March 2011

Galactic Civil War

It's a tie! Both sides of the war, across all the galaxies, continue put up an outstanding fight and the score is again deadlocked. With the news of GCW2 underway, each faction is excited about the new opportunities that will be available in the game. The war wages on

Galactic Civil War 2

The initial design document has been posted to the Private Senate forum where we are starting to see some great feedback from the senators. Although the design is not public yet, there is some information I can share with everyone.

First, we will be releasing this update in multiple parts. Part 1 will focus on space. Part 2 will focus on player cities. Part 3 will be a balance pass on the different GCW systems including planetary control. We want to break it up into parts so we can get the finished stuff out sooner.

Second, what would a space update be without new ships? Well we are planning to add some new ships. Here's a teaser image of the neutral ship. Can you guess what ship it is? One hint is that it has been given out in the game already but not as a player ship. We also want to add a new Rebel and Imperial fighter class ship so we cover everyone. Please continue to make suggestions on which ships you would like to see the most.

Update 19.12 - An Entertaining Update

Wow. This update started slow and then really snowballed into a fairly large update. We set out to fix some top issues and balance the expertise trees for Entertainers. We ended up adding new dance animations, several hair style options including hair trim, and more choices to the buff builder. Plus we still managed to fix several top issues. What a fun update this turned out to be! The Entertainer class, overall, is a very unique aspect of our game. It has many facets from role playing to character customization to combat and everything in between. And with this game update, we feel like we gave Entertainers a well deserved refresh. And all players will benefit in different ways.

One thing we forgot to mention in the public notes, as compensation for all the changes in this update, the development team gets 10% of all tips received by Entertainers. We figured this was a fair exchange. The tips are automatically deducted and directly deposited into the Bank o' T2. Ok I'm just kidding! Zatozia made me pull that change out before it went live.

Enjoy the update and be sure and tip those Entertainers well for the new dos and buffs. We'll figure out another way you can tip the devs =)

The devs discover how to hook up hair trim customization. Cool!

Oh and, if you haven't checked them out yet, the Expertise calculators have been updated! Finally! We've worked them into our development process now so we can continue to keep them synced with the game changes. The Entertainer expertise changes from this update have already been completed and are live (or will be pushed live very soon). Also, thanks again to great player feedback, we have pretty much worked out all the issues with the initial release and we'll be taking them out of beta soon. It's also great to see players sharing their expertise trees with others through the calculators. Zatozia helped so much with getting the calculators updated that I promised her I wouldn't make fun of her in my producer note (maybe you can make fun of her for me instead?).

Expertise Calculators Testing

Guilds

As a precursor to GCW2, in the last few updates, we have made several changes and improvements to guilds. We added Intra-Guild Squad PvP separated for ground and space, improved guild management features, added a guild war channel, made some changes to how guild wars work, and added many ways to improve guild recruiting. Coordination, communication, and recruitment are all vital to the war effort. These changes provide you with the tools you need to get an edge in the war. Use them. And a few additional guild recruiting information related tweaks are going to public test today. Check them out on the test servers and let us know what you think.

Development Discussion Forums

Bounty Hunting in Space

As another precursor to GCW2, we're looking into adding Bounty Hunting to Space. Here are some more specific details on where we currently stand on several topics of discussion that have appeared on the thread in the Bounty Hunter forum. As usual, these are subject to change/cancellation:

Tracking droids will be usable in space. We'll need to look at the nature of the information that the tracking droids will provide, in order to reflect the nature of BHing in space.
Bounty can be placed from space pvp kill.
Ground bounty vs. space bounty - If the bounty consists of only space bounties, the mark can only be hunted in space. If the bounty consists of only ground bounties (or both ground and space bounties), the mark can be hunted on both ground and space. The bounty mission terminal will indicate whether the bounty is space only.
No BH first strike in space - The mark's ship and the BH's ship will mutually appear red to each other at all times.
The Sorosuub Luxury Yacht will continue to remain unattackable.
Ejection rules - An actual kill will be required to collect the bounty. We'll look at ways to make it difficult to use ejection to avoid getting BH killed (or mark killed). Like possibly a delay after ejection request but before ejection actually occurs, during which time, the ship must continue to evade the "kill shot". Or possibly require the ship to remain stationary during the delay before ejection actually occurs.
POB rules - The BH must hunt using his own ship, even though he doesn't have to be the actual pilot of the ship. He just has to be on board his own ship. Any ship that the mark is aboard (even if it's not the mark's own ship) will be attackable by the BH's ship.

If you are interested in contributing your suggestions or you have some concerns, please check out the thread in the Bounty Hunter forum. Also, get on public test when these changes go out and try them out before they go live.

Bounty Hunting in Space - What are the challenges?

Ewok Festival of Love

The Ewok Festival of Love has come and gone. But the decoration stats are ready! I cannot believe the Ewok Chocolate Fountain was only the 3rd most placed decoration. I thought for sure some players would try to cover an entire planet with those. Maybe next year

Compared to WLD and GMF, there were much fewer persistent decorations placed for this year's EFOL event. We'll need to spice things up more next time.

Top 25 Most Decorated Server and Planet:

Europe-FarStar Talus
Starsider Naboo
Europe-Chimaera Naboo
Starsider Tatooine
Europe-Chimaera Corellia
Starsider Rori
Chilastra Naboo
Europe-FarStar Lok
Starsider Talus
Europe-Chimaera Tatooine
Starsider Dantooine
Europe-Chimaera Talus
Shadowfire Lok
Europe-FarStar Naboo
Chilastra Lok
Flurry Talus
Europe-Chimaera Dantooine
Flurry Rori
Europe-FarStar Dantooine
Eclipse Dantooine
Bria Naboo
Starsider Lok
Europe-FarStar Tatooine
Shadowfire Tatooine
Eclipse Naboo

Top Decorated Planet for Each Server:

Ahazi Lok
Bloodfin Dantooine
Bria Dantooine
Chilastra Dantooine
Eclipse Corellia
Europe-Chimaera Corellia
Europe-FarStar Dantooine
Flurry Dantooine
Gorath Dantooine
Radiant Dantooine
Shadowfire Corellia
Starsider Corellia
Sunrunner Dantooine
TCPrime Dantooine
TestCenter Rori

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

Naboo 9.5%
Talus 7.6%
Tatooine 4.1%
Lok 3.7%
Dantooine 3.3%
Corellia 2.0%
Rori 2.0%
Dathomir 0.2%
Endor 0.1%

Most Used Decorations (~percentage of total props):

Ewok Festival of Love Flowers 4.4%
Ewok Festival of Love Bouquet 2.5%
Ewok Chocolate Fountain 2.1%
Stage 1.3%
Plotted Plant - Purple Flowers 1.2%
Plotted Plant - Orange Flowers 1.0%
Tiki Torch 1.0%
Pillar: Naboo Style 1 0.8%
Pillar: Tatooine Style 0.7%
Streetlamp Large Style 01 0.7%
Cafe Chair 0.7%
AT-ST 0.6%
AT-AT 0.6%
Imperial Banner 0.5%
Gate: Tatooine Style 0.5%
Garden Gazebo 0.5%
Wall: Naboo Style Tall 0.4%
Wall: Imperial Style 1 0.4%
Streetlamp Small Style 01 0.4%
First Ewok Festival of Love Card 0.4%

SOE Fan Faire 2011

It's coming up soon. I have some great news for this year's event. We were recently rearranging furniture in the office and made a most excellent discovery. Hidden in a rarely used book shelf, we found another set of original SWG concept art. At last year's Fan Faire, we gave out several pieces of concept art. At the time, we thought it was all that remained. Well we found this new stash and there are some awesome pieces in it. I think this is really the last of it though. These are original hand drawn pieces of work from SWG development. They are unique and we will be giving them out at Fan Faire during the SWG activities. We also found another two unopened SWG Collector's Addition boxes. We're working on plans for those at Fan Faire too!

This concept art is part of SWG history. It's awesome that we can give these out to the most deserving folks, our players. Here are some scanned images for two of the pieces we found:

If you can make it out, come to the event and hang out with the dev team. There's nothing that can compare to seeing Hjal's expression when you tell him in person that you would like to take your ships out of your datapad on the ground and fly around in them =)

Facebook

Congratulations on reaching the 10K fans goal! We hope you enjoy the Yoda Bobble Head reward. We're working on plans for another Facebook fan goal and reward. We'll share those details as soon as they become available.

The Official Star Wars Galaxies Page on Facebook

Support Events

Zatozia has been really busy with plans of boost up the events in the community Player Events and Community Team hosted events. To support the effort, we'll be working with her on getting some new badges made for both types of events. She also has a few trinkets in mind for some future Community Team event rewards. We'll see what the Torturess cooks up for those! No Zatozia! We won't be making you a mind control device.

Enjoy the recent changes and make sure you log in on April Fools! A new surprise awaits

- Teesquared & Team