Visiting Bioware In the Name of Community
Floodgates have opened and it is now widely known in the SWTOR community that there will be an event held this weekend at Bioware’s offices in Austin, Texas. The participants – fan site representatives. Fifteen fan sites will be attending. This seems to be an extension of events that were organized for regular press members at the recent UK event and for PC Gamer (they said in their article that they too were flown to Austin for two day SWTOR bonanza). Bioware graciously invited representatives of SWTOR Life and I’m one of the lucky ones that gets to go. I just wanted to let everyone know that you should keep your eye on SWTOR Life in the upcoming days because we will try our best to relate to you our full experience of the event. I plan on blogging about my trip to Austin, since it is a 20 hour epic trek across the ocean with three flights. I’ll continue the coverage of the event from a more personal perspective of someone that is not used to this kind of events. As a gamer I am totally thrilled that I get a chance to play something like the Old Republic for several hours. There’s a part of me wanting to just enjoy the gaming experience, while the more responsible part wants to take notes all throughout the event and gather as much information as possible.
Thinking about it more thoroughly I come to the conclusion that I would like to do whatever you, the SWTOR community, want me to do. I would like to be your eyes and hands at the event. If you ever wanted to have a buddy that has access to the game and he can only describe his gaming experience over the phone and email while you ask him questions about things you’d like to find out – let me be that guy. Your source on the inside. Can I open the character and see what PvP stats are present in the game? Yes I can. Can I try and powerlevel through my gametime to see what’s awaiting past level 15? Yes, I can try. Can I see all the skill the Bounty Hunter can learn at a class trainer? Yes, I will write those down. (Thinking about it now, that would be stupid considering all skills are changing in this stage of game development, but if you want me to see if any classes’ skills are cool – I’ll probably do that 🙂 ) So, ask away, wish away. In line with what Bioware is ready to reveal I’ll pick the most compatible requests and make it my goal to fulfill those. You can post your requests here in the comment section and I will be opening a special thread on the official swtor.com forums in the coming days so you can post your requests there as well.
6 Responses to “Visiting Bioware In the Name of Community”
Congrats on being able to make the trip. What I would really like to see is just an in depth article of what you did in your playing experience. There are so many reviews out there that say, oh ya enjoyed the game, played for x amount of hours, and thats great. What I would come to the site to read though, its a good solid very detailed write out of what you did in the game and what was fun, etc. Did you get on a speeder taxi and travel across the zone? What was it like, how fast was it? Was it laggy? Etc..
Hey Mike thanks for commenting. 🙂
That is what i plan to do, I want to write about my game experiences for sure.
I dont want to try to write down every single skill or how much damage it does type of thing because, well, thats the stuff that changes so much in this stage of development and I would hate to add to that confusion.
I want to try to give the community my feelings of playing the game and how the experience was, I think like you have said, that is a better way for the community to feel like they can see what I saw.
let us know what you think for sure 🙂
Hmm to get the best info you want to ask them something innocent sounding that let’s them say more than they meant to…
Are there non-combat activites besides crafting?
(might imply pazaak or swoop racing)
Are the game’s systems likely to be completed all at a similar time or are some likely be finished sooner than others?
(tells you if the end is in sight for only some or all game systems)
Anyway have fun, take a hidden camera and steal as many towels as will fit in your suitcase 😛
[…] would also like to point you to this post of ours. My agenda for the event is to have my gameplay experience guided by the community. To experience […]
Awesome that all those sites including your own get to go. And the tour of Bioware Austin (perhaps you can see if they have developers shackled in the basement and these LARP parties and chocolate fountains they keep talking about).
Some SWTOR questions I would ask the Bioware team would be:
Are there any additional Crew Skills they are ready to reveal? Will Bioware ever update Armtech on their Crew Skills page since it’s reveal in December last year? Are each of the unknowns on that page equal to an as yet unrevealed Crew Skill?
Is there anything else Bioware can reveal about the Voidstar Warzone or other Warzones?
Can Bioware confirm the CC Immunity bar revealed from buffed.de as in game right now along with it being viewable by the opposing faction?
Can Bioware give us an idea of raid sizes in terms of number of players needed for SWTOR yet? Will it be 8 people or 20 people per raid group or something entirely different?
Will there be a companion video to showcase some companions and what they can do and some of the customizations they have to set them apart from someone else’s companions?
With the guild integration that the Guild HQ seems to hint at, is there going to be some kind of guild raid loot system like DKP in place or some kind of ‘in-house’ system that is similar where you can reward players for effort and attendance?
Can Bioware give us more information on the 6 healers and how they differ in the ways that they heal for each advanced class as the game stands right now?
Can Bioware give us more information on the 6 tanks and how they differ in the ways that they tank for each advanced class as the game stands right now?
For the advanced classes without support skill trees such as Gunslinger, Sniper, Sentinel, and Marauder, what are their styles of DPS (since they have 2 DPS skill trees) and how do those skill trees differ?
Since 1 skill tree is shared with each advanced class of a particular class, how different is say an Operative specc’ed in that shared tree versus a Sniper specc’ed in the same shared tree?
Will there be a video to show off Trooper and Bounty Hunter healing so we can get a better idea of what to expect from their healing as a healing build of those classes?
Will there be an addon system like World of Warcraft’s system using LUA?
Is the UI customizable? Will you be able to create or download custom UI’s similar to other MMO’s?
Will there be macros in SWTOR?
Will you be able to capture cities or planets in PVP?
Can Bioware reveal any other lightsaber colors?
Are there any other player character races they can reveal officially now or are there still some up in the air at this point?
Will Bioware ever get Weird Al and Dallas Dickinson to sing the Saga Begins together along with the whole SWTOR design team for an epic reprise of their PAX Prime performance?
Well just a few questions to start…
Jesus, a three flight journey? I hope you’ll have some energy left to actually play 😀
Anyways, it’s really cool that you gave the community this chance! Here’s my half-serious question: D.E. said that they visually redesigned the Rattataki. Are they looking cool now, or are they the same old pale baldies and it was just PR-talk? :p Would be epic if you could get a peek!