Tagged News: lucasarts

It's the holiday season and Chapter 8 is on the horizon. As an early Life Day gift, SWG Lead Developer Thomas "Blixtev" Blair gave WarCry an early preview:

Space is big. Really big. And, at least in the Star Wars: Galaxies universe, it just got a bit bigger.

Fresh on the heels of one of the largest updates since the NGE, the SWG development team is in the final testing stages on Chapter 8, which was scheduled to be added to the Test Center servers today.

Click below to read the rest and check out some exclusive screenshots.

Want to know a little bit more about the SWG Team? Remember - they don't just work on the game ... they also enjoy playing it! Get an inside look at how the folks behind-the-scenes enjoy Star Wars: Galaxies.

Click below to read this week's profile featuring Mikkel "Hjal" Jensen, a QA Associate and Apprentice Designer for Star Wars Galaxies.

Kelly "Valara" Knox dropped off this week's Friday Feature, giving us a look at the new 54-month veteran rewards. Looks like some good stuff:

Experienced veterans who have been a part of Star Wars Galaxies for an amazing 54 months will have a choice of three unique veteran rewards. Players who reach the 54 month milestone can choose a permanent storyteller token, a city banner kit, or a podracer statue.

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Chapter 7 has launched and now we do our usual post-chapter State of the Game update. Lead Designer Thomas Blair and Producer Jake Neri drop in to pen a complete update on where Star Wars Galaxies sits today and where it's headed.

The Collections system allows players to get three primary kinds of collections: click collections, inventory collections, and kill collections. Click collections involve clicking an object in the world to "collect" it. Inventory collections are something you loot from the corpse of a creature. And kill collections involve killing a specific creature. Each kill collection will have a counter, with some requiring that you kill hundreds of creatures. Even more challenging is when we make collections out of other collections. There are multiple ways to find a collection, and we even built a system so players can track who was the first on each server to finish a collection. . "Server firsts," or the person on each server to finish a collection, are not only tracked on the SWG website, but also in the collection journal interface. Any player can open their journal, mouse over a particular collection, and see who finished it first.

Read more after the jump.

Kelly "Valara" Knox checked in with this week's Friday Feature. This week, Valara gives us a look at a couple of new ships that will be available for players in Chapter 8:

Space-faring adventurers will have new ships at their disposal in Chapter 8! These gunships, loaded with firepower for supporting the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, or those wishing to remain out of the sight of both, are sure to appeal to all pilots.

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Want to know a little bit more about the SWG Team? Remember - they don't just work on the game ... they also enjoy playing it! Get an inside look at how the folks behind-the-scenes enjoy Star Wars: Galaxies.

Click below to read this week's profile featuring SWG QA Supervisor Taylor "Zoraka" Haley.

LucasArts and BioWare today announced that they would co-create and publish an upcoming "interactive entertainment product", details of which will be released later this year. The two companies have a history, as BioWare did the original Knights of the Old Republic, a popular Star Wars RPG.

For anyone who has not followed the news for the last year, this project is almost certainly the unannounced MMORPG in development at BioWare Austin, which just happens to be staffed by many former Star Wars Galaxies developers. Officially, though, that' just a guess, of course.

The two have also announced a new website at www.LucasArtsBioWare.com.

Read the details after the click.

Want to know a little bit more about the SWG Team? Remember - they don't just work on the game ... they also enjoy playing it! Get an inside look at how the folks behind-the-scenes enjoy Star Wars: Galaxies.

Click below to read this week's profile featuring SOE Online Events Manager Jason "Pex" Ryan.

Want to know a little bit more about the SWG Team? Remember - they don't just work on the game ... they also enjoy playing it! Get an inside look at how the folks behind-the-scenes enjoy Star Wars: Galaxies.

Click below to read this week's profile featuring SOE Senior Community Relations Representative Kelly Knox.

SWG designer Michael "Fiasco" Farone checked in with his first Dev Diary:

"Well, I had been working as a designer on Ultima Online. This was during development for the Age of Shadows expansion for UO. A friend, who was one of the lead designers on SWG at the time, had been trying to talk me into joining their team. I enjoyed working on UO, but at the same time it was the only game I had ever worked on at that point. The idea of expanding my horizons seemed like a good one. So I took my friend's advice and joined the SWG team. Strangely enough, shortly after, my friend was offered a position on UO as a producer, so we basically traded projects. Funny the way things turn out sometimes."

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