Chris "Dotanuki" Field, SOE Producer for Star Wars Galaxies, has been very busy lately. His latest producer's note covers Life Day, upcoming game updates, the Ewok Festival of Love, and loyalty rewards, and he participated in a House of Commons chat yesterday to answer fans' questions.

Field expresses his excitement for this month's return of the Life Day event in his note and explains that it is based on the famous Star Wars Holiday Special. He also discusses the updates coming in 2009. Expect the addition of an appearance tab so you can wear the armor with the best stats while appearing to wear whatever you like; some bug fixes for Spies; refinements to Player Associations and Player Cities; the return of the Ewok Festival of Love; and a new loyalty reward system.

As for the House of Commons chat, while the team states there are no plans for an expansion in 2009, they have a lot of "great content" lined up next year. Also, they reiterate there are no plans to shut down Star Wars Galaxies.

The full producer's note and House of Commons Chat transcript can be found below.

Producer’s Note – December 2008

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

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Stratics House of Commons Chat Transcript
Thursday, December 4, 2008

Chat Topics:

• Chapter 11, Appearance Tab, upcoming game updates, and more.

<@Brannoc> Welcome to today's House of Commons chat with the developers of Star Wars Galaxies!

<@Brannoc> Questions may be submitted to directly to me by typing /msg Brannoc my question here!

<@Brannoc> We'll begin with a brief introduction from our guests and then jump straight into the questions. The full logs will be available at http://www.stratics.com shortly afterward.

<@AdeptStrain> Hey everyone. AdeptStrain here. Programmer. Hope you're having a wonderful A-Tab evening.

<@Teesquared> Hello I'm Teesquared, SWG Technical Director. Welcome everyone!

<@LEC_Neif> Hi all, glad to be here! Neif from Lucasarts here, warming up with a cup of Hoth Chocolate

<@Loche> Heya folks, I am Loche Lead Designer for Star Wars Galaxies, thanks for coming out and chatting with us!

<@SOE_Millbarge> Hello, this is Millbarge, Associate Designer on SWG.

<@Valara> Hi everyone! I'm Valara, the Community Manager for SWG -- welcome to the chat!

<@fiasco> Greetings everyone, I'm fiasco...a designer on SWG.

<@Dotanuki> Hi folks, I'm Dotanuki, the SOE Producer on Star Wars Galaxies.

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> Evening all.

<@Brannoc> *deathstuch* when will dark jedi be fixed?

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> *deathstuch* If you are referring to the lack of critical hits; We fixed a core issue with combat results related to offensive hit type modifiers that impacted every profession. So you will see that soon.

<@Brannoc> *Halyn* Do the devs have any plans for space-related development for the next year?

<@Dotanuki> I know that there are many questions regarding our plans space, GCW, and other content. At this point we are not ready to announce anything regarding plans beyond Update 8 (mentioned in my Producer Note today).

<@Brannoc> *NeillM_* I love the way the Hoth Encounter evokes the feeling that the Imperial army is an unstoppable behemoth and the Rebels are fighting a desperate war against them, trying to disrupt them when they can. When looking at future content and the game world will you be trying to incorporate that feeling into it more?

<@Loche> *NeillM_* We like that feeling as well, and that is certainly something on the table for the future to discuss.

<@Brannoc> *Hakry-Kauri* I was just wondering, now that Hoth has been released what can we expect to see in the month of December into the new year?

<@Dotanuki> Our next release is Life Day (in December). For 2009, in the Producer Note today I revealed that Update 6 will be Appearance Tab, Update 7 is Spy, and Update 8 is Player Associations/Player Cities. We are also bringing back the Ewok Festival of Love in February.

<@Brannoc> *Naritus_FTW* While hoth is awesome, the playerbase is begging for a real expansion - the kind we pay for, and of the same quality as previous SWG expansions. What can we do to make this happen, or at the very least, more likely to happen?

<@Dotanuki> We have no plans for an expansion in 2009. Hoth is really the size of a small expansion and it was included in the price of your monthly subscription.

<@Brannoc> *Jeeves* can they comment on if the game is not going to shut down

<@LEC_Neif> Thanks for the question -- there are no plans to shut down SWG. We have some great content lined up for '09, and we're looking forward to unveiling more down the line.

<@Brannoc> *[SA]KiliDaran* Smugglers would like to have the looted contraband items turned into useful items for a large array of professions, through the emphasis of player interaction. It could lead to mechanics such as weapon/armor/vehicle/ship slicing, food/drink enhancement, crafting subcomponents, tinkering, etc.. Is it considered as an acceptable feature request by SOE?

<@Loche> *[SA]KiliDaran* While the smugglers have had their update more recently than some, we can consider these ideas for possible general content updates in the future.

<@Brannoc> *Kyehlar* With the announcement of the upcoming Appearance Tab, I have a question on the armor restrictions with Boots and Gloves. Items that do not give any armor bonuses/etc. I ask because as we all know Jedi cannot wear armor, and that's understandable. But the Dark Jedi from Update 3 is wearing Marauder Armor boots, and her outfit is something I've tried to model since it came out. Will there be a change in this so I can look forward

<@Loche> *Kyehlar* With the advent of the appearance tab work, we can look into this being a possibility.

<@Brannoc> *Trelicorre* Hoth is good, but are we ever going to get an answer to the lag issues???

<@Dotanuki> Several lag optimizations were done within days of Hoth's release. We believe that the majority of Hoth lag issues have been addressed at this point. We are always looking for general game optimizations as the opportunities arise.

<@Brannoc> *darkk1138 * why are there no tow cables for the snow speeders? I like Hoth, but I also think reb phase 1 is not as great as it could be if this feature had been added as well as the controls tweaked a little more..

<@Loche> *darkk1138* We did look into finding ways to use tow cables. Unfortunately to do this justice it would have taken a complete overhaul of our game to introduce true physics. we decided to go with a more gameplay feel and allow you to shoot with the speeders blasters instead. All in all, we are very proud of what we accomplished.

<@Brannoc> *AdommCroash* There seems to be alot of gifts this year for life day. Can you give us any information on how these will be obtained.

<@Dotanuki> One major gift is obtained by going on a quest for Saun Dann. Most other gifts are available on the Life Day vendors. Specific details will be available in the public testing notes in the next couple of days.

<@Brannoc> *Eveas* Is there a timeframe spies can expect to get any form of communication with the devs working on GU7? GU1 we only saw 2 public posts total and spies will be bit sceptical until they see communication start up this time around.

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> *Eveas* Keep tabs on your Spy Senator, the dev team has already been in contact with them about spy issues and TRS should start releasing some information shortly.

<@Brannoc> *Malto_Bethrin* Will we see any more housing types be added to the game in the future? With the release of the diner we now have 2 houses that were added by a type of reward. Will we ever see new houses in schematic form?

<@Loche> *Malto_Bethrin* This is something we are definitely considering for the structure trader update

<@Brannoc> *Shibs* Shibs... DoT resistance is a huge deal to the BHs as well and I would like to know when the coding for Serpent Shard and the DoT resistance buff will be updated to work vs the stackable DoTs. We are also wanting DoT Reduction added to our shields or expertise.

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> *Shibs* We will be addressing combat modifiers, both good and bad, not properly modifying DoT damage in GU 7.

<@Brannoc> *Naritus_FTW* I have seen it suggested that when the free CTS is active, those eligible for free transfers will not be permitted to transfer to servers with the highest population, but instead only to moderately populated servers. Is this true? Will Bria, and others be off-limits?

<@Dotanuki> Hi Naritus. No, that is not true. Bria and others will NOT be off limits.

<@Brannoc> *ArkonPhoenix* First off, thank you for the AWESOME news of the Appearance Tab finally getting put on the Update Schedule which now leaves me with only one question, when? :-)

<@AdeptStrain> With Update 6. Early 2009.

<@Brannoc> *ArkonPhoenix* What's the status on the Crit Bug issue that has arisen since chap 11 for some of the Jedi and Smuggler skills? Is it indeed a bug?

<@Loche> *ArkonPhoenix* As mentioned earlier by shadowbrak, we have found and fixed the bug with crits. Look for it to come out with the life day update.

<@Brannoc> *sandie* Will jedi's actually become more usefull instead of just being a meat sheild for very few points in instances? In Hoth they have almost no use at all.

<@Loche> *sandie* During our Hoth playtests, several times I had to fill the role of Jedi in the instance. We noticed a huge difference in our survival rate when we had a Jedi in there tanking for us. The Dark Jedi, helped increased our DPS as well.

<@Brannoc> *Halcyon-Draconis* Would it be feasable to increase the amount of time allowed in the Hoth instance by 15 minutes or more?

<@Dotanuki> We are not going to increase the time for Hoth. Incidentally, the logs show that most groups complete the instance in about 45 minutes to an hour.

<@Brannoc> *Hakry-Kauri* What is in store for player cities in the future?

<@Loche> *Hakry-Kauri* Player cities and Player associations have been broken out into their own update so we can give more attention to them. While I have nothing specific to share as yet, they will indeed be getting some love.

<@Brannoc> *MasterCosmo* With Diminishing Returns on Combat Rolls now, can we look to balance Critical Hit now being there are tons of ways to get around Diminishing Returns there?

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> Could you please phrase your question in the form of a graph?

<@SOE-Shadowbrak> *MasterCosmo* Weapon and target specific critical modifiers are now correctly modified by the DR formula. This will go out with GU 7.

<@Brannoc> *Guest22soyokaze* Will there be any consideration on pet size and increasing it to pre chapter 6 sizes?

<@Loche> *Guest22soyokaze* We have no intention of changing the beasts sizes again. The beasts have now been the sizes they are for a while now, and we dont want to make that change.

<@Brannoc> Leafbacca* Are there any more features planned for holo-beasts? It would be nice to have a "mute" button on the emitters for those noisy pets, and the ability to change the level (size) of a holo-beast on the cube since holo-beasts can't be trained up like pets made for stuffing can. Lastly, a faster way to make holo-beasts would be nice. 36 hours+ for a piece of decor is a bit much.

<@fiasco > We're making a change to allow the rare color for holo-beasts to be tied to the data cube rather than a random, temporary color, but other than that no changes to holo-beasts are currently planned.

<@Brannoc> *Lexx* Is there any chance of vehicular combat being allowed outside of Hoth?

<@Loche> *Lexx* There is always a chance....

<@Loche> Bringing the vehicular combat changes out of hoth is something we would like to do. We don't have a time frame as of yet, but is something on my white board.

<@Brannoc> *Halcyon-Draconis* Is there any timetable on when the client stability issues will be fixed? Specifically crashes to desktop while transferring between characters on the same account. (happened to me as I was loading in here to stratics, lol)

<@AdeptStrain> *Halcyon-Draconis* - With the fix of the Vista crash, I'm not aware of any outstanding, reproducible client crashes. If you are able to consistently produce this crash, feel free to PM me with the steps and I'll look into it.

<@Brannoc> *Cripop* With the release of Hoth what does this do to the timeline in SWG? Is it going to be advanced?

<@Dotanuki> No, the timeline is not being advanced. Hoth was released as a "Star Wars Moment". It's a standalone thing not meant to affect our timeline.

<@Brannoc> *Cebot_* When will ranged action augmentation bits start dropping? It was reported at Fan Faire that this would be in C11, but no notes and no reports of it yet.

<@Loche> *Cebot_* This is not a bad suggestion and we have heard it before. As far as I am aware, it was not promised for Chapter 11, but it is something we are not against adding, time allowing.

<@Brannoc> *willflynne* Is there a chance we might see new profession specific content introduced (ie for Officers, Commandos, etc) sprinkled in with the announced updates, or does that fall into the "not ready to announce anything beyond Update 8" category?

<@Dotanuki> Generally we want to keep our content as broad as possible so that it hits the maximum amount of players. That being said, it's not out of the question that we could do something. We do not have anything to announce at this time though.

<@Brannoc> That's it for tonight, thanks for joining us here on Stratics IRC; the logs will be up on http://swg.stratics.com shortly!

<@Valara> Thank you everyone for coming, and Happy Life Day!

<@AdeptStrain> It was fun everyone. I hope we do this again soon. Have a wonderful night!

<@Loche> Wow, really good questions in here tonight. Thank you all for coming out and chatting with us.

<@SOE_Millbarge> Thanks for dropping by - have a good night!

<@Teesquared> Later everyone. See you at the next chat!

<@Dotanuki> Thank you for joining us tonight and for playing the game! Have a great holiday!

<@fiasco> Thanks for being here everyone! Good night.

<@LEC_Neif> Thanks everybody for stopping by -- and have a happy Life Day!