1) Haden "Shug_Ninx" Blackman (Lucas Arts Producer) has commented on a fan´s post in which he (the fan) said he read an article on Yahoo stating that Hoth and Dagobah will be err.. "visitable" locations in the game world.

Shug_Ninx replied:

Haven´t read the article that you´re discussing, but only Tatooine has been confirmed. The other two planets, while a focus of some debate, have not been announced as actual locations in Star Wars Galaxies at launch. The quote may have been taken out of context - Star Wars Galaxies will allow you to explore familiar (and not-so familiar) Star Wars planets. We´re not ready to tell you which ones yet.

2) In the very same post the fan asked if and how Vader will be included in the game (plus a few other things).

Shug_Ninx:

We are planning to include Darth Vader. We haven´t decided who will encounter him nor what the circumstances will be. "Jedi in training" might run afoul of Vader; they might not...

I expect planets will evolve and change, specificially due to player interactions with the worlds (cities will spring up and grow, etc.). They will also change due to weather patterns and other stuff.

We haven´t announced anything about the beta testing yet. If you work backwards from our Fall 2002 release date, you can probably guess that Beta testing will start sometime in 2002, though.

3) Last one for today is from Raph "Holocron" Koster (Creative Director). He comments on PvP (player vs. player), the most talked-about issue since weeks.

Holocron:

There´s really three main avenues to consider here.

1) Battlefields. This is the REAL way we draw in the non-PvP crowd, of course. It´s a zero commitment, have fun and fight a battle, pick a side with no permanent consequence, sort of thing.

2) Doing an action and getting some faction standing and a temporary PvP flag. This is what scares the non-PvPers, because they see "shoot a Stormtrooper, and get 10,000 hards raised against you and get ganked." But it does give us an avenue for people to acquire faction standing in the first place.

3) The sympathizer thing, whereby you don´t get to initiate, but get aggressed against by NPCs. This is what Bajeezus was referring to as inelegant. It undeniably is. But it´s a natural consequence of #2. Otherwise you could keep doing say, Rebel actions and missions, and suffer zero consequence. We can´t forcibly make you declare...

Now, we currently do in fact intend to reserve equipment checkout and the like to declared people only. So the bennies are still on the declared side. So that (very valid!) concern of yours is moot...