May 14
How They Make Star Wars Galaxies
At the SOE Gamer’s Day event in LA the week before last, I spoke with a couple of fascinating people. Getting to nerd it up with Scott Hartsman about the class balance of Inquisitors may be the most fun I’ve yet had covering a games media event.
John Blakely, head of the SOE-Austin development house, was onhand at the event and a nice enough guy to put up with my nattering questions about Star Wars Galaxies. It was, of course, all we had to talk about … he staunchly withstood the temptation to talk about DC Online. (Curse your Will Save, Blakely!)
Here are my notes from our talk, which I (for reasons I can’t comprehend) didn’t record:
- The Galaxies team has been stripped down to just about 20 people. Their aim is to be agile, flexible, and focused. IE: The whole group turns on a single project, attacks it, succeeds, and then moves on to something new as soon as they can.
- The folks that are there now are dedicated and passionate. They’ve learned a lot of lessons from the last two years, and all they want to do now is shut up and make the game.
- Despite my best efforts I couldn’t get any hints about what Chapter 7 will be about. John said that what they like to do is take some time every few months to do some ‘bug squashing’. Once Chapter 6 is stable on the live servers, they’re going to make some time to get on their list of outstanding problems. They essentially take the list of known issues, prioritize them (with input from the community), and then knock em off starting at the top and working down.
- We spent a goodly amount of time talking about the company’s relationship with LucasArts. He was reluctant to place blame with their group, but he did admit that SOE and the house that Skywalker built have occasionally had rough patches. His statement was that, if you look at the project’s history it’s possible to see where there were problems based on how the game was doing. Problems in SWG probably equated to problems between SOE and LucasArts.
- Mr. Blakely took pains to note that, while they have had problems in the past the relationship between the two companies is probably stronger than it has been in over a year. He also shared a bit about their process. Every year SOE-Austin meets with the folks at LucasArts to decide goals for the coming year. The tacke the queue of ideas they’ve built up over the previous 12 months, and use feedback from the community via boards, IMs, conversations, and player events to prioritize what needs to be done first.
- This year’s goals are exactly what has been said in public: no expansion this year, just lots of free content, making the game great for the players.
- Now that the profession expertise systems are all in place, they can start turning their attention to more ‘pure fun’ additions. He said to expect a lot more new content into the summer and fall.
- The one thing I could wrestle out of him is that … eventually … they are going to be expanding the Legacy quest series. They’d love to just be rolling out additions to the quest line all the time, but one quest is a not inconsiderable amount of effort.
- The problem is one of time. We talked at some length about the problems facing designers the simple act of adding a quest to the game. SWG was not designed to have quests added on a regular basis; SWG’s sandbox concept when the game launched is still working against them. As a result, the tools they’re using (to this day) are awkward and clumsy when you consider the amount of information they’d like to add for a given quest. It’s something they’re working on.
- When they work on systems in the future, they’re going to get a ‘big slice of the pie’ as they’ve done with the new version of creature handling going in with Chapter 6. If they spend time working on new systems, they essentially want as many players as possible to have access to those systems. Mr. Blakely didn’t rule out the possibility of more expertise systems, like creature handling, in the future.
Thanks again to Mr. John Blakely for his time at what was certainly a busy event.
12 comments12 Comments so far
When will people realize this game is dead?
They ran it through with a sword with the CU.
They set fire to the remains with the NGE.
The only thing I’m looking forward to is the swg emu project going live. Star Trek Online brings a small measure of hope as well.
I loved being a CH, but even them doing the BM crap wasn’t enough to bring me back.
Serves SOE right … That a group of Morons … SOE , Sony !
SWG will not last the year with SWG and if SWG 2 is made by SOE then it too is DOOMED! Love that Jestor – The Clowned Prince of SOE’s stupidty!
Jestor is just upset because he has been hooting SWG is gonna die within a year for the last 2 or 3 years now.
Gotta love those vets, such bright and cheery people.
Oh great, now they are going to bring back Creature Handler? Too little, too late.
It’s sad to hear that the sandbox approach is working against them and they have been actively working against it. I would still play the game had the developers stuck to that sandbox approach and produced some friggin’ content for the majority of the contentless professions.
The game had a bunch of monsters to shoot… where the fuck is the Star Wars in that? And as far as I’ve seen, that is still the game they have today, but you can gain “levels” now and be a “jedi” from start. Lame.
Hmm.. maybe you didnt watch the movies where children from birth were trained as Jedis. You people only cry because the painful grind that once was has been removed. Get with it. I hold an elder jedi title (amongst other elder titles) The gameplay has improved a million times since you quit. So chill already.
NGE devs are pathetic, “making the game great for the players” ?
Woh, now they try to make us believe that there is player in their game ? 100 people at primetime can be called “players population” ?
Let’s face it, they destroyed the game that we all loved, they just have to bring back preCU and A LARGE part of the old community, and lot of new player would come and play one of the greatest unique MMO ever saw, all they have to do was to fix some minor bug during preCU and add few content (nothing affecting game mechanics) to keep it fresh for players.
And now, once they destroyed the game, they try to bring back “expertise” and some other poor game mechanics ? They had a unique system of skill points, unique PvP, and a large community, WoW stole few of them so they begun to try to change the game and made the CU, then the NGE, but they didn’t understood that what people wanted was preCU.
It’s sad to see that the game is actually empty, they would be better to regroup all of their server into one, but they can’t admit that they made a mistake or something like that…
Good luck with the poor NGE now.
You know, just because a group has to downsize does not mean that they don’t care about their product guys. I think these guys have more than their work cut out for them and I am grateful that they are willing to put the time and effort to help us turn this thing into a worthwhile venture for us. I’m looking forward to the storyteller mode, I think it could really add value to providing directed content for some of the lower level players and promote increased interactions between players which is why we play MMOs to begin with. so many other games are just shoot em up 1st/3rd person shooters. this thing promotes team building and customizations and roleplaying. And its got the only decent space system in my opinion of anything! If you want a developer to make the adventures for you, then get a console. This thing can only make improvements to how players feel about the game
Look, the game is not dead. believe it or not more people are in it now than have been in a long time, the game is beginning to be fun again. and dont say, oh he’s just a noob from the post-nge. i was there pre-cu, i was there pre-nge, i stuck with it, tho i will admit i took a break (a good year long break) It’s better. its actually evolving and becoming fun. the beast master system actually takes skill instead of just taming creatures you actually have to get an incubator, get good enzymes, get good dna, try to mutate, work hard and wait about 3 days. its enjoyable. i will admit i will be playing SWGEmu when it goes live. but i will stick with SWG. and i’ll be posting on more of these threads as people continue to blindly attack a game that they no longer recognize, and insult a game they havent played since changes have been made, and approved by, the fan base. dont attack the game if you arent willing to try it and make a certified judgement, you cant attack a game thats changed immensely since u last played it.
“Hmm.. maybe you didnt watch the movies where children from birth were trained as Jedis” – Elder JEDI
Ok elderjedi, what you fail to understand is SWG is set during time line of the new galactic order. The game was supposed to be set during the GCW ( galactic civil war) where the jedi religion was merely a myth or a story of the past. Jedis were extremely rare….they hid themselves from the empire. How the fuck do you explain 100 jedis in a city in a time where jedis are extinct? You’re basing your facts based on Ep 1 , 2 ,and 3. But NEWS FLASH , those movies were set during the old republic where the jedi order still existed. Change the fucken game to KOTOR or something then this game will make more sense since everyone’s a jedi now. This game should be more about storm troopers , bountry hungrts , rebel troopers etc etc etc. Not fucken jedi jedi jedi jedi jedi. You can tell this game is being run by people who don’t know anything about star wars it’s just aimed at the dumb people fan base who’ll just give their money cuz they saw something from episode 3 in SWG.
[...] opinionated posts I did some off the cuff designing for Star Wars Galaxies, and then sat down for a talk with the Producer of the game. I gabbed with Scott Hartsman about EQ2, and put some snark down on why WoW is more popular. And [...]
If yall are pissed at what SOE did, check out SWGEmu.com, they are bringing the game back the way its supposed to be.