First Night Post NGE

“Good evening Lieutenant Lightcloud”, the Imperial officer started. “I’ve called you in tonight to discuss some changes we have in store for you”.
“Wonderful” I though, haven’t they made enough changes in the last few months to keep the higher ups occupied for the next several years?
“First” he went on, “I want you to empty out your back pack and lay it all down on the floor here so that we can decide what you can keep and what we will get rid of”.
“Huh?” I said,
“Empty your pack Lieutenant Lightcloud, that’s an order”.
I opened my pack and proceeded to empty the contents on the floor of his office. He strode from behind his desk, and walked over to the pile. He surveyed the contents, hands behind his back, making a slow circle around the pile, and looking down at the contents like I had just dumped the contents of a recycler on his floor. I mean I had a little bit of everything in my pack. Hides, bones, meat…ok so the meat wasn’t all that fresh, but hey! It was good quality, and I couldn’t see to toss it out.
I had camp kits, camo-kits and traps, some armor, both padded and ubese, a few different weapons, plus a lot of odds and ends I had picked up in my travels. He poked at all my things with the toe of his boot murmuring to himself as he surveyed what I had dumped on his carpet.
“Ok, first, we are going to lighten you up some by getting rid of all the Ranger related items you have here, then were going to go through all the rest and dispose of everything that will not be essential to your new assignment”.
“New assignment?”
“I’ll discuss that after we go through all this stuff,” he stated flatly.
After some time, I was left with pretty much the clothes on my back. I still had all my hide, meat, and weapons, but the colonel strongly suggested I find someone that would take it off my hands, soon, rather then later, as to what he had in mind for me, I would need to start traveling a lot lighter.
“Sir? I don’t know how you expect me to survive and complete my assigned missions, without my camps, camo-kits, and traps”.
“Lieutenant Lightcloud, for what we have in store for you, you wont need those antiquated items anymore. In fact we are going to issue you a whole new arsenal to deal with what you may encounter out on the missions we have in mind. It is for this reason that we went through all your items…you see…the Imperial Army is not longer in need of Rangers as such, but what we do have a need for is persons, such as yourself, that are experienced in the art of cover and concealment. Persons that do know how to utilize traps, just not the ones you were used to, but a whole new line, that can be used against personnel”.
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard! No more Rangers? New traps? What the Kark was going on?
“Lieutenant Lightcloud, what we plan on doing is assigning you to a very secretive and covert class of people in The Imperial Army. You will become one of these. You will be required to assess enemy troop strengths, gather information on sentient beings, go behind enemy lines in advance of other operatives to gather information, set up ambushes, and other duties we think you will be qualified to undertake”
I looked at this officer of the Imperial army as if he had suffered some sort of space decomp sickness. Covert? Secretive missions?
“What you are saying sir, is that I’m to become a spy?” I asked.
“Well I wouldn’t quite call it that”, he grinned, and I prefer to call it a covert operative for the Empire”. “But yes, essentially you will become a spy. I’m giving you this requisition to get the new items you will need for this new path”. He handed me a slip of paper and turned back to his desk.
Settling down in his chair he continued. “I know you will be of even greater assistance to the Empire then you ever were. Don’t worry about this stuff lying on the floor, I will have someone come and dispose of it properly. I want you to go now, and requisition the gear I have listed on the form I just gave you. In the next couple of weeks, you will be contacted and given instructions as to your assignments”.
“That is all I have for you at this time” he said dismissively.
I saluted, turned, and left his office.
Out in the hall I pulled out the requisition he had handed me and read through the list of items I was to pick up. Smoke grenades, poison traps, and high potency med-packs. This I thought was going to be interesting. At least I had a couple of weeks to get familiar with this new equipment before I was to be contacted.
I squared up my much lighter pack and headed off towards the supply wing of the building.
“I wonder where Lotuss is?” I thought as I rounded the first corridor.

Some idea about new game

I read through the Star Wars Galaxy forums last night at (http://www.starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/) to see if there was any more news on what is being called the NGE (New Game Enhancements) or the CU2 (Combat Upgrade 2). One interesting thing I noticed was that their saying we might be getting two characters per server. This would be nice, for it would allow me to explore a different profession. This could be important as once you decide on one of the nine professions offered, you are going to be stuck with it and not able to change as you used to be able to in the old game system. This is a big departure from how the game used to be, where you had 30 different professions to work with.
I finally made it onto test center to try out how the new game works. I created a new toon that I have named Neki, and she is on TC5. She has started out in the Spy profession, which is one of only nine that players are able to choose from. She woke up in a medical center on an orbiting space station. I was greeted by C3P0 and given instructions on how the new interface works. It’s pretty simple, but will take some time to get used to it. I can no longer hold down my right mouse button to move, instead I have to use the “w,a,s,d” keys to move about.
ThreePeeO had me talk to a medical droid and then had me examine a crate. In the crate I was given a starting pistol, a CDEF I think and shown how to use it. After shooting a couple of crates, I had to blast open a door to move on. When the door opened Han, Solo, Chewy, and R2D2 greeted me.
Han told me what a great kid I was, but that we had to leave as the station was going to blow or something to that effect. They led me down a couple of corridors to a hanger bay where the Millennium Falcon was parked. Standing next to the boarding ramp were three Imperial Storm Troopers.
As soon as we approached the boarding ramp, on of the troopers yelled at Han, and said that I was basically property of the imperial army and that I was to be tuned over to them immediately. Han had said that he was there to take me off the space station by contract and that I was not going anywhere with the troopers. Next thing I know we are in a blaster fight. Shooting is much quicker in this new game then in the old. I think faster then pre-CU. Holding down the left mouse button seemed to make the gun fire continuously.
The three troopers were dispatched quickly. I was told to board the falcon, and this is where I ran into my first bug. Seems I couldn’t go up the boarding ramp. Try as I may, I just was not going to get onboard the falcon. I repeatedly rebooted hoping this would fix thing, but to no avail. I decided to give it a rest at this point and try the next night.
If this is how the system works, SOE has a lot of work ahead of them.

Next night.
Yay!! I finally got on the Falcon and was whisked to another space station by Han and Chewy. I was told to meet someone in the cantina and start my newbie quest on learning how the new system interface works. I hope this game still will retain some of its original feel, as I don’t care to have to constantly run quests in order to enjoy myself. I guess I will wait till tomorrow to find out how the new system really works. 24 more hours till new game launch.

Winds of Change

My universe is about to change. Again. Star Wars Galaxy is poised to become a completely different game in the next week. On November 15th the game that I’ve played for the last two and a half years will be completely revamped for a new one. Every aspect will be changed, from the way you fight and craft, to what you can do with your character. Ebe Lightcloud (My character) had strived to be one of the best Master Ranger and Riflewoman on the server called Radiant.
Earlier this year SWG change dramatically with what was known as the combat upgrade (CU) to try and balance out the different combat professions within the game. Several things happened with this. First, my skill points that I have to use were shuffled around so that I would have to move them around my professions to actually retain master. They offered what was/is called a respect. This is where SOE allowed you to move your skill points to other professions or to drop the points and use them some other way.
When I went to use my respect I ended up losing all my skills! And I could not get them back. Even after submitting numerous help tickets I could not get them back. I would have to start all over again to regain my titles.
This change all but destroyed the profession I loved playing the most, Master Ranger. It also limited my ability to effectively utilize my rifle skills from what it had been to practically zero. I almost left the game because of this change.
As you may have noticed my Blog changed between April and October, during this period I had to take a break and make a decision on whether I would continue to play or not. A lot of personal friends left SWG for other interest, some due to real life obligations and others because of the changes made to the game. I ultimately decided I would continue, but I had to find a way to explain my absence, so that is where I decided I would start over. Ebe had been in an accident and had lost her memory, she remembers very little of her past and had to redefine herself to best fit the new situation.
She had been making good progress to this end, like finding a friend she could trust and who helped her to re-master her lost skills, this person is known as Lotuss Maximo. Ebe and Lotuss eventually wed and had been having fun running quests and doing missions together, but how this all came about will never be told in this Blog.
I have decided that once the game changes again, I will start from that point. This will be a new Ebe and it will be a new game. Starting November 16th I will start posting Ebe’s life as it is from there.
It’s a new Game, and Story.