Star Wars Galaxies: Correspondent Top 5 Lists: Where we are and where we're going.

I would like to start off by showing a deep appreciation for all of the Player Correspondents both past and present. They have all contributed much of their time and a great deal of effort into helping make this process a success. Granted, these are the first few steps and we have a long way to go, but as a larger community effort, this is a great start. It has been a fantastic experience to have been part of a strong and active community for over three years now and it's good to see this level of continued involvement and interaction by everyone.

Many thanks to all of the correspondents and to all parts of our community.

Why so long?

I know many of you have waited for these Top 5 responses and I want to thank you for your patience. You may curse me for being late, but please understand that the length of time it took to accomplish this task directly relates to my desire to do the best job possible and as such, involved a lot of in-depth learning, investigations and to earnestly get these issues into the realm of progress.

Over the course of this process, many of the Top 5 items that were fixed early on, some were changed or repaired over the duration of this Correspondence effort, some items that will be fixed in the January publish and some of these issues are part of larger efforts than will span longer periods of time. For instance, the Combat Balance, the GCW and other large-in-scope game reiterations are all underway and will take more than a single month to address. As such, many Top 5 items will take longer than a month and the developers and I had to determine a course for future actions. There wasn't a "quick and easy" answer that could be provided, so we needed to take the time to put together realistic answers. We, as a team, had to decide on a course of action and commit to it and it took a little bit of time to get everything in order. Getting that information from you, to the correspondents, to me, then to the devs is all a process that had to be agreed upon or it just wouldn't have worked. As we go forward and address some of these larger Top 5 issues, I will be working with you and with the correspondents to gather the best of our community ideas and present them to the development team. This will be my main order of business when the New Year begins.

The Player Correspondents

Player Correspondents play an important role in the development of the game and the "Top 5" is a key part of the process. The player correspondents and I interact and talk about player issues; game play, rules, technical challenges and a great many things. There are Correspondents for each profession and 4 additional aspects of the game that are of key importance. Those four additional aspects are the Galactic Civil War (GCW), Player Associations (PA's), Star Wars and Test Center. The GCW correspondent focuses on elements of the war and PvP, The PA correspondent focuses on Player Associations, guilds and that set of features while our Star Wars Correspondent focuses on general issues like missions, the interface, playable species and most importantly, the "star warsy-ness" factor of the game. Then there are the Test Center folks who work very hard to help tweak changes, find issues and give us clues on a daily basis. All of the correspondents read your posts, get information to you and represent your sub-communities in the larger group and it is important that we all support that process. Their issues are your issues.

Going Forward

The first couple of months of this Top 5 effort have taught me many things and making commitments to thousands of people over the internet sounds like a difficult thing to do, and it is. We all want it to be part of a larger world building effort and these are the first steps of a longer journey. Without further adieu, I present the Top 5 issues as they are today and hope to see everyone get involved and add their feedback as we go forward.

Architect - In progress. _-ArchAngel-_ will be posting an update soon and I will add it to this index.

Armorsmith - We are transitioning a new Correspondent. Correspondent has initiated a new effort

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=armorsmith&message.id=25873

Artisan
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=artisan&message.id=25587

Bio-Engineer

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bio-engineer&message.id=40194

Bounty Hunter

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bounty_hunter&message.id=120707

Brawler - In progress. StGabriel will be posting an update soon and I will add it to this index

Carbineer

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=carabineer&message.id=14526

Chef

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=chef&message.id=16898

Combat Medic
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=combat_medic&message.id=18281

Commando - Transitioning a new Correspondent, LordSeckmoth. Top 5 list Pending

Creature Handler

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=creature_handler&message.id=141562

Dancer - In progress. Ravenmist and I are still discussing some issues.

Doctor

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=doctor&message.id=24681

Droid Engineer - Sintrosi has retired and left for the holidays. We salute the work of Sintrosi and the Droid Engineer community. Last week I posted a run of 22 questions to the community and going forward in January after the holidays, please check the "In Concept" part of the web site. Well have some information outlining some of the feedback we'd like to get from everyone.

Entertainer - In progress. SlickRiptide is retiring and we have some hanging issues to button up. Ill post a link as soon as I can.

Fencer
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=fencer&message.id=13305

Image Designer

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=image_designer&message.id=7054

Marksman
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=marksman&message.id=4800

Medic
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=medic&message.id=7860

Merchant
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=merchant&message.id=17551

Musician

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=musician&message.id=7255

Pikeman

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pikeman&message.id=10962

Pistoleer

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=pistoleer&message.id=30542

Ranger

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=28324

Rifleman

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=rifleman&message.id=34875

Scout

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=12959

Smuggler
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=smuggler&message.id=42771

Squad Leader

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=squad_leader&message.id=11275

Swordsman

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=swordsman&message.id=13146

Tailor

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=tailor&message.id=21565

Teras Kesi

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=teras_kasi_artist&message.id=39964

Weaponsmith - Logix is transitioning in as a new correspondent and has started a new cycle in the process.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=weaponsmith&message.id=24166

PA
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Player_Association&message.id=807

Star Wars

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=971494

GCW - A very thorough piece of work. This is a big job and we have a ways to go to answer all the issues, but I'm working with Jester to get everything in and get it catalogued and get some dev attention.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=GCW&message.id=62837

I hope everyone has a great holiday