Star Wars Galaxies: Decay!!!

Q-3P0, the man on my to-bug-at-E3 list, let us in on some information on item decay within SWG. It's a nice little informative article, so here it is.

This is just a bit of clarification to help focus the debate.
The statement was "a 1000 hp item, with a 50 decay value, lasts 300 hours of real time."

What's a 1000hp item? Well, my example happened to be a metal staff I looted off of an NPC.

The scale of decay is a hundred point scale, so there's quite a lot of variation there.

Youc an also simply repair an item. This MAY lower its max hit points if the repairperson fails (and sometimes when they succeed, if it's a really complex item), but also effectively resets the decay. Decay works by lowering the current HPs of the item over time.

We've spoken before of "trophy kits" that remove all utility from an item but preserve them forever, to make them permanent trophies.

Lastly, I want to remind people that we're asking for a reason--to find out what it should be. There's a balance point between "never decay" and "decays too fast for casual gamers" that we have to find. We need decay for the crafting market to stay viable. We don't want to alienate casual gamers. So the question is, "what's the balance point?" Statements like "The final nail in the coffin for casual gamers" or whatever are missing the point--we're asking both the beta testers and you precisely so that it ISN'T a nail in anyone's coffin.

Read it all here.