November 2010

Galactic Civil War

For the first time in my producer note, I get to congratulate the Imperials for grabbing a well deserved one percent edge in the Galaxies-wide GCW point total and earning their first ever scoring victory in the Galactic Civil War. Rest assured, the Rebellion is hot on their trails and the whole team cannot wait to see how this plays out. Will the Imperials hold the lead next month? Or will the Rebels regain their dominance in the scoring? Stay tuned to find out the exciting status of the GCW in Star Wars Galaxies!

On the war front, the team continues to look into balancing issues with the GCW point scoring systems. On public test right now are two invasion fixes regarding slicing. Please continue to let us know about your concerns and issues. Good luck on the leaderboards and in the war. May each faction have a fun and fair war!

Galactic Moon Festival

We hope everyone had fun in this year's celebration of the Galactic Moon Festival. I had a blast attending some of the in-game events. It was wonderful seeing everyone's horrific decorations scattered throughout the galaxy. And there were many of them. For the first time, we allowed players who earned the GMF badge to persist up to 10 storyteller props. These props stay around for the duration of the event. For your viewing pleasure, I went ahead and threw together some statistics based on the number of persisted storyteller props. I also took a ride to a few of the most decorated locations to grab some screenshots for my note. Unfortunately, and I couldn't believe this, many of you have already cleaned up the props. I understand the event is coming to an end but I was very surprised to see how thorough many of you are.

Top 20 Most Decorated Server and Planet:

Starsider Dantooine
Bria Lok
Eclipse Lok
Europe-FarStar Lok
Starsider Talus
Bloodfin Talus
Sunrunner Naboo
Gorath Lok
Starsider Naboo
Flurry Talus
Europe-Chimaera Talus
Gorath Tatooine
Eclipse Tatooine
Europe-FarStar Naboo
Starsider Tatooine
Starsider Lok
Chilastra Naboo
Bria Dantooine
Bloodfin Corellia
Europe-Chimaera Lok

Top Decorated Planet for Each Server:

Ahazi Naboo
Bloodfin Talus
Bria Lok
Chilastra Naboo
Eclipse Lok
Europe-Chimaera Talus
Europe-FarStar Lok
Flurry Talus
Gorath Lok
Radiant Naboo
Shadowfire Tatooine
Starsider Dantooine
Sunrunner Naboo
TCPrime Lok
TestCenter Tatooine

Most Decorated Planets for All Servers (~percentage of total props):

Lok 21%
Dantooine 18%
Naboo 17%
Talus 16%
Tatooine 16%
Corellia 7%
Rori 3%
Yavin4 0.1%
Dathomir 0.1%

Most Used Decorations (~percentage of total props):

Burning Man Style 2 10%
Kashyyyk Cave Plant 7%
Burning Man Style 1 6%
Humanoid Bone Pile 5%
Mushroom Cluster 5%
Webbed Tree 4%
Streetlamp Kashyyyk Style II 4%
Streetlamp Kashyyyk Style I 4%
Wookiee Stick 4%
Scarecrow Kashyyyk Style I 3%
Webweaver Lair 3%
Egg Sac Cluster 3%
Scarecrow Kashyyyk Style II 3%
Wookiee Gravestone III 2%
Sitholantern Style 1 2%
Sitholantern Style 5 2%
Sitholantern Style 2 2%
Wookiee Gravestone I 2%
Wookiee Gravestone II 2%
AT-AT 2%

GMF Decorations on Starsider's Dantooine (1st)

GMF Decorations on Bria's Lok (2nd)

GMF Decorations on Eclipse's Lok (3rd)

Also for this year's event we added new undead mood and emotes. It was absolutely so terrifying seeing players use them that I couldn't stop laughing. We will try to continue to do more of these types of changes in the future. We can now add run and walk animations to moods so we'll also try to enhance some of the existing moods with this new support.

Wookiee Life Day

Wookiee Life Day is on track to hit a mid-December release this year and will run for about 4 weeks. You can look forward to new rewards and a new badge. Also, now that we have the storyteller persist wand, you can also decorate around your homes and your cities. The team cannot wait to see the holiday spirit spread throughout the galaxy. Now we just need to figure out how to place those enormous Wroshyr trees without breaking the game. I'm sure we'll come up with something. I wonder what the storyteller vendor will look like for this year's event.

Witches of Dathomir Prologue & Finale

The Witches of Dathomir Prologue is live now. Pick a side and build up your faction in preparation for the finale which is scheduled to go live later this year. I was on TestCenter earlier today decorating my house with some of the cool loot we added for the prologue. Here's an image of my house now. Wow it really feels like Dathomir in my home.

Profession and Game-Play Improvements

The team continues to address important issues in the game. We are focusing right now on some of the top issues gathered by our senators. We'll have more details soon but we have several of them on the list to get worked on. We are still planning to cycle through the professions as well. As soon as we have an opportunity, we are planning to dedicate time to the next profession on the list which is Officer. We don't have an estimate yet on when this work will begin. We will continue to work on game-play issues and make sure we dedicate the time we need to continue the polish pass on the professions.

Credit Spam Prevention

This week we released a credit spam prevention change. This change blocks a player's ability to send unsolicited tells and mail while in the tutorial. The team understands the importance of credit spam prevention. We felt this change was a step in the right direction. This adds to the existing anti-spam measures the game supports. Namely the warden system and the chat limit for trial accounts. Addressing spam in our game is a multi-pronged and continuously evolving effort. We would like your feedback on how well this change works. Please continue to suggest ways to address credit spam prevention in the game.

Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game®: The Price of Victory

We first let you know about the next TCG set during Fan Faire. And now it's official. This past May, we got to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back in game. Now we get a chance to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this great film in the TCG. Be sure and check out the announcement for full details.

The Price of Victory

And now for a very special piece of loot from the set, here's an exclusive preview of the Yoda housing structure:

And don't worry; it's been sized up a bit so you can fit inside. We're looking forward to revealing more of the ESB-themed loot in the coming weeks.

Incoming!

We have a surprise planned for our community (both current and former) for the week of Thanksgiving. I cannot give you any details right now, but it is something that I think you will be "thankful" for and should also whip up some real excitement across the community. More to come from marketing in a few weeks

Enjoy the prologue and keep up the outstanding war effort!

- Teesquared & Team