Star Wars: The Old Republic Interviews

MMORPG.com has cranked out two separate interviews that they conducted during BioWare Austin's recent Star Wars: The Old Republic press event, with the first Q&A focusing on flashpoints with lead writer Daniel Erickson:
MMORPG.com: Can you give us a taste of the one we saw today? The Black Talon?

Daniel Erickson: Absolutely. So, the Black Talon is actually a, probably the one we talked about the earliest, and one of the first ones we conceived of. The Black Talon is, you're on your way from your origin world just trying to get to Dromund Kaas, you're just minding your own business. A Grand Moff calls you up and says, (Hey. There is a Captain on your ship that has refused to do what I told him to. He thinks for some reason, that taking his small transport craft and attacking a large military fleet is a bad idea, but I want you to do it anyway. So you go hijack the ship and attack them.) So, you end up fighting your way through your own ship, taking out the Captain, making the bold decision whether or not, killing the Captain is really a punitive measure that is not asked of you, and if you this it has fairly far reaching consequences. Crew morale goes pretty bad, some pretty bad stuff happens at the end, and there are several other decisions like that all the way through.

You get to fight across yours, and then you get to go and invade another ship, take out all their people, chase it down. It's a big big, really amazing sort of piece, that frames the battle. It's really there to introduce you to the conflict with the Republic. Just in case, like if you're one of the characters that came off Hutta, you actually haven't really been introduced to the idea of the Republic and what they represent, and so this gives you a taste of it before you get to Dromund Kaas.

And then the second Q&A chats with Daniel about the Bounty Hunter profession:
MMORPG.com: Will there be any form of player bounties in the game?

Daniel Erickson: This is one of those things thats always sat around the maps. We know that it's one of the classic fantasies, it's there. There was more than that on the original things on the wish list, so player bounties were on the wish list, but what we've always said is, (If there's going to be a player bounty system, there's going to be a game for all classes.) So, we're not going to have Jedi chasing bounties. So if there's going to be a player bounty system, it's going to be for Bounty Hunters, which means we need a smuggling system, we need the, whatever we decide to, we've got some really interesting ideas about what you'd do as a Sith or Jedi, but these are not things that are going to make it in for launch. At this point, any tech has to going into making the base game as tight and clean and bug free and fast and smooth as it can. We have to say, (What are the things that make this game the core of what we want it to be?) and most of that stuff is in the game now. Now we've got two things basically, endgame and tightening, and polish, and so all things are going into that. But we have, for all those people who are constantly interested; we have no moral objectives to player bounty systems. They're just not going to make it in for launch.