ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

"Rise of the Rakghouls is very much in the vein of the story-heavy Flashpoints."

Worst. Diarrhea. Ever.

"It's definitely going to be more of a challenging Flashpoint."

Is this the Old Republic's equivalent of a trailer park?

"Yes, we're serious, we're going to be providing free content on a regular basis."

"What the Legacy system is going to allow you to do is actually create a family tree of characters."

Exciting new hallways! Well, I'm sure there's something cool happening around the corner.

Time to rack up some Rakghoul kills!

"When I say "bug fixes," I don't just mean bugs. I

also mean what

we like to call

'quality of life improvements.'"

On January 17th, the Star Wars: The Old Republic will get the first of what BioWare promises will be many content updates. This one, titled Rise of the Rakghouls, packs a new Flashpoint, a new Operation, and more. We chatted with BioWare Austin's Game Director James Ohlen to find out what's in store for our characters next week.If you're familiar with Knights of the Old Republic, or the world of Taris in The Old Republic for that matter, they're the creatures that, if they infect you, you can turn into a Rakghoul yourself. The Rakghoul plague is becoming weaponized, there's a danger of seeing it spread throughout the galaxy.So Rise of the Rakghouls is a Flashpoint that's for level 50 characters. We've been working on it for more than a year. It's pretty epic, it's really huge, it's got a vast scope in the story. It's story-heavy -- we have some Flashpoints that are story-heavy and some that are story-light. The first ones that you played were the story-heavy Flashpoints, and that's the type of Flashpoint that Rise of the Rakghouls is going to be. Part one comes out with our game update next week, and then part two comes out in our game update that comes in March.Yes, that's exactly it. Rise of the Rakghouls is very much in the vein of the story-heavy Flashpoints. The thing is, some of the perception comes from the fact that in The Old Republic, the first Flashpoint you play is very story-heavy, and then the second two Flashpoints in Chapter One are the story-light variety. But then when you have the Flashpoints that deal with what happened to Revan after Knights of the Old Republic, those are story-heavy. And the Flashpoints that end the game, the one that deals with Directive Seven and with the box-cover villain, Darth Malgus, those are story-heavy as well. So we have several story-heavy Flashpoints in the game, but in Chapter One, I think because you get introduced with a story-heavy one and then go on to two non-story-heavy ones, people were worried that we were abandoning them.Well, we know that there's two different kinds of players -- or there's obviously more than two different kinds of players, but there are players who really enjoy the story-heavy Flashpoints, because it's something that's unique to the online space, they never experienced it before, there's huge fans of those. Then there are other players who are really focused on the combat aspect of it, and they enjoy more of the story-light Flashpoints. So we feel that we're going to have to continue to provide two different kinds of Flashpoints, the story-heavy Flashpoints and the story-light Flashpoints.As new features have come online, as new combat features have become available to the combat team or the team making the boss monsters, we've definitely been able to tweak the Flashpoints, and basically make it flashier. More cinematic tools came online, we were able to make the boss fights more interesting. It's really grown a lot as we've gotten more tools and more features available to us. That's the main way that it's been growing over the course of development.It is going to be challenging. It won't be as challenging as the Operation, Karagga's Palace. That's the other big piece of content that's coming out in our game update one next week. Karagga's Palace is an Operation for eight to 16 players, we're adding four new main bosses to that Operation, so now it's going to have five bosses instead of one. We've also really improved the cinematics, we've added a lot to it, it's really impressive now. I think it's on par with the Eternity Vault Operation. I think players are gonna really dig that.But that's not to say that Rise of the Rakghouls isn't going to be challenging, it's definitely going to be more of a challenging Flashpoint. We do want casual players to be able to play it, though. As the game continues to grow, continues to mature, we'll be adjusting content according to what the population is at any given level. So, for example, if we're finding that aren't able to beat a Flashpoint, we might have to make adjustments to it at some later date.I don't want to give too many details. I don't know how to describe it, actually... Um, it does have a lot of Rakghouls. Basically, Kaon is the setting for part one of Rise of the Rakghouls. It's entirely devoted to the Flashpoint. However, in our Game Update 2, which is coming in March, we're introducing a new world in that update as well, which is called Denova. That world is going to have an Operation and a Warzone, so it's actually going to have more to it than Kaon. Plus, of course, in the Game Update 2 we'll have the second part of Rise of the Rakghouls.I think that's one of the biggest concerns that players bring up. We're coming out with this first game update within this first month, to show that yes, we're serious, we're going to be providing free content on a regular basis. And then with Game Update Two, the one coming in March, we're going to be providing even more content. We're going to have PvP content in the form of Warzones, the Flashpoint, the Operation. We're also going to be providing single-player content for level 50s -- it's actually pretty extensive. We have a single-player Flashpoint, Operation, Warzone. In addition to that, we're going to be providing new game systems that are going to be usable by players of all levels.We've been able to keep the entire team together, still working on the game -- that's allowed us to really create a bunch of different "strike teams" to continue focusing on different aspects of the game. So we have a strike team focused on guilds, for example, and we'll be releasing guild banks in March. We also have a team devoted to PvP functionality, so in addition to just Warzones, we're also going to provide new functionality for PvP players. The first thing is ranked matches -- PvP fans are obviously very competitive, they want to compare themselves to each other, so we're going to allow them to go into matches that are ranked.Finally, in the second game update, we're also providing the full Legacy system. From a fictional standpoint, it's inspired by the fact that Star Wars has a lot to do with family -- Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker being one of the more famous father-son relationships in fiction. The legacy system is really meant to appeal to players who love to re-roll characters, to create alt characters, who like to play through different storylines and see how they play out. What the Legacy system is going to allow you to do is actually create a family tree of characters that can be sisters, brothers, husbands, fathers, sons, basically the characters that you're creating are all part of that family tree. Whenever one of your characters is adventuring, you gain experience points for your family Legacy, and you gain Legacy levels. Legacy levels unlock abilities and perks, they allow you to use bind on legacy items. It also allows you to customize your level of experience. We know that when a player has played a character from levels one to 50, and he's starting up a new character, so there's certain things where he wants his experience to be slightly different, he might want to optimize it so that he's doing more PvP than he was the last time, or maybe he wants to focus more on heroic quests. The legacy system will allow him to essentially optimize his gameplay experience, through things like experience point bonuses, other things like that.Yeah. Obviously, the first one came really fast. We wanted to set the precedent. The next one's coming a couple months after. We really want to have a cadence to this, where we're releasing content really quickly. We'll have multiple teams working on different content so we've got them staggered. We're going to be able to keep up. I'm reviewing content that is meant for releases in 2013, so that's how far we're working ahead. We know that the only way we're going to be a successful service is if our fans believe we're going to continue to grow the game and continue to support it in a big way. We're going to continue to release weekly updates, and those weekly updates will take care of the biggest issues that come to a head that week.Oh, oh, he feels that stuns are too powerful?We have a combat team, the combat team's always looking at the community, taking a look at what the major concerns are that people are bringing up. But yeah, if stuns are truly a big issue and they're causing an imbalance, we'll make a change to that.Oh, yeah. The thing is, it's not a single thing. It's a whole bunch of different things that come together to create the feeling of lag. In some ways that's good news -- it means it's not actually lag -- but in other ways it's bad news. It means we have to touch a whole bunch of different systems to improve it. It's something that we have a lot of different solutions for. A lot of those solutions are coming in Game Update 1 next week. We have some more in the weekly patch that will come out a week after that. That's another thing, our weekly patches, where we're doing bug fixes -- when I say "bug fixes," I don't just mean bugs, I also mean what we like to call "quality of life improvements." Things that are annoying players, we'll make tweaks to them or changes. For example, our auction house, the Galactic Trade Network. People have some issues with some of the features involved there. Because of that, we're making small changes to improve it, they won't be in the major game updates, but instead they'll be in the weekly bug-fix updates.TOR may not be the perfect MMO, but with all this new content coming at us it's sure earning that $15/month subscription fee so far. I'm quite curious as to what the Space Combat "strike team" is up to -- rumor has it they're working on something big.