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With every Star Wars fan eagerly awaiting the release of style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars: The Old
Republic from BioWare, Ten
Ton Hammer’s own Jeff “Ethec” Woleslagle
traveled to BioWare’s favorite spaceport cantina to learn
more about the PvP aspects of the game. Quaffing a few bottles of
Tusken Banthan Sweat with Gabe Amatangelo, lead PvP designer, he
learned some interesting tidbits about the Alderaan warzone and PvP in
general.




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Ten
Ton Hammer: Is there anything
else you wanted to get out there about the Alderaan war zone or the
other stuff you talked about?



Gabe
Amatangelo: The major thing
is that it’s an immersive experience and that the Alderaan
war zone has a visceral mechanic or it has a visceral coding to every
MMOG mechanic. You’re seeing ships go down, you’re
seeing damage to the ship, you’re retargeting guns. 
I’m holding that philosophy to PvP in general in style="font-style: italic;">The Old Republic.
That’s not going to say that everything is going to have a
visceral coat of paint, but it’s going to be in that vein.



Ten
Ton Hammer: So you can tell
how the battle is going just by looking around.



Gabe
Amatangelo: Just by seeing
the scene, especially when you take that vehicle back down.
You’re going to get a bird’s-eye view of the
battlefield below so you’ll see, “Hey, those two
guns are firing at their ship, so that’s cool. That gun is
firing at our ship; that’s not cool. I see that some of my
group mates are there and some of them are over there, the enemy is
over there, etc.” So when you land in a safe area, you know
where to go. One other thing to mention is that when you’re
up in your dropship and you choose a vehicle to come back onto the
field below, the path that it can take will change dynamically based
upon what’s going on in the battlefield.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: In one of the two
PvP game types we’re discussing today - the Alderaan war zone
- the two sides are waging war to bring down each others’
command ships.  It’s fairly reminiscent of style="font-style: italic;">Battlefield 2142,
but with gun turrets instead of missiles. Did that serve as an
inspiration? Were there any other multiplayer game that served as an
inspiration to you and the team?



Gabe
Amatangelo: Playing a lot of
different games over the years all inspire what you develop and design
next in one way or another. You cherry pick the best elements, the ones
that leave the impression, the ones that the community responds
favorably to, etc. You try to design along those lines or let it affect
your design. It’s about pulling metrics and stuff like that.
You want better metrics that survive the test of time. You look at
what’s worked and what hasn’t.



Ten
Ton Hammer: How many people
are going to be fighting in this particular war zone?

Gabe
Amatangelo: Right now
it’s set at 8v8, but that may fluctuate with testing and time
before release.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Do you have any
kind of level range in mind? Is it going to be by tier?



Gabe
Amatangelo: That’s
another thing as time goes on we’ll test. We do have a
matchmaking system that’s going to do a lot of different
magic. Basically at it’s core, it is promoting rapid entry
and fun battles.



Ten
Ton Hammer:  How
will players get to warzones like this one?  Will players be
able to queue up anywhere, or will players have to travel to Alderaan
to participate?



Gabe
Amatangelo: The way it works
is that, at a very early level, players are going to be able to queue
for it. You’ll be able to queue for it anywhere and anytime
via your HUD and interface element. When a match is made,
you’ll get a prompt for it and you can enter it from anywhere
and at anytime. When you’re done, it sends you back to where
you were.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Does the game
have PvP-only abilities for players? Are you going to take the exact
same skill set you have in PvE into PvP?



Gabe
Amatangelo: For the most
part, we will. We may tool around with a few things that are exclusive
to one side or another. In the months to come, we’ll talk
more about PvP features and giving more details on those things.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: I guess you can
say the same thing about equipment – the same for PvE and PvP?



Gabe
Amatangelo: PvP, I talked
about briefly earlier. We are going to have stuff that you get through
PvP, so you’ll see that this person got it through PvP and
maybe that’s the really hard thing to get in PvP, so they
must be really a really good PvP player or a really committed PvP
player.



Ten
Ton Hammer: One of the
aspects that makes PvE combat really gritty is the light side / dark
side decisions players will make. Do you anticipate players these kind
of decisions in PvP?



Gabe
Amatangelo: I joked a little
bit about what it meant to have an immersive PvP experience by asking
if you engage in cinematic player-versus-player conversations with one
another. No, of course not. You
don’t want to impede the
combat experience with pauses. For example, if you’re playing
this big cinematic scene every time you entered or exited a war zone,
the first time would be cool, but after that it would suck.
We’re not going to have anything like the story-driven
decisions you’ll make in PvE. The exception would be that
there will be PvP quests. There will be quests that direct you towards
the war zone or perhaps a daily thing. We haven’t decided
that yet. Testing and time will determine that, but we will have quests
that will direct you there.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: Besides the war
zone, you mentioned an assault type mechanic.



Gabe
Amatangelo: Yes. We have the
Alderaan war zone is on the video we showed and talked about
predominantly today, but once we talk about new PvP features such as
the next war zone, which takes place on a derelict starship.
It’s going to have an assault type mechanic.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Do you have an
idea yet of how many types of PvP you’re going for?



Gabe
Amatangelo: I have a very
crystal clear idea, but I can only say so much right now.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Nothing about
territory control to report right now?



Gabe
Amatangelo: No, not right
now. I know everybody is anxious to hear about what they want to know.
I’m anxious to talk about it, and as time goes on,
we’ll be revealing more. But there’s the natural
development process where we’re testing to see what works,
what doesn’t work, etc before committing to the audience what
it is.





Our thanks to Gabe Amatangelo for this interview.