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Tag Archives: SWTOR vanity pets

Newly Hatched on Mother’s Day: my Orokeet!

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by anexxia in pets, screenshots

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Tags

Orokeet, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, SWTOR vanity pets, vanity pets

This morning, I found myself with an Unusual Egg in my posession, courtesy of my ever vigilant banker. She had purchased it from some fleet denizen who needed a quick 40,000 credits, believe it or not.

And thus, I hopped into my spacecraft and returned to Tatooine. Who could have predicted how frequently I’d be finding myself here? I really should have purchased a parking discount card from that Jawa last time I was here…

Thanks to having done my homework on how to hatch my Orokeet, I knew my first course of business was to travel to Jundland and be on the look out for a water tower whose blue panel indicated it was ready for some moisture harvesting.

After I found a water tower ready to give up some moisture and give me a buff, I hopped on a speeder and headed to the far South Western reaches of the Dune Sea. I found the Czerka Archaeological site at -2329, -405 and set about looking for an area that looked like it would get hot enough to hatch my egg.

I finally found two solar panels that faced in upon each other that still had enough room for me to squeeze myself inside. Almost immediately, I could tell that my egg was reacting positively to the extreme heat. At the same time, I started to wish I had a large palm frond with which Khemmy could fan me. After a minute or so, my ability to take the heat was rewarded with my Orokeet hatchling! What a lovely treat to become a mother on Mother’s Day.

And a very Happy Mothers Day to all of you!

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SWTOR Vanity Pets Q&A with Damion Schubert

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by anexxia in legacy system, pets, SWTOR team interviews

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

minipets, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, SWTOR pets, SWTOR vanity pets, vanity pets

As a serial MMO vanity pet collector, I’m thrilled to have gotten a few minutes of lead systems designer Damion Schubert’s time to talk about SWTOR’s adorable mechanical vanity pets. Read on for some details on upcoming additional ways to obtain vanity pets beyond purchasing from a vendor, pet improvements we can expect to see in the next major content patch, and find out which of the current pets is his favorite.

IR: Vanity or companion pets were added to the game pretty close to the end after a significant amount of forum speculation as to whether or not they would be in-game. Were they always on the road map for inclusion?

DS: They were always on the road map for inclusion!  One of the things about project development of a massive MMO is that you have to prioritize features in the best way to ensure the project gets done.  Tops are features that have high content requirements (such as story) and/or have major impacts on testing the core gameplay and world flow (such as combat and worldbuilding), so features that impacted those elements were built first.  Features that were more auxiliary to that, such as vanity pets and the dressing room, were less central – not having them in wasn’t going to make the beta substantially worse or prevent other devs from doing their jobs — and so those features were prioritized downwards.  But we knew we wanted them in.

IR: Right now, the pets we are seeing are all purchasable, some with light/dark side alignment requirements. Any intentions of having some that are drops in the future?

DS: Absolutely!  In fact, some of these should show up in our next major patch!  I don’t want to give out too big a hint, but they smell kinda bad on the outside.

IR: Do any of the currently discovered pets interact with their environment? i.e. in reply to locations/activities or emotes?

DS: Not at this time.  It’s something we’d like to add, but there are higher code priority features in queue right now.

IR: Is there going to be any way for characters to obtain opposite-faction pets?

DS: We currently have LS/DS pets, not opposite faction pets.  That’s not to say this won’t change.  One of the things we want to do a lot more of is adding items that take a bit of communal exploration to discover – we’re well aware of how popular Datacrons and the Magenta Lightsaber crystal is – and minipets is one place where we’ve identified adding fun things like that could really pay off.

IR: Are there plans to add in more pets? I’ve seen some pretty swanky robots out there I’d love to have miniaturized and following me along on my journeys.

DS: We plan to add a steady stream of new vanity pets to most major patches.  Note: I didn’t say ‘all’, but we’re making a concerted effort to do this frequently.

IR: Will social level and eventually legacy level be key items pet collectors will want to focus on for access to more pets? Or do you think you will be finding additional ways such as random drops to spread around the pets?

DS: Yes, and yes!  We want to use the pets to reward as many kinds of gameplay as we can.

IR: Which is your favorite vanity pet in game currently and why?

DS: I gotta say, the little sandcrawler just cracks me up every time I see it.

IR: Any other improvements we can count on?

DS: Yep!  The abilities page just got restructured to improve usability, and one of the things that fell out of that was a dedicated ‘Pets’ section.  This will come in the next major patch.

A big THANK YOU! to Damion for taking the time to talk minipets with us!

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