WarCry has up a ‘state of the game‘ piece by the lead designer of SWG and the LucasArts producer for the game. (Bet they have a fun working relationship.) While mostly it’s just self-congratulatory backpatting they do give out some goodies at the end:

The whole development team is really excited about all the early design work that is in progress for the Beast Master Expertise system which will be released in Chapter 6. Players will have fun crafting their pets, trading or keeping the eggs, then hatching and raising them. As players adventure into the world they will find creatures that will give them DNA cores that they can load into their incubator and create their pet. We are giving the players the freedom to customize their pet, making them more defensive, offensive, and so on. It is going to be a very cool system for all of our players to try out. For those veteran players who are worried about the status of their older pets, we can assure you that we are working to ensure the pets will keep their look and the names that you gave them long ago.

I do want to take a sec and say that I think the last five publishes actually have been steps in the right direction. They’ve chosen to make this game a much more straightforward title than it used to be, and they’re building on the platform they erected using the bones from the cold, dead corpse of the launch game. Issues and frustrations with the NGE should be gone and, if not forgotten, then accepted. Everybody that was going to leave already has. The playerbase they’ve got left is probably who is there to stay. It’s time to do some server merges, light the bonfire under the SWG of old, and move on.

It’s great to hear they’re bringing back pets. Like almost everyone else who played SWG in the early days, my primary character was a Creature Trainer at one point. I never got nearly as high on the ladder as most did, but I still had a few favorites I brought out for PvP and hunting. While Strider (my long-deleted Kaadu mount) is lost forever, it’s especially heartening to hear that they’re supporting some of the ancient pets that people still have lying around in the game.

I actually think this may be what the game needs to start appealing to old players again. Here are five other suggestions on things to bring back from the olden days to get veterans back into the game:

1. Bounty Hunter vs. Jedi Antagonism - One of my absolute favorite things from the olden days was the system whereby Jedi who showed off to much got themselves bounty hunted for their trouble. I’m not suggesting a return to that hardcore a system, but it seems like every other character in the game is either a Jedi or a BH. Can’t there be some way of tapping into that player choice to produce interesting game content?
2. The Wonder of Space - When the Space Expansion came out, and for a few months after, EVERYONE was in space. It was a blast doing pvp space battles, doing runs with folks on Star Destroyers; I loved TIE Fighter so bad back in the day, and this was the closest thing I’d had since those experiences. Bring back that sense of wonder! Do another expansion with a big space component, or give players some more focused stuff to do in their ships.
3. Community in Cantinas and Med Centers - The ‘build a buff’ system is keen and all, but … oh screw it. The Cantinas are dead. Never mind.
4. Viability of Public Vendors - Give Traders a reason to put something other than a ‘buy my stuff here’ widget on one of the public vendors. Newbies need to buy things too, you know, and sometimes I just don’t feel up to treking across half a planet to buy some pants. Hey, maybe reintroducing item decay to the game would help with this? I’m just saying.
5. Tusken Hardcore - Back in the day, taking on the tusken raiders was a big deal. Now, I don’t know of anyone who does PvE that thinks there’s a really scary endgame to take on. Maybe some more of that crazy ‘content’ stuff they mentioned after the community summit would be a draw.

Thanks to YAMB for getting my mind restarted on these issues. It’s been really fun re-visiting my own memories of the game through their oddly mis-shapen heads.