Never know how much stock to put in these but the guy was nice enough to write up what he experienced.
Form an orderly queue for your pinch of salt (my stock is limited )
Attended the Dallas Cantina event Friday night with some guildies. I was able to meet Eric Musco, Amber Green (Yowza!) and a few of the devs. There were a couple of people recording the event on phone cams, so hopefully some of those make the rounds so you can hear the exact questions and answers that were ask but I can paraphrase some of the things that stuck with me.
As with pretty much EVERYTHING in the SWTOR universe, nothing had confirmed dates and you can pretty much stick SOON™ by everything. As a renowned journalist I forgot to take notes and all of this is from memory. So I'm sure I forgot 75% of it.
-SSSP: Super secret space project is definitely still in the works. And I quote: "IT IS AWESOME!" But no details given.
-Guild Ships: This is one of the devs pet projects. He has been working on it for a very long time and swears it will be amazing. But they don't want to release something without the bells and whistles.
-Guild Stuff: Other guild stuff mentioned was an increase in the number of guild bank tabs/slots as well as a way to auto collect a tax of some kind that goes into the bank. Lots of stuff on the "wall of crazy".
-Housing: In the works, on the wall of crazy.
-Legacy Messaging: If you remember, the last patch prior to 2.1 introduced a bug that caused any messages being sent to a player that just logged off and back onto an alt to automatically go to the alt. This immediately went on the wall of crazy to be implemented properly at a later date so that if you are talking to someone and log to an alt you will get to continue your conversation.
-Knights/Warriors: The thought process behind alacrity was that if GDC decreased then the player could not only attack faster to increase dps, but it would also decrease the cool down on rebuilding focus/rage as well since alacrity doesn't recharge "energy" for that class like other classes. They realize it's not working as intended and are working to fix that.
-Subscribers: Let's just say a few posts after 2.1 got their attention. They fumbled the ball on the wording of the Jeff Hickman blog post and are currently in meetings to determine how they can show subscribers more love. They promise that you will never be able to "buy power" from the CM and I was personally guaranteed the ship parts fiasco would never happen again. The CM will be strictly for vanity items and buying access to content for F2Pers.
-F2P: Contrary to popular belief, F2Pers are NOT the ones buying the most stuff from the CM. It was never clarified whether this means the bulk of purchases is strictly coming from subs or from a combination of subs and preferred status players. (Though this does beg the question of whether F2P is even beneficial if its still subs and sub CM purchases supporting the game.) They are tentatively (TENTATIVELY!) considering removing the limit on the amount of WZ's a F2Per can play in a given week, BUT only if they determine a way in which it doesn't negatively affect subs.
-Crafting: So 2.0 introduced some quirks in crafting. (Duh.) They know this and are working on it. The comments on the GUI for crafting being designed around a potential mobile platform was reaffirmed to me. Unfortunately, the web team (not like the web PR team, but the guys who do like web integration for billing/cartel market, etc) are in charge of that and no one from their team was present. I was told that likely, the mobile platform would first introduce an armory and then would add features like access to crafting missions and GTN, etc. But that is all hypothetical right now, so I wouldn't expect this for some time.
-2.2: The next patch is going to be a huge content update. No details given.
-PvP: Some time post-2.2, and I'm paraphrasing, PvPers are going to be really really happy. It was not explained whether this would be a new WZ or Open World PvP or both or something entirely new. But it sure sounded like a patch focused on PvP'ers. (About time!)
-Classes: If you were curious, class balance questions were off limits. So nothing to see here.
I may remember more later and will add it if I do. One thing that was really reinforced in my mind after talking to all these folks was that while I'm sure there are some jerk head accountants around somewhere making life hard, the folks at this event are die hard about this game. They play the game, they love the game, they work on the game, and they support themselves and their families on the game (Amber Phase Walked for us so they even live the game!) . So they want to see it succeed.
Good stuff all around. Thanks to BW for being willing to put on these events for their fans and giving us free food, drinks, game stuff and pets.
p.s. When's BioConn?
p.s.p.s. Jeff Hickman, I love joo!