SWG Beta Update:Player Associations

[Johnny Rico]

This is a recent Beta update regarding player associations:

Enjoy it for what its worth.

JR

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"Although technically the Player Associations have been ready to test for a while now, bugs with certain steps of resource gathering and crafting have prevented players from getting to the point where they can make the P.A. Hall deed. In order to start a Player Association, you must purchase a deed, build the guildhall, and then get some members. So to help them out, we decided to create a couple P.A.’s for them.

FSS
I created the first Player Association just north of Mos Eisley. After building the P.A. Hall, I went inside to the Guild Management Terminal. The first step was to give it a name. The first bug I discovered was I couldn’t put spaces in the name. After reporting the bug, I typed in the name of the first Star Wars Galaxies Beta P.A. – “ForceSensitiveSheep” (inspired, of course, from in-jokes on these very boards). The next step was to give it an abbreviated name; “FSS”. My P.A. was now active, but I needed to get members if I didn’t want it to go away in the next couple days.

After putting out a quick system message (it’s good to have special powers ), I soon had several potential members rushing up the hills outside of the seedy spaceport city. When they got to the door, they quickly realized they couldn’t get in. My first step was to sponsor them. I clicked on the “Sponsor For Membership” button on the radial menu on the terminal and typed in the name (the first being “Erick”). Erick got a message telling him that I was willing to sponsor him for the PA if he accepted. A moment later, I received a message with Erick’s acceptance. The next step was for me to click on the new “Sponsored for Membership” button of the radial menu. It brought up a list of sponsored people waiting to be accepted (currently only Erick). I accepted him and my first recruit came in through the door.

I repeated this step a couple times and soon we had several people exploring the different rooms of the PA hall. We discovered a few more bugs (some characters didn’t appear to update correctly in the hall and looked like they were continually running into a wall, the PA abbreviated name wasn’t showing up over the avatars, the guild chat channel wasn’t working 100% of the time). My next step was to start doling out permissions to the new members. I gave everybody the ability to sponsor new members. This means they could invite people to join the guild. I gave some of them the ability to accept sponsored members. I also gave a few of them the ability to hand out P.A. titles to other members. In no time, our members had titles like “Master Ram”, “Sheep”, “Sheep of Sacrasm” “Q’s Ewe” and “Hedgetrimmer”.

Given we weren’t that picky as to who joined the P.A. our numbers quickly grew. Last I checked we were at 75. We have decided that the first order of business was getting crafters advanced enough to make sure some furniture. The place looked kind of barren.

HFS
Meanwhile, Blair (our Associate Producer in Austin) started his own P.A. just north of Mos Espa. He quickly discovered another issue with our P.A.s; he wanted to create the “Dark Jedi Lobster” P.A. but the naming filter was the same as the player naming filter, meaning he couldn’t use the word “Jedi”. So that is how the “HolyFloatingShrubberies” came into being.

Unfortunately, Blair became swamped in project work and HFS got off to a slower start than FSS (along with an accidental deletion of the management terminal). But their numbers are going up as well (last I checked over 30). And frankly, they are a bit scarier with titles like “Shrubbite”, “Holy Shrubber” and “Shrub Messiah”.

Already one can sense the tension between those who follow the ways of the Shrub and those who feel shrubs are meant for eating. This weekend we will try out another P.A. feature; the “Declare War” button.

My current goal is to pass on the mantle of P.A. Leader to the testers so they can fully test the system themselves. Considering the respect I’m getting from my members, I’m looking forward to doing that. (I’ll get you for this Kulen!)

-Kevin O'Hara
Community Relations Manager"