Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring
Me: “Hello, SuperFurry here”
Bank: “Hello Mr Animal, this is your Bank. Congratulations! You have been with us for over 10 years and we would like to give you a token of our appreciation – A brand new, top of the range PC”
Me: “Wow, thank you. I could do with a new PC. I can replace the old one upstairs”
Bank: “I’m afraid not sir, the PC must only be used in single storey houses”
Me: “Oh, I see. Oh well, I guess I can give it to my brother”
Bank: “No! You are forbidden to give or sell this PC to anyone”
Me: “Well, what do you suggest I do with it?”
Bank: “Well Mr Animal, you could always keep it at the bank.”

This is just getting stupid now. It’s getting really old and really stupid. I’ve just received the 39 month reward for long service – a deed that allows a house to have an extra 200 items. In the past, I’ve been selling my vet rewards the day I receive them and living off the profits. Finally, I get a reward that is actually useful to me.  I have two guild halls, all filled with junk, engines and other components. It looks like Steptoe and Son are my interior decorators.  My halls are full of the hundreds of items that are needed for Reverse Engineering and an extra 200 items would be very helpful.

Can I use them in my guild halls? Can I? No, I bloody can’t. I’ve never grumbled about Vet rewards in the past. If I don’t particularly want an item, I can sell it and buy something I do want. It’s still a reward. I’ve got two guild halls. No slots to move anything and an item I can’t use or give away. This isn’t a reward, it’s a big pain in the bum. It’s a totally unnecessary annoyance.

I understand that the reward can no longer be used in a guild hall because of some sort of exploit. Well guess what, you could always fix the actual exploit. This is a lazy workaround. Not a fix. This isn’t a quick fix bug, it’s a cheap win.
I also hear that SOE don’t want items to be traded as it could increase inflation and mess up the economy. Have they actually seen the economy lately? It’s messed up already! This is just a cheap attempt to try and control something that they are too lazy to spend any real effort in addressing.

What other reason do I often hear bandied around in defence of No-Trade? Oh yes, they want to force players to actually do the content to get the rewards. What if I don’t want to do the quests, but I want the reward? Why can’t I raise money doing some other sort of content and buy it? Is it so bad that I’d like to play the game the way I want?

Seriously, get rid of No-Trade. Nobody likes it. It imposes artificial restrictions on players. Some No-Trade items such as elder robes are so highly desired that people work around the system by selling accounts that possess these items. That’s why an Elder Jedi sells more than a normal Jedi. That’s why we have Jebay.  I think I’m fairly relaxed about SWG and I’m a big defender of its current incarnation but two things really get my goat – rubberbanding and No-Trade. At least rubberbanding is an actual bug.

Last week I promised you that I’d write a full blown feature on the Senate and grade their performance so far. Well, to use one of the Dev’s favourite lines ‘I looked into it and it is possible, but would require a lot of work’. I’m not saying that I’ll never do it. All I am saying is that I can’t be bothered at this current time.

I do want to talk about the senate a bit more though. As you know, GreyPawn has recently reformed the old correspondent process and labelled it ‘The Senate’. Thirty-odd outstanding members of the community were selected and invited to represent the community on various aspects of game play.  Now, GreyPawn is a little…wordy and tends to come over all hoity-toity in his more formal posts. I’m certainly not knocking his writing style – it’s very nice in fact. A fact that I’m sure a lot of the Senators will agree with since they seemed to have borrowed the same style. During one long, drawn out Senator Post, the Websters-Online dictionary crashed due to overuse of the thesaurus.

 With no formal mechanics in place other than the actual forums, the newly appointed Senate decided on a policy to put forward suggestions to the developers. This is where it get’s a funny. The hidden politician inside our new community leaders leapt out and they devised the most boring system known to man – The SWG Senate Bill System.

It’s shining tribute to local government bureaucracy and red tape. I did try to explain the entire process here, but ended up deleting it. I tried to make it funny and lie about some of the process, but it was still too tedious. All I’m saying is that there are so many formalities tied into the system that a simple request like ‘For the love of Lucas, please remove No-Trade’ is likely to disappear up its own arse before a developer will ever get a whiff of it.

Armed with their new system, the Senators went to town and created Bill after Bill after Bill. Dare I say it, some of these Bills were the personal whims of the Senator rather than an issue presented by the community they represent. There are now so many Bills that a new forum had to be created to house them all. GreyPawn stepped in and threatened to get rid of any senator who created any new bills and yet more officialdom was drawn up to control the flow of Bills.
Are you guys still awake?

The first Senate meeting (or the First Convocation of the Galactic Senate as they like to call it) took place last week. They discussed even more organisational issues and at that point I seriously started to consider eating my own flesh. When they did finally manage to move on to Gameplay – the topic for discussion was the evil credit farmers and how they are the root of all the problems in this game. ArkonPhoenix, the Jedi Senator interrupted and boldly stated, "I would like to see things like Animations have priority over Credit Spammers". I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m starting to think that Arkon is going to be my favourite Senator.

Aside from Firestar’s brilliant coverage of the Fan Faire, SWG Warcry (http://swg.warcry.com/) is currently showing a promo film of the new stuff coming to SWG in the near future. Yeah, yeah, the content looks nice but something else caught my eye. I saw an NPC wearing a cape. I’ve no idea who this NPC is, but she looks about 100 times sexier than a Nightsister. Although the cape didn’t sway in the breeze when she executed a round house kick, it was still the coolest thing I’ve seen in SWG. Does this mean we will finally be able to wear capes? Does this mean that Lando is on his way to SWG? If this is true, we truly are in the renaissance of SWG.

Take care of yourselves readers, I guess that’s what you’re best at.
SuperFurry – 14th August 2007
Email me: SuperFurryGalaxies@hotmail.com