This week we sit down with Mark Jacobs and discuss his Kickstarter project: Camelot Unchained. Our conversation ranges from what to expect in the game to going over his founding principles and getting to the bottom of what he wants his game to become. Camelot Unchained looks to bring old school RVR/PVP ideals to a modern game. While not shooting for a AAA game created to support millions of players; Mark Jacobs hopes to fashion a game for RVR players only. Not sacrificing design to make everyone happy, Camelot Unchained hopes to bring RVR to its niche market.

Keep reading to watch the interview.

SWTOR has gone Free to Play. Along with the F2P launch, an in-game market, dubbed the Cartel Market, was introduced.

The Cartel Market is an integral part of the F2P model. It allows players enjoying SWTOR, at no cost, a way to purchase quality of life components. The Market appeals to subscribers by making toys, mounts, pets and cosmetic gear purchasable for fun and profit.

Last week we got a chance to ask a few questions of Austin Peckenpaugh and Rob Hinkle and talk about a few PVP topics including warzones, balance, Outlaw’s Den and a few others. To find out what these two SWTOR devs had to say, please continue reading to read the whole interview!

Earlier this week, we showed you the first part of our interview with Emmanuel Luscinchi, Technical Design Director for SWTOR, where we talked all about the changes coming in 1.2 and beyond for PVE. Now we wrap up the interview with our discussion on PVP!

Keep reading for the full interview!

Please note: Emmanuel wasn’t exactly sure on some of the more finer points on the disconnecting rules of ranked Warzones. During the interview, not shown here, he stated that there were some points that he would have to look up to specifically see how players interacted with each other.

The guys at Toroz.com.au had a chance to interview Gabe Amatangelo about PVP and some of the upcoming additions in 1.2. Here are the highlights:

Gear/Warzone/Commendation Changes

• Lesser end-game commendations (Champion, Centurion, etc.) will not be exchangable.
• There will be two levels of warzones. Regular and Ranked warzones.
• Regular warzones will give out regular WZ commendations, and Ranked warzones will give out ranked WZ commendations.
• New intro PVP set for new level 50 players to fill gap in gear.
• There will be some “fun” uses for commendations you dont need anymore.

Ranked PVP

• Phase one will be server specific.
• Phase two (coming in the future) will have cross-server queuing.

General/UI Changes

• Combat log coming soon.
• DPS meters/Parsers will be done by 3rd party addons via combat log.
• Free/Paid Server transfers are being worked on but no date provided. They want to make sure the process is perfect before releasing this.

Cross-Server Queuing

• Coming in phase two of pvp changes (later than 1.2)
• Priority is on playing with people from your own server.
• As soon as you start choosing certain things (which warzone, ranked, etc.). It becomes more difficult for you to get a WZ with server players so you go into the cross-server

Gamespy recently got a chance to talk to Daniel Erickson about a myriad of topics that include story elements, IP choices and dark side and light side choices. Here’s a quick blurb, but make sure you read the whole interview over at Gamespy.

GameSpy: When people are playing through, and I’m assuming you’re seeing a bunch of usage statistics at this point, are you seeing that people are sticking mostly to a light side path or a dark side path? Or are people mixing it up and going both ways?

Daniel Erickson: We see people mix it up a bit. People primarily settle down. You tend to see a little bit more experimentation in the first couple worlds. In fact, we have quests in there, the one on Hutta being probably the one people notice the most, but we have quests throughout the game, on the original worlds, that we call our “test and tempt” quests. Which are: Okay, if you’re going dark side, let’s see whether or not you can really do something brutally dark side. If you’re going light side, we’re going to keep throwing a few things at you to see what might break you off that. Are you still going to go light side if romance is dark side? Are you still going to go light side if there’s really good loot on the dark side? Are you still going to go light side if there’s something that sounds really fun on the dark side? It’s interesting to see, on both sides. We can pretty well guess, usually, if somebody is going one direction and then will stop, which quests will turn them.

In a recent interview with James Ohlen by PCGamer, we get a few juicy tidbits of the way-back time before SWTOR was SWTOR and Bioware was beginning to think about what kind of MMORPG they were going to make.

“We had backup plans,” said Ohlen. “In all the design team was like three of us at that point, in total. So we were looking at doing a Lord of the Rings MMO, a Silmarillion MMO, a kind of a Gunslinger-esque Dark Tower MMO, a Game of Thrones MMO.”

All smart companies have contingent plans before beginning a large project, but in the end SWTOR is the perfect fit for Bioware given their history with KOTOR. However, it’s fun to think what could of been.

IGN recently got a chance to listen to James Ohlen discuss the beta process and the future of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The topics ranged from looking for group features to the future expansion of the game. Here are a few interesting excerpts.

On a Dungeon Finder:

IGN: Moving forward might there be something like a group finder or something like that? An auto-finder implemented into the game?

James Ohlen: Some people ask for a dungeon finder system but the thing about those systems is they’re really for more of a mature online game. If you put a system in early on it really takes away from the exploration of the level up game. If you have people all just basically waiting around their dungeon finder and all being grouped up together, they’re going to actually take the time to explore all the worlds that are available in the Old Republic galaxy. So it’s definitely a feature that we want to put in, we just want to put it in at the right time. However, the looking for group feature is something that we continue to work on, we want to make that more robust and more powerful.

So we’ll eventually see a dungeon finder but at the right time. This is the first time we’re learning the reason why they are holding off on this system.

MMORPG.com got a chance to sit down and talk with Dallas Dickinson, Director of Production, to discuss Early Access and the future of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Here are a few highlights:

Early Game Access:

MMORPG.com: Continuing on Early Access, some gamers have noted they may not receive their games on the exact day of launch, but perhaps a day or two later. Will you be offering a grace period for those who have redeemed pre-order codes? If so, how long is the grace period?

Dallas Dickinson: The quick answer is there will be announcements related to that in the next day or two, but I can’t actually tell you that. So, you’ll have to see that when the e-mail comes to your inbox, sometime this afternoon, or whenever it comes.

It looks like the question regarding a grace period is not settled yet. There has been a lot of mixed communication on this issue in the last few days. Hopefully it gets settled soon, officially, from Bioware. It’s hard to imagine they don’t do something like this, especially after extending Early Access by two days.

Via last week’s Fan Summit, Frag TV’s Jaro interviews Ryan and I where we discuss PVP and the Fan Summit itself.