Galactic Civil War

Rebels continue to maintain the lead. With the upcoming GCW changes, though, we may see a shift in the war.

These changes are on public test now:

• Player placed GCW bases caps, restrictions, & scoring
• Ground Factional Presence scaling
• Perks (and maybe Penalties?)

We fixed some issue with the enforcement of GCW base caps and the caps are affected by the score. You must also have factional control of a region (51% or higher) to place a base. These bases are also now tied into the score and provide a bonus. Ground FP scales and we added a Cloning Sickness Reduction Perk for the winning faction. We're currently discussing possible penalties applied against the losing faction. Check out the public notes, get on public test, and let us know what you think.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...opic_id=1103069

Galactic Civil War NEXT

Just like the war is ongoing, our GCW changes will be ongoing as well. Up next we are planning to add GCW leader boards for individuals, guilds, and cities. These leader boards will be viewable from the War Terminal, War Intel Pad, and War Table. For individuals, the game will track each character's contribution to the GCW score for the week. When the weekly tracking period ends, the top 10 contributors for each faction will be displayed on the "Previous Week" leader board. The "Current Week" leader board will display the running list of top 25 contributors for each faction for the current week to let you know where you stand, and how much more you need to work to get to the top end before the week ends. Those who made the "Previous Week" top 10 list, get a cool title to display until the next week's cycle. We'll be putting up a forum post to get your suggestions for these titles. There will also be some rules on which PvP kills contribute to the ranking score to make sure that players are PvPing out in the open where they are at risk. For cities and guilds, if they are factionally aligned, whenever a character contributes to the GCW score, if he/she is the same faction as his/her city/guild, that city/guild will get "credit" for the GCW score contribution. These leader boards will have a "Previous Week" and "Current Week" display similar to the individual. We're still finalizing the details but we'd also like to add some rewards, badges, and collections for incentive. The system that we are developing will support these if we want to add them in the future.

And I mentioned Space Invasions and Player Cities in my producer notes in the past. Don't worry, we haven't forgotten. We've got some really great ideas down on paper (ok typed in an email) regarding these topics. And the team is really excited about them. I'll be talking more about them at

Fan Faire 2010

I'm hoping to see all you there =) Ok I may not get to see you all there but I can always hope. So far, representing SWG we'll have me, Hjal, a genuine replica of the AI chip DevH that I will have on my keychain, Fiasco, Jaskell, and Aphox. And the most important question, of course, is - Will there be cake? Well for those of you who attended last year, that was one awesome cake. All I can say is we are working on it! And we all really want one too. Oh and we'll be going into a lot of detail on the upcoming changes to the game. It will be a blast.

http://events.station.sony.com/fanfaire/

Rare Loot System

I am very excited about this new system. In fact, the framework is already live. The Rare Loot System will allow us to add some really cool loot to the game that players will have a chance to loot off of any mob they encounter. There are restrictions however. The restrictions are in place so that farming mobs or generally killing trash mobs (AOE FTW) won't give you a chance to get this new loot. You have to play the game and fight challenging mobs to earn a chance to find this loot. The details are not final yet but the basic concept is that there will be three categories of rare loot; normal, boss, and elite. If you kill a mob and qualify per the restrictions, you will get a chance to receive one of them. Again, the type you qualify to get will be based on a rule set. If you get the lucky roll, you will see a new tradable item in your inventory. This item will be one of the three types (each type will look different). This item can be traded or consumed. Upon consuming the item, the system will choose a rare loot item from the corresponding list (normal, boss, or elite) and place the selected item into your inventory. CongratZ and good luck!

So what's live now? Isn't a framework something that holds a painting? The system that determines the loot chance and type based on the restrictions and rules is running in live right now. Instead of generating the loot, it generates a log. That way we can pull the logs and make sure the chances are fair for everyone. By framework, I mean the system that checks the restrictions and rules and generates a result. The result right now is just to output a log. Hang in there though, we're working to get this system tuned and live as soon as we can.

What kind of loot will we find? Pretty much anything we want to add. We understand that we have collectors in the game and our intention is not to devalue items. There are just so many items that were never given out or just need to be added back to the game. An example would be a prior publish gift could make one of the lists. Keep in mind that these are rare. Even the normal list will be rare. So our expectation is that the items added to these lists will still be rare and valuable.

Yeah, all this is nice but what about some new content?

The details are extremely vague right now but here's a teaser image to get you guessing

No Trade is No Fun

On public test right now we've made some changes to also remove "Biolink On Purchase". This change will apply to new items only. Check out the latest list of item changes here and go on to public test if you want to try them out before they go live,

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...opic_id=1080498

We will continue to add more items to the list. Also, please keep your suggestions coming.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...opic_id=1090266

Profession and Game Play Improvements

The latest Bounty Hunter changes are on public test. We will continue to adjust these based on player feedback. If you play a BH or have an interest (or you are a concerned Jedi), be sure and hop onto public test to check out the changes. Let us know in the Development Discussion forum what you think.

Ok, time to reveal the next two professions on the list. They are Officer and Entertainer. Be sure and let your profession senator know what you want changed.

Empire Day VII / Remembrance Day VII

These events are now live. You can rerun all the quests from last year and there are new badges, collections, and rewards to be had. You asked for new Mara Jade and Wedge Antilles rewards so we put those in too. Everyone is enjoying the AT-XT and AT-ST vehicles. Make sure you get yours before the event ends. Oh and we are going to change out those vehicle sounds. So you can look forward to that coming out in the next few weeks.

For the first few days of the event, we gave out a factional themed target dummy. If you didn't get a chance to grab one don't worry. We'll be adding them to the game also so you'll have another chance to get one.

Star Wars Galaxies 7th Year Anniversary

The year 1 gift is live now. It's a Theed Arch house decoration. Well it's one of two possible arches. For this event, we're not changing out the gift each week. We're planning to spread it out some. We'll let everyone know in the publish notes when the next gift will come out.

In my last producer note, I posted some early development screens from SWG. I got some great feedback and requests to post more so here's another round of screens. Enjoy.

August 2000

October 2001

January 2002

Facebook

Ok after my last clue of the rotated section of Yoda's ear, someone guessed the next milestone reward a bobble head Yoda. We keep creeping closer to this very cool milestone. In the near future, we're planning to start doing more stuff on Facebook. Stay tuned!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-O...04535812?ref=ts

- Teesquared & Team