Yesterday marked the launch of Publish 17 for StarWars Galaxies (for the uninitiated, SWG Publishes are either HUGE patch days or where they implement new content or play systems.). This one added quite a few nice features. My favorite, which I have been expecting since the recent Combat Upgrade made the combat system like EQ2, is how aggressive NPCs won't attack you anymore if they are grey to you. This is insanely important since a small group of things 20-30 levels lower than you can still kill you. This one little addition has made some of the dumber zones from the new Rage of the Wookiees expansion playable without drugs...the real life kind. Instead of spending 30 minutes to go tear through zones that force you into combat with invisible walls, you can actually play with the content. This and possibly the couple of new space quests they added are the only things I really care about in the patch.
The first major addition I noticed sent me into fits of laughter was: multi-passenger land vehicles. This might have been a nice feature earlier on in the game when there were more people playing...or even closer to when the first released speeders. But now, the server populations are about half of what they used to be (I think I am being insanely generous here) and they give items to facilitate grouping...ingenious.
The second major addition that made me laugh: SWG has a new New Player Tutorial for all of those players that are not picking the game up. I plan on running through it tonight, but I have heard that it makes the player think they will be a Jedi in no time at all (takes about a year of die hard playing now..maybe longer). I think it is more a tutorial for those of us who have been playing to teach us what the new combat system is like since they decided to change everything and then not give us documentation about how things work now.
Number three, yes, of course there is a number three: [DEVL]! Apparently, there will be occasions where the text "[DEVL]" will pop up into the chat window if you are having problems when it pops up, you should include the string after [DEVL] in your /bug report. This is nice because it shows how much they test things on the Test servers now before they give it out to us in the live ones. I guess they are minimizing staff since the game is losing players. Good thing they are adding a "move players with items" to get ready for some server merges.
And lastly, ok, technically not lastly, but it is the last I am gonna mention: /coverCharge for entertainers! Now, not only can entertainers set up macros to have their characters running nonstop while they are at work/at school/sleeping to gain experience without any work (and garner tips from it), now they can charge you to watch them. A better idea, which while it may not be what the entertainers want, is what a lot of us who are not entertainers want, is to make it so that when you /tip an entertainer in a group it is evenly distributed to everyone in the group. Everyone in the group was entertaining you, so why not tip everyone?
