Good Morning HWS Community @everyone
Today is the big day!
While I prepare the full wipe, I want to give you a dedicated special teaser during the wait!
After more than 7 years, Ju and I sit together and came up with a brand new Elemental Galactic Services HQ (EGS HQ) POI for this Anniversary Release!
New EGS HQ POI
And as you know, building a new EGS HQ is a hardcore challenge! This POI is one of the most visited and played POI in whole Empyrion I could say. Thousands of players have visited it in the last 7 years.
The new EGS HQ is built with long term goals in mind. It is not only bigger but a living progress to grow along the way. During the season it will adapt to your progress and requests as you can read below.
The Changes in the room
Making it bigger has of course two main downsides I have to mention right away. Performance and travel time.
Regarding Performance we tried to still optimize it as good as possible but in the end it is something we have to iterate over step by step with the Community. The thing is, that the EGS HQ is built out of 3 POIs. That way you will see elegant solutions of Stargate Portals standing almost in a circle. It also gave us this perfect 6-wing star, with a highly organic shape of the main tower. Perfectly aligned, it renders an illusion that this is one single blueprint.
If the compromise is that you have to wait a bit longer when flying in render range, then we hope it is acceptable for now. On the other hand I try to use this as benchmark for Eleon to maybe identify performance bottlenecks, so they can work on performance which would be a win for everyone.
The second issue regarding travel time is solved with new “HWS Tele Ports”. Inspired by No Mans Sky, you just walk inside the blue hexagons and get teleported to pre-defined destinations. In this case from the outer wings to the main tower and vice versa. Additionally, for horizontal and vertical teleportation within the main tower, you have the “EGS HQ Beamer”, that lets you choose your destination to teleport to via Dialogue.
This will massively reduce travel time within the EGS HQ to reach all important locations (it is really huge, in case I didn’t mention it yet ^^).
For the remaining travel time I have to admit to myself that I enjoyed spending time just wandering around. Even in its current birth state it has already a couple of nice locations and easter eggs for you to explore! But as I said, I have so much more envisioned for it to become much more alive and a place you can spend days just there.
Stargate Missions
The new EGS HQ is the start of a new era of Stargate Missions. For one, all (30+) Stargate Missions are now playable on HWS+ and HWS RE. Yes, there might be some legacy ones and yes, I have to fix some along the way, but since the majority by now did not play during the golden age of HWS back then, many of the Stargate Missions will be new for you anyways. The veterans can maybe help you out with some of them 
The main goal here was that the main tower holds all Stargates nicely in an easily accessible way, aligned nicely in a circle, spread through 2 floors.
Also, as many of you know, Stargate Missions are not easy to create and a lot of time goes into them. Therefore I decided, as discussed many times, I want to see the support of our HWS Patrons as a little form of “DLCs”. Each season, sometimes even during a season (basically already did this with HWS Connect updates), I want to provide new content, in this case Stargate Missions. As a motivation for the support, Elite+ Patrons now have a dedicated room where only them can enter new Stargate Missions, kinda like Early Access. In the next season, if approved, some of those then get rotated to the public. Again, my main motive is: because of our awesome HWS Patrons, everyone Benefits!
The Zones
On the outer ring you have 6 Zones. The four zones you all know: EGS, OCD, Market, Bank and 2 new ones: Quest and Events. The Quest Zone is a dedicated place for Quests or Mission Boards you can run on regular basis. The Events Zone is a consolidation in one place of our Events and place to grow in that section.
Along the way, all of those Zones will become much more populated with lots of NPCs you can do little side quests and get useful information.
The Main Tower
In the main hall you have all the Stargate Missions and little adventures to explore - for example Ju’s first time ever digital exhibition!
On the first floor you have the Support Floor, where you can get your benefits as Patron but also the ability to make Forum / Discord tickets from there or get overall more information about everything around supporting us and supporting you.
On the second floor you have the EGS Floor. EGS become an important role from now on, where you start with 12001 Reputation at the start and must work your career leader up through Quests. There is no shortcut anymore to get instantly Honored with EGS and doing the quests can also lead to Reputation loss if you fail. If you succeed though, and if you are one of the three first, you can get a flex spot in the floor above, the Prestige Floor.
You can only enter this Floor with an EGS Reputation of 25000+. New dedicated “Quantum Forcefield Doors” have been implemented that solve a long issue I had: how to give dedicated players access to a room. Before I had to fiddle with Signals and closing Doors, that always could get circumvented. Now, each player trying to walk through the door is checked and filtered! (this is also used for the Patreon Mission room).
The Prestige Floor is where you as Honored and Elite of EGS can run special and dedicated Quests for EGS and have influence on a lot of things of EGS (including EGS Features such as EGS Recycle. Note: the EGS and Prestige floor are still in active development)
Last but not least the CSW+ Floor. As teasered often in the past, CSW+ will be the bridge between the HWS+ and the HWS RE servers. Going up there, you can use dedicated CSW commands to warp you (player-only, no structures) to the other server, with a white list of items I will provide in a dedicated forum guide.
There is much more to explore in the new EGS HQ and up to you to do in the new season. Please be aware that it is not fully finished yet. It took Ju more than 3 months to build, so I have to catch up, filling it fully with life and adjust to your needs. Overall I’m super excited to see a new EGS HQ and how you will explore it. In comparison to the old EGS HQ, it is built for years in the future and extendable.
All of that being said, the biggest question for you is, when the season actually starts now.
With all the new changes I honestly can’t give you an ETA yet. Maybe not even today. There is only so much I can prepare in advance and then have to integrate / merge stuff during a season reset.
A last round of patience please, while I reduce some days of my total life span due hardcore stress 
I keep you updated and thank you all for your support! It was a very long season this time and a pivot of many things - including my lasered eyes ^^. From now on it is rather about polishing and adding new content than big structural changes.
May we survive, build and explore another 10 years together! Thank you so much everyone!
RexXxuS