We’re twelve hours into Day One of SWTOR’s early access period for those who pre-ordered, but that hasn’t stopped Bioware talking about future development plans for the game. James Ohlen has blogged on the broad areas for improvement that are already on the radar. There are some obvious ones like more game content and implementation of a guide bank, but there’s also some encouraging signs on other aspects. The ones that caught my attention in particular were:

PvP: Some strong hints are dropped about open world PvP as well as emphasising the team working on improving current content and developing new PvP content.

Space combat: I actually didn’t get a chance to check out space combat in beta but the hints on a wider role for this will be welcomed in a lot of quarters I would have thought.

UI Customisation: I’m a bit of a minimalist with UI tweaks but I know I’m in a minority and the more customisation the better I suppose. Tetris whilst in a Taxi anyone?

Any MMO lives and dies on its development cycle and its looking like Bioware are going out on the front foot to emphasise they have solid development plans. As I joked in a forum 30 minutes after starting early access: “I’m bored – when’s the next expansion coming out?”