Paris GAMES Week '11: Interview med Chris Collins

Her er et udsnit af interviewet. Læs det fulde interview her.

We had two different release dates before the global and now you consolidated it into one. Will there be a different patch or maintenance schedule for EU servers than the US counterparts?

We talked about this a few times. We use the phrase "global service" because that is what we're running with Star Wars. For us, it's obviously not going to be completely synchronized. We have to take into account a number of different factors including quiet times to bring the services down. So while they might not necessarily be back-to-back, we will do everything we can to make them as close as physically possible. 

 

What challenges do you face with time zone differences between EU and Austin when you're communicating back and forth with the team here and the US?

Compared to a lot of the other projects that I've launched in the past, one of the areas we have to bear in mind is that people work in different time zones and Stephen may be asleep at certain times when I need to get a hold of him. We have NOC teams that run 24/7. Our CS team is 24/7. We do a lot to make sure that we are a 24/7 service, so we have to make sure we run that as smoothly as possible. But really these days, we're not afraid to phone each other up. I had Stephen call me up at three o'clock in the morning. It's obviously the first voice that I want to hear first thing in the morning to deliver me some fantastic news and not so fantastic news at the same time. So we're all ready and we're all raring to make this the best service we possibly can.

 

And from the community aspect, how are you supporting the existing guilds?

We're doing everything we can. Obviously we got the guild program running right now, so pre-launch that will be doing a lot of good stuff. But at the same time, it's working with guilds. We do a lot to try and sort of accommodate guilds. David Bass is talking to every guild that he possibly can. Basically any program we can think of... we listen to the players, we listen to the guilds, hear what they want from us. And not just as a community team or as a development team, but as a product. And we do whatever we can to accommodate that. So if anybody has any fantastic ideas or things people want to see in the game, we just want to hear about it. 

Have you thought of extending the guild testing program to Europe?

Definitely. It is something we're looking at doing. Stay tuned to swtor.com for more. 

Kilde: DarthHater