Haden "Shug Ninx" Brief an die Community.

Er spricht über das vergangene Jahr und blickt auf die Zukunft von Star Wars Galaxies 2004.


Haden Blackman's Letter to the Community

What the New Year Will Bring
Well over three years ago, I was asked to write a brief "letter from the team" for the official Star Wars Galaxies web site, which had only recently launched. At that time, we were still feverishly designing the game, and we carried with us an awesome sense of responsibility to the Star Wars fans and the rapidly growing Star Wars Galaxies community.

Now, I've been tasked with writing another Letter from the Team. After three years, our sense of responsibility to our fans and player-base has only grown exponentially, so I thought I'd take this time to provide a brief retrospective on the game since launch, followed by a look forward into the New Year.

WHO AM I?

Although better known to long-time community members as Shug_Ninx, I'm actually just Haden Blackman, the Star Wars Galaxies Producer for LucasArts. As the LucasArts producer, it's generally my job to help guide the team to ensure that the game fulfills our (and your) expectations, from a design, quality, schedule, and Star Wars standpoint. How I spend my time: identifying in-game issues; discussing issues and potential solutions with the designers; working with the producers at Sony Online Entertainment to plan publishes; collaborating with Marketing and PR to promote the game and the publishes; monitoring our internal testing efforts; and sitting in meetings... Mostly, I try to serve as an advocate for the game internally, so let me quickly put on that helmet here and give you:

A LOOK BACK

The past six months have been pretty amazing for us as a team and a community. In June, we saw the culmination of many years of hard work when the game launched. Despite some sizable snags during the first few weeks, our in-game community grew at a record pace and many of you embraced the game, warts and all. For that, we remain incredibly thankful.

Since launch, we've been hard at work expanding and improving the Star Wars Galaxies experience. For those of you who've been with us since Day One, most of this isn't news to you, but I like the look of a bullet-point list, so here it goes...

While our earliest patches contained literally thousands of bug fixes (with many more come) and upgrades to existing systems and content, we also managed to slip in some new content, including new caves and complexes to explore. In addition to these locations, we peppered the planets with a handful of "named" enemies like Borvo's Wookiee Champion, who is hidden in the swamps of Naboo, and Lord Nyax. These types of updates were important in establishing the groundwork for future content additions: you can expect to see more "dungeons" and "boss enemies" in the months to come (but more on that below...).

In August, we rolled out the first Act of the Cries of Alderaan, an ongoing story arc that anticipates a fateful decision by the mysterious Dr. Vacca, and the competing efforts of the Rebel Alliance and the Empire to control Vacca's destiny. We hope that these Acts have offered some variety and have allowed you to engage in a larger, Star Wars-specific storyline.

October continued Cries of Alderaan, but also introduced the Warren, our first large-scale "dungeon," complete with a rich storyline, lots of scripted encounters, and a few puzzles to solve. A major undertaking, the Warren has become a prototype for other similar locations being developed now.

Aside from the Warren, our October publish supplied new quests from Nym's stronghold on Lok, gave bartenders "rumors" to spread, and included several hundred improvements to existing professions and other content.
November represented our most ambitious publish yet, integrating two systems that had been part of our original design: Player Mounts and Player Cities. As a result of the November update, which we believe to be one of the most significant free updates to any MMORPG, the game has changed significantly. Hopefully, you're finding that you can now explore planets more quickly, and when you're seeking a place to chill out, you can do so with your friends in your own personal cantina.

November also saw the rebirth of the Jedi Order. After months of speculation and hard work, players had begun to unlock the secrets of the Force. For us, this was an extremely exciting development.

To round out November, we began running Live Events. These are events coordinated by a member of our Events Team, designed to bring more Star Wars flavor and mini-stories into the game. One of the first Live Events involves stormtroopers invading a city in search of suspected Rebels, while another allows players to join forces with an Imperial pilot in an attempt to rescue an Imperial officer before his crashed transport can be overrun. Live Events can be very rewarding for players because they are unpredictable experiences with a great deal of targeted interaction; so far, we're extremely happy with the way these have turned out.

And, just a few days ago, we concluded our first calendar year of major publishes with Player Vehicles. Again, Player Vehicles were something we wanted as part of the game since the early design phase, and we're overjoyed that they have made it into players' hands so quickly. We're still kicking the tires and working on some sizable bugs, but early indications are that player vehicles are fun to drive, improve the gameplay experience, and make the game feel more "Star Warsy," all things we hoped they would achieve.

Because player vehicles, player cities, and player mounts are very high-profile and have such a huge impact on the game, it's easy for them to overshadow the hundreds of other additions that have coincided with such releases. A few other updates we think are cool:



A POI tab in your datapad to help you find locations of interest

New badges, including some that reward explorers

New UI color schemes

New mission terminals and missions for scouts and artisans

The Politician profession, added as part of the City update

NPCs that hand out missions and new quests for some
NPCs, like the Darklighters

Life Day orbs and Wookiee robes to help celebrate the
Holiday Season

Integration of randomly-occurring "boss creatures" to lairs and bases

New color palettes for wearables

Factional HQs

Tracking for Galactic Civil War status

New loot items, such as the "projectile feed mechanism"

Poison and disease attacks for some creatures


So, that's the work we've already done, but we're just getting started. So, here is:

A LOOK AHEAD

What's next for Star Wars Galaxies? Well, for the next two weeks, we're going to continue to address any bugs with the most recent update (most notably, fixing any new problems with storing vehicles!). Then, we'll hopefully take some time to enjoy the holiday season, zipping around Tatooine or Naboo with the rest of you on our newly-purchased landspeeders or kaadu. After the New Year, however, you can expect us to be back at work updating and improving the game on all fronts. From our perspective, there's still a lot we want to do, from revisions to existing systems to the addition of new Star Wars-specific "dungeons." As always, we will strive to fix any urgent bugs, add new content at a steady clip, and continue to work on balance issues (and none of the below will prevent us from doing so). But, we're also looking at some special programs and key updates that will help us to grow the game. Some highlights for the coming months (and no, this doesn't include everything we have planned...):



The big news for the Holiday season is the launch of a Buddy Key program. Right before Christmas, we'll be sending "Buddy Keys" out to all existing subscribers. These Buddy Keys will allow one of your friends to try out the game for free. Check the homepage for more details.

With the Vehicles publish, we found that rallying the team (and the community) around a single "theme" for an update has been extremely helpful. Moving forward, expect all of our publishes to have some sort of over-arching theme, which we'll use to build new content and make system improvements. Live Events will likely support the theme as well. We aren't going to give away too much right now, but I will reveal that our next publish is tentatively titled "Imperial Crackdown." We'll provide details after the New Year, but expect a more oppressive and dangerous Imperial regime to emerge... As with publishes in the past, our themed publishes won't be restricted to items that fit the theme - we'll continue to include dozens (if not hundreds) of other upgrades.

We are going to continue to give love and attention to all of the professions. Those at the top of our list include all of the core combat professions, Chef, Droid Engineer, Merchant, Squad Leader, and Smuggler. At least one of these is a leading candidate for a publish theme...

Along with changes to the Droid Engineer, we'll be adding combat droids and giving combat capabilities to existing droids.

We already have several new dungeons in development and will be rolling out the next major "warren" sometime in February. Some new enemies are in the works as well, as is a revamp of enemy AI.

In January and February, we're hoping to announce some exciting community-building efforts, such as our first fan fest.

We've already proposed some changes to combat, and more of these will surface as we continue to balance the content.

In addition, we're dedicated to improving PvP and battlefields to enhance the GCW.

We hope to begin revising some of the starting cities, adding more city-specific content and giving them each their own personality.

As mentioned in the chat last night, we'll be doling out new weapons as well. We'll also be adding new armor and eventually new songs for Entertainers.

The next Act of COA is slated for sometime in January, and we're hoping to increase the frequency of these over time.

We're going to be adding more loot! And Junk Dealers should eventually buy more stuff...

We're already hard at work on the Space Expansion. The design and feature set are almost locked down, so we hope to be able to start sharing more information about the expansion later next year.

Oh, and we're working on some changes to the Jedi system and more Jedi-specific content too...


As in the past, we'll keep updating the official site, either through the In Development pages or on the forums, with new information about all of the above. Be sure to keep checking back with us throughout the coming months.

Happy Wookiee Life Day (or whatever holiday you happen to celebrate)

Haden Blackman
LucasArts Producer