The Battle of Restuss Begins in Star Wars Galaxies

After a couple of summer events announced last week for Blizzard's World of Warcraft and NCsoft's Guild Wars, it's now Sony Online Entertainment's turn to reveal "The Battle of Restuss" - an epic, server-wide event that will advance the Galactic Civil War and allow players to work together to permanently alter the Star Wars Galaxies universe. Not sure how many of you are still playing SWG after the whole NGE ("New Game Experience") mess-up, but anyway, here's what the event is all about.

Beginning this week, guards will be stationed in major cities throughout Star Wars Galaxies to give players more information on the brewing conflict. Guards will be found in Theed, Mos Eisley, Bestine and Coronet, and will direct players to Restuss, a small city on the planet Rori. There, players who have dedicated their allegiance to the Rebels or the Empire will work together with their fellow faction members to build up their base and arms in preparation for the upcoming conflict.

Players of all levels in Star Wars Galaxies can participate in building up the factions' forces, along with discovering the backstory of this escalating conflict, by accepting gathering, mining and assassination quests in-game. Once tensions reach a breaking point, the final battle will commence, and Restuss will never be the same.

Players can get the latest news and information on how preparations are progressing on their server on the Star Wars Galaxies community page. The Battle of Restuss will happen only one time in the Star Wars saga, and players must be present to participate.

Ironically, SOE's announcement comes just a couple of days after this update was posted with regards to the [highly unofficial] Star Wars Galaxies emulator Test Server, currently undergoing alpha testing. "The SWGEMU will allow private, emulated game servers to be run by anyone with the hardware and bandwidth to support the load, possibly allowing customized environments, and game mechanics, as well as a 'dungeon master' control of the server, possibly even over a LAN" - and they even have a trailer to prove it (check the links from the end of the post). I give them another couple of days, until they receive a cease-and-desist order from SOE...

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)