The producers letters...

Hello All

In case someone missed them. Here they are, both of them.

Producer Letter from Julio Torres: February 2006 Options   
 
JulioLEC
Dev
Posts: 6
Registered: 12-04-2003


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Greetings Everyone,
Hope this letter finds you all well. Here we are roughly three months after
unveiling some significant changes to Star Wars Galaxies geared towards
delivering the ultimate immersive Star Wars experience. Though not all
elements of the new direction were welcomed by all players with open arms,
we still see that the majority (??0%) of players still in the game were
playing before the changes were unveiled and implemented. We also continue
to have more and more players enter the galaxy daily through the demo,
almost 200,000 players to date. First, we'd like to thank everyone who has
been posting their feedback and that we want to keep hearing from you in an
effort to improve the game experience.  We appreciate your passion and your
involvement in the community.  Towards the end of last year, the team made
many of the changes, adjustments, and fixes you were asking for and we're
going to continue to try and do this in an effort to improve Galaxies for
current players as well as new players. Refining, Fixing, & Improving The
Existing Game Our number-one priority is on improving the existing game. We
are dedicating significant development resources to polish the existing
experience. One of the biggest facets the new game enhancements got knocked
for was that many elements were broken. Quests would break halfway-through
or not trigger at all, quest NPC's and enemies wouldn't be where they were
supposed-to, as well as other issues that literally made portions of the
game unplayable or simply not fun to play. Our main goal of this top
priority is to fix all existing issues to the highest standard of quality,
not just-enough to where they are playable. There are a lot of annoying
bugs out there and we want to knock ‘em out for good! One of the key
efforts of our focus on existing game improvement will be to give all
publishes extensive time on Test Center so that you all can have time to
evaluate and share your feedback with us so we can make any necessary
adjustments before we push them to the live game. We certainly want to see
as many new features and improvements to Galaxies as possible, but we're
focusing on the quality over the quantity of features going-forward.  As we
mentioned, this will also include addressing the issues that already exist
in the game. O ur approach is to make sure that as much attention is paid
to addressing bugs as is to implementing new features. This approach will
also affect the frequency of publishes this year.  However, this does not
mean we have reduced efforts to fix bugs and issues via hotfixes. We are
confident our approach in terms of frequency of publishes will allow us to
deliver better, cleaner, and more fun Star Wars content. The end result is
that everything new and that is fixed in the game is going to undergo a lot
more scrutiny, both internally and from the community.  We know this will
result in a much higher-quality experience for everyone. As I mentioned,
our goals aren't limited to refining and fixing the existing game. In an
effort to improve it as well, we are focusing heavily on giving players the
opportunity to differentiate themselves within their chosen profession from
others within the same profession. The first you will see of these efforts
is in tomorrow's Publish 27 in which we are introducing new abilities to
the Jedi profession. We plan to do the same for all nine of our iconic
professions across the board. In addition to adding new abilities, we
eventually will be introducing new skills for each profession to give
players further opportunity to differentiate themselves. Look for
information on these skills to be popping-up on the boards in the coming
months. Remember, your feedback on these abilities and skills is essential
to their successful implementation.

Increasing Interaction With Community  Community is an important part of
the Star Wars Galaxies experience – it is as important as the game's design
itself. We're going to be listening to your feedback and posting much more
about the issues and features that are important to everyone. Moving
forward we will make sure we have a much stronger dev presence on the
boards. Though we may not always be posting, we are always listening. As
part of this effort, we'll be posting more details about upcoming features
on the forums so we can get your feedback before any of these features are
set in stone.  We'll start by posting information, publishing the features
to Test Center , and getting your feedback on how each of these features
plays.  We will then be able to more effectively polish the overall
experience before anything makes it to the live game. As all things
develop, we'll be letting everyone know what's going on with more frequent
letters from the producers and other members of the development team in
addition to our more frequent interaction with you all on the boards.   
Until next time – may the Force be with you! Julio Torres, Producer –
LucasArts
02-13-200601:18 PM
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Producer Letter from Grant McDaniel: February 2006 Options   
 
Rogue_5
Dev
Posts: 768
Registered: 06-25-2003


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Hello!
My name is Grant McDaniel, though many of you may know me as “Rogue_5”.  I
was recently Producer for the Star Wars Galaxies Trials of Obi-Wan
expansion, and now I am the Producer for SWG. I have been part of the SWG
development team since almost the very beginning back in February 2002. 
All along I have been an avid, some may even say extreme, Star Wars fan and
collector since the very first film was introduced.  I have collected
thousands of various Star Wars items and memorabilia including such things
as toys, books, replicas, and autographs, and I often spend my free time
tracking down unique and rare items for my personal collection. The best
part of being such a devoted Star Wars fan is getting to work on a Star
Wars game.  There is no other job I could think of that would allow me to
indulge my passion and get paid for it.  I recognize the strength that this
franchise has in terms of fans worldwide and I respect the core values
inherent in the brand.  For that reason, I am proud to be on the
development team and excited about leading the SOE development team into
the future. Going forward, our overall goal this year is to continue to
improve our game by focusing on adding content that offers players the best
interactive entertainment experience available online today.  We are lucky
as we already have the greatest entertainment brand to build content around
– Star Wars .  To make that goal a reality we will continue to develop
compelling Star Wars style adventure content that brings the excitement of
the movies alive through in-game missions and story-driven adventures. 
Additionally, we will be working to further differentiate each of our nine
iconic Star Wars professions in the upcoming live publishes.  We will start
by giving them new abilities and skills, and then access to new things that
make each of them unique.  Improving our communication is going to be a
critical part of achieving this goal.  We recognize that our success is
determined in large part by our ability to listen to players, ask for
feedback, initiate research and stay true to the brand.  We want your
continued support.  Your input is critical to our process and we will
continue to bounce ideas off the community, put new content on our Test
Centers and probe for your ideas.  Together we can take this game to the
next level of excitement. We know we have to earn your loyalty.  To that
end, this year you will see an increased focus on quality first and a
passion for introducing content that brings iconic Star Wars conflicts and
characters alive in-game.  Like you, we love this brand because of the
classic Star Wars adventures it brings to life  – Jedi fighting with
Lightsabers and Force powers; Bounty Hunters battling with blasters;
Commandos and Officers leading raids, Smugglers and Traders offering
valuable resources, Spies leading us behind enemy lines and Medics keeping
us safe and putting us back in the action or Entertainers engaging us with
their artistry. Let's not forget the fun we have in space with the best
space combat in the galaxy while dog-fighting in legendary ships like the
X-wing, TIE fighter and Millennium Falcon.  There is no other Star Wars
game that let's players take up residence in the Star Wars universe and
play an active role in the ongoing battle between the Empire and the
Rebels.  This year, our commitment to you is to bring back the spirit of
Star Wars with more focus on the “wars”, the characters, the adventures,
and battles that hearken back to the movie adventures.  We have a lot of
fun planned, a lot of quality improvement, and a lot of bug fixing – so get
ready for an exciting year that will remind you of why you love SWG . Feel
free to, drop me a line from time to time and let me know how we are doing.
  I look forward to hearing from you on our boards, the Stratics chats
(hint: you might want to tune in to the one coming up this month for some
news about an upcoming publish!), and meeting some of you at upcoming
events (look for announcements coming soon about the Dev team hitting the
road and going on some real-life galactic adventures).  Stay with us and
keep giving us the benefit of your insights.  I look forward to a great
year at the helm of a truly great game.  The movies may be over but the
adventure continues right here!

May the Force be with you! Grant “Rogue_5” McDaniel, Producer – SOE   Grant
"Rogue_5" McDaniel SOE Producer, Star Wars Galaxies
02-13-200601:21 PM
 

Bye
Dirk Pfeiffer <dirk DeleteThis @dbx501.de> Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:02:47 +0200

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