Jesse-Sky
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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR Czerka dailies, the F2P experiment, and sitting in chairs
Commenters and followers of my work have asked about multiple things over the last couple of weeks. When are you going to finish the free-to-play experiment? Are you going to do a monetary breakdown of the new Star Wars: The Old Republic daily zone? What do you think about the sitting-in-chairs news revealed at the cantina tour? The unfortunate bit about all of those questions is that the answers are far too short to make up their own article and far too long to answer on Twitter. So I've decided to answer all of these questions in one hodgepodge of an article that I'm calling nuna nuggets.
SWTOR update 2.4 preview from Chicago cantina tour
The BioWare community team and Lead Designer Jesse Sky traveled to Wizard World ComicCon last week to give fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic a taste of the new upcoming content. The developers announced that, besides the arena PvP content, Update 2.4 will introduce players to two brand-new operations centering around the planet Oricon, the planet where the Dread Masters have been rumored to be hiding. Developers also gave every fan attendee a thumb drive containing concept art and screenshots from the planet. If you are on the SWTOR mailing list, then you saw the teaser about the new Varactyl mount coming soon. The cantina crawlers in Chicago received a couple of screenshots and a video of the new mount, which we have featured after the break. And one more rumor coming directly from our tipster in the field: Jesse Sky said that although we will never see actual sitting in chairs due to coding issues, we will see an emote that will make our characters look as if they are sitting very soon. [Thanks to Mike from Nefarious Intent for the tips!] %Gallery-195790%
Star Wars: The Old Republic kicks off meeting the developers with Jesse Sky
Like every MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic is not a game produced by a single person. The community team behind the game has kicked off what promises to be a series of articles introducing the developers, starting with the lead Flashpoint and Operations designer Jesse Sky. Like BioWare's similar articles for other franchises, the interview is a mix of questions about Star Wars: The Old Republic and questions about who Sky is as a person. Sky goes on record as mentioning that he sees designing Flashpoints as similar to designing an adventure for a tabletop game, with the story choices having a major impact on how the instance is paced out. There's also a science to making sure that the encounters are designed to be challenging while at the same time not insurmountable. If you'd like to know more about one of the minds behind the game's content, check out the full interview, and perhaps throw a few more questions into the official discussion thread.
SWTOR dev builds mini-movies in Flashpoints
We all know BioWare is acclaimed for the presentation of its games. Single-player games like Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and DragonAge have a way of capturing a player and immersing him in the world. How many of you have ever wondered what it would be like to invite your friends along for a ride on a BioWare game, too? This could be the key reason BioWare decided to make Flashpoints in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Jesse Sky is a world designer at BioWare Austin. In the most resent developers blog for SWTOR, he details what it takes to build a Flashpoint. He explains that it's not all about getting to the next boss fight: "Fighting through legions of enemies is part of what makes the cooperative gameplay feel heroic, but we find it helps if your enemies do more than just stand around waiting to be attacked." According to Sky, many players have run dungeons that have them wondering why they are there, with no sense of purpose. "We want you to feel like you are the heroes in a Star Wars action sequence, but we also want to give you opportunities to roleplay with your friends." Sky indicates again that SWTOR's emphasis is not only making a great game but also making a great story. Be sure to read the whole developers blog on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website.
[Updated] SWTOR unveils the Taral V flashpoint
We've been told about Star Wars: The Old Republic flashpoints for over a year now, since the Developer Walkthrough, but no one outside of BioWare has seen, touched, or really known anything about them -- until today. Gamespot was lucky enough to land the first glimpse into one of the Republic flashpoints: Taral V. This 90-minute story arc within SWTOR was summed up in a subsequent interview with Jesse Sky, World Designer for SWTOR. A powerful Jedi is being held prisoner inside a nebula, and only one specific computer can navigate the maelstrom. Sky highlights the flashpoint like so: "Your mission is to infiltrate the hidden Imperial fortress on Taral V and recover this computer. Success will mean that the Republic fleet can launch an assault on the prison where you can, perhaps, rescue the Jedi prisoner." For more on the interview with Jesse Sky, you can run over to Gamespot or follow after the break right here on Massively for the full Taral V video. [Update: The official SWTOR website has added a new section for Flashpoints including four other instances besides Taral V. We also updated the video so it does not have the three minutes of nothing at the end.]
