Another great SWGEmu year behind us. Much was accomplished, there is much to be proud of. I want to thank our Developers, Quality Assurance, CSR's, EC's, Mod's, Support Interns, Community Testers, Code Contributors, past and present, for their time, effort and their unwavering dedication to this project. And of course our community. Thank you for supporting us, and playing with us all these years.

Happy holidays.

It's been a great year, I've enjoyed digging in even deeper with the team as I worked to move all our systems to a new cleaner and scalable environment. I learned a lot about our systems and I got to clean a lot of stuff up which is one of my biggest motivators. We have more alerting, solid backups and we're setup in a way that allows us great flexibility for the future.

My single favorite thing about last year: We moved, and nobody really knew it. That was my goal, I'm always the guy who works in the shadows to make everything "just work". It was very quiet, and as things moved they only got better for the community, our developers and our staff. The overhaul was one of my favorite projects of the last couple of years and it re-ignited my passion for infrastructure and systems management.

I'm excited about TC-Prime, it was hard to setup but now it's 100% automated, every week it just magically clones the entire Basilisk beast to our backup server and makes it available to everyone. This is a major milestone for the project, we can now push publish changes there and test new ideas from infrastructure changes (it runs in a container!) to managing Basilisk and other servers like it in the future.

Plans for the future?
Well now that the overhaul is over I am going to be doing a lot more house cleaning on our systems, I also want to get back to committing code to Core3. I have some cool ideas both on the game side and on the infrastructure side.

I want to do more with thePit, my original dream was to have an always-on PVP server but I've been so busy with everything else I've not had time to really hone that environment. I’d like to structure the mechanics to be a bit more fun while embracing the dog-eat-dog world of a PvP server.

It's been an amazing year for SWGEmu. JEDI!! What else is there to say?

The infrastructure overhaul is quite a major leap for us also. State of the art hardware capable of handling our needs for the future. Included in that was automated backups of our databases, a new test server (thePit), streamlined and updated core3 dependencies, additional logging of server/system functions, automated outage notifications, rolling log files, among other performance and stability changes.

Discord showed up this year.. It's taken the gaming community by storm. The community SWGEmu discord currently has 1433 members. Average of 300+ online, currently 403. I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is not an official form of communication for SWGEmu.

Plans for the future?
TC-Prime - A copy of Bas that is auto-refreshed weekly. A full copy of everything on Bas.. all your toons, weapons, housing, resources, even the location you were in when we make the copy to TC-Prime. (TC-Prime is active now.)
It will also be used to stage large changes (publishes) and hotfixes for testing. The advantage of testing on Bas database first is obvious.

Finish Ground game - This milestone is within sight.

JTL - We have started..

Big year. Return of the Jedi and all that. Infrastructure changes are a simply amazing effort by the devs. Great job, folks.

New servers TC-Prime and thePit:

• TC-Prime is a regularly backed up copy of Basilisk where players can test using their actual in-game items without fear of losing them on their play characters.
• thePit is an always-PvP copy of Unstable (think Nova) with code added that is not ready for Unstable. There typically aren't a lot of people there, but you might get lucky and find a QA there you can gank.

I'll echo what the OP and RisenAngel said above: we can always use more help in QA. We've done some things lately that will ease the learning curve. If you're interested, please get in touch with one of us in-game or on forums, IRC, or Discord.

Now I've got stuff to test. On to another great year.

When I started as a CT almost four years ago now, I would often times get asked how the game was coming along, and how close we were to being near 'finished'. My answer at the time was unabashedly blunt: It was easier to tell people what was in the game than what was left to work on. At the time, we were working on CH stuff and droids. Now though, if you ask me the same thing, its easier to list off what is left to work on. That is pretty crazy to me. Additionally, when I started, one of the two kinds of content I was told I wasn't allowed to touch is now in the game and being tested quite thoroughly by everyone on Basilisk alongside other servers that run on Core3. What I'm getting at is this: The light at the end of the tunnel is getting pretty bright. And yeah, as the OP says QA and the other teams are always recruiting. Right now is an excellent time to join up if you've been considering it given QA has been crushing bugs like its Starship Troopers.

I look forward to what 2018 brings. I just want to say in closing, thank you to everyone that has supported us through thick and thin. Everyone that has been active on Mantis and helped with bug reports and testing. We see you and appreciate you. You guys catch the stuff that slips past us and it helps immensely. Everyone on the QA team has a different perspective and we all catch different things, but our players have their own perspectives and see things we don't. Usually, in very creative and sometimes unintended ways.

Thanks to everyone that has helped us get this far, too. We could not do it without you. That might seem cliché, but its the honest truth.

We have lost many staff in these areas this year due to health and work. I wish them all well in the future. Anyone wanting to apply should follow this link: https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93399

CSR-
Many changes have been made in game since our latest publishes. Everyone is doing great to adapt to those changes. A big thank you to QA, Devs, Scurby and Vlada for helping with problems that occur. Lots of accounts old and new are coming back and it is great to see new and old faces in game.

EC-
Events have not been happening and I am sorry about that. We currently have only 1 CSR/EC and I will try to get at least 1 event a month scheduled. If you want a player event please be sure to fill out the event application and send it in. https://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121061 Developers have been great making us a event tool that can be used at certain types of events.

Support-
Many tickets come in daily so be patient if you do not hear from us right away. Many issues must be tested to see if it can be reproduced or discussed between Devs, QA and Support to see what the issue may be. No one is being ignored it just takes time to answer some tickets over others. Please do not spam the ticket system with multiple tickets and remember to create an account before submitting a ticket. Support system is different from forums and does require a separate log in. This way you can view and respond the ticket you already have open.

Thank you community for all the support you have given ALL of staff. *Cheers* to what is to come!!

*BigE had a big nice picture here telling everyone that he have been looking at us from afar for far to long and that he is happy to be back with the community. We are all glad to have him back with us* (Sorry BigE, our forum isn't the best and that picture is lost, Lolin)

Not this **** again.

Wow, 2017 done already? The year have gone so fast. The project have gone steadily forward and we have finally seen both the corvette and Jedi implemented in the latest patch. Didn't take long for them to pop up here and there. Going forward from this is exciting for me. Most things have been implemented and now it feels like beta is around the corner (don't quote me on that! You know.... Soon^TM). Looking forward to 2018 and where our project will go. Happy New Year!

It's been an intense year for me. Twelve months ago I was fumbling around on Nova trying to figure out how to test things, learning about 1,000 things per day. A year later I feel like I'm starting to understand what I'm doing.

We're all part of an awesome community here. From playtesters to event coordinators, customer support, moderators, site services, code contributors, developers, and QA we all play critical roles.

I'm blessed to be part of such an amazing project. It's helped me personally in more ways than I can describe. It would be pretty easy for this to feel like a job at times. But I always come back to the fact that we're working on a game and that's pretty cool. And I'm reminded of a quote: "Success is a journey, not a destination." It's about how we learn and improve over time.

I'm also blown away that we have the owners of the project and all the donators that keep everything moving. People who take their personal time on weekends in the middle of their nights to fix problems with Basilisk so it can keep being stress tested over time. People who take some of their income and donate it so the costs can be covered. People who have a passion for pre-CU SWG.

I could go on all day about this, but I'll stop. I'll end by echoing what Nee said: join us in IRC at #openqa or pop onto Nova and look for me. I'm Farelli and FonzFarelli there. Send me a tell if you see me on. I'd love to hear from you.

Happy Holidays to all.

Thank you Community for your continued support of our Project. With our collective efforts, perhaps 2017 can become even more progressive than 2016 was. As always, if anyone ever has any questions about Mantis or TCNova, feel free to reach-out to me here on our forums and/or in IRC #openqa channel anytime.

best regards, Nee

p.s. Remember to always bookmark our 'Weekly Update' posts every Sunday, so you don't miss a thing

I would like to thank our community for the support and donations you have given us.

CSR side- We have been short on CSRs and I appreciate the patience you all have given us in getting your tickets answered. Thank you to all the community members that have been answering questions to new players in game that helps us more than you know. I just want to remind everyone now that the end of the year is coming and family members will be visiting please apply to be approved for multiple accounts. Read the rules and if you have any questions please ask us.


EC side- Weedie and I have been working hard on getting events set back up. We will be having mini events at least once a week starting January 1st. All event rules have been updated and are posted for you to read. Since we are short staffed we will try to hold one staff event as often as we can.


2016 was a great year but look out 2017 is coming around the corner. Who know what it will bring!

OK then...

here. 2017 will be an very interesting year indeed