Heads up, both Jedi and Sith! We got information that will surely interest you. Game Update 3.1 for SOE's Star Wars Galaxies has just been released. It contains about three changes that we know you'd want to know. Find out what they are after the jump!

Fancy yourself as good a bounty hunter as Boba Fett? You get your chance in Star Wars Galaxies, where you can track down interstellar fugitives with the Bounty Check skill. Details in the full article.

It's definitely hard to believe the rumor spreading that SOE has plans of discontinuing Star Wars Galaxies since the latest game update has just been released. The presence of this update show us that the game is alive and still kicking. Check out the details of the game update after the jump!

Lucas Arts and Sony Online Entertainment has picked The Fortress of Memory for this week's Galactic Showcase for their MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. The place belongs to the founder of the Order of the Burning Blade guild, Thran.

Aside from being a training ground for new Jedis and a great hall, this place also serves as a link to the past as it is home to many ancient artifacts. More on this place after the jump!

  

LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment have another offering today for MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies' Galactic Showcase. These are in-game events or places created by players for their association. For this week, we get to visit the Corellian city hall in Talus, FreedomCliffs (4972, 102, -2629).

At one look, we can attest that this place was designed and created with the word majestic in mind. It was erected to celebrate the one year anniversary of the town as well as the guild. The ceiling is decorated with asteroids and the walls are littered with Sayormi tomes and scrolls, not to mention veteran rewards collected over the years.

For the Jedi characters, you will be pleased to know that a unique room dedicated just for you has also been included. Go ahead and visit this place if you have nothing else to do in the vast universe of Star Wars Galaxies MMORPG. After all, its proprietor will be too happy to accommodate you without charging a single cent.

 

If you've already hung up your lightsaber, blaster pistol, or whatever weapon your online avatar wielded in the digital battlegrounds of Star Wars Galaxies, here's a reason for you to get that battle instinct of yours to kick in and get that weapon back in your hand, where it rightfully belongs: Sony Online Entertainment is calling you to return and fight the good fight once more!

Yes, you read right. For a whopping 21 whole days, former players with accounts that have been inactive for 90 days or more can come back and experience the latest in the MMORPG about that legendary space opera, Star Wars Galaxies.

Get to tinker around with the game's newly-introduced Beast Master expertise system yourself, instead of having to hear about it from your still-active friends - see what all the buzz is about. Who knows, you might even find more reasons to stay active as you once were.

You'd better get right on it, though - the offer expires right on the dot, 11:59 p.m. of September 30, PST. So if you've been looking to get your digital Jedi avatar back in action, now's the chance.

Even in something as unpredictable as World of Warcraft, expect political-correctness to ensue. In light of the new jewelcrafting skill introduced by way of The Burning Crusade expansion, Aeus is letting everybody know that he's planning to mail a JewelCrafting link to the WoW Community team.

And just like any new conception, it deserved a name - which is where it got interesting. As Aeus wrote:

So, I was just about to mail a handy Jewelcrafting link to the Community Team, when I noticed that the tag [Jew] doesn't really work that well.
Then I thought, perhaps [JC], but that might upset people too.
Has anyone agreed on a good tag yet? Perhaps just [Jewel]? Or is that too long?

And, keep it clean in here, I don't want to suspend anyone from the forums today..

Fortunately, the boards were perfectly comfortable with the idea of the [JC] tag, although posters did suggest turning it into [JCR] just in case somebody got touchy - other propositions were that JC be used as the new link for the woodworking profession (carpentry, get it?), or it be dubbed "The Jedi Council". Consider this one of the more mundane happenings to ease over the recent bug reports.

What do Space Operas, short stubby gnomes, odd contraptions, and hot female humans have in common? Barring "Return of the Jedi", not much. We used to think the same way too, until we picked up this video another enterprising World of Warcraft gamer cooked up.

It's a parody of the Battlestar Galactica intro, and as you guys will see, it's synced into the original track rather well. Kudos to Nytshade (the video's author) for making this flick. We now add this to our plethora of funny videos, which includes odds and ends of hardware stores, and snowball fights...

The second chapter of the Star Wars Galaxies, "The Talus Incident",brings into the table new quest series building off of Chapter 1's quest series, "The Corellian Captives". So what could be in store for you in the second chapter? The heat is on in Restuss as the Galactic Civil War reaches an intense and deadly level. Everybody seems to be getting sucked up into the civil war, including Corellian Security Force (CorSec) Officer Dathnaeya Loessin.

As both forces -- the Empire and the Rebellion -- flex their powers, Dathnaeya Loessin must make a decision: should she fight for the empire or aid the rebellion? This is where you enter the picture. Having been a great help in finding The Corellian Captives, she turns to you for answers. You are then tasked to investigate military contractors and try to uncover the truth about the Empire and the Rebellion for CorSec.

The guys responsible for Star Wars Galaxies would be giving you some chapter goodies. This chapter will have a short-duration, military grade buff that will heal your wounds in combat as you take damage. A new feature called Auto Aim Targeting would enable you to take lock on to any target to ensure you are engaging the enemy target you choose in the heat of battle. To make use of the new targeting options, open your keymap options and select the key bindings for "Toggle Safety" and "Set Intended Target."

The new chapter will also feature a new expertise system which aims to give your character more depth. Starting at level 10, the Jedi will earn Expertise points that can be spent on specialized Expertise abilities. This new feature allows you to develop a variety of different Light and Dark Jedi abilities for your character. Aside from that, Bounty Hunter Expertise is also making its presence felt in this chapter. First Strike, Defensive Tank, and Sustained Damage are all different ways that you can specialize your Bounty Hunter using the Expertise System.

Also, the chapter made room for static galactic civil war bases. Following the battle in Restuss, both forces have intensified their efforts to oppose one another. Both sides have identified what they believe are strategic locations that are important to their operations. Strategic places such as Talus, Naboo and Corellia are now the causes of heated conflict as both sides attempt to control them.

Characters also get their makeovers. Humans, Zabrak, and Twi'leks get an appearance improvement in Chapter 2! These playable species have been upgraded so that your character's customized details take advantage of the latest visual technologies. Skin tones will look richer and more natural; body details will be more distinct and other details will be more striking.

Yesterday, the scuttlebutt on the 'Net was that the creator of Babylon 5 wanted to reinvent Star Trek. To the relief of many Trekkers, Paramount rejected the proposal, (and the movie franchise is now in the hands of Lost creator J.J. Abrams who is set to direct the next installment) but the issue raised concerns about whether or not the owners of the wildly successful franchise wasn't being a bit over-protective of its "golden goose."

An example given was a situation several years ago, in which game publisher Interplay was required to submit all ideas to a "canon" person at Paramount - one whose function it was to ensure that game elements were consistent with the ST universe. One writer submitted an idea based on  ST:TOS episode entitled "The Ultimate Computer." In this writer's scenario, Dr. Daystrom had been rehabilitated, and was again working with the M-Series computer (which nearly destroyed the Enterprise NCC 1701 during the war-game simulation).

The canon person's response: "What is this M5 computer @#%? This isn't canon; get rid of it."

Later, it was discovered that the the "canoneer" was a secretary who had worked for a departed executive. When the new one came in, he decided it was cheaper to keep her on, sticking her with all the work,  than to hire a new lawyer to look over all the material. What was significant is that the woman had never seen a single episode of any Star Trek TV episode nor feature film.

So...what are the implications for upcoming MMORPG, ST Online? Only that something like this will happen again. In the never-ending cry of "Cost-Cutting!," Paramount will "overload the warp core," and the Star Trek universe will go up like a supernova - without an Archer, Kirk, Picard, Sisco or Janeway to save it.

It's happened before. Take Star Wars: Galaxies, for example. Who got it into their head that there could be thousands of Jedi buzzing around the Empire at any one time...?

Star Trek: Online is currently in development by Perpetual Entertainment, and is scheduled to go live later this year.