Why I miss Star Wars Galaxies
Lately I have been a wee bit torn up about the absence of an immersive, engaging MMORPG. Star Wars Galaxies 2003 – 2005 was the best thing going in that game space, and I think SWG won the contest with me due to
1) Massive customization
I built custom furniture, cities, food items, land speeders, and any other conceivable element. I could name my items and then sell them. In addition, major decorative potential in custom homes was fed through custom crafting.
I could visit an image designer at any time to manipulate my appearance, and buy emotes and other interesting services from those image designers.
2) Amazing Economy
Resource extractors, great market potential, loot drops, and player driven economic forces really made the economy, crafting, and resource sales a crucial aspect of game play. My resource harvesting and component building was a fun part of the game for me.
4) In-World Everything
Your cities, housing, bases, and resource extractors were all in the PvE world. You played PvP, built cities, lived, and quested all within the same gamespace. No servers segregating housing from the game world. I know there are technical issue to this, but you must allow the players to modify the game space — yes even the Shire — if you are to have loyalty over multiple years. I understand the logic behind the separation both in terms of technology and potential spoiling of the game landscape. However, these re-mediated titles don’t belong exclusively to the author. MMORPGs bring the player to the story. If we want a one sided story, we can play “watch-the-DVD” version of the story. We have to rise beyond this antiquated, defunct Everquest co-op model of game play.
3) The Star Wars milieu
It lost its place in the hearts of its players and the market place due to the incredible arrogance I personally experienced with SOE’s senior management and President. In addition, operational practices and poor customer service drove a spike through its heart. It is a shell of what it was based upon the NGE and the aforementioned poor treatment of veteran players.
Playing City of Heroes, DAOC, Lord of the Rings On-Line, EVE, Lineage II, and several other games since I left SWG has left me worn out. I am searching for the community and vast game space that I loved in SWG — before the dark times. I think LOTRO is moving in the right direction at a good pace, but I am still not hooked into that world the way I was to a science fiction backdrop.
I really look for to Age of Conan and Stargate Worlds. Both have a story backdrop with which I can relate and have an immersive interest. Hopefully, some of these titles can bring back that lovin’ feeling!
Tags: MMORPG, Stargate Worlds, SWG
Give SWG another go. I am a post NGE player and the things I read about the CU and NGE nearly put me off trying the game. However I did and was surprised.
There are old veterans returning in a slow but steady dribble and those vets that are around tell me that the game now is tons better than just post NGE.
The Dev Team seem to be taking some notice of what players want and appear to have learned some hard lessons about how to run a MMORPG. Some of the stuff that was removed is creeping back in and there are new things being added as time goes by.
Some of the servers are pretty much dead but there are servers with healthy populations and good communities of players. I am on Europe-Chimera and we have a thriving guild and have cross guild events with other thriving guilds. You have to do a little research into which are the best servers, but the communities are there.
SEO have been giving away free month trials for ages now, it doesn’t cost anything (other than your time) to dip your toe back in the waters to see if it is any good. Find a server, find a guild that suits your style and give it a go. PvP, RP, Crafters, there are specialist guilds for most and mixed guilds for those wanting to experiment.
It is a different game to pre NGE but if you bear that in mind and don’t expect a return to what you once knew, you might find you like it. All the things you list as things you miss are still in the game and SOE seem to have woken up to players needs – they even seem to have tackled the credit farmers well.
Give it a go, what have you got to lose?
Nothing I would love better, but as long as Sony employs its present executive management in that organization, I can never consider a return. I encourage people to stay away from any SOE title.
I can understand that.
Something to bear in mind though, is that everybody makes mistakes; admittedly this was a monumental mistake that effected thousands of people, but they are making improvements. Voting with your subscription fee (or the lack of it) is certainly the most effective way of hitting them where it hurts.
But at what point does the punishment end and the process of forgiveness begin? The current dev team are putting in a lot of effort into improving the game and subscriber numbers are slowly creeping up. Most of the senior team from SWG are now gone and there are some new faces and long-standing staff members promoted to senior roles.
Also, if the same people who made the appalling decisions in the first place are those responsible for putting things right again, does this not redeem them in some way? Is not a subscription fee a way of encouraging and rewarding those improvements?
I don’t know, I wasn’t around for the “bad times” so I can’t really imagine the feeling of betrayal and all that, and the last thing I want to do is sound like I am advocating what has happened or the decisions that were made. Everyone effected by the NGE and CU have things to work through, and the odds are that most won’t come back. But you are right in that there is nothing else like it, this is why I decided to give SWG a try despite all the bad press I read.
I hope things do change to a point that you do consider a return. Until then, I hope you do find something to fill that SWG shaped void.
I agree with the author and he makes some very very good points, and they are true. The social interaction was huge infact I have never had the same social interaction since Ultima Online and SWG. I knew people in World of Warcraft but the bond wasn’t there. I lost so much sleep and time playing SWG just because I didn’t want to leave my friends.
YES friends I knew these people so well its like they where my family. We hung out in catinas, crafted and traded resources, we built citys togeather! SWG attracted female players by the masses. If you saw a female in a cantina there was a 90% chance it really was one being a social butterfly chatting with her dancer friends.
When I became a Jedi I really felt like one in the game and it not being a class. I had to hide out in forests and far out of the way places training my ass off so one day I could join the battle. That was the only way to stay of the BH terminals was to be alone and alone I felt but I felt like a Jedi in the game and not a class who carrys a glowy stick. People who showed of their Jedi payed for it dearly and thus kept the jedi underground like they should be.
I loved being a doc and crafting my own buffs I took pride in my crafted buffs. Then role playing a doctor in a major starport and readying people for combat and healing them. People would look for me because I gave killer buffs for a killer price. Some docs would have 5 or so people inline and id have 15 to 20. I had a spiffy little macro that would prepair my needles and prep the patient and people would get a kick out of it and end up roleplaying back with me and they never rped a day in their life.
Just a few things I think of when I read the above.
Oh I so agree… I’m currently in LOTRO too, it’s a good game, but not what Star Wars Galaxies brought me. The game lacks the “sandbox feeling” that SWG had, wich is sad and sometimes frustrating too becouse of the lack of end-game content.
I’m looking forward to Age of Conan aswell, though I’ve heard reports from beta players stating that there are so many bugs that it’s hardly playable… But I guess that’s a good thing in a way, becouse it reminds me how SWG was back in the early days
Anyway, Bioware is (hopefully) doing a Star Wars MMO as we speak. I can’t possibly imagine that it would end up bad.
I started the game when there were no speeders, you had to run everywhere!! I used to hang with my FRIENDS, do guild runs and attacks, build up our bases!! Camp lord nyax or that thingy in the geo caves!! I would pay $50 bucks a month to get that game back. Please dont ask me to give a game a CHANCE again, I spent countless hours dancing in a cantena because my holo told me to be a master dancer, master doctor and another 17 profession s till i unlocked jedi, years of work gone in one sec with the stupid NGE.
I hated video games till 4th grade. My brother played SWG. I had NOTHING in me that wanted to try that ” gay SW game “. I went to gamestop with my dad to try and buy counterstrke. They were out of it. On the shelf sat SWG, 3 months into the game. My dad asked me to try it out. I bought it. Downloaded it. Played for 2 weeks. My brother invited me to his guild. I didn’t enjoy it that much, but it was fun. The second week we had a guild meeting, and the corvette mission was coming out. Don’t ask why but I felt like it would be awesome to level up and master a profession. I mastered TKM, and was having more fun then I’d ever have in real life. My swg life meant more then ANYTHING. I loved the game so much. It didnt matter what the HELL happened to me in real life, when I was logged on, I was home. End of story. It might be ridiculous to say, but I don’t think I ever enjoyed anything more then swg. It was my favorite thing to happen. I developed a love for the game. Like a second home, the community, the style of play, just walking around. I loved it. A little while in….CU. I refused to play. I ended up giving it 2 months of play. I still had some kind of drive to play. The nge…. i played for about 4 months. God knows why…I don’t think I will ever be able to not forget about the game, or want to play again. If what you guys say is true, I might be coming back home to Bria. I know i might sound like a faggot…but that’s the story of my life from 4th grade summer up until my freshman year of highschool.
-jared
I’ve been thinking of getting back into Galaxies. Why? I miss it. It’s just that simple. I know that things have changed, I’m also one of those that played when you had to run everywhere. I remember the pure joy I felt when speeders were introduced and the joyrides out to the edges of the map “just to see what was there!” I remember when my friends and I built our first city west of Moenia along the shore of this lake, BEFORE cities were available. We just put up our houses all together, with our factories and smaller houses as warehouses on the outskirts. We had to worry about high end mobs spawning within range, and i can’t tell you how many times someone’s mission was too close to my house and I had to call in someone to help me kill it so I could go inside. I remember my friends that didn’t play just didn’t understand when I was saying all the time, “I have to check my harvester!” I remember slogging away at professions that I had absolutely NO interesting in being so I could unlock Jedi on my account. And then that fateful day when the nerf happened. I didn’t just stop paying and playing. I deleted my character ,sent e-mails and made phone calls just so I was sure that they KNEW how pissed I was. It’s been years now, I’m playing EVE online, WoW before that, and I find that I miss Galaxies. I know it’ll be different, but I miss the atmosphere, and that intangible something that galaxies had that was more than just the classes that were changed, that sandbox that you were rewarded just for jumping into. I don’t know how to put it… but I think I’m going to give it another try. I only happened on this site looking for info on what’s become of the game and when I read the posts I just felt that i had to share my feelings. I don’t want to sway anyone else into joining back up, hell it could suck still, but… I think I’m going back, if just to be disappointed again.
I started playing SWG a month after launch. There has never been a game like it. SWG Pre-CU was a game that I could log into the minute I got out of bed and log out as my head was hitting the keyboard from exhaustion. And many a day I had never fired a single shot from my prized DE-10 that I farmed the mats out of the Death Watch bunker for months. It was indeed like an alternate reality, one that I had dreamed of being a part of since I was 9 years old.
Then came the dark times. The Combat upgrade ripped the guts out the entire game. It turned that DE-10 into a paper weight overnight. The graphics changed, the sounds changed, the feeling of personal depth and fulfillment was ripped away.
I hate SOE, and all things Sony because of what they did. Forgiveness is not something that can come easily after an ordeal of that magnitude. I know that some of you will say “get a life” or “grow up”, but you don’t understand. Imagine losing someone who you cared so much for, then imagine that it was someone you knew and trusted that took them from you. Would you trust that person again, even if they were fully rehabilitated and were deeply sorry for what they had done?
There will never be another Star Wars Galaxies.
Star Wars Galaxies
RIP April 27, 2005
This may sound pathetic… But seriously I want to cry when I think of SWG, I miss that game dearly :/ I started playing at launch and I remember having to chance after your corpse with all your loot on it after you died. LOL couldn’t reach it cuz of the aggro-hellhold it was in, so had to callin a couple friends to help out. But in which case they all died too lol, that game was beautiful :/ and lol that running everywhere before mounts and speeders was so much fun. I remember making laps with a couple friends just to go around and explore shit to see what all was around… At times we even ran distances just to time shit to see how far from this point to this point is… the waypoint creation system man……. the magnitude of sophistication put into that game was beyond belief :/ the social experience was AMAZING, still haven’t found anything in any way nor shape nor form to replace it :/ and WoW sucks hardcore… only reason that game is successful is because of the smoothness of gameplay and the success in their player numbers came from when the majority of the SWG community flocked over to blizzard…
And seriously I can’t ever find it in my heart to EVER forgive SOE… was complete bullshit what they did. I remember trying for 4-8hours trying to load into the test center just to try out and see what all the hype SOE had made about the “newly adored NGE (New Game Enhancements)” man……After playing that… I seriously think I would have found a toddlers ABC learning game more enjoyable. They took all sophisticated thinking and logic out of the game :/ dumbbed it down.
I think the worst part of all, is that I could go on hours on end talking about how great this game was and how much I miss it… But unlesse you’ve played before that NGE bullshit, you wouldn’t understand where I’m coming from
so hard to express how i feel about it :/ it really is sad, still haven’t forgotten the game nor forgiven SOE after 5years now…. thought the resentment would have resided… but its still there :/ wish someone could relate lol
I hate NGE-SOE-game developers and refuse to play/purchase any SOE related game/merchandise even if its free and the best game ever made…
**It was just so lovely to see how dedicated they were to try and bring newcomers to an already extremely successful game, by throwing away the already loyally dedicated veterans… LOL** (no.. seriously we really did get slapped in the face; simply put)
Imagine going to really fancy high class restaurant like no other, the experience and atmosphere simply spectacular you’ve never seen such a thing and its just so GREAT and you can’t explain why… just is simply put…. AND THEN the manager comes over and throws a McDonald’s happy meal in your face and tells you that you get a free toy and to be happy with it……
Dude, you have summed up the emotional feelings I have for this game perfectly. Its amazing after 5 years we can have such an emotional response to this game, which really tells you it wasn’t just a game it was a living, vibrant world where the players contributed to creating that world. I blame greedy corporations and the public school system for dumbing down society.
I played it late in 2004 and early 2005. Before NGE it was a wonderful experience as I played it mostly as a RPG. I had a great older brother (the joke being in real life the young man was over 10 years younger then me) and just had such great fun. I loved the way we could move, dance, laugh, hug, kiss and smile. I was given lovely gifts, dresses and fine clothes. At the start I had to go every where on foot (Tattooine at night with a storm blowing around you was just magical) and remember being chatted up while waiting at a lonely shuttle port by an Imperial faction member who became a friend.
Miss the game a lot, I have tried Eve and WOW but it still has a place in my heart. Before he left my online “brother” gave me his e-mail and after all these years I can still e-mail him and chat!
SOE Makes a mistake, then they do the exact same thing over and over. They have no common sense and no love for their player base. Their endless pursuit of a game with WoW $$. They don’t understand that if you make something good and take care of your fan base (spend money on support and in game events etc) you will have just that. You can’t make money by pissing off those who give the money to you. You can never make everyone happy and you will always have haters. But if you do your best it will show.
Oh and one more thing. One more reason I will not forgive SOE is because not only did they kill SWG, they killed any chance of another sci-fi sandbox MMO. Everything coming out is pathed, small zones. the interface and commands are simple and its easy to get bored. I have great hopes for The Old Republic, but I fear that it will be so heavy on the story end, there will be no vast expanses to explore and populate. And the reason WoW is doing so well isn’t just because its smooth, it’s because its so simple a 7 year old or 80 year old can play. which is another reason why you will not see another in depth massive expanse sandbox mmo.
Well, its been years since the NGE destroyed the game. I have tried WOW, STO and numerous others but nothing comes close to pre NGE or at least Post CU. I could live with the CU. Bring it back and make money, Ill still buy 2 subscriptions a month if you run just one server pre NGE.
Primony Intrepid Server, Jedi, Master RIfleman Master Defender. BH killer.
I caught SWG right before it changed. I fell in love with it. Was a TKM and was just getting leveled up pretty well. I loved the fast fighting style and the ability to one man bosses with the buffs you could buy. Then they changed it all. I could hardly kill a bug for crying out loud…and the fast fighting style…gone. It was now Hit…wait…kick…wait…yawn…wait…sleep….
The only good thing that came out of it was after I left my neighbor got me to try WoW. And though it did not provide the feel I had with SWG it gave me a good replacement. The rich graphics and depth of the game was nice. I leave WoW now and then for a break sometimes up to a year. But I always go back. And I would go back to SWG if they ever brought it back the way it use to be only with enhanced graphics. I have NO interest in SWG as it is now as all they were attempting to do was copy WoW and they failed miserably. They should have kept what they had, it was original and it would have grown massively if they would have just listened to the members they had rather than blowing off everyones opinions and wiping the slate clean. It is true what they say…once you leave a place for a while, you can never truly go back. Some things are best laid to rest.