SWG Legends news // Bespin: The City in the Clouds

"I saw... I saw a city in the clouds."
―Luke Skywalker
Welcome Legends,
At last.. After so many years, we're going to the clouds! As you can imagine (or hope you can imagine), it's a very big day for not just us here on the Legends team, but it's just as big a day for all of you in the community having finally reached this moment, and of all days, on May the Fourth! Legends, we can't put into enough words the pride and joy to finally be here sharing this experience with all of you.
The City in the Clouds expansion is the culmination of THREE AND A HALF YEARS of strenuous work across our (past and present) Development team, Design team, and also endured rigorous testing from our Quality Assurance team, so we want to thank them for their many long hours in helping us reach this point. Also throughout this journey we've seen many of our Project Contributors shine as Bespin little by little came to life with stunning decorating work and top level sound design, quality promotional stills, and video to help showcase this amazing endeavor. We send a truly heartfelt thanks to our Project Contributors for their efforts in taking Bespin to the next level.
Last, but certainly not least, we sincerely appreciate everyone in this community for the continued support over these years and all the kind words you've shared recently as we've finally been able to reveal much of this work to you in trailers and many screenshots and written works. Your patience has been crucial throughout this entire process and we certainly hope you enjoy this brand new addition to the galaxy for a long time to come.

The City in the Clouds Overview

In this City in the Clouds Overview, we want to do our best with breaking down a little bit of what our goals are in ensuring as much of a quality experience as possible here in the opening days of Bespin and navigating some of the tricky waters with a development rollout of this magnitude in the coming days and possibly weeks that MANY of our community members will be anxious to take part in. We also want to make sure that you know where and HOW to get started when it comes to the Bespin Questline (without going into any major detail on the storyline itself).
Some of these crucial points you will read here such as AFK use on Bespin and the Game Zone Management methods we're employing may only be temporary with the sole purpose of simply keeping things truly active and moving here in the early stages as we get through the growing pains first towards making Cloud City a true community hub in the galaxy.
Please (pretty please with camby berries on top!) READ over the following sections of this thread listed below not only to help provide yourself with the need to know details, but so you can share it with your friends or guild mates and be a huge help to us in keeping your fellow community members informed:
  1. Welcome to Bespin - ( City in the Clouds video trailers; SWG:Legends Social Media platforms )
  2. The City in the Clouds - Expansion Update ( Development patch notes )
  3. Your Chapter Gift - ( Login reward )
  4. Travel to Bespin / The Bespin Questline ( Quick breakdown of the how and where for the Bespin Questline )
  5. Game Zone Management ( Breakdown of our methods to mitigate the player volume on Cloud City in the early stages of release )
  6. AFK use on Bespin ( A brief look at the AFK rules as they will apply to Bespin and temporary restrictions in the early stages of release )
  7. The Support Center ( Reminder to please make use of the Support Center if you need help or need to report bugs )
  8. We'll see you in the clouds!


Welcome to Bespin:

Glad you made it? Yeah us too! As previously stated, the work on Bespin has taken YEARS, but here we are finally!
Explore the iconic locations across Cloud City (along with the many instanced areas within), meet many new and familiar faces, and truly immerse yourself in this brand new chapter here on SWG:Legends with an all new space zone, many returning items you may recognize from the TCG and much more completely new and exclusive new armor, wearables, and decor created by our incredible Design Team. With a true Cloud City cache of loot for you to get out there and acquire, the sky is the limit on Bespin.
Check out some more of what's awaiting in the Bespin Features trailer below:

(Don't forget to like and subscribe!) You can follow any of our other social media platforms here.


The City in the Clouds - Expansion Update:
If you want to know what's new from Development, follow this link to the Expansion Update patch notes.

Your Chapter Gift:
For a limited time, when you log into the game after our City in the Clouds release, you will receive a painting of the Baron Administrator himself, Lando Calrissian as a welcome to this new exciting update! This painting CAN BE TRADED and is rewarded to ALL characters on your account. We hope you enjoy!

Travel to Bespin / The Bespin Questline:
PLEASE READ

One major topic we wanted to briefly touch upon and help give you all a nudge in the right direction for is STARTING THE BESPIN QUESTLINE. We will go over those details below:
  • ALL players can freely travel to Bespin, even without beginning the Bespin Questline.
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  • You MUST have previously completed the Hoth Heroic instance to start the Bespin Questline.
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  • If you HAVE completed Hoth, you may speak to your respective faction NPC in the Adventurer's Guild Hall in Aurilia (Ask about the Battle of Hoth).
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  • This story takes place in the timeline AFTER the battle of Echo Base.
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  • Enjoy your adventures through the clouds.
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If you have completed Hoth, you may speak to your respective NPC here to start the Bespin Questline.

We can't share much right now, but we certainly hope this helps point you to the starting line so you can begin this new exciting journey!

Game Zone Management:
PLEASE READ

We want to make sure everyone is aware of the steps we are taking to help prevent server / performance issues during the early parts of this huge rollout, so it's worth mentioning these details we hope all of you can take the time to read so you can better prepare yourselves and plan accordingly.
This is a massive update and it's one that we obviously all want to hurry and take part in. We will be monitoring the server closely, but we want to share the following information regarding Cloud City itself:
  • Due to the anticipated high volume of players traveling to Bespin, we have added in temporary game zone management that can help limit the players in the area without causing high area activity and prevent server crashes from the volume of people.
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  • if you try to travel to Bespin while it’s at its limit for players, the server will not let you travel there. You will have to try again in a few minutes to try and go there if the zone hasn’t reached its limit.
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  • This temporary game zone management only applies to the surface level of Cloud City.
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  • It DOES NOT include players that are within the many instanced areas within Bespin, so players within the instanced areas will free up space within the surface level of Cloud City.
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  • Players in the instanced "dungeon" areas WILL be able to leave those areas and return to the surface level of Cloud City regardless of the player capacity.
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  • Just to further reiterate - As people go through the Bespin questline, more openings will be available for players to come in to the surface level.
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  • This system IS TEMPORARY to ensure server stability and allow players to enjoy Bespin with minimal interruptions as possible.
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  • We want to make sure everyone is able to get into Bespin to participate!
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AFK use on Bespin:
To keep SWG:Legends a compliant, fun, fair and safe gaming environment for everyone, we have set the following rules when it comes to Away From Keyboard (AFK) Gameplay on Bespin:
Initially, we will not be allowing Medics or Officers to be set up to offer their Buffs and Stims while AFK due to the temporary Game Zone Management that is in place. We will also not be allowing any toons left out to "Ad-Bark."
As Bespin begins to "normalize" and the temporary zone management gets lifted, we will invite the Medics and Officers to return to "set-up shop" to provide the much loved buffs and stims to the community. These are just some necessary growing pains we need to get through first as we gradually work our way towards making Cloud City the proper community hub we all want to see it become.
We will not be allowing any AFK Combat gameplay on Bespin. Players who are caught AFK Combat Grinding will be promptly removed from the area. This restriction is permanent, and will remain in effect after the temporary zone management is lifted.

The Support Center:
SWG:Legends Staff will be standing by as much as we can over the coming days to assist with any in-game problems or other issues that might arise. We definitely want to take this time to remind you (or advise any newer community members) that we do have our Support Center that's always open for use to the community to send in tickets or reports to our staff of any potential problems. This Bespin experience will be new to a lot of us as well, but we will be here to help.
If you run into any potential bugs, the support center is also on standby 24/7 to receive any player tickets of issues you might run into on this fresh journey through Bespin. We strongly encourage you to read all about the Support Center in the following link located here.
if you're a member of the SWG:Legends Discord Server, you may also contact our Community Support Representatives (CSR) through the #csr-helpdesk channel.

We'll see you in the clouds:
To honor the Star Wars day fun and in celebration of this big release, we're enabling DOUBLE XP (XP ONLY) until Monday, May 10th.
We're so happy to be at this point and look forward to watching all of your adventures take you to Cloud City and the many challenges that await there. As exciting as it is, we do ask that you still be patient with us. We can't emphasize enough the sheer volume of activity expected to arrive on Bespin, but we will do our best to make the early experience as bump free as possible. To further celebrate the release of The City in the Clouds and May the Fourth, we will have ongoing fireworks shows happening all throughout on the surface of Cloud City!
Stay tuned in to discord, here on the forums, and across our Social Media platforms as new developments and updates to Cloud City start making their way into the galaxy in the future. There's still a lot more to come!

May the Fourth be with you,
The SWG:Legends Team
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