In a galaxy far, far away, the debate over CGI and deepfake technology in the Star Wars universe has taken a new turn. The original Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, has been making some waves, and his views are as intriguing as a good old-fashioned Mos Eisley cantina gossip. Hamill, a seminal figure in the Star Wars saga, has appeared as Luke in six out of nine feature films. He’s also made appearances in “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett,” including some recent moments where his younger face was deepfaked onto another actor’s body to resurrect young Luke. But now in an interview with esquire, it seems he’s ready to hang up his lightsaber and pass it onto a new generation. Hamill’s Run-In with CGI and Deepfakes: After Luke’s death in “The Last Jedi,” Hamill stepped back from the series, having disagreed with some creative choices. He was,…
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Interview with Dave Shramek Lead World Designer of Star Wars: The old Republic
BioWare has posted a lengthy interview with Dave Shramek who is lead World Designer of Star Wars: The old republic, Behind The Scenes Of World Design With key non-playable-characters (NPCs) like Darth Malgus, Tau Idair, and others leading the charge in the upcoming ‘Onslaught’ Expansion, it’s no surprise that a lot of thought goes into their creation, but what about other less known NPCs? What about that arrogant guy at the cantina, or the vendor down that dark alley? To get some insight into what goes into creating the miscellaneous characters that populate the universe of Star Wars: The Old Republic, we sat down with our Lead World Designer, Dave Shramek. During this behind the scenes look, we’ll dig into creating one of the ruling gangs of the upcoming planet, Mek-Sha. For starters, would you like to introduce yourself and explain a little bit about what you do on the team?…
SWTOR: PvP Interview with Eric Musco [video]
If you’re looking to catch up on the state of PvP in SWTOR, then you will want to check out this interview with Eric Musco. Snave and Musco get together and talk PvP and while it’s a long watch (or listen), it’s worth it to see Snave pick Musco’s brain for a bit. As always, PvP is a hot topic in SWTOR (isn’t it in any MMORPG?) so there are going to be a lot of varying opinions on this. Does Musco really give any new info or is it doing the typical dance of answering-without-really-answering? I’d say he’s probably paid for the latter but there are still some tidbits you can pick up from it and some people like to read between the lines and speculate on this or that. As usual, we want to know what you think. Here you can see it for yourself: “My second interview with SWTOR…
MMORPG Interview with James Ohlen
It has been an amazing year for Star Wars fans. With the new movie release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens arriving late this year and the new Star Wars: Battlefront game launching around the same time, it couldn’t get any better. Also, the latest expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic Knights of the Fallen Empire, will open on October 27th. Once the expansion launches, players will have nine new chapters of new episodic content to dig their teeth into and even more updates are planned after the holiday season. Gareth Harmer from mmorpg.com, caught up with James Ohlen, the Game Director on SWTOR over on Gamescom, to talk about more information on the new expansion. But, before we dig into that information, let’s talk about what has already been discovered. During the event in Cologne, he was shown content from Chapter 3, and this includes the Carbonite defrosting…
EA’s Fallen Empire Preview with Creative Director Jesse Sky
EA posted a snippet on the official EA site, of a preview with Creative Director on Star Wars: The old Republic Jesse Sky, on the upcoming Fallen Empire expansion coming in October. BioWare goes back to its roots for: Knights of the Fallen Empire What goes into crafting the new expansion for Star Wars: The Old Republic – Knights of the Fallen Empire? Creative director Jesse Sky takes things back to the beginning. Back to basics Last year, I decided to re-watch The Empire Strikes Back® and write down everything that shocked the audience back in its original theatrical run. It’s a very long list. That film packs a real emotional punch—it’s full of twists, betrayals and revelations the entire way through. I’ve wanted to tell a Star Wars™ story like that ever since the first time I saw it. When we began conceptualizing Knights of the Fallen Empire, the story…
BioWare Writer Talks Gay Romances and Sexual Diversity in Gaming
BioWare’s lead writer and developer for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, David Gaider, has decided to address the popular topic of sexual diversity in video games. Gaider is a 16-year veteran of the RPG studio and he recently wrote for Dragon Age: Inquisition. He began his interview by going over his reaction after he learned that BioWare’s 2005 RPG Jade Empire would allow gamers to have gay romances. “I remember hearing about when they made that decision to put it in and I was floored,” Gaider told Video Game Sophistry. “I mean, I’m gay myself, so I felt it kind of odd when I heard about it, how shocked I was because I just never thought that part of my life had a role to play in work. Like I said, it just wasn’t done. I didn’t even really consider the idea, so when they made that decision it was…
Interview with BioWare’s Manager of Analytics – Stats and Game Design Decisions
Every now and then we get the privilege of hearing from representatives of BioWare quote player engagement stats in order to back up their game design. However, we have never been lucky enough to delve into the deep insight concerning their usage. If you have been curious or just flat out frustrated, Alex Tremblay from BioWare has all the answers you need in a recent interview. Olib: Can you tell us a little about yourself? Alex: Hi, my name is Alex Tremblay. I’m the Manager of Analytics here at BioWare Austin. I’ve been working on SWTOR since well before the launch of the game. This is the first time I’ve been asked to talk about the game and I have to say, I’m excited. Through data, I feel very, very connected to both our game and players, but rarely do I get to directly interact.
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!
Timothy Zahn AMA has some interesting points on Canon and Lore
Reddit is known for its AMAs (ask me anything). These sessions can be fun and interesting, all depending on who is getting asked the questions. There was an interesting one recently with Timothy Zahn, Star Wars novelist and author of Blackcollar. While this AMA didn’t specifically address SWTOR, there were some very interesting points brought up, especially about story and lore and if you have not seen it yet, we suggest you head over and give it a read. Here are some snippets: Hey Mr. Zahn! HUGE fan of your work. A lot of my love for Star Wars stems from your work. But I have to ask, how do you feel about Lucasfilm declaring most expanded universe works (i.e. your works) as “non-canon”? I wasn’t going to address this topic. But since so many of you have asked: What the “non-canon” announcement by LFL means is that they aren’t…
Boston Cantina Tour and Jack Wood Interview
MMORPG.com had the chance to interview Producer Jack Wood, at the BioWare cantina tour in Boston earlier this month. The full interview can be read here, but Reddit user bstr413 made A summary of the Q&A not relating to strongholds: Why is there a sabacc table on The Esseles when there isn’t any sabacc? “Good question.” (No mention of adding sabacc to the game.) Why was Op/Scoundrel knockdown now a root?: That and the assassin skills would keep the player stunned for 1 second if they used a stun breaker due to the animation. More Same Gender Romance: Yes in future content. No in past content due to it breaking a lot of things. In retrospect, they should have made it possible to add it to all romanceable characters. EA/BioWare will not remove any Same Gender Romance in the game and romance opportunities in the future will be Bisexual. Moraband vs Korriban:…
MMORPG – Interview w/ Jeff Hickman & Bruce Maclean
MMORPG.Com had the chance to interview Jeff Hickman & Bruce Maclean from BioWare, about Star Wars: The old republic. The article contains lots of new great info, and here is the most imortant information from the article put together by Thrives: *Both warzones and GSF will see updates, GSF in the form of new maps, new ship roles, and new ships, new Huttball arena (Quesh), will be a more vertical/three dimensional space to maneuver through. *Class combat team is very busy. *They offered the interview because of her previous article, the slightly negative F2P review posted here a few weeks ago. They disagreed, responses from player with no prior SWTOR experience were characterized as ‘generally super positive’, they have metrics to support this statement. Subscribers are their priority but they’re always looking for opportunities to improve the F2P experience. *Interviewer thought the tour stops weren’t a huge opportunity to ‘drop some…
Lukewarm Tauntauns, Star Wars The Old Republic Ranked Guild Interview
It’s a long interview but one I recommend people watch, especially if they want a glimpse into the world of high level ranked PvP and the players behind it. Play it in the background while playing SWTOR or something. 🙂 Good questions asked and hopefully Bioware actually sees this to see what some of their ranked players are saying and thinking.
Cory Butler speaks on the future of SWTOR
mmorpg.com has an interview with BioWare’s Cory Butler discussing customization options coming in Game Update 2.1, Cathar race and Free to play restrictions. Most interesting parth of the interview are the last few questions regarding server transfer which include some new information about upcoming stuff that will be adding. MMORPG.com: Are for-pay server transfers coming? If so, when can players look forward to this service? Can you talk about any additional for-pay services players can look forward to? Cory Butler: Paid Character Transfers were originally slated to be part of Game Update 2.1, but we ran into a few bugs with the new Legacy Achievement system. You can expect Paid Character Transfers to be coming in hot on the heels of Game Update 2.1. No new announcements for paid services to make at this time. Other interesting info from the interview is Cathar Species unlock priced at 600 Cartel Coins for the entire account. This price will be the same for both…
Carrie Fisher to be in New Star Wars Film
The Internet world has been buzzing about whether or not Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill (which confirmed there are talks) and Harrison Ford will return to the big screen for the next installment in the Star Wars story. In an interview with Palm Beach Illustrated, Carrie puts some of those questions to rest. When asked if she could confirm whether or not she would play the role of Princess Leia, she said “Yes.” The interview was fun (in typical Carrie fashion) and went something like this: What do you think Princess Leia is like today? Elderly. She’s in an intergalactic old folks’ home [laughs]. I just think she would be just like she was before, only slower and less inclined to be up for the big battle. And still wearing the bagel buns? The bagel buns and the bikini, because probably she has sundowners syndrome. At sundown, she thinks that she’s 20-something….
Star Wars Rumor: Mark Hamill on Spinoff Movies and Returning to Star Wars
Mark Hamill’s movie “Sushi Girl” just went to DVD and Blu-ray this week and ET Online did an interview and talked to him about this release as well as his involvement in the upcoming Star Wars films. Specifically, they asked him what he thinks about those proposed spinoff movies. “It’s all very, very exciting and so unexpected,” says Hamill. “I think that’s the quality I like about it most – it’s like getting a pair of pants out of the closet you haven’t worn in three years and finding a $20 bill in the pocket. It’s just so unexpected.” They go on to ask him questions about whether or not he will appear in Star Wars Episode VII and he says “They’re talking to us” and that “George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we’d be interested. He did say that if we didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t cast…
Jeff Hickman Interview
The guys and girls over at TORWars got an Exclusive Interview with Executive Producer of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s, Jeff Hickman. In the interview mr. Hickman answers questions from the readers of TORWars and while he do dodge a few questions, he also answers some questions so well, that it get’s me very confident in the future of the game we all love so much. TW: The studio has seen some staffing changes over the past year. Do you feel you are at a good staffing level now? JH: Absolutely. The core of what makes the game and studio great are still here; quality in our game and in our workplace, people that are passionate about both, a camaraderie with each other that helps us support one another, and people who continue to help us carry the banner of BioWare and who are dedicated to help evolve and improve…
Corellian Run Radio Interviews Rob Hinkle
The good people over at Corellian Run Radio had the chance to interview Senior Systems Designer, Rob Hinkle. In the interview Mr. Hinkle answers questions regarding upcoming and current mechanics in PVP. What struck me the most about his answers to the questions, regarding gear. He personally felt gear had mattered too much up to this point. He spoke of having progression without having such a large gear gap, i.e. tightening up the gear gap. This seems like a good way to go. Here is a snip: Question 4: Are there any plans to ever change from the vertical progression of PvP gear to horizontal, especially with free-to-play? (i.e. will gear in the future still be a large factor in performance?) Rob: As we move forward, we want to tighten up the minimal gear level and maximum gear level power gap while inside PvP. ToR is an MMORPG, so we feel that players need some…
Meet the Developers: Jonathan Crow
Cool interview with Jonathan Crow, with some insight into what they keep tabs on. Quite an enjoyable read. Man would love to see the queries he runs on all that sweet sweet data he has access too. What does a typical day look like for you? Most days I work on two activities: 1. Monitoring the health of the game via a series of dashboards that we developed to track some of the important key performance indicators for the game (keeping track of daily logins, game economy, engagement in Operations and Warzones, etc). 2. Working on deeper-dive analyses associated with specific areas of play (such as comparing player deaths to boss kill rates between Operations) to help the development team assess whether a certain feature or piece of content needs to be modified to maximize the engagement and enjoyment of the player base. Can you share some interesting statistics with…
Massively: Interview Hall Hood
Massively’s Larry Everett had the chance to to an interview with Lead Writer of Star Wars: The old Republic – Hall Hood. This guy is approaching politician levels of question dodging, and answering questions regarding the upcoming planet Makeb, Hall Hood don’t really sheds light on anything new. It seems to me that going forward, at least for the foreseable future, the concept of 8 distinct class stories is gone, even if we may have different cutscenes for the same main story depending on our class. No word about “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” story, that was datamined a few weeks ago either. When Makeb was first announced, we were told that it was not a continuation of the class story. Yet in a recent interview, Jeff Hickman said that Makeb is the continuation of your story. I think there might be a bit of confusion in semantics. Can you clarify and perhaps expound on what…
EUCantina Interviews Drew Karpyshyn
The guys over at EU Cantina had the chance to sit down and interview Drew Karpyshyn. The interview is mainly about his new book Annihilation, but Drew Karpyshyn also answers questions regarding Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil. Unfortunately the interview don’t touch his work on Star Wars: The old republic, But Mr. Karpyshyn love to see it make the jump to TV or the big screen someday. EUC: Aside from The Tales of the Jedi and Knight Errant, most of The Old Republic novels and comics tie directly into video games. As you peer into the future, where does The Old Republic era go from here? DK: I think the Old Republic era is going to continue to grow. It’s proven quite popular with the fans, and it still has so much untapped potential for authors and other creative types to explore. In addition to more games, books and graphic novels, I’d love to see it make the jump to…
SWTOR F2P & Future content interview with Damion Schubert
Dulfy had the opportunity to interview Lead Designer Damion Schubert regarding the F2P option launching yesterday. Dulfy was good enough to take questions from the readers of her blog. reading through the interview I found some of the most interesting key points to be: Armor dyes seems to be in the pipeline No new items to the VIP/Collectors Edition vendors Cathar race will be by purchase only Returning events (i.e. sell your rakghoul items now before the word gets out) Check out the full interview over at dulfu.net or read our small snippet below: What was the biggest challenge in converting such a massive MMO into a FTP model? It would have to be giving away as much as humanly possible to our free to play players, while still ensuring that our subscribers felt like they were getting a great value. Both populations of players are a key component to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s path forward,…
Bioware Executive Producer Jeff Hickman on SWTOR’s upcoming move to F2P
The team over at Zam spoke to BioWare’s Executive Producer for Live Services about introducing a free-to-play option, future updates and the impact of Hero Engine. In this interview, they talk about the upcoming f2p model for the game as well as how they will be attracting new players to the game with a premium experience. They talk new updates, additional content brought to the game and more. It’s a good read while we await these changes. Here’s a snippet: I started off by asking about where the idea for SWTOR’s free-to-play option came from, and what influenced the team in deciding to offer it alongside the existing subscription. Hickman explained that, while they’ve been aware of what other MMOs were doing, it was player feedback that encouraged them to choose this route. “We knew that there were other models out there, and they’ve been successful, and it’s kind of been…
BioWare pledges six-week content update schedule for Star Wars: The Old Republic
BioWare Austin General Manager Matt Bromberg recently spoke with AusGamers about Star Wars: The Old Republic’s free-to-play option and future content updates. PC Gamer has more on that story and what it means to us. With the free to play model coming soon, many existing players want to know what we can expect from future updates to the game. So PC Gamer asked about the timelines for future updates to Warzones, Flashpoints and Operations. PC Gamer reports: “We’re committed to a roughly six-week schedule for major updates — a new Warzone, Flashpoint, Operation, and event — on a regularly frequent cadence,” Bromberg said. Bromberg also reiterated planned incentives for recouping paid subscribers with closed accounts when The Old Republic’s new account system executes this fall, saying, “We announced that subscribers who have lapsed are already qualified to get Cartel Coins, which will be the in-game currency in the game once…
Interview of Gabe Amatangelo
SWTOR Life visited Gamescom this year and also had the great opportunity to interview Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo about SWTOR. We have seen other interviews with Gabe but it’s always great to see what else he will say and do. Here some info from SWTOR-Life about the interview and then check out the video below to see it all for yourself: “”The first booth I visited at Gamescom this year was Star Wars: The Old Republic booth. I was curious as to what will I find there. What I found were people playing the new warzone Ancient Hypergates and, to my surprise, Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo himself chilling and waiting for the press to come. I spent more than half my time in SWTOR playing PvP on the maps this man designed so I opened with: “You ruined my life by wasting sooooo much of my…