On the eve of the grand premiere of his documentary Second Skin, director Juan Carlos Piņeiro Escoriaza was kind enough to speak with WarCry about the film and how it taught about virtual worlds and those who live in them.
Features
Crafting remains one of the most tedious aspects of MMOs. For most players, trade skills are a nice addition to the gaming experience but we'd rather not quit our adventuring "day job" for long hours at a time to keep up on crafting. Trade skills are generally time consuming, tedious, and devoid of player skill when they should be enjoyable, not just for the rewards they offer at the end of the hard work, but because the hard work is fun in and of itself.
This week's Friday Feature from SWG Community Manager Kelly "Valara" Knox includes some new Astromech Stats that provide a "snapshot" of characters across all galaxies on a given date, reflecting the status and activities of players online. This week, they take a look at popular professions and locations across the galaxies.
Click the lick below to check them out.
Chris "Dotanuki" Field, SOE Producer for Star Wars Galaxies, chats about Chapter 11: The Battle of Echo Base, the upcoming Life Day event, what the future holds for the game, (including a reaction to the recent announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic) and more in the latest producer's note.
Click below to check it out.
WarCry got a chance to have a brief Q&A with Star Wars: Galaxies designer Niklas "Swede" Johansson about SWG's answer to Halloween, the Galactic Moon festival. Johansson also talked a little about what's involved with adapting an Earth holiday to a galaxy far, far away.
Click the link to check it out, along with some spooky screenshots.
While advances in world story are promising in the arena of PvP, the other aspects of MMOs have suffered neglect. If "the pen is mightier than the sword" then why are players only able to use swords? The answer is that the devs won't let go of the pen.
In this week's Friday Feature, Star Wars: Galaxies Community Relations Manager Kelly "Valara" Knox has put together a quick look at the upcoming Galactic Moon Festival.
Click below to check it out and stay tuned for screenshots, a short video and an exclusive Q&A with one of the developers about this brand new holiday.
Suzie Ford chats with Monty Sharma at Vivox - the team behind the in-game voice chat in games like EQ, EQ2, and SWG.
MMO worlds are stagnant. They have cardboard cutout monsters and NPCs that stand in their assigned space. Players knock the monsters down like a fantastical shooting range, but after a few minutes, the pulleys whir, the monsters stand up, and the world reverts to its static state. On a micro level where thousands of players are sharing the same game space, this is to be expected. The problem is that it also exists at a macro level and constantly echoes in the background, "This world is not real... this world is not real..."
At GDC 08, we sat down with LucasArts Producer Jake Neri and others from Star Wars Galaxies to discuss the game's direction in 2008. They spoke of a new development plan to bring more updates to their fans and incorporate more of their feedback.
In Update #2 they plan to focus on the Entertainer and Medic, not with a full overhaul, but with an assortment of changes and additions that have been highly requested from those segments of the community. This Update is due out in the next couple weeks.
Chapter 9 follows later this month and is headlined by a new heroic instance and epic villain from Star Wars lore: Exar Kun. Heroic instances are top-end dungeons, and this is their first new one since Chapter 7. In tune with their desire to be more reactive to the community, Exar Kun was chosen from a list of epic villains that the development team polled the community on during the planning phase of this Chapter.
Read more after the jump.
