SWTOR Overview part 2

What kind of space-based aspect will there be in the game?

Rich Vogel, Co-GM BioWare Austin: We can say that we'll have many different worlds for you to explore, and that you'll have a method you can use to travel from world to world. Again, we can't go into details on other space elements. That isn't something we can talk about at this point.

We also can't talk about ground vehicles. But, obviously, Star Wars has a lot of vehicles. So ... it's definitely something that is on our plate.

This might be a question mostly for Jake. What has LucasArts come away with, from the experience on Star Wars Galaxies? What have you learned that you can avoid repeating in The Old Republic?

Jake: First thing: Galaxies is one of the things I still work on. I'm very proud of our players there, and we remain committed to Galaxies. Even with this game in development. We're constantly looking at what's gone well and what's gone wrong there to learn lessons. One of the biggest things, that James talked about ... we want to make sure we grab the player right out of the gate. Early on, with a compelling and heroic story, launch into the world. That's something I think we could have done better with Galaxies.

As a company I think LucasArts is now more experienced dealing with community and understanding what that really means. The importance of listening to those folks, of being in tune with what's going on inside the game on a day-to-day basis. I think we're definitely bringing that sort of approach to this title. But hey, Galaxies is still going strong. We're going to continue to learn from it and bring lessons learned to both teams.

Are you guys doing anything with player-driven environments, player towns, anything like that?

Rich: We're looking into things like that, but we can't talk about it. Warhammer has been doing a lot of nifty things with Keeps along those lines. They're part of EA and we can talk to them about their experiences. We're allowed to look at all the stuff they've done with that.

Are you engineering the game to be web-facing at all? Achievements, Facebook tie-ins, anything like that?

Gordon Walton, Co-GM BioWare Austin: We think of the web as part of the service. It's part of the game service. So you'll see some very competitive stuff from us there. That's where I'd leave it. There's no difference for me from someone that's on the web and somebody that's in-game. In the big scheme of things, they're still a customer and we're delivering entertainment experiences to them. Regardless of the platform.

Will the game make use of instancing?

Rich: Yes, there is going to be a form of instancing. That's very important to a lot of different things – being able to do storytelling, being able to do experiences that aren't disrupted in public areas ... they are a part of our game. We do have both though, and we want to make sure you don't feel like you are in a single-player game.

Jake: We feel because it's an MMO and players play MMOs because they want to feel like they're a part of a vast world, you can't make too heavy use of instancing or you take that feeling away. It is a balance, though, like Rich was saying.

Rich: I met my first friends online by getting in trouble with a monster and they came over to rescue me. That is the kind of experience you can't get without public areas.