There was a grubby little post on the SWTOR official forums that drummed up a tasty chunk of info from Bioware. Apparently the Cartel Market, according to Bioware, is giving the Dev team resources to create more content.

According to Damion Schubert, part of SWTOR’s Dev Team, “The success of the Cartel Market means that there will be more good stuff for ALL players, paying, subscribers, and free.”

He also dropped some interesting stats on us about the Market’s Sales.

Yes. We have metrics, as well, on what sells, and for what price, which we compare to their drop rates. This gives us a great idea on adjustments we should make for future packs (the drop rates and the pack contents themselves) – which means that our next round of packs will be better, and the ones after that will be better again.

Here are some fun stats
* The White indestructible crystal Median Buyout price = 1.4 million credits
* The Overlord’s Command Throne Median Buyout Price = 1.75 million credits
* The Dominator’s Command Throne Median buyout price = 1.50 million credits
* The imperial banner Median buyout price = 250 credits
* Ruddyscale Kowakian Monkey-Lizard median buyout price = 500,000 credits
* Elegant Loungewear Top median buyout price = 22,000 credits

This is interesting, in that the thrones are much less rare than the crystal. The metrics we have on what sells and what doesn’t are excellent, which means that we should get better and better at pushing our resources towards things that players actually want.

Damion goes into further detail explaining how they use these stats to produce more desire from item in them. It is also mentioned that there will be a time when the packs are off the Cartel Market, and only available from players who have saved/hoarded them.

Next up we have the current Cartel Market fashion fiasco of 2013. Bioware effed up some gear. They admitted it, but didn’t make the change quick enough. Some of you might know what I’m talking about. The best example is the Phantom Armor. Effective it was a painted on black cat-suit top. It has been changed recently to the intended hooded-robe-with-funky-shoulders look. This changed casused such an out roar the Dev team stepped up to the plate with this fix, posted by Joveth Gonzales.

Hi everyone, as Damion mentioned in an earlier forum post, this was incredibly important for the development team to resolve. We think that we’ve found the best solution for all users affected by the changes made to the Spymaster, Phantom, Trailblazer, and Preceptor outfits in Patch 1.6.2. In Game Update 1.7 (which should be going live in the next month or so), we are going to offer versions of the aforementioned outfits as they appeared before the 1.6.2 changes in addition to the current versions that appear in the Cartel Market Packs. Players will be able to obtain (via Cartel Packs) both the “Classic” (pre 1.6.2) versions of the outfits and the current versions (post 1.6.2).

What about players who already purchased this before the 1.6.2 changes? Or even the players that enjoy the new looks? We’re going to do what’s best for all and in the next major Game Update, any player that has any pieces of the four outfits (Spymaster, Phantom, Trailbazer, and Preceptor) will receive the “Classic” version (pre 1.6.2) of those pieces as well, at no extra cost.

We will scan the bank, currently equipped items, and personal mail to check for the pieces to these outfits, so be sure to remove them from a Guild Bank before then (don’t worry, we will let people know well ahead of time when the next Game Update will go live). If we find that you own these pieces, we will mail you the “Classic” versions of these items. These extra outfit pieces will be unbound, so you may do whatever you like with them. If an item is on the GTN during the maintenance when we make this change, the auction will be canceled and you will receive both versions of the item in the mail after we come back out of maintenance.

We feel that this is the best possible design decision to make all of our players happy and we will continue to improve our internal processes in order to prevent a situation like this from happening again.

Thank you for your patience, and thank you for continuing to support Star Wars: The Old Republic.

This information is telling about the commitment from the SWTOR dev team. The are listening, and care about the players. Thanks Joveth! You might also check out the hidden info about patch 1.7 in the above response. It looks like 1.7 will drop before the end of February.

See you on the Space Station

/Salute

Commander Silverstrike