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Since the copyright to produce a game has been passed on to WOTC, and WOTC is changing a large number of things, is WEG still valid?

Ender wrote:Since the copyright to produce a game has been passed on to WOTC, and WOTC is changing a large number of things, is WEG still valid?

See my most recent post in the Ep3ICS thread. Even if it's not considered valid, the 12.8km SSD length in BTM shows that there are obviously people within Lucasfilm who have some kind of personal or political interest in protecting their legacy.

A lot of things are hurt by WEG's model for space combat and ships and scale and such.

For example, we have really awkward positions like 1.2 km cruisers holding up and even getting some good shots in against Executor-class ships, and Home One supposed to be the same as the anonymous pearly wingless cruisers from ROTJ (MC-80s, presumably).

I like a lot of Saxton's fixes for all of that, and I'm interested in his fleshing out of the Star Wars Universe, bringing up information about the Republic's Unification Wars and such in interviews.

WEG would probably be overridden by WotC in the event of a conflict between the two, but any uncontradicted WEG info should still be valid (you just gotta, y'know, find some WEG info that isn't contradicted...).

I generally consider most of the stats a basis for calcs and whatnot if you do not have other data, but otherwise (see above examples) I consider them pretty unreliable). These are the guys who think that infamous 8 km image is the Executor, and the the ISD is Imperial and has 60 apparently invisible (I've never found them) TL batteries and only 1 wing of fighters.

The exposition in their Sourcebooks can be quite insightful and useful, however.

WEG is as reliable as it ever was, even though it lost the license (although it's pretty clearly not particularly accurate).

None of the other books and franchises lost their status as being "official" or "quasi-canon" after they lost their licenses to continue.

Different periods are covered by the different games:

Tales of the Jedi: Exclusively WEG. The WOTC RPG hasn't even TOUCHED the ToTJ era.
Prequel Trilogy: Exclusively WOTC. The license was revoked from WEG before they had their EP1 sourcebook written.
Original Trilogy: Both. Obviously, both the WOTC and WEG games have lots of data that covers the time period between the Empire's rise and fall. In this matter, WOTC data generally is superior, as it's newer (however, the WOTC "Starships of the Galaxy" book reprints the WEG-originated "five mile fallacy" in the Executor's stat block, even though they use the later 12.8 km length in the flavor text); however, WEG's treatment of force powers remains in my mind the definitive RPG method of dealing with such. WEG force users are far less overpowered than their WOTC counterparts, as there are decided disadvantages to taking power in the Force (namely, each Force attribute you take removes a die from your other six).
New Republic era: Exclusively WEG. The WOTC RPG completely skips over the twenty years between Return of the Jedi and Vector Prime, giving it only the most cursory notice in flavor text where it's absolutely unavoidable (such as dealing with the marriage of Luke and Mara Jade, which occurs shortly after The Hand of Thrawn).
New Jedi Order era: Exclusively WOTC. Once again, the license was revoked from WEG before they made any rule books regarding NJO.

Is West End Games still around actively? I know that they still have a somewhat current website, but I remember hearing something about bankruptcy or such...