Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

Another interview with Star Wars: The Old Republic lead writer Daniel Erickson has popped up on the Internet, with this latest crew skill-related Q&A being presented in two-part fashion over at Darth Hater. From part one:
Each of your companions has different bonuses to all the Crew Skills, so some of the companions are better at different things and your Affection Rating with them can actually adjust that as well. I look through my stuff and say, "Today I'm taking Companion Number One with me. So Companion Number Two, you're going to work on this thing."

All of the Crew Skills have different timing for them. I'll talk about that more when we talk about Missions because it is important to remember this is not something that you are going to click, wait ten seconds, and then click again. We're not sitting around spamming anything. You're going to make a big item... you're going to do something... it is going to take hours. But you're not impacted by this -- you're going off to do something else. Your companion character though is now hooked up with this.

And a bit from part two:
How do you the player craft in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Are there recipes you loot or you learn from other people in the galaxy?

Daniel Erickson: The beginning stuff you do when you learn a crafting skill... you get a number of recipes. There are also recipes that you can discover out in the world. There are recipes that are very rare. One of the important overall goals that we haven't talked about Crew Skills is that there will be "go to" people. You will be able to craft items that are the top tier of things in the game. It is going to be very possible that there are only one or two people on the server who know how to craft specific things. There is a whole lot of discovery involved.

The Crew Skills system is a place for everyone -- whoever wants to play can come play. The missions system is super accessible, and even if you aren't into crafting, you can play with those. People who want to be a master at crafting -- and really want to be those who are the go to people on the servers -- they are going to put a ton of work into it. We're not going to talk quite yet about how you get some of these recipes but suffice to say, they will be in demand as crafters and it will not be something you can casually do.