Before you ask, yes, this is all legit, as Marcus Stephenson's and Jonathan Durr's accounts over the smackdownvsraw.com forums are listed as Site Admin. They are answering questions (like always, not big ones) over there. So you might go ahead and try to ask something. Remember that our new Q&A for the SmackDown Hotel will be posted soon though! Don't know exactly when, but very soon.
Stephenson: http://community.smackdownvsraw.com/forums/topic/9231
Durr: http://community.smackdownvsraw.com/forums/topic/9332
Confirmed things from their answers:
STORY DESIGNER
- There will be more show openers
- Loading times will be improved: the more you reuse the same characters and arenas from moment to moment the faster the load time will be
- You can now place titles on anybody in the cutscenes
- CAWS: Last year, there wre 10 total uses. You put 1 guy in 10 times, that's it...you're done. This year we can have 15 CAS with UNLIMITED uses! So if you want to fill up a 500 moment story with all CAS, go for it! You are just limited to 15 different CAS, but that's basically one complete roster.
- It won't be possible to set an entrance as a scene
ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA
- There is no Divas locker room, but there is a Divas makeup area, where you can talk to Divas, or just observe from a distance, all you want!
- You can toggle between 1st and 3rd person in the Backstage Free Roaming
OTHERS
- In WWE Universe we can choose who we want or not to appear in the mode by removing/adding superstars
- Instead of adding brand new match types this year, they decided to revisit the existing ones, and polish them up. They want things to be quality, and having a match type, just to say they have it is something they're trying to avoid.
- Titles CAN now be defended in the Elimination Chamber again!
- There's no lumberjack/lumberjill match
- There's no Triple Threat Tag Team Match
- There won't be side and curves minitrons. They'll probably be in next year
- It's official, there's not going to be a Demo
- You can change LOGOS color in Superstar Threads
- Very high chance that Cody Rhodes new theme is going to be in. Marcuse replied ";)" to the question.
- "The new tag titles of course didn't make it in, but there might be a useful unlockable in the game to help with this..."
ANSWER ABOUT 8 PLAYERS IN THE RING
I know the PS3 and 360 are newer tech than the PS2, but we are really pushing the graphical quality of our models, arenas, effects and everything else in the matches. Having huge movesets for example is very important and takes up a MASSIVE amount of memory. So, while everybody (THQ included) wants more wrestlers in the ring, there's a trade off.
I also don't want you to think that it can't be solved (anything can be solved). But as a design team we have to look at how long it would take to implement a feature like that (it's not just the tech improvement of putting in 2 more people but also gameplay tuning and all that other good stuff to make sure that it's fun), vs. what other cool things we can implement with the same amount of time. So in a case like this, we go "well we can support 8 people in the ring OR we can get these 10 other cool features that people are asking for in the same amount of time".
Someday, enough of those other features will get scratched off and we'll be able to move on to supporting 8 players.
