Daniel Erickson

Drew Karpyshyn joines two other SWTOR writers

As we told you a few days ago, Drew Karpyshyn is leaving BioWare for the second time. In his blog post, he mentioned that he was joining Fogbank Games, that has been launched by FoxNext Games, a division of 21st Century Fox. Now it turns out that a few of his old colleagues is also joining the studio, as Daniel Erickson will act as studio director. Daniel Erickson was the lead writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic and also worked on Dragon Age: Origins before leaving Bioware in 2012. He’s since held a number of roles, most recently at Kabam, as mobile game designer, were he hold a key role in the development of Star Wars: Uprising, that’s now shut down. The rest of the 20-strong team includes executive producer Nathan Germick, who also joins from Kabam, and former Bioware writer Alexander Freed ( storyline writer of the imperial agent!) ,…

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Star Wars: Uprising – Introducing the Assault Contract Challenge!

There is a new challenge in Star Wars: Uprising, that will earn you a Short-Term Smuggling Contract! Here is the forum post. To go along with this, Daniel Erickson added bit of an incentive to run those Bespin Assaults for some extra credits! You can read up on that here . Introducing the Assault Contract Challenge! Details: Players who complete all five of their Assault Missions for at least four days between 3/2 11:00pm PST and 3/8 11:00pm PST will be rewarded with a Short-Term Smuggling Contract! The Short-Term Smuggler’s Contract is a variant of the Long-Term Smuggler’s Contract, which provides the player with 40 Chromium each day they log in for the next seven days. The Short-Term Smuggler’s Contract will begin on 3/9 4:00pm PST and end on 3/15 3:59pm PST. The Long-Term Smuggler’s Contract will stack with the Short-Term Smuggler’s Contract so be sure to take advantage of this lucrative opportunity! (Tap…

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Star Wars: Uprising – Win 1 Million Credits if you assault Bespin!

Game Director for Star Wars: Uprising, Daniel Erickson announced a challange to the community. Here is your chance to win 1 million credits. Every Player who completes all of their Assault Missions (5/5 every day) between now and the next Sector Battle kick off AND runs at least 90% of those on BESPIN will go in a pool and one person will randomly be chosen to get 1 MILLION credits. Check it out: Hey Everyone, After so many questions this week I reviewed the Bespin Battle Readiness targets and last cycle people basically started to run Bespin, got discouraged, stopped and went and ran Mataou, frustrating many of the end-level players. In 2.1, Battle Readiness rewards will scale with level which should alleviate a lot of this problem but for right now I’m going to make a personal challenge with the tools I have. We’re already having an Assault Mission…

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Former SWTOR Lead Writer Daniel Erickson Working on Chapter 2 for SW: Uprising

Curious what former Lead Writer for SWTOR Daniel Erickson has been up to lately? Well, his recent Tweet will set the record straight (sort of): Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Deep in dev on Chapter 2. Which is literally more than 150% the size of the entire present game. — Daniel Erickson (@DanielAErickson) September 26, 2015 The former Bioware writer is now Director of Star Wars: Uprising and like those of us here, a BIG Star Wars nerd. I don’t know about you but I love seeing people who are truly passionate about games work on games. Being a writer myself, I also have a special kind of love for game writers. It’s why I was such a fangirl over meeting Erickson and Alexander Freed. These guys are not in it for the money or for fame (so many don’t even recognize their names). They are in it…

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Star Wars Uprising – Dev Diary Introduction

I have been looking forward to Star wars: Uprising and thus, following along with updates from the dev team that tell us a bit more about the game. All too often we see mobile games that are movie tie-ins just created to be quick money grabs. Kabam! is known for putting more effort and depth into their games and this one is going to be no exception. In fact, this one might set a precedent. The new Dev Diary Introduction video will show you just what I mean. They’ve actually tried to create a real Star Wars experience in the  palm of your hand with this one and you can color me impressed. I think there is one person on the team who probably has  a lot to do with that. Daniel Erickson who was creative director on SWTOR, is now creative director on Star Wars: Uprising.  It’s nice to see…

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Daniel Erickson hires Emmanuel Lusinchi to Bluepoint Games

Could some of the old BioWare team get back together to work on a new project? It’s a theory we tossed out there back when the news of many key BioWare players leaving was first revealed. Well today Twitter gave us a little more insight into this very topic! A tweet from former BioWare develop Daniel Erickson today confirms Emmanuel Lusinchi has left or will be soon leaving BioWare to start work at Bluepoint as a Lead Designer. There were previous rumors about Lusinchi leaving but nothing solid or in the public until this tweet today: — Daniel Erickson (@DanielAErickson) November 5, 2012 I have to admit that it’s tough to see how passionately these developers and designers talked about SWTOR earlier this year at the Guild Summit and now they are dropping off like flies. These are people who put their heart and soul into their work and for those of…

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Confirmed – Daniel Erickson leaving BioWare

A few weeks ago we wrote the story that Daniel Erickson was “Actively looking for new opportunities” . Today Mr. Erickson confirms this rumor via twitter as he has started his new twitter account for job hunting and design thoughts. Back in early September, we saw via Erickson’s LinkedIn profile that he was looking for new opportunities. We speculated about what this might mean but warned against jumping to conclusions and thinking this meant he was leaving BioWare. However, with so many BioWare Austin staff members making their exits, it wouldn’t be a big surprise. Well, now we stumbled across this Tweet and this new Twitter account from Daniel Erickson and it’s clear that he has officially left BioWare and is on the job hunt. So he has known for at very least, the month of September that he was leaving or was already gone. So now that we do know it…

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Daniel Erickson is “Actively looking for new opportunities”

We learned in the past that making assumptions based on a person’s LinkedIn profile is not always the best idea. Some people take a little thing such as change of job description and blow it into something it’s not. However, if you take a look at Daniel Erickson’s profile, you will see that he says he is “Actively looking for new opportunities”. This lends itself to a little bit of conversation. The Lead Designer/Creative Director at Bioware/Electronic Arts works in the gaming industry, an industry we know is booming and at the same time, one that can change with the snap of your fingers. It takes an entire team of people to build and launch a game and after that launch, all of the same team members are not needed to stay on. Layoffs usually happen and those creative people have to search for a new job or a new…

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Will it Help SWTOR to Get Megaservers?

Big changes and additions are happening with SWTOR. In addition to the announcement of the new patch (1.3) coming soon, there was also a big exodus at the BioWare Austin studio. This was a huge disappointment to me because I went there, toured the studio with David Bass, saw employees hard and work and also saw how much all of the staff there seemed to care so much about their job. It really is a sad day to see so many people let go who really cared about the game and have put so many years of hard work into the game. Of course it is the nature of the game that staff gets let go from a video game project once the game is launched and less work is needed for it but letting community manager Stephen Reid go was a real blow. Why would a successful game let…

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Daniel Erickson reveals plan to merge into super-servers!

Here is an interesting piece of news.  In an interview with PC Gamer, our main man Daniel Erickson, spilled the beans about the upcoming serve transfers.   Answering a question about the upcoming changes in patch 1.3 regarding the group finder tool, Mr. Erickson had an interesting answer: From the interview: PCG: Will they be cross-server at launch? Is that planned for the future? DE: They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today. So  is that how they’re going to (more or less) avoid the stigma of server mergers?  Best they could do, I guess.  No more low-pop servers, same-server Group Finder viable… nice! I, for one, will welcome our new super-server overlords.

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SWTOR Community Q&A

For some reason we fogot to post this one. Better late then never I guess. BioWare has an official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the February 17th, 2012 Q&A blog post. This is an effort to keep the community of players more involved with the game and changes that are incoming. It’s also an opportunity for fans and players to tell the staff what they want to see in the game or what changes they would like to see happen. Here are the rules to asking questions: Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but don’t go overboard. Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums. Use common sense – we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content. This should go without saying, but be respectful. Limit yourself to one question in this thread, please. You can always…

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Daniel Erickson interview

Ryan and Jeff from Giant Bomb did a really good interview with Lead Writer Daniel Erickson on Everything from from queues, instancing to LS/DS permanence. Daniel is great at doing these interviews, as I personally would jump up and punch Jeff for constantly interrupting me. Remember to listen to the part around 11:15 -12:15 as it is pretty much cut and paste what was happening on forums and websites as people were hearing about the game for the first time, and I still see people expressing concern that they’ll just be playing a single-player game presumably because “it’s Bioware.”””

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Sith Inquirer Interview with Daniel Erickson

Don’t you wish you could learn more about the Sith Inquisitor? Would if you could have a behind-the-scenes interview with the lead writer and ask them whatever you wanted about the class? That’s exactly what our friends over at Sith Inquirer did and they’re sharing it with us. While they originally wrote David Bass to ask some questions about the Sith Inquisitor, it was Daniel Erickson who actually gave the answers in the form of an exclusive interview with the site. Some of the questions they ask: Where did you start when thinking about what you wanted the Sith Inquisitor story to be like? What stories were your inspirations? Do any main characters tie into our own story? People like Darth Malgus, Baras and Angral from the comics and Deceived novel, Darth Jadus, or anyone else of note? Describe some of the companions, if possible? We know of Khem Val and Xalek…

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Interview: Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid

Kay White had the privilege of interviewing Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic at NYCC and allowed TORWars to print the story. I love Erickson and the fun and humor he brings to every interview or chat about SWTOR so I was definitely interested in giving this one a read. On Saturday at New York Comic Con, in between some hours of being shoulder-bumped by geek-crazed New Yorkers, I got to enjoy some minutes with Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. Mr. Erickson, with grace and animated humor, gave out details of the writing process, resolving questions that have gnawed at me since I played my first BioWare game, Dragon Age: Origins. He also discussed content balance, titles, voice actor availability, character surnames, and a skinny little bit about slave bikinis. You will need to head on over to TORWars…

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Q&A with Daniel Erickson.

BioWare had a short Q&A session with Daniel Erickson at the official Facebook page earlier today. The following was posted on SWTOR’s Facebook wall, lots of good questions and enticing answers! Thomas Haugeberg: Is there going to be an end for this game’s story? Will one side rule in the end? Daniel: We know where the galaxy ends up in the next 3000 years but there’s a long way to go until we get there and hopefully (since we all like our jobs) that story won’t be ending anytime soon! Jason Trent: Are all “romances” with non-companion NPC’s one night stands or are some of them fully fleshed out romances? Daniel: Some of them are long term romances, some actually spanning across several chapters. Travis Clay Henry: What character in ToR has been your favorite to write thus far? Daniel: Vette. Writing a complete character from start to finish is…

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Daniel Erickson interview with a French fan site

The French guild Chimaera uploaded a video with Daniel Erickson from his French community visit last week. Here’s the recap for you: Daniel Erickson walked onto the stage with two Storm Troopers (fun!) to talk about Star Wars the Old Republic. He started by listing off many achievements they have reached with this game including one of the Guinness Book of World Records for “Biggest Voiceover Production” in entertainment history. With accomplishments like that, there’s no wonder why so many fans are amped up for this game’s release in December. The release date for Europe is December 22, 2011. Erickson was quoted as saying “The biggest story RPG in history”, which gives me a lot of hope for the depth of the lore that we will find when we boot up our computers and run Star Wars: The Old Republic for the first time, and hopefully every time thereafter. In…

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Totalbiscuit interviews Daniel Erickson

TotalBiscuit interviews the Lead Writer of  Star Wars: The Old Republic and multitalented Bioware veteran Daniel Erickson on how to tell a story in an MMO as well as information on the morality system of The Old Republic. This is the first time we are seeing what biscuit looks like I believe. First I thought he was going to be the guy on the left before i played the video, but then I saw the tophat and I was like yep thats him. The ending made me laugh a bit when Daniel Erickson said that the first chapter would take longer to complete than KOTOR. And there’s 8 of them. Theres three chapters, eight trilogies Kind of misleading, but thats what he meant.

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VideoGamer.com Interviews Daniel Erickson on SWTOR

We’re all about fun stuff related to SWTOR and getting to send that info on to you. This is why we especially love Q&A sessions and lots of them come out at events like Comic-Con or shortly after. We found a great interview with Daniel Erickson over on VideoGamer.com and even if you think you already know everything he has to say, there may be some new bits in this article. Here, Erickson talks design decisions, negative responses and the future of SWTOR which has yet to launch but is selling pre-order records for BioWare. It’s an MMORPG making records before it’s even been released. How is that for awesome? So anyway, here’s a snippet of the interview, courtesy of VideoGamer.com: Q: At Comic-Con this year, one of the Star Wars: The Old Republic developers said the team hopes the game will last for decades. Can any game legitimately have…

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Daniel Erickson Interview from Gamereactor

As part of their ongoing coverage of E3, Gamereactor has a pretty interesting video interview never before released with Daniel Erickson that’s worth the time to check out. It’s the longest video they’ve filmed at E3 and we’re all about hearing anything from SWTOR lead writer Daniel Erickson. The interview talks about story, end-game and also the possibility of a closed or open beta. It’s a 15-minute sit down with Erickson just released. “It’s our launch year,” Erickson says, “so I finally get to quit saying — for the most part — I can’t talk about that.” We are happy to hear when you can talk about that, Daniel!

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Daniel Erickson goes into detail about the number of Companions

Players have been asking a lot of questions about SWTOR companions, including how many we will be allowed to have per character. Recently Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for SWTOR, shed some light on this situation on the official forums.       Erickson says, “There will be, at launch, five unique companion characters per class. Plus your resident butler/crafting/welcome home droid on the ship which is different per faction.”   In his post, Erickson goes on to explain how since you will get five unique companion characters per class, plus a resident butler droid on the ship, you will have over forty companions within the game that can have more than a dozen romances, intricate plotlines and hundreds of hours of development. The possibilities are endless to what your companions can do.   The storyline of SWTOR is really what makes or breaks the game so all of the staff…

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Daniel Erickson SWTOR Interview Confirms No Open Beta

For all of you who have been hoping for an open beta release date at E3, it’s not going to happen. In fact, what we did get from E3 is the news that there will be no open beta. Honestly, I’m not that surprised. With so many people excited to play this game and so many beta testers signed up already, there’s no need to go to an open beta to test the game.     Another reason for skipping the open beta option is that BioWare wants to preserve their storyline as much as possible. The story is really what separates this from any other MMO we’ve all seen before. The story is key to the success of the game and keeping as much info about it hidden until release will benefit BioWare.   In this interview with BioWare’s Daniel Erickson, he states that an open beta is not…

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E3: Interview extravaganza

Another day of E3 has gone, and another round of interviews has hit the internet. Yesterday we posted 5 interviews with Daniel Erickson as it seemed like he was the only BioWare employee who was allowed to talk to the camera.  I mean no disrespect to the good Mr. Erickson, but  it becomes quite  annoying here him answer the same questions over and over again. So it was nice to finally see an interview with some of the other top dogs at BioWare Here is a rundown of all the interviews we haven’t covered in other post’s today: CVG – Dr. Greg Zeschuk interview Bioware Greg Zeschuk Interview “Making a different game” GamerLiveTV – Daniel Erickson interview Newsarama – James Ohlen interview James Ohlen thinks you may not ever go back to any other MMORRPG once you play SW Old Republic. It’s epic combat wherein you can play both light…

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