While writing about my past experiences with Star Wars Galaxies, I started to feel pretty nestalgiac and started looking at SWG to see of any changes. Sadly, it looks like Sony is flushing this once great game right down the toilet and not looking back. However, there is a new hope Star Wars Galaxies fans! A group of individual developers have gotten together and begun building an open source SWG emulator project! I’m still learning about this project and have much to read but it is looking promising! These guys are writing the code to emulate pre-combat upgrade Star Wars Galaxies servers. The servers will be privately owned and operated and there won’t be any monthly fee to play, however these guys have to eat and the servers need to be maintained, so donations are strongly encouraged, I know I’m going to throw into this mix with some cash. Finally a gleam of hope!
I have so many rants for this game I could, and probably will, go on all day. In the early days this game was great. It’s everything, well almost everything, you would expect from the Star Wars universe. Combat was fun and challenging. The crafting system was actually fun and rewarding, albeit a bit tedious at times for the grind factor. And the most important thing that made it feel like Star Wars? No jedi.
In the early days it felt like a mix of the Old West meets the Jetsons. That I think is why so many people love the original Star Wars movies. It wasn’t about a bunch of force weilding guys running around with light sabers. As cool as they are, they were extremely rare. The real meat and potatoes of the movies was that raggedy edge of space feel. It was the future, that or it was a long, long time ago. Whatever, the point is they were in space but everything wasn’t shiny new. The ships were old and beat up, some kept together through bubble gum and duct tape. That’s the heart of Star Wars. And when Star Wars Galaxies released the “New Game Enhancements” and made Jedi common, the game ceased to be fun.
I can remember in combat with hundreds of rebels and imperials out on the battle field killing eachother feel a real thrill seeing a Jedi come into the battle and wade through the opposing faction. They were truly powerful and really fun to watch, even if it was you they were coming after. They were also a fun target for us bounty hunters to try to gang up on and kill, but it wasn’t easy even with many of us. Now, everyone is a Jedi and they are all watered down wimps with glowing wiffle ball bats for weapons.
Before mounts or vehicles in Star Wars Galaxies, everyone had to make their way on foot, everywhere. The only shortcut to getting to a destination on planet was to take a shuttle to the nearest city to your destination and walk it from there.
After awhile, this became tedious labor but in the beginning this was all part of the adventure. I started my character, Brad Olsen, on Tatooine. For the first month or so of gameplay, it was dangerous for me to venture to far out of the city. I had basic weapons skills but nothing that could take on the Tusken Raiders outside of town, so if I ventured anywhere it was with a caravan of other players. This really added to the community feel of the game. We would venture to explore places like Jabba’s Palace or the Dune Sea with character of every class. Even after I was strong enough to venture out on my own it was still nice to come see the light of a camp fire across the canyons and join in for some rejuvenating down time.
