Ranger - A Lifestyle, Not A Profession

Spread Your Wings...

2010-02-11T01:38:00.003Z

Or some other such tosh.

SOE have left Jar Jar Binks in charge of the seasonal events arrangements again and we have the Ewok Festival of Love, again.

For the third? year in a row the ewoks, little furry gits with rows of sharp teeth and a pretty negative attitude to outsiders, are in town doling out candy, hearts, wings and halos.

Ach, it's all a bit of fun you say but other than Ani's "Are you an angel" can you remember anything in any of the films that hinted at angels? Or ayjits running about in the background with haloes and big frakking wings?

As for the chocolate fountains.. come on, these are furry critters.. you're going to let them within a 100 yards of any sort of sticky food?

Jeff Freeman, 1969 - 2008

2008-10-01T16:18:00.002Z

I was truly shocked to read today that Jeff Freeman, formerly of SOE and an amazingly nice, smart guy has died at the age of 39, apparently having taken his own life.

Sadly I never got to know young Mr Freeman as well as I'd liked to have and from now on there'll be no more educated discussion of game design, the industry or the many facets of being Jeff.

Wherever you are now, man,
travel well and rest easy.

I'm not here...

2007-03-11T11:30:00.000Z

... as some of the more observant of you might have noticed I haven't posted "in some time" (yeah, forgot my login, lol, what a newb).

Anyway, I'm over here now http://almagill.livejournal.com where I'm still spouting the same crap, just more frequently.

Sorry Il Divo, I'm judging you by your friends.

2006-11-04T12:43:00.000Z

I like Il Divo. Good music to plooter around in the car too.

So yesterday i was moved to buy a couple of their CDs. Abut what's this? I can't play them on my PC, my normal media player, as there's some sort of copy protection?

Or rather, "You have to update several files in order to play this disc" and then you're given the option of installing crap knows what on your machine or sit listening to it grinding and clunking away while you try in vain to cancel MPlayer, get back to the desk top, eject the disk...

A quick google reveals that the boys discs are produced/distributed by Syco Music and that the copy protection comes via BMG. On close inspection ther eis the TINIEST of labels with who knows what random logos and the url www.bmg-copycontrol.info. The site that leads to is, what's the word... shit? Oh it's nicely designed, flash animated sqooshy graphics and all manner of knob knockery, but it doens't tell you how you can use the damned disc or what this software it wants to install is.

So I can only assume it's faulty and will be chucking it back over the counter at Virgin for a refun tyvm. "Not suitable for the purpose for which it was purchased", that is, it won't play on my PC.

More info on BMG and co at The Register

Meanwhile, sorry boys, but I'm going to judge you by the company you keep. No more Il Divo in this house. So that's a clear case of copy protection affecting sales.

Jeff Freeman Blogs... I Reblog... You xBlog.

2006-09-02T19:10:00.000Z

Jeff Freeman blogs... infrequently ;)

Aw Dundee, you don't post much mate, but you do post some good stuff y'know.

Nien Nunb Blogs!

2006-09-02T19:00:00.000Z

Well, puppeteer Mike Quinn's got a hand in it...

read more over at starwars.com

IS SL growing as WoW begins to shrink?

2006-08-31T17:24:00.000Z

A long and contentious article by Mark Wallace of 3D.com.

Now, before reading it remind yourself that, as the author admits, comparing SL to WoW is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. But the exact premise of his argument is that SL may be getting bigger while WoW starts to go into a lull.

This is sort of supported by the sort of models that the two games prefer to use when looking at themselves, SL sees itself as being closer in form to a communications type network, as more people join, more people join, whereas WoW is usually looked at onthe conventional 'rapid climb/ peak / drop/ plateau and decline' style of model that, well, most businesses use.

Worth a read, worth thinking over later, and worth bearing in mind when people start throwng subs numbers about as away of 'proving' that game A is better than game B.

Stop Press! Hims Play Hers In Online game shock horror probe!

2006-08-30T09:37:00.000Z

Heavy, Heavy Sarcasm intended, btw

Just read this article http://tinyurl.com/hq55m by Sean Twist in the LFP which has left me going "Huh? WTF?" on so many levels it's amusing.

I'll start with the obvious. "Where's the rest of the article, guy"??? It's like you've had this one great thought for something to write in your column and then wandered off to go back ingame and shimmy some. (Having played an ent in SWG for 2+ yuears I just know that's not the case, lol).

So... this guy offered you his gun? Was this meant to be symbolic? Am I just too dumb to get the whole 'dude with gun and chick with norks' thing?

Damn, Sean, I really, really don't like ragging on somebody who is just doing their job but that article is possibly one of the lamest SWG pieces I've read since the one that came out just after launch where the writer was whining about 'all there is to do in Galaxies is sit in a field and make pots...'

GAH!! What's your point? Is it really just that you had no idea that people play other genders in RPG's? Do you think ALL the players in BF2 are ALL guys? And anywahy,what's the issue here? Transgender RP is even an issue? For chrissakes... there's people in that game are playing different species.

;)

(And oh you can bet your badgermuffing beard that I'm creating a new toon today... screeny to follow)

Do you got class or is you skilled?

2006-08-29T11:30:00.000Z

Damien at ZenOfDesign kicked off a debate about clas / skill systems in response to an article by Thomas Mortensen at MMORPG. You have to read the ZoD thread first for half of what follows to make the slightest bit of sense, and even then you're going to disagree as people (players) seem to want to be EITHER class or skill based.

Anyway, it's sparked off a postathon by every dev/commentator/blogger who has an opinion to opine, and it's great :)

Brenlo (Bixiebopper) writes: "It’s all about choice. So is one system any better than the other? Not in my opinion, folks just have preferences. Besides, it’s what happens after your character is defined that really counts."

Raph Koster is on the class/skill debate too.. naturally :) he comes down on both sides of the fence:

"The question is, as always, what is the appropriate mix for the job. If you are making a game centered around teams, with clear singular objectives and one core system and mechanic, and nothing much else in the mix, then yes, of course, go with classes. Anything else would be a bit strange.

But if you’re making a virtual world with more than one thing to do, more than one game system, then they’ll make less sense. As soon as you have parallel game systems that don’t really overlap in their objectives, you’ll need to account for the fact that someone might be a hockey goalie and a herringbone stitcher. And the more of these you add to the mix, the less sense classes will make."

Well, this is MY blog space, so even though I feel as intimidated as heck by having so many big names in one entry, I gots my own opinions on class/skill systems:

"Neither classes nor skill based systems ’suck’ in and of themselves. It depends on what the player is expecting to be able to do within the game structure and how well the game design allows them to do that that results in a perception of suckiness.

For instance, I roll a combat toon in a class based system and find that I can’t, for example, heal others. Does the class system suck, or does the problem lie in my choice of build?

In a skill based system, I chose to invest on, say, defensive skills and heals to the stage where I can only do a little damage in combat but am effectively unkillable. Again, does the system suck or my choice of build? Obviously somebody who dislikes def stackers will have one PoV, the def stacker will have another.

A skill based system that allows a player to build a good low level (in terms of effectiveness, not necessarily combat level) toon with a borad but shallow range of abilities allows the player to experience more of the options that the game allows before choosing to specialise on one particular field.

Obviously the best example I can give of this is SWG where it was possible to take all the novice professions (thinly masked classes) and be a huntin’, shootin’ dancin’ medic who could do a little crafting with the resources he harvested. As your character developed you could then choose to drop the skills you didn’t need, or even have to sacrifice some that you’d have liked to have kept ie, at Master Ranger / Master Rifles it was not possible to have a large self heal as you couldn’t keep any of your medic skills.

You could of course drop the master box of one of the profs and invest in medic but then your effectiveness as a hunter would be impacted. (Which of course takes me onto my other favourite hobbyhorse, choices and consequences. I’ll save that for another day ;) )

A well structured class system will allow the player to have, for example in the EQ ranger subclass, effective specialist combat skills and sufficient self buffs and heals which are consistent/coherent with the professions descriptors and player expectations. You will, of course, have to depend on other players for the skills and abilities that fall outside your chosen class.

As I said, Idon’t think either system necessarily sucks, depending on it’s implementation. I do agree that a class system is generally easier to introduce to a player as you can point them at a defined archetype and say “that’s a paladin, that’s a pirate” and they’ll understand what can and can’t be done by that class within the game context. On the other hand, a free ranging skill based system allows for the sort of dynamic mix that you do find in real life where people have a multitude of skills that they can apply in different situations and which vary in value depending on their appropriateness for that situation.

OK, I’ll stop there before this becomes a dissertation on Acquired and Ascribed Roles, Expectations and social token exchange… "

Playerep Is Shaping Up

2006-08-26T13:19:00.000Z

Playerep is a free service for online gamers to vote for the people they play with. Members can track their friends and teammates, and give feedback on their experiences.

They've just added a UI mod for WoW, so I'll be giving that a whirl shortly. Meanwhile am just adding my most played toons to the profile in a barefaced attempt to get some rating, lol.

Seriously though, give it a bash. This could be a really useful tool for guild masters or just players looking to form a group with folk who aren't ninjalooting cloudsong stealing gonzo poo.... ;)

Salute to Roy Lichtenstein

2006-08-24T14:44:00.000Z

The Rangers Credo

2006-08-23T22:07:00.000Z

Back in the old days, early 05, when there were still rangers in the world, I wrote a post suggesting that they were in fact the true jedi (in a SW:G context). One ranger, Bethya, took that to heart and wrote a Rangers Benediction, I've lifted the text of my original credo from the benediction as, sadly, the forums seem to have eaten the original post.

The Ranger is at one with the worlds,
taking from it only what is necessary and wasting nothing.

The Ranger seeks good for all life around him,
knowing that nature is our provider and our partner.

The Ranger seeks no glory
but dwells with the unseen and neglected.

The Ranger always thinks first;
rash action brings swift justice on all.

The Ranger is a compass
and a pathfinder for the lost.

Ranger is not a profession,
It is a lifestyle.

Are YOU HoT?

2006-08-23T12:38:00.000Z

No, you filthy minder tosser. Are you the Hero of Tatooine?

SWG have, once again, rejuvinated this quest series. For better? For worse? Well, let me recap...

I did the original revamp of the Hot quest on TC (the original original HoT having been broke since before I started playing) and it was *fun*. My toon was an up and coming ranger and it was great to actually be able to, wait for this... *use the skills that were UNIQUE to my profession*.

As soon as it went Live (after about two weeks on TC, we used to cook 'em slow back then) I got my whole guild and out alts out and about, leading them through the squill cave, tracking the spawns, solving the BH's riddle, all good fun. And we got our 'ickle rings and tings.

The next few months were a laugh riot of tells and messages in planet chat with people looking for a ranger to "spawn teh mixture farmer" or "find meh teh pilot king" /boggle But it was easy money and I could happily charge a half mill for an hours tracking because of that player thought it was overpriced there was another two or three waiting.

I did notice it was getting harder to find the blighters, but, well, lifes like that. Then post NGE I had no tracking and was busy scouring Tat for Val/Jabba thugs to kill for Legacy.

So, we get the new HoT stuff on TC. I missed them at first as we don't get freaking notes of what's IN a publish for checking, doh. But yeah, there they were.... For one reason or another I wasn't ingame much so didn't test them or give feedback before they went to Live (like there was much chance with them flashing publishes to test for a few days now a days).

I'm doing htem with one of my newblish toons and, oh BOY are they boring. Static spawns? Pirates in a bunker with a bucketload of placeholders to kill before the leader finally spawns? Camping the wilderness for the moisture farmer? (Hah, being HoT is now a matter of being first to log on after a server reset and pouncing the buggers before anyone else gets to steal your cloudsong).

Yeah, back in the day it was sooo different.

There was this hermit, wandering the wastes. It was a chance encounter, a real adventure.... now? It's a tick box list of locations and a lot of sitting waiting. And I'm sorry, but sitting in a bunker staring at an empty chair is NOT gameplay dammit.

You stole my £$&"$ing cloudsong..

2006-08-22T10:18:00.000Z

I'm going to have to invest in incontinence pants or a bucket or something...

You Stole My Cloudsong

Warning! NSFW. Contains LANGUAGE.

And the next time some *£$*"(("£$er says that SW:G is like WoW I'm going to find where they live, park a &£*" off huge truck outside their house and play that track in a loop thru *£$* off huge speakers...

yeah, that's what am gonna do :)

;)

Wow...

*errata*
Apparently cloudsong is an item in DAOC and my comment above re WoW players was taken by some as a bit of a slur on their goodly nature. I of course immediately, wholly and humbly apologise for any offence caused. I mean, it's not as though you'd find some tauren shaman going totally emo over a spell book eh?

Be Alert... (insert tasteless joke here)

2006-08-21T23:06:00.000Z

"I had an interesting experience this weekend. My
oldest daughter (she’s 9) was playing an online game (not one of ours
and not WoW) and someone asked her how old she was. As I had taught her
she immediately put this person on the ignore list, reported them via
an in-game command and came to me and let me know what had happened.
Since this had happened one previous time in this particular game (with
the exact same response from her) I immediately cancelled the account.I’m
a parent with 4 kids ranging in age from 5 to 11. All 4 of them play
games. I actively game with my son (the 11 year old). My youngest 2
kids (ages 5 and 6) also play games (Disney’s ToonTown which I highly
recommend as a VERY SAFE game)." Full article and link for feedback

I'm going to ask everyone to go to that link, read it (all of it, twice) and then give Smed some constructive feedback.

My concerns are that he may propose some sort of 'one report bad, two report banned' type of system which, as we all know, will be used as a griefing mechanism by the darlings who play.

Yes, there should be some degree of parental control over what games your kids play and what freedoms they are allowed when ingame and yes they should also be aware that there are some truly wicked people out there and they need to know what to do if an inappropriate approach is made. But please oh please, don't over react by training them to /ignore and /report each and every a/s/l enquiry they encounter. ESPECIALLY in any game where there's a social element.

Teach them that, ingame, they should only give out info on the character. Y'know, you're playing a wookiee and someone asks where you're from.... "Kashyyk" obviously. Age? Well, wooks live a long, long time... , etc. If, after all that, the person is still pestering for personal info then tell them you don't give out personal info. If they STILL push it, THEN /ig and /rep. And escalate it with a CSR if you can.

Heck, half the fun in online games is finding out where the puppetmasters are really from. I've 'met' folk from all over the world and it's great to learn that way. Gender? Age? Less of a concern as we're in a non-tangible environment and have no way of verifying what they say. Being aware of when boundaries are being crossed is important tho, so email addies, myspace stuff, depending on context that's suspect.

But jumping like one of Pavlov's dogs as soon as somebody asks what age? Dodgy ground.

BOOM Throat Punch!

2006-08-21T22:18:00.000Z

I laughed so hard at this I may be in the market for a new chair....

Squeakers

SWG. Polishing....

2006-08-10T19:23:00.000Z

Textures on some structures are messed up.

Imperial Matters bunker, top walkway

Talus Bridge, colour cycling low res texture

Talus Bridge, colour cycling low res texture

Following two are not uncomon on ANY planet under ANY lighting conditions:

NE corner Talus, on way up to deal withthe spiders.... terrain textures

NE corner Talus, on way up to deal withthe spiders.... terrain textures

The Kitty Lawyer is IN.

2006-08-09T01:42:00.000Z

By way of a tribute to a sometime special guest on SWGYaMB. If you have to ask you won't get it, lol.

They're Back! (SWGwYaMB 50.5)

2006-08-06T23:53:00.000Z

After a much deserved break Yivvits and MrBubble are back with a 'mini-podcast', brought to you by the power of paint fumes and that unsupressed NEED to rant....:

http://swgpodcast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=117306#

We are back! Well, almost. Building our new recording studio has been a fairly large project which took a little longer than expect. But, we are committed to the show and are eager to get back in the swing of things. Neither wet paint nor paint fumes will stop us! (Albeit, the fumes made us a little loopy) This week's show isn't really a normal episode for us. Hence, we are calling it Episode 50 and 1/2. We cover all sorts of things from truckers to the kitty lawyer to one of our favorite callers from Episode 50. Oh, we talk about Star Wars Galaxies a bit as well.

Enjoy the show, and keep an eye out for Episode 51 later this coming week. It's good to be back!

So, let's get this clear...

2006-08-06T00:55:00.000Z

Just because somebody shows you the plans for a house and then asks if it *could* be built...

... it doesn't necessarily follow that it SHOULD be built, or that you should ignore your neighbours whenthey start saying "Uh, are you SURE about that?"

Just saying.

About nothing in particular, of course.

Tiggs Writes....

2006-08-05T23:23:00.000Z

...about Mom things.

We Diggs The Tiggs.

It was't Jeff, okay.

2006-08-05T00:48:00.000Z

Jeff said it wasn't him. He said it this morning in a kind of cryptically round the houses way, and seeing as we all misunderstimated the contextuality of his verbalising, or was it prosification, he's now saying it loud and clear.

Or, putting it another way. "I didn't design it, stop saying I did, I didn't. It was some other guy, I just hung the doors and maybe painted round the edging..."

So, now that's all clear...

Them posts in full:

Reading Comprehension

If someone else (i.e. not you) designs a house and asks you to come look at their design, then it is not your design, no matter how long you look at it, no matter what you think of it. And you didn’t “come up with it” even if you like it.

If someone else asks if it is possible to build, and you say “Yes, that is possible,” then that is not the same as “pushing” or “selling” or “demanding that your design be built”.

No matter how many times they ask “Are you sure?” and no matter how many times you answer the question, and no matter even what you think of the design: it is not your design (keep up now, we just covered that) and even if it were your design, that’s not “pushing your design” but is, rather, answering a question.

If it is possible and you say it is not possible even though you know it is possible, then you are a filthy liar.

If they say “Ok, build that house” and you join a team of builders who all work hard to build the house then it is still not your design, you didn’t build it single-handedly, you didn’t shove it down anyone’s throat and it wasn’t your decision to build it.

If you make claims to the contrary then you are a filthy liar.

I’m not talking about anything in particular, I’m just sayin’.

Reading Comprehension

UPDATE:

Now see, this is just the sort of thing I’ve been talking about. Ya get misunderstood, post a clarification, that get’s misunderstood, so you gotta post a clarification to that, and on and on forever. Better off just leaving the misunderstood thing out there and letting people assign their own meanings to it.

Don’t try to read so closely between the lines that you fail read the lines themselves.

All I’m saying here is: When I wrote “I looked at what this guy designed” it should never have been interpreted to mean “I designed that and everything else”.

But it was taken to mean just that. Seems a little crazy to me.

So I finally wrote that it shouldn’t have been taken that way (since it keeps getting trotted out and about) and now some folks are taking that to mean something other that just what it says.
C’mon now.

And from way back in November:

Friday, November 4
Shenanigans

SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.

Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.

So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now ? how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.

Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."

A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3?2?1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.

In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.

That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.

This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.

But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.

Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.

So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.

Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.

Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!

As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.

Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.

So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.

So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"

It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."

There's no way we can do that.

There's no way we should do that.

Man that's fun.

The Man will never let us get away with doing that.

We can't do it.

We shouldn't do it.

Oh man that is fun.

When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".

My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.

And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.

It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.

First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.

And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.

The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.

There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.

Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.

Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.

For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.

Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.

So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.

Now, fwiw, I don't blame Jeff for the NGE. I'm appy to accept that he was just the contractor that told to do the implementation after saying it was possible. Just making that clear. In case anyone is under any false impression that this little backwater of the blogosphere is saying otherwise.

a propos of nothing at all.

2006-08-04T09:38:00.000Z

Once there was a builder of houses. He was very proud of the houses he'd built and he just 'knew' what was possible and what wasn't.

One day a guy roles into the office with plans for a one legged platform house, decorated in purple and orange flock wallpaper and crimson cladding made from recycled socks. "Here, look at these designs, they're breathtaking, aren't they?" he says to the builder. The builder looks and agrees, his breath is certainly taken away by the whole staggering audacity of the concept.

"Could it be built?" asks the designer? "Well, yes..." says the builder, knowing that anything that can be conceived can be made, the only limitations being mere technicalities. He also knows that saying anything to the contrary would be a lie.

"Well, build it then..." says the designer and introduces the builder to a crack team of carpenters, bricklayers, electricians and plumbers. They all look at each other and say "Can this be built?" and then as one say "Heck sure it can!" and they set to work with a passion.

When the building is finished they hold a grand opening but to their dismay the Great Unwashed Masses scream out loud "It's a monstrosity! What were you thinking? Where are the doors? How did I get up to the platform? And what's with the flock wallpaper? It's so... garish...". A few voices in the crowd say "Well, if you squint your eyes up and look at it sideways it's kind of interesting" or "Hmm, I guess I could get used to it..." or even "Well, it's not what I'd call a house but I guess I could live in it for a while till we redecorate and remodel and rebuild..."

The builders all look at each other and at the designer. There is much shrugging and shuffling of feet and they start wandering off to do other jobs on other houses. But wherever they go, towering above them is the one legged platform house with the orange and purple wallpaper and red, red cladding.

The last anyone saw of them they were standing round pointing at each other and saying "He made the doors!" "Yeah, but you made the walls..." "Well the carpets were fitted nicely..." and the Designer was standing way of to one side shouting pointing at the Builder and shouting "But HE said it could be built..."

a propos of nothing, just saying.

More Mea Culpa.

2006-08-04T08:18:00.000Z

What's going on at SOE? It's like they've suddenly discovered self-flagellation...

Brenlo Bixiebopper speaks: (oh come on!)

First a request, to those of you using this thread as your personal battleground, please take it to PM's.

So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, to try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed. =)

We can, and I am sure many of us will, debate for years on end whether this was a good idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly, I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.

Where did we go wrong? Delivery, we failed in our timing and communication. That is where we let you down most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize.

Brenlo Bixiebopper
Director, Global Community Relations - SOE

I'm just saying...

2006-08-04T07:24:00.000Z

Jeff Freeman goes off on one but nicely, cos he's cuddly like that.

Good points there Dundee, about nothing in particular.

We've got a saying here, it goes "It wisnae me, ah didnae dae it, a bad boy came and did it...", which of course refers to nothing in particular either, but it's good to see what happens when people aren't constantly asking you to look at their houses and suggesting that just because they've got flock wallpaper *everyone* wants flock wallpaper already. ;)

SWG:Remapped. The House Mix (unplugged)

2006-08-03T20:20:00.000Z

Yivvits blogs:

"Chapter 2 is now live and with it comes another round at trying to address the targeting and keymapping problems in SWG. Overall I feel pretty good about these changes, but there are a few things that have become glaringly apparent.

Rather than streamlining the targeting/target lock system to more closely match pre-NGE, they have made a real mess – and the only reason I can discern is they refuse to accept that the NGE controls just don’t work with SWG. In their eyes, it would be a big no-no to revert something like targeting to the pre-NGE style. "

And there's the rub of it. People are REMAPPING their keyboards to try and get back to the preNGE state and the devs seem Hell bet on trying to implement ANYTHING but that.

Honestly, it's as if they've got preNGEphobia. "OMG, that's how they did things back in the olden days, before November 15th! We can't possibly allow anyone to go back to that.... we better reinvent some arsecake random keymapping that leaves existing players feeling like they are one of the Infinite Monkeys and new players going "d00d how do this workorz??""

The Smed Blog.

2006-08-02T10:05:00.000Z

In a nice wee ramble about ChinaJoy (It's like E3, but bigger...) Smed blogs:

We have four diverse MMO titles in internal development, not counting the five MMOs we currently have live, or our partnership with Sigil for Vanguard.

Each of these new games is aimed at a very different market and all of them are in different genres. From our perspective, it’s time to shake things up a bit in the online gaming space. We’re aiming for very high production values that will bring us (and gamers) into completely new places. We’re bringing mercenaries, spies, super-heroes and a new whimsical world to life as I write this. We’re also concentrating on bringing each of these games to you on both the PC and the upcoming PlayStation 3.

With the exception of the DC Comics game we’re working on, each of these games is an original IP. Our teams in San Diego, Austin, Seattle and Taiwan are excited about working on game worlds that we’re developing ourselves. It’s often frustrating to work with third party IP. There’s a constant battle over what the right direction is for the game, and from our own recent experience, it’s not something we enjoy. It very often puts handcuffs on what we can and can’t do and, frankly speaking, it’s a lot harder to make great games when the IP holders don’t understand the online gaming market.

(My emphasis added)

SWG Chapter 2 Character Appearance Changes

2006-08-02T01:46:00.000Z

Now children, don' t smoke...

2006-08-01T00:22:00.000Z

Late 70's PSA featuring R2 and C3PO.

"R2, you don't think I don't have a heart, do you?"

E3 Binned

2006-07-31T15:31:00.000Z

Aw bugger.... seems the organisers of the industries big glamfest E3 have decided that it's all got too big and doesn't give enough of a return to the industry, or something, and they're going to stop doing the megahuge extravaganza. (It must be true, it was on /. )

Or are they? After the weekend's flurry of blogging it now seems they're just 'revamping it', or something... "E3 is dead, Long Live E4?"

Maybe they'll just got for a 'tents in the desert, bring your own bottle' thing.... I can just see Blizzard and SOE trying to have a bigger and better tent, lol

Jedi Knights and Census Takers Revisited.

2006-07-31T15:28:00.000Z

Jedi Knights and Census Takers Revisited.

I'm in two minds about this kind of thing. Yeah, it's a bit of fun, cocking your snook at the establishment, yada yada, but the researcher in me cringes at the idea of some genealogist 100 years down the line going "Jedi? WTF??".

Still, read on, and if you're in Oz, you have to let the Force guide you..

Join The Force And Become A Census Jedi Knight

Posted By Dustin on July 29, 2006

More great news form your friends Downunder at Mousedroid.com.

For the 15th time since Federation the every man, woman and child will be counted in the 2006 Australian Census and this time you can do it on the internet. But how does this relate to Star Wars you might ask? Last time some 70,000 people put down "Jedi" as their religion in an effort to get it officially recognized. Let's see if we can do better this time round come 8th August 2006.

Plenty of people tried to put the scare into people saying "You'll be tracked down and fined for giving false information"...WRONG (Read more here). If you have no real religion yourself but you're a HUGE Star Wars fan, or if you are a follower of the Jedi Faith this is your chance to be heard. Wookiees may not exist, lightsabers may not be real (yet) but do you believe in a UNIVERSAL FORCE?!?!

On the question of religion, VOTE JEDI. Put down "Jedi" on their census form. And remember, if you are a member of the Jedi religion then you are by default a 'Jedi Knight'. So If this has been your dream since you were 4 years old. Do it cos you love Star Wars. Tell all your Star Wars friends to join the coolest religion this side of the outer rim.

REMEMBER ... VOTE JEDI ... BECOME A CENSUS KNIGHT!

Why. One Small Sullistan, One Shitload of Galaxy

2006-07-31T03:29:00.000Z

(right click, view image)

Koster's Lament

2006-07-30T02:15:00.000Z

I'm a slow reader ;)

So I only just found this gem from last year

What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?

The tide never washes in and out.

The birds never migrate.

Strawberries are never in season.

Read, learn and inwardly digest.

Get the **** out of my head...

2006-07-27T07:56:00.000Z

Almagill freaks out

2006-07-26T18:11:00.000Z

There is an extensive, and detailed, interview with Raph "Holocron" Koster online at The Escapist Magazine. I'm copying the section dealing with SW:G here as that's my personal 'bugbear' but you really DO have to read the rest of the article to get an idea of where Raph was coming from and what he thinks about the MMOG field in general.

Star Wars Galaxies: What Went Wrong?
After almost three and a half years of development, Sony Online Entertainment launched Star Wars Galaxies in June 2003 to mixed or negative response. SWG peaked in 2004 below 300,000 subscribers. SOE revamped the game, first in April 2005 and more drastically - some say disastrously - in November, with the New Game Enhancements (NGE). Bruce Woodcock estimates SWG's current player base at between 110,000 and 175,000.

"When I started on SWG, one of the first things I did was write down the things I thought the game had to mean: a great civil war, political battles (under the influence of the new trilogy here), the Light and Dark sides of the Force, swashbuckling derring-do, a rich and diverse world and, lastly, community - because this last one is common to all MMOGs and also because Star Wars fans are themselves a strong community. My

goal was to marry the open-endedness of Ultima Online with all the content and depth of EverQuest. My feeling at the time was, 'This is the single best opportunity ever for MMOGs to swing for the fences, damn the cost - if not now, when?'

"Fundamentally, SWG was launched too early from a game design point of view. It may not have been from a financial point of view - there's considerations like how much had been spent, how soon it would earn back the investment, that sort of thing - but most systems in there were first-pass at best. The place where that was most obvious was in the relative lack of content at launch. The tools simply came on too late to make the volume of content needed, and even though a heroic final push tried to populate the game with distinctive content, it just wasn't anywhere near enough.

"A large chunk of the blame lies with me, for being over-ambitious with the design. I don't think there were all that many fundamental problems with the overall design itself - some, sure, but nothing like the closed-economy debacle in UO, for example. [The systems] were first-pass, but mostly

conceptually solid. (I am sure current and ex-SWG players will want to argue this point in detail, but hey, this is an interview, and there's no room to give my detailed postmortem on every system! Yes, I still think something like HAM [the threefold Health-Agility-Mental damage system] could work, but yeah, it was probably too complicated.)

"I was not involved directly with SWG from about four months after launch. People seem to think that as [Chief Creative Officer] I was somehow in control of all the design being done at SOE. That's not really the case at all; I had some influence, but I spent most of my time doing pitches, R&D,

publicity stuff and that sort of thing. It's been well over two years since I did anything significant on the title. The last things really finished under my tenure were player cities, mounts and the Warren - and by cities, actually, I was barely involved. I had philosophical disagreements with a lot of the direction taken after that.

"I didn't like a lot of the subsequent choices - thinking here of Holocron drops, [Temporary Enemy Flag] changes, group sizes, buff expansions, global market, entertainer changes, creature handler removal, levels, a lot of the combat upgrade ... I could give you my opinions there, but there's no point - even those changes have been changed. Many of them were essentially trying to dig out of the hole that launching prematurely had caused. I can't really blame anyone for them, whether I agreed with the decisions or not. The whole time, the team worked their ass off and tried their best.

"I'll make an exception for the NGE. I don't think you can or should change a game that radically out from under a user base. You dance with the ones that brung ya, whether they are the market of your dreams or not. They have invested their passion and built expectations about where they want the game to go. Changing things out from under them isn't fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."

Jeff posts

2006-07-25T20:28:00.000Z

And I'm linking to it, because usually when his name appears on the internet these days, it’s coupled to a hope that he's died and gone to hell.

Well, not *every* time, Jeff. Even if you "can't" tell us what you're now working on ;)

I was disappointed when Jeff had to take his blog down a while back after it became Flame Central as every man and his monkey blamed him personally for, well, a number of decisions that were made in the development of a game that we all had a bit too much emotional investment in for it to be healthy.

Dundee's blog has led me to read more and more about and by the *people* who make games work and, well, frankly, I'm pretty ashamed of the way some players act. Like or dislike a decision that's been made, but draw the line at making it personal.

Karen Traviss wrote about a related subject recently when she and other SW EU writers were getting griefed by the green crayon weilding 'fans' and it certainly gave me pause for thought.

So, what DID happen to SWG?

2006-07-25T20:18:00.000Z

Henry Jenkins asks "So What Happened to Star Wars Galaxies?" and then gives some truly excellent analysis.

There is a link to Javier's goodbye video "Together" which helps illustrate the depth and range of involvement in the game that resulted in *massive* player investment in co-authoring the virtual world that was Star Wars Galaxies.

It's interesting to see 'history' being written, because that IS what this process is, and seeing the academics drawing the threads ouf the story out of the near mythology that's grown up around the NGE and it's precursor the CU.

Read the article, read the related pages (Raph's blog etc) and watch the video and just reflect on how shallow "It's just a game" sounds now.

/tiphat Javier
You and so many other elder entertainers are sadly missed. Not just for the dancing and the music but for the magic that you helped bring into the game. Without having to load/loot/kill.

2006-07-20T14:23:00.000Z

Well, they DID say that the SWG forum servers were 'moving to an internal solution' in August and that they'd be down for several days. So why am I surprised to find:

Not Found

The requested URL /swg/ was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Apache/2.2.2 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.2 OpenSSL/0.9.7j Server at forums.station.sony.com Port 80

forums.station.sony.com/swg/

Seems somebdy forgot to coordinate the dates when the SWG boards were coming down (about two days ahead of EQ's) or to put up the "Single forum page" which presumably would have been a "work in progress" clippy and 'Normal Service Will Be Resumed... SOON(tm)'

/sigh

Situation Normal for SOE/SWG. One clusterfuck after another.

2006-07-18T11:43:00.000Z

Discussing the "Trickledown Theory" (a counterposition to the Vocal Minority Theory) Ryan Schwayder at The Nerfbat says:

Keeping the vocal minority happy should always be a concern if you want your game’s general populous to remain so. Should you bend to their will and implement exactly what they demand? Probably not, but you should take their opinions into consideration and act accordingly.

Thoughtful article. Dismissing the outspoken few as a 'vocal minority' and then deliberately ignoring their views, concerns, suggestions can lead to mistakingly assuming that the Silent Majority hold the opposite position.

Logically it's a potentially fallacious argument of the form "IF a THEN b. b THEREFORE a" known as Affirming the Consequent.

In this Vocal Minority instance that's often trotted out on games forums the argument runs thus:

"There are a number of posts from players expressing dissatisfaction with $foo feature. They do not represent a majority, therefore we can assume that the majority of players are happy as they are not complaining".

However, it is also possible that the vocal minority is just that. A small cluster of agrieved players who are venting their opinion and that the majority of players ARE happy. It then falls to the games developers to look at the arguments being presented to them and assess which case is the correct one.

In fact, it becomes an absolute necessity.

2006-07-16T14:42:00.000Z

Athela's Game-O-Rama

Mindless ramblings about games of all types.

I'm all for mindless ramblings about games. Yup.
Sometimes I don't even think *that* hard about ranting...

I am t3h uber... sort of.

2006-07-14T14:32:00.000Z

45791

Almagill

Double Wookiee

Ur-Paladin

CON 86

Act III

+3 Cambric Studded Plasma Vambraces

Mulligan X

Feel the squidgy edge of my Slime Finger XX!!!

QoD

OK, I'm hooked. ProgressQuest is the most excellent example of how pointlessly futile yet fun old school D&D level based gaming can be... expecially when you take the player interaction nonsense out and just let it run.

Progress Quest is a next generation computer role-playing game. Gamers who have played modern online role-playing games, or almost any computer role-playing game, or who have at any time installed or upgraded their operating system, will find themselves incredibly comfortable with Progress Quest's very familiar gameplay. Progress Quest follows reverently in the footsteps of recent smash hit online worlds, but is careful to streamline the more tedious aspects of those offerings. Players will still have the satisfaction of building their character from a ninety-pound level 1 teenager, to an incredibly puissant, magically imbued warrior, well able to snuff out the lives of a barnload of bugbears without need of so much as a lunch break. Yet, gone are the tedious micromanagement and other frustrations common to that older generation of RPG's. (ProgressQuest group at yahoo)

"Fire & Forget RPGs brings gaming to new levels"
This is one of the best cases for software patents I've ever seen. If it's not already patented, I'm certain it'll be copied by all the big RPG companies. It's compelling and addictive. The best part is, you can play for hours, stop if you have to, and restart without missing a beat. (-NotGrumdrig, download.com user opinions)

What can I say? Apart from "just go download it and play... well, ok, play is maybe overstating it, but hehehe... slime finger XX ftw"...

;)

*** Update ***

36775 Almagill Double Wookiee Ur-Paladin 43 CON 164 Act V +9 Cambric Custom Plasma Helm Mulligan XXIII Double wookiee power!!

Sad, isn't it?

***UPDATE***

30383 Almagill Double Wookiee Ur-Paladin 48 CON 295 Act VII +34 Steely Vicious Bastard Sword Mulligan XXX

Yay! Go me!

***UPDATE 28th July***

29094 Almagill Double Wookiee Ur-Paladin 49 CON 345 Act VIII +26 Fine Custom Platemail Hauberk Mulligan XXXIII

Ah, for one brief moment I had 60000 gold but then I belw it all on weapons and armour. LOL!

Still, I'm in the top 30000 now ;)

Raph and the seeds of an idea

2006-07-12T02:40:00.000Z

Raph Koster explains some of the ideas in making 'a game' come out of 'an idea'.

"I don’t know why, but it came to me as a picture, a bit over a week ago: a bird made of light, flapping on a screen with hand-drawn artwork. It trailed a few particles of light as it flapped, mostly white, but some of them pink or pale blue. What was interesting about it was the flapping, the way in which it had to twitch one wing in order to slide sideways against the wind currents and the gravity."

There's a nice little WiP to download that illustrates the flight model he's trying to work to and just seeing a designer block out the processes involved in getting that idea out of your head and onto a screen is interesting in and of its self.

All Change at the SWG Forums

2006-07-11T17:45:00.000Z

Possibly connected to news earlier in the year that SOE were changing the DB for some of their game forums.

SWG forums moving to an 'internal solution' (eeuw, that sounds colonic)

Greetings SWG Community!

On Tuesday, August 15th, 2006 Sony Online Entertainment will be transitioning the Star Wars: Galaxies (SWG) Official Forums to an internal forum solution. Transitioning to this new system gives us the opportunity to offer new functionality and update the system as often as needed. The new forums solution gives us greater flexibility and allows us to provide you with a better forum experience.

Your Forum Handles, post counts, posts, etc., will be transferred from the existing forums to the new forums. Bookmarks, subscriptions, friends lists, floated threads, etc . . . will most likely not transfer over. If you currently use any of these, you will want to make note of them before the transition, so that you can set them up once again, after the transition occurs.

Forum Ranks (titles) will go through some changes. However, you will automatically receive the appropriate new ranks and titles upon login. Those of you with specialized forum ranks and privileges will be adjusted after the launch of the new forums or shortly thereafter.

During the transition period, the forums will be down for 5 days (while we migrate the posts from the current forums). A single temporary board will be available during this time. Data will not be transferred from the temporary forum, so don’t get too comfortable there. If any of this information changes, we will post the updated information on the official website.

Once the new forums are live we will provide more information on all of the new features.

Thank you and please keep in mind that the Dates and time period is subject to change!

Message Edited by GarVa on 07-11-2006 12:38 PM

Helios' getting reamed on MySpace

2006-07-11T10:47:00.000Z

Poor Helios is taking some flak over being a SOE dev...

Thursday, July 06, 2006

I get these creepy messages sometimes...

...Where people say scary stuff to me... like this one from today:

Subject: I hope you die, soon

Body:

You sir are a Fuck head and should be killed, thanks for ruining the greatest game ever created. How is that for polite you fuck.

Is all that really necessary?

Well Kai, there's some scary assed muppets out there and they're pretty pissed. Not sure whose making the biggest mistake, you for having a public blog or them for making public threats.

Either way, it suggests that theres a HUGE amount of repair work needed at SOE and it doesn't end with 'just making the game better' but needs to cover rebuilding the community, giving people a solid reason to play, etc.

Smed, or was it Julios?, said a while back that we never hear from the silent majority as they are ingame playing. Sadly the seem to be the silent minority now as forum whoring is more fun than actually logging in and mindlessly grinding through pointless 'kill ten rats' mission after pointless 'kill ten rats' mission.

Best of luck to you.

Sing me a song, a sad old song...

2006-07-05T23:01:00.000Z

OK, this is more an 'entertainer' thing than a 'ranger' thing, but oh, it gives an insight into what a dev *wants* to go into a game and what *actually* ends up in there...

Raph Koster blogs:

[quote]"...what I originally wanted for musicianship in SWG.

Players with higher composing skill would have had access to more buttons in the composition window — stuff like alternate scales, keys, multiple instruments, etc. The composition would be rated in difficulty based on which tools were used to make it.

The ability to add lyrics so that they could be synced up with the song, and use the /sing speech variant (it had notes on the chat bubble border, so you could tell it was sung)

A datadisk would have been generated which then a musician could add to their collection. If they had sufficient musicianship skill, they’d be able to play it. A small performance royalty would go back to the composer every time the song was performed, so that popular songwriters could earn money as they went."[/quote]

So, what went wrong? Was it the evil devs with their PvP 'if it don't squelch whenyou hit it it's carebear' fetish? Was it the technology couldn't handle it??

No, it was my second favourite whipping boys after 'beancounters'... the LAWYERS.

Raph again:
[quote]
This all fell afoul of legal concerns, of course. There was the fear that someone would simply replicate a song from the real world, thus leaving the game operators liable for copyright infringement.[/quote]

Tell me that, had that not been strangled at birth, it wouldn't have been the most spectacularly awesome non-combat contribution to an MMO?

OK, some of the songs would have been dire in the extreme. But there are some genuinely talented people out there and they'd have run with this. Just look at the machinima videos that people have put together in the SWG world, and not 'just' the dance ones tho they are pretty smart, but real little films that tell tales and move emotions...

(What makes me angry tho is the fact that, under the old system, an ent could have done this AND fought! gorram monodimensional dev teams...)

Oh it could have all gone so horribly horribly wrong...

2006-07-05T13:10:00.000Z

Now THAT would have made a different movie lolz.

Dance Yoda Dance

2006-07-05T12:53:00.000Z

Just a little shorty from YouTube....

Once Is Enough

2006-07-05T10:29:00.000Z

Been working up a drawing of a female Sullustan. (Hey, look.. she's not a slapper!)

Still got to add a background, some textures and a bit of smooj.

2006-07-04T23:39:00.000Z

There has been so much good material doing the rounds recently on 'how to be a better designer' and the Ten Commandments, etc. that I felt it might be interesting to take a little trip back in time to a forum, far, far away...

Julio Torres wrote (02-13-2006):

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 (~80%) 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

A New Beginning.

2006-07-04T22:40:00.000Z

K'hen Nunb brought his SoroSuub 3000 to a halt at the Tatooine station marker bouy and hailed the local traffic controller.

"Yeah, whaddaya want?"
"Survey Vessel Sullust Sky. Request landing clearance to Mos Eisley Sierra Papa. Customs clearance docket #3159-204."
"Hold your station Sullust Sky. Checking your details... you'd be surprised the scum we get trying to slip in here..."
"Roger that. Sullust Sky holding."

The comms window cleared and K'hen sat back in the plasteel pilots chair watching as the beams from searchlights on Tat Station rolled lazily back and forth along the hull of his ship looking for any external signs he was carrying contraband items and, just as importantly, that he hadn't picked up any mynock parasites in space.

A short two tone beep alerted him to an incoming message "Survey Vessel Sullust Sky proceed to hangar for docking and transshipment to surface. Docking clearance 419"

He pushed the nose of his ship down and slowly moved into the small hangar doorway. As he approached the hangar, large airscrubbers were sucking the air in the boxlike chamber into internal tanks to minimise loss of vital gasses during the docking process.

Electromagnetic shielding which formed the 'doors' of the hangar would be switched off to allow him to enter and land. By the time he had done that, a near normal atmosphere would have been restored in the hangar space so there was no need to wear the heavy flight suit and helmet required on mining outposts such as Tansari.

That, of course, was the theory. All travellers up here had stories of cheating death when a careless operator purged the hangar too soon or was late closing the shielding. Nunb had never seen an accident like that for himself, but of course, he knew somebody who'd met someone in a cantina who'd had a landing pad technician hit the front viewport screens after being sucked out into space...

He chuckled to himself at such bogeyman tales then hauled the himself into the heavy flightsuit, just in case.

The SoroSuub 3000 hovered a metre above the glassy floor of the hangar, repulsor lifts holding her steady while a binary load lifter offloaded pallets of containerised mining equipment. Nunb made a final pass of the ship, securing lockfast cabinets and sealing each compartment as he left it. The skyhop pilots could be trusted, so far, but as the ship would be left unattended in the storage bays on the station, there was no point leaving things to chance.

Hoisting a sturdysack onto his shoulders the tall Sullustan clambered down the rear ramp of his ship, checked the details on the skyhops docket and headed to the small shuttle that would tranship him to Tatooine planetside.

The Commandments of Online Worlds

2006-07-03T20:51:00.000Z

Oh the gamer gods are on good form these days!

Raph Koster gave us his 40 Rules just t'other day and now he has been up Mount Improbable and extracted these Ten Commandments from inside the corpse of poor old Ernie (Well, he said he found two tablets in Dead Earnest)(Ah please yourself ;) )

Now, anyone fancy printing these out and sticking a copy on the cubicle wall of every dev at a certain MMO company?

The Commandments of Online Worlds

Thou shalt not mistake online worlds for games, for they encompass far more; nor shalt thou forget that play is noble, and game is no epithet.

Thou shalt not disrespect thy players, nor treat them as mere database entries or subscriptions, but rather as people, for thy power is granted you by them.
Thou shalt not remove fun or implement unfun for the sake of longer subscriber longevity, nor shalt thou consider thy sort of fun to be the only sort of fun to be had, for many and mysterious are the ways of enjoyment.
Thou shalt not blindly do what has been done before, but rather shalt know why all is as it is, and how it could be different.
Thou shalt create and follow rules that bind thyself as well as the players, for thou art of the community, not above it.
Thou shalt not make thy world a place for players to do real harm unto one another, or for thee to do harm unto players.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s userbase, but instead be true to thine own userbase, for thou hast made them a garden, and thy job is cultivation.
Thou shalt make every activity within thy world one that stands alone enjoyably; if it be a game, then thou shouldst make it a fun game on its own merits; if it be other, then thou shouldst make it true to itself. Thy world doth not make boring things into enjoyable things merely because it is thy world.
There shalt be no number nine.
Honor thy ancestors, for they solved most of thy design problems.

( (C) Ralph Koster, July 2006. First published: http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/03/the-commandments-of-online-worlds/trackback/)

The Shape of Things To Come

2006-07-03T20:11:00.000Z

Now here's a chilling thought.

Are the little techno tyros and Gimme Jimmies of Generation Yn the shape of a scoiety to come, or just an exageration of our worst behaviour IRL when we're granted the anonymity and license that an online persona gives?

Karen Traviss recently blogged about some pretty horrendous behavour by the virtual worlds equivalent to the green crayon scribblers and the impact that that has on the REAL flesh and blood people behind the screenname.

Scott Jennings has had a lot to say on the relationship between the devs and the players. Or at least, on their respective perspectives on each other when they get up close to Oz's Curtain.

Now Mark Wallace has a look at bullying in MysSpace, cloning and the 'It's Just A Game' attitude not only of the commentators but of the people producing the VWorlds and the people inhabiting them.

Given that VWorlds are huge social spaces in which people are expected to behave within a set of social rules which *most* would recognise as 'good behaviour', even when the purpose of being there is to rip the spines out of the enemy, shit into the neckhole and then use the carcase as an unguided biochemical weapon, it surely can't just be me that finds 'rude' people ingame to be such an extreme pain in the arse?

If these people are reflecting, even in part, something about their own RL values, Heaven help us when we need to interact with them in the Real World. The question is, are they reflecting a part of their personality that they feel they have to suppress IRL or do they actually think that being rude, hurtful and downright imbalanced is 'alright' as 'everyone is doing it'?

These devs think people are so dumb.

2006-07-02T22:53:00.000Z

These devs think people are so dumb.

It's not that they think the player base is dumb, it's that a dev, having been on a live team for several years starts to view the 'player' as a ravenous mongoloid zombie hydra with attention deficit disorder and serious split personality problems.

Just because somebody is a decent programmer doesn't mean that they are going to have people skills that are much better than their playerbase. As a result, most Devs should be forbidden from ever, ever speaking directly to players as no matter what they say they are going to piss people off.

Of course, community relations should speak to the players, they are after all the 'public facing' part of the dev cycle. But as we know, they just piss people off too. The hardline forum cop does their job and is slammed as being a nazi, the PR guy chats with player groups and is accused of elitism and building cliques.

But by far the worst, and best, example is the CS guy who has been plucked from the ranks and elevated to the dizzy heights of 'voice of the gods'. OOOHAAAH! He gets to go to work every day and Live The Dream. Working on MMO's and hanging with the cool kids and just *every freaking day* he gets to sit in on planning meetings and go 'do lunch'. And he's just got to tell somebody, cos this is the coolest thing since getting to grips with Mary Jane behind the bleachers... except *the players* take every last wittering of the Willing Fool as Holy Writ and, when some bluesky thinking bit of 'well maybe what if' gets kicked around the internet as a bit of' cast iron sure fire this is gonna happen'.

Long time ago wanted to get into game design. But seriously, having seen the green crayon scrawlings of some of 'teh f4nz' I'd be going to work in a stab vest and living under an assumed name. You plebs don't deserve me, and Lord knows, i don't deserve the sort of flak and grief that'd come with a job like that.

Did (insert random dev name here) lie? I dunno, I don't think he even though t it through as far as that.
Did the player base grab at one idea and build it into a whole empire... gosh, as if.
Are there players hanging on in the hope of a miracle and that the King Under The Hill will rise and lead them to vicotry/salvation/Chucky Cheese?
Are there devs that think their game would just be freaking awesome if it wasn't for the asshole customers and their "I pay for your home, boy, so git back in that cubicle and code me some dragonz..."

(Originally posted on MMORPG. Much of the above was stolen from a dev blog and referred to MMO devs in general. I'ts not just the SOE devs that can come off as the offcasts from The Muppet Show or just the SWG player base that are forthy mouthed zealots. *everymucker is like that*)

On RMT

2006-06-30T13:11:00.000Z

Jeff Freeman writes:

I disagree with this assessment of gold farmers, in reference to Dan’s proposal:

What Rubenfield espouses isn’t RMT: as most understand it, RMT is player trading with player (or farmer, or arbitrage trader, or what have you.) It’s still understood that the money came from somewhere. It isn’t counterfeit currency (unless your game has a dupe, which it probably does); it was earned, by fair means or foul, by someone.

But the money and items that farmers produce are created from thin-air, and would not exist otherwise. Farmers are producing at a rate beyond what a normal player, playing normally, would produce. The impact on the economy is no different at all than if the game company simply created that same number of items, that same amount of cash, and sold it on the web. Also, I think “farmer” is too gentle a term. They’re more like strip-miners: extracting resources and damaging the environment at the same time.

(Having to tread warily here)
Wholly agree that 'farmers' is too mild a term and that, in one particular game environment the farmers genuinely were stripminers.

The game mechanic allowed players to drop mining equipment to extract resources which were then sold on at low cost (though a marvellous bazaar and vendor system) converting the resource to credits which were then sold to other players for hard cash.

This had two main effects. One was the economic effect of having $foo resource dumped onto the marked for little more than it cost to extract which made life difficult for the 'dust crop' farmer artisans to compete (though admittedly it also allowed them to pick up raw materials in bulk to convert into items, but that's a whole other avenue of investigation)

The second was the actual environmental impact of the harvester farms which occupied huge tracts of 'land' which would otherwise have been open for creature spawns, battlegrounds, etc. This disruption (real or perceived) to the spawning of creatures hunted by other players for resources, advancement and fun was a good analogue to real world industrial impact and, as such, is a reasonable argument for the case that credit farmers DO impact on the playability of the game for other players.

The presence of the harvesting equipment was visually intrusive, the huge grids where players had collaborated (or multiple account holders had used lot-share methods) to place literally hundreds of large harvesters was, fromthe PoV of a PvE gamer aesthetically horrific.

The harvesters also generated considerable amounts of lag causing rubberbanding when a player drove into the area near them or creature warping if you were trying to clear a lair among them.

Again, this was a direct impact on playability, for some players it was a 'barrier to play'.

Had the game company opted to make the resources available for purchase in a way similar to that being suggested to counter the RMT farmers the immediate difference would have been that there would have been NO server farms. Crafters could have bought the stacks of resources that they wanted, at cost+, and toddled off to merrily grind their way through the endless shirts/crafting tools needed to gain mastery of their profession. Specialist crafters could and would still place harvesters to get specific reources required for specific products.

All would have been right in the world, or would it...

I rather suspect that the farmers would have found something else they could make a % on and then that would get hammered by them until the rest of the player base squeaked.

Scott Jennings Nails Crafting

2006-06-30T12:22:00.000Z

Scott Jennings Nails Crafting

The Forum Troll Explained

2006-06-30T00:38:00.000Z

Penny Arcade toon that just sums it up perfectly...

Why Devs should just shut up and Create...

2006-06-30T00:32:00.000Z

Scott Jennings of Broken Toys (who I'm currently building a pedastal for in my pantheon of gaming deities) rocked my socks off tonight with the following observations on the relationship between the MMO dev/CSR crew and 'the horde', or, you and me and the rest of the evil player fiends.

"most MMO developers should never, ever, EVER talk to players directly. Good lord. You think community people piss off the player base? Never let them near the bitter programmer who’s been on a live team for over three years and views his subscriber base as a pack of ravenous mongoloid zombie hordes with attention deficit disorder. People who may be excellent programmers, artists, or designers may have really lousy people skills.
Even if the developer isn’t a frothy blend of ennui and hatred, the alternative is in many ways worse. Picture the guy who’s been plucked from the community of gamers and is LIVING HIS DREAM! He gets to WORK ON GAMES! WOOOH! And MMOS! HOOAH! It’s the big show, and every day… every FREAKING DAY he’s sitting in on a meeting planning out incredibly cool stuff that is going to ROCK YOUR WORLD OFF, and he just has to tell SOMEONE… and then the producer gets to deal with the community seeing yesterday’s brainstormed three bagger as a promise with the weight of Holy Writ."

I'm not going to draw the obvious connections to, ahem, certain crew members over at Planet SWG but, c'mon, we KNOW you feel this way about us, and, funnily enough, we feel the same way!

Nero. Rome. Fiddle...

2006-06-27T21:27:00.000Z

Today, at 12 noon BST, the SW:G servers went down for a patch update, or, in the the devs NuSpeak "Publish 1.1". The servers would typically have been expected to be down for 2 hours give or take, but by mid afternoon Garva is posting that there's a problem and that they'll be down for another 3-4 hours.

Well, they were still resting at 7pm... not entirely sure when they eventually went back up but they'd staggered to life before 10pm BST.

While all this was going on, Helios, Lead Designer (and I'm starting to really think he means Lead as in the metal) posts:

Helios_SOE wrote (06-27-2006 06:20 PM) :

... anyone up for a friendly skirmish on Restuss/TC while we wait for the servers to load?

So, while Rome burned, figuratively speaking, Helios finds time to go play Boomstick and Glowsticks. BRILLIANT!

Nobody thought of actually using the time to go onto the Test Centre and looking at the shitload of bugs that have been reported and that are STILL unfixed? Maybe try reproducing some of the LoS issues? Address the fact that TC is effectively a different game from Live as the frogs spew out gear that's not available to Live? That the TC economy has been royally buttfucked over and over again to the extent that the few non-combat toons around are the alts of people who used to give a flying fuck about the game and how it was tested?

Nah... too busy poncing about in his 800k buffed godmode way, getting his arse kissed by the fanbois.

Just remember, when it does go tits up, this is how Helios_SOE addresses issues, by going outside and playing.

Raph and 40 Ways To Be A Better Games Designer

2006-06-27T10:19:00.000Z

Game guru and all round weird beard Raph Koster has posted a list of ways to be a better game designer.

Some seriously iportant key points in there and they don't *just* apply to game design. I can think of other project management situations where they'd have saved a lot of tears...

Canon? Isn't that a company that makes cameras?

2006-06-27T01:21:00.000Z

Canon? Isn't that a company that makes cameras? Well it might as well be as far as the SW:G devs are concerned.

I'm really ticked at the city of Restuss being flattened as there is absolutely no mention of this event in any of the books or films and you would think it's the sort of thing that people might have mentioned... "Oooh, you don't want to go touching that big red button... remember Restuss!!" kind of thing.

But I'm more ticked at the devs introducing some sort of Mandalorian *style* armour and that it's going to be the same armour for both Imperials and Alliance.

Now, the Alliance I can see using 'any old surpluss kit' that they were able to get their hands on. You can just see some Toydarian sidling up to Mon Mothma "Hey preddy laydee, I got some armour in a freight speeder out back, real good. It's a bit old but oi its qvalidy schtuff..." and offloading a few container loads of hookey gear.

But the EMPIRE?? Okay, I don't know if anyone has noticed but one of the *big* things about the Empire is that it has a centralised supply structure issuing standard equipment built to a pattern that allows immediate repair or replacement in the field either by requisition from stores or 'field supply' from fallen colleagues.

Everything from their Star Destroyers to haircuts is made to a pattern. That way you don't suddenly find that you've dropped an ST detachment into the Tatooine Sector but that the local commisars have decided to use local manufacturers and, well, bone armour is just SO in... and blasters? Well, we decided to go over to these new smaller power units... what, they don't fit your kit? You should have brought more...

SOME Imperial operatives do wear non-standard issue kit but they are few and far between and tend to be highly specialist operatives. You can bet they've got a standard EI dress uniform and battledress in the locker at their billet though....

But some sort of scavenged surplus equipment that was owned by who? Mandalorians? Some sort of terrorists like the Rebels? I just can't see it....

The devs have tried developing a bit of a story to explain the Reduction of Restuss. A power pack that could fuel a Star Detroyer but it's only the size of a backpack... OK, I'll buy that, but answer me these questions first... Why don't we get to see it? Why aren't there spy missions (and counterspy missions) in the lead up? Surely an energy source that could shift a Star Destroyer would need more mass than can be held in a backpack? And, having gone to the trouble of working in THAT story line... who the heck owned all this armour and these "Templar Knight" weapons? Not a mention.. they're just 'there'.

Y'know, you might have guessed it, but I've got a bad feeling about this...

The Restuss Memorial.

2006-06-27T00:48:00.000Z

The second settlement founded on the Naboo moon of Rori, Restuss rose from tradegy. The city was originally constructed to serve as a quarantine area during a devastating Brainworm Rot Plague that affected Naboo and many outlying systems. The first inhabitants were therefore doctors, missionaries, and the afflicted. When the plague was crushed, the Republic ordered that Restuss remain quarantined for several years, for fear that the disease would somehow resurface. During this crisis, the citizens of Restuss developed a deep distrust for authority. An unarmed revolt eventually ensued, and the Republic reluctantly lifted the quarantine. Huge portions of Restuss, including the hospital and detainment center, were razed to the ground in the ensuing riots. Restuss was then rebuilt around a small starport, which still serves as the town's primary meeting place and financial center.

Restuss is located on the northern shores of the Narmle Bog. Like the city of Narmle, Restuss is largely surrounded by swamplands. Perhaps because of its history of the fact that Governor Ferrox rarely visits, Restuss seems even further removed from Naboo politics that its sister city. It's not uncommon to meet a Restuss citizen who has difficulty identifying the current Queen. Restuss seems even less interested in galactic dealings: the populace rarely discusses the raging civil war, but when they do, it is as if the conflict is taking place in some far distant corner of the galaxy.

By contrast, local politics on Restuss are hugely important. Restuss has hundreds of laws and ordinances, many of which are over a century old. Although Restuss is self-governed by elected officials, the election process is long and arduous and often produces results that only Restuss natives can understand. The city often seems mired in bureaucracy. Fortunately, the numerous laws do seem to favor local merchants, who thrive in the city. Trade is only lightly-regulated and the city is known for its extensice access to black market goods, including weapons.

The inhabitants of Restuss are hard-working, but suspicious of outsiders. This paranoia protects a community that is actually extremely giving and supportive of their own. The inhabitants celebrate together often, and at night the local cantina is often overflowing. Because the locals do not prey on one another, crime is virtually unknown.

Source: http://swg.allakhazam.com/db/cities.html?swgcity=26

During an outbreak of brainworm rot some two hundred years before the
Battle of Naboo, the Advisory Council commissioned the construction of
a second spaceport on Rori; this city, known as Restuss, was used for
decades as a quarantined processing center for colonists traveling to
Naboo. Although both Restuss and Narmle were built by Naboo architects,
most of the moon's current colonists have been drawn from other, less
hospitable worlds, including Iridonia and Ryloth. The Gungans, who
colonized the Naboo moon of Ohma-D'un, have also established small
outposts on Rori.

Source: http://swg.allakhazam.com/db/cities.html?swgcity=26

Quests for Restuss included:

Bark Mite Samples

Trained Tusk-cat (Draya No. 1)

Arts Jubilee Holo Thief (Draya No. 2)

Arts Jubilee Holo Smuggler (Draya No. 3)

Protect the Chief Administrator (Draya No. 4)

Deliver to Briska Gil (Indintra No. 1)

Deliver to Shaultra Loraweet (Indintra No. 2)

Dinner Party Invitation Delivery (Ajuva No. 1)

Imported Corellian Gubburs (Magur No. 1)

Talusian Guf Drolg (Magur No. 2)

Join the Hunting Elite (Lord Sloan Rusper No. 1)

Maestro's Invitation (Hefsen No 1)

The Runaway Gualmam (Hefsen No. 2)

Wealthy Patron (Hefsen No. 3)

You're only meant to blow the bloody doors off!!

2006-06-25T14:46:00.000Z

"Help us Restuss Event, You're our only hope..."
If this is the devs last ditch rally to try and save the game (and let's face it, they're not exactly shouting about MORE stuff acomin') then I hate to say it, but we really are in a bad way.

It's a very different game from SW:G now. It is SWBattlefront with a bit of an MMO twist. Is that good or bad, well, that's a whole other debate.

Was it fun. Yes.
Was it immersive. Well... yeah, kinda...
Was it consistent/coherent withteh SW:G world vision? Hell no.
Would I log in and play PvP Round the Houses every night? I'd rather practise dentistry on myself with rusty tools.

Folk are going to be well disappointed when they see how little is actually in this 'expansion that isn't an expansion'.

There is some lvl35 combat stuff (kill 40 troops).
There is some crafting. (make blasters and other items)
There is some space mining (remember, that generates NO xp and is in the Kessel zone so, hah, newbs, stay home)

There's a LOT of collecting of 'commendations' to be done (earned by doing the above, over and over and over again) and you DO get rewards when you hand in the commendations. But we're talking 800 commendations for one piece of armour (at 40 faction kills per piece, go do the math).

The phrase MASSIVE TIME SINK and 'thin experience' spring to mind.

The problems:

No real tools for group/squad/battlefield management.
The simple lack of a planet chat makes if blimmin' difficult to coordinate getting people together, working out strategy, deveoping tactics, etc. OK OK so an organised player would set up a channel and macro in basic squad commands, but c'mon...

Clone Zerging and Clone Camping.
With the battlefield being less than 1km across this becomes a major issue.
Last night the Rebels stormed the 400m from Rebel Base to the town, flushed through the city and out the other side in a matter of minutes. There was some resistance from the outnumbered Imperials but through attrition and sheer weight of numbers they were forced back.
A large part of the Rebel force continued out of town in pursuit of the retreating Imperials and, after 400m or so, were within the Imperial Sanctuary. This resulted in SF Rebels being right outside the area the Imperials were cloning into and much complaint about clone camping. (Simple answer, don't declare PvP in the sanctuary zone, heal up, get out of Dodge and THEN go overt)

NPC AI
It's crap.
Long lines of ~24 Imp or Rebel troops, marching in single column is the least 'starwarsy' troop movement I have ever seen. Hell, the meatwads in SWBF2 are smarter with their AI turned right down.
They didn't act like soldiers, they didn't even behave like the ordinary faction NPCs. They were just there as cannon fodder. (This refers to the troops spawning in town. Those out inthe free fire zones did seem to have different AI but were all silver elite, lol)

And that's sad, because it WAS fun.... kinda.

(First posted at Star Wars Galaxies with Yivvits and MrBubble 25th June, 2006)

I wish I'd said that!

2006-06-24T23:32:00.000Z

Kwong-Wah, a SWG Test Centre veteran and all round decent bloke let rip at 'the Dread Lord Helios':

Original Post

Helios_SOE wrote:

AD_MK wrote:

how do you expect the system to be properly tested if you're just going to skip it and bump onto phase 2?

for gods sake, let us test things!

The QA departments at SOE and Lucas Arts have been testing this event for weeks. This weekend is more intended to give you guys a try at it before it rolls out on live servers; it's not what we rely on for testing.

To the original poster, I find the testing comments hilarious. I've been absent from TC for six months. However I kept track of everything that was going on with TC, the remergence of frogs, the lack of subsequent rollback, the screw up of the TC economy as a result. Why I find the testing comments hilarious? I'll tell you, every minute I'm on TC, I'm asked where the hell did I get the elder title from, where do I get this, that from? When I'm busy checking on something a bug or functionality of something, I get called an arrogant git because I don't have time to reply to everyone on the server who wants to know where to get pearls from. Frankly since coming back there are only a handful of people I've ran into who cares about testing on the server. Those that do are old time regular TC players and the correspondents. I'm not surprised from the treatment I've recieved that so many of the old TC players have quit the server or moved onto the live servers. I seriously doubt 99% of the players I ran into even know how to file a bug report, all they seem to care about is why the heck the jedi options on the frog aren't working. Virtually all the people I ran into are busy pvping at the frogs or in front of the starport. I have no problem with them doing that. What I do have a problem with is those that claim to be testing when in fact they are not. This isn't directed at the quoted poster but some of the newer residents of the TC server.

To Helios, truth hurts when it comes to TC that's its no longer serving it's purpose. Who's to blame here? The players, the devs or the damn idiot who refused to rollback the TC database after putting those damn frogs on the server. In one shot the frogs screwed up the Test Center economy, handicapped all trader professions and made the server one nightmare place to be. And you have the audiacity to wonder why the server population was dwindling or why testing wasn't happening? It was well documented frogs do not promote testing and are short term fixes.

There's a saying "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". Time and time again people on TC had been promised about being treated right, time and time again this has failed. YOu can not expect people to care if you do not care about them first. The old TC community can be quite understanding if you let them, but stab them in the back more than once, they'll burn you at the stake before anything else.

Want a solution to this nightmare on TC? First rollback the server back to prior to this frog incident. Or do a complete wipe and start again. Cause without either of these, the economy is a seriously messed up place and offers all the old traders (or even new traders) no incentive to craft.

Second add incentives for people to actually be on TC, double/triple xp, additional character slots are some examples of what to do. Greater interaction between devs/QAs and the community on the Test Center. Probably plenty of other things you could try. Heck do what they do with EQ1, let people who play on TC regularly have free access to the expansions, but not on the live servers.

But from what I've been hearing from some old hands, I guess we should be lucky those that treat TC as their play server to still have a home. Probably the best thing to do if its purpose is no longer for testing is just to rename it and make it a live server.

===========================================================
Kwong-Wah

Survivor of the CU wars; Died during the NGE conflict.

Token Exchange and the profile of rise/decay

2006-06-24T20:12:00.000Z

Something I have been giving a great deal of thought to over a number of years is the way that people, as social entities, collect experiences through interacting with their environment and how those experiences (I'll refer to them as 'tokens') have different values for different people and caneven have different values for an individual at different times.

To elaborate. A lifejacket is not a terribly useful or fashionable item, but it has a value for people who will be going on a boat that is significantly different to the value that people who will not be going on a boat. Even within the subgroup of people going onto a boat, the lifejacket will have a significantly different value if circumstances dictate that they are going to have to leave the boat. You can also imagine that an old, salt stained lifejacket could have yet another value to the widow of a salior lost at sea, to a sailor who survived thanks to that lifejacket or to a junk dealer scavenging at a garage sale...

Okay, now that I've got you all going "EH??" let's push on, or, to use another token "moving forward.."

SWG is in itself both a discreet token and a collection of tokens any of which could conceivably have a value greater than the 'whole SWG' token. Focusing in on the game experience for a PvPer and a crafter it is not difficult to see that the crafting minigame has little to no value for the fighter whereas it is, for many crafters, a hugely valuable element within the game structure.

The value of the whole game token varies as a player progresses through the normal rise-plateau-decline profile of the consumption of an experience token. Thus, a fast, easy to learn game has a short, steep rise going from 'novice' to 'expert' in a very short timescale. A game, or minigame, with a slower learning process goes from 'novice' to 'expert' over a longer period. The value that the players put on that learning experience token will be affected by the duration of the learning period. In short, the longer the learning period the greater the emotional investment and, presumably, the greater the feeling of 'achievement'.

Once the player has reached 'expert' level they enter a plateau phase and will remain there until they begin to become bored. As humans we constantly seek out new challenges, new experiences. We seek to obtain additional tokens which we have a value for. Thus a trivial crafting process becomes a chore, an easily defeated enemy is dismissed as yard trash or just a pest. As long as the game continues to provide these experiences and we continue to have a value for them we won't enter the decline stage of the consumption profile.

However, the speed of that deline will be in part determined by a) the perceived 'height' of the plateau and b) the amount of emotional investment in the character/skillset/game experience.

Thus a player who has risen rapidly, had a medium to poor mixture of experiences at plateau level and has become disenchanted with the game will have a very rapid decline and exit. Players who have invested considerably more time and effort in getting to the 'top' and/or have had a rich and rewarding experience while at the plateau phase will descend more slowlly, possibly even forming minor plateau as their involvement with the game fritters out but they find other distractions to delay their final exit.

We have moved from a game model that encouraged a slow climb, with intermediate level sections on the way up and that permitted the player to choose to "apply the brakes" on the way down from which they could once again build up their involvement in the game by exploring new experiences (deskilling and relevelling) with a model that actively encourages a fast rise, shortened period of gameplay (kill loot repeat is only 'satisfying' or worth anything to the player for a limited time) and, once the player has decided they've had enough lacks the mechanisms to encourage them to rebuild / reinvest.

This creates a consumption profile that is much more of a 'hump' than a low flat curve. The shorter end to end pathway for a players gaming life is critical to the long term viability of the game. MMO's such as SWG, as we all know, demand a monthly payment from players. The players, consciously or subconsciously, weigh that real world monetary value (in itself just another 'token') against the rewards of the game (in terms of fun, experience, community, achievement, etc) and are more likely to find that the monetary token outweighs the experiental token when there is a shorter game curve. Quite simply, there IS less reward.

The further reducing of long term playable functions, such as the crafting minigame, city politics, etc, by devaluing their skillbases means that you are pushing players who formed part of the long term investors into a style of gameplay that is unlikely to provide the type of experiential return that they enjoy. In short, you will reduce the value of their game experience and increase the speed with which they approach decline/exit.

This is counterproductive in the extreme. By shortening the time that individual players are loyal to the game you increase churn. This means you have to spend more and more time (and money) in attracting new customers. Resistance to taking up a game will be greater if there are elements such as a monthly fee, short game experience, lack of variety etc, and that will in time make recruitment of new players more and more difficult. The rate of churn will eventually catchup with or exceed the capacity to bring new blood onboard and the game as a whole will enter a period of decline.

That the game was previously in decline (qv John Smedley's admission that they were heamoraging players) but has survived thus far is largely down to the persistance of the elder player community who felt they had sufficient investment to stay postNGE in the hope of a radical revamp that would justify the continuance of their investment. It is debatable whether the current combat changes, targetting, upcoming Restuss event etc will be enough. What is indisputable is that it would be madness to hack away at the one remaining solid leg, the crafter/social comunity and precipitate a decline in their involvement.

Once you reduce the value of a token, debasing it, it is incredibly difficult to reverse that process. Usually it requires a far greater investment than there was originally just to get back to a 'starting' level. I have serious doubts that the current dev team (who you will notice have by and large got a very differnt 'value' for the game than it's original dev team had) have either the resources or commitment to make that size of investment, especially as they seem to be overly focused on 'slimming down' the whole package.

Who is known for...

2006-06-23T15:20:00.000Z

Jeff Freeman slips the yoke of domestication and blogs about some interesting google-fun for Friday

[SW:G] 3rd Anniversary - Player v Dev PvP battle.

2006-06-20T00:45:00.000Z

Well, this is gonna be a short report...

Server was taken down for a bump and brought back up just about on time for the official start.

My toon was already in Theed and it was something to see over 100 players all log in simultaneously outside the SP. Headed towards the edge of town where I was going to wait to find out what was going to happen when a sysmsg popped up with two waypoints, one for Imps, one for Rebs.

ITV's were called, shuttles hopped, yachts spawned and everyone started heading towards Moenia. The server went down.

Pex posted a note that they had 'found something' that needed immediate attention and the server would be back up in about an hour. True enough, about an hour later it was back up and running.

Loaded in, headed to the Rebel waypoint where there was a good sized crowd around the frog. (Rough estimate 75 - 100 players) Hooked up with some TC regulars and we all proceeded to stand about going "so, what next?". The next hour was largely taken up just trying to get the group formed up, people couldn't travel in because of lag, people in the area couldn't chat due to lag.

I realised, after ~45mins, that I was taking hits from a BH standing 30m away. I couldn't target him to fire back, lol. Ran out of range, came back in fast and still couldn't do any damage.

Just then a sysmsg came up announcing that 'after a frenzied battle the Rebels had won'. Which was news to us as we couldn't see anything that looked like fighting apart from some newbs dueling at the frogs with flamers.

Minutes later we got a 'thank you for coming' and that was it... The Battle of Moenia. I didn't even get a chance to take screenies, lol. I did have FRAPS running but again, nothing filmed as nothing happened.

Boy, am I looking forward to the next one AND the Restuss Event.

oh yeah....

The murloc says...

2006-06-19T00:46:00.000Z

ROFLMAO!

A life in the day of a Star Wars Crafter

2006-06-17T14:29:00.000Z

Crafter blog.
Day One. Today I hand sampled blistersonthebum, an extruded ore.

Day Two. I placed 2000 units of blistersonthebum on the bizaar. I will be rich soon!!

Day Nine. Whaffatuck? My blistersonthebum disappeared of the bazaar because nobody bought it? Don't they know how much I suffered getting that?? I quit.

Day Nine, part two. OK, I'll not quit. Maybe I'll make shirts instead. Tomorrow I will sample enough materials to make some shirts. I'll sell them and buy a harvester.

Day Twelve. OK, what is wrong with these people? I've had black shirts (Imperial) on the bazaar since yesterday and not one has sold. There's other shirts at 20000cr on there so they must sell..

Day Twenty Three. By the golden apples of Eris, pilot is way too much fun. Must try crafting again soon.

Karen Travis and the Grimy Underbelly of Fandom

2006-06-17T12:37:00.000Z

I sometimes wonder at the very vocal rantings of some of the SW(G) fanbase so was interested when Karen Traviss blogged:

"I'm still mired in some excruciatingly painful deadlines but I wanted to drop by and thank you all. And I'm sorry that I didn't even drop a hint about the Boba novella. You know me. The silent service... Can neither confirm nor deny etc etc etc.

Since DarkMoose blogged on the activities of the grimy underbelly of fandom last week, I've had lots of mail from you folks and it's touched me deeply. It's lovely to know that so many of you care and want to support me when I'm targeted by trolls. (Yes, okay Moosie, trolls - I forgot how old this behaviour is, and that it had a name long ago. It even predates the internet.) Thank you, everyone." Full article at http://blogs.starwars.com/karentraviss/133

Nien Nunb Speaks!

2006-06-14T09:18:00.000Z

The Ultimate Nien Nunb Page!

Apparently ;)

Tide's Horizon: Truth Revealed (Raph on SWG Quest)

2006-06-14T07:56:00.000Z

Adam MacDonald rambles on in an absent minded stylee about mysterious SWG NPC spawn.

Tide's Horizon: Truth Revealed (Raph on SWG Quest)

FWIW, this NPC was still being sought after I started by people who hoped / believed she had something to do with unlocking that FS slot.

Little random events like that can have long lasting effects, no?

Sam Spade. Imperial pilot, jedi and wino

2006-06-10T14:46:00.000Z

Well, my post NGE toon is having some major identity issues.

I'm an Imperial pilot coming to terms with being Force Sensitive and was a bit freaked out at finding myself on Tansari Point after having been shot down BY the Empire. I can only assume that some idiot mercenery was jamming the IFF frequencies again, but c'mon, even a sunblind Sullustan can tell teh differnece between a TIE fighter and, well, anything else in space.

Moreso, that treacherous scum deserter Solo and his furbag pet was there to 'rescue' me, promptly gunning down some innocent troopers who were slacking off on a ref break in the hangers. I went along with them on that rustbucket freighter (damn fool, he thinks I didn't see his 'hidden compartments'? Just wait till I get to a terminal and update the Imperial database) hoping to lull him into a false sense of security and find a link between him and the Rebellion.

Oh good grief. The memory of that flight still haunts me. Perhaps it was the emotional trauma of being forced into shooting down more innocent, law abiding Imperials (note to self, must get a better ship than a TIE, they're too easy to light up) or the close presence of the Emperors henchman Vader, but it was after that trip that I found I was becoming more closely aligned with the Force.

Still, needs must, as they say. Worse things happen at sea and all that. Down to Mos Eisley on some bassackwards desert planet called Tatooine. I don't know what it is with Solo but he's got me hooked up with some of his underworld cronies already. What a patsie!

And some petty criminal, Bubba, Booby, Bib, something like that. Ugly kid, bad teeth, looks like he fell out the ugly tree and chewed every branch on the way down... he's on my comm day and night telling me that I'm to work for Jabba the Hutt? The bollocks I will, I'm headed for Bestine and the nearest Imperial admin centre. I've got to report in. Tho the paperwork for losing a TIE fighter off Ord Mandell and then explaining about the Imperial pilots and troopers I've killed so far, to say nothing of being seen in the company of old Bloodstripe Solo....

Well, anyhow, I end up working as a hired thug for Jabba the Hutt. Yeah, that made so much sense. About as much sense as working for that Watto thing... what was THAT about? Apart from killing more of my Imperial brothers?

I did manage to get some time to commune with the Force and met some cool folk who helped me understand that the Light path is one of seeking balance. So I'm doing my best to be at one with the Force and to strive to stay on the Light side.

Which is why slaughtering those escaped prisoners for the Hutt rankled so much. And I'm now worried about what Lady Valarian is going to have to say to the Imperial sector command about this idiot jeti running about the planet killing her henchmen and putting a bit of a crimp in her business activities.

Fortunately an Imperial contact got me hooked up woth some work for the RSF on Naboo. And a merry old time that was. Killing terrorists, petty criminals, random thugs. I suppose the Force has a plan for me. At least that old woman, Trehla, in Eisley seemed to think it had. Hope she was right...

I worked for the Royal Security Forces, on detachment from the Imperial Fleet obviously, for a while. Broke a couple of crime rings, smashed a smuggling ring, tortured some terrorists.... happy days. But all too soon it was over and I was posted to backwater planet after backwater planet with no feedback whatsoever from Imperial Command. I think they've forgotten about me, I mean, I'm just a number to those beurocrats...

and so I find myself harrassing farmers and beachcombers on Corellia. Yeah, more police work. More private detective work would be closer to the truth.

You know, sometimes I wake up in the night and see myself as Philip Marlow, or maybe Sam Spade... the gumshoe with the light saber.

It's really not the life I had imagined for myself. Was gonna serve my time with the Fleet, then buy a little farm someplace and raise durnis for the snackfood industry. But here I am, living out the life of some half assed detective / hired gun, running to and fro, killing Drall patriots because "they might not be up to something now but they will be eventually", huh? What in Drokks name is that about?

And, now I've come to terms with being Force Sensitive, well, where's my support network? Where's my training? My induction into the Jetii Temple? How can I ever pursue a path to the Light side if I keep getting sent to kill random innocents 'just to make the numbers up'??

You know, if alcohol had any effect in this game I'd curl up with a big bottle of Vasarian Brandy and get out of my head on spice... I'm just one crazy mad mixed up Force sensitive Imperial pilot deserter thug scum...

It can't get any worse than this, can it?

Chapter 1. A new beginning or more of the same but nu and improved?

2006-06-09T11:20:00.000Z

Dem bombad devs over at SWG have been at da crunchin' again and meesa still bogglin....

Weapon conversion:

DXR6 carbine/rifle was my weapon of choice since way before CU. It was always just a lovely big brutal beast spitting gobs of superheated plasma into the moist tender parts of my targets... (I'm a pacifist irl, btw, before you start running and hiding your kids) My current one isn't 'the best' I've had but it was pretty handy. Decent damage, high rate of fire and a rifles range.

Now it's a bit pants. In fact, I've got reward SWORDS that do more damage, lol.

OTOH, I found my Nym's have converted really nicely and my trusty Tusken rifles are ideal for PvE.

Targetting:

Meh... I can pretty much manage without all that assistance. Just point and shoot....

Combat. PvE.

As a lvl 90 spy I don't find THAT much difference. It starts getting ugly I hit smoke and rest up, then kill the bugger. I've done krayts already, avatar blackscale... but I got my ass handed to me by some lvl 30 legacy thugs as they swarmed me and even with gas, smoke and running away stealthed I still went over.

I don't PvP. Not unless I've done something daft and gone overt, in which case I die fast.

Creature AI? Oh,that's borked.

UI? Don't get me started. It's still fugly AND they have added another non-scalable, non-customisable flickerbar which, if truth be told, seems to be there JUST to break the UI mods that people were using.

Seriously, there's something in their attitude to the UI that's like a 5 year old kid that wants you to play and be his buddy but you have GOT to play by HIS rules or he's gonna throw a paddy....

[SWG] Goin' back to it's roots, yeah...

2006-06-08T11:48:00.000Z

Over at MoggNation Michael salutes SWG Returning to it's roots, kinda.

He finishes off with the questions "What if you’re over that level? Or what if CorSec hates you? Where’s the love? I guess, at least, they’re trying something new."

So of course the latent fanboi in me just HAD to reply:

Level. Apparently (and we've just got to trust them on this) there will be higher level stuff in the later chapters, as the story unfolds, in the fullness of time...

CorSec hate? /emote sigh... if only. Sadly faction beyond Imp/Reb means nothing at the moment. You can be a CorSec murdering son of a bothan and still they'll welcome you in with open arms.

Where's the love... we's all a-askin' dat meesta, eesa all de bombad crunchin', deres no lovin in de galaxies...

And, yes. They are trying. Very.

Still. Interesting times, eh? 6-8 hours downtime scheduled today to roll out "Chapter 1" and then we'll see. One thing I CAN guarantee and that's that some folk will be happy clappers and others will be well ticked.

(Well, I would have replied if the cussed security tag number verification thing didn't have a shitty on and keep telling me that I can't 'kin read.... )

Rogue_5's Comlink. Is it LD?

2006-06-08T01:29:00.001Z

Just noticed a new tab on the SW:G official forums, the "Feature Portal" which takes you, wonder of wonders, to a nice shiny new page that lists a load of the regualr features for the forums in a nice, clear, shiny format.

Had to laugh my socks off though at the entry for Grant McDaniel's "comlink":

Rogue_5's Comlink
Grant "Rogue_5" McDaniel is the SOE producer and Star Wars Galaxies Team leader. Rogue_5 posts a weekly update to the community. Don't miss out on this transmission!

Well, I'm all agog and just waiting to see what fun, exciting and starwarsy news the iconic Rouge 5 (sic) has to offer.... so I click and whaddaya know...

The first two articles were posted on his behalf, he's not actually posted a weekly update since the end of April and that was only the second he'd managed since the previous stint when helios was posting fo him.

On checking the Rogue_5 tracker, he's not managed to log on to the forums in a while either.
(Date Last Visited 05-16-2006 04:38 PM)

Now I'm not ragging on the wee fella, heck knows, the last time we saw him (on the E3 video) he was looking hunted enough, but seriously, when SW:G Dev's go quiet the fans start wondering just what the heck is coming next...

2006-06-08T01:29:00.000Z

Rogue_5's Comlink
Grant "Rogue_5" McDaniel is the SOE producer and Star Wars Galaxies Team leader. Rogue_5 posts a weekly update to the community. Don't miss out on this transmission!

SWG Graphics

2006-06-04T13:35:00.000Z

Been out on TC taking some screenies around Mos Entha. A while back (over a year ago) Thortac, Zaw and I did the same exercise as we were totally hyped up about the 'new improved' graphics. And believe me, they really were awesome.

I'm posting todays screenies just now but will be adding the 'before' shots once I track them down in the Ranger Archives.

Mos Entha showing the Fallen Star

Last time I did this run I stood here in an HTFB with the BE and Ranger correspondants.

Not entirely a vanity shot, but showing character shadows, character detail and 'glare' off metalic objects such as the big dangly necklace thing...

This shot is illustrative of several problems with SWG's graphics. The 'sliced salmon' texture for the sand is slightly glossy and unnatural, the edge of the dunes here can clearlybe seen to be quite angular and not rounded as they used to be.

The shadow settings are on volumetric simple, but the shadow cast by the cupa is totally wrong looking. The shadows on the buildings are far too harsh and blocky.

Oh, and yeah, that's Ozies house that buried itself on the 15th September 2005*. Have given up trying to get it dug out by QA and will just have to accept that it'll draw maintainence from his bank account from now on.

(*had a CSR ticket open for over six months, pm'd and mailled a couple of QA, but eventuallyhad to close the ticket voluntarily to submit a fresh one when I got stuck in some architecture.)

Polish that for quality, Julio. ;)

Star Wars Galaxies©, Jump to Lightspeed©, Sony Online Entertainment© and all associated logos are trademarks, or service marks of Sony Online Entertainment©. All rights reserved worldwide. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
All base artwork is copyright ©2006 Sony Online Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Images are displayed for illustrative purposes only. No ownership of the images, characters or items is implied.

Second Life Of Warcraft wiki starts.

2006-05-31T07:32:00.000Z

Second Life Of Warcraft wiki starts.

Cross platform, inter world, metaversal?

OK. Big SL world event with WoW themed avatars, WoW streamed on video and well... just cool stuff.

Looks like project for the week is making a dwarf avatar in SL... where'd I leave them screenies

TiggPost

2006-05-30T16:26:00.000Z

Lady Tiggs writes

/. Sony And The No-Confidence Vote

2006-05-30T09:02:00.000Z

Zonk at Slashdot has this to say on Sony's sniffy attitude to the sheep... sorry, customers

"Sony continues to spend the goodwill it has achieved over the last generation of consoles. As widely reported over the weekend, last Friday CEO for SCE Europe David Reeves spoke to the press. "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games." This 'you'll buy it anyway' attitude has further annoyed gamers already rankling from the announced pricetag."

Full article and links

Game Theory:: Grouping

2006-05-30T08:52:00.000Z

Boy, have I got some big reading to get on with...

Darniaq asks "Where is the Massive"

Grimwell ponders player accountability

Tobold rolls out a Theory of Grouping

And Michael May at MMOG runs with A Theory on the Quality of Grouping

All of which tie rather serendipitously in with a rant that's been building in me recently regarding changes (again) to group XP in SWG and the whole 'drive' of loot based gaming.

Bang! Howdy

2006-05-26T21:08:00.000Z

Bang! Howdy is... well, remember when you were a kid and played cowboys? And the other kid would pull a bigger imaginary gun than yours, and in your kid imagination you'd pull a rifle, and he'd pull a tank??

Oh, look, just go download the client, saddle up and get them dogies movin'...

Dance, dance, you son of a bitch...

2006-05-26T04:06:00.000Z

OK, Speak and Maizie have inadvertantly led me to the really dark side of SW fandom...

I mean, love your dog, pamper him or her and give them treats but... Slave Girl Leia Dog Costume is going waaaay out beyond the reaches of good taste. Or sanity.

Now an EWOK cozzy, that'd be different

Computer and Video Game Stats.

2006-05-25T09:20:00.000Z

OK, some numbers for you all to play with.

ESSENTIAL FACTS ABOUT THE COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY

Research: Annual PC game spending hits $1.4 billion

The Night Riders - SWG FanFic

2006-05-21T22:39:00.000Z

Long after dark, in that close thick air that settles in a room as people sleep, Marek sat patiently, listening to the snoring, grunting and other night noises of his sleeping companions. His chair was resting back against the wall by the door, a blaster on his lap and two kusak hounds sprawled at his feet.

In the shadows he could see the sleeping forms of another six men, most recovering from the previous nights drinking, others twitching as dreams or nightmares rolled through troubled minds. These men slept on pallets, bedrolls or simply on the floor where they could find space. The only bed in the chamber was occupied by the large frame of their master and landlord, Brair of Mospic.

A large man, pale skinned with grey blue eyes, long dark hair and a beard that seemed to bristle when he was angered, Brair was the feudal overlord of the men who slept on the floor of this room, called here for his protection and to make a raiding party which would set out later in the night on behalf of his overlord, Huff Darklighter. Darklighter in turn was subservient to his master, tho he'd never admit it to your face, preferring to think of himself as first among equals.

Marek mused on this and smiled to himself at the thought of the towns people, the sort that lived in Espa, Eisley and Bestine, who looked down on the ranger clans as somehow 'primitive' but completely failed to see that they themselves were just as dependant on their superiors for protection, support, law and order as these people here, his extended family, were on the structired society that had allowed them to survive on the lawless wastes for centuries.

A sharp beeping in his pocket snapped him back to the real world, it was time. Standing up and kicking out at the nearest sleeping form he began waking the men. On the bed Brair's head raised, grunted then with a burst of energy that seemed misplaced in a frame as large as his, he kicked his feet out of the bed, rolled forward and roared "Wakey wakey!! Rise and SHINE! You've 'ad your fun, now I'll 'ave MINE!!" Much muttering and cursing rumbled round the room as the men stood, rubbed sleep from their eyes, gathered their equipment and argued about who was getting to the latrine first, who had kept who awake all night and just what sort of tiime was this for any good living son of the land to be about his business anyway.

Marek sluiced his face with a little precious water and, running his hands over his pockets and pack, mentally noted each piece of equipment, checked webbing and fastenings and with practised ease slid into the breast plate, hands blindly finding the clips and locking the light armour in place over a heavy hide jerkin. Already wearing trousers, reinforced in the seat and knees, and heavy leather boots that came up to the knee and were an idea place to stow a small flask of brandy or a backup blaster, he was ready to move out just a few minutes after his alarm had sounded.

All this was completed in the dark, preserving the groups night vision. Occaisional stumbles, curses and harsh words were to be expected and were ignored by all as everyone contentrated on the task in hand.

Brair strode past Marek into the next room where a breakfast had been left by the women of the house the night previously. Brairs wife, Emm Dee, was the only female to be seen as the raid party assembled in the room, drinking cool beer and eating breads, cheeses and meats from the platters on the table.

Emm Dee spoke to each man in turn, wished him "Safe out, safe in" and quietly checked that they all had their armour fastened properly, had remembered to gather their gear and that even the more nervous, younger men had a kind word to help calm them.

The ranger's women were by no means subservient to the men filling, as they did, a different but equal role in their structired society. While the men were away on raids, at the beck and call of their overlords, the women not only looked after the family and its livestock, but continued with the business of collecting rentals from the small farmers who held land off them, dealing with disputes and trading goods to and from town. Moreover, they were responsible for the defence of the homestead while their men were from home and the number of stories and ballads sung by the rangers of hard fighting womenfolk gave the lie to any notion that these were anything but the equals of their menfolk.

The raid party now moved out of the house and into the courtyard where their mounts were tethered. It was Brairs preference for his men to be mounted on specially bred carrion spats from a stud farm on Corellia. Each man was given a young spat when he came of age, though he owed payment for its upkeep to Brair as 'insurance' in case the beast was killed while on a raid. This payment was often made, not in credits, but in service, attending raids like this one and giving their time to patrol the clans homeland boundaries and protect them against incursion by the sand people, other clans and settlers trying to move out from the cities.

Tonights raid was against one of these settler communities. A group of families from Espa had decided to set up home in one of the side valleys leading from the Mospic plains up into the wastelands behind. This was grazing land for the clans bantha herd and also was the breeding ground of several valuable prey animals such as the desert dewback and Jundland eopie. Darklighter couldn't allow this incursion to go unchecked, not least because the small party sent out under Marek's command last week had failed to impress on the townspeople the need for them to pay adequate insurance for protection against, oh, sandpeople, squill, mysterious night raiders...

The raid party formed up in the large courtyard, palm trees black against the dark blue sky. Moonlight flooded the valley making it as easy for eyes accustomed to the dark to see as well as in daylight. The spats hissed and kicked out as the men wrapped sacking around the birds feet to deaden any sound. All kit was stowed securely and dark cloaks were drawn over their shoulders to further muffle any sound and save moonlight from glistening on blaster barrels or on the blades that most men carried.

Travelling south by south west the silent caravan used patches of shadow to make its way down the valley and up into the wastes, circling round behind the townspeoples settlement. Blair signalled for the men to form a wedge behind him as they came to rest on the blind side of a slight ridge near the collection of tents, half built houses and temporary shelters. A few camp fires burned in the distance, their smoke carrying the scent of roasted nuna and of zucca boar. "See, already they've begun stealing. This insult cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Not only do they steal our lord Darklighters land, they take food from our mouths..." Blair snarled.

Men freed their sword arms of the dark cloaks, others quickly untied the sacking from the spat's feet, keeping clear of the razor sharp hooked claws. Marek slipped the safety toggle off on his blasters, pushed them under the strapping at the front of his mounts saddle and drew the long, curved sword that had been his fathers from its sheath. Around him the faint sussuration of steel told him that others made the same grim preparation as he set his spat's head towards the small settlement, sleeping yet watchful, and waited.

Against the light of the campfires the raiders could see the shadows of several people walking to and fro. Pickets. But the light from the fires would also make their night vision less effective. Typical townies, don't want to stray too far from the light because it comforts them.

Brair turned to face his men and said "Right lads, have at them..." before wheeling round and, first at a trot, then at a full charge, led the raid directly into the new steading.

45 yards from the nearest figure a shout of alarm went up!

Before it was answered the raid party had closed to 10 yards, individual farmers and settlers could now be seen clearly, rushing to find weapons, rushing to find cover.

A split second later and the spats burst over the low sandy berm the farmers had built to keep their livestock within the settlement, the meagre effort at palisading kicked flat by the great powerful legs of the now enraged mounts.

One farmer had the lack of foresight to grab a rifle and bring it round to face directly at Marek's head. The sword blade flashed downwards, crashing through flesh, muscle and bone and reducing the farmers arm to a tattered shred. The laser rifle thudded into the dirt, the mans hand still grasping it.

The raid party charged straight through the settlement, targetting only livestock and the occaisional misguided fool, scattering small dark objects as they thundered through.

Less than a minute from the start of the raid the party burst through the low fence at the rear of the settlement where it split into two groups, one wheeling left, the other right. As the small flares dropped by the raid party began to explode, flooding the settlement with intolerably bright light, the raiders formed an arc, drew their blasters and opened fire on the farmstead. Again, targetting machinery and droids they left little undamaged before wheeling again, forming into a column and riding quietly away into the darkness before heading back northwards and across the valley to arrive back at Brairs homestead shortly before dawn.

Tomorrow a Darklighter liveried patrol would head out, neighbourly like, to enquire what all the noise and flashing was about last night. They'd offer help to relocate, perhaps to rebuild and of course, they'd offer their new neighbours every assistance in keeping the evil Night Riders away.

For a price.

It's All Hunting - SWG FanFic

2006-05-21T22:37:00.000Z

Things had changed for the old ranger and his crew over the years. Things were always changing, life’s like that, so what was the problem?

Sitting in his apartment on the 76th floor of the Coruscant Mining Corporation’s accommodation block in central Coronet City watching the sun try to burn through another layer of smog to glint dully off the herds of speeders and skytrains that flocked round the dark housing towers for the past week now, ken' had had a lot of time to consider the ways life changed over time.

He’d lived in a small town on the desert planet Tatooine for much of his early life. Trained as a craftsman like his father and fathers before before going off to the Academy to learn to be a pilot for the Emperor like all good, loyal citizens were expected to do. Basic training was, as expected, short and brutal. Flight training was equally shrt, if you survived, you could fly. If you didn’t, well, you were an expendable resource after all, plenty more willing, ahem, volunteers waiting to take your place. Fortunately, he could fly but it seemed the Empire had other plans for him…

So, he’d ended up back on Tatooine, beating feet across the damned sands, clearing out pockets of ‘resistance’ and ‘seperatists’ and ‘insurgents’ by any expedient means. You were expected to follow orders, take your squad of troopers to point X, make robust enquiries, remove any potential threat to Imperial stability and to ensure that enough citizens were allowed to survive to ‘educate’ others about the consequences of wrong headedness. Other vermin, like the sandpeople, jawa and kitonaks were just so much target practise. Filthy non-human scum.

But that reasoning didn’t help keep the dreams at bay and, after one particular muon and industrial alcohol fuelled screaming session, he’d been retired from the service on medical grounds. Of course, nobody really retired from the service and his convalescence was to be spent watching for infiltrators and other troublemakers here in C-Net. During the day he’d spend time trekking out into the grasslands with hunting groups, observing, learning and without realising it, beginning to relax and get to like these people.

People. Trained to think of ‘targets’ ‘subjects’ and other dehumanising tags, he’d stopped looking at his fellow citizens as people. But now, working daily with the hunters and hanging out with the miners in the cantina at nights he started to hear more than just complaints about Imperial brutality and started to understand that they too had wants, needs, dreams and hopes. Something inside uncurled from the dark corner it had been hiding in and he realised he had begun to sympathise…

He spent more and more time hunting, travelling to other planets to look for more and more exotic creatures. The hides and meat he brought back in the hold of his ship always sold for a good price to the local artisans and the bio-med suppliers. He grew rich, well, at least ‘comfortable’ and, thanks to his old Imperial connections was able to secure a long lease on this apartment. It was ironic then that he should use this apartment to meet with so many of the separatists, insurgents and other rebels that he’d originally been sent to track down and identify.

They didn’t trust him immediately, that itself was understandable. But over time they began to realise that he could be trusted to gain information for them, carry out small disruption missions and conduct long distance patrols deep into Imperial territory.

He eventually agreed to become a guide for the Alliance, taking small groups into the wilds and training them in survival techniques, how to track, how to skin and flesh carcases and how to live off the land for days or weeks at a time. His knowledge of Imperial military tactics allowed him to train his teams in insurgency and counter-insurgency techniques. They became a fast moving, hard hitting Ranger unit and were rewarded well for their efforts in hindering the Empires progress.

As his squad began to trust him entirely they began to function as one ‘entity’. A target would be identified, they’d move fast and silently to the best position to aquire the target then, with a withering, focused burst of fire, the target would be eliminated and they’d withdraw rapidly, covering any signs of their passing as they went.

Conceal. Observe. Move. Hit. Withdraw. It was a simple tactic. It worked and it created the maximum disruption to the Empire with the minimum cost in lives. Just like hunting the krayt on Tatooine or the Gorax on Endor, target the vital point, hit it as hard as possible, neutralise the threat, kill, harvest, celebrate when you get back to camp safely.

Sitting at the window of his apartment, watching the sun burn through another layer of smog and glinting dully off the herds of speeders and skytrains that flocked round the dark housing towers, ken’ considered ‘change’ and how, if you made the best of it, it wasn’t all that bad really.

--oo00oo—

A quiet chirruping bleep drew his attention to the terminal on his desk. A new prey had been located. An Imperial officer had been identified as the serial killer dubbed “Darth Gaydar”. Using the private holonet chat channels this psychopath had been terrorising the, uhm, alternately gendered for over a year now, luring them to meetings in the undercity which inevitably resulted in a badly mangled corpse being dumped outside a cantina in the middle of the night.

A nice bounty had been offered by the local Seamstress’ Guild for anyone who could stop the fiend in his tracks. A tidy bonus was offered if all wounds were restricted to one small area of the body…. Vindictive old hags those seamstresses.

This mission would need special camouflage and, though he preferred the heft of a rifle, there wasn’t going to be much room to conceal many weapons in this outfit. Hopefully the blaster wouldn't make too freakish a bulge..

Changes, eh? Different kind of camo, thats for sure, but how was he going to negotiate terrain in these heels?

The Droids Tale - SWG FanFic

2006-05-21T22:36:00.000Z

The little droid drifted in the cold blackness of space. Alone.

Slowly ticking off its internal systems it became more and more aware of the fact it was totally and completely alone.

It could neither feel, hear nor see anything that indicated there was anything else within range of any of its senses. Nothing but cold blackness.

Running through the diagnostics for the low level power supply it noticed a small indicator trip over. A tiny red tell illuminated as the low level power supply began recharging the capacitors that helped operate the droids actuators.

Another, another, another. Soon a small bar display of red tells had lit up, casting a very dim glow over the droids maintenance panel. A short beep and the bar turned bright green. The capacitors were now full charged and the Power On Start-up Tests began running on the actuator circuitry.

Internally the droid continued checking subsystems, memory, motive power, all low level systems that permitted the droid to function its most basic tasks and helped support its more advanced functions. It wondered what those functions had been. It wondered if it had had any advanced functions.

The sensor sub array checked out with only minimal damage and now the small droid knew it was actually moving through space, tumbling slowly, but on a definite trajectory. The navigation subsystem told it that it had travelled, since becoming aware of movement a few seconds ago, approximately 20km. Quite an impressive turn of speed for a small metal body.

Optical and infra red sensors began to warm up, literally, in the coldness of space. As they began operating they fed information back to the NavSubSys which began interrogating the droids memory bank for any astromech star chart data.

Fascinating. They were travelling towards a large heat source. Ah, a star. One of the twin stars that formed the heart of this system. Logic dictated that, if they were travelling in a straight line towards the star then extrapolating that line back in the opposite direction would give an indication of the point of origin of their current voyage.

Very interesting indeed. They appeared to be travelling away from a small, collapsing cloud of gas. Electromagnetic and radiation sensors indicated there was metallic and organic matter within the cloud, much of it travelling outwards at a similar speed to the droid, but a large mass of material still sat at the centre of the hot gaseous cluster.

The actuator subsystem reported that it had finished its checks and there was 75% functionality across all systems. The shortfall was accounted for by the current non-functioning status of the left manipulator assembly. Despite repeated attempts the ActSubSys had been unable to establish meaningful communication with the manipulator and it had decided to close down power and hydraulic flow to the affected area to conserve resources.

The droid now began searching for an Advance Functions controller and found that it had three modules. One marked Defence one marked Offence. The Offence module was flagged as being highly dangerous. Best leave that alone until the DefMod was functioning then. The third Mod was flagged as having Priority 1. That sounded important. Better start with that one then.

On activation the third module caused a message to scroll across the droids display panel. The message indicated it was the property of one Ozie Antares, a pilot and that it’s last position had been as Astromech on their ship the Lost Ranger.

It now knew that its immediate task was to find and return to its master, Ozie. Where to look. Sensor arrays began checking for any homing signal, the memory banks were interrogated for more information. The NavCom chimed in with the suggestion that, if they were travelling in a straight line away from a gaseous cloud, which, incidentally, had now ceased to generate so much heat according to the Sensor Array, and their last known function had been as an Astromench on a starship, then it was possible that their master might be in that direction.

The droid considered this, saw the logic in the argument and began giving instructions to NavCom to calculate a solution that would arrest their forward motion, then send them travelling back towards the supposed ship and hopefully their master. NavCom snapped back that a solution had already been fed to the actuator circuits and only needed the droid to give the instruction to begin the manoeuvre. Only 50% of their available fuel could be used to complete the manoeuvre, in order to conserve enough power to halt their progress once they arrived at the ship. At best, NavCom advised, they had a small to negligible chance of completing the trip.

The instruction was given.

Small gas jets fired and stopped the droids tumbling motion. Heavier bursts of gas and a small explosive charge arrested their forward movement. They had now travelled almost 50km into space. In order to return to the ship they would have to fire all the gas stored onboard and also use the small rocket motor built into the baseplate of the droid. The droid was aware that there was a risk that the explosion and subsequent acceleration could, if there was more damage to its chassis than had been detected, could result in a catastrophic failure. However, the little droid also knew that it now had to find and return to its master.

The blast sent the droid hurtling back towards the site of the now diminished gaseous cloud. It was able to sense the large metallic mass and the smaller organic object inside. The power to the rocket was cut and the droid braced itself for impact.

40km. 30km. 20 10 5 1km 500m 250m 100 50 20…. Final adjustment to

Darkness.

Dim awareness. They hit the ship. They hit the master’s ship. The droid made a maintainence journal entry and scheduled the NavCom for some low level formatting and reinstallation of it’s operating code.

The droids sensor arrays picked up human speech, close, very close.

“R4?”

Bright greenish white light flooded the workshop bay, a humanoid figure was approaching. For some reason it appeared to be walking along one of the walls.

“R4 L7?”

The visual sensors, after a few moments of self alignment, focused on the tall zabrak in grey flightsuit. It was Ozie.

He released a restraining bolt and wrestled the R4 up into a vertical position.

“Arthur? Can you hear me? Let’s get you fixed up…. You hit the port engine nacelle pretty hard buddy. Good job the engine was out of commission after that pirate hit us or you’d have been so much chaff by now….”

The zabrak worked quickly, removing damaged plating, replacing it with salvaged parts from a crate under the bench. “That arm will have to go. Maybe I should fit you with a trap launcher after all?” His voice was warm, friendly and the little droid burbled a response…

11010010 10100101 01001001 11010001 10010010

“Yeah, it’s good to have you home too pal… Let's get the ship squared away and I promise we'll take a few days out for some hunting. Dathomir should be interesting, eh?”

The Spies Tale - SWG Fanfic

2006-05-21T22:35:00.000Z

The hunter was tired.

He had been watching the small military base for a long time now. His daily routine had remained unchanged for over a week. Washing, shaving and all other toilet functions had been carried out in the narrow confines of the OP. The waste from these processes bagged and removed before the local wildlife literally got scent of him.

Under cover of dark he'd carefully extract himself from the dugout, covering the entrance and his tracks and scattering the contents of the small bag into the lair of some native scavengers 500m away. Returning to his lair he was wary not only of the local predators but of the small intruder detection sensors he'd hidden to cover the blind area behind his OP. Anyone approaching from that direction would trigger a small vibrating alarm tucked into the lining of his helmet. If necessary he could detonate flash bombs and shrapnel mines remotely from the OP, but so far the enemies patrols had remained a good distance away.

Five days ago the activity in the base had changed. Sentries were more alert, the compound had been tidied and the whole base gave off an air of expectancy that any soldier would know signalled the impending visit of some brass. And three days ago the personal skiff of one of the Divisional Commanders had arrived, flanked by swoops and followed by two large troop carriers.

For the next 48 hours the base literally bristled with blasters, echoed to the sound of barked commands and took on the appearance of a well run Military Establishment.

The hunter had watched all this, recording images of troops for the intel guys to scan over later looking for, well, whatever it was that the intel guys looked for. He'd taken high resolution images of any face that came into view. Most of the troopers were, of course, in full battle armour but the officers and NCO's wore battledress uniforms. Again, the intel boys would pore over those images, trying to marry up faces to information scanned from radio chatter, picked up from data transfers and 'acquired' from the dancers and entertainers in the garrisons home town.

This morning the troop carriers had pulled out leaving the skiff and a few swoops. The Divisional COmmander seemed to have settled in for a longer stay. It was time to head down to camp and find out just what he was up to.

The hunter made one final check of his equipment. Everything was where it should be, harnesses were tight but didn't squeak, additional charge packs for the snub nosed carbine slung round his neck were in ready pouches around his waist. Bacta packs in the thigh pockets of his trousers. Other equipment just in the right place to be reached fast.

Moving quietly out of the OP, he primed the demoliton charges and removed the intruder devices from the scrub behind the dugout. Using dead ground and natural cover he moved down to within earshot of the few troopers now on sentry duty at the compound. A probot droid sat motionless near the fenceline and he primed a carbon fibre chaff unit to detonate if the droid powered up. The resulting flash and explosion would give him warning that the base' defence net had detected him while the carbon fibres would seriously interfere with the droids electronics.

Before proceeding further he activated the cloaking device he had been provided with. To all but the closest observers he was now effectivley invisible. This would allow him to make his way into the compound and possibly even into the officers quarters, but only at the cost of having to move at a slow walking pace. The electronics that drove the image projection unit which was the heart of the cloaking device could not cope with rapidly changing backgrounds, so a nervewracking babystepping walk it had to be.

He further decreased the likely hood of being seen by keeping out of the troopers eyeline, staying in shadows and sliding along walls. The projector could handle largely uniform surfaces, such as walls, so this sideways slide had become known as wall-crawling.

Once inside the building the chances of being discovered went up dramatically and he readied the carbine while stowing the image projector. Keeping low and moving silently he made his way down the short corridor and, using a small mirror, checked there was nobody in the Divisional office. He stepped in, quickly moved to the document folders and map on the desk, recording everything he could see.

Footsteps in the hallway alerted him to the return of the rightful occupant of the room and he quickly moved to a position where he'd be hidden by the open door. As the officer stepped into the room he was felled by a crushing blow to the base of the skull. The body went limp and was, more or less, quietly lowered onto the floor.

Moving quickly into the hall the hunter was horrified to see two more uniformed staff walking towards the office. As their mouths began to form the word HALT! he tossed a small metal tube in their direction which erupted with a blinding flash and thunderous bang, creating thick, choking smoke which, together with the stunning percussion would delay any pursuer for a few moments.

The carbine was now nestled against his forearm and, as he turned and headed towards the exit, it barked noisily, scattering bolts of highly modified energy in the direction of the two confused troopers who had just appeared in the doorway. Despite their training the desire to protect ones self kicked in and they instinctively ducked back and away from the fire spitting from the short barrelled weapon.

The hunter, now very much the prey, dropped another flash bang and sprinted for the fenceline. With his free hand he pressed the trigger on the transmitter on his chest causing the demolition charge in the now abandoned OP and the flare by the probot to detonate. In the resulting confusion he grabbed the nearest swoop, flicked the igniter switch over and roared out of the base directly towards the fireball by the old OP.

As he had hoped the light and vibration had attracted a pair of kimoglia dragons. The careful cleaning of his skin, during the time he was laid up in the OP, with the leaves of native plants helped mask his alien odour slightly. The very different odour of the troopers, stuck inside their hot, heavy armour all day and sleeping in the same ready-suits overnight was far more noticable to the waiting lizards which ignored the single fast moving swoop and instead began lumbering towards the troopers moving out from the base.

Almost predictably the troopers began to fire on the approaching kimoglia pack.

Slowing only long enough to turn and make one last recording of the ensuing carnage, the hunter set his navcom to the waypoint for the exfil point. In a little over 20 minutes he should be safely on his way back off planet and out of this sector, the data he'd managed to capture on it's way to the intel guys, to do whatever it was that they did with information gathered in the field.

Best Screenshot Ever

2006-05-21T11:15:00.000Z

OK, I know it's preCU, let alone preNGE, but this is still the funnies thtign I've seen in/about SWG in a long time...

CLICK

iSaber?

2006-05-21T11:08:00.000Z

Turn your mac into a jedi weapon...

Well, I guess it's a change from the Macquarium.

A new SWG Blog.

2006-05-21T01:13:00.000Z

Little linkback to a fellow YaMB fan:

Star Wars Galaxies According To MrHappy

SWG FanFic - Ozies Tale

2006-05-20T09:39:00.000Z

Little RP story for you. (btw, we need a stickied thread, like in the old Ranger boards, for fanfic tales)

Towards the end of the first week of Elona, and still suffering from the excesses of the Winter Fete, Ozie recieved an encoded transmission from the Watchman. He was to travel to the NW sector of Dantooine and investigate reports that the local Dantari tribesmen had recently been attacking travellers in that region and using some sort of 'magic' to harm them.

As the Nightwatch collaborated closely with the Antarian Rangers in assisting force sensitives the Watchman made it clear that Imperial 'entanglements' were to be avoided if possible. However, while this was officially a recon mission Ozie should draw weapons and armour from the 'watches planetary cache on the Arissi Plains

The transmission ended with a databurst giving the location of several useful contacts in the Banir Fields region.

Ozie shifted in his chair on the bridge of the Antari V, a converted Sorosuub yacht registered as a 'pleasure craft' and, as far as Imperial records would show, owned by a Corellian businessman with 'interests' in the entertainment industry.

The Winter Fete holiday had been a welcome break after the stressful end to the year and sharing Life Day with his adopted family had been enjoyable, but it was time to get back to work and what better than a simple recon mission to Dantooine. Maybe get the chance to do some fishing while he was planetside. "Yeah, a little huntin', shootin' and fishin'. That'd be ideal" he said, speaking to himself in the distracted way that spacefarers tend to do. Just the harmless habit of somebody who spent a lot of time alone in the depths of space. At the back of his mind, however, was the niggling doubt that one day somebody would answer back...

The zabrak's fingers rattled across the ships command keyboard, punching in the coordinates of the Dantooine Orbital Station, queuing up a hyperspace jump and transferring his mission data from the ships main comms station to his personal datapad. That done he strapped himself in and waited for the ships engine note to change from the usual low hum to a brief growl as he entered hspace.

Transferring from his ship to the local shuttle at Dant Orbital went smoothly and the customs droids barely gave him a second glance as he boarded the ship that'd take him down to one of the few facilities on the planet that could handle starship landings. No doubt one day the Empire would develop the settlements here into great cities like those on Coruscant, but for now it was nice not to have rookie pilots zooming around trying to get to grips with atmospheric flight. Especially when their ships were designed for use in deep space and not equipped with the thrusters and counter thrusters needed for delicate maneuvering needed to land on, rather than IN, a planets surface.

At the Mining Outpost Ozie headed to the cantina to give himself a few minutes to adjust to having solid ground under his feet again and to listen in to the locals, see if he couldn't pick up any useful snippets of information.

The outpost was far quieter than he remembered from previous visits. True, there were a few small hunting parties mustering and heading out, but there seemed to be something missing. It took a few minutes before he realised that there were no 'retired doctors' hawking their 'health supplements' and even the local 'entertainment' seemed a lot less active than he thought he remembered. Space travel can do odd things to your memory, but he definitely recalled seeing half a dozen or more twi'lek dancers here and now there was just one tired looking Bith musician.

The other patrons of the bar commented on the lack of entertainment too and blamed the recent 'changes' that had made the planet too dangerous for many of the local crafters. Wild beasts roamed in packs and there was nobody to keep them under control. Even the Mokk and Dantari tribesmen, normally peaceful unless provoked, had started attacking travellers. There were wild tales of rogue jedi hiding out in the hills and acting more like bandits than knights...

Ozie listened carefully to these travellers tales, asked a few discreet, seemingly disinterested, questions and then asked if anyone had heard of an Imperial facility nicknamed 'The Warren'. While the few customers in the bar argued over the existence of this place and whether it really DID haved mad scientists or that was just a tale put round to keep people away, Ozie quietly slipped out of the cantina and headed to the far end of the outpost where he hired a speeder from a local dealer, again letting slip that he was heading to the warren, and then, by taking a large sweeping loop south and east of the outpost, he made sure he was well out of tracking distance of the small Imperial detachment that was stationed in the outpost to assist the Administrator there before heading towards the mountains in the north west of the planet where he should be able to find out more about these weird Dantari magicians.

Night was falling as he arrived at the ruins of the old Jedi temple where his first contact was supposed to be. About 500m from the meeting point he stowed the speeder, attaching a modified droid tracker to it so he'd be able to find it again, and began heading to the imposing ruins on foot. His military training had taught him never to go riding straight in to a meeting without first scanning the area and checking for any surprises. Near the old temple he could see the flames of a large camp fire and this struck him as odd. Surely his contact wouldn't be so blatant, or stupid, as to light a beacon fire?

He stopped behind a low ridge and lay prone in the grass, his electrobinoculars propped on his pack he was able to use their image intensification to see who was standing by the fire. Certainly not his contact, who he knew was a Zabrak like himself and a female to boot. The large humanoid male standing by the fire looked like trouble. Zooming in on the figure Ozie was able to make out an small decoration on a fine chain round his neck. "It can't be..." he thought "that's a dark jedi amulet... what in the name of the Maker would one of them be doing here?"

Sliding back down the embankment Ozie skirted round the edge of the jedi's small camp and, as quietly as possible, made his way into the ruins of the old temple by fording the moat. Keeping to the shadows and ducking down to make sure he was not silhoutted agains the night sky he found his way to a recess under the remains of a ceremonial staircase. He was going to have to think about what to do next, especially as his contact was still nowhere to be seen.

Fine rain began falling and he was glad of the extra cover that this would give him, though he silently cursed the fact it would make drying his clothes harder.

"Comfortable, are we?" the voice said. Ozie, briefly disoriented as he couldn't tell if the voice had originated in his head or not, looked carefully around. Nobody in sight... his hand strayed to the hilt of the dagger concealed in the front of his jacket.

"Calm. Be still..." the voice spoke again and this time Ozie was able to get a fix on the direction it had come from. He turned his head and, outlined in the ran, could see the shape of a figure. As he tried to make out more detail the shape solidified and a female Zabrak stood about 20m from him, her face concealed by the hooded cloak she wore. Only jedi could conceal themselves that well, but she must have been standing there all the time Ozie had been sheltering. He thanked the Maker that it had been to cold to take off his damp clothing...

"You were sent here, yes? By whom?" she asked, her eyes bright in the darkness giving Ozie the feeling that he was being pressed back against the rocks he was sheltering among.

"If you are who I am looking for, you know who sent me..." Ozie replied

"I know far more than that, Ozie Antare. I am Juddarl, Drakka Juddarl and The Watchman told me to expect you" She nodded towards the distant glow of the Dark Jedi's campfire "I wonder if he's expecting you too? Luthik has been camped out there for the last few days. He's clearly waiting on someone, or some thing"

"Luthik Uwyr? His presence here suggests the Empire is showing an interest in the temples... You have been watching him?"

"There has been much to watch here recently Ozie. But Luthik has had several interesting visitors, yes. Come, let's get into some shelter and you can get dried off properly while we talk"

"I'm almost dry now, but shelter and rest would be welcome..."

Drakka smiled at him "Dry for now... but you will still need to get dry. Follow me." They left the shadows under the old stairs and cossed to the rear of the temple platform. Drakka hooked the skirt of her cloak over her arm and walked into the water. "Hurry..." she said as Ozie stood at the river bank shaking his head as he realised what the jedi had meant by her earlier comment. "Here we go again..."

Wading chest deep in the water, they made their way round some rocks and under the edge of a waterfall. Scrambling up the slippery moss covered rocks they reached the opening of a cave. Drakka quickly stepped inside followed a few seconds later by Ozie. "Soon there's a chamber where we can light a fire and get dry. Come"

The jedi pulled a halo lamp from a small pile of apparently discarded scrap, adjusted the beam down to a low glow and they headed into the tunnel leading away from the cave mouth. Ozie could hear scuttering in the shadows but decided not to investigate instead he concentrated on following the fast moving figure as they wound their way through the tunnel system and eventually found themselves in a short passageway opening into a larger chamber.

Rather incongruoulsy there was a stone built hut in the centre of the chamber, two basilesk pylons extending up on either side of it and sparkling with energy.

Drakka observed Ozies puzzled look and said "They were already in the cave when I first sought shelter here. The hut, well, it makes it easier to keep warm and dry and also gives me somewhere to sleep without the quenkers nibbling at my feet..." She pushed the door of the hut open, securing it with a cord, and gestured to Ozie to follow her in.

The interior was lit by the orange glow of embers in the central hearth. Drakka placed a small bundle of kindling in the hearth then knelt and blew gently into the embers till small flames sprang up. She then added more kindling and a couple of small pieces of timber before standing and taking off her wet cloak. She hung the cloak from one of the branches that formed the roof of her shack and suggest Ozie might want to find dry clothing for himself. She indicated a small cargo container near him which, when Ozie opened it, had a selection of mens clothing in it.

He quickly found a pair of trousers, a ragged sweater and a sleeveless jerkin made from some sort of leather. The trousers had a 2nd class Corellian Bloodstripe running up the side seam and Ozie pointed to it, asking as he did so how she came to have these. "Over the years I have been here many people have visited. Some exploring, some seeking assistance. The owner of those trousers, I seem to remember, lost them in a bet..." She smiled to herself and Ozie knew that that was all the information he'd get from her on that subject. For now.

He propped his boots on the edge of the hearth to dry, pulled off his own sodden gear, dried himself with a rough towel and dressed quickly. He turned back to the centre of the room just in time to see Drakka hitch a brown skirt round her hips and pull the edge of a mangy looking sweater down to cover her midriff. He looked away quickly as he realised her eyes were on him but not before he saw the amused look on Drakka's face as his own cheeks reddened.

They sat on large cushions at opposite sides of the hearth and exchanged pleasantries. Both were zabrak and it had been some time since either of them had been face to face with anyone. Solitude was not a 'normal' state for a zabrak to find themselves in as they were, by nature, social creatures who lived in large extended families. Service to others, military or otherwise, came easily to them as their unit became a surrogate family and, Ozie knew, the paternalistic nature of the Empire attracted many of his kind to Imperial service.

Drakka made a quick meal of some stew from a pot hanging over the fire and some root vegetables that she boiled in fresh water. While doing this she asked Ozie to tell her a little of his past. From his tattoos she could see he had seen battle, yet he was no longer in the Emperors service and still lived? Unusual in these times.

Ozie explained to Drakka that the nature of the Empire had become all too clear as he found his progression through the ranks slower than his human colleagues and the 'expendability' of so many of the Emperors 'children' had finally shocked him into accepting that any paternalism was mere artifice... It was after completing his final tour of duty that he took the opportunity to join an Imperial survey team exploring some of the more secluded and neglected sectors under the Emperors care and learned more about working with the native peoples and species he encountered. When that post was disolved due to diversion of funds to some other pet project he took the offered chance to be "stood down" from active service.

Drakka nodded. "I too have seen the ways that the Emperor treats those who he has become tired of...." She went on to tell of the massacre of the jedi at the hands of what was to become the Empire, directed by dark forces. The recollection clearly upset her and, to divert attention from her own distress she asked how Ozie had become a Watchman.

He explained that while exploring the Jundland Wastes of Tatooine and recording the different species there he had met the leader of the Nightwatch and, having learned to trust each other over time, become firm friends with the old ranger. The Nightwatch was a small group loosely associated with the Antarian Rangers. They assisted jedi by being their 'second eyes' in areas where the Empire still actively sought out all force sensitives. They also assisted those who had were just becoming sensitive to the Force by watching over them during that uncertain period of inner turbulence. Ozies current task, the one which had brought him here to Dantooine, was typical of another role the 'watch played, and that was to be the 'hands' of the jedi where there were reasons they didn't want their presence felt.

And so, with the retelling of their past lives out of the way, clothes dried and food in their bellies, the two zabrak got round to discussing the business that had brought Ozie out here.

It was true that some Dantari had been attacking travellers in this area and it was also true that they were using some sort of magic to do so. Drakka would go out tomorrow to check some details, while she was doing that could Ozie help with another 'local problem' that could, if unchecked, complicate matters? His ability to come and go unseen would be of great help...

Ozie was flattered at the jedi's recognition of one of his talents and readily agreed to take on the mission when he learned that it involved despatching an Imperial stormtrooper squad that had taken to using the local tribesmen for target practise. While he had been warned by the Watchman to avoid any entanglements with the Empire he couldn't sit idly by while these troopers massacred innocents.

***An Imperial Entanglement***

Before dawn broke Ozie had left the cave, finding that it was easier to get out dry than it was to get in while trying to avoid getting wet. He scurried up a fold in the hillside and away from the temple ruins, stoping only briefly to check on the dark jedi whose camp fire still burned in the distance. Amazingly the tall bald man was still standing by the fire, staring into the distance. Whoever or whatever he was waiting on certainly inspired obedience and dedication.

Moving through the early morning mists Ozie soon found signs that the troopers had indeed been in this area. The bodies of several Dantari warriors lay scattered in the grass, neat holes blasted in their chests. Recognising only too well the blaster pattern he muttered a few words to the Maker asking that he look over these unfortunates and that they should 'travel well, wherever they are'. Drakka's words to him as he left the cave in the morning slipped into his mind... "May the Force be with you" she had said. Let's hope it looks after him better than it had looked after these tribesmen.

The troopers were easy to track from the massacre site. Grass bent double, great big footprints from their Imperial issue footwear. They had headed off directly north, further into the hills. Presumably they were tracking another group of tribesmen. Such great hunters... He'd walked north, following the troopers tracks all the way, for about an hour when he heard the unmistakable sound of blasters. The high pitched whining carried for some distance, but, given the terrain and the weather, it was unlikley they were more than a few hundred metres away. Ozie broke right, ran about 200m before turning to head back in towards the sound of firing. This way, if the troopers decided to backtrack, he'd not end up running into them.

From 75m out he could see them in his gunsight. Four of them, a sergeant and three troopers. Picking off Dantari tribesmen and women who were trying to flee from a nearby village, their stone spears and stoneknives no match for Imperial blasters. "Time to restore some balance...." Ozie said in his head. His left hand dropped to a small device strapped to his waist, his finger found the switch, flicked it and a small electromagnetic field was generated that rendered him effectively invisible. Unlike the jedi who had been cloaked in the temple last night, he was able to move, albeit at a more cautious pace, and he used this advantage to get to a low outcrop of rock that would give him both a good firing position and a degree of protection from any returned fire.

The rocks meant he was unable to fire from a prone position as they had given the nearby grass enough protection to allow it to grow to nearly chest height. Normally this would have been cropped by the herds of bol that moved across the landscape here but the rocks were large enough to bump against the big herbivores horns so they had left the grass closest to the rocks to spring up to full height.

He looked down the barrel of the long Lithitanium rifle he used for sniping, found the sergeant by looking for his coloured shoulder flash, aimed at the weak point in the trooper armour just below the edge of the helmet where the neck was relatively unprotected, took a breath, exhaled slowly and s-queee-zed. The rifle barked loud in the morning stillness and Ozie was already dropping to his knee behind the rocks as his stealth field failed. The stormtrooper sergeant's neck snapped as the projectile hit, severing his spinal cord instantaneously. He couldn't even cry out in surprise as the white hot projectile carried on through the spine, exited under his jaw and then rattled round the inside of the armoured helmet.

His corpse continued to finish taking the step it had just started, the right foot naturally swinging through as his bodyweight shifted, the heel struck the floor as it should and then the impact of the slug hitting him forced the top half of his body to jerk forward from the waist up, his arms spalyed out to the side and he lurched forward, landing face down in the long grass.

The three junior troopers looked instinctively in the direction of the blast but saw nothing, the smoke from the barrel of the rifle masked by the morning mist. As their eyes swung towards their leader for inspiration it appeared to them that he had just thrown some sort of massive fit and fallen to the floor. The trooper closest to the sergeant ran towards the fallen body and was just about to pull the helmet free when he too lurched backwards, performing a ragdoll cartwheel in midair before crumpling to the ground, the lense over his eyes smashed on the right hand side.

This time the smoke from the rifle was clearly visible, as was the tall bald assassin. He dropped to the ground, the long barelled rifle slipping from his graps as he fell feigning a move to his left but rolling quickly to the right. His arm snapped up as he lobbed a flashbang grenade directly at the two shocked troopers. Before the grenade detonated he had already grabbed the carbine from where he had previously propped it against the rocks and was making a curving approach towards the now stunned, deafened and blind troopers who were blindly firing at wher ethey thought he had been.

He closed from about 70 metres at a full run, the carbine chattering, it's rate of fire set to maximum. Ozie knew this would trash the barrel but these were easily replaced, even in the field. The concentrated energy bolts smacked into the troopers armour, the first rounds doing little or no damage at all as the design of stormtrooper armour made it especially resistant to blaster bolts. However that resistance dropped rapidly under a sustained attack and the third bolt easily cracked the surface plating open, the fourth bolt erupted in a small spurt of flame as it ignited the underlying padding layer and the fifth and subsequent bolts slammed straight into the troopers torso. The energy released converted immediately to heat casuing the body fluids in the gut to boil and generate steam. With no easy way out the steam forces its way through the body cavity and death follows almost instantly. Unfortunately it's 'almost' instantly and being hit by a hail of blaster bolts is never going to be a pleasant way to die.

The troopers body was thrown back against his remaining colleague who, still stunned from the grenade, hit the ground hard. Ozie rushed towards him, stamping his boot down on the troopers wrist as he groped around for his blaster. It went against all his instincts to kill a defenceless man but he couldn't risk a survivor getting back to raise the alarm. The Empire would flood the sector with troops and Drakka's hideout would surely be found. He stepped forward, pressed his foot against the troopers throat and shifted his weight forward. The crunch as the troopers neck snapped told its own story.

Working quickly he dragged the four corpses into a small ravine, checked their pouches for any documents or items that may come in useful and, finding only credits, left them to the quenkers and huurton that were already circling. The undergrowth shoook as a large voritor lizard rushed out, grabbed the leg of one of the dead troopers and began trying to shake it loose.

It wouldn't take long for there to be nothing left to find.

He gathered the troopers weapons, short barrelled blasters mostly, removed their energy packs, then heaved them into a dense cluster of ferns. A quick scan round to check that he'd not left any of his own gear by mistake and he was out of there. He headed away from the direction leading to the jedi temple for about 15 minutes, then curved round to the right, eventually crossing back over his own trail. At this point he backtracked up the original route away from the clearing where he'd killed the troopers, eventually sidestepping off the track when he found some convenient boulders and loose growing shrubs that'd easily hide the point where he left the track. In this way, anyone following him away from the ambush would find themselves literally going round in circles while he moved rapidly away from the target area and eventually headed back in towards the temple, checking all the while that he was not being followed.

He approached the cave mouth from above this time, marvelling at how well concealed it was by the falling water. Even better, he found a way to get in with not much more than a slight drenching. As it was still daylight outside he could see down as far as the first bend in the tunnel and, as he went round into the darkness he pulled a small halo light from his pack, slid it into the fabric loop on the shoulder strap and used that to illuminate his way back down to the underground shack.

The hut was unlit and he could see no sign that Drakka had returned. He entered and made himself comfortable on the cushions. Because the torches in the hut had been lit last night he hadn't noticed how far up the tunnel he could see, and, in the silence, just how much he could actually hear out in the cave system. The quenkers scavenged the tunnels constantly, eating whatever they could find, communicating with each other in high squeals. Somewhere in the distance he could hear something bigger, heavier that made a similar sound to the quenker but it was deeper, different somehow...

Thinking about this he drifted off to sleep, only to dream about the troopers and the large lizard, then as always happened, the faces started to come back. The faces of countless tribesmen and women, rebels, insurgents, seperatists, traitors, cowards.... like a long queue, snaking off into his past, the faces of everyone he'd killed at the Emperor's bidding. Then he saw them, his brothers and sister, the small travelling camp on Iridonia when the family was travelling across the desert to join with others from the same clan in the rain forest there. The riders that came charging down from the dunes on those damned saphire blue lizards. He was only young but if he could just get to his pack, if he could jus treach up to the pack on his fathers mount... something grabbed his foot, dragged him backwards onto the hot sand, it burned against his skin, he was lifted by the ankle and thrown... the last thing he remembered about Iridonia and his family was the heavy, armoured boot swinging towards his face. Something had a hold of his foot! Not then, not in his child memory, here, NOW!

He rolled onto his back and kicked out, his foot being held vicelike. His eyes, already used to the dark finally focussed on Drakka's face. He stopped struggling and was immediately babbling apologies and excuses and still trying to shake the memory of that last day on the home world. Drakka knelt beside him "No, it is I who should apologise Ozie. I saw you sleeping and, remembering my joke about 'quenkers nibbling my toes' thought it'd be funny to wake you by pretending to you that one had got hold of your foot. I didn't mean, I didn't realise... I didn't want to see your dream..."

"You saw my dream?" he snapped back? "How can that be? It's mine, it's my memory, how can you have seen it?"

"The Force reached out to you and saw what you saw. When I touched your foot the Force gave me a sense of that memory... I am truly sorry for intruding..."

Now standing, Ozie looked at the old zabrak, still pretty for all her years, but suddenly looking tired and worried. He felt the anger and fear that the nightmare had left pass through him and burn away into the nothingness. "No, Drakka, you have nothing to apologise for, you were not to know. The Force sometimes toys with us, for it's own ends."

She smiled at that and replied "You are wise, for a youngling! But we have a grave matter to attend to. Please, light the fire while I check the tunnels. We will eat when I come back and then you will have a choice to make.

***The Chieftans Daughter***

Drakka returned after checking the tunnels for signs that anyone had been here unbidden. They sat and ate some of the stew which Ozie had heated over the fire. There was none of the talk of past lives that had gone with their meal last night and both of them felt a tension build between them. This was something they would have to deal with or it could cause problems if they were to work together.

Ozie broke the silence by asking what was the choice he was going to have to make. "The Dantari tribesmen from the plains near here, have been assisting me in making raids on Imperial camps in the region" she began. "While you were gone today I travelled over to meet with their chieftan and his daughter, Preni, has been captured by a new detachment that has been drafted in recently. The ordinary troopers are bad enough but these commando are arrogant, relentless. The Dantari say they have overheard them mention having been sent from Dathomir to look for jedi scum." She paused, looking around the hut nervously. "I think I must have been indiscreet in my use of the Force and possibly it has been felt. It could explain what Luthier is doing here..."

Ozie said, in as calm a voice as he could, "No, you told me that there are some tribesmen in the area who are using the Force? Perhaps it is their untutored use of it that has been detected? Surely you feel it when they use it?"

"That is possible, yes. So many small disturbances in the Force there are. I try to meditate and determine what they mean but there are just so many..."

"Take time to think on it while I'm gone Drakka... May the Force be with you" Ozie said as he got to his feet, already reaching for his pack.

"And with you, youngling" she half smiled back "So you are going to help find Preni?"

"I have no choice, really. I was a child when I was taken from my family. The pain of that still disturbs me now..." He paused briefly as Drakka stood and walked to the back of the hut. "Travel well, Ozie, and yes, I will meditate on these small disturbances while you are gone."

Outside in the night air Ozie could smell the smoke from the dark jedi's fire, drifting down the river on the breeze. He pulled the electrobinoculars from his pack and looked. Yes, the man was still standing there, still staring off in the same direction. He was so focused on his own 'meditation' that he would be unaware of anything but a major disruption of the Force. And even then, the dedication, or fear, that had him stand there day in, day out, would it let him notice?

He decided he would head directly to the chieftans camp and then follow the troopers trail out from there. It should be easier to do that than to blunder about out here hoping to find them. After travelling for a short while he felt he should move up into the hills and take a look in the next valley. He wasn't sure what drove him to make this decision, he was just following a hunch really but again there was that niggling feeling in his head that somebody was directing him, telling him where to go.

As he approached the crest of the hill he dropped to his knees to minimise his silhouette against the sky, then in a half crouch, shuffled forward to where he could see a herd of long necked pikets were grazing amongs another herd of bol. The tall animals serving as a lookout for the whole herd in case a voritor or other carnivore attacked.

Beyond the herbivore herd he could see the unmistakable flashes of blaster fire and he headed down to investigate.

As he approached the location where the blaster fire was coming from he found the huge corpse of a graul. A large bipedal creature, incredibly aggressive and looking a little like a furry rancor, it was a favourite trophy kill for hunters. The blaster marks on its body showed that it hadn't been hunted and killed but instead it had been tormented and tortured with shots to its arms and legs, ears, hands and feet. Somebody had a cruel idea of 'sport' around here. And to do that sort of damage whoever had done it had had company.

Approaching the source of the blaster fire carefully, Ozie was able to see that a small four man squad of Imperial Commando, dressed in dark 'scout' style armour, were tormenting another graul, goading it towards a pack of voritor lizards that were standing their ground on a nearby hill. If they could edge it close enough to the lizards they would join in the attack and leave the 'hunters' to bet on the outcome. Nearby he could see a Dantari tribesman, no, it was a female, with her hand shackled to a pin driven into the ground.

First things first, save the hostage. Send her back to her tribe or let her fight alongside him. Then he'd see how well these commando fought with a graul and some voritor on one side, and a maddened zabrak on the other.

Using the personal stealth field generator on his belt Ozie was able to skirt round to the tree line beside Preni. He decloaked and, when she almost cried out in amazement at the man appearing by magic, he hissed "Drakka sent me, quick, follow me..." as he used a pair of bolt cutters to snap the light chain holding Preni in place. "Did Drakka send you? She's so brave! I want to be like her one day..." the Dantari chieftans daughter prattled. "Please, Preni, run now, go back home..." Ozie hissed, shooing her away... "I'll go back to Drakka. She's so cool!" snapped Preni and ran off into the trees.

A blaster bolt whizzed past his ear and suddenly Ozie wished he'd equipped armour this time out. He tossed a small smoke bomb at the ground and vanished into the cloud it threw up. Immediately he reactivated the stealth field and moved as quickly as he could AWAY from teh tree line as he was sure that was the direction the troopers would expect him to go. He also wanted to draw their fire away from Preni and travelling inthe same direction as her would not achieve that.

The troopers unleashed a hail of blaster bolts in the direction of the trees, hoping to hit the hidden man who had popped up and released their captive. They weren't able to give the job their full attention however as the graul was now bearing down on them and looking for revenge. Scenting a change in the balance of things, the voritors were also closing in.

Ozie ran close to the troopers, lobbed a gas grenade under their feet and then plunged into the oncoming animals, dropping another smoke bomb as he went. The effects of the smoke were strong enough to cause the creatures to lose interest in him and they continued in their charge towards the troopers. Ozie collected his thoughts, checked that the gas bomb had detonated properly and was relieved to see the troopers pulling off their helmets and trying to stem the blood that spurted from their eyes, ears and noses. The lizards and graul also got scent of this and began leaping and slashing at the troopers who were powerless to fight back.

Unslinging his rifle Ozie took aim at the first trooper. The slug slammed into his unarmoured head with predictable results. A second trooper went down screaming as the graul used it's hooked claw to open him up from gut to gizzard. The third trooper vanished from sight under a cluster of lizards and the fourth, who was now trying to run away ran starigh t into a huurton matrons pack.

The damage the creatures had done would cover the few shots he had fired at the trippers and, after grabbing the remains of the smoke bomb and gas grenade, Ozie fired up stealth again and ran out of the area. No point hanging around to feed the bodies to the wildlife, they were already doing the business themselves.

Day was just breaking as Ozie got back to the cave and made his way down to the little hut. He quietly unlatched the door, stepped inside and lowered himself onto the large cushions. With the door latched behind him and no light other than the dying embers of the fire the interior of the hut was almost black. He could hear Drakka's breathing over at the far side of the shack and, rather than risk giving her a nightmare by pulling at her foot, he lay down on his cushions and allowed himself to drift off.

***The Emperors Agent ***

He awoke after a dreamless sleep. Drakka was already sitting in the doorway of the hut, her back to him, her legs folded under her and her head dipped as if in deep thought. He reached out and lifted the small bottle of drinking water from the side pouch of his pack, unscrewed the lid and took a gulp to freshen his mouth.

"Good morning, Light of Preni's Eye.... " Drakka chuckled.

"Good mo.. what?" Ozie choked, coughing water onto the floor of the hut. "Pardon?"

Drakka swung round in the doorway, laughing. "Oh youngling! You have so much to learn. Preni came here last night after you rescued her from the troopers. 'Oh such a fine young warrior' 'a magician! he appeared out of nowhere and called the animals of the plains and the mountains to aid him...' 'So brave! So fierce! I would want my sons to be like him..."

Ozie dropped his head into his hands, groaning "I don't believe it.... You're teasing me? Tell me you're teasing me?"

"But Ozie!! She's such a fine young girl, a good hunter and she does have a rich father...you should be pleased that she finds you so, ah, interesting..." By now Drakka could barely contain her amusement and Ozie felt as if his entire face was alight.

"I'm sure she is a FINE young lady, Drakka, but I think her path and mine lie in different directions..."

"Predictions are hard to make, youngling. Especially about the future!" Drakka chuckled to herself as she got up and walked into the hut. "We have some answers to the problem that sent you here and again, you must choose your path. Listen carefully, Ozie. Listen well".

Drakka then explained to him that Luthik, the dark jedi who had been camped nearby for weeks now, was in fact an agent sent by the Emperor to organize the native tribes into some sort of 'strike force'. "As you have said yourself, Ozie, the Emperors children are 'expendable' and he will do with them as he will". She continued "Luthik has taught some of the Dantari to draw from the Force and, as they have no knowledge of the Light and Dark sides of the Force, they have been willing students, enjoying the power to instil fear and do damage that the Force gives them"

"We have to stop him, Drakka, we can't let knowledge of this spread off world, back to the Emperor..." He shuddered at the thought of force wielding Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, or what could happen to his hoe world if some of the natives there were given access to this sort of unskilled knowledge...

"Again, you have chosen without hearing the alternatives, youngling. This impatience will cause you harm I fear"

"There is no alternative, Drakka. We must maintain the balance. No matter what that takes..."

"You should contact the Watchman, ask him to send you help? These force wielders are going t be a formidable enemy..."

Ozie thought for a moment then said "No. I will go alone. I cannot ask you to risk exposing your presence here and there isn't time for the Nightwatch to muster and send a detachment here. Every hour that passes is an hour closed to the Emperor getting window of this development and we must stop that. No matter what the cost." He paused for a moment. "Drakka... If... If I fail. Contact the Watchman and tell him I have let him down. Tell him of this Luthik and his training of the Dantari, then retrieve my body. If anything is left I want it to go home..."

Drakka looked shocked at the strength of the young mans resolve and his acceptance of the need for him to make this sacrifice. If only he had been found by the Watchmen when he was younger, before he had suffered so much. In her head a voice said "Younger he would not have been the same young man. Stronger a weapon becomes as it is heated in a fire..."

"Yes, Master. I will meditate on this...." Drakka mumbled to herself. Looking up she saw the look of concern on the young zabrak's face. She waved at the air as if to dismiss some phantom and half smiled to Ozie as she said "May the Firce be with you, Ozie"

"And with you, Drakka. Always".

He did not stop to look down at the dark jedi's camp this time. Instead he dropped down into the riverbed and used the dead ground it created to shield him from view as he made his way toward the valley that Drakka had told him the force sensitive Dantari were hiding out.

As he clambered up out of the riverbed and picked his awy through some head height ferns, he walked straight into the face of a red eyed Dantari who was wearing a heavy hooded robe, similar to the one that Drakka had, but of a much darker material. Instinct, and fear, took over and he immediately grabbed the black handled stiletto which he wore in a horizontal scabbard on the back of his belt, lunged forward and rammed the tip of the blade upwards beneath the Dantari's jaw.

The heavy muscles and thick bone of his skull slowed the knife but not before it had penetrated up into the brain. A quick twist of the wrist and the wild man dropped like a bag of melons dragging Ozie down with him. Ozie pulled the knife out, wiped it on the shirt front of the fallen man, then rolled him over to pull the heavy robe off of his corpse. "Travel well, stranger. Be at peace.." Ozie muttered.

The robe, made of a coarse woolen material, stank like the bottom of a quenkers den, but it did serve to hide Ozies true identity as he circled the three remaining Dantari. The one he had just dispatched was probably the weaker of the group. Two of those remaining looked a little tougher, but the tall one, the one wearing a tabarded top similar to Luthik's. He looked as if he'd be very much more of a challenge.

"Take the head off the snake" the vice in his head seemed to whisper "Take the head off the snake and the body will die..."

"No, no..." Ozie thought back. "Not this time. Leave the leader till last. Remove his protectors and he'll still be a tough fight, but I won't have them hitting me as well..."

As soon as he had made his mind up on this course of action, Ozie stood, concealed himself with the Personal Field Generator and moved round to where one of the henchmen was lifting a small rock by manipulating the Force. He waited till the rock was at waist height before sneaking in and attaching a small wire hook to the Dantari's clothing. He then slipped back out of sight of the other two wildmen, paying out a fine monofilament thread behind him as he went. He then gave the thread a gentle pull and watched in amusement as the Dantari completely fell for this old school yard trick. Totally taken aback with the sudden tug on his clothing, the wild man scowled, then followed the thread... straight into the killing ground that Ozie had just prepared.

He barely had time to react before Ozie smashed a container at his feet that discharged a noxious cloud of gas. As Ozie stepped back out of range of the gas cloud he lobbed a snare trap at the retching tribesman then, as the gas cleared and the tribesman stumbled about, bloodied and confused, Ozie stepped forward and dispatched him with a pistol shot direct to the temple. The tribesman crumpled and lay completely motionless. "Be at peace, traveller"

The third Dantari fell as fast as his friend, falling for the same trick, but not before calling out in pain and alarm. Ozie had barely finsihed with him when the last Dantari rushed into view. As soon as he saw Ozie crouched over his fallen comrade the tribesman drew a vicious looking sword, about half as long as a normal sword and, from the high pitched whine it gave off, Ozie immediately knew it was a vibroblade.

This meant trouble. The short sword had a powerful motor built into the hilt that caused the edge of the blade to vibrate at such a high rate that it could easily break through light armour. One blow from that could easily take Ozies arm off and the Dantari was closing fast.

Grabbing his pistol in one hand and a snare trap in the other, Ozie jumped to his feet and, hoping for a direct hit, chucked the trap with all the skill he could muster. He heard the casing split and the wire mesh deploy. The Dantari flailed at the mesh as it hit him and this only served to further entangle him, knocking him off balance and making movement difficult.

Knowing the fine wires would only hold for a matter of seconds, Ozie moved further away from the tribesman and raised the pistol to fire a small poison flechette into the exposed neck. Dropping the pistol he unslung his carbine and began firing as fast as he could, moving away and off to one side. The Dantari, free of the wire now but groggy from the effects of the small poison dart continued to charge in the direction that Ozie had been in. This exposed his flank to a further burst of fire from the carbine and he eventually toppled forward, still heading towards the last place he'd seen his attacker.

Ozie walked forward and knelt beside the corpse. Rolling him over he saw that he too was wearing a necklace with a small dark jedi medallion attached. "Trinkets for the natives..." Ozie cursed as the voice startled him. He looked round and saw a heavy set man, no, a Dantari tribesman, but groomed, dressed from head to toe in black and red. Even as he digested this information the Dantari brought his hands togetehr in front of him and unleasehed a terrifying bolt of Force lightning directly at Ozies chest.

The blast threw him back 5 metres and left him totally winded. The tribesman was clearly weakened by the effort it had taken to unleash this attack but he had already begin to adopt a Dark Jedi combat stance, gathering strength from the Force. "You see, I have learned well, Master!" he shouted as he again brought his hands round to fire another burst of lightning at Ozie.

Ozie reacted more from instinct than any sort of plan and, throwing himself off to one side, lobbed a flash bang grenade at the wildman. The resulting explosion disoriented him for a few seconds, enough time for Ozie to drop a smoke bomb and conceal his position. Not for long, but enough time to gather his thoughts and plan his next move.

A quick check at the carbine showed it had enough energy left for two maybe three blasts. The shots would go wide as the barrel was pretty well worn now and there wasn't time to field strip it before his cover broke. He needed to weaken the wildman, wear him down, and at the same time stay out of the reach of that damn lightning. He slung the carbine round his neck, prepped his last gas grenade and a flashbang. Then, taking a deep breath he stood and lobbed the flash bang directly at the force wielder. It detonated on contact and had the effect of deafening and blinding the target as well as disorientating them with shock.

Ozie sidestepped to the left about 15m, dropping the gas bomb in the path of the staggering wildman. The bomb detonated and sent up a cloud of foul greenish chemical smoke which, on contact with skin or eyes, casued immediate bleeding and blistering. Added to the effects of the flash-bang this meant the wildmans senses were being heavily overloaded with pain stimulii.

Sidestepping left again, Ozie swung the carbine up and aimed directly into the cut of the wildman. Force weilder or not, it'd be difficult to concentrate with your guts filling with the steam from blaster bolts. The target crumpled, fell to his knees, then forward onto all fours... retching and gagging he rolled onto his side and finally got sight of Ozie, now closing in to deliver the coup-de-grace.

With his dying gasp the Dantari fired a furious burst of lightning at Ozie which again caught him in the chest, throwing him backwards and effectively paralysing him as the charge ran through his arms and legs, burned around his face, ears, eyes... Ozie's carbine was still pointing at the tribesman and, through sheer strength of will he managed to force his hand to squeeze closed. The gun barked, pain seared through Ozies right leg and the lightning stopped.

It took some time for Ozie to gather enough strength even to roll onto his side and see that the Dantari was in fact dead. In doing so the pain from his leg caused him to shout out, breaking the silence that had settled over the valley. Knowing that the local wildlife would be closing in fast looking for an easy meal, he realised he needed to stabilise his wound and get out of there. He pushed himself up until he was roughly sitting, scrabbled in his pack for a large field dressing and a stim pack D. The smaller Stim A's in the ready pocket on his belt were not going to be powerful enough for this mess.

Opening the field dressing, the first thing he found was a thin fibreplast sheet that was to be laid on the ground to make a small sterile field. He stuffed as much of it under his leg as he could manage before the pain started to wash over him again. The leg of his trousers below the knee was shredded completely away and the calf muscle was badly ripped. The blast from the barrel exploding had driven carbonium steel fragments into the leg and flayed the skin away from his shin in a hand sized patch. He slammed the needle of the StimD into his thigh, straight through the clothing, and depressed the handle. A hefty cocktail of medecines in a bacta suspension began to flow through the needle, into the muscle tissues and on into his system. He peeled the sterile cover off the front of the padded dressing, a simple pad made from blown fibreplast "wool" and infused with bacta, then steeling himself for the pain, he pressed it down over as much of his wound as he could. A small ampule of bacta on the back of the pad cracked open under the pressure from his hand and the healng fluid began to seep thru the dressing and into the wound.

He rested back on his hands, the pain in his leg still bright but changing now to a heavy thudding burning sensation. Oddly enough, this WAS an improvment. He had to get back to Drakka and tell her that the force weilders were dead but that one of them had been studying and knew some rudimentary combat moves. He had to get to her and let her know and THEN he could get to a med centre.

Rolling onto his front, Ozie crawled to a nearby tree and used that as a suppoert to force himself upright. From the top pocket of his shirt he pulled out the trigger for the droid locator beacon he'd attached to his hire bike a few days ago. It was a fair distance away, but it was a LOT closer than Drakka's cave. What owuld normally have been a 15 minute walk dragged on to be a one hour hobble. The pain relief in the dressing pack was starting to wear off as he found the bike, but he was able to push his damaged leg over the saddle, then gun the engine, leaping forward across the Fields of Banir as the day began to fade. At least, he hoped the light of day was fading, either that or he was slowly dying... oh great, now the voices in his head were starting to share graveyard humour... this couldn't be good.

The drive up towards Drakka's cave was mercifully uneventful and he left the bike in a small defile near the river that fed the waterfall. There was no easy way for him to get down to the cave, so, stuffing the sterile field cloth in his mouth to help stifle any screams, he slid into the river and allowed it to drag him over the lip of the cascade. The fall down carried weightless in the shimmering water, lit by the last rays of the evening sun, was momentarily blissful. The slam as his body hit the icy dark pool at the bottom of the falls and was then tossed around in the current as he flailed his arms trying to guide himself towards the edge, less fun.

A hand shot out of the curtain of water and grabbed him, hauling him backwards and into the cave mouth. Drakka? Thank the Maker...

He woke on a pallet of cushions in the small hut, a cool hand on his forehead, quiet mumbling in his ear. As his eyes opened he saw the tanned face of Preni, the young Dantari girl who Drakka had taken great delight in tormenting him about.

"Master Drakka! He is awake! He is returned to us...." she called excitedly, beaming down into his face. Her dark eyes glistened with unshed tears, and Ozie felt himself being drawn into them, feeling sorry that he had been responsible in some way for her distress...

"Ah, youngling, Preni has brought you back to be with us again? She was amazed when you fell out of the sky yesterday... lucky for you she was just leaving after bringing me some firewood and supplies!"

Ozie struggled to sit up in the bed then realised that he seemed to be naked under the sheets. "My clothes? Where..."

"Oh, don't worry about that, young Preni has seen men undressed before. After all, you can't grow up in a warrior society without damaged fighters needing treatment. And besides, a loincloth doens't eave much to the imagination...." Drakka looked as if she was going to start laughing at Ozies embarassment againand excused herself. She stepped away and made herself busy with something at the far side of the room "A great impression you have made, young Ozie. Preni has not left your bedside since she carried your body in here..."

Preni knelt beside Ozies bed and said, "Young Master Ozie. I was so grateful to you for saving me from those co-man-does but you sent me away before I could thank you. I am so glad that the goddess of the sky delivered you to me, especially as you were in need of healing. Master Drakka has been teaching me how to heal wounds and treat illnesses, so it was doubly fortunate that you landed in the temple pool".

She spoke with such earnestness and conviction that it was hard not to admire the strength it must have taken for her to take tuition in healing from anyone other than the clans shaman. Ozie placed his hand on her shoulder, smiled and thanked her for all her care. He hoped that he had been a good patient? She nodded and smiled, placed her hand over his and squeezed it.

"You should rest now, Master Ozie. If I may, I would like to rest a little too?"

Not entirely sure where Preni intended resting, Ozie nodded, thanked her again then almost sighed with relief as she stood and made her way across to the cushions Drakka had used as a bed.

Reaching into the cargo container at the head of his bed, Ozie fished out a large piece of plain coloured material which he wrapped round his waist like a long kilt. "That'll do for now..." he grinned. "I don't seem to be able to find any trousers that'll fit over the dressing on my leg!".

"Walk with me, Ozie. If you can manage..." Drakka said, moving toward the door of the hut.

Ozie hobbled to the door, then rested against the outside of the hut.

"You have choices to make, young master Ozie, Light of Preni's Eye. But first, tell me about the force wielders. I felt the battle as a disturbance in the Force and can see for your wounds that it was a tough fight, but tell me, what happened.. what did you see..."

He retold the days events as best as he could remember them. Drakka was especially interested to hear the details of the attacks that the Dantari had learned. "From the student you can learn much about the Master" she said.

Then the telling was past and Drakka stood in the shadows of the cave for some time, thinking over the details, weighing the significance of each event and how it fitted into the whole. Ozie remained where he was, sitting against the stones that formed the bottom layer of the small hut.

Finally Drakka spoke.

"Ozie, you have endured great pains, have acted honestly and with no selfish motive. I fear you will have made enemies with some Dantari and the Empire will one day become aware of what has happened here, so you will continue to be exposed to risk because you have helped me. But you have shown yourself to be a true friend and I am honoured to have met you".

Ozie blushed and muttered something about it having been a priveledge to serve and how the risks were worth it if it means the Emperor doesn't start training other tribesmen to be his toys.

"I want you to take this token, Ozie. It is a holocron, a jedi trinket, but I feel that in time it may help guide you towards your true home." She handed him a small blue cube that glowed faintly. The surface was covered with a fine, intricate geometric pattern and, as he held it, the holocron seemed to hum gently as if it was resonating to some energy field.

Ozie thanked her and then followed her gaze. Inside the hut the sleeping form of Preni could be seen, lying on the small bed and clutching Ozies workshirt.

"As I said, you have choices to make, young Master Ozie. Meditate on this you must" In the shadows, Drakka smiled.

Ozie looked at the sleeping Dantari girl, then at his pack on the foot of his bed and the pathway up to the mouth of the cave.

"Much I have to think on" he said, quietly.

SWG FanFic

2006-05-20T09:37:00.000Z

Rain scudded off the flat rooftops, boiled into gutters and poured out onto the streets of Theed, as if the clouds were trying to fill the town to the brim, like some bizarre, ornate bathtub.

Running from the starport doors across to the arcaded buildings on the opposite side of the square, the young pilot was soaked to the skin before he was halfway. By the time he reached the comparative shelter of the brick archways his flightsuit hung shaplessly, making him look more like a stump legged shapaut than a man.

Sloshing his way along the pavement he could smell the cities dirt being rinsed off buildings, roads, people. The birds which normally sang in the trees dotted around the square huddled high up in the brickwork, spattering him with their compliments to man and all his works. At least the rain would rinse the mess out of his hair before he rounded the corner at the bank and entered the cantina by the back door.

Standing in the foyer he steamed as water ran out of his sodden garb, pooled on the floor around him and was vacuumed up by a modified MSE droid, the sludgy brown water filling a tank precariously mounted on it's back. As the miniature janitor tended to keeping the entrance to the cantina free, or mostly free of rainwater the pilots eyes adjusted to the dull misty lighting in the buildings interior picking out general shapes in the mass of bodies, then identifiying species, faces, individuals and finally... friends!

"Ath!! Where in the galaxy have you been?" a large, unshaven man boomed at him as he slid down into the seating are near the bar. "We've been watching for you for days..." Pale blue grey eyes scanned his features, eyes like his own, steady in their gaze, sharp and somehow seeing 'beyond' just what was in front of them.

"Father..." he began, his voice cracking, "Dad... it was terrible. I never want to see that again. They came to the vill..." his face turned down to the table, his voice trailed into a whisper. He seemed to be crying silently but his father knew the signs, felt the anger building in the young mans frame and, as his son's hands grapsed the edge of the table, the face turned up, white with rage, teeth set, eyes blazing he was already stepping into the line of sight of the two Imperial troopers who had just walked into the bar. "Quiet lad, now's not the time, nor the place... Quickly, put my robe over your suit, it'll raise too many questions..."

The boy seemed, for a moment, to be on the verge of yelling out then paused, grasped the heavy hooded robe from where it lay along the backs of the bar seating and quickly pulled it over his flightsuit, flicking the hood up so it hid his features in shadows. The light of the cantina caught his eyes, now narrowed and determined as the two men casually moved towards the exit of the cantina keeping their faces averted from the troopers while trying to act as casually as possible.

Up the two steps, into the short corridor, and straight into an Imperial non-com, a recruiting sergeant of all people. "Hah, young man, have you considered a career with the Imperial Navy? All loyal citisssssssss" There was a gurgle, then the sergeant slowly slumped against the wall, slid down till he was sitting on the floor, a puzzled look on his face, mouth moving as if to finish words which were being drowned out as blood bubbled up into his mouth and also out from the small slit in his throat just on the Adams apple.

"MOVE! NOW!" the younger man growled at his father and both figures bolted for the door. The MSE droid turned and, with barely a bleep of protest began clearing the spreading puddle of blood from the floor. The sergeants mouth, still now, formed a silent red scream, his eyes focused on the nevermore.

"You damn fool... they'll come after us, they'll clear the town looking for us..."

"Then I need to be seen somewhere else and you need to be away. Take mother, go to Talus, meet me at the old Ranger station in two days time. If I'm not there, well, if I'm not there I'm nowhere."

Father and son stood in the shadows, held each other, looked into each others faces, then, silently, both nodded, stepped apart and quickly moved through the arcades and backstreets, each heading in his own direction, mirror images of each other in so many ways.

SWG FanFic "We Were Rangers" Pt 1of n

2006-05-20T09:32:00.000Z

I remember.

I remember the house I was born in.

A small two roomed shack on the outskirts of Mos Espa. Mother and father had moved here after the war. She worked in the Trades Hall dealing with licensing for local market traders, routine work but safe and it paid well. He, well, as kids we didn't see much of Dad.

We'd hear him arrive home late, late at night. Mum would be trying to keep him quiet as he chattered animatedly in the front room of the house. Us kids would stay in our bunks, we'd learned that sticking our nose round the door was not always a good idea. In the night we'd wake again, hear him snoring on the pallet he shared with Mum. Sometimes in the morning as we were ushered out to school we'd see the bulk of him lying there, rank smelling, covered by one of the rugs that Mum and her sisters had made when they were new brides.

Most times he'd be gone. Just a pile of hides and a note that we'd to clean and stretch them and he'd see us right when he was home.

Sometimes there'd be another man there, a doctor from town and we'd be rushed straight past and sent to stay with an aunt for a few days.

Life in Espa was good, especially for kids like me and my brother. He was younger than me but smarter. Not too smart that I couldn't lead him into all sorts of trouble tho. Lifting droid parts from Watto's scrap heap and trying to sell them back. Playing dare with the odd wild squill that'd stray into the slums and then running pell mell for the nearest militia patrol as soon as the beast turned on us, all teeth and fury. You learned to be sneaky and fast, growing up in the slums. You also learned that some fuel from a speeder, a container and some old strips of scrap metal made a terrifyingly efficient way to remove womp rat lairs from the stairwells and alleys around the houses. Well, that and how to put out fires fast. But that only happened the once. Well, the one time they could pin it on me anyway. Hey, accidents happen.

The old doctor looked serious. Then again, he always did. I think that man was born without the muscles inhis face that make smiles. Perhaps it was spending your life sewing bits back onto your fellow man, digging stuff out of them and trying to keep them alive long enough to let them go out and try killing each other or themselves again that did it.

Dad was lying, face to the wall, on the pallet just inside the front door of the house. The doc had set up a portable bacta tank beside the bed and was muttering to himself that "This fool really should know better... still some things never change" His hand, red with blood, went into the bag that sat on the floor beside the makeshift bed, drew out a laser scalpel as he muttered "this really is going to hurt you a lot more than it'll hurt me".

Us kids were ushered out of the room but even next door we could hear the oaths and curses from the giant on the bed. With a final grunt and curse things fell very, very quiet and a few minutes later an ashen faced Mother came into our room. "You'll have to be quiet. Your father has a bad wound and needs to rest for a few days". Again we were shipped off to another aunts.

My school days blur into each other. Sometimes I remember the school play where I played the back end of a bantha, or the time that Malen Garston beat me up for smiling at HIS girlfriend. Dunno, ever since that first crush on the little twi'lek from the H'yobri clan I've had a fondness for blue skin. After learning to read and write and being taught the history of the Glorious Empire it was time for me to be sent on to Technical School in Bestine.

SWG FanFic

2006-05-20T09:30:00.000Z

Peeling off the sodden, peaty smelling clothes and lowering his bruised frame into the tub of hot, scented water ken' ath closed his eyes and reflected on the day. It had started well, a wandering herd of bantha had decided to graze on the hillside below the ranger station. That had drawn in enough hide and meat to cover his repair bills for the week and had allowed him to shake out the cobwebs in his head from spending too long away from the hunt. His neighbours, both young scouts, had joined him while the local doc gave everyone the once over and administered a few homebrewed medicines that helped give the hunters the edge over their prey. They agreed to drop off some meat on their return and headed out to where some ronto had been sighted earlier. The twin suns were just above the east horizon meaning they had time to walk to the hunting grounds before the full glare of the midday sun turned Tatooines sandwastes to one massive griddle, searing any bare flesh with intense heat. Both of the younger members of the patrol whinged about being made to walk, but the old Ranger just laughed, asking if they really wanted to frighten off the animals. Maybe they were too weak to hunt? Perhaps they should have stayed back and helped decorate the new guild hall with the rest of the Watchmen? The scouts followed on, sullenly measuring out the day step by gridging step, amazed at the older man's ability to just trot along without seeming to tire, never stumbling, and barely leaving a mark behind. About 5km south west of Mos Espa the Ranger drew them up, knelt and inspected some tracks in the sand. Bootmarks, military pattern treads. Fresh, clear marks, not used to walking. Nearby scorching on the scrub told the rest of the story. "Imperial shuttle. Troopers, patrol strength, two non-coms" the Ranger mumbled, almost to himself. A few yards further ahead lay the remains of a man. Dressed in city clothes, a rough robe pulled over his face, nearby a pack lay ripped open, it's contents already slipping into the sands. "Don't know what this guys business was, but they've dropped his body out here to be found...." he said, looking carefully around for any other clues. "Don't touch anything, move back a bit and lets go round the long way" The youngest scout stared at the corpse, flyblown, burnt by the sun. "But we should bury him?" "No lad, that's what they're looking for, who comes out here to recover him and give him a funeral. Now, move. Fast." They beat double time, back about 100 metres, then worked their way in towards the rock face. "In here..." the Ranger shot forward and into a narrow gap in the rocks. His two apprentices followed without question. Back in the dunes a dark shape lifted up from its hiding place, bleeped and whirred, extended folding legs to stabilise the weight of its body and began moving towards their hiding place. "Probot. I knew they'd have left one or more out here. Stay down" The Ranger moved to the opening in the rock, dropped to one knee and slipped a heavy military blaster from the oilcloth that protected it from the sand. Tipping his body forward he assumed the prone firing position, brought the rifle to his cheek, aimed, and fired in one smooth movement. Almost as soon as it's head cleared the smaill ridge at the edge of the dunefield, the probot shuddered, a shower of sparks erupting from the camera mount on one side of its chassis and, almost simultaneously, the thin plating on the opposite side blew out, scattering circuit boards and cabling across the sand. "Keep down...." hissed the ranger as the scouts began to press forward. The explosion shattered what was left of the silence as a large anti-tamper charge ripped the probot into a thousand angry flying shards. "Hopefully it didn't get a long look at us, but we better get a shift on. Up the way, over the rocks. NOW!" Popping up from the prone position, stowing his rifle and beginning to scrabble up the rockface, the Ranger seemed to work as efficiently as the machine he'd just destroyed. The scouts followed, with less grace, but youthful muscles managed to keep the pace up. Over the ridge of the cliff, and already they were sprinting over the plateau, dodging rocks and crevasses, watchful for the shape of descending Lambda shuttles. Forced up onto higher ground than had been his intention the Ranger knew that they would be exposed, not only to the full glare of the suns, but to the eyes of anyone looking out over the flat plateau. The best way to avoid detection and the building heat would be to drop into the crevasses, work their way across the plain as best they could. This would mean following the direction of these natural trenches back and forth and that could mean taking twice as long to cross, but better to err on the safe side. For now. After an hour of backbreaking crouched running, ducking in and out of shadows, scrabbling over rocks and avoiding the various small creatures that hunted down here for any scrap of food that’d been blown in from the surrounding desert they stopped for a brief rest. A small stove was produced from a backpack, water was boiled and some leaves from the local kuafu shrub were dropped in to make a strong, reddish brown tea. A reversible sheet, sand coloured on one side, greyish brown and green on the other, was stretched across the width of the trench to give a little cover from the buzzing white light of the day though it did little to stop the actual heat. “Keep a look out up top lad” Ken’ said in a low voice and one of the scouts shimmied up to the edge of the sheeting and peered out over the dirt wastes. The other scout busied himself pouring tea, adding some strong bantha milk and a few spices to mask the milks sour taste. “Food fit for a soldier” the old Ranger mumbled in thanks as the steaming mug of hot t’chai was handed to him. Two further servings were poured and the scouts took up position on either side of the trench, sipping, watching, wondering. Mid-day was not the time to be stuck out on the Mesric Plateau. Not when both suns beat down in full summer heat from a clear blue sky. The ranger party kept still in the shade, quietly watchful, listening for anything that disturbed the natural sound of the desert. As the suns moved from the highest quarter of their progress and the air ceased to sear bare skin the Ranger and his two scouts broke camp, and began picking their way through the crevasses towards the hills south of Mos Eisley. The quiet of the desert was shattered by the sudden explosion. A fireball formed in the air above the desert and the party hit the ground as fast as they could. A wave of heat rolled across the sand, hitting the hillside and setting off a chain of echoes. A new probot droid hit the sand with an almighty thud, lay motionless for a few seconds, then, as legs pushed down from it’s underside, lifted and hovered a few metres above the surface. Even as they watched it scan the horizon they knew it had been called down from orbit, either by a bounty hunter or by Imperial forces. The sound of a vehicle nearby answered that. A bounty hunter. The speeder shot out from the shadows, stopped by the probot while a figure stepped out of the hovering vehicle, walked to the droid, tapped some information into a datapad and then scurried back to the speeder and drove away from the droid, directly towards the rangers party.

SWG FanFic

2006-05-20T09:28:00.000Z

The morning mists were just starting to burn off the grasslands in whispy ghostlike streamers. His bones ached. Every muscle in his body felt as if it was trying to rip itself off his frame with cramps. The flies, at least, hadn't homed in on him yet. For that at least he was thankful.

From even a few yards away it would have been difficult to spot the hide. Low in the grass, built over a natural dip in the ground, the ghillie suit and scrim net had been interwoven with local grasses to break up their outline. Looking for all the world like another rats nest, the hide had been home to k'alum and his observer te'lia for the past week. The rats that scavenged round the edge of the hide looking for food scraps or worse added an air of authenticity to the disguise.

He dipped his face down onto the dirt beneath him, slowed his breathing and listened. First close, then far. The regular sound of his own breathing was matched by that of his sister, the only other twi'lek k'alum would have trusted to work with him like this. Outside the nest he could ear the rats scurry and then much further out he detected the sounds of the Rorgungan camp stirring.

The unmistakable sounds of soldiers waking in early dawn. Coughing, hawking, passing wind and laughing among themselves, safe in the knowledge that their patrol droids would alert them to any danger. Metal clanged against metal as ration packs were heated and served out. The warm smell of freshly reconstituted meat stew travelled far on the wind.

The rumbling of their stomachs startled both twi'lek into full alertness. "Drink, now" he gestured with his lekku. They both sipped carefully at their own liquid rations, warm from their body heat, alive with bacteria and tasting like nectar as the protein soup trickled into their guts.

A gentle tap on his shoulder alerted him to the presence of a larger figure in the Rorgungan camp. Their target had risen and was walking amongst his men, slapping their backs and laughing loudly, his dark eyes skittering about watching the horizon for any signs of danger. The lack of chatter from the patrol droids had disturbed him, though they were reporting in regularly and didn't seem to have come across anything. The small comms pack in the twi'leks lair made sure that the droids kept on their patrol routes, made sure they only found what the twi'lek wanted them to.

A small glowing green dot to the edge of his vision flashed twice to signify an incoming message. k'alum slipped the mini-HUD into the retaining band on his headress, touched a finger to the pad in his palm twice to indicate he was able to take the message. The green dot blinked out and was replaced by a red dot. The go signal was about to come in. A gentle kick withthe side of his foot alerted his sister who slipped forward a few inches, raised the disruptor rifle on its stand and looked intently through the scope.

"Three, unarmed. East and west of the main tent. One, sentry, armed, south. Facing away. He's... " she laughed quietly "he's getting rid of last nights beers, uch the smell.... Target is centre of camp, seated. Reading a map?"

"kay kay" her brother hissed. His own rifle, a long barrelled, heavily modified blaster was already trained on the forehead of the target. The Rorgungan officer drank his tea, consulted his maps, listened to the chatter of his own comms, totally unaware that barely 90m away two assassins lay in deep cover. Waiting.

The steady red dot blinked twice, steadied, twice, steadied then burned bright green. "Go"

Two clicks, pause, two clicks. The green dot blinked out. "We're on our own now..."

"As always"

A flick of a button on the HUD changed the display to show the nearby hostiles as red dots surrounded with a red circle. Aggressive and deadly. Perfect. Two waymarks glowed, the first showing the camp, the second showing their exit route. There would be no time to think once the target was down, just run and hope the waymarks held up.

In the camp the Rorgungan stood, folded his map, dropped it on the field table and stretched. His great fat green face filled the scope as k'alum gently squeezed the trigger, stopping just halfway to the point of full travel. The officers head tipped forward, his eyes swivelled towards the lair, directly towards the muzzle of his assassins rifle.

There was a flash of light, a barking sound as the highly charged bolt of energy leapt towards its target.

With barely a pause to check that the officer was falling, his head split by the release of energy against unprotected flesh, both twi'lek flicked to full automatic and spreyed the camp with a hail of suppression fire. The patrol droids erupted in balls of flame and shards of metal as the demolition charges blew them into the camp.

Not one shot in retaliation. Smoke and flames burst from tents and bodies as the twi'lek raised themselves to their knees, still firing, and then fled back from their nest, back from the rats, back from the bloody mayhem they'd unleashed. Long legs carried them effortlessly towards the treeline, heavy weapons were slung over shoulders, small spraysticks were readied for any unfortunate encounters and, withthe press off a thumbswitch, a small minefield extending from inside their lair and out for 20m in all directions went live.

"That'll keep them busy, heh?"

Sprinting up the near sheer escarpment the two Antarian Rangers seemed gifted with unnatural speed and elegance as they leapt into the waiting shuttle.

"Good hunting, k'alim?"

"Aye sir, as ever..."

"Grand!! You have both served the Alliance well, this will be long remembered, you will be rewarded a hundred times when the war is over...."

"To be honest sir, I'd settle for some real food, a bath, and a chance to get out of these combats for a day or two" grinned k'alim

The rodian officer turned, smiling to himself, "I've never understood the twi'lek. Marvellous hunters, expert marksmen, and yet you're happiest when you are dancing??"

From out of the breast pocket of her ghillie suit t'elia was already unfolding a pair of hotpants "Somebody mentioned a dance??"

An Old Ranger's Story

2006-05-20T09:24:00.000Z

I'm salvaging some of my old stories from the SWG rangers forums "Campfire Tales"

What do I miss most, son? No, not the chase, tho, to be sure, that was always a thrill. Walking and crawling, sometimes for days, to get just the right position to pick off the wanderers from the pod. Thinning the herd by taking out the weak, the sick, the old.

Yourself and your brothers riding in, fleshing and skinning the carcasses before the flyers got to them. I'd lay up in the hide, watching you all work, remembering when I was learning the trade and had to rush in, work fast and get out before the bulls got scent of you and charged.

Oh, that mad run back to safety, eh? Leaping over rocks and gulleys, shimmying up the 'scarps as if you had wings in your heels. Hah! True, true, several tonnes of armoured temper right behind you does kind of focus the mind.

Good days they were son, great days. I know I never told you or your brothers, but, well, they're gone now I guess and, yeah, no point in getting us upset. Eh?

What I miss most. No, not the nights we'd all spend, camped up there in the highlands, taking turns on watch in case the locals got wind of our presence and decided to run us off. Or worse. The chat round the fires, seeing you lads beaming with excitement at the memory of the day, aye, that was always worth more than all the credits in Theed.

But no, what I miss most son, it's the smell of fresh clawed earth. The way it used to come in on the morning breeze as the bantha herds began grazing for forage. That musty, damp smell of the nights dew burning off in the dawn suns. I'd lay in there, behind your mother, my back to the wall, sniffing the breeze coming through the ventilators and know there would be one more good days hunt.

She'd stir, we'd say our good morrows, and the day would begin full of hope.

It's not been the same since, well, since we had to move up here to C-net. Aye, I know, we couldn't keep the old place going, just the two of us and with your mother gone I couldn't look after all you lads. Not properly. I only wish I'd tried harder to get you all to go live at your aunts... perhaps then you'd not have been there when the recruiting sergeants came looking for 'a few good men, steady with a rifle and not afraid to fight for their freedom'.

Aye, aye, I know, the Alliance was a noble cause. They're all noble causes. Och, never mind me, am just a silly owd fool. I'll be fine, I'll be fine bye and bye. Just let me sit by the window a little while, pretend I can still smell pantha poodu.

Those were the last words I ever heard from the old Ranger. That evening in the apartment in C-net. Shuttles roaring past outside, the smell of their turbines heavy in the damp air.

My wife and I found him the next morning, head tilted to the one side, his eyes fixed somewhere miles away. In his hands he held some datadiscs, letters from the commander of the Alliance unit we had all served in. Letters that wore my poor mother down, bit by bit, as they arrived.

We burned her remains on a pyre above the old farm on Tatooine, returning her to the planet as ash, the better to bring new life forth. Father promised her he'd come back to her one day and, today we we will spread his ashes on that same hillside, among the sweetgrass that grows there now.

I suppose it's the sweetgrass that's drawn them in, but the local farmers say they've never seen so may bantha in the valley on so many years.

There is a smell of moist, fresh earth from their foraging as I step forward to light the pyre.

There'll be good hunting Father. Travel well.

Second Life Objects Milled in RL

2006-05-18T03:43:00.000Z

Second Life objects could be milled IRL Interesting article over at 3pointD.com

Mike Beradino and Simon Spartalian (SL IGN Simon Jezebel), students at the Art Institute of Chicago are launching a service offering to mill SL objects (up to a given size) out of anything from foam to stainless steel.

Mike and Simon can also be found at their own place: Recursive Instruments

This kind of crossover tech from a 'game' environment to the main reality really knocks my socks off. Awesome.

The NGE. Six Months In...

2006-05-15T11:57:00.000Z

Well John, when you unleashed the NGE on an unsuspecting SWG populace back on 15th November 2005 you and the boys (and gals) asked for six months to get everything up and running.

All the bugs would be gone, the new combat systems would be in. Collision detection?

Well, 6 months in and, uhm, last night Theed starport vanished on the Bria server, heals don't fire when they're meant to, specials don't work with your looted weapons, crafters are going out of business left right and centre as their little businesses crumble in reactionto modded clothes and weapons dropping, you can're respec from a master combat to a master trader prof without the risk of getting stuck as a newb again and...

well, I could go on, couldn't I?

The list of bugs that have flared up SINCE NGE is appalling. The fact there are still release day bugs in game is laughable. I'm not even going to comment on the feeble showing at E3....

Six months in and already your team have asked us for another six months. Oh, and no new expansions this year, just bug fixes, polishing and a bit of content...

I'm depserately grasping for a word here John. It means lacklustre but eith even less 'wow' than a ball of laundry lint... if I could think of that word it'd sum up how I feel about SWGNGE 6 months in.

New new stuff for SOE vid from E3...

2006-05-14T00:23:00.000Z

OK, I know you're hungry to see ANYTHING of the 'new stuff' that's hitting SWG soon, so, here... it's a video cap from E3 and, in the background, in the middle interview (the one with the chunky, excited, nervous looking bloke in the SOE tshirt*) you can see... a teeny tiny video playing that shows another few seconds of exciting excitement.

Remember, and this is key, if it's not starwarsy and iconic, it's not SWG.

Pass me another KrispyKreme, John, the RedBull is wearing off...

(Video is from the Santa Barbara Arts TV's daily coverage of E3)

* OMFG... THAT is Grant McDaniel???

Ranger - A Lifestyle, Not A Profession

Spread Your Wings...

Jeff Freeman, 1969 - 2008

I'm not here...

Sorry Il Divo, I'm judging you by your friends.

Jeff Freeman Blogs... I Reblog... You xBlog.

Nien Nunb Blogs!

IS SL growing as WoW begins to shrink?

Stop Press! Hims Play Hers In Online game shock horror probe!

Do you got class or is you skilled?

Playerep Is Shaping Up

Salute to Roy Lichtenstein

The Rangers Credo

Are YOU HoT?

You stole my *£$&"*$ing cloudsong..

Be Alert... (insert tasteless joke here)

BOOM Throat Punch!

SWG. Polishing....

The Kitty Lawyer is IN.

They're Back! (SWGwYaMB 50.5)

So, let's get this clear...

Tiggs Writes....

It was't Jeff, okay.

a propos of nothing at all.

More Mea Culpa.

I'm just saying...

SWG:Remapped. The House Mix (unplugged)

The Smed Blog.

SWG Chapter 2 Character Appearance Changes

Now children, don' t smoke...

E3 Binned

Jedi Knights and Census Takers Revisited.

Why. One Small Sullistan, One Shitload of Galaxy

Koster's Lament

Get the **** out of my head...

Jeff posts

So, what DID happen to SWG?

Not Found

Athela's Game-O-Rama

I am t3h uber... sort of.

Raph and the seeds of an idea

All Change at the SWG Forums

Helios' getting reamed on MySpace

Sing me a song, a sad old song...

Oh it could have all gone so horribly horribly wrong...

Dance Yoda Dance

Once Is Enough

A New Beginning.

The Commandments of Online Worlds

Oh the gamer gods are on good form these days!

Raph Koster gave us his 40 Rules just t'other day and now he has been up Mount Improbable and extracted these Ten Commandments from inside the corpse of poor old Ernie (Well, he said he found two tablets in Dead Earnest)(Ah please yourself ;) )

The Commandments of Online Worlds

The Shape of Things To Come

These devs think people are so dumb.

On RMT

Scott Jennings Nails Crafting

The Forum Troll Explained

Why Devs should just shut up and Create...

Nero. Rome. Fiddle...

Raph and 40 Ways To Be A Better Games Designer

Canon? Isn't that a company that makes cameras?

The Restuss Memorial.

You're only meant to blow the bloody doors off!!

I wish I'd said that!

Token Exchange and the profile of rise/decay

Who is known for...

[SW:G] 3rd Anniversary - Player v Dev PvP battle.

The murloc says...

A life in the day of a Star Wars Crafter

Karen Travis and the Grimy Underbelly of Fandom

Nien Nunb Speaks!

Tide's Horizon: Truth Revealed (Raph on SWG Quest)

Sam Spade. Imperial pilot, jedi and wino

Chapter 1. A new beginning or more of the same but nu and improved?

[SWG] Goin' back to it's roots, yeah...

Rogue_5's Comlink. Is it LD?

SWG Graphics

Second Life Of Warcraft wiki starts.

TiggPost

/. Sony And The No-Confidence Vote

You stole my £$&"$ing cloudsong..