We are excited to be moving into the home stretch with Chapter 6 and I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of the folks that are participating in testing and refining this massive chapter on the test centers. There is a lot going on with this update and we have been spending extra time with this on the TC's to get it right. These is little doubt that the feedback on this chapter has been the best we have ever had and I want to extend a special thanks to the TCPrime folks who make testing a large part of their total SWG playtime. We know it is not easy playing and testing with a moving target and you have shown great dedication to making this game better.
At this point our plan is to get Chapter 6 to live early next week. We like where we are in terms of features, balance, and stability and we will be mostly fixing outstanding bugs and do some minor tweaking this week as we move towards a release candidate. Today we will be archiving the current feedback threads in Dev Discussion and replacing them with fewer and more focused ones for the remaining time in test. These threads have been invaluable and we want to be sure to get as tight a focus as possible with the remaining areas we want to address before publish.
I know that many players have mixed feelings about some of the changes with Chapter 6. This is understandable and we are sensitive to those reservations, but I believe we have achieved the primary goals we wanted to hit. A solid and immersive Beast Master system, a great tool for player events and content with Story Teller, and a pass on NPC's and other mobs in the game to address the level of challenge in our content. I could have wished for perhaps more agreement on that level of challenge, but I am satisfied that we have made a better game, while not forgetting that we have many styles of players in SWG.
So please continue the testing and feedback as we move into our final week on test and for those patiently waiting for Chapter 6 on live, we are almost there!
I wanted to drop a quick announcement to the community about the status of Chapter 6 going to live. We will be publishing an update to the test centers early tomorrow with some final changes (the reversion of the dreaded self-heal changes and other tweaks) and if it all checks out, this is the version that will go live. We are excited about this chapter and anxious to get this into the hands of the broader player base, but not until we feel we have hit our goals. I think we are there, but only by getting it to the TC's and allowing QA to regress all the systems will we be sure. If all goes well we are still on track for release this week.
I know that not everyone will feel that all of their individual issues have been addressed, but I do not think any game can achieve that level of agreement. What we do hope is that everyone sees this chapter as a great addition to the game and that all types of players will find something new and appealing to do in the game. I appreciate your patience in this process, and I urge the testing community to really beat on this version to make sure we have a solid update to SWG.
We have been pushing hard to resolve all Chapter 6 issues by today in order to release the chapter to live tomorrow, but unfortunately we have had a couple of late bugs reported that we feel are important enough to address before going live that we have decided not to push the release tomorrow. Though these issues are not massive, they represent a level of polish and robustness that we really want to hit with this publish, so as difficult as it is to go back on my earlier statement about C6 going live this week, we will hold it until next week. Unless it is a extreme emergency, all chapter publishes and hotfixes are deployed during the normal maintenance windows on Tuesday and Thursday so our next opportunity for release is next Tuesday the 22nd.
I honestly wish I could put this out there now because this is one hell of a chapter, but I just do not see the point in not making this as clean of a release as possible. Feel free to call me out on this (I suspect my bosses will), it was a hard choice, but the right one.
