SWG Leak Reveals Playable Jawa, Gungan Characters?

Anonymous SWG Fan writes "Through a 'Friday Feature' giving players a look inside the player-species statistics for their PC MMO, 'Star Wars: Galaxies' accidentally released the names of the secret two player species coming with the highly anticipated 'Jump To Lightspeed' expansion. This information was not supposed to be released until later this summer, but when putting up the statistics on current species, 'Jawa - 0%' and 'Gungan - 0%' appeared. They were removed almost immediately, but not before dozens of people had already posted about the mistake on the official Star Wars Galaxies forum." Update: 06/12 21:38 GMT by S : According to Community Manager Kevin 'Q-3PO' O'Hara in the same thread: "OK, OK, it was a joke. I will not confirm or deny any rumors about the two new species" - make of this what you will.

New playable races

[RogueyWon]

I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I think that adding new playable races is something that MMORPG creators are generally reluctant to do, compared with adding, say new classes, new items or new quests.

The reason is simple... it doesn't give as much of an incentive for the established hardcore players to pick up the expansion, as it's something they wouldn't be able to take advantage of without creating a whole new character and starting again. New items and quests can be picked up with existing characters. A lot of MMORPGs will let you change your class pretty much at will now (FFXI being the best example), but once you pick a race, you're pretty much tied to it.

So yes, I strongly suspect this is a joke. In fact, I wonder if it's a bit of a wry admission from certain parts of Lucasarts that... yes... Jar-Jar really was THAT unpopular :)

Re:Playable Jawas and Gungans!

[droleary]

A small handful of people REJOICE!!

If it means a virtual Jar Jar Binks can be killed, there will be a good deal more rejoicing. I think a number of people would see to it that "Gungans - 0%" is a fixture of the game . . .

Re:New playable races

[Bagels]

Erm, they *are* adding two new species... just not necessarily the two new species that were leaked today. They've said so; it's one of the selling points of the "Jump to Lightspeed" expansion.

Neimodian and Sullustan?

[kherr]

Jawas and Gungans already exist as NPCs, which means the rendering is done. While I don't see Jawas as likely (kind of boring from a customization standpoint), Gungans are possible. They are richly populated throughout Naboo and don't have the kind of bad rep in-game as Jar Jar Binks does from the movies.

We know there will be two new races with the JTL space expansion. I wouldn't be surprised to see Neimoidian [starwars.com] (Trade Federation) as one of the races. And maybe the Sullustan [starwars.com], since they were prominent as rebels. These seem more likely to me since they are space-faring races and the expansion is space-centric.

Re:The devs are playing it off as a joke...

[Arngautr]

On that note it is also possible that they did it on purpose to grab few more headlines and attract new players to a game where the player base is much less than was initialy expected. Timing is also interesting, early summer...

Won't matter...

[Zhirem]

Folks need to realize that this is all much ado about nothing. IMHO - it won't save the game. Played it myself since the launch (well day two since one could not get in day one). Was an interesting game with one major problem: it's not fun. Same AI on EVERY mob (from rat to rancor), completely whacked player economy, bumbling idiot dev team ('We don't like the Holocron mess anymore than you do...'), seriously erroding player-base, complete lack of class balance, bugs from early beta STILL not fixed, etc. etc. etc.

But I am quite certain that this crack team of talented devs will provide for the saving grace in this game that is to be the Space Expansion. After all, they did such a good job with the original game... Broken missions, missing content, worthless game systems, etc.

Try to envision the worst train wreck that SOE could release with the SWG: Space Expansion. Then don't worry. It won't be that bad.

It will be worse...

This game had more promise than any other I have ever played before. And the fact that said promise has been so thoroughly squandered and sabotaged... makes me ill.

It took them roughly 10 months (post-release) to try to affect decent changes to the most basic of Star Wars elements: droids. It is bad enough that we don't have ships yet. Did not have speeders or other ground transportation until roughly 5 to 6 months post-release. There is very little Star Wars about the game.

Save your money. Or don't, blow time and cash on this 'game' and then discover in several months that 'Hey, I am really not having very much fun.', dump the game and wonder why you bothered.

Go play CoH for fun if you actually want to enjoy your gaming experience.

Your mileage may vary, but I gave the game a half-year beyond the time when I should have bailed on it. Take my advice. Bail on it before you get into it. Go play KotOR. You'll thank me later.