Ya know, it's been a lot of years since I played SWG (Star Wars Galaxies). I was there at it's opening, obsessed during the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, tried to ride out the rough patch through the Combat Upgrade, and after failing that I returned during the last year while the New Game Experience (NGE) was busy "softening" the video game for new players.
I can't actually recall which version of SWG that I spent the most time playing. I suspect it was during the NGE era, when I was part of a massive city state. That said, just because I spent the most time in that version of the game, I can't say that's my favorite time period.
Star Wars Galaxies existed during, what I refer to as, the "Golden Years of Massive Multiplayer Games". This was the time where good storytelling and real achievements meant more than a game being easy to play. It was before video games shifted to being a source of cheap rewards and quick dopamine hits. Sadly a lot of games from that era didn't make it due to the spoiling of the casual gamer.
The time around 2005 was a rough patch for these Golden Year MMO's. Most new video games had taken the challenge out of gaming and replaced it with a lot of handholding. XP was easier to get, items were a lot more powerful, and enemies were "nerfed" to the point where you could easily defeat 2 or 3 at a time. There was no need to strategize your combat, plan out your character, or grind up your experience. Everything was handed to you on a silver platter. Any game that didn't bow to that softening wouldn't see this new generation of "spoiled" players.
A few MMO's that existed before this softening period, which were highly exceptional experiences, included;
- Classic World of Warcraft (before Cataclysm)
- Star Wars Galaxies (before the Combat Upgrade)
- City of Heroes
- Ragnarok Online (the origional)
- Earth and Beyond
The reasoning that I spent so much time in Star Wars Galaxies after the NGE update was simple, most of these other games didn't exist anymore. Older players moved on with families, younger players didn't have the patience for their deep systems, and the games shut down when their populations dropped.
When you go from being a part of 5 or more MMO's down to two, you have a lot more time to spend in those two.
That said, to this very day I still believe that the best Star Wars video game experience was found in the original Star Wars Galaxies, just after they added the Jump to Lightspeed addon. This, specifically, was the "Golden Age" of SWG, in my opinion. So what made it so great?
Well, I have to start out by saying that SWG was a unique experience right from the start. It took traditional RPG elements and basically threw them away.
In most RPG games your character starts with a "Class", and you begin your character at "Level 1" of that class. As you play the game you gain experience which levels you up. You go to level 2, then level 3, and so on until your reach your maximum level. As you level, your character gains more power and unlocks new abilities in a linear direction. There's no adaptability. Every level 9 of your class has the same abilities as every other level 9 of your class.
Star Wars Galaxies didn't do this, at least not to the point where characters were so linear you could guess their abilities. At the start of the game, you picked out what your main profession was going to be. Will you be a marksman? An entertainer? An artisan? This is the only thing it wants to know about you... Aside from which Star Wars race you wanted to be, and how your appearance would look.
That said, unlike most RPG games, in this earlier version of Star Wars Galaxies you had complete character freedom. If you wanted to be an Artisan who worked as a Smuggler with a side-job as a Combat Medic, you could be. If you wanted to be a Dancer who lived in a secluded desert house because they moonlighted as a Sharpshooting Bounty Hunter, it was possible. If you wanted to be a Doctor who spent half his time genetically creating Beasts and the other half of his time as the Mayor of a massive player-built and occupied city, you could be! The limit was your imagination... and your available knowledge points.
You see, in Star Wars Galaxies you didn't have a max level. In fact, you didn't have any levels. What you had were "points", 250 to be exact, and every character had the same amount. These points were used to unlock careers, as well as the various parts of each career. You see, careers were built almost like family trees.
I. You start with your basic career;
- For this example we'll use "Artisan"
- You begin as a "Novice" in that career
- Experience is gained doing your job (eg. crafting items)
- Anything not related to your job gains you no exp.
II. Once you've earned enough artisan experience, it'll let you know that you've completed "Novice Artisan". You would then go and find an artisan trainer, and from there you have 4 branches in that career which you can choose, or not, to follow;
- Engineering (the "architect/smithy" branch)
- Domestic Arts (the cook/tailor branch)
- Business (the shop owner branch)
- Regional Surveying (the surveyor branch)
III. Each branch may also have different tasks to earn experience. As an example, Engineering requires you to craft items to earn experience while surveying requires you to... Well, survey for resources. Surveying doesn't improve your Engineering skills though, so you have to pay attention to what tasks you need to do to gain xp in your specific jobs.
IV. Each branch also has a series of 4 skill levels in that branch. As you progress through the skill levels, each will require more and more points and money to unlock, and more experience to complete. That said, they also offer you more advanced skills. For example, the Engineering branch has;
- Engineering I (1 points & 1000 credits, 500 xp)
- Engineering II (2 points & 2000 credits, 1000 xp)
- Engineering III (3 points & 3000 credits, 3000 xp)
- Engineering IV (4 points & 4000 credits, 6000 xp)
V. Once you finish a tier, it might open new professions. Those professions will have their own branches and own levels to progress through. As an example, if you finish the Artisan's Engineering branch it will give you access to;
- Architect
- Armorsmith
- Weaponsmith
- Shipwright
- Droid Engineer
VI. That new profession will have it's own branch of 4 tiers which you can pick and choose to do... Or you could complete all 4 branches of, for example, the Artisan profession you're currently on and become a "Master" in that profession, which has it's own perks.
So now that you know how the profession system worked, the most important part is the fact that you weren't locked into the original selection you made at the very start of the game. At any point you could go find a trainer for whatever profession you wanted to add to your character and you could add it.
This is what gave SWG it's extreme RPG capabilities, because anybody could be anything. You could never tell a person's skills just by looking at them. You might be able to guess a bit of their skill, by the armor/clothing they wore, but that was it.
Inherently, however, this type of character freedom also came with a few problems. If you can do everything yourself, what's the point of playing with others?
Well, here's where the absolute genius of the original Sony Online Entertainment development team came into play. Remember when I told you that you had a total of 250 knowledge points? Well, it could cost anywhere from 90 to 152 points to completely master a single standard or elite profession.
In a nutshell, what this means is, even if you could have a Doctor who was also a Marksman and Bounty Hunter...he still needed others. He'd need;
- A dancer to heal his Mind wounds (blue bar)
- An armor smith to craft his personal defense
- A chef to provide food buffs
- A tailor to customize his visual appearance
- An architect to build his structures and vehicles
- A droid engineer to craft combat and medical droids
- A shipwright to build and upgrade his starship
- An artisan to harvest chemicals for him
This kind of "forced multiplayer" experience is what made these late 90's and early 2000's Online Communities so tightly intertwined.
It was seen in the original World of Warcraft, with it's 2 profession limit, increased grind and difficulty, and massive 40-player requirements for end-game content.
It was seen in City of Heroes, with every hero having their own strengths and weaknesses, requiring partnering up with others to balance out your teams.
And it was seen here in the Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies experience...
That said, all good things must come to an end. As the new generation of 2000's gamers began to expect more handholding, the team as SOE decided to bow to their expectations. It started out by making it easier to unlock the coveted "Jedi" character class. Jedi characters would go from being extremely rare and coveted to, basically, everyone having a Jedi.
Next would come the heavily hated Combat Upgrade (CU), which was met with severe community backlash. Instead of being able to queue up your attacks, they worked on the instant/cooldown system that WoW had implemented. You could no longer strategically plan and queue your attacks, you just spammed whatever abilities were available. This would see a heavy decrease in player numbers, as many refused to use the new system.
SOE, trying to fight back the loss of players by bowing again to new ones, threw a hail-marry and launched the New Game Enhancements (NGE) update. This would remove virtually anything leftover that made Star Wars Galaxies a special experience. Customization was now gone, replaced with a basic character system.
After NGE, when you started a character you were given a selection of 9 professions. What you selected as a profession is what you were locked into. If you were a doctor, you stayed a doctor. If you were a commando, you stayed a commando. If you were an entertainer, you stayed an entertainer.
There was no more ability to multi-class your character. Gone were the days of Entertainers who were also Tailors. Gone were the days of a Scout who was also a Medic. Ironically, the old multi-class profession system would end up being more realistic than this new system. As you'd expect, this changeover basically alienated anyone who held out after the CU patch happened, and player numbers dropped even more.
After the launch of NGE there were only two types of players left in Star Wars: Galaxies. Most were new players, who hadn't experienced the freedom of Pre-Cu. The rest were those who were die-hard players from either CU or Pre-CU, members of prestigious player cities and groups, and far too invested to simply quit.
It wouldn't actually be much longer before LucasArts, watching the dwindling player numbers, decided to do a complete rewrite of the MMO experience. It would come in the form of an agreement with Electronic Arts to create a new MMO called Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:TOR).
This new game would be a typical "theme park", where you follow a completely linear storyline and level up your character just like every other basic MMO. This would also signal the nail in the coffin for Star Wars Galaxies.
As the Intellectual Property Rights to Star Wars expired for Sony Online Entertainment, forcing them to shut down SWG, the rights would be granted to Electronic Arts and BioWare, the developers behind SW:TOR. It was hoped, by LucasArts, that those still hanging on to SWG would migrate over to this new Star Wars experience, and they would... But...
While the launch of SW:TOR would be a blockbuster experience, the extremely linear story meant that 1 million registered subscribers would hit the end of the game within the first month, causing severe backlash and an almost immediate loss of over 700 subscriptions. This led to some major layoffs at BioWare and extreme community frustration that the MMO never really recovered from.
Today, the team at SW:TOR struggles to maintain a concurrent player population of 3,500 to 5,000 even with a good portion of the game not requiring a subscription. Ironically, that population is less than half of what SWG had when it was shut down.
So, to get back to the topic, now that Star Wars Galaxies no longer exists why am I still talking about it? Well, because it actually does exist!
There are many teams out there who have basically brought SWG back from the dead, but I'm going to focus on the main three. Each one of them has zeroed in on a specific period of the Star Wars Galaxies timeline. So, I figured I'd try each of them out for THREE HOURS to see if I could roust up some old memories.
SWGEmu
This was my first stop, because this is the one that I figured would hold the most nostalgia for me. This development team has worked to bring the absolute original Star Wars Galaxies experience back to the gaming world. While there are many copies out there that did Pre-CU and then added their own special customizations, this team made concrete promises that the experience would be as "pure" to the original as possible.
The Upside: I gotta tell ya, when I hopped into the game it was like going back in a time machine. I actually had to go online to look up all the macros and configurations, which I had originally figured out myself and kept on a little notepad on my desk. Every NPC was where I remembered them being. The cantina was bustling with dancers and musicians. I played for the full three hours and actually enjoyed every grindy minute of it.
The Downside: I'd really say the only downside I experienced here was the lack of players. When I hopped online there were only 50, and about 10 of them were found in and around the Mos Eisley cantina. The player-driven economy appeared practically dead, many categories in the shop having no items. This is a fixable problem, you just need more players, but it shows how badly the splintering of the Pre-CU experience (multiple off-shoot servers) has hit the server population. Other Pre-Cu servers are reportedly gimmicky, and I guess that appeals to this "aim assisted" generation of gamers.
SWG Restoration
The restoration team focused mainly on the time period that existed right before the NGE happened, which was known as the CU or Combat Upgrade time period. I find that interesting because the CU patch was what drove the original SWG community into a rage and led to almost half of the players leaving the game.
The Upside: Right off the bat I could tell that there were more players here. In addition, this was the first of the servers I visited that actually had the Jump to Lightspeed content capable of being played, so I was pretty excited about that. It also still had the highly-customizable character professions, so that was a bonus, although I could tell a few things had been...changed.
The Downside: During my 2 hours playing, I could quickly tell that the experience was nothing like the actual Combat Upgrade experience. It almost seems like they tried to give players the best of all expansions. You have the highly customizable professions, with NGE content, a tweaked Combat Upgrade, and custom content slapped on top. I, honestly, had a hard time trying to figure out what this version of the game was trying to be. What I can say is it's definitely not the faithful SWG:CU experience I was expecting. I did play the full 3 hours, but I wouldn't really say I enjoyed it. I simply experienced it.
SWG Legends
The legends team peaked my interest because, going into this, all I knew was they had created a full NGE experience. This was the overly-softened experience that Sony Online Entertainment had hoped would draw in the newer class of "please hold my hand" gamers, after they had alienated their existing gamers with the Combat Upgrade.
The Upside: The opening story of the NGE experience is here and in full dopamine display, with your character meeting Han Solo basically right off the start. I also didn't have to really do any configuring to my controls, since they had standardized the WoW control scheme by this point. Leveling was easy, questing was easy, combat was easy. Just like what you'd expect from the NGE experience. That said...
The Downside: Where do I start? First, this isn't even close to the REAL NGE experience. As an artisan, the first thing I did was went to a terminal to get some scanning missions (quick money). When I got there I found a group of players in combat with an AT-AT walker, which shouldn't have been there. By the name of the walker being an admin's name followed by "Tax Collector" it was clearly a custom added encounter. Yet another quick dopamine hit as I used my level 1 character to help take down an Imperial AT-AT walker.
Then I traveled away from the city and was met with a slew of custom player houses you were never able to build and custom vehicles you were never able to own. The area around Mos Eisley looked NOTHING like the area around Mos Eisley should look. If I'm being completely honest, this experience was so gimmicky that I couldn't actually stomach it for the full 3 hours. I only lasted 45 minutes.
My Verdict
Even with the dwindling player base I'd have to say that the SWGEmu team deserves a hell of a lot of credit for keeping their experience the most faithful to the actual game. This is the version that I'll likely continue to play, and hopefully not watch die off.
It's true that they currently don't have the Jump to Lightspeed content playable, although they've been working on it for a couple years now. They rely pretty heavily on their player base to be the actual testers of their content patches though, which most players really don't care to do, and this seems to clearly hinder their progress.
I mean, do they really think players are out here donating to server costs and then going "Hey, I have an hour to play today so I think I'll look through bug reports and test them" ??? No, that's not gonna happen.
That said, this development team is the only one that seems to be providing the REAL experience of what Star Wars Galaxies used to be... No cheap dopamine hits... No custom content running around.
That's what I like, so that's who will be getting my monthly donation to their server costs.
UPDATE
Since I first wrote this, I figured I didn't really give the other Pre-CU teams a fair chance. While SWGEmu has low populations, a lot of these splinter teams have larger ones and should also be considered. Since I don't know why they split off, and they're also labeled as a "PURE" experience in the Pre-CU time period, I can't really judge them without experiencing them.
To perform this test I sought out the Pre-CU server that was reported as being the most heavily populated, while still advertising that it would be a "PURE" experience. This server team goes by the name "Infinity".
The Upside: The weekly average population of the server is roughly around 600-800 players, which means I was pleasantly seeing a lot of other players while I explored. There also seemed to be a fairly booming player economy, although you would have to go to player cities to take advantage of that because the main cities had pretty empty markets.
The Downside: This is anything but a pure Pre-Cu experience. While it is based in Pre-Cu era, there has been a lot of "softening" as well as customizations added to the game.
They added an opening tutorial, much like the NGE experience, which is actually beneficial to new players. That said, it ends by dumping you into one of two player cities. If Tatooine is your favorite planet, sorry you can't start there.
They then give each new character 15000 credits to get you started, which you could use to travel wherever you like. That said, I could easily see this being exploited. Just keep creating new characters and mailing your free money to your main one. I haven't seen any rule that prevents you from doing that, so I'd expect it happens regularly.
As well, when I went to collect a couple Artisan missions to make money, I was kinda discouraged to find out I could take 6 missions at a time instead of the usual 2. This made it extremely easy to get money. I was averaging about 4500 credits every trip instead of 1200. It also made me wonder what other "ease of play" adjustments they had made to the game.
Put simply, while I was initially drawn to the perks of this server, I highly doubt I'm going to stick with it. The player count is great, and I love that it's got a booming economy, but knowing that economy can be easily cheated with new characters and quick missions takes the fun out of being an Artisan... my preferred class.
I know it sounds weird, but it means more to me to sell something if I know someone actually had to spend time earning the money they used to buy it. If someone can afford my 5000 credit Personal Mineral Miner with less effort than it took me to make it? Where's the fun in that?
Working the economy is part of the enjoyment of the Artisan profession. Finding out what sells for what price and how you can tweak your prices to sell better. If money is really easy to get than it doesn't really matter what your price is.
Because of this fact, I highly doubt I'll continue playing on this server. The SWGEmu team still has my support.
