A lot of thought currently goes into the consequences of Advanced Class respec - if we allow it, it will require players to relearn their entire approach to combat (which they learned over many many hours before) and replace the majority of their equipment, so it's not a thing we would want the player to do lightly, or just out of curiosity.

That's why we've always kept it a bit vague. The truth is that player characters don't start exactly in lockstep as far as the timeline goes. There are likely origins that start before the ten year cutoff but a decade or so is a good frame of reference.

For the average planet, I'd say that 85+% of space is located in open, non phased areas.

That's average of course. Origin planets, with their focus on introducing the player to the story and their character, generally have a higher density of phased space, while vast open planets like Hoth or Tatooine have less in relation to their huge size.

I have a looping video of Darth Vader explaining the price of failure as a screensaver along with the words: "Failure ... a player in the Game Testing Program soloing a Flashpoint".

We might or might not ease that definition for the introductory Flashpoint - that's certainly possible if testing tells us it is needed - but once you're past the opening period of the game, Flashpoints sit squarely in full group difficulty territory.

Don't worry - there's plenty of exciting content for the solo player, too.

We could have long discussions about Benevolence or other abilities, but they might not even be in the game anymore at this point (or not part of the base class anymore). (PS - This is not a subtle hint one way or another.)

Obviously we can't stop people from writing down every technical detail they see at a convention, but honestly, doing something like that at this stage is, in my opinion, just wasting people's time.

So, first off let me start off by saying I've got the utmost respect for World of Warcraft. I was once a World of Warcraft player. I play a lot of other things now. It's one of the greatest products ever invented. It's probably the most profitable individual entertainment property every built. Um, we're going right at it. We want to take share; we want a leadership position here. And our product is innovative in a number of ways. But let me start by the observation by saying, BioWare is probably the highest average rated developer in the history of games in addition the history of RPG's which is a great starting place.

When you come after a product like World of Warcraft, which you could argue, it's got its own, you know share of foe British dark fantasy, you know with broad swords and chain mail. Lots of products have come up with exactly that fictional composition and attempted to take them down. But their going up against a superior product with an installed, kind of a very loyal base, haven't been able to knock them, move them very much at all. Interesting enough, the same type of dark fantasy lives in the Star Wars universe. Except it's lightsabers versus broad swords. And instead of, you know, riding your steed you've got a spaceship. We actually think that's the exactly the right amount of innovation to bring to this in terms of fictional center.

A lot of people want to live the Star Wars fiction, being a mage or being a rogue, is one thing you know. Being a Sith or being a Jedi is another thing. They're just separated by enough. The second issue is we have sort of a next generation technology base, so I think our game standing it up side by side is going to look better. That doesn't mean their game is going to look bad, but we think we've got a better looking product and ultimately this is a visual medium. The third thing that is think is different is that, in a way theirs is a silent movie and ours is the first talking. So, um by and large, you know, it's not a voiced MMO. Ours is a fully voiced MMO in multiple languages. So that's a fundamental point of differentiation as well. You know, I don't think we're, I'm not expecting to sort of knock them over but you know, they've got half of 12 million count subscribers in the Western market and a big chunk of business in Asia that counts them up to that 12 or 13 they keep talking about. We want to take a big chunk of that.

Да бе, верно... Няма ли някаква ориентировъчна дата на излизане?

The way game development works is that you often create assets during early development that eventually get replaced.

For example, you need a movement animation in the game as a prerequisite for pretty much anything else involving a character.

These kind of high-dependency assets get roughed in or prototyped as quickly as possible early on to minimize bottlenecks - e.g. once you have basic character movement, you can start doing more specialized work. If you don't, you can't start on that, so they block the rest of development if they're not there.

Usually, all those early assets will get replaced with their final versions later in development - at a time when all the details have been worked out (e.g. the character speeds have been fixed, their special attacks are known, etc.).

There'll be still quite a few of those kind of functional placeholders (such as the UI) in the game around PAX, but you'll also see a lot of things that used to be placeholder in their final versions.

Fellow PvPers,

Have no doubt, we aim to ensure every Advanced Class has at least one spec that has its place in competitive PvP.

The PvP team is already diligently tuning classes based on testing results and will continue to do so as new functions come online. By functions, I mean things like enabling Smugglers in cover to be immune to charge' and pull' abilities.

Your ship's cargo hold is, indeed, your bank.