Producer’s Note – December 2008

[Q'in]

Guten Tag, Konichiwa, Sveiki, and Hello, To begin with, let me thank you for your generally warm reception of Hoth. The team was very happy to see all their months of hard work appreciated by so many people in the SWG community. It was an exciting Chapter to create and we're very proud of the results. So, with the giant Hoth beastie out of the way, it's time to focus on the next batch of upcoming releases. Our last release of 2008 will be Life Day. Life Day will return mid month; in fact, it should be up for public testing any time now. A lot of the content this year is directly inspired

by the Star Wars Holiday Special. I'm sure most of you have found a way to see it and… well, it's certainly special. Loche and I sat and watched the whole thing all the way through when we started planning for Life Day this year. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody as I'm still bleeding from both eyes months later. That said, we did find a lot of fun inspiration in it.

Our main new gameplay mechanic for this year (destroying presents / decorating trees) was directly inspired by the scene of the Imperial troops smashing Lumpy's presents; many thanks to Blixtev for that idea. A number of the gifts this year are lifted directly from the special such as the pocket aquarium, holographic table, and proton chair. Other gifts, like the first home wroshyr tree to be given out since the 2003 and the Kowakian monkey-lizard house pet, are there to satisfy fan requests that we've heard over the years. Last month someone mentioned that they wanted Ackmena to make an appearance. While Ackmena could not be booked for the occasion this year, Saun Dann is on hand and desperately needs your help. The reward is well worth it so be sure to seek him out.

On to 2009…

We are going to reorganize our Updates a bit over the first few months of the year. Don't worry, nothing is being pushed off, we're simply adjusting the timing on a couple items to be sure we can give them the attention they need. Over the first portion of the year you can expect to see the following updates:

Update 6

Adept Stain , being the sneaky engineer that he is, managed to find a way to get the often-requested Appearance Tab done while we were all finishing off Hoth. Since it's nearly ready to go, we wanted to get it out for you folks sooner rather than later. That is, we didn't want to hold it until the Spy update was complete, which is going to take a touch longer. Again, we haven't pushed Spies out a full update; the Spy update will come at the same time it would have if the Appearance Tab had not existed, we just didn't want to hold Appearance Tab. Thus, Update 6 has become Appearance Tab.

The Appearance Tab is a new entry on the Game Menu bar. It essentially allows you to wear whatever armor or clothing you feel best enhances your stats yet you may appear as though you are wearing a completely different outfit. We hope that this will inject a great deal of visual diversity and customization into the game as players will now be able to wear whatever they like without negatively affecting their stats. Do you think a Padawan Robe looks cooler than the Initiate's Robe? No problem; you can now wear the Initiate's robe and receive all the stat bonuses it applies while your outward appearance shows the Padawan robe. Of course the usual rules still apply. If your character couldn't equip it before, they can't appear to wear it now. For example, Jedi cannot appear to wear armor.

Update 7

Update 7 is where the Spies will get their love. Shadowbrak is working on this update right now (with some Hanse input). While we may not be able to fulfill every request made, we are looking at the Spy Top 5 (PvE, expertise tree, etc) as well as the list of bugs that Spies would like fixed.

Update 8

We have moved Player Associations and Player Cities to their own update to give them the amount of time we feel is necessary to accomplish what we would like to do. I will have more details on the refinements to be found here in the coming months.

Ewok Festival of Love

February will see the return of the second annual Ewok Festival of Love. The chocolate fountains (bathing pools) will be back along with a few new mini-games for you folks to enjoy.

Lastly I wanted to discuss a new reward system that will be introduced early next year. Starting with our next re-entitlement we will be instituting a loyalty reward system. Loyal players who are subscribed before the entitlement is announced, and still subscribed when the entitlement ends, will receive a deluxe version of the reward the returning players receive for re-subscribing. This should hopefully keep the discontent that arose from Hoth's re-entitlement hologram at bay. We intend to do this for all future re-entitlements.

The first of these loyalty items will be a Sarlacc Trash Can. Players who have let their subscriptions lapse and fall under our next re-entitlement program will receive an awesome Sarlacc Trash Can decorative item for their homes. However, players who are subscribed before that entitlement is formally announced, and still subscribed when the entitlement ends, will receive the Deluxe Sarlacc Trash Can. The Deluxe model is not only a great decorative item, but it can be fed as well. Feeding the Deluxe Sarlacc junk items once per week for four weeks will award the player a random collection item. We're not ready to announce when these excellent new items will be premiering, but it will be in the first few months of next year.

There is plenty more coming down the pipeline as well, but the items above are all I can divulge as of right now. I think we have some really neat stuff in store for you guys and gals in 2009. Stay tuned.

I hope you all have a great holiday!

-Dotanuki