Producer Note: March 6th, 2009

[Q'in]

Howdy,

I want to start out by thanking everyone for starting the month out with a bang (pun intended) by taking part in our House Pack-Up event. In the first hour of the event alone you destroyed a combined total of over 30,000 structures! Furthermore, since the start of the event you have knocked down over 300,000 structures. In the words of Lord Vader, “Most impressive.”

So this month heralds the arrival of Update 8: Player Associations and Player Cities. This is the first city update since player cities launched in our game once upon a time and we’re all very excited about that. In addition to the new UI for both PAs and Cities, new city gardens, and a mountain of bug fixes/improvements, Update 8 also features four new collections, overhead map customization capabilities, and an increase to the group xp modifier.

Up next is Update 9: Structures and Domestics. I’m proud to announce that this update will introduce three frequently requested structure features; new houses, houses that can be custom painted, and houses with windows. First off, we’re introducing two completely new houses into the game that can be crafted by structure traders. One is a small house and one is a medium house; the small house is pictured below.



Both of these new houses feature windows and they can be colored. Structure traders will also be able to craft six windowed/colorable houses that are based on existing house floorplans.

Other things to watch out for in Update 9 include updates to existing food buffs and “Barn-Lite”. Barn-Lite is for all the players who want the TCG Barn but have not yet been able to obtain one. Barn-Lite is an object that can be crafted by a structure trader and then placed in any structure to give it a maximum beast storage capacity of 12 beasts (depending on how well it’s crafted).

People asked last month why I didn’t write about anything beyond the current update and the subsequent update. The primary reason for this is that things can change very rapidly and the team needs to be nimble enough to respond. I don’t want to put certain information out there only to have things change and then see the backlash of, “they promised x, y, z and now we’re not getting any of that”. In fact, not giving any information on future updates in the last Producer Note actually worked out very well because there have indeed been changes to the production schedule since then. The player desires on the forums, coupled with the actual PvP metrics that we pulled, have inspired us to change our plans and devote an entire update to PvP. I’m not going to give a timeframe or specific plans in this Producer Note (I should have some details in the next one) but a PvP Update is something that is actively in development right now.

Now onto the other big topic of late: GCW. The update mentioned above is a PvP-specific update and not the full GCW update that some have been asking for. I do want to say that we are exploring options for a full GCW update and it is something that we would definitely like to do. To that end, we will be opening an official thread regarding our GCW plans in the Private Senate Forum and will be working directly with the Senators to gather focused feedback as we move into development on that update. We do not want full GCW proposals written up for us. We’ve seen a lot of them and, while some are good, they’re not exactly what we’re looking for at this point in the process. Senators, we will be asking focused questions for you to gather feedback on every week or two. Details are minimal right now but I will state that what we have in mind will affect all aspects and professions in the game (crafters, pilots, combat professions, entertainers, etc).

Finally, as was mentioned in my last Producer Note, if you haven’t opted-in for Star Wars Galaxies emails, I suggest you do it now. We have something special coming. It’s taken a little longer to prepare the announcement than anticipated but we should be announcing it any time now.

-Dotanuki