Next Hotfix: Tuesday January 10th!

The next hotfix is scheduled for Tuesday January 10th. We don't expect that date to change, but if it does, we will let you know.

Here is the current list of changes to be included in Tuesday's Update:

Quest Updates:

Rage of the Wookiees: Arena Challenge - Face Wirartu: All the issues with this quest will be resolved. For those of you who have been following this, we had a fix for the original issue with the quest back on December 20th. There was an additional change that had to be made and we've finished that up for Tuesday. After the update, the quest giver NPC should be replaced to his original location and you'll be able to take on the arena challenge and finally face Wirartu!

Also note that if you have already attempted this challenge before:

• If you have the quest in your journal, but never tried to complete the quest, you should be able to play through the quest normally.

• If you were part of the way through the quest and it didn't work, go see the Arena Guard.

He will let you into the arena, but the quest will not work correctly. Talk to the arena guard that is inside the arena and ask him to let you out. This will clear your quest and you can now talk to Chief Kerritamba and receive the quest again. When you do the challenge this time, everything should work correctly.

Legacy Quests: Repo Man: When you go through the Repo Man quest now, Kleetuz will no longer mysteriously vanish (de-spawn) and he will give you the correct waypoint when you defeat Pah and his crazy family.

Jabba's Theme Park: Valarian's Brute: Tyrok will no longer be stuck in a wall, so you will be able to attack him and complete the quest.

Jabba's Theme Park: Jabba the Hutt: Delrice Capreece can now be attacked, so you will be able to attack her and complete the quest.

Jabba's Theme Park: Valarian's Slicer: Iris Tananda Sinclair will no longer be stuck in a wall, so you will be able to attack her and complete the quest.

Space - Multiplayer Ships: Some players had an issue that was preventing them from being able to see out of the windows in their multi-player ships (before you could see only black). We've been in touch with some Besalisk repairmen who have fixed the windows on those ships.

Inert Gas - Inert Gas will be spawning again after Tuesday's update! Thanks for your patience while we monitored the situation. This update is also currently on Test Center and will be there through the weekend.

Old Republic Lightsaber Schematics: Also in Tuesday's update is a fix for both the 1-Handed and 2-Handed lightsaber schematics. If you have the schematic in your datapad, you will be able to use it and all of the Old Republic Lightsaber Schematic loot drops will work properly from now on.

Publish 27 : January 24th

The next big publish is scheduled for January 24th. Again, we don't expect that date to change, but if it does, we will let you know.

We posted the highlights of Publish 27 before the holidays:

Suleman posted a Publish 27 Preview Thread. You can find that here.

EJDev gave us a look at the exciting new changes to the Jedi Profession here in this thread.

Helios_SOE posted a look ahead at the heavy Weapons Revamp and the new Stealth enhancements. You can find that information here:

• Heavy Weapons Revamp

• Stealth Enhancements & New Gadgets

Some of the other items that will also be in this publish include an easier way for players to enter and exit multi-player ground vehicles and even more fixes if we can squeeze them in. As details develop we will bring you the news in later updates. You can find a few more bits and pieces in the December 20th Community Update .

One thing we also want to talk about is Commandos and Heavy Weapons. Commandos want Heavy Weapons to be their domain and everyone is looking to see more profession specialization, so everyone wants to know why Heavy Weapons will be available to everyone.

The Heavy Weapons revamp is adding a very neat new feature the game: "Location Targeting". Location Targeting is a new type of targeting method that casts a targeting reticle on the ground. You can aim the targeting crosshairs and target an area to attack. This new targeting method is a big conceptual shift in the way combat works in SWG.

This is a pretty dramatic new type of system to be adding to the game and a lot of work went into including this feature as part of the Heavy Weapons revamp. We didn't want to add a big new feature like this and limit it to only a small part of the community.

In the future, we will certainly be giving Commandos some Heavy Weapon Perks and some Heavy Weapons of their own, but for this first step of development, we wanted everyone to be able to enjoy this fun change to the game.

Outstanding Issues

Last for today's update is a look at some of the bigger issues that are still in progress:

"East Coast Lag": We know that many of you are still having some performance issues with the game. We have been heavily investigating this from all angles and are continuing to do so. Some of you have even sent us in some helpful information, but nothing that was able to definitively help us solve the problem. We wanted to let you know that we are doing everything we can.

Harvester Resources: Work continues on solving the issue with Harvester resources turning up missing. We have been working on reproducing the issue so we can fix it and Community Member Red Dwarf was able to provide some helpful information. Many thanks to RD and we are hopeful we will have a fix for this as soon as possible.

Entertainer and Trader Revamps: Many of you are eager to know more about these profession revamps that are coming up in the near future. We don't have any information to share with you just yet, but we will be working to get you this information in the next few weeks.

Specific fixes and feature requests: We've tried to cover a lot of ground in this update but SWG is a big game and there are many smaller issues, concerns and requests coming from the community. We'll answer your questions, continue these updates and work on getting you all the info we can.

Heading into 2006, we'll be working at keep community news and communication to the high level it was at the end of December and continue to get you as many updates as possible.

Thanks!