ZAM talks to Bruce Maclean, Producer of SWTOR about Update 2.0 and RotHC

In the early days of SWTOR, the Sorcerer was held up as the main example of class imbalance (not that I was envious when playing my Juggernaut, oh no). Having played the class for a few hours, I was impressed with its versatility and how easily I could switch roles from healer to DPS to crowd control support on the fly in mid-battle, even though not optimally specced. Of course, my experience was anecdotal and can be deceptive; I asked what class balance efforts remained so close to Update 2.0 and RotHC.

"We've had game update 2.0 live on public test server and a lot of players immediately jumped to 55 on PTS and beat each other up in Warzones day in and day out. Not only are we looking at what they're saying in their responses to the class changes we made, we're also looking at actual data and metrics. We have combed through this, used it and fine-tuned adjustments to the balance that we've made. It's good that your class felt powerful, every class should feel powerful."

As announced last week, SWTOR has seen two million new accounts created since the November launch of F2P. Although the team must be elated, I wondered how the team viewed Rise of the Hutt Cartel as a way to further grow the game’s player base.

"A lot of the folks who have left Star Wars in the last year haven't seen the new content additions we’ve been doing. We have been doing frequent content updates and there’re a lot of great things to bring them back. Some of the players today haven’t played in the last five months and they hadn’t seen our new Warzone Ancient Hypergates. Our hope is, first and foremost, that they’ll come back and see all the changes that we’ve made to the game.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is the best game that it could ever be at this point, so if Rise of the Hutt Cartel brings them back just to check out Rise of the Hutt Cartel, they can see the rest of the game, that’s absolutely what we want. What we do from there depends on how it’s received, but so far reception has seemed good.”

One of the criticisms that the development team had accepted was an issue that needed addressing, was that SWTOR can be too much of a single player experience. With the new expansion, in what ways was it attempting to accentuate more social game play?

“One of the reasons we had you play through was so you could see how well it plays in a group content situation. We’ve made a lot of the challenges [ones] that encourage grouping, or are more easily completed through grouping.

There are a lot of challenging parts to Rise of the Hutt Cartel, that players will step back from and think “I need to get some more experience, or some better levels or find someone else to play with,” and we certainly hope they do as it’s much better with a friend. Also, with Game Update 2.0 we’re introducing an experience bonus for being in a guild. You get a 5% experience bonus for being in a guild, there’s a great reason to find other people, play with them, guild with them and enjoy Rise of the Hutt Cartel.”

The story in RotHC, which focuses on Makeb, is faction based rather than surrounding the individual classes as was the case with the original story at launch. As the eight week turnaround on new content is so demanding, I asked when and if we might see more class centered story lines in the future.

“We made a deliberate decision with Rise of the Hutt Cartel to move to a shorter expansion release cycle. It’s a less than ten dollar price point for subscribers; it’s just over a year and a number of months after the release of the actual game in the first place. So instead of going for a big two or three year expansion, we made the decision to go to the same philosophy that we’ve approached the eight week content updates that you mentioned, which is more frequent updates.

To achieve that, we’ve pared down, the storyline is a faction unique storyline, but not class unique. There are vignettes within the cinematics that are specific to each class, so the cinematics are slightly different for each class, but ultimately it’s a faction storyline.

Your character's voice is there; it is your character’s story, but everyone in the faction shares that storyline. In order for us to continue to keep this cadence, that’s likely to be the methodology we pursue going forward, it depends on what our community response is, how much they love Rise of the Hutt Cartel; which we’re hoping they love it as much as we do.”

Fans can find out if Rise of the Hutt Cartel captures their hearts on April 9 for head start players and April 14 for everyone else. For my hands-on impressions of Makeb and Macrobinoculars, read the article here.

It was a particularly interesting day meeting the development team behind SWTOR for the first time. It was obvious that there was an abundance of determination to drive the game forward and respond to the community. I was asked a variety of questions on my thoughts about the game, both in its play and how I saw the perception from various forums.

The BioWare Austin team really is watching intently. Make sure your voice is heard as the next phase of SWTOR releases in just a couple of weeks.

Stay here for more Star Wars: The Old Republic news and head on over to Torhead for all your SWTOR resource needs.

Scott "Jarimor" Hawkes, Editor in Chief