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.

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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.

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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)!

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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.

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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.

Hello all, we have become aware that another Star Wars Galaxies private server has allegedly been the victim of a malicious data breach. We have not been directly impacted by this, however, we are issuing this advisory out of an abundance of caution and commitment to the safety of our community.

Recommended Actions:

If you have accounts on any other SWG private servers, we strongly recommend taking the following steps immediately:
Change your SWG Awakening account password

• Login to your account via our website.
• Navigate to your account settings and select the option to change your password.
• Create a new, strong password that you have not used elsewhere.

Do not reuse passwords across services

• Avoid using the same password on multiple websites or services, especially if any of those may have been compromised.
• Reusing passwords significantly increases your risk if any single account is breached.

We take the security of your data very seriously at SWG Awakening. In response to this incident, we will be conducting a thorough internal review of our systems and security protocols to ensure that all necessary measures are in place and your information continues to remain safe into the future.

Thank you for your vigilance and continued support.

– The SWG Awakening Team

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Security Audit Update - 11 June 2025:

System Maintenance and Security Review

Hello all,

I have completed a comprehensive review of our systems and security protocols. I am pleased to report that no critical vulnerabilities were identified in any of our systems or existing security measures.

As part of this review, I have also taken the opportunity to apply updates to several core systems, ensuring that we are operating with the latest available security patches. Additionally, I have identified several areas where our security protocols can be enhanced to further reduce the risk of unauthorized access and potential data breaches.

Many of these improvements have already been implemented, with a few remaining changes scheduled for deployment in the coming days. Once completed, these enhancements will further align our security practices with our commitment to keep your data safe and secure. As always, we thank you for spending your time with us here on Awakening!

Woohoo May 4^th is here!

We will be conducting a server restart to enable the Awakening event system from an ad hoc server restart on Friday the 2^nd of May through until the scheduled server restart on Monday 12^th of May. We will be giving players a chance to get two random event paintings, as this is the 10^th Star Wars Day we have experienced since Awakening's inception, we are bringing back all of the prior series of May 4th paintings, to give our player a chance to finish off any sets they may be missing some pieces from. These will be able to be collected once per account (put in the inventory of the first character to login after restart). The commemorative badge for May 4^th 2025 will be awarded to each character that is logged in during the event. Like usual there will also be boosted XP during the event, this will be equal to three (3) times the base server XP rate. Keeping in mind that the server is currently on two and a half (2.5) times the base XP rate.

The Event team is planning on holding:

• A Vehicle Race for a prize of a Rare Vehicle See link: Vehicle Race Details - Congratulations to Krood our Race Winner.

• A Scavenger Hunt for Minor Tokens and a Named Crystal - is live! See: Scavenger Hunt Details - Congratulations to Gref our Scavenger Hunt Winner

• A Major Token Lottery - Located at Coronet, Corellia outside the Starport at (/waypoint -152 -4725) - Congratulations to Survo our Lottery Winner.

More details will be provided by the event team as they are finalised.

There may be additional spontaneous/semi-spontaneous events being held throughout the week. The occurrence of these is solely based on the availability of our volunteer Event Coordination team members.



To summarise everything that’s guaranteed to be happening during the week:

• Two random May 4th event paintings per account, from any existing May 4th painting series (put in the inventory of the first character to login)

• A May 4^th 2025 event badge per character logged in

• Increased XP rate (3x the base rate)

All of these will be available from Friday the 2^nd of May’s ad hoc reset, to the scheduled server restart on Monday 12^th of May.

Thank you all for playing SWG with us on Awakening. We hope you enjoy!

The staff team wishes you a happy Star Wars Day, May the 4^th be with you all!