Teesquareds Producer Note October 1, 2010 - 10/01/2010
October 2010
Galactic Civil War
Rebels are still holding their lead on the Galaxies Wide scoring. In last week's update, we adjusted the GCW point rewards for some of the invasion quests. After leaderboards went live we created a new competition among players. As a result we discovered some balancing issues with how points are scored. We are planning to continue to monitor the leaderboards. It's an ongoing system and we are stilling balancing it. We value your input as well and we're looking at various options and suggestions to help keep the system fair and balanced. Keep up the discussions and let us know your concerns and issues.
Fishing for an update
The fishing update is live. We are already seeing more fishing activity on the servers than we expected. Sometimes even devs need to take a break and go fishing. Ok well we didn't go fishing but we added some fun changes to the existing fishing system. I wanted to mention one more thing, if you haven't tried out fishing yet, we added a very funny twist. I have received a few questions regarding it so I don't think everyone caught it in the notes. Whenever you get a record catch, you will get a communication message from an iconic Star Wars or Star Wars Galaxy character. He, she, or it will say a rather funny line when their record is beaten. Even if a player has the last record catch, you will still get the iconic character communication. It's a fun system and we hope you enjoy the quotes.
Wow! I have to say we had a great time working on this event. It started out a little slow with the initial gifts being decorations but it really started to heat up after we released the Kashyyyk tree house. Some of the developers were at SOE Fan Faire right after that gift went live and we got to talk to the players in person. Everyone was so excited about it at Fan Faire that it really touched each of us. It's hard to keep outdoing yourself in an event like this but I like to think the devs did a pretty good job.
Also keeping the gifts a surprise, well at least until they go live, has been fun also. It's something we will try to keep doing.
Now to tease the final gift a bit... All I can say is WOW. It is amazing. Actually it's two gifts and both of them are awesome. You will get one awesome gift just for logging in. You will get the other more awesome gift by finishing the SWG 7 collection. I have to say again that the devs really had a very fun time coming up with, giving out, and seeing your reactions to the gifts. Also, the changes we've made to the game to support some of the functionality we put into them will be used going forward as well. For example, we can now make a portable bazaar terminal. That is really cool. There may be some other things we can do with that support as well. Oh yeah and there's a fun twist to the finale as well that you will get to see when it goes live next week. And yes it's going live next week!
Ok what do you want to celebrate next? Anyone have a birthday coming soon or an anniversary? Let me know J
Rare Loot System
I'm very excited to announce that RLS will be going live next week with the finale of the SWG 7th celebration. The system is in great shape and, thanks to input from you, we have come up with an amazing list of loot. We've previewed a few items here and there but we've left many for you to discover. Enjoy the cool loot and good luck in your adventures!
Check out this week's Friday Feature as Zatozia shows more loot that can be discovered. Look closely at the examine windows in the screenshots to see how we are identifying items as coming from RLS.
Shh. Don't say anything to Zatozia but I think she forgot to lock the submission thread. Be sure and get your game tip submitted. She may catch on any second and lock that thread. If you haven't already, then be sure to get something submitted this weekend to be safe. I think her home computer is broken so you should be ok until Monday.
And for everyone that has submitted a tip, thanks for taking the time to do so. We've got a lot of reviews and approvals to do before the submissions are finalized but there are some really great tips that players will benefit from. It's all about helping each other out and our community does a great job at that.
The Galactic Moon Festival will be going live on October 19th this year. We are planning to run the event for about 4 weeks. This year, like the events in the past, there will be a new badge and some scary new rewards. We've also got a surprise in store for everyone in this year's event. I won't say anything more but...
Ack. What is that?
Also, this month is looking to be a great month for player run events. I got an invite to a couple already. I can't wait to see the GMF related ones after this update goes live.
Massively.com
I just wrapped up an interview for Massively.com. It talks about what's going on now and in the future for SWG. There are a few SWG players working at Massively and they were really excited about the interview. And they asked some really good questions. Almost as good as some of the PMs I get from you folks. The interview will go live sometime next week. We'll be posting on the web site when it's done so you can check it out.
In the interview I discuss more about the Witches of Dathomir and the status of the Profession and Game Play improvements that the team is doing. You'll get the full rundown when the interview goes live.
Meanwhile, catch a big one and get ready for the best event finale ever!