Hello Awakening,

We wanted to share a quick update on where things stand with our donations and a new improvement to our system.

Current Donation Progress

Thanks to your generosity, we’ve now reached $911 of our $340 stretch goal (268%)! Every bit helps keep Awakening running - covering server hosting, maintenance, and all the infrastructure that keeps the galaxy alive. Huge thanks to everyone who’s chipped in so far.

New: Recurring Monthly Donations

We’ve also added a recurring donation option for those who’d like to support Awakening on an ongoing basis. This makes it easy to automatically contribute each month, helping us maintain more stable and predictable funding for the future.

You can choose any amount for your monthly donation, though we do have some easy select options ($10, $25 & $50) as well.

Recurring donors receive the same recognition and title options as one-time contributors.

You can modify or cancel at any time through PayPal.

If you prefer one-time donations, that’s still completely fine - this just adds another convenient option for those who want to "set and forget."

How to Donate

Head over to our Donation page, then click the "Donate" button.

We truly appreciate everyone’s continued support. Every donation, big or small, helps keep Awakening’s community-driven galaxy alive and thriving.

May the Force be with you,
- The Awakening Team

Hello everyone,

We’re thrilled to share some incredible news - thanks to your overwhelming generosity, we’ve not only reached but surpassed our October donation goal!

Together, the community has raised $660 USD so far, out of our $340 stretch goal (194%), with 23 total donations contributing to this amazing milestone. Your support ensures that SWG Awakening’s future is secure for the months ahead and allows us to move forward confidently with our planned server migration - bringing improved hardware, performance, and stability to our galaxy.

A special thank-you goes out to our two largest donors, each contributing $100 USD, and an equally heartfelt thank-you to everyone who donated any amount - from $5 to $50 and beyond. Every dollar has truly made a difference in reaching this goal and ensuring we remain funded.

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Community Rewards Activated

As promised, reaching our October goal has unlocked a 3x XP modifier for the entire server, active for the rest of the month. This is our way of saying thank you to everyone for helping to keep the galaxy alive - now get out there and make the most of it! We will also be turning on a 10% increase in the yellow modifier drop chance on looted items for the rest of October, this will be active from next Monday's scheduled server restart.

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Looking Ahead

Any donations made in excess of this month’s goal will roll over toward November’s target - and each month thereafter, if there’s enough in surplus - helping us get a head start on keeping Awakening online and fully community-funded for the long term. So, if you haven’t had a chance to donate yet but were thinking about it, now is as good a time as any to contribute to the future of Awakening.

We’re also exploring options to introduce a recurring donation system in the coming months. This would allow supporters to set up automatic monthly contributions, making it easier to help sustain Awakening without needing to donate manually each time. Once we’ve finalized the details, we’ll share an update on how it will work and what options will be available.

In addition, Koorlbardi is preparing a balance sheet-style breakdown of Awakening’s hosting and operational costs. This will provide everyone with a clear view of where donations go, what our monthly expenses look like, and how funds are allocated - ensuring full transparency as we transition into being a completely community-funded project. We are still deciding exactly what format this will take and the frequency with which we will be publishing this.

Our goal is to make supporting Awakening as simple and transparent as possible - ensuring that 100% of all donations continue to go directly toward hosting, maintenance, and keeping the galaxy thriving.

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From the entire Awakening Team - thank you for standing with us, for supporting this incredible, long-lived project, and for keeping our galaxy alive! Awakening has always been built by its players, and once again, you’ve proven the strength and dedication of this amazing community.

Together, we’re not just keeping the galaxy alive - we’re making it stronger than ever.

May the Force be with you,
- The Awakening Team

Hello everyone,

This is an important announcement, so I kindly request some of your time to read through it, as it directly impacts you and our community as a whole. For over a decade, SWG Awakening has thrived thanks to the passion and dedication of our amazing community - players, staff, and supporters who’ve helped keep this galaxy far, far away alive and growing.

Now, we’re entering a new chapter - and we need your help to keep the adventure going.

What’s Changing?

Over the last few years, the majority of our hosting and operational costs have often been personally covered by Dirge, ensuring Awakening stayed online even when donations fell short.

Starting next month, Dirge will be stepping back from financially supporting the project in full - meaning Awakening will now rely entirely on community funding to stay online. The staff team will continue to contribute where possible, but we unfortunately don’t have the means to cover the full cost as Dirge has so generously done for so long.

To make this transition successful, we’re asking for your help to meet an ambitious initial goal of $340 USD this month.
This will cover:

• Our server migration (pending donation targets being met), which will bring better hardware and performance
• Next month’s hosting costs, ensuring a smooth transition

After that, our monthly goal will likely drop to around $200-$220 USD/month again, which will go directly toward hosting and essential services.
We will aim to provide a further breakdown of Awakening’s ongoing expenses once we have finalised our server migration.
We will also make another announcement regarding what our server migration has achieved relating to reasoning, hardware, cost and expected benefit.

100% Community Funded

Every dollar donated goes directly toward keeping Awakening online - hosting, maintenance, and infrastructure only.
No one on the team receives any form of payment, and any extra funds above our donation goal automatically roll over into the next month’s goal.

We’ve always believed Awakening belongs to the community, and now, together, we can make that a reality.

As a thank you to our generous supporters, donors receive a special cosmetic title/rank on the forums and in Discord (see the donation page for full details) - a small way for us to show appreciation for helping keep the galaxy alive!

Plus, when we hit our monthly donation goal, the whole community benefits from a server-wide XP boost - so everyone wins when the goal is met!
In October, hitting the goal will trigger an extraordinary reward - the server’s XP rate will jump to 3x XP for everyone (currently 2x)!

How You Can Help

If you’d like to support Awakening, you can donate securely via PayPal here:
https://swgawakening.com/donate
Note: You do not need a PayPal account to donate - just select “Donate with Card” once on PayPal’s donation screen.

Donation Tracking Update:
Our donation tracking system is now fixed!
The progress bar on the forum and launcher will be manually updated every 24-48 hours again, so don’t worry if your contribution doesn’t appear immediately - it’s still counted and appreciated.

Even a few dollars helps more than you might think. Regular monthly contributions - no matter the amount - will be the force that keeps our galaxy alive and thriving.

A Galaxy Built by Its Players

From day one, Awakening has been powered by its players. You’ve kept this incredible community alive through your creativity, your friendships, and your love for SWG.

Now, we once again have a chance to keep it thriving together - stronger than ever - as a fully community-supported project.

Thank you for being part of this journey - and for helping us ensure the galaxy remains open to explorers, traders, crafters, and rebels alike for many years to come.

Together, we can keep Awakening alive.

— The Awakening Team

Hello Awakening,

It slipped my mind to write a post here to update you all on the server issues many players have been facing over the last few days. Sorry about that. These issues are hopefully resolved now. Please see a copy of the updates I posted to Discord below:

Original:

Hello all, we are aware that the server has been suffering from some instability in the form of increased latency and packet loss over the last few days.

I have done a reboot of the Core3 (SWG) server which unfortunately has not alleviated our issues. I have contacted Dirge to get him to coordinate a full reboot of our host machine and to investigate the issue with our hosting provider, OVH, if necessary.

Please bear with me, and know that I am aware of the issue and working to get it resolved for you. As always, thanks for your patience and understanding.

Link to Discord Message

Latest Update:

Hiya everyone, Dirge and I have completed a full reboot of our host machine to give the hardware a well-deserved refresh after an impressive uptime run on our main server. We’re hopeful this will help resolve the performance issues many players have been experiencing recently.

As of this moment all systems should be back online. If you notice any packet loss or increased latency/ping, please report it via #create-a-ticket - don’t assume someone else has already done so.

We really appreciate your patience while we worked through this. Hopefully this marks the end of the recent bumps, but rest assured we’ll continue to investigate and work with our hosting provider if further issues arise.

P.S. the automated server restart will still occur at the regularly scheduled time on Monday.

Link to Discord Message

Hello Awakening,

I wanted to give you a quick update on some recent work I’ve been completing behind the scenes.

First, our web server has been upgraded to a newer OS. This resolves some issues that had started appearing on the older system. It will improve system security, and should improve overall stability too. I’ve also refined the Live server’s database backup and remote archive scripts. These are now more resource-friendly, putting less strain on the server's resources, including disk and network I/O. This should help reduce the occasional lockups we’ve seen recently, which are likely due to our databases steadily growing larger due to the 10+ years of data within them, which has resulted in increasing server load when the backups are created and archives dispatched.

The bigger change is new automation that I’ll be trialling with next week’s scheduled restarts. All going to plan, the Test Server will now automatically refresh with the latest Live Server database archive every Monday at 2 AM US Eastern Time.

Here’s how it works:

• At 2 AM on Monday, the latest archive will download (rate-limited for stability). During my testing this usually took about an hour or slightly more.
• Once the download completes, the Awakening Core3 Test Server will go offline for ~20-30 minutes while the archive is extracted and the databases are updated.
  • The extended downtime is due to host machine limitations: its storage is only provisioned to hold one full database and one compressed archive at a time.

What this means for you:

• You’ll always have an up-to-date Test Server environment for experimenting before making changes or commiting to using a rare item/resource on the Live Server.
• Event Coordinators can design and plan events using current data without waiting on manual updates.
• Support staff can more easily reproduce and resolve technical issues related to community support tickets.
• Developers gain a reliable space to test changes with data that closely matches Live.

Overall, this should make both player experience and staff workflows smoother. Thanks for bearing with the short Test Server downtime while the process runs. This change should pay off in better reliability and more opportunities for everyone. If you've read this far, thanks for your time. I'll be moving onto getting a WIP launcher update finished next which should resolve some issues which players have reported. After that, hopefully I'll have time to continue getting a couple more WIP bosses finished so you all have some new foes to hunt for and loot to collect.