Niklas "Swede" Johansson, a Star Wars Galaxies designer, posted a dev diary today taking us behind the scenes of this year's Life Day event.

I wanted more decorations in the cities, so the idea came to me that we place a bunch of smaller trees in the city, and then the players that sign up with the Rebel Alliance can go around and decorate them to make the city look even better. On the opposite side of the spectrum, players who sign up with the Empire can go around and stomp on present piles who they believe are filled with contraband. This enabled us to get the cities decorated and an event up at the same time, with the added bonus of letting me use the angry stomp emote, which is just funny.

Read the full diary entry, which is quite entertaining, here or below.

For this developer diary I thought I would share with everyone the thought process of creating this year's Life Day event. First and most importantly, I didn't want to remove anything from previous years' events, as I knew Life Day was already very popular. However, with lessons learned from the Galactic Moon Festival, I felt we could add even more fun this year.

I can't with a straight face recommend the Star Wars Holiday Special to anyone, but that's where Life Day made its first appearance, so it was decided that we take some ideas for rewards from it. This was the first major change; we wanted more rewards this time than in previous Life Days.

I also wanted to change the environment somewhat. I like that we now have the ability to temporarily change the way old areas look and who inhabits them, so I thought, wouldn't it be fun if we could make it snow in the cities celebrating Life Day? Thanks to the Art and Programming departments, we managed to make that happen. And as an added bonus, AdeptStrain managed to fix the freezing rain bug that's been in the game since launch.

For this year's event I wanted to try and get some of the Galactic Civil War in without making it too gritty -- it is a holiday, after all. I came up with the idea that the Alliance is helping bring Life Day to the less fortunate citizens of the galaxy, not only out of goodwill but also to improve their public image and hopefully gain more followers. The Empire, goaded on by the Trandoshan slavers, would immediately suspect the worst and try to ruin the festivities.

I wanted more decorations in the cities, so the idea came to me that we place a bunch of smaller trees in the city, and then the players that sign up with the Rebel Alliance can go around and decorate them to make the city look even better. On the opposite side of the spectrum, players who sign up with the Empire can go around and stomp on present piles who they believe are filled with contraband. This enabled us to get the cities decorated and an event up at the same time, with the added bonus of letting me use the angry stomp emote, which is just funny.

To spice things up even further, I wanted to entice players to declare themselves Special Forces by reward those that dare to do so with a quicker gain of tokens. I just had the picture in my head of everyone running around in this winter wonderland celebrating Life Day by shooting at each other with blasters. I couldn't pass it up.

Looking back at the Galactic Moon Festival and the feedback from it, I realized that I may have been a bit harsh on how much trick or treating you had to do. For Life Day I wanted to avoid creating a grind and just make it mindless fun, so all the rewards are cheap compared to how many tokens you can get, especially if you dare to declare Special Forces. This enables any player to get all the rewards in a day or two at the most, but many of the rewards are decorative and can be bought multiple times for those that want to keep enjoying the event. I also added a way to get more GCW points for Imperial and Rebel players, and a leader board that keep track of the three players on the server that has collected the most tokens that day, just purely for bragging rights. It is my hope that this will make the event enjoyable both for the casual and the competitive players.

Last but certainly not least, I remembered a character I created during Empire Day that seemed to be very popular with you guys, so I wanted to bring him back somehow. I'm sure most of you know who it is by now but to not ruin the surprise for everyone, I'll just say that a whole batch of Life Day candy has gone missing and you need to find the thief.

It is my hope that you all enjoy this lighthearted event, as well as have a great holiday and a happy new year!