Star Wars Galaxies Interview

WarCry had the opportunity to chat with SOE's Debysue Wolfcale and John Blakely at the Austin Game Developers Conference about the team's current plans for Star Wars Galaxies.
By far the largest change resulting from these newfound communication skills was the addition of the Beastmaster expertise system, which is open to all players, regardless of profession, and incorporates elements of two older professions - Creature Handler and Bioengineer - that were removed during the NGE. But it's not just reintroducing old code.

"What we're doing is, like the Beastmaster compared to the Creature Handler," said John Blakely, SOE-Austin's vice president of development. "The Beastmaster is a lot more deep, a lot more integrated into the gameplay, a lot more supportive of the other professions, and things like that.

"You know, being fans of the game ourselves, we wanted to get those things back in. But it's not just a revisit; it's an improvement. I mean if you look at the players who have returned during this housing pack up event, what you get is a lot of people saying, 'Wow, this is a lot better than CH.'

Unfortunately, I don't think they're ever going to live down the whole NGE nightmare.