A Great Dev Interview

I probably don't give shout-outs to other content creators often enough, but I really wanted to highlight this dev interview posted yesterday by the New Overlords Podcast (formerly known as SWTOR Escape Pod Cast).

Hosts Max and Sema had Executive Producer Keith Kanneg, Narrative Director Ashley Ruhl and Lead Writer Caitlin Sullivan Kelly all on at once, and they basically had a great group chat about their history with SWTOR, the dynamics within their team, their process when it comes to creating narrative for the game as well as what's coming up next (as much as they're able to talk about that kind of thing before anything's been announced). Max did a great job at making sure that all of them got to speak and throwing them little prompts to talk more about different subjects. I can really only recommend that you watch it for yourself if you're a fan of the game - the video clocks in at slightly under an hour but there isn't a boring minute.

I just wanted to highlight a few choice quotes from Keith in specific that I thought were quite juicy:

• "I got to take over the producer role at the end of 2016. It was, you know, 'why are you qualified to do this', right? But at the time, there was a lot of difference of opinion as to whether or not the game was going to be successful after 2016. But here we are in 2024, right, and we've obviously done a lot of good things, right?" - This one stood out to me because it seems to imply quite clearly that at least in some ways, the game is actually in a better position today than it was in 2016. And I'm not surprised at all, because the months immediately after the launch of Eternal Throne were pretty miserable for me as a long-time player, mostly due to Galactic Command. Literally the only time I ever felt actively actively put off from playing. But since KotFE and KotET were generally quite well received, I don't think the mainstream and more casual observers generally caught on to just how bad things were for a while.
  
• "We've been working with Lucasfilm, what, sixteen, seventeen years now, right? We have a phenomenal relationship with them. They are... I mean, they're just us, right? And we are them. We work together hand in hand with absolutely everything. We meet with them every week." This isn't really news because it's been public knowledge that Lucasfilm is quite happy with SWTOR for a while, but it's still nice to hear it stated so explicitly.
  
• [After talking about the joys of the new server experience on the APAC server] "How do you take that same experience and bring it to everybody in the entire world? Right, so we have those thoughts - we haven't figured it out yet but we are kicking those stones over to see what can we do to make it so that everybody has that same experience." Wonder what that will mean...
  

Oh, and it's not really "revealing" anything but I was amused by Ashley using the phrase "We make excellent hot dogs in this coffee maker" to describe how they constantly use their tools in ways they weren't originally designed for. Anyway, just go and listen for yourself!