In their latest interview from the PAX East convention of 2011, Darth Hater sat down with Bioware’s creative director, James Ohlen.

Darth Hater: “We also heard that in your dialogue system, you are tracking metrics on when people are pausing to see how long they’re taking to make decisions and things like that to really work on the dialogue. So you are getting ton of information from the testers?”

 

James Ohlen: “We keep on getting more and more information as the testing groups get larger. We had two groups of a thousand players on a shard and that got us a lot of information because it was a lot more people playing together. We were able to see a population that was not indicative of the final game, but it was closer to it because the populations were so much bigger than just a couple hundred. We’re able to use that to make a lot of adjustments; it also validated a lot design decisions we made months earlier. The game really gets a lot better every single month. It is pretty impressive. The developer teams are getting faster at making changes and making adjustments to feedback. Two years ago it would take so long to see a change in the game, but now you see changes every month.”

From what I remember in the past, we have never really gotten a definitive number from a developer about just how many people are involved in “game testing”.  If I remember correctly the only estimations of a number came from the statement of “more than I could fit in my office” or something to that effect. (the actual quote escapes me at the moment but it was very similar to that statement)

When they tell me that they have two groups of a thousand players on a shard that gives me a better idea as to how far they are along in the numbers of people that they have allowed in at this point.  I figure it is more than two thousand at this point, but at least I now have a baseline reference.

The comment that they were “on a shard”  also makes me wonder if they also have the ability of running more than one shard at this time with their current server structure.  I am thinking they do and that they may be currently operating several shards at this point in time.  Maybe a private in house version for the developers only that showcases the latest builds, maybe a couple for outside the office testers, and etc.   I may be way off base,  as this is just speculation on my part.

In the end though, with this developer interaction I feel better about the testing process going on at Bioware.  One of my fears from the past was that they didn’t have the amount of people testing their game that they needed to find out all that was necessary.  That a small minority of people testing would sway the design decisions in directions I as a MMO veteran did not approve of for my gaming time.

With a number of at the very least two thousand testing the game, I feel much better that a wider view of MMO mechanic and game play design is being addressed.

Now if I could just get my hands on it and test out the “Crew skills system” I could die a happy man.      🙂

Penny Arcade Expo in Boston is about to open its doors to the gaming enthusiasts in about 30-60 minutes and excitement is mounting. The Old Republic fans are anxiously waiting for the Friday Update that will kick start PAX. I was thinking of starting a poll on what people think the big PAX Friday Update will be with options like “Next phase of beta” and “release date”, but I figure with only several hours away we’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime enjoy this image sent to Twitter by Guild Umbra of a line forming at PAX gates.

Image from Mos Eisley Radio

Penny Arcade Expo in Boston is only several hours away and excitement among The Old Republic fans is mounting. Things are not being made any less difficult by officials at Bioware and they keep adding fuel to fire. We first had an awesome update last Friday with plethora of information on the Bounty Hunter and the Deceived novel. We got surprised on Wednesday by the Guild HQ application on the official swtor.com site (10.000 guilds have registered in these two days). The latest news is that Firday update, that Bioware has been doing for SWTOR every Friday for almost 2 years now, will be done live from the show floor. Official SWTOR Twitter account invited fans to:

… join us at 10:15am EST at Booth 912 and help us kick off #SWTORPAX

The wording of this announcement is very suggestive and the fact they chose #SWTORPAX to be their hash tag feels as if their news is going to be so big that PAX East this year will be remembered by SWTOR news. It might just be the starving fan in me seeing things though.

The other fact is that fans and members of fansites have already started arriving in Boston and there are some images already being available. You can see what the press badge looks like bellow (image from Vall of Tor Syndicate) and the image at the top of this article is actually a look at SWTOR booth that will host the big announcement tomorrow.

Keep your eyes pealed to SWTOR Life all throughout tomorrow and while the event lasts because we will be scouring for news and footage non-stop to bring you as much coverage as we can. Temporarily we added Twitter feeds in our sidebar to keep you updated with the latest news from fansite attendees as well as discussions tagged by the official SWTOR PAX East hashtag #SWTORPAX.

Image courtesy of Tor Syndicate

Only a few days are left before Boston hosts the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo – East coast edition. This is a big deal in the SWTOR community because Bioware seems to love PAX and always does something special at these events. This event is also special because for the first time there will be an organized gathering of SWTOR fansites and fans at two community events. Here’s a list of important things you can expect from PAX East this year.

The Old Republic booth is 912 and that is where visitors will be able to sit down and play the game. For the first time the general public will be able to experience flashpoint content. Taral V, the flashpoint we’ve seen footage of several weeks ago, is what people will be able to play through at the show. Those that lean towards the dark side can avoid playing this Republic only instance and choose to play one of the Sith Empire classes and their starting planets. Never fear my Jedi friends, you get a treat as well because for the first time the general public will be able to play on Tython and try Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular. Just to make things even more awesome James Ohlen (Lead Designer) and Daniel Erickson (Lead Writer) will be hanging at the booth all throughout the event and will be available for Q&A sessions.

The things I hate missing out on are two community gatherings that will happen at PAX. There is the Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Cantina organized by SWTOR fansites (I think the main sponsor is Darth Hater). Here are the details:
Date & Time: Friday March 11th, 2011, 7PM
Location: The Times Irish Pub & Restaurant, 112 Broad St. (Between High st & Wendell St.) Boston, MA 02110
Confirmed Participants:
Ask A Jedi
Corellian Run Radio
Curse
Darth Hater
Massively
Mos Eisley Radio
TORSyndicate

The second event is officially organized by Bioware and it is by invitation only. You can get your invitations at the SWTOR booth and if you do you will be able to attend the Community Meet and Greet hosted by SWTOR community team. The details are as follows:

Date & Time: March 12th, 2011
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront hotel
Confirmed Participants:
SWTOR Community team (meaning Stephen Reid, David Bass and Allison Berryman to name a few)
Developers (depending on how tired they are we might see James Ohlen and Daniel Erickson)

Remember that you can queue for the event up to an hour early so make sure you arrive there on time because the capacity is limited!

Apparently, The Old Republic team is in Europe and they just announced through their Twitter accounts that they will be announcing new details about the game soon. Whether this will be this Friday as part of the regular Friday updates or today remains unclear. Ask a Jedi reports that:

.. one of our sources spoke of another “special unannounced event” that would provide TOR fans with some new information before the end of the year

The special event is supposedly EA Winter Showcase in London. We all know that European players are hoping for announcement of EU Game Testing start, but we better hold back see what happens in the neext few hours. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we get more information.