Well, chapter 8 is on Test Center finally. Since the NGE first hit SWG over two years ago, there hasn’t been a patch released on TC this quickly. It was probably a month ago that chapter 7 was launched on Live, and we already have chapter 8 on TC. It shows that the developers working on SWG are much more confident in their work.

Previous chapters, and publishes, took two or three months before they were released. After the CU, most publishes had 10 to 15 hotfixes before the next publish was brought out. So far, we’ve had 3 hotfixes for chapter 7, and chapter 8 is on Test, which means one of two things. Either the Devs did a good job from a programming point of view with chapter 7, or they are rushing on chapter 8.

We have not seen many bugs in chapter 7, and for the most part everything works. I personally believe that we have chapter 8 already because the developers are thinking through their decisions for the future of the game, rather than loading everything with content. Chapter 7 did bring a lot of new content into the game, but there wasn’t so much that players got annoyed. I say annoyed because there are some things that many players feel are a waste of time. Legacy for example. 2 or 3 chapters were dedicated to that series of quests. From a veteran point of view, it was a huge waste of development time working on that, but from the point of view of new players, it was a good call.

Obviously chapter 8 is going to be met with some hostilities. It’s impossible to make a change to a game and have every single player agree with the changes. Lucky for us, SOE is no longer “changing” the game, so much as they are “adding” to the game. Chapter 8 brings new content for players. So far, I have not seen any game feature that has been altered. Space combat is still the same, you can still kill tier 1 to 5 ships the same way in chapter 8 as you can now. What they did do, is add new content for players who want to do more than just kill tier 5 ships. I myself am very very excited for this update.

I’ve played TC with a Rebel and Imperial character. I have tried all three of the new gunboats, and I must say the Neutral ship is the best. There is so much room to roam around inside. I wish we could have combat in space so we could have battles up there, or even have boarding parties. But at the moment, the neutral gunboat is the best. The devs have outdone themselves on this update, and I hope to see it launched on Live for the new year. If they got it out before Christmas, they would be kings among kings. However, it is a difficult deadline to make. Early January will probably be the launch date.

If you haven’t played Test Center yet, I suggest taking a look at it. The new waypoint and furniture commands are nice, as well as new collections. The heroic sounds good also, though I have not tried it out yet. Good stuff to come in the next few weeks in the world of Star Wars Galaxies.