Greetings!
When people come to us with suggestions and ideas, I often say “already on it!” or “already on our list” – and reassure that we’ve thought of it already. It’s true, too. All of us on staff have had extensive voice calls and late night marathon chats over a period of 5 years. We’ve collaborated with and had discussions with developers from SOE (yeah, *that* SOE), SWGEMU, and many other EMU servers. We’ve truly done our best to be something that stands out in this community. We want to stand out for the right reasons, as well. We want to be creative, we want to emphasize the most unique aspects of the game, and we want to have longevity and adaptability. We also want to be friendly and welcoming, and have a community that can surpass conventional expectations of online gaming.
I take my role as a content designer and server administrator as seriously as I can. The list is real. Anyone who’s been around S2 long enough has at least been able to observe the slow progression into everything we’ve promised – or at the very least a real effort to make it happen. So, I’m constantly holding this huge, dynamic vision in my head. I’m holding the physical shape of our experience in my head as well – the ‘web’ that is our game server, our web server, our launcher, and our Discord server – all interconnected by a series of scripts I’ve collected, commissioned, or that myself or staff have written. There is a great deal of functionality still to unlock between these pieces of our galaxy.
I’m constantly holding all of this in my head, and I’m constantly trying to figure out how to make it all happen. Sometimes, the decisions I have to make for this project are absolutely maddening – or feel like betraying my vision. I’ve had to learn to see an even bigger picture. I truly believe there is a reason to devote my time to this – beyond just playing a game, or my own amateur game design aspirations. That reason is also why I go so far to protect the community. I’m sure that my reason is different than everyone else’s, I’ll refrain from sharing it. It’s enough to drive me, in any case. As long as I feel like we’re achieving that purpose for a decent bunch of people, as long as I feel like what we are bringing to the table is of a certain quality level, as long as I feel like we’re not doing any disservice to the legacy of SWG – we move forward.
I believe at this time that the best way to move forward is to first take one step back.
I would like to finish my promised work on Mandalore and integrate the cool new stuff Xerthan has given me for it. I would like to find at least a band-aid fix for our house packup and Hero of Tatooine bugs, and address a few typos and loot issues. Then I’d like to officially pause development on the server. I will switch our server plan (finally!) and get our monthly costs cheaper – *and* get us on a new operating system with fully updated software and packages. Currently – our server is functioning in an ‘arcane bubble’ of deprecated packages and requires a full re-install, regardless. In the process of migrating our server and databases to this new location – we will perform and test the SWGEMU code merge and have it ready and tested before the server officially migrates. This process will also necessarily require us to update the launcher – and correct some longstanding errors and functional problems at the very least.
Take a moment to keep in mind – this plan is designed to not only achieve our goals of serving SWG players, it’s meant to make it possible for us to deliver on what we’ve promised. After 5 years, we know what we’re capable of. We know that we have to design our tasks and goals carefully.
From this point, I suppose we have options. We will have our current Sunrunner 2 functioning on a (hopefully) better server, in a slightly better state than it’s in today, with a lot of new functions and features from both us and SWGEMU. We will also still have development paused. What I would like to do, and what I have pitched to staff and friends for months – is keep Sunrunner 2 exactly as it is, no wipes, no plans to shut down. Also no Jedi (maybe Jedi), no JTL, no major roadmap updates aside from *good* fixes that we acquire from: the closed development of Sunrunner 3 (TBD). Sunrunner 3 would be a server that launches fresh in a few years with all the features of Sunrunner 2 + roadmap completion + JTL.
Personally, I salivate at the idea of that launch, that ‘wilderness period.’ Necessarily… there is a mass amnesty, a clean slate for all, and I/we have learned the lessons of the past 5 years. I could become *very* excited by this plan, and I could see it being much less stressful. I would gladly maintain Sunrunner 2 and support Event Staff and minor QoL updates and bug fixes there while continuing major development with no pressure. We could keep working on infrastructure, tools, and cool features and testing them on Sunrunner 2 during this time as well.
The other option I suppose would be to just keep doing what we do for S2 on the new server. This would work, too. I understand there is a great divide between past and present players over the quality of the server economy through all of our… different trials. I understand there would be pushback to a complete wipe and reset – hence my plan to preserve Sunrunner 2 as… just ‘what it is’ for as long as possible. I understand I’ll hear a lot of opinions and feedback on this plan. It will be taken into consideration of course, alongside my own heart and gut, staff discussions, further developments in development, and the regular ebb and flow of time and history. I’m not going to have a big vote or anything like that. If I’ve learned anything over the past year or two especially, the tough decisions here just have to be made.
The ‘S3 Plan’ is my best idea for accomplishing our promised content goals, healing some of the wounds of the past, preserving the history we made on S2, and productively helping the state of SWG as best we can.
Takh