Dev Diary: Michael "Fiasco" Farone - September 17, 2007

"Please state your name and profession for the record."

"Yes, I'm Michael Farone. I'm one of the designers on Star Wars Galaxies."

"Thank you. And how did you come to be a designer on Star Wars Galaxies, Mr. Farone?"

"Well, I had been working as a designer on Ultima Online. This was during development for the Age of Shadows expansion for UO. A friend, who was one of the lead designers on SWG at the time, had been trying to talk me into joining their team. I enjoyed working on UO, but at the same time it was the only game I had ever worked on at that point. The idea of expanding my horizons seemed like a good one. So I took my friend's advice and joined the SWG team. Strangely enough, shortly after, my friend was offered a position on UO as a producer, so we basically traded projects. Funny the way things turn out sometimes."

"That will do. Please describe your duties on SWG? And please remember that you are under oath. "

"I am? Hmm...very well. I've had any number of different tasks. Such as building cities and other world locations, creating and placing NPCs and spawners, writing conversations, creating quests and events, designing and implementing content tools, and developing various other things that I've completely repressed over the years.

"I've mostly dealt with adding content to the game, though I have dabbled in some systems work here and there. Especially in relation to expanding our content tools and writing new scripts."

"Could you be more specific and relate some of your more recent work?"

"I recently revamped the Rebel Theme Park as part of Chapter 6. Doing so included the creation of a wave event quest task which requires an adventurer to defeat wave after wave of enemies in order to defeat it. There are some features I'd like to add to the wave event task, but it's not bad as a starting point.

"At the moment, I'm working on the township of Aurilia. Aurilia is in the process of growing from a small village into a prospering city for Chapter 7 . Aurilia will serve as a nexus point for adventurers looking to attempt the heroic encounters."

"Did you or did you not also implement the Storyteller system?"

"I did. Development had been started by another designer who left the team midway through it. I took over and finished everything that went into Chapter 6. Most of the system was incomplete or had not yet been started, so I ended up building much of it from scratch. I still consider the Storyteller system as a work in progress and intend to add more to it as I am able."

"I have no more questions at this time."

Michael Farone

Star Wars Galaxies Game Designer