This event celebrates 5 years of what is left of Star Wars Galaxies. Yet it is somewhat flawed.
Many players enjoy receiving badges for various activities, including taking part in events. Usually you show up at the event, you get a badge. Not so this time.
There is an Empire Day celebration in Theed, Naboo and a parallel Republic Remembrance Day in Coronet, Corellia. Once an hour, on the hour, Darth Vader and Princess Leia respectively arrive in these places. Each time one person in the gathered crowd gets a badge. So there are 24 Imperial badges a day and 24 Republican, per server, every day for a month.
The advantage is that it ensures that lots of people gather when the celebrities arrive. But so many of those showing up will not get badges. It would be nice if when the period ended, everyone who took part got a badge anyway. It remains to be seen if SOE, who run Star Wars Galaxies, have that kind of sensitivity.
After the New Game Enhancement was forced on the Star Wars Galaxies community, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of players left the game. When their accounts lapsed, their houses were left standing in player cities on all servers. Presumably this was because Sony Online Entertainment and Lucas Arts didn't want to indicate the extent of their blunder by just having so many houses disappear. The true extent of the defection from the game would have been just too apparent. Denial (and a refusal to talk numbers) was the policy.
Today, despite attempts to bring in new players, the game is a shadow of its former self.
Finally, however, the developers have moved from denial to acceptance, and scheduled June 22, 2007 as the day for the demolition of the "abandoned" structures. They did an excellent job of this. For weeks prior to the day (which was delayed a couple times) structures that would be disappearing were marked "Abandoned". When the big day arrived, rather than just having the buildings disappear, players were encouraged to click on them and call in "imperial forces" who would bomb them into destruction.
One indication of the popularity of this was the enormous lag, so that structures didn't appear to be destroyed in a single bombing run. As Developer DeadMeat wrote on the official forum:
Well...You certainly have proven what 10,000 people loading up 50,000 houses and their items at roughly the same time can do to an array of high end Oracle servers SMILEY:-? The effects on the database are causing a definite lag in the actual packing of the houses. This should balance out once the initial rush is over. This database hammering may effect some folks ability to log into some of the servers so please be patient. There should be plenty of structures out there. This will also cause a lag in the loading of object in your own structures so please do not worry that your items are disappearing.
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I feel it is best to try and weather out this initial storm then trying to shut down some clusters to lessen the load. Because of the lag, some packups may not go through if you move to a different region from the house itself so your best bet us to hang out and chat with your buddies until the house go away. I will keep you informed as the situation develops and let you know if there are any other changes in our plans.
Every structure you eliminate gives you a reward. Some of these are rather stupid (really strange holo-pets), some are pretty nice (two new paintings). Once again most are non-trade, which is really boring, although it was been pointed out that even with a 5 structure per day maximum, some people would create free trial accounts, get their five, store them away, delete the accounts, and do it again, and again, and again.
Those who take out 10 buildings get a badge, those who take out 50 get a better badge.
Unfortunately, if Mos Vegas is anything to judge by, groups of players have gone through on the first day, removing virtually all the "abandoned" buildings. Getting those badges may be hard.
An excellent recent article in The Escapist puts the NGE into perspective. SOE and Lucas Arts thought they were fixing their game. What they failed to understand was that after a couple of years online, SWG had become a community. It was a place people went, hung out with friends, etc. It is terribly unethical to suddenly and arbitrarily change the rules of a community. People felt deeply betrayed, hence the continued demands that at least one server be put online with Classic SWG.
The reason this proposal is constantly rejected is because undoubtedly this one server would be filled with many times the number of players as all the other servers put together.
It’s difficult to keep up with a
continuing series when the books come out a year apart. “Vanguard: Reap
the Whirlwind” (published May 2007) is the third book in a series that
started with “Vanguard: Harbinger” (published July 2005) and continued with “Vanguard: Summon the Thunderer” (published June 2006).
In the case of ordinary Star Trek
books this perhaps wouldn’t matter quite so much, everyone knows who
Kirk, Spock and McCoy are, or Picard, Ricard and Data. But this series
brings in a completely new cast of characters. Set in the period of The
Original Series, it is placed on a space station in the distant Taurus
Reach, an unexplored area contended for by the Federation, Tholians,
and Klingons. It also contains a deep secret in the form of a massive
genome left behind by a dormant, extremely ancient, and massively
powerful people.
That said, there are a few characters
from TOS, and in one case what might be a section of suspense isn’t
because anyone who has seen “The Wrath of Khan”
knows a particular character is not about to die. But there’s also a
delightful surprise at the end when another character from that film
suddenly appears.
Picking up “Reap the Whirlwind” a
year after reading its predecessor, it takes a while to get up to
speed. Author David Mack does a good job of reminding us who everyone
is, and there is a very helpful “Vanguard Minipedia” in the back of the
book, which unfortunately many readers may not discover until they get
to the end of the book.
The story is good, many threads come
together, and the book brings up interesting issues of ethics (or
personal feelings) versus duty, or whether a potential threat to the
survival of billions is worth a much more certain threat to thousands.
When Chapter 6 hits, creatures used as decorations and mounts in datapads are supposed to turn into something else. We're supposed to be able to reuse them as decorations or turn them into DNA for pets under the new system.
New mounts will have to be grown from eggs.
One can only hope that when Chapter 6 hits, things won't get messed up.
The Return of Tamed Creatures to Star Wars Galaxies
The Star Wars Galaxies universe is currently agog over the impending introduction of the Beast Master profession.
This is an attempt to restore the professions of Creature Handler and Bio-engineer, which disappeared a couple of years ago when the game developers introduced the massively unpopular New Game Enhancement (hundreds of thousands of subscribers quit at the time) reducing the number of professions from a couple of dozen to nine.
Part of that decision was apparently based on the low number of Master Creature Handlers, but the developers failed to understand that in the old game people would dabble in different professions and changed professions often, that many had second characters as Creature Handlers, and that everybody liked having creatures as pets, mounts, or combat allies.
With the disappearance of the two professions, the remaining tamed creatures in the game, used as mounts or as decorations in homes, have become scarce and extremely valuable.
Now the new Beast Master system is running on the test servers. It is not a new profession as such. Instead the expertise points that have been rolled out to each player over the past months (an attempt to get back to the pre-NGE system of skill points) can be allocated in Beast Master skills. These seem to take two forms, those needed to actually harvest DNA and grow creature eggs, and those needed to train a hatched creature to be a fighting machine.
The developers seem to have scored in creating a system in which all four surviving craft professions (called “Traders” under the NGE) participate. It is a little harder to understand why they have created a brand new energy source (geo-thermal) to power the incubators for the eggs and the actual feeding system in the incubators seems to be incomprehensively complicated.
Apparently growing a creature to be a mount or decoration won’t be that hard. The incubating eggs will need to be fed a variety of new “enzymes” looted from the wild. But if they are to be used as combat allies those enzymes will have to be refined first in an extremely confusing manner, and requiring a wide selection of new components, many with confusingly similar names.
While the best thing the developers could have done would be to restore a few servers to the original game system as it was introduced four years ago, the introduction of Beast Master is at least a step back towards what was one of the nicer parts of the old game.
Finally, finally, finally the houses of players who have left the game are being removed from Star Wars Galaxies.
All around the various servers/galaxies houses have been labeled (Abandoned). The developers are being careful however. E-mails have been sent to the owners of all the structures, giving them a chance to renew their subscriptions. If they don't, they will be deleted on June 5.
It's often been speculated that one reason Sony Online Entertainment has don't this previously is because it would have revealed the massive numbers of players who quit the game after the surprise introduction of the New Game Enhancement, which completely changed the nature of key parts of the game.
The good news is that we get rid of unused housing in our player cities, and can move existing houses to nicer locations. In our city of Mos Vegas, many of the merchant tents next to the shuttle are scheduled for removal. This will give us a great opportunity to put up new tents and make them available.
The bad news is that with the disappearance of the housing, those players will no longer count as residents in their player cities. This means that some cities may slip in rank because of low population, losing some of their important amenities, like shuttle ports and cloning stations.
The key factor is the subscription of the person owning the structure. In some cases, that person may be gone, but someone else has administrative rights and has been continuing to pay maintenance. Unfortunately in those cases the structures will disappear.
Which player accounts will have their structures packed up?
Star Wars Galaxies accounts that have been inactive since April 17, 2006 will have their structures packed up (an account that has not been an active, paying, validly subscribed account since April 17, 2006).
What is the inactive account time frame?
If your Star Wars Galaxies service has been inactive since April 17, 2006 and you do not re-subscribe by May 31, 2007, your houses, PA halls, factories and associated assets will be packed up into your inventory and removed from the game servers at 11:59 PM PDT on June 5, 2007.
Will the owners of these structures be notified in advance?
An email will be sent out to notify players in case they want to return to Star Wars Galaxies and claim their structures.
Which structures are being packed up?
Houses, Player Association Halls and Factories will be packed up.
Civic structures (player city buildings) are not going to be packed up.
Harvesters will decay and disappear from the game as normal.
What will happen to a structure and its contents after it has been removed?
Structures will be packed up and placed into the owner's datatpad. They will be available when/if they reactivate their account.
What will happen to vendors inside of a structure that is flagged for removal?
Vendors in the packed up house will also be packed up into the owner's datapad.
Will all flagged structures be removed at once?
House pack-ups will be initiated by players. We'll have more info for you soon on how the event will work.
Will flagging structures for pack-up happen as an ongoing process or will this be a one-time event?
Structure flagging and pack-up is going to be a one time event and will be ongoing as is necessary.
How will house pack-up affect the citizenship of Player Cities?
Cities will lose registered / declared citizens. As this happens, mayors will have to rock the vote and bring in new citizens.
Will structure admins, mayors, and other players be able to see which structures have been flagged for removal?
Players will be able to see a sign on any structure that has been flagged for removal.
This will give mayors a chance to make all the necessary arrangements for their city. Players on the admin list will also be notified that a structure has been flagged.
Can structure admins do anything to prevent the pack-up of a flagged structure?
No. Only the owner of a structure will be able to prevent a structure's pack-up, however admins will be notified that a structure has been flagged so they can reclaim their items.
If I am on a structure's admin list and regularly use the building, will it be flagged for pack-up since I am using the structure?
Every structure is flagged for pack-up based on the owner's account, not a structure admins account. If the owner's account has been inactive during the time frame listed above then the structure will be flagged and packed-up.
Will structure admins be allowed to take ownership of a structure if it is flagged for removal?
Only the structure's owner can transfer ownership to another player. Customer Service Representatives will not transfer the ownership of structures to structure admins or other players.
How will civic structures for player Cities be affected by the housing pack-up?
Civic structures (City Halls, Clone Centers, Shuttleports, etc.) are part of the player city and not an individual player account. If a city loses the required rank needed for a structure, then the affected structures are destroyed but not as specifically as part of the housing pack-up effort.
What will happen to player owned city structures (cantinas, medical centers and theaters) that require a specific city rank if the player city falls below the required level?
Player-owned structures, once placed, will remain even if the city no longer exists. The rank requirement is only for structure placement and will not be packed-up.
If these player-placed civic structures are packed-up after a city has lost rank, the structure can only be re-placed in a city that has the required rank.
Will trial account structures remain un-flagged for a year or will they be flagged sooner?
Right now there is no differentiation between the two types of structures.
This is the sequel to Crucible: McCoy Provenance of Shadows,
and the middle book of a trilogy revolving around the three main
characters of the original Star Trek, McCoy, Spock and Kirk. The three
books are all supposed to center around a key incident in the lives off
all three, the visit to 1930’s New York in the TV episode “City on the
Edge of Forever”, in which Kirk is forced to allow his love Edith
Keeler to die to preserve the timeline of the future.
The nice touch is that both books take
up the consequences of events in the TV episodes, filling in the lives
of the main characters between what we saw on TV, and allowing them to
react and follow-up on what happened there. In this book we see how
Spock made the transition from Star Fleet to the diplomatic corps, his
second attempt at the emotion-purging Kolinahr, and how he deals with
the news of the death of his mother Amanda. (Ironically the book comes
days after the death of actress Jane Wyatt, who played Amanda on both television and in the film “Star Trek: The Voyage Home”.)
Provenance of Shadows is the first of a new trilogy of Star Trek original series books by
David R. George III, each centering around the three main characters,
McCoy, Spock, and Kirk.
In his foreward George says he had a
problem adding something new to all the TV shows, movies, and books
already written about these characters. Instead he looks at their
entire lives, but with a crucial point of departure, the events of the
TV episode City on the Edge of Forever.
Shades of Mos
Muerte! Someone got herself elected Mayor of Brenn, then decided she
wanted to move elsewhere. Rather than let anyone run against her, she
deleted the city! Now what was one of the premier commerce centers of
our server no longer has a shuttle and critters and other NPCs wander
the streets.
Brenn was no longer what it was before the NGE, but it should have been
allowed to die by attrition, and just because one person doesn't want
to live there is no reason for the other citizens to lose their city.
The three Excalibur Starship vendors have been removed and all our
stock has been relocated to Tent 11 in Mos Vegas.
