There is a known issue with the Station Launcher and LoN tonight. You may get an 'invalid client version' error when logging into LoN via the Station Launcher.

This problem will be resolved the morning of 6/2. In the meantime, please use the LoN Stand Alone client or integrated MMO clients.

Klowny83, you may need to do a Full Scan using the Stand Alone LoN patcher or EQ2.

We weren't able to get this into the patch we did today, but we do plan to fix it before the weekend.

Are you trying to log into EQ2 and/or LoN Stand Alone without using Station Launcher at all?

Thank you for the post. We're looking into this right now.

In the meantime, if you have the Stand Alone client and launch from the LoN icon (not Station Launcher Beta), you should be able to log in.

I think Imperial and Sith have the market cornered on tight black (or dark) leather outfits. Is that a dead guy behind her?

I like the rendering of the landscape behind her, and I like the way she's rendered. I'm just not sure if she fits into it? Tell me why I'm wrong. (I do like the artwork, it just seems like something isn't fitting exactly. Or it could just be me.)

Saturday, May 30th

80-point Spanish Main Tournament - 10:40AM PT

brocka5 won the morning with 2 wins, 0 losses and 9 points. Second through fourth were JigBim, CaptainYippy, and Faulyn, each with 2 wins, 1 loss and 7 points. Dragonsblood was fifth with 1 win, 2 losses and 5 points. Sixth and seventh were Ikthultu and Admiral_Blye with 0 wins, 2 losses and 5 points.

Multi-Pack Sealed Tournament - 5:08PM PT

JigBim won the evening with 3 wins, 0 losses, and 9 points. Second through fourth were Admiral_Blye, Dragonsblood, and Chastise  with 2 wins, 1 loss and 7 points (except Dragonsblood with 1 win). Fifth through seventh were brocka5, Capt.Ron, and WraithHunter with 0 wins, 2 losses and 5 points (except Capt.Ron with 1 win).

For details, see the tournaments page.

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all who played!

Not that I know of, no.

Saturday, May 30th

Galactic Hunters Winner's Choice Tournament - 10:03AM PT

Waye took first in this morning's tournament with 4 wins, 0 losses and 12 points. Second through fourth were Whale, SadgarTheBold, and Eviso, all with 3 wins, 1 loss and 10 points.

Galactic Hunters Winner's Choice Tournament - 5:05PM PT

Gapsule won first place in this evening's tournament with 4 wins, 0 losses and 12 points. Second through fifth were ifai, Pleuto, SadgarTheBold, and Eviso, all with 3 wins, 1 loss and 10 points.

Monday, June 1st

June Sprint Tournament - 11:03AM PT

Zion, Siglase, I-fizz, ifai, and Kurri each earned 12 points in this morning's Sprint, the first one of the new month.

Congratulations to Battleaxe, the winner of the May Sprint with 212 points! LABB came in second at 210 points, and BoBob was third with 193 points.

For details, see the tournaments page.

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all who played!

Saturday, May 30th

Against the Void Winner's Choice Tournament - 10:02AM PT

King_Of_Games won this morning's tournament with 5 wins, 0 losses and 15 points. Second through fifth were Cookie, ifxist, Infamaous, and Haximus, all with 4 wins, 1 loss and 13 points.

Against the Void Winner's Choice Tournament - 5:04PM PT

Daarcher won this evening's tournament with 5 wins, 0 losses and 15 points. Second and third were LoNmewl and Melias with 4 wins, 1 loss and 13 points each.

Monday, June 1st

June Sprint Tournament - 11:03AM PT

C_o_l_e, Kembal, Vixn, Stormspirit, and Soorus each earned 12 points in the first Sprint of the month.

Congratulations to Master04 for winning the May Sprint with 214 points! He was 38 points ahead of the second place finisher, Parkwiz, who had 176 points. Third was Stormspirit with 172 points.

For details, see the tournaments page.

Congrats to the winners, and thanks to all who played!

I think you may have the wrong forums. This forum is for the SWG Trading Card Game.

Yep it's a pack of special cards. Not a full deck.

Hey, get some tips before you plunge headlong to your death against Exar Kun tomorrow! New Design article here.

Hehehehe.

Oh Lab. Have faith.

You know, they have to get the new Heroic in somehow tomorrow. That usually involves an update of some kind.

Get some tips from the designer on the new Exar Kun Heroic Encounter releasing tomorrow! Check out the article here.

By Joe “Palejo” Alread, Game Designer

Today I'd like to share some information about the upcoming four-player Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game heroic encounter: Exar Kun! This heroic encounter is unique when compared to our previous heroic encounters and we're looking forward to seeing how players react to it.

The first thing you'll notice as soon as you enter is that Exar Kun's cards don't use the standard raid template that we've used in the past, they use the Sith template. Why? The simple answer is that he's a Sith and uses Sith abilities. His ability to AvA effectively is done by many cheap abilities and his ability to destroy them to ready himself. Be prepared, he'll attack early and often.

Another big difference is the format. Our previous heroic encounters (IG-88 and the Tusken King) take place in a single location and you don't have to do much "traveling" to get to the main boss. With Exar Kun, not only do you have to reach the depths of his temple to get to him but you also have to defeat numerous disciples and other smaller bosses along the way. We wanted to recreate the tension of facing different bosses at different times before facing Exar Kun himself. To accomplish this, we created a number of these bosses as unit cards in his deck that he has only one copy of. When these bosses come into play, your party will need to immediately shift gears or make adjustments to account for them. My personal favorite is Caretaker of the Lost.

Before walking into the encounter, it's best to ask everyone, "Got abilities in your deck?"

Initially, Caretaker of the Lost didn't have such big numbers. His first version that we tested had him with numbers of 2/2/2/2 and if somebody didn't discard an ability when he was played, he got +4 to all of his stats (we didn't want him to go beyond 6/6/6/6). He worked all right at the start, but after some playtesting we realized that he could be so much cooler if players were penalized each time one of them couldn't discard an ability. The end result I think got us an even cooler (and more brutal!) card for players to deal with.

Exar Kun also starts this heroic encounter with some units already in play.

These are only some of his starting units, there are others as well and they have similar gametext to what you see here. Some of these guys you'll prefer to kill outside of battle, others just the opposite. The important thing to note here is that with these units in play at the start, your party has to be very careful about where they attack first. Some players will need focus their unit strategies away from Vengeance and more towards Harmony. Others that deal more with direct damage and questing will want to focus more on the Vengeance-type units. Coordination will be key.

With Exar Kun's powerful AvA abilities and his disciples providing support, taking down this mad Sith will be no easy task. I've touched on a few of the basic concepts here but there is much more that you will need to figure out on your own (I don't want to spoil everything!). Good luck.

We are now unlocked.

Enjoy!

One of the things that sets The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game apart is that it allows you to join with friends and take on a massive and powerful AI "boss" avatar! In Star Wars®, it doesn't get much bigger than Exar Kun, the one-time Jedi who eventually became one of the most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith! Build your best decks and get three stalwart companions, because it will take all four of you to defeat Exar Kun and his minions in this challenging 4v1 Heroic Encounter.

If you defeat the Exar Kun and win the game, you and your companions will receive a Massassi Sword promo card. You'll receive one additional promo card with each additional archetype you defeat the Heroic Encounter with (limit 4 per account).

The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game Exar Kun 4v1 Heroic Encounter begins Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 2 p.m. PT. "Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

One of the things that sets The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game apart is that it allows you to join with friends and take on a massive and powerful AI "boss" avatar! In Star Wars®, it doesn't get much bigger than Exar Kun, the one-time Jedi who eventually became one of the most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith! Build your best decks and get three stalwart companions, because it will take all four of you to defeat Exar Kun and his minions in this challenging 4v1 Heroic Encounter.

If you defeat the Exar Kun and win the game, you and your companions will receive a Massassi Sword promo card. You'll receive one additional promo card with each additional archetype you defeat the Heroic Encounter with (limit 4 per account).

The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game Exar Kun 4v1 Heroic Encounter begins Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 2 p.m. PT. "Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

One of the things that sets The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game apart is that it allows you to join with friends and take on a massive and powerful AI "boss" avatar! In Star Wars®, it doesn't get much bigger than Exar Kun, the one-time Jedi who eventually became one of the most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith! Build your best decks and get three stalwart companions, because it will take all four of you to defeat Exar Kun and his minions in this challenging 4v1 Heroic Encounter.

If you defeat the Exar Kun and win the game, you and your companions will receive a Massassi Sword promo card. You'll receive one additional promo card with each additional archetype you defeat the Heroic Encounter with (limit 4 per account).

The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game Exar Kun 4v1 Heroic Encounter begins Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 2 p.m. PT. "Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

One of the things that sets The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game apart is that it allows you to join with friends and take on a massive and powerful AI "boss" avatar! In Star Wars®, it doesn't get much bigger than Exar Kun, the one-time Jedi who eventually became one of the most powerful Dark Lords of the Sith! Build your best decks and get three stalwart companions, because it will take all four of you to defeat Exar Kun and his minions in this challenging 4v1 Heroic Encounter.

If you defeat the Exar Kun and win the game, you and your companions will receive a Massassi Sword promo card. You'll receive one additional promo card with each additional archetype you defeat the Heroic Encounter with (limit 4 per account).

The Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game Exar Kun 4v1 Heroic Encounter begins Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 2 p.m. PT. "Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

Update Notes for 6/1/09
*************************

 Gameplay

- Blazon Life now works correctly.

- The restriction on using Blazon Life in decks has been lifted, have fun!

- Units that begin a raid alone such as Jonas Sweal and Bolan Frostwind no longer allow readied units to enter their combat.

- Bolan Frostwind and Jonas Sweal no longer allow more raids at a quest than they should.

- Tranquility now correctly prevents units that “begin a raid alone” from beginning a raid.

- Using Spirit of Wind now counts as a raid at a given quest for the turn.

- Radiance no longer resets your faction to 2 light when Radiance is the card that makes you turn light faction.

- Ice Nova no longer resets your faction to 2 light when Ice Nova is the card that makes you turn light faction.

- Ice Nova no longer resets faction when you pass on playing it for free.

- Using Silverwing Cloak on Runnyeye Cook now works properly.

- Silverwing Cloak is no longer placed on the bottom of the owner’s deck when it is destroyed.

- Dark Inferno no longer destroys itself at the end of any combat.

- Mist Wolf no longer gets its own game text on destruction.

- Enhanced Steamsuit now correctly assigns damage when taking more than one damage at a time.

- Solar Flare is no longer damaging avatars when it shouldn’t.

- Iksar Sailor can no longer ready itself.

- Drogan Earth Totems’ game text is now optional as intended.

- Robe of the Oracle and Storm Guard Defiance now work as intended with each other.

- Uppercut now returns an opposing unit to its owner’s hand correctly.

We will be patching Legends of Norrath on Monday morning, June 1, 2009. We expect the servers to go down at 7:00am PT and then will be brought back up and locked for testing soon after. We hope to have the servers unlocked so you can get back in at about 8:00am PT.

Thanks for the patience.

Could you give more details? When did this occur? Do you have Match or Turn numbers? What other cards were in play at the time? Who was your opponent?

Any further details such as these will greatly help our investigation, thanks.

Welcome to Caption of the Week! Each week a Star Chamber card will be presented, with its regular caption (or without one if it doesn't have one!), for you here. Your job is to come up with another appropriate caption for the card. It can be funny, serious, or simply silly but remember: keep it clean.

Your card this week:

I wanna party with this guy.

Ok, time to vote for your favorite caption. Last week's card, followed by player-written captions, is here. Take a look and come back here to vote!

Leyah wrote:

Minerva wrote:

You will not be able to use the G9 ITV to transport into an instance, into someone's home, into Battlefields, Space Zones, or NPC Cities. You will only be able to set your three locations in places you can normally call one of the older ITVs.

Ack, okay, one last try - something funky with forums/quoting, hehe.

Thanks for the update, Minerva.  Can you confirm the verbage there in regards to "where you can normally call" one of the existing ITV's?

We can call them pretty much anywhere that isn't an NPC City or POI.  Is it intended to be three locations where we can currently take ITV's to (i.e. Shuttleports/Starports)?

 

Thanks!

The verbage I got was direct from the source:

The G9 Rigger can hold up to 3 locations of the player’s choosing. 

In order to store a location, the player must:

            Be in a location where the ITV can be called (older ITV restriction apply (no Space Zones, Battlefields, Instances, NPC Cities, etc.)).

Be at the location he/she wants to store.

Call the G9 rigger.

Click on the G9 Rigger

This is what I was told....so I would go with "called".

Welcome to Caption of the Week! Each week a SWG TCG card will be presented, with its regular caption (or without one if it doesn't have one!), for you here. Your job is to come up with another appropriate caption for the card. It can be witty, funny, or downright silly, but remember: keep it clean.

Your card this week:

Someone's mad.

At the end of a week, all captions will be perused, and the one you the players choose will be featured in a short piece on the community webpage.

Have fun!

Ok, time to vote for your favorite caption. Last week's card, followed by player-written captions, is here. Take a look and come back here to vote!

Ok, time to vote for your favorite caption. Last week's card, followed by player-written captions, is here. Take a look and come back here to vote!

Smuggling is fun, and profitable! There are many abilities with the Smuggle keyword. They create cards that are shuffled into your deck. You can draw them and play them as if they were any other card in your deck. Smugglers help you access those created cards or reward you for playing them.

In the coming weeks we’ll talk more about the other new concepts. And, I can’t wait to show off the new Jedi units – some “are too” dynamic to be believed.

You can search tournament results at http://starwarsgalaxies.station.son...m/d/tournament/ and see results from there. Clicking on a match in a tournament game will give you the archetype used.

We don’t have an automatic analysis of tournament results. We do go through the major events and look for trends. Also, there are players who are doing some fantastic work. Treskin and the Roughnecks posted an analysis of this past weekend’s Pooja Naberrie tournament sprint weekend in the forums and it shows an overwhelming trend towards Sith decks. We don’t want any archetype to be “overwhelming” and we are looking carefully at both the cause and effect of this trend.

There are changes coming with the release of Agents of Deception, both in terms of new cards and errata to older cards. When we released Galactic Hunters I believed that we were going to get parity between the four archetypes, and for a while there was a real change in the tournament environment. It is clear that people do like winning with dark side cards, despite all of the changes. So, we’re spending a large amount of development time looking at not just “who is winning” but “what makes the archetype win.”

Jedi can be strong with units and AvA. Jedi’s units generally provide support for another strategy – Gungan Priest generates power, Obi-Wan Kenobi boosts your avatar’s stats, and so on. Jedi are also good at questing.

Right now, I firmly believe that Jedi have some powerful tools to win... even before Agents of Deception is released. I wanted to build a unit-based deck based around Hermetic Touch. It is an outstanding card, one that lets you play expensive units early. I believe that questing is the largest threat to my Jedi avatar, so I chose cards that can respond to that.

Take a look at this deck:

Avatar:

Ithorian #3, 1 attack, 3 defense, 10 health, exert an ability to ready.

Quests:

L2 Mark of Alrtuism

L4 Keren Street Race

L5 Turning the Tables

L6 Fate of the Galaxy

ABILITIES (9)

4 Hermetic Touch

3 Enhanced Stamina

2 Undermine

ITEMS (6)

2 Fallann Hyper-Rifle

1 Jedi's Wristguard

1 Old Republic Lightsaber

1 Personal Shield Generator

1 Holocron Fragment

TACTICS (6)

1 Scandal

4 Trakata

1 Inside Information

UNITS (29)

4 Gungan Priest

2 Jedi Master

1 Rune

3 Gungan Light Scout

4 Singing Mountain Guardian

1 Dannik Jerriko

3 Jedi Sentinel

4 Wookiee Villager

3 CorSec Captain

4 Jabba the Hutt

With this deck you can punish your opponent when they go to quest, you can defend yourself with Sentry units and with your avatar’s ability, and you can peck away at the opposing avatar with Wookiee Villager. The combination of Gungan Priest and Hermetic Touch lets you play out all of the expensive units quickly.

Inside Information and Scandal can wreck your day… this is why you pack Undermine to turn off those Adaptive Biology quests. I think Undermine is an underused card these days, and it can be put into any deck – not just the Jedi ones.

This is not the only route for Jedi, of course. My Jedi AvA deck that revolves around Obi-Wan Kenobi, Meditation Crystal and Padawan Lightsaber. (Love the artwork on that last one!) Next time around I’ll share this deck design... and probably a set four spoiler or two.

Welcome to Caption of the Week! Each week a LoN card will be presented, with its regular caption (or without one if it doesn't have one!), for you here. Your job is to come up with another appropriate caption for the card. It can be witty, funny, or downright silly, but remember: keep it clean.

Your card this week:

This is what happens if you don't take care of your things....

At the end of a week, all captions will be perused, and the one you the players choose will be featured in a short piece on the community webpage.

Have fun!

This is the thread for design questions during the weeks of 5/30-6/12. Post any questions you have, and a Legends of Norrath designer will try to answer!

Please note that the responses to these Q&As are always going to be written by one of the Legends of Norrath game designers. We can tackle questions about specific cards, the design process, gameplay, design philosophy, and other such topics. We won’t be able to answer any questions about tournaments, loot cards, client interface – these aren’t areas we have any kind of major input on.

Maynot wrote:

Will there ever be some cards that will nullify the text of other cards?  What I'm asking is like in that one void scenario where you could play Legend cards stripped of thier text and could only be used at face value of attack/defence/damage.  It would be cool to strip effects of all cards in play or maybe have a linked effect to strip a specific card.  I'm sure this could be a challenge to work out in practice.  Maybe even just set it up to effect certain cards like units played but they cost less to play or something like that.  The only exception would be that they could never effect tactic cards.

I think this is a possibility, but as you say, a challenge. There’s a very wide range to just how much of a card’s cost accounts for the game text. If, for example, we let you play a unit at a benefit (say, cost -2) in exchange for blanking its game text, that would be a hugely different proposition for Barbarian Veteran or Clockwork Spider than it would be for Dark Vampire. There might not be too many “cross-sections” of cards where that sort of thing would be fair across the board.

I think it more likely that we’d do something that removed the text from an opponent’s card. But even then, we’d have to consider the well-established flow to the gameplay in Legends of Norrath. Basically, your opponent can’t really do anything on your turn unless you attack him; you get to play all your cards without being “interrupted.” This keeps the pace of the game fast, since the rules engine doesn’t have to stop to ask your opponent if he wants to do something after every action you take. Cards that could actually “counter” a player’s action would change all that. Instead, we would probably want to remove the text of a card once it had already been played.

MindTwisted wrote:

First, a couple Pet questions:

When will we see a pet card that costs 1 power?  Also, since the pet decks are technically resurrection decks, when will we see an Equinox-like card for dark mages?  Lastly, when might we see a powerful pet unit that would make "Malignant Dead" units be able to resurrect a more powerful card?  Using malignant dead to bring back a 2-3 power pet card isn't very competitive against a light-priest bringing back 2 Nagafen type cards with Equinox.

I'd love to see pet decks become competitive against Equinox, Scout Ava, and cloudskippers.  As of right now, the only mage build that is competitive is a generic rush build, but it seems to me like a solid dedicated pet build (or spell build) should beat a generic rush build, no?

Lastly, when will we see the priest decks get reined in a bit?  In 95% of RPG games, priests are the weakest class, typically with the lowest defense, hp, and attack.  Light-Priests should be used for healing and questing only, not resurrecting 8pt shadow monsters.  Yet for some reason in LON, the light-priest builds have all the best healing, unit, and defense cards in the entire game...i.e. Order of the Resolute, Tranquility, Equinox, Blazon Life, Scepter of Shielding, revive, resurrection, reconstitution, dabner, etc, etc, etc... As far as I can tell, only Dark Priests and Dark Mages should have resurrection builds, not light priests or any other class.

Let’s go through all this a bit at a time. A 1 cost pet? Probably some day. We don’t have anything against Mages or their pets, it’s just that we don’t do as many 1-cost units in general these days as we used to. In fact, Ethernauts didn’t have any. Still, I think a dirt cheap pet will happen sooner or later.

A massively huge pet? I expect that will also happen in some set. But if you’re asking for it only so that you can not actually pay for it and dodge around its cost like with Equinox – a strategy you seem to be frustrated with – that seems like a bit of a contradiction to me. If you think it’s not fair that Priests have a powerful resurrection strategy, wouldn’t it be better for the game to make sure the strategy is fair, rather than further spread something you think might not be?

As for the power level of priest decks, I don’t agree that the Priest archetype should be bad in LoN because Priests tend to be “weak” in RPGs. One huge difference here is that most RPGs are group games. That goes for traditional paper-and-dice role-playing, LARPing, computer gaming, you name it -- a priest-like character is part of a party, joined up with multiple other players. And it’s the responsibility of the group to protect the weaker character in a fight, in exchange for the support that character can give from the background (or after the fight has concluded).

While we do have raids in LoN, the simple 1-on-1 game isn’t like that at all. You have no party, no other player allies. So for the game to be fun and fair, a Priest has to be able to stand in a fight against an opponent of any other archetype, no matter what the matchup might look like in an RPG. That’s true of all the archetypes, so if Priests are standing up too well at any given moment, that’s not what we want either. You named a couple of the other very good strategies right now – Cloudskipper and Scout AvA – so I don’t think it’s completely clear that any one archetype or strategy is always winning over everything else right now. But no matter what rises to the top in Legends of Norrath at any given time, whether it’s clearly one deck or a group of decks, we’ll always be checking to see if “good” is actually “too good.” We’re definitely tracking the decks you mentioned, and the cards that go in them.

And as for why light Priests have resurrection rather than shadow Priests? “Zombification” isn’t the only flavor of reanimation (though it’s certainly what shadow Mages represent). Coming back from the dead can be a force for good as well. (As I’m sure anyone whose MMO character dies and re-spawns would agree.)

The Star Wars Galaxies™ Trading Card Game Pooja Naberrie Tournament Pack is now at the Station Store for a limited time. Just $10.00 USD (plus applicable taxes) gets you this pack, which contains the following:

• One (1) Pooja Naberrie (3P9) Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game promo card
• One (1) House Sign (3SWGP4) loot card
• Three (3) Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game Galactic Hunters booster packs

The Pooja Naberrie Tournament Pack will only be available until Friday, June 5, 2009 at 2PM PT, so don’t miss out!