Dr. Zeschuk wears his heart on his sleeve...also he burns it into his skin

In the exciting and hectic days just before the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic we audaciously attempted to grab a few words with BioWare co-founder Dr. Greg Zeschuk when he was at his busiest. Unfortunately, with all that needed attending to and the good doctor needing to jet off to New York for launch day festivities – we couldn’t get the chat together.

Now that the dust has cleared and SWTOR has rolled out successfully to the masses we’ve been able to bend Dr. Zeschuk’s ear and bring you the results. Read on!

TORWars:
Thanks so much for speaking with us today, Dr. Zeschuk. We know you’ve got your hands full at the moment, so we’ll keep this short and sweet.

This has got to be an exciting and nerve-wracking time for you with Star Wars: The Old Republic launching after many long years in production. Can you describe how you’re feeling on the cusp of the game’s release?

Dr. Greg Zeschuk:
Well, it seems I’m a little slow answering these questions, since the game is already out, but I can certainly recall how it felt. Before we launched we were running the Early Game Access program, which opened December 13th, so we had been up and running with quite a few people before the official December 20th release date.

I think it’s fair to say we were on edge and ready for anything, but we were also very confident in the game we were delivering. We had the opportunity to build the game we wanted and tested it extensively, so we knew what we had. The big unknown is what were the fans going to do? Fortunately a huge number showed up to play and frankly are still playing avidly.

TORWars:
If you knew five years ago all you know now about the challenges of getting a highly-polished massively multiplayer game out the door – would you do it all again? Are there things you would change regarding how you went about it?

Zeschuk:
I think we would definitely do it over again given the opportunity, or a time machine… I think we can see a lot of things we could have done differently given the benefit of retrospective vision, but I also don’t think we would have changed many decisions. It would more have been a process of refinement and fine tuning to our plans.Certainly testing even more than we did, and doing so earlier would have been a good goal. I also think in retrospect we would have been able to weight some of our technical decisions differently given that we ultimately knew what worked after the fact and what needed a lot of work; there was no way of knowing that in advance, but in retrospect that would have helped quite a bit.

TORWars:
What are your in-game plans for when the game goes live? For example, what character class will you fire up first? Is there a BioWare guild you’ll be running with?

Zeschuk:
I had a funny experience in my first week or two of gameplay in that I kept changing what character I was playing. First I rolled a Sith Inquisitor, only to discover that everyone else I play with had also rolled one, so I put that character on hold and promptly rolled a Bounty Hunter. Then I realized the Bounty Hunter story was the one I was the most familiar with, so I instead swapped to a Sith Warrior (and ultimately Juggernaut) as I had played a Marauder in my last playtest right before we launched and wanted to see how that story ended. Convoluted yes, but I’m having a ton of fun with my Juggernaut. I definitely notice the reduction in damage versus my Marauder but I also am super resilient (even when I’m wearing the modded-up Security Key tanking bikini top – and yes, my Juggernaut is female).

We do have a couple BioWare guilds, but we can’t tell you where they are, or their names. They are top secret. And no, they aren’t the BioWarriors or the Knights of Neverwinter.

TORWars:
Are there plans in place for an internal BioWare celebration for launch? Champagne? Slave Bikini-wearing dancers? A crazy holiday party?

Zeschuk:
We had a really cool holiday party in December, but we are also looking at doing it up right early in 2012 with a SWTOR launch party. We joked about having two beers: one named the Light and the other the Dark, and yes, they would be light and dark styles (e.g. a Wit and a Stout, for example).

The problem with having a huge party right around launch is that a ton of people are still working a lot to support the recently live game so lots of people wouldn’t be able to participate. By waiting a couple months things settle (slightly) and get into a more regular cadence and we can really have a good time!

TORWars:
I know you’ve got to get back to work; before you go, could you give us a message to relay to BioWare fans and diehard SWTOR followers who have been eagerly awaiting this momentous occasion?

Zeschuk:
Given I’m a bit late doing this and hopefully EVERYONE is playing…. “Please enjoy the game! We’re treating it as a long term labor of love and will continue to expand and tweak it over time while ensuring a super solid service for all of you!”

TORWars:
Thanks very much for chatting with us!