Today revealed more tidbits about Star Wars: The Old Republic. First up, a new planet:

One of larger portions of BioWare Austin's Co-Studio Director Gordon Walton and consultant Scott Hartsman's GDC session, "MMO Retention -- Learning From The First 25 Years," highlighted some of the game change management issues MMO developers encountered trying to retain existing customers. Although we plan on issuing a more comprehensive article on how some of the topics discussed in this session may relate to Star Wars: The Old Republic, we decided to release this very telling quote about Walton's experience with introducing space combat in an expansion for Star Wars Galaxies.

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BioWare co-founder and CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka participated in a GDCSF session yesterday entitled "Fireside Chat: Building a Blockbuster Franchise," along with Bungie Creative Director Joseph Staten. We had the opportunity to ask Dr. Muzyka about his views on content updates versus expansions or sequels.

Eurogamer reports on a quote from Electronic Arts' Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown, who spoke at a Wedbush Morgan conference in New York on March 10th. Eric Brown stated that Star Wars: The Old Republic is "[the] largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company."

When you take a look at previous projects created by Electronic Arts, this speaks volumes. EA has several big name franchises, such as "The Sims," and "Command and Conquer". The news that The Old Republic exceeds these titles in terms of the scope of development certainly reinforces the idea that the game is being given a high priority within Electronic Arts.

Brown mentioned production costs of similar games, like World of Warcraft, which Blizzard spent "$100 million, perhaps more" to bring to market in 2004. This shows the general scope of the game as well as the quality that Bioware, and indeed EA as a whole, are aiming for. One reason they are likely investing so much is because they know they only have one launch and an MMO can be a make or break deal.

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Sean Dahlberg sent word that next week's Star Wars: The Old Republic friday update will be a Fan Friday and commented on a tweet he made earlier:

A PC Gamer interview came out today that highlights what BioWare's thoughts are when it comes to endgame:

Episode 25 - 'Funny Hat Talk' of the Darth Hater podcast is now up for stream and download. Check the bottom of the post for the stream and download links. Podcast notes after the jump.

BioWare writers are commenting a bit more often on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums lately. Writer Randy Begel added his observations to a thread discussing alignment decisions yesterday:

This week's update is a Developer Blog. As Sean Dahlberg said:


After reading this blog, a few new people might be interested in playing a Jedi Consular. After you have finished reading this blog, feel free to check out our Afterlife Interview and our Timeline Synopsis if you haven't already.

If you ever used DKP in a raid to assign loot, then you should probably thank the guild Afterlife for inventing the system. Afterlife originally formed in 1999 as an Everquest raiding guild, and eventually migrated to World of Warcraft. The longtime group has several claims to fame: leader Thott created the Thottbot website, and Biny is the notorious Warlock who blew up the Auction House, causing Blizzard programmers to internally call certain bug fixes "Biny Code."

We sat down with Afterlife's Tabin, Attreus, and Biny to discuss their history and what they think Star Wars: The Old Republic needs to succeed.