AMA on Reddit with Stephen Reid

Ask Me Anything!

AMA on Reddit with Stephen Reid @Rockjaw today was really exciting, lots of fun and brought us some fun and interesting stuff. My only complaint is that many of the questions were regarding issues that have already been publicly discussed. I would have preferred to see more personal stories, insider info and insights into the game and the making of the game. Anyway, it’s still good info.

If you missed it happening live, that’s a-ok because I caught it all and we’re here to give you the highlights.

Reid started the event with a few caveats:

  • I’m not in charge of any design decisions on the game – if you are looking to get something changed, ask nicely on the official Forums 🙂
  • I’m not aware of every single bug in the game, or the status of their resolution – although I am happy to hear about them
  • I am British and likely to use dry humor (but note: I spell things American now)
  • I am going into a meeting titled ” “THE AWESOME ATTACK OF RAINBOWS AND NARWHALS AND BACON THAT WE’RE GOING TO HIT THE BLOG WITH” right now, so I’ll be 30 minutes or more late before I start answering stuff…

With nearly 1,000 comments and the promise of future events of this nature to come in the future, it was all very eventful. Many of the things discussed were issues we have just recently written about on the site.
Here are some examples from the Short Questions- Short Answers section:

Q: Ability Delay. Have you guys discussed this internally, and if so, is there an ETA for a fix on this issue?Hey! It has been discussed internally, and we’ll talk about it publicly soon. It’s not a simple issue so we don’t want to issue a quick, off-the-cuff response.
Q: Can you tell us what your plans are for guild banks and guild capital ships?Guild banks and guild ‘housing’ (of some type; ships are most popular as people know) are both on the list for future development. As always it’s a question of priorities and so on, but they’re definitely discussed. I will say that guild banks are higher priority.
Q: I’d love to know tons more about the legacy system.We absolutely know people want to know more about the Legacy System and when the time is right, you’ll know. 🙂
Q: Can we please get a more functional AH/Galactic Trade Market?
Improvements will come to the GTN in time, definitely.
Q: are there plans to add more vanity pets and non-mechanical mounts to the game?More pets – yes. Non-mechanical mounts – maybe, it’s a technical challenge, I’ve been told.
Q: The camera doesn’t have an option to disable the auto-follow functionNo insight on that beyond what you already know, but we (Community team) are aware that it’s a request/concern, and we’ll raise it as such.

Those of you who follow Reid (like I do regularly on Twitter) you know that he is often the sounding board for all complaints and issues with SWTOR. While it is what he is paid for, he had this to say about it.

“Being the bulwark (AKA ‘Chief Whipping Boy’ which is what I signed on a box at our launch event in Austin) is just part of the job. Some days it’s fine, other days it gets to you. The latter days involve beer. 😉 Nonetheless, it’s an important part of the job, so we spend a considerable amount of time reading, noting, assessing and performing triage on bug or game issues. Unfortunately with all the development team power in the world we can’t fix every bug instantly, or make every change everyone wants, so it’s always got to be a matter of priorities. We try our best.”

Some other issues that were mentioned include world events, server forums, ambient dialogue, writing and class storylines, FPS issues, UI customization, PvP brackets, romancing companions and more. Hours of questioning condensed into short question and answer format is there for your perusal and it’s well worth the read or at very least, a scan over the posts to catch the ones of most interest to you.

I honestly cannot think of anything that wasn’t asked, although Reid couldn’t honestly answer every single question at this time. What do you think? Was there a question you wanted asked that you don’t see covered?

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.