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devs leaving swg
urbanos
Member UncommonPosts: 13
Within five months swg has lost: Millbarge, Undertoad and Adeptstrain. The end is near?
Comments
Are they being replaced with new people? If not, it is a sign of cost cutting. Are the devs that are leaving moving to the DCU team or are they leaving SOE altogether? If it is the former, then it is likely just a result of their internships ending and gettig a promotion, if it is the latter it is likely a sign of rats fleeing a sinking ship.
They are NOT.
The only one I know of for sure was Adept, who was hired by Bioware (BRILLIANT move for him!). If you read the forums, only 2 Devs have posted anything in the past 20+ days...Teesquared and Hjal. Hjal was on the QA team as recently as a year ago and Teesquared is the Producer, Technical Lead and whatever else...I truly think he's all they have atm...which is why the extent of any "updates" are in the form of "tweaks" to existing things (removing no trade, profession updates, new "loot").
MxO made it a bit over a year with only one dev, and close to three more with no devs, so SWG may be able to limp along until TOR is released.
I had no idea this was common practice for SoE. I guess SWG players are fortunate to have 2.
Hjal is a great Dev for SWG to have, his years spent as QA lead mean he knows a lot of systems inside and he also knows what the players want from a system. His work so far has been warmly welcomed by the community.
There are Devs that don't post at all, for some it's more effort than it's worth and they leave it up to the CMs to get information to the players.
I hope my comment on Hjal didn't come off as a knock on him, it most certainly was not intended as such. As you said, he knows what players want and unlike so many before him, he actually DELIVERS on those wants (LUC is the perfect example). Hjal is 2nd in his work only to Adept and had the 2 worked on the game for more than a little while together, I have little doubt they alone could have turned it around. Hjal may be superhuman in Dev terms, but he can still only do so much.
As far as Devs who don't post but still work there...who? Can you name 2? I don't buy the "it's not worth the effort" crap because it's their freaking jobs on the line Badger. If that's all the more they care, then they're useless IMO. SWG doesn't need Devs there just to fill a seat in a chair, they want them to address the concerns and desires of the community and join in debates on systems they're developing...kinda like Adept and Hjal did/do! There's a reason those two are as good as they are Badger.
Hey guys, just wondering if there was any official announcement anywhere about AdeptStrain leaving SOE/SWG?
Apart from him being quiet on the forums and the discussion here, I can't find anything about his move to Bioware. Is there a note in the SWTOR forums?
From programming Torsion and CancelAutoRun are still at SoE from what I can gather, and DevH lets the Community Team post for him these days.
Design wise SWG-Swede is still with SoE as are Hanse, Shadowbrak, Jaskell and fiasco.
I don't know how many of these are still full time on SWG or are part time/full time on the newer SoE titles though but there is still plenty of resource to crank out fun updates.
The SWG art team (what little I know of them) doesn't seem to have changed much either.
I don't blame some Programmers and Designers from shying away from the forum, they need to be spending time on the game rather then spending time trying to figure out how to post something that is probably fairly innocuous without the communuity taking it the wrong way and tearing it to pieces. That stuff is best left to the community team to worry about and programmers/designers aren't always forum savvy.
As a player though I do like it when people like Hjal and Adept are posting on the forums and you are there is a clear exchange of information but I think this is the exception rather than the rule. There's not many companies where you as a customer will get to communicate directly with Programmers and Designers, there is usually a layer of Customer Services or Community people to prevent that from happening as it ties up the Devs time unecessarily.
Those were all one time SoE employees who all once worked on SWG, but that is sure as hell not an accurate list of SWG Devs and you know it.
Very much so.
With a down economy and a new up-to-date Sci-Fi, well Star Wars IP from a well known company to arrive. Though I believe SWG won't be dead just yet, even at the launch of the new title. There will be a "wait and see" if Bioware's Star Wars tanks or blows the roof. If it tanks, well SWG will then stick it out for a bit longer on life-support.
Perhaps may see SWG go through another identity crisis, this time becoming a full blown Trading Card MMO.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
Yes, there's definitely been something going on for a while now. SWG has seemingly been a revolving door for Devs for at least the last few months. A number of red names over the last year have been introduced, served a tenure of literally 3-6 weeks, then moved to other projects, namely DCU. The appearance to the community was that SWG had become a "trainer" for incoming talent.
But lately that hasn't even been the case, the lead dev is now wearing multiple hats, and it would appear that he only has one dev under him, Hjal. Note that between the two, their backgrounds are networking and QA, the two most bsic fields necessary to keep the game running. The last few updates have not introduced any new content but updated what was already in-game. The no-trade removal from items like heroic jewelry and a few pre-nge items shows a relaxing of the rules to serve dwindling population on servers rather than another server merge.
I fully expect to see a slow rotation of profession tweaks and small updates to current content to continue. Heroics will occasionally have new loot thrown in, as will GCW invasions and chronicles. The TCG will, of couse, continue to get new addtions as it serves as the game's cash cow. In all likelihood, however, SWG has seen the last of any "major"updates from here on out.
Like TV's 24, SWG's clock is no doubt ticking down to the end, but how long it's clock has is still anyone's guess.
^This
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
who the heck are these devs you speak of. Whatever happened to...
(Posted july, '06 on oboards)
Current (known) SWG Team: LucasArts
JulioLEC (Julio Torres) works for Lucasarts and is the producer for SWG. He registered his forum handle in December 2003 (probably to plan the Christmas holo, who knows?) and last logged on the forums on April 21st 2006. who knows if he has been reading anonymously since, most probably, but he did not post. His first post was the Letter to the community early November 2006, introducing the NGE. After that he shows up a few times to crush rumors. The funny thing is his profile totals 8 posts, but only 4 are visible. The others seem to have been deleted.
Jneri (Jake Neri) is a producer for LucasArts. He registered and posted only once on July 7th 2006 to discuss a recent Stratics HoC chat. He was talking about some of the stress testing they had done on TC for the battle of Restuss. He seems to be involved in day to day operations as a LucasArts liaison of some sort, and he seems to be logging on the forums regularly now even though he does not post. He visits the forums on a regular basis.
Neif (Tim Temmerman) this one is funny. This is a red name from LucasArts no less, whose first 2 posts were to sell in-game stuff on the Intrepid Galaxy Trade server in March 2005, lol! One such message was edited twice by him 2 days later. Good way to get a lot of bids on your auctions when they show up on DevTracker! He registered on the forums in November 2005 and recently resurfaced on the forums with real posts this time, and also joined a recent Stratics HoC chat with the team. It looks like he works in LEC Production for Star Wars Galaxies.
Current (known) SWG Team: SOE
Helios_SOE (Kai) is the Lead Designer for SWG. In January 2006 he was introduced as a SWG Systems Designer. He logs in the forums almost every day but tries to engage us as little as possible lately. He is one of the few devs who has a public profile. Many of the others have a private profile to hide when they last logged in. Granted, you can read without logging in, but it makes it harder to track what you have read or not, and it means you have no intention to post. The other interesting fact is that despite registering in the forums for the first time in August 2004, but a LOT of his pre 2006 posts have been removed/deleted, but I was told that he also used to post a lot behind the scenes in the former correspondents forums, which are not viewable by most of us.
Rogue_5 (Grant McDaniel) is the SOE Producer for SWG. Before that he was the producer for the ToOW expansion and a member of the dev team since before launch. He joined the forum at launch and vacation time aside, he visits the forums and posts on a regular basis. For some reason the recent Comlinks were not even named after him anymore. He is well known by all forum dwellers, Test Center peeps and beta testers as he is usually involved a lot there. He may have been silent lately, but many sources confirm he is still on the team in the role mentioned above. Interestingly enough, a LOT of his pre-NGE posts, in the months preceding it, cannot be seen, but those would be ToOW beta forum posts he made, he was producing it and was a maniac posting in those forums which is why they now look like barren pages on his tracker. Reports are he had like 5 or 6 threads a day with each one a start and "thanks for all the bugs on graphics/sound/quest/whichever thread this is..." and often a few "fixed that" or "explain that bug better please". And I can personally vouch for those reports as I was one of the privileged few who got in relatively early in the beta as a non-correspondent/regular player. Take off the tin foil hats, all is good folks!
Thunderheart (Kurt Stangl) is a former player/beta tester who later started working for SOE in October 2003 as assistant community relations manager with Q-3P0. His forum handle is registered from early July 2003. He took over Q-3P0s job in July 2004 and has been the Community relations Manager. Unless I am mistaken, he is the second heaviest poster on the SWG forums, after GarVa. Seriously, if you do not know about TH, then youve been living under a rock for the last 3 years.
Pex (Jason Ryan) is the SOE Events Manager and is one of the most senior members of the team (not the most according to him, Rogue_5 and others were there way before him) in terms of presence in the SWG team and forum posting. Pex always posts and he has brought us countless memorable events on all the servers. He first registered on the forums in late July 2003 and has been active ever since, up until now! Thank you Pex! Jason is a huge Star Wars fan (it shows) and he got started by writing stuff for Q-3P0. He eventually interviewed for the job at SOE and was the perfect candidate. We all agree.
GarVa (Vaughn Garvin) is a dev and member of the SWG Community Relations Team. Most of his visibility is as forums moderator and overall helper, but internal reports indicate that forum moderation only occupies 15% of their time. He has maintained a Love-Hate relationship with the forum posters, but we all love him nonetheless, because he most often takes care of those annoying posters and not our own. He has more posts than anyone on the SWG staff (over 13500, even more than TH) and has been around in the SWG and on the forums since launch. He started as a tech support rep (TSR) and eventually was promoted to community relations.
Virrago (Paul D. Williams) is a dev and another member of the Community Relations team, working closely with GarVa. He joined the SWG forums in January 2004 and has been posting massively to this day. He took over Xahns old position. He started at SOE in Oct of 2000 in Customer Service Tech support, then moved up to Senior Tech, then did Community for the Station pass games (infantry, cosmic rift, and Tanarus). After that he transferred to the SWG Community team on January 28th 2004. Just like GarVa, forum moderation only takes about 15% of his work time.
Dev-Vapor (David Jones) is an associate producer at SOE for SWG and has been with the team for 3 years. He registered on the forums at launch, started in QA and initially did most of his work on JTL. When he introduced himself again in March 2006, he had been promoted to associate producer. In his words In short I work with Rogue_5 to compose, schedule, task, execute, and deliver the publishes and hotfixes. What is interesting is that the Friday Comlink was initially titled Rogue 5s Comlink and the last few were posted by Dev-Vapor and were simply named Comlink.
SWG-Swede (Niklas Johansson) is a Content Game Designer working on live issues with Blixtev. He started his job at SOE as a Game Master for EQ, was a Senior Guide in their Guide program before that, and then got the opportunity to go to Austin and lend a hand at the last 6 months of developing SWG and was invited to stay on as a designer after that. He joined the forums at launch, worked on the ground game and JTL. He is definitely still around, alive and kickin. Interestingly he is married to Janessa Johansson (Kylaena, see below).
SWG-Goliath (Rick Knox) is a Master Artist and environment/character model artist on SWG who joined the forums in November 2004, and visits regularly. He is an amazing artist who designed the Mustafarian Bunker, the Sorosuub yacht, the Y-8 and the YT-2400, among others. He is a former player who started since launch (as a smuggler) and joined SOE mid 2004. Previous to working for SOE, he worked as a modeler on the Star Trek Legacy game, according to my sources and a recent interview on GameSpot. The guy is apparently a huge Trekkie: Im told you should see his office- it's covered in models. A lot of his Star Trek modeling career is from Star Trek: Bridge Commander for which he designed some of the most photo-realistic mods.a few years ago. He did about 80 some models for the game that can be found at the http://bridgecommander.filefront.com Website under the name "P81" or "Rick Knox". Despite erroneous reports (my bad, sorry) he is definitely still with the SWG team and is actually working hard to make the game better (and prettier!)
Dev-Temujin (Jason Minor) is an Art Director for SWG who joined the forum in September 2003 and last posted/visited the forums on 6/23 2006. His first post was very recent (same day) regarding the new art/texture skins we are supposed to get soon. It was confirmed to me he is still around, so I assume he is working on those.
SpaceRancor (Eli Holding) is Lead Expansion Designer, and worked as a content designer for both Jump to Lightspeed and Rage of the Wookiee, and then as the Lead Designer for Trials of Obi-Wan. Eli joined SOE and the forums in September 2003, was a JTL designer, and still logs on the forums on a daily basis. What is funny is that SpaceRancor actually switched to a private forum profile since I first posted this thread, lol! Dont like Big Brother huh Eli? I thought Eli was probably another victim of the dev exodus or cutbacks, especially considering they said there would be no expansion for now, but I was told Eli is still on the team, working with Fiasco on content. Hey Eli! Come and drop us a line, will ya?
AddySWG (Pete Warner) is a content game designer (another?) for SWG, joined the forums in August 2004 and last signed on them on June 26th 2006. I guess he too is on vacation since I know he is still on the team. He worked on the NGE and the AI upgrade on the CU, among other things. Since he was also a former player. 5 of his 8 posts to date are invisible/deleted.
SWG-Tunso (Mark Halash) is a game designer. He joined the forums in November 2003 and still hangs around here, even if he does not post often. He used to work with Pex on SWG player events. He recently has been working on the expertise system framework and Bounty Hunter expertise specifically.
HanseSOE (Hanse) is a dev who was a hero to this community in June. He was posting a lot and engaging us in discussions in the forums about the Jedi expertise system. Hes a new guy, joined in May 2006 and then suddenly fell completely silent, despite still logging back on the forums. It looked like he was talking too much and someone told him to cut it (j/k) Seriously, Hanse dropped by in the thread and informed us that he had been so busy working that he hadnt had time to post. He was working on the Jedi Expertise (not the Bounty Hunter Expertise, as I misreported at first, although, he has touched on shared elements between the two) and will post more, once he has concrete information that is worth reading. Keep up the good work Hanse!
Nadias is a forum moderator on the SWG Community team. She joined the forums in November 2004 and has been posting ever since. In her own words, aside from a short break in December 2004, she is always around.
EJDev is a Senior Game Designer and Im not sure when he joined as I cannot find an introduction post nor does he have any posts before December 2005. His profile is also private. He last posted on 7/7 to reply in the last Comlink but has been logging on the forums since then. He now works on live systems with Shadowbrak.
Shadowbrak (Travis Hicks) never posted a lot but used to give us good info, most of his posts are on the private senate forums. When he introduced himself in October 2004, he said he had been with the team for 18 months, and was an expansion developer. With Restuss out the door and no expansions in the works, the Expansion team has been divided out to the other groups. Travis is now with Systems working under EJDev. But we wonder, is there an expansion after all? Psssst! Travis! 26 39 14 Hoth! Hoth! Hoth! (get the hint?)
Blixtev is a systems game designer working on live issues with SWG-Swede. He joined the forums in July 2004 and last posted on them on June 8th 2006. While he has a private profile, I can tell you that he has not logged on since at least June 22nd 2006.
Xel-Qrom (Jesse Knapp) is a game designer who joined SWG around April 2006 but has a forum handle registered in December 2003. Im not sure where Jesse comes from. Last post was June 29th 2006 but despite the private profile, I know Xel has logged on the forums very recently.
Phydeaux-K9 (Hollis Gray) is a content game designer who joined the forums in September 2004, and last visited on June 22nd 2006. In January 2006 he claimed having been with the team for 2 years already. He also says he has been playing since beta.
Loche (Jesse Benjamin) is a content game designer, and previously QA Analyst who joined the project in February 2003, the forums in July 2003 and last posted on 6/22 this year. Jesse has been with SWG since about 6 months till launch and was originally hired on as a contract QA tester, having worked with a few of the original TCPA/Unity players. While not necessarily posting, Loche is still roaming the forums on a daily basis. Interesting fact: The brawler master NPC in one of the training room on Tansarii Point Station is named Loche nice personal touch there Jesse.
Dev_Mercy (Lisa Farina, aka Quest Mistress) is yet another SWG content game designer. She joined the forums in June 2005 and was last seen on June 1st 2006. She apparently joined the SWG team in January 2005. She worked on the Legacy quest (droid head), Tansarii station, secrets of the siren and things like that.
Chrysalide (Jeff Carpenter) is a Live Systems designer who joined the forums in January 2004 and worked on JTL early on. In his January 2006 introduction, he claimed having been with the team for 3 years. Funnily enough, his last post was less than a month later in February 2006 but despite the private profile, I know that Jeff was still lurking on the forums very recently. My sources tell me that a few devs who hadn't been around for a while showed up at the recent PvP events on TC, and Chrysalide was one of them, but they could not remember all the others. This is good news, as there are apparently more people involved in the team than it actually seems, so hopefully things will take a turn for the best soon!
Fiasco (Michael Farone) is leading the SWG content design team. He joined the forums in July 2003 and was still posting on March 24th then, silence. Despite his private profile, I also know he did not log on the forums past April 12th. However, Shadowbrak confirmed that he is definitely still on the SWG team.
Milhous (Mick Honea, not sure about the name) joined the forums in September 2005 (probably an NGE job) and is still reading almost every day. Only one of his 2 posts is visible, and he worked in QA.
Alai_SOE is one of the new devs that joined the team. He first registered on the forums on July 11th 2006 and seems to be off to a good start by visiting every day. He is originally from Ohio and started at SOE as a new programmer on the SWG team in June 2006. Chapter 2 is his first patch on SWG (patch? Is that what they call it internally? Here I though we were getting chapters and publishes full of content!?!) Hes excited to be a part of the team and everyone and SOE so far has been terrific - they're all good people (yeah, but they dont LISTEN!!!!!) Previous to SWG he worked on a little known MMO called "Meridian 59" off and on during college and then Ultima Online for about 6 years in almost every conceivable role. After UO he did some work on a system that did 3D laser scans of extruded rubber components for a tire factory. In that time he has learned one inarguable thing: Game Studios > Tire Factories (duh, I could have saved you the trouble dude I guess he, too, does not listen Im sure he was warned). He will try to check in on the forums from time to time, but we probably shouldn't expect him to become a regular fixture. Were ok with that, as long as he reads a lot, listens to us (not to Julio or Smedley) and codes what we really need, and not what a focus group of 12 year olds who showed up for free chips and soda told him was fun. We also have proof that he is human since he, too, gets hand cramps when playing with the twitch-based NGE or at least we know he has hands (he could be a Hutt, you never know!)
Tereb is another one of the new hires at SOE. He is the current build master on SWG, and started with SOE in March 2006). The build master is the person on the team responsible for building the game, and also ensuring it is deployed to the test centers, both internal and externally. So for those here who call test center their home, hes normally the guy pressing the big red button to stop the hamsters from running, and provide them with new food to process. He made it clear that hes does not control when patches go out, nor does he control the release of the blue frogs. New patches and content are released when it is ready (really? but for Live it usually comes way too early and bug-ridden), and blue frogs are put on TC when the need arises. Hell try to keep up with the community here as much as he can, but his normal job duties come first. He is also working on some improvements to the deployment system that may help QA greatly (FYI the problem is not QA, the problem is the devs ignore what is reported by QA and players on TC and push buggy publishes to live anyways). Hes also looking at a slightly different deployment strategy to the test centers to help shorten the downtime when new patches are released (I wonder if he can make Bria load faster ). As he initially put it, hes the bothan that pokes the hamsters running the test centers. I decided to step out of the shadows today. My guess is that he is a spy and was cloaked all this time. The problem with devs is they have god mode so they can cloak forever, the cooldown timer is like 2 seconds and they have such high luck and agility that every time you throw a constructive comment at them, you always get a glancing blow. He joined the forums on July 20th 2006 and so far his few posts have been about TC stuff. My guess is his forum name is short for The Reb which means that all TC Imps will be converted into blue frogs for Alliance use in the future. Apparently it's something more boring like Tereb Rukki, which is a bothan name. I still say he's a reb...
Teesquared (Tony Tyson) is a Technical Director for SWG, which means he manages internal processes for the team as well as the various tools, environment and logistics to facilitate the work of the devs. His forum account was created on July 9th 2006 but he has not posted yet.
Vrixx (Annette Rogers) doesn't show up on DevTracker, but is a member of the dev team and definitely deserves to be listed here. She has been a hardcore player since beta, she is still an active player in her spare time and joined the team 2 years ago as a QA. She has been a Entertainer, Tailor, Medic and now Smuggler on her play characters, but she has played every class out there both old and new. She joined the forums in July 2004 and still hangs out here every day. Most of her posts involve special testing events on TC when she invites players to join those are *always* fun! She's now a Live QA Lead running a team testing the various updates and is a well known Twi'lek around TC. Her duties include tasking out the live team, scouring the forums for bugs, working with the test center players on their reported bugs and exploits, essentially anything related to the updates in between Chapters. Her story on how she got the job: I was on vacation in Los Angeles from Portland Oregon. While there a friend gave me the business card to the person who did the hiring at SOE. I gave him a call, he asked me to come down to San Diego for a pre-interview. I made the trek down the next day, had my pre-interview and 10 minutes later was being shuttled over to the SOE offices for an actual interview. About 2 hours later I got a call as I was eating a salad offering me the position. I actually lived out of a hotel for the first month while I looked for an apartment. I still haven't had the majority of my things (or my dog!) shipped from the Northwest. This is her first gaming industry job. She worked in telecommunications before. She has worked with computers, mainly Internet and communications-related her entire professional life. She is also a huge Star Wars fan; Return of the Jedi was the first movie she got to see alone. Her mom wanted to see something else and she begged and pleaded for her to let her go see something different, she agreed, she chose RotJ and the rest is history! She is also an AVID reader, knits, crochets and sows; she has three cats and a LARGE dog plus a foster dog. She also dabbles around with paint and canvas although she would never call herself a painter! She (obviously) live in Austin now and has two roommates (both dudes, lucky **edit**!) who are also insane gamers, they frequently have large LAN parties with multiple computers and consoles set up. In short, she is a huge nerd.
DevH is a very shy dev since he/she joined the forums in December 2004 and yet never posted. Someone caught him/her logging on the forums and thats how the gurrcat got out of the chiss poachers backpack! DevH stands for Dev Hidden. Since this dev managed to survive the CU and the NGE, we figured he must have very high toughness oh, wait, toughness is out of the game. Either that or he has the ability to rise from the dead and according to reports, the character of Lord Vartonis is based on him/her. Last we heard, DevH was walking the halls of SOE as a blue glowie offering design suggestions on how to turn every single useful item in game into a 3-use +5 buff stim (Translation: I dont know crap about this dev and I made all of this up).
xVector is another introverted dev who got caught online like DevH. He/she first registered and logged on the forums on July 20th 2006 and never posted. I guess he/she was hoping to be noticed so I would add him/her to this post. Someone needs a hug. My reports tell me xVector is in fact a pre-CU buffbot from Bria who became sentient and invaded the SOE network. The devs adopted him and kept it alive using a stash of Vasarian Brandy. Unfortunately since the pre-CU version is no longer available, Helios ran out of crates and now xVector is rampaging the forums, feeding on trolls and flames (for some reason xVector gained 400 lbs in 24 h.)
Gris (Fannie Gunton) is technically not a red name since I cannot find a forum account for her, but we know from a recent Stratics HoC chat that she is an Associate Producer with SOE for SWG and called herself Gris in that chatroom. It would be great if she could drop by and tell us more about herself.
Other (known) SOE Folks (not necessarily on the SWG team)
Smed (John Smedley) is the President of SOE. He first registered on the SWG forums in May 2005 (for CU damage control) and last logged in on March 25th 2006. He usually shows up to crush rumors, announce the CU, ro announce the NGE you can imagine how popular he is now. In his very last post on March 24th, he said I will do my best to continue to follow this thread and post this weekend. I will say we'll continue to keep a dialogue open. Looks like he kept reading for a day, then gave up and never posted again. E-mail: jsmedley@soe.sony.com. John also maintains a blog on the SOE site at http://blog.station.sony.com (I am providing blog links here as a great source of information, but understand this is not a place to go pester devs about SWG questions unless they address the topic themselves in a blog post first).
ChrisCao (Chris Cao) is the Creative Director for the SOE Austin studio and he is busy with many SOE games there. He first registered on the SWG forums in September 2005 (not long before the NGE), and last seen on them on April 12th 2006. He was previously the Lead Designer on EverQuest II before moving over to the SWG team. Some of his posts and tone caused a lot of controversy, so either he was canned, left or told not to post again.
JFreeman (Jeff Freeman) was Lead Game Play Designer for SWG, and before that Lead Content Designer for JTL and worked on numerous other systems since. He joined the forums at launch and has not posted since February 2006, which is odd since he did post quite a bit. He once had a blog on game design, but since deleted it since people started to quote him and use that against him on the forums. Reports indicate that about a month or two ago, he posted on f13.net that he's no longer part of the SWG team, however all my sources and his own blog indicate he is still working at SOE as the Lead Systems Designer for another project. You can read Jeffs blog at http://mythicalblog.com/blog (I am providing blog links here as a great source of information, but understand this is not a place to go pester devs about SWG questions unless they address the topic themselves in a blog post first).
Brenlo (Alan Crosby, aka Brenlo Bixiebopper) is the Director of Global Community Relations at SOE. He registered on the forums in January 2004 and was still reading them very recently. Most of his posts were in assistance to managing the community during the CU and the NGE. Basically, people like TH, Tiggs (when she was around) and all the CSRs ultimately report to him. It has been a while since he has posted on the SWG forums and he has been seen posting recently on the EverQuest II forums. You can read Alans blog at http://brenlosworld.com (I am providing blog links here as a great source of information, but understand this is not a place to go pester devs about SWG questions unless they address the topic themselves in a blog post first).
Suleman (Mario Rizzo) was an associate producer for SWG, joined the forums in September 2003 and was last seen on them on April 12th 2006. He does not seem to have any pre-NGE posts. Considering Dev-Vapor was announced as associate producer a month before, I say Suleman is bye-bye from SWG. It seems he still logs on our forums almost every day though, so he may be working on other projects at SOE while keeping an eye on SWG, or maybe he is still involved in the shadows. Hey, Mario what are you up to?
Jo-don is a mystery dev who registered in September 2003, and only posted in August 2005 (well, only 8 of his 29 posts are visible). It seems he was involved with the Aurilian village quests and the old man and other jedi revamp things. The hypothesis is that the mystery developer named Jo-Don is John Donham's other handle, because he apparently still works for SOE in much the same role as a producer (according to reports and confirmed by a few), but other sources tell me he is not Donham. He last logged on the forums in February or March.
Xahn was the former Senior Community Relations Moderator. He has 1943 posts from June 25th, 2003 to December 23rd, 2003. Xahn was either the first or second moderator on the SWG forums, and considered the most amicable. Jeassa would later replace Xahn in December as senior moderator. Xahn currently works as an associate producer for EverQuest II, doing sound production.
Jeff Freeman passed away in 2008. Kinda ironic that this game has a dev named fiasco.
Millbarge is still working on SWG.
As is :
DevH
CancelAutoRun
Blixtev
SWG-Tunso
Shadowbrak
Deadmeat
Chrysalide
Torsion
Hjal
Teesquared
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Someone just did a rolecall on the forums :
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=1090224
someone posted with their names... doesn't mean its really them. its really odd the timing in which the posts were made. some within 10-20 seconds of each other. several had the a 'brain's theme which Drakfool also had with an image. Seems like the BS he'd try to pull to try to prove a point.
and even if it is them... doesn't mean they are working on SWG because honestly if they are working on SWG it is truly sad how little they have to show for it
BioWare picking up SWG devs... CLASSIC!!!!
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
LOL!!! You don't think for a moment that that was actual Devs that work on SWG do you? People asked that specific question, and they didn't answer it lol. Don't fall for it for a moment. It's a stunt.
Millbarge still works on SWG as he was today asking for feedback from Mayors, http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/preList.m?topic_id=1090928&post_id=12158818
Deadmeat overlooks the entire Austin studio so while he doesn't work directly on SWG anymore, he does still have some involvement with it (from time to time he pops in to talk about how he's watching server loads, etc).
Teesquared and Hjal are obviously still working on SWG, as is Jaskell and HanseSOE. DevH still seems to have some involvement in setting up server side systems. Chrysalide has always been an artist for SWG, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire Austin studio share an artist team across all the games produced there.
Jaskell didn't say he still did, in fact, his comment "It actually represents our relationship with SWG." leads me to believe that he doesn't.
Neither did Millbarge, who just said "/fixed" and a disclaimer.
Your "artist" is a SoE employee, not a SWG Dev.
DevH is long gone mate...don't believe the quirky references to him they make. The real DevH used to play on Flurry and I ran into him almost nightly. He may still be a "systems" guy for SoE, but he most assuredly doesn't spend his time on SWG most days.
Hanse is the only one I wish WASN'T working on SWG tbh, but he does seem to still be there.
You people seem to be confusing a "Roll Call of who is in the office" (which is what sparked this reply by the many former Devs) as a "Roll Call of who still works on SWG"...don't confuse the two.
Jaskell posted and confirmed that yes, he is still around, see this post, http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?start=150&topic_id=1090224#12160185
Millbarge posted asking for feedback on the Player City system, which implies that he must still be working as a developer on SWG (see the link I posted above. Maybe this time you'll want to actually click it...)
I'm fully aware of the inhouse joke with DevH, however he's often involved in discussions with dealing with behind the scenes systems, even if he doesn't directly post about them. Most recent was about a month ago when making modifications to the Factional Presence system.
Thanks for reiterating what I already posted in relation to the Artist, btw
Jaskell said he's "around" in that link...not "working on SWG".
You're link wasn't "clickable", but I did quote Millbarge above in my reply. It was just "/fixed". edit: You're correct, he did ask how they liked his update, again, not that he's working on SWG.
DevH references are proof to you of him being around? Not to me, sorry.
You're welcome.
I'm not gonna split hairs with you on how you interpret something. I'm sure you're incorrect and I'll likely be proven right, but believe what you wish.
They might be pulling them to work on SOE's new clonewars mmo for kids, who knows though I gave up on SWG a year ago so I have'nt been keeping up with it.
Perhaps. Until there's proof to the contrary, I only go by what is presented to me.