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Both this week and last week the Friday Features on the official Star Wars Galaxies site have been all about the Jedi and their legacy. Last week team artist Christine Chugon walked us through the process of creating the amazing new heroic instance, the Tomb of Exar Kun. Kun was just recently added to the game in the Chapter 9 content patch. Chugon offers up the simple pencil drawing on lined paper that was her starting point, and takes us through the various steps required to bring the maze to life.

This week's Feature is also all about the Jedi's world - this time a walkthrough of the new Expertise tree coming to the class in Game Update 3. The tree is split into two parts, representing the Light and Dark sides of the force. The Light side offers improvements in saber technique, a simple snare or two, and the 'mind trick' ability to confuse/de-aggro an enemy. The Dark side is much more straightforward, offering crit enhancements, the ability to drain life, the force choke snare ability, and the power to throw deadly force lightning. For further discussion of the new Jedi powers, check out the vigorous thread on the official forums.

Star Wars Galaxies Technical Director Tony 'Teesquared' Tyson has been tapped to join the community and design teams, writing regular updates for the players. For his first 'Teesquared technical report', Mr. Tyson introduced the programming team, the gents who work tirelessly on the backend game components for very little recognition.

Considering the often-anonymous role that MMO game developers have on large projects, it's great to see this team individually lauded for their recent contributions. DevH (a popular forum-posting developer) is working on the back-end elements for the Chapter 10 community search feature, for example. The report also sneaks in a nugget of new information: the integration with Vivox planned for all of SOE's games is currently being trial-tested in Star Wars Galaxies by developer CancelAutoRun. It will be interesting to see what future technical reports offer, and whether the programming team can offer SWG players a built-in voicechat experience.

This past Friday's featured article on the official Star Wars Galaxies site was all about a brand-new toy. Chapter 9 dropped onto the live servers on Thursday. Alongside the bevy of other content, a brand-new collection was added that ends by obtaining a new instant-travel vehicle called the 'Rattletrap.' Instant travel vehicles have been available for some time now as claimable gifts in retail boxes, but this piece of space trash is available to anyone with the time and keen eyes to find it.

Instant travel toys are one of the clearest departures of the 'new' SWG from the thinking of at-launch Galaxies. The lengthy runs and endless travel times of the pre-vehicle days were notorious. With vehicles and mounts in place for some time, as well as shorter shuttle waits and instant travel vehicles more recent additions, SWG marches forward towards that always-elusive goal of 'Fun'. For full details of the recent Chapter update, make sure to check out our extensively-linked breakdown.

The ninth chapter update to Star Wars Galaxies was released to the live servers yesterday! This chapter is entitled "The Fury of Exar Kun", and continues the SWG team's commitment to regular and targetted content updates. This one, unlike Game Updates 1 and 2, is nothing but a love letter to the players. The official patch notes spell out all the gory details: PvP collections, the Exar Kun heroic instance, improved Storyteller tools ... even the chapter gift (a housing-placeable terminal that lets you track the progress of the Galactic Civil War) is getting a really positive player reaction. For details RPGVault has up a piece giving us the full rundown on the Chapter, from badges to blasters.

With Chapter 9 out and being explored the next content updates are already in the works. Game Update 3 will see much love given to the Jedi and Bounty Hunter classes; the developers are testing the changes to the Jedi and have been sharing some of their play experiences with force-users on the forums. They've also been releasing information on the upcoming Chapter 10 goodies. The next big content drop will see significantly improved player search options, making it that much easier to find a group of fellow adventurers in the Galaxy Far, Far Away.

We've been following the progress of the Star Wars Galaxies team on the upcoming Chapter 9 content update for some time, and patch day shouldn't be too far off now. We've talked about the new PvP collections, discussed fan reaction to the content on the Test server, and it all sounds pretty good. How about a look, though?

All the way back at the beginning of the month we discussed preview information for Chapter 9's setpiece addition: the Exar Kun heroic instance. Today we're going to give you a look inside. Check out the four exclusive screenshots we have of this imposing facility, deep in the heart of a Yavin 4 temple. Built originally by the Massassi race, Kun has now twisted the old stones to his dark will. Looks like a great place for a fight!

The ongoing quest for more content in the galaxy Far, Far Away continues, with producer Lorin 'DeadMeat' Jameson dropping a production letter / state of the game address into the official Star Wars Galaxies forums. Jameson is enthusiastic about the upcoming release of Chapter 9, which entered public testing this past Friday. He invites players to fully test the patch, giving special notice to the much anticipated Exan Kun instance (which will feature some really fantastic rewards), the storyteller blueprint system (screenshots of the system at work are available) and a brand new ITV collection quest.

The next two Game Updates are already in the planning phases, with Bounty Hunters/Jedi scheduled for some tweaking in Update 3, and Commandos/Officers due for Update 4 (finally!).

He also teases the playerbase with hints about what we can expect in Chapter 10. According to Jameson the headliner for next chapter will be the fan-favorite Meatlumps gang. This content will be, amazingly, not for the high level. Instead, level 45-65 characters will feel the love, and face down the dangerous Meatlump gang on their home turf. The next content drop will also see dramatic improvements in the Looking For Group and player search interfaces - tweaks designed to make finding other players less of a challenge on low-population servers. All great news for the average SWG player, and another follow-through with the team's promise to keep the players happy.

The newest content update for Sony Online's Star Wars Galaxies is expected soon, and Chapter 9 promises a world of new and enjoyable content for the players in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Last week the official SWG site offered up a preview of one of the Chapter's additions: PvP collections. Collections are a great feature, added to the game back in Chapter 7. They allow players to show off their in-game accomplishments in a very deliberate fashion, and these PvP rewards follow much the same lines.

Collections will be opened up for all kinds of PvP activities, including killing factional NPCs, slaying players on the opposing side, and downing officers of varying rank in the Rebel or Imperial forces. PvP collections not only net players swanky additions to their inventory, but have the possibility of earning the PvPer factional rewards above and beyond what they'd normally get. A rare base infiltration collection, for example, could earn a player 2500 faction points for spending/saving as they participate in the Galactic Civil War. We were promised a number of new collections in the upcoming patch, and it will be very interesting to see what other kinds of rewards will be made available post-Chapter 9.

The SOE-Austin design machine rolls on, with more content in the pipeline for Star Wars Galaxies. WarCry is hosting a preview of the game's goals in the coming months, with feedback from the dev team on how the first game update went. In a nutshell: not as well as they'd wanted. There was apparently a lot of miscommunication between the players and designers, that resulted in the expectation that Game Update 1's highlighted classes (the Spy and Smuggler) would get complete overhauls. That's actually very much not the point of the updates, which are only meant to polish out the world's rough parts.

The piece goes on to detail some elements we can expect to see in Game Update 2, which should be pushed live in the next week or so. That patch will offer general polishing to the Entertainer and Medic classes, along with a new raft of bug fixes. Chapter 9, the next proper content drop anticipated before the end of the month, also gets some lip service.

The official SWG site has a few tidbits on upcoming content as well. A dev diary talks about the thinking behind the newly improved buff interface, and an article called Domain of Evil offers background on the ominous Exar Kun - a baddie incoming in a Chapter 9 heroic instance.