authentic (make sure to expand the information about the sender, and check for spelling errors or other tricks that scammers often use). If you receive an e-mail and are in doubt or are concerned about its validity, please forward your concerns to bwacommunitysupport@bioware.com.

[color=#FF8000]Damion Schubert | Lead Systems Designer[/color] hat geschrieben: When making design decisions about 'convenience features', a lot of it comes down to what do you want people to do all day while playing.

If we didn't put a quest symbol over the head of every NPC with a quest, then the alternative - clicking on every NPC in the game to see if they have a quest - would suddenly be a gameplay activity that takes a frightening amount of time. If we didn't put a 'usable' glow on the holocron that is the quest objective, then the player will spend a lot of time playing pixel hunter with their mouse. If we didn't put a symbol on the map that is where the next quest objective is, the player will spend a lot of time wandering the map fruitlessly and killing a lot of trash they could otherwise avoid.

If these activities are fun in your game, then you shouldn't 'convenience' them out. However, they aren't in a lot of MMOs, and a lot of modern MMOs have started to rough out those edges in order to get you to the fun parts faster. In our case, we have a seperate vested interest - quest turn-in dialogue is more compelling when the last bit of VO is still fresh in your mind. So we do have (and I guess I am confirming) a pretty in-depth map system designed to help you find your quest objectives relatively easily.

As for whether or not the existence of features like these means a game's quest design must be 'poor', I guess I'd disagree. Designing enough quests to fill an MMO with content is an incredibly effort-intensive process, especially when you're putting the Bioware story and VO on 'em. On top of that, different people like different kinds of quests - some people just want to kill 10 rats and couldn't care less about the story, whereas other people's favorite quests are those that can be completed without drawing your blade at all.

A good quest system is one that is flexible enough to allow worldbuilders to design a wide variety of quests, often in a worldbuilding environment that is still in flux when the quest is being designed, and ensures that players are getting to the 'good parts' of the quests as soon as possible. In our case, the 'good parts' are usually the dialogue and the combat, although we do have some more... varied quests in there that y'all will find in the long run.