SWTOR Classes part 2

Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer BioWare Austin: You will never in the game go into a cantina and poke a random person to see if you can solve their problems and they'll give you money. You will never have some stranger on the street ask you to save their cat. You do large, heroic things. I always tell people that we have to keep pushing forward. The level of writing and quest building that was acceptable in KOTOR would absolutely not be acceptable now. Mass Effect came out and absolutely set a new bar for this. We're coming out and saying we can push that even further. I always tell my writers to imagine if the very first response you could ever choose to any quest you might pitch is, "Excuse me, I'm saving the world. Is this important?"

The next one you think is, "Is it valid?" Because it might be, again, the Jedi guy who says, "Uh, I don't want to do this," but maybe we can convince him to go find your cat. But Vader? Really? That's actually why when I said that there's absolutely no faction cross-over ... I could never find a single example of a story Ben Kenobi would do that Vader would also be down with.

You can't talk about classes in particular, but are you going to include anything in the game that isn't combat oriented? Smugglers, tradesmen, that sort of thing.

Gordon: We will definitely have crafting.

"You know, crafting at its heart is not really what the universe is about. But one of the designers came up with a great idea, which I can't talk about because it's not implemented yet, of how to incorporate crafting into Star Wars without forcing a hero to do something that's very non-heroic."

Rich: The core classes we'll start off with will be based off or heroic, combat oriented experiences ... Star Wars, right? We are going to have crafting, because that's a big part of MMOs. We're going to implement crafting in a way that 'feels' right for Star Wars. For the longest time we struggled with that. You know, crafting at its heart is not really what the universe is about. But one of the designers came up with a great idea, which I can't talk about because it's not implemented yet, of how to incorporate crafting into Star Wars without forcing a hero to do something that's very non-heroic.

What about the tradition of Jedi crafting their own lightsabers?

Rich: With the way that MMOs work, gaining and upgrading loot over levels, you're not going to end the game with the same lightsaber you started with. That might mean a succession of different lightsabers ...

James Olen, Studio Creative Director: Yeah, our game is about loot. There are things in our game that as you progress you definitely can tell a new player from a high-level player.

Rich: There's also other roles you can play within an MMO social group. There are things we've been discussing about how we can make guilds feel more like they fit within the Star Wars universe, that's pretty special.

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