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SWG Leak Reveals Playable Jawa, Gungan Characters?
Anonymous SWG Fan writes "Through a 'Friday Feature' giving players a look inside the player-species statistics for their PC MMO, 'Star Wars: Galaxies' accidentally released the names of the secret two player species coming with the highly anticipated 'Jump To Lightspeed' expansion. This information was not supposed to be released until later this summer, but when putting up the statistics on current species, 'Jawa - 0%' and 'Gungan - 0%' appeared. They were removed almost immediately, but not before dozens of people had already posted about the mistake on the official Star Wars Galaxies forum." Update: 06/12 21:38 GMT by S : According to Community Manager Kevin 'Q-3PO' O'Hara in the same thread: "OK, OK, it was a joke. I will not confirm or deny any rumors about the two new species" - make of this what you will.
... in the linked thread. I can that going either way; it could be true, or it could just be CMA. I have a hard time thinking they'd put gungans in there, though. With the widespread hatred (or at least distaste) for episode 1 and Jar Jar in particular, it seems like a player who picked them would be asking for trouble. Then again, I don't actually play SWG, so take that as the expert thought that it is (not).
Second page of that thread says it's a joke.
Another post says that the devs wouldn't make Jawas a player species because "they are supposed to be non-travelers and you cannot really customize a character that doesn't have a face", which seems to bolster the joke theory.
A small handful of people REJOICE!!
"Derp de derp."
A player's single jawa character will actually consist of a pack of jawa's that attacks in swarms and tactically swing clubs as each of the knees and joints.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I think that adding new playable races is something that MMORPG creators are generally reluctant to do, compared with adding, say new classes, new items or new quests.
:)
The reason is simple... it doesn't give as much of an incentive for the established hardcore players to pick up the expansion, as it's something they wouldn't be able to take advantage of without creating a whole new character and starting again. New items and quests can be picked up with existing characters. A lot of MMORPGs will let you change your class pretty much at will now (FFXI being the best example), but once you pick a race, you're pretty much tied to it.
So yes, I strongly suspect this is a joke. In fact, I wonder if it's a bit of a wry admission from certain parts of Lucasarts that... yes... Jar-Jar really was THAT unpopular
Jawas and Gungans already exist as NPCs, which means the rendering is done. While I don't see Jawas as likely (kind of boring from a customization standpoint), Gungans are possible. They are richly populated throughout Naboo and don't have the kind of bad rep in-game as Jar Jar Binks does from the movies.
We know there will be two new races with the JTL space expansion. I wouldn't be surprised to see Neimoidian (Trade Federation) as one of the races. And maybe the Sullustan, since they were prominent as rebels. These seem more likely to me since they are space-faring races and the expansion is space-centric.
[Jaba] sit ...
Sitting
[Jaba] wait
Waiting
[Jaba] wait
Waiting
[Jaba] wait
Waiting
[Jaba] wait
Waiting
You are getting hungry
[Jaba] eat small critter
Yumm
[Jaba] yank chain on scantly clad women
Holding out hope for the chance to be an Ewok...