Star Wars: The Old Republic Q&A

Star Wars: The Old Republic lead systems designer Damion Schubert took some time out of his day to answer a fistful of questions about crew skills for the guys at Ask A Jedi. A snip:
Ask A Jedi: In the context of master crafters, (dedication) is cited as the avenue to achieve this status. Is it (time) that will allow you to become this elite crafter, or will there be rare resources, quests, raids (pve or pvp) or other activities that you need to do in order to achieve this status?

Damion Schubert: We want our top crafters to progress and get to be the best in their field by doing things that crafters like to do: research, gather very rare materials, and interact with other players as customers or resource suppliers. We're not a big fan of '˜you can be the best there is by staring at progress bars', if for no other reason than then there is no way for great craftsmen to differentiate themselves from a casual craftsman with a lot of free time.

As for the other activities, we have some things we'll be talking about eventually, but the general gist is that we want there to be a symbiotic relationship. We want top-end raiders and PvPers to need crafters, but we want the crafters to need them in return. And we're trying to keep away from making anyone play a game they don't want to play. We want crafters to be primarily playing a social game, not spending hours doing stuff they don't want to do.