Star Wars Galaxies 2008 Preview

WarCry has put together a new article detailing some of the additions we can expect in SOE's Star Wars Galaxies through the rest of this year.
Chapter 9 follows later this month and is headlined by a new heroic instance and epic villain from Star Wars lore: Exar Kun. Heroic instances are top-end dungeons, and this is their first new one since Chapter 7. In tune with their desire to be more reactive to the community, Exar Kun was chosen from a list of epic villains that the development team polled the community on during the planning phase of this Chapter.

Neri believes that these dungeons provide both an epic Star Wars feel to the game, in the form of a concentrated and cinematic epic encounter, but also stay engaging through replayability. In each of these heroic instances, players earn tokens that can be cashed in for enhancements.

Collection is another important way they have recently moved to further engage their players. In each Chapter, including 9, they add to their collection system first introduced last year. They found, in a survey of the data, that a huge percentage of their players had been - whether consciously or not - vigorously collecting various items around the world. As such, they added a mechanic not unlike the Xbox 360's Achievement System whereby players gain badges and vanity rewards for passive milestones they may not even realize they're after.