Star Wars Galaxies: Friday Feature: Space Ship Info and Beta Registration Opens!

On Wednesday, LucasArts revealed the first of two Jump to Lightspeed species, the Ithorian (we'll reveal the second one later this summer). We also went into details about two more of the space sectors, Dathomir and Yavin 4 (check out the new 360 degree screenshots).  Today we are officially putting up pictures and info for 13 of the 15+ space ships that players will be able to build and fly when we launch Jump to Lightspeed.  Enjoy!
 
The other big news is today we have opened Beta Registration for Jump to Lightspeed. Please note: it is not first come first serve, so don't be discouraged if you don't register right away. You must have an active Star Wars Galaxies account to register.
 
Here is the rough beta timeline:
 
During August - Internal Alpha Testing - this will be done with SOE and LucasArts employees. We may invite a few handpicked players (likely long time community people who have helped us out on Test Center) later in August. This will be before we are considered feature complete (hence "Alpha").
 
During September - Beta 1 Testing - our goal will be to quickly fill a galaxy. The first people selected for this will be the Anaheim Fan Fest attendees. After that will we'll start to take some handpicked and many random samples from the community (giving preference to long time, constructive community members)
 
In October - Beta 2 Testing - we will open up another galaxy or two to do stress testing and polish.

I'm not at liberty to discuss the official release date, but as you can see we are still looking at fall 2004.
 
Good luck!
 
Thunderheart will be handling Friday Features from this point forward. Thanks for putting up with me
  
Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara
SOE Associate Producer
Former SWG Community Relations Manager