Chapter 3 "Smugglers and Scoundrels" Publish Notes, September 27th

On Wednesday, September 27th at 4:00 AM PDT all U.S. and European galaxies will be taken down for server maintenance and a live update.

When the update is complete, all galaxies will be live but unavailable while we complete final testing. All galaxies will be made available after that time.

4:00 AM PDT (Los Angeles) / 6:00 AM CDT (Austin) / 7:00 AM EDT (New York)
12:00 PM BST (London) / 1:00 PM CEST (Berlin) / 9:00 PM (Tokyo)
[Click here for a Time Zone Calculator]

Always remember to check the Announcement Forum for the latest information.

“Chapter 3: Smugglers and Scoundrels”

• Cargo, contraband and criminals are the lifeblood of any good smuggler, and with Chapter 3: Smugglers and Scoundrels, players have even more ways of plying their trade. Packed with new features, content, skills and rewards, Chapter 3 offers new and exciting enhancements for every aspiring Han Solo in the galaxy.

The new Smuggling System will introduce features including:

• A New Underworld Faction – Smugglers can increase their standing with this faction by completing smuggling missions; while Bounty Hunters and Spies will watch their standing fall as they try to thwart the Smugglers' efforts.

• New Smuggling Missions – NPCs will be stationed across the galaxy distributing dangerous yet profitable new missions that deliver rewards of credits and higher faction rankings. But watch out for the new enemy NPCs that are out to steal the mission contraband!

• Player versus Player Smuggling Missions – Signing up for certain more lucrative missions automatically puts the player on the “most wanted” list of every bounty hunter in the galaxy, but surviving them results in fabulous rewards of credits, armor and weapons.

• New Smuggling Abilities – “Sly Lie” and “Fast Talk” will come in handy when attempting to evade capture and hide contraband.

• There is a Broker named Barak in Bestine on Tatooine who can hook Smugglers up with work (-1049 10 -3538).

You can find details about the Smuggling System by clicking here: Smugglers: Tricks of the Trade

New Features:

• Additional Profession Expertise System Rollout: Smugglers and Officers are the beneficiaries of all new skills and abilities in Chapter 3, allowing them to fully customize their characters and carve out their own place in the galaxy. Players will be able to earn up to 45 talent points as their characters progress to level 90, which they can spend as they please on new abilities and modifications to existing abilities.

• The Smuggling Expertise System – New smuggling talents and abilities have been divided into two trees: the Smuggling tree, which includes the two new abilities “Sly Lie” and “Fast Talk,” and the Scoundrel Tree that includes specializations for de-buffs, pistols, melee and party buffs.

Full details on the new profession expertise system for Smugglers can be found by clicking here: Smuggler Expertise.

• The Officer Expertise System – Officers can now assign talent points within two trees, Officer and Squad Command, that offer new skills and abilities such as calling in NPCs for reinforcements, bringing in supply drops, and providing buffs for all party members.

Full details on the new profession expertise system for Officers can be found by clicking here: Officer Expertise.

• Faction Ranking and Reward System: This summer, the Galactic Civil War kicked into high gear. Beginning with the Battle of Restuss, clashes among Rebel and Imperial players have been intensifying sharply, and Star Wars Galaxies is implementing a new Faction Ranking and Rewards system to acknowledge players who have been participating in the conflicts.

With the launch of Chapter 3, players will be able to gain faction ranks by completing a variety of PvE and PvP activities. Each new rank grants players the access to purchase higher-level items from their faction recruiter.

• Improvements to the User Interface: Several enhancements are being introduced to the in-game UI to improve ease of use and customizability.

• Additional Toolbar – Players now have the option to add a second toolbar to their on-screen interface, providing a full 24 slots to place icons for skills and abilities.

• Radar Upgrade – Graphical enhancements, adjustable buttons, opacity controls, clearer coordinates, and the option to fully re-size the radar are all now available.

• Combat Log Update – Players now have the option to display a combat log with updated information on default attacks, special attacks, critical hits, procs and buffs.

• In-Game Rewards: When players log in to download “Chapter 3: Smugglers and Scoundrels,” they will automatically receive an item that will grant them Galactic Civil War ranking points, so they can jump-start their career fighting against the evil Empire, or defeating the Rebel Scum. Players will receive enough points to automatically move from Rank 1 (Private) to Rank 2 (Lance Corporal/Trooper).

Chapter 3, "Smugglers and Scoundrels" Publish Notes

Art

* New Trandoshan Character Appearances: Trandoshan character appearances have been upgraded so that your character's customized details take advantage of the latest visual technologies. Skin tones will look richer and more natural; body details will be more distinct and other details will be more striking.

Armor

* Most Imperial armor can now be worn by races that previously couldn't wear it. The armor won't be visible, but the armor bonuses will be applied. For example, a Mon Calamari can now wear a Scout Trooper helmet and receive the armor bonuses but he won't appear to be wearing a helmet.

* Fixed an issue with faction armor that required faction points to bio-link the armor.

Chat

* Note: A combat log has been added to the game. To prevent any possible issues, all existing chat window settings will be reset to their default settings.

Combat

* Heavy Weapons are using damage procs again.

* All damage procs have been normalized based on the speed of the weapon you are using.

* Delayed attacks such as the Trauger Gas Canister will no longer continue to attack targets after the player who initiated the attack has died.

* If a group buff fails to take effect on a player in your group due to factional restrictions, you will receive a system message telling you so.

* As you spend or revoke Expertise skills and abilities, equipped weapons will have the correct modified weapon ranges.

* Damage from Area-of-Effect (AoE) attacks should no longer affect buildings.

* Armor requirements have been removed for Expertise abilities that are activated by the using toolbar. Specifically, the Bounty Hunter abilities Duelist Stance and Power Assisted Sprint and the Officer abilities Synaptic Stimulator and Environmental Purge no longer have "worn armor" requirements.

Cybernetics

* Fixed an issue that sometimes caused a crash-to-desktop while using cybernetic limbs.

Galactic Civil War

* Minefield donations to factional HQs have been temporarily disabled.

* Faction points can no longer be purchased from recruiters since faction points are now earned by GCW combat.

* Faction cost modifiers based on species or profession have been reduced or removed.

* The /pvp command cannot be used by Special Forces in player bases.

* The command "/surrender" now plays the surrender emote. ("/surrenderself").

* Killing Rebel and Imperial NPC guards around the Restuss communication arrays should now award the correct faction points.

* The radial menus for GCW bases will display available options more conveniently for base attackers and base defenders. For example, base attackers will have the default option "overload" displayed as the first option. Base defenders will have the default option "Manage Structure" displayed as the first option.

Loot

* Elite insects will drop loot.

Player Cities

* Mayors no longer need a militia member to give them zoning rights when trying to transfer a structure.

Profession: Jedi

* The three Heightened Speed Expertise abilities that were available in the original Jedi Expertise template will be automatically allocated.

Profession: Officer

* Officer Expertise has been added to the game.

Full details on the new profession expertise system for Officers can be found by clicking here: Officer Expertise.
Profession: Smuggler

* Smuggler Expertise has been added to the game.

Full details on the new profession expertise system for Smugglers can be found by clicking here: Smuggler Expertise.

You can find details about the Smuggling System by clicking here: Smugglers: Tricks of the Trade .

Profession: Traders

* Wookiee Vendors should now wear Wookiee Armor.

* Fixed an issue that caused Survey Tools to have a black circle in the background.

Quests

* Trials of Obi-Wan: Doombringer in the Operational Droid Factory will activate more consistently after his hands have died.

* Trials of Obi-Wan: The "Malevolent Heavy Sword" quest reward in Mustafar is now a two-handed weapon as it was originally intended.

Space

* The repair conduits on multiplayer ships will no longer prevent you from repairing multiple conduit breaks during space combat.

User Interface

* Character Select Screen: Scrolling happens more smoothly when scrolling up and down the list of available galaxies.

* Character Sheet: Added a Galactic Civil War page to the character sheet.

* Character Sheet: Added a Cybernetics page to the character sheet.

* Character Sheet: Experience Point bars are thicker.

* Expertise window: Expertise windows will no longer draw arrows to skills that are not immediately dependant on each other.

* Inventory: An option has been added that will allow you to drag-and-drop items into containers. You can choose to have the option to drag-and-drop items into containers or to use the new sortable inventory mode.

* Radar: Radar is now smaller, cleaner, and resizable.

* Radar: The symbol for North on your radar display is more clearly visible.

* Radar: The display for location coordinates has been detached from the radar display. It now has its own window that is moveable.

* Radar: Added an option to turn the location coordinates display on and off.

* Radar: Radar is no longer transparent when standing in a multiplayer space ship.

* Radar: Radar screens no longer have white backgrounds in a variety of adventure zones while the "show terrain on radar" option is turned on.

* Toolbar: An option to turn on a second toolbar has been added to the game.

* The main menu button is now moveable.

* Star Wars Galaxies can now be moved to any monitor when running in windowed mode on multi-monitor systems.

* Star Wars Galaxies can now be minimized when running in windowed mode.

* Added 4 new sliders to control the sizes of various types of combat fly-text.

* You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in-and-out on your radar screen, even if you don't hold down the control key.

* Added a menu option to control the opacity of the Command Button.

* The Quest Helper window is now moveable on both the ground and in space.

* Clicking the right scroll bar on your datapad will no longer cause datapad tabs to disappear.

* The help window correctly stretches all the way to the bottom of the window.

* Fly-text now uses the Star Wars font.

* Pressing the escape key to skip an in-game move will no longer log you out of the game. The "back" button on loading screens is now labeled "Exit". You can press the "Exit" button to skip in-game movies. This was done to help prevent players from accidentally logging out of the game.

* A DPS meter has been added to the game. This meter will add a small informative window that will display your character's current DPS along with a running total.

* The modal chat option is available in your Options menu.

* Added the "Change View" button to the inventory screen and the datapad.

* Fixed an issue that sometimes caused POI and Draft Schematics tabs in the Datapad to be empty.

* "Weapon Category" is now displayed on weapons when they are examined.

* Commands on the space toolbar will work even if the toolbar isn't visible.

* While targeting another player, a radial menu option has been added that will display the targeted player's character sheet. This will display a limited version of the player's character sheet which includes the player's Status, Personal, and GCW information.

* The "activate" and "deactivate" cursors will display correctly. For example, sitting in a chair will now display the correct activate and deactivate icons.

Vehicles

* Vehicles will now be more difficult to disable while mounted by a player.

* Visual effects won't restart every time you mount and dismount a vehicle as long as the effect has finished.

World

* Milk can be harvested by milking creatures.

* You can examine a creature to find out what type of milk it has. If it has none, the description will say "None".




-- Edited by Jibblett at 06:50, 2006-09-27

-- Edited by Jibblett at 06:53, 2006-09-27

-- Edited by Jibblett at 06:57, 2006-09-27

-- Edited by Jibblett at 10:14, 2006-09-27