The Death Troopers update arrived with a splash of gore on October 13th. Tales of Imperial experiments gone awry were rapidly transmitted in hushed tones across the galaxy and gleefully horrified people rushed to Dathomir to investigate the rumors themselves. Some even lived to tell the tale.

Jaskell, a Designer for SWG, revealed what it took to bring this project together:

Documenting ideas for Death Troopers content was a group effort. Loche, Fiasco and I locked ourselves in a small room and hashed out the main story line. It was here that we decided where the theme park would be located and how it would be laid out. We also went over how the story line would be delivered and how the characters from the book would be introduced.

Right from the start, Loche wanted to make the themepark inclusive to players level five and higher, with repeatable content and the ability for all three factions to participate in the main story line. Fiasco had the idea of the virus being communicated as a debuff, and I was very much interested in making any new content differ from previous theme parks.

World Building the Death Troopers themepark was a lengthy and challenging process. The entire area had to be flattened, each camp created and the main dungeon decorated. A lot of custom functionality went into how the Death Trooper inhabitants behave. Hanse took on the job of creating the Cornburr and Undead Rancor functionality while I worked on making survivor AI path to specific locations while being attacked by undead. Art put together some awesome animations for our new undead enemies and in the last week thick fog and sounds were delivered. After that point it felt like I was logging in to a completely different game.

Developed in conjunction with the new Del Rey book, Star Wars: Death Troopers, the update was launched in time for Halloween, but persists as a permanent addition to the game. That means if you havent tried it yet, you can go now! Take some friends for good measure and remember that if things go very wrong, you dont have to run faster than the zombies just faster than your friends!

May the Force be with youyoull need it!

To give you some idea of the ambience and grim setting of the concept, here is the Death Troopers book trailer video, produced by 5ive By 5ive Studios.