Have no fear; my weekly updates are not going to fade quietly into the night. Many thanks to those who patiently waited for this update to reappear. It’s been crazy-mad busy in the studio working on getting Mounts, Player Cities and Vehicles ready to be added to the Galaxies. There is also JustG’s big announcement on upcoming efforts to make SWG the game we all love even better.

JustG's Letter:

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/team_comments.jsp?id=59306&page=Team%20Comments

Mounts are a huge success! (I have a spat myself) I’m pleased that the community (that’s you) was able to express your desires for mounts to the dev team and me so we could make them as useful as they are fun. The /gallop command works well and since combat is not allowed during a gallop, the developer is even considering reducing the recovery rate. That would make mounts able to gallop with shorter periods of time in between “gallops” and I think that would make them even better.

Some Tips:

When buying a mount, remember that there are only six species of mounts right now: Bol, Brackaset, Carrion Spat, Dewback, Falumpasets and Kaadu.
You can check to make sure a mount is a playable mount if it has a saddle. If it doesn’t have a saddle, it my be a young mount in training. Use the radial menu to “Examine” the creature and get all the details.
For those of you who use /maskscent a lot. If you /maskscent before you get on a mount, it stays in effect and it makes for useful travel through treacherous territories.

Mounts in the Online Manual

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/manual_detail.jsp?id=59351

Player Cities are also a big hit. Much to my own surprise, the planetary caps were hit right away on all galaxies. Player cities take a lot of work and planning to successfully expand and grow and I think it’s a strong showing of SWG fans and their desire to lay down roots in the Galaxy. There has been a little bit of turnover from some of the rogue City Halls fading out, but overall, cities are expanding to the next level and starting to pop up on the planetary maps. I did some traveling this weekend, going from new city to new city and there is some fun exploration to be had for sure. Player Cities all have their own unique flavor to them and as they continue to grow, place new structures and develop, they will add a lot of character to the game worlds. IMHO, I’m really excited to see all different types of people gather with other people of like minds in the galaxy to see their city populations swell as Player Associations and casual player groups ally with one another to meet their voting numbers.

I know some of you are still anxious for the Planetary Caps to go up so let me share a little bit with you about the ongoing discussions. Player Cities are a fantastic new feature and everyone wants their own city, but lets consider the situation a little bit. Playing a Sith’s advocate, lets say we lifted the planetary caps tomorrow and anyone could run out and build a player city. A maximum player city radius is 1000 meters. In time, players would build cities wherever and however they could and urban sprawl would litter the galaxy. All the planets would have city after city, every 1000 meters and each planet would lose its character. Naboo would cease to be Naboo with no more pastures and greenspace. Tatooine would no longer be an empty desert where C-3PO and R2-D2 could wander for days without seeing anyone and the examples of how urban sprawl would ruin the feel and aesthetics of the galaxy go on and on.

Then there is the hope of outposts. The big thing on the outpost front is that we would limit outposts and they wouldn’t be able to expand, so they would essentially be expensive Player Associations. Without the ability to grow or place many buildings, they lose a lot of their appeal. Still, they are different than PA’s and have different characteristics, so there is a desire with you folks to have them.

We’ll be making some decisions this week and I know you are anxious to get the results, so I’ll post as soon as I have some concrete information.

Player Cities in the Online Manual

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/manual_detail.jsp?id=59376

Then there are vehicles

The team is working very hard to get Vehicles out to you as soon as possible and all I can say is WOW. Vehicles are going to be a lot of fun and will make getting to the far reaches of the galaxy a lot easier. Ood_Banar and his group have put together an exciting video for everyone to get a sneak preview. As soon as that piece of game footage has finished production, we’ll get it out to you. Don’t forget, Vehicles are another great reason to spend some Time on Test Center and I’m sure we’ll have a lot of information on the status of this feature real soon. I expect we might have a vehicle giveaway on TC or something along those lines so we can get things tested and polished.

On top of those three major game systems, I’ve been working very hard with the Player Correspondents on the Top 5 list. It has taken a bit longer because it’s a pretty big job. Q-3PO and I expanded the Player Correspondent program to include the categories of “Star Wars” (Basic game features and Star Warsyness), Player Associations and the Galactic Civil War. That gives is 32 professions+3 aspects x Top 5 Issues = 175 issues for me to resolve between the developers and all the correspondents. Since my goal is to get you folks and the correspondents more involved in the game development process, its become…well…a process. Rather than me asking questions of the developers and then regurgitating it all back to you, I’ve been negotiating with the dev team on all of these items. With all this being considered, I give the devs a lot of credit for being patient with me pushing for player issues and my hats off go to Blair for staying really late with me a couple of nights last week to get it done.

Last Friday, I posted all of the Top 5 updates in the Correspondent forums and I am getting additional input and discussion from the correspondents so we can clear up an miscommunications and polish up the posts. I apologize to you guys for the 3 professions got bogged down for various reasons (Merchant, Squad Leader and Fencer), but I’ll get with Blair and we’ll get em done early this week.

The next step in this process is that I am going to gather up the Correspondent responses to my posts this week, answer their questions, consider their clarifications, and they will work up responses and post them in their respective forums. I’ll mix it up with you folks in each of the forums so they show up on the dev tracker and everyone can get quick access to all the action.

Then there is the AT-ST. I know this is a very hot issue with many of you and we expect some resolutions soon. Currently, the AT-ST is a pet and will be affected in the Creature Balance and there are some other changes too. I’ve maintained your position on the AT-ST with the devs and when the final decisions are made, Ill post the results.

With all the new features, the live events and the big developments, there sure is a lot going on. I look forward to our ongoing discussions this week, so stay tuned!