Eric Musco

Interview with community manager Eric Musco

Twitch user Snave1208 had the chance to interview BioWares community manager for Star Wars: The old Republic, Eric Musco. It’s a pretty good interview, were Eric talks about what he do, and were SWTOR is heading. Snave1208 don’t let Musco off easy when he was trying to dodge answering some of the questions. But i do sound like the games PVP wont get much better in the future. Personally I am not surprised or remotely happy with the PvP answers but I partially understand where Musco is coming from. He has a rough job. Their “better than cross-server” is likely to be something like “Queue for 500 matches this month and get the rest of the Baron Deathmark gear!” This is the mentality that they have, and it’s harmful. Hopefully iy will change in the future though!

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When Will SWTOR See New PvP Content?

We have heard a lot of talk about SWTOR and the new content coming out recently. Fans are hyped up about all the good stuff coming with 3.0 but one player on the forums asked something that I was also thinking: Can we expect to see any PvP content or news any time soon. While SWTOR isn’t marketed as a PvP game, it does still have those elements to it and some players really like it so it would be great to see Bioware do a little more in this area to keep things fun and interesting. Community Manager Eric Musco had this to say in response on the forums: Hey Jaiyne, Good question, let me take a stab at this one. If you are asking specifically for news about new content, such as a Warzone or Arena map, then the answers is unfortunately no. There are no new maps,…

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Cartel market bug leads to Slot Machine sale!

Bioware recently released a new cartel market pack called Constable Stronghold’s pack as part of Patch 2.10. The pack includes the Smuggler’s Gambit Slot Machine that apparently a lot of SWToR fans were eagerly awaiting to become available. Unfortunately, yet another bug prevented cartel market shoppers from obtaining their slot machine as community manager Eric Musco confirmed at the forums earlier today.

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Get them while they last! Voss Embassy Sign to be removed when Patch 2.10 drops

The title is pretty self-explanatory but today Community Manager Eric Musco posted the following message at the official forums: Quick reminder before 2.10 drops tomorrow. Currently, if you visit the Binary Star Realty vendor, you will find the Republic Voss Embassy Sign is available for 1 credit. As a note, that item being on the vendor was available for only a limited time and it will be removed tomorrow with 2.10. So stock up on your 1 credit signs while they’re cheap. Thanks everyone. PS – On the vendor, there is a known issue where the items name appears to be blank, the name appears as just a set of brackets []. That is the Republic Voss Embassy Sign.

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Legacy Storage Info

With the upcoming game update to Star Wars the old Republic – Galactic Strongholds, BioWare will be introducing new legacy storage. Eric Musco took some time yesterday, updating the community on the official SWTOR forums on what to expect: here is a C/P: Hey folks, I know there are a few questions surrounding Legacy storage and although I can’t answer everything here are some of the bigger answers: How do I get Legacy storage? You will get Legacy storage for free with the completion of the “Introduction to Strongholds Mission” upon acquiring your first Stronghold. Legacy storage will also be craftable and is possible to appear on the Cartel Market. (In both cases this means it would be available on the GTN for credits as well) If I add another Legacy storage to my Stronghold, does this add more storage space? It does not. Adding more Legacy storage “units” will…

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Status Update on Hood Toggle

Eric Musco posted an update on the official forums yesterday regarding hood toggle. Eric replied to a user named Pingonaut who had the following question: It has been more than two years since the game launched, and that’s two years of players asking for a way to toggle the hoods on their outfits. In this Community Q&A from February 2012 we were told that the hood toggle likely be in the next major patch after Game Update 1.2. Delays are acceptable, this is not. He even goes so far as to say that the functionality will be available for our companions, as well. This means that the feature was being tested and worked on enough to where they could release such information. If there were problems or bugs with the hood toggle option that kept it from being released, why not tell us? Why just leave us in the dark,…

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PvP vs PvE Mounts Philosophy

Eric Musco was really engaged in the community yesterday. Besides the Faction change post we wrote about earlier, he also updated the community about the PvP vs PvE Mounts Philosophy: Hey everyone, I know there has been a bit of frustration from our PvP community regarding a Rancor mount going into the Cartel Market. Although I had mentioned at the time that there would be Rancor mounts coming to both the CM and Operations, I thought it would be good to explain our philosophy on mounts. Especially around their exclusivity. For PvP mounts, such as Season rewards, what you are going to tend to find is that they are exclusive variations of a mount and not necessarily a completely exclusive model (not to say we would never do an exclusive model, that is always possible). For example, you will not find a Rancor that looks anything like Giradda’s Rancor, but…

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Confirmed: Faction Change “very, very unlikely” to be Added

There have been a discussion regarding faction change on the official forums, and yesterday Eric Musco had an answer on this matter. Faction changes is “very, very unlikely” to be Added. Personally I I never thought the ability to change factions was something that was in the realm of realistic possibility. I can understand people wanting to change faction but as Eric pretty much states it’s likely never going to happen as the story options tied to each toon makes it impossible. Hey folks, This is a good question! We have been asked this a few times at some of our Cantina Tours as well but I wanted to make sure we had the answer here in the forums for folks to be able to find it. I am remiss to ever say the word never, but I can say that it is very, very unlikely that we would ever…

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Star Wars: The Old Republic Insider Video — May 2014

Watch the latest SWTOR Insider Video, now live, as Producer Jack Wood and Community Manager Eric Musco offer an inside look at the latest exciting news for Galactic Strongholds Digital Expansion, Season 2 of Ranked PvP, Cartel Market and more! Darth_Wicked from Reddit discover something interesting. At around 00m36sYou can listen Jack Wood talking about the new Homestead on Tatooine and you get to see a couple of new Sandcrawlers that are not currently in the game. Starting to wonder if the above is related to the planetary Guild conquest thing or if our homestead on Tatooine will be an actual Sandcrawler What do you guys think that’s all about?

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Powertech Top 3 Answers

Eric Musco posted an update on the forums that Bounty hunters will like. Here is the summary of the post Changes coming: Game Update 2.8: Rapid Venting changed from alacrity to critical chance increase. Shield Tech/Specialist skills will be able to proc from misses and resists instead of just shielding attacks, except for Heat/Power Screens. DPS Boost for DOTs for Pyrotech/Assault Specialist to increase DPS. (Unknown timeframe) Ways to make pure tanks more viable in PvP: Developers are asking for input on how to do this Other info: Powertech/Vanguard tanks have the best Ranked Arenas PvP win ratio, even though they have the least amount of stuns. And here is the post in full: 3 Questions for PT. Lets DO IT! | 03.25.2014, 01:07 PM Hey folks! Here are your top 3 questions, answered: Question 1 – PvE DPS This question is plain and simple. Both specs for Powertech DPS are…

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Frequently Asked PvP Questions

Eric Musco and PvP Designer Alex Modny will be on Twitch later today, playing Warzones on Prophecy of the Five at 1:30PM PDT. As with most of the BioWare streams, they get quite a few questions which are commonly asked by PvPers. Therefor Eric talked with the combat team about many of our questions and got answers to many of the commonly asked questions. Below you will find those questions/answers. Will we ever be able to choose a specific Warzone to queue for? From the design side, we do like the idea of allowing our players to be able to impact which Warzone they want to queue for, but it is not as simple as letting everyone select which Warzone they want and call it a day. Because of a few reasons (queue population, preventing ‘de facto’ best Warzone, making sure all Warzones are being played, etc.) it would require…

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Galactic Strongholds forums updates

With the announcement of the new upcoming Star Wars: The old Republic expansion, it was only expected that the official forums would go nuts. So many questions needs answering, and Eric Musco is trying to keep up. Here is a rundown of all the yellow posts on the official forum: Post #1 EricMusco Watch New Galactic Strongholds Announcement Trailer | 03.19.2014, 10:01 AM Quote: Originally Posted by ninjonxb Woo! So if Subscribers are getting early access on June 24th can we assume that this will not be the focus of 2.8? 2.8 was originally said to come on June 10th and “is going to be the biggest update up to this point”http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20140203 Good catch Ninjonxb, Subscriber Early Access to Galactic Strongholds is coming as a part of 2.8. As you can see the decision has been made to move the 2.8 date out two weeks from its original target. We wanted…

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Eric Musco Addresses Double XP Weekend Bugs

If you tried to play SWTOR this weekend for the double XP event, you may have encountered some bugs and not gotten your double experience like you should have. Don’t worry- you are not alone and Bioware is aware of the issue. Eric Musco addresses it in the forums: I know that there was definitely some unhappiness that came out of this past double XP weekend and I wanted to address a little bit about what happened, and we are doing about it. There are two main issues which plagued the weekend: In certain group compositions, no experience is granted during a Flashpoint. The Kuat Drive Yards Flashpoint was awarding only normal experience for NPC kills, it was not being doubled. Understandably, many players look to Flashpoints to level during our double XP weekends and so there is quite a bit of frustration that these bugs were present. Let’s take…

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Ranked PvP Rating Requires Minimum 10 Matches to Count for Rewards

Following the last few days debate regarding end Season 1 Rewards, Eric Musco updated the community about am issue with the game. Currently, it is possible that your name can show up on the leaderboards with a rating, even if you have technically not yet earned one. Below is the announcement: Announcing End Season 1 Rewards | 02.20.2014, 11:44 AM Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know of an issue I just learned of. Currently, it is possible that your name can show up on the leaderboards with a rating, even if you have technically not yet earned one. The rules that determine you having a rating are fairly simple but I want to make sure I spell them out so that we don’t have a situation where someone is expecting a reward and does not receive one. In order to earn a rating, you must: Have played 10 games…

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New Weekly Community Live Stream!

Eric Musco is starting a weekly community live stream were he will be playing through the game. In the beginning only Eric will host the live stream, but in future, both Courtney and Tait will get  on there as well. If possible, they will kidnap the devs to play also. Below is the announcements: Post #1 EricMusco New Weekly Community Live Stream! | 01.09.2014, 11:07 AM Hey everyone! I alluded to it during our GSF stream at the end of the year, but I wanted to let you know that we are going to start having a weekly community live stream! Early on, you will see me playing but in time we will definitely get both Courtney and Tait on there as well. We may even expand it to other folks in the studio but that remains to be seen. The stream will be more of a “let’s play” than…

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Name Renewal details from the dev tracker

community manager Eric Musco posted some clarification regarding the Name Renewal program that starts november 12, 2013. Bascially if you have a 30+ character you don’t really need to do anything, but if you have toons below that level, it will be a good idea to read the details below. Character names poll for prefered and f2p | 11.06.2013, 12:39 PM Hey Liron! I wanted to clear up how the Name Renewal will work to alleviate any concerns that you have. You are obviously a subscriber right now, this means that even if you unsubscribe today, you will be completely unaffected. The reason is that you would then become a preferred status player. Preferred players are completely unaffected as long as they logged in to those specific characters within the last 90 days. Being how the name renewal is next week, that is far less than 90 days 🙂 Here…

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PSA: Eric Musco confirms that the new Starfighter Expansion has its own Leveling Track.

Eric Musco made an interesting comment on the official forums regarding the new SWTOR Expansion – “Galactic Starfighter” Originally Posted by Elminster_cs Can you explain what: “Maximum leveling and progression” does it mean? We will able to level this ships? Although I cannot go into specifics yet, what I can say is that there is a system of leveling and progression for Galactic Starfighter itself, and just like the rest of SWTOR, subscribers will get a bonus to that progression. That is really great to know. The “maximum leveling/progression” thing could easily be interpreted as gating off certain levels to subscribers, which would have ventured into “pay to win” territory. Very glad to know it is just slower progression, like normal. Can’t wait to get to play. Also from the official terms and conditions: Starfighter Passes, which offer Preferred Status Players and Free-to-Play Players faster leveling and progression speed, will be…

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Official Forums Class Representatives Announced

Eric Musco posted an interesting update to the official SWTOR forums yesterday. We will now be getting class representatives for the forums. Each representative will only serve for a term and then new representatives will take their places so it ensures there is some balance and rotation. Class Representatives are player elected and will not be granted any special access to the BioWare team. They will be used to help Bioware staff provide more information and community involvement on the topic of classes within SWTOR. What tasks will these forum class representatives do? What Will They Do? Upon the Class representatives being selected, we will release a schedule. On each scheduled date listed, the chosen representative for each Class will make a forum post in their Class forum with the top 3 things they want to have answered or commented on. Our current plan is to do 4 ACs each…

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Issues regarding the Revan Armor

Eric Musco took on the official SWTOR forums today explaining players that nothing is wrong with the Revan armor. While this pretty dull news, I’m amazed at the comments on the official forums; the aggressivity and disrespect are mind-boggling. What is wrong with these people? Check it out here: Hey guys, I wanted to add a bit of clarity to the post in this thread, and my update from this morning. This is all of the information I have about Revan’s armor, what was or wasn’t changed, and why. When we originally saw the double hood issue we also noted that it appeared there was a color difference in the armor between the player and NPC. Our plan was to mirror the NPC exactly for the player for consistency. When we fixed the double hood and we looked at the color palette, the armor sets were already identical in color so…

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Bug Fixes and updates Set for Patch 2.2.1

The official SWTOR Forums have been active with yellow posts today. Both Eric Musco and Amber Green have been posting update regarding bug fixes we can expect with next weeks patch. Here is a short run down off what have been said so far: Broken or Missing Titles and Achievements I wanted to give an update on the broken titles and achievements issue. These should be fixed with Game Update 2.2.1 next week. Also, after that point if you transfer a character you should not experience these issues. If you run into any problems with your titles or achievements after 2.2.1, please contact CS. -eric Bolster Changes for 2.2.1 Hey folks, Quick update, here are two changes coming to Bolster in Game Update 2.2.1 which is slated for next Tuesday, 6/25: Expertise again caps appropriately at 2018 instead of 2013. This correction to a rounding error will result in a…

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Paid Character Transfers are still slated for 2.2.1

Community Manager for Star Wars: The old republic, Eric Musco posted a short forum update confirming that paid character transfers are still slated for 2.2.1 That meens we should be able to transfere our characters to other servers next Tuesday, June 25th. Hey folks, Yes, Paid Character Transfers are still slated for 2.2.1. The reason we didn’t post anything about it is that simply put, nothing changed. I will typically only post about something changing from what I had already stated previously. Paid Character Transfers are still slated for 2.2.1 which is targeted for next Tuesday, June 25th. I will let you know if anything changes, the second it changes. -eric

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Patch 2.2.1 Slated for 6/25 (Expected Paid Transfers)

A few days ago we wrote about the price for paid server transfers. Most people hoped that this transfers would come with game update 2.2 but unfortunately it was removed in the last minute. Yesterday Eric Musco had some update about it as he shed some light on the targeted date for patch 2.2.1. There are no guarantees that server transfers will be live with the next game update, but the devs are working on it. Hey folks, I just posted here, the current target date for 2.2.1 is 6/25. One thing I wanted to stress is that it is not a guarantee that transfers will be in 2.2.1. It is our goal to get them to all of you as fast as we can as a part of 2.2.1, but we will not release it until it is working correctly. -eric

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Paid Transfers Delayed til 2.2.1

Apparently payed transfers are delayed again. This is abit of a bummer since they said transfers would be “right on the heels” of 2.1. Even thought disappointing you have to appreciate that they are trying not to bungle this when they launch it. If you pay $15 to transfer a character you will want all of the benefits of that character to also be transferred with them. The official forums are convinced that this delay will ruin the game and kill swtor. =) EricMusco Scheduled Maintenance: June 11th, 2013 [POSTPONED] | 06.10.2013, 03:19 PM Hey folks, I wanted to give you an update on Paid Character Transfers since I know you have been curious about it with the delay of 2.2. Unfortunately, we have come across some bugs that are present with Character Transfers, specifically around Achievements. We definitely want to insure that we are providing the best service possible when…

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