Tony "Teesquared" Tyson has published his producer's note for February, and he takes a moment to announce that the Ewok Festival of Love will return to Star Wars Galaxies from Feb. 9 to March 2. Be sure to participate if you'd like to earn rewards like wings, a costume, a miniature chocolate fountain, and a Crossbow of Love that decreases an enemy's hate toward the player who uses it.

Tyson also gives us a sneak peek at what players can expect to see in Update 16. Nym's Theme Park will get a revamp, top senate and community issues will be addressed, and many changes will be made in space. Keep reading after the jump for more details.

Update 15 – Star Wars Galaxies™ Galactic Civil War: Forces Under Siege

Since GU15 went live last week, the team has continued to work on the update and incorporate your feedback. We added a "GCW Personal Contribution" radial menu option to the war terminal to help players see how they are contributing to the GCW. We polished and tweaked the city invasions to make them more enjoyable and challenging. We put in a tutorial interface that can be used at any time to get a waypoint or as a help reference ("/gcwSkirmishCityHelp"). And for the next hot fix, we've made all the GCW Battle Worn Armor destructible. I actually had to pull the team off the GCW enhancements and get them going on GU16 and EFOL. They are all really excited about this update and want to make sure it's in the best shape possible for you to enjoy. Don't worry though; they will be back on GCW later this year. For GCW part 2, we are planning to refine and expand the systems introduced in this first update and turn our focus to space and player cities.

It's really fun to watch players compete for region and planet control. Congratulations to the Rebels for just edging out the Imperials in the Galaxy Wide GCW score (Rebel 52% vs. Imperial 48%). Imperials need to step it up some to grab hold of the galaxy again. Good luck to you all.

Want to know how the Galaxy Wide score is calculated? Log into DevH and find out.

Also on the war front, MMORPG posted an interview with me covering this update. Be sure and check it out.

Ewok Festival of Love 2010

Next week the ever popular Ewok Festival of Love will be back. We’re adding some new rewards including colorable flowers and some other surprises. Thanks to all your hard work last year, the Sage Blaire is doing much better but there’s a new Sage this year that will need your help. There will also be some new badges and new titles with this year’s event. Happy Love Day to all of you!

The 78th month veteran reward will also go live with this event. We thought we’d make life a little easier on our vets, so you’ll enjoy the convenience this reward will offer.

Update 16

Alas the long awaited reveal of the next game update. There’s a lot going on in this update. A few things will be announced later. Here is a teaser of some of the things that you can look forward to.

Content: Nym’s Theme Park

The old theme park will be receiving a long deserved revamp to make the content more challenging. This theme park will also pick up where the content path left off in an effort to deliver a more complete experience for new players. Quests will be added to the player’s journal. Players will get a chance to earn new rewards. We’re also planning to include additional side quest, collections, and solo and group content. New and veteran players alike will enjoy the new theme park and get a chance to play one of our most exciting quest series.

Space: Yes Space!

We’re removing the Kessel Switch. Destroying the Star Destroyer or the Freedom Station will no longer have any effect on Kessel. In addition the special spawns that would normally only appear after one of the two had been destroyed will now always be active. We’re also removing (almost) all of the collection spawns from all the space zones (the spawns remain in the Nova-Orion zone). Instead these spawns will now be available via space Duty Missions from the space stations. Finally, Destroy Duty Missions will give the player a special token as a reward in addition to the credit payout. The token can be used to purchase randomly generated space parts. Players will be able to select the type of item (for example: Armor, Weapon, or Engine) and the certification level. The stats will be generated in the same way looted items are generated. Oh and one more thing on the list is to change Nym’s Starmap and the Lord Cyssc missions and make them repeatable (you’ll be able to do them daily). It really feels great to discuss space changes in a producer note (I can’t wait until GCW part 2).

Can you fix … We can try!

After too long of a wait we are dedicating a large portion of GU16 to address top senate and community issues. We hear you and we are very excited to get a chance to start focusing on addressing these issues. The goal of this update is to address issues across all the professions plus fixes for player associations, groups, role players, battlefields, and even some GCW (can’t …. stop …). So far the team is making great progress.

And there is more. Stay tuned for more details on this very exciting update.

Facebook

Thanks to everyone who has become our fan on our new SWG Facebook page. We have over 4,000 fans and it’s growing strong. Congratulations on hitting that first milestone and earning everyone in the game the Storm Trooper Squad Leader bobble head. We’re looking forward to achieving the next milestone for more in-game rewards.

- Teesquared