First goes to the person who can remember the punchline! quote:

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What's everyone playing whilst we wait for SWG?

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Well, I’ve been playing The Sims Online, Asheron’s Call 2, ToonTown, Anarchy Online: Notum Wars, Dark Age of Camelot: Shrouded Isles, and Earth and Beyond, when I get the chance, which isn’t often. Mostly, though, I play SWG. quote:

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wouldn't it be cool if they had zoo's on SWG where you could view all the different sort of species...I think it would be rather entertaining...

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Not at launch, sorry. quote:

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Neocron and I think Anarchy Online as well had loots that served no functional purpose other then filler objects. They went into no device and no NPC would buy it from you. Junk loot. Will there be any of this in SWG? It had to be one of the more annoying parts of the games.

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Yes, there will be, in part because some players like to collect oddities like that. quote:

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As MMORPGs progress and the immersion of gameplay increase, will they evolve to something beyond gaming? And more importantly to this moment, will SWG begin to cross that threshold into the world of higher gaming?

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I think they already have. The fact is that when you interact with someone across the wire in an MMORPG, you’re affecting real feelings, making real friends and enemies, having real emotional experiences. That’s already beyond what single-player gaming does. When you introduce elements like guilds and the like, we’re talking about something that transcends gaming. The communities that form around these games are more than the games themselves. I hope that SWG is some steps along this road. quote:

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Dev's are you considering changes to the /tell system

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Nope. We’ve recently added /retell (which you can also use as /rt in addition to /tell and /reply. The fact is that a robust communications system is absolutely vital to a game like this. Launching without one is just an invitation for people to use ICQ instead. And everyone will. quote:

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How will buffs be visually displayed?

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They are mostly displayed via icons in your icon bar (which I right next to your health, mind, and action bars). This being a sci-fi game set in the SW universe, there isn’t really much room for fancy particle effects swirling around you. quote:

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Will the AI used by SWG be the same as the one used by Sony in EQ or will the basic templet be different?

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No, we had to write our own. It’s fairly different, because we have to handle a wider array of types of creatures (peaceful herd animals are all over SWG because you can’t make an SW games without your banthas!), but don’t serve much purpose in a game like EQ. Also, we have to handle ranged weaponry and make most combat be vs. NPCs, and that called for a different approach as well. quote:

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last we heard, the full day/night cycle was about 45 minutes, and the night portion only lasting for 15 or so.

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That’s way old. I think most planets are between an hour and a half and two hours, with the moons tending to have shorter days. quote:

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Do you think the dev's families and friends ask the same questions as us?

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They mostly ask, “when will I see you again?” After all, we’re all pulling long hours, and our families don’t get to see much of us right now. quote:

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Logging off completely blows a game and any shade of realism or immersiveness it has. When you disconnect from the game, your character should immediately go into NPC mode and either lie on the ground sleeping, or stand around in a stupor waiting for its soul to come back.

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And get killed while you’re offline? Doesn’t sound like much fun… We use a pretty standard approach on this front. You can log out immediately if you’re in a camp or a hotel. You can disconnect anywhere else, but you’ll hang around in the world for around five minutes to make sure you weren’t using disconnecting as a way to avoid a fight. quote:

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many of you are aware of the Star Wars Insider galactic map tailored for SWG (pieces have been scanned in and posted here previously).[snip] Some of the trade routes are shifted at the seams (ie. they look slightly disjointed there), but it's still relatively intact and impressive to look at. I'll be curious to see if those routes ever become a factor in some regard with, say, the Space Expansion.

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The trade routes are used as the template for the passenger lines between the spaceports of the planets in the game. quote:

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In what 3 months of AC2 being out players have already reached the pinnacle of success, which is level 50 as of right now. I'd like to know what the Dev's have to say about this, and I certainly hope this won't be "I've maxed out my character in 3 months! (June 15th)

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I think that different games have different emphases on how fast you should advance through the advancement ladder. In AC2 it’s much faster than EQ, sure. In UO it is faster than either of those two, but many UO players say the game doesn’t even BEGIN until you max out. So I think there’s differing philosophies there, and they’re all valid. In SWG’s case, I am not even sure it makes sense. Do you define maxing out as having spent all your skill boxes? Well, that doesn’t include Jedihood, and it doesn’t include the other 9/10ths of the game. Let’s assume you mean “time to max out a single character, spending all skill points and achieving an elite profession.” quote:

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How long would you like to see it take for a player to reach the pinnacle of sucess? Normal Profession? Elite Profession? I would hope powergaming, maybe 6 hours a day, 7 days a week of gaining XP constantly, it would take 6 months at the very LEAST.

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Not a chance. That would be 42 hours a week of playing, and that’s twice as much as the average. A casual player would take two years to max out. At that pace, the rewards for advancement would come far too slowly. You might get a new skill every couple of weeks. :P You have to measure off of the average player, not the people who can play like it’s a full-time job. And in fact, we’d love it if the average player in SWG was online for LESS than 20 hours a week. We’ve been hoping for more like 15 or so. We’re looking for around 3 months there. Of course, if you want to REALLY max out and cover all the ground in the game, you’re talking about ten times that. And we’re also thinking that in many ways, the game in SWG is just getting interesting when you’ve maxed out, because there’s lots of other stuff to do. quote:

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Chatting has always been done in MMORPGs by typing into the chatbox, usually with /commands in front, ect. It amazes Ekim and myself that these games, which are extremely graphical in nature, do not have graphical implementations of chatting; like buttons for commands would make life MUCH EASIER, and like a button-panel of favorite players (or most chatting occurances) with customizable buttons on the panel for each person. So when you click on the chatbutton all you have to do next is start typing the message.

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The issue here is mostly that when people want to talk, they want to do it as fast as possible. And mousing around and clicking is not fast. That’s why people tend to end up gravitating towards typing, because it’s more efficient. quote:

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Still working at 7:30?

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It was 9:30 here actually. And I’m doing 10am to midnight, every weekday. 2pm to midnight every weekend day. quote:

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If you're short on questions I'll ask an easy one, does the Teras Kasi artist profession have any prerequisites?

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Sure, they need to learn brawling first. -Raph Koster Creative Director