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Star Wars Galaxies

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Star Wars Galaxies (often abbreviated SWG or Galaxies by fans) is a Star Wars themed MMORPG platform for Microsoft Windows PCs, developed by Sony Online Entertainment and published by LucasArts. The base game, titled Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, was released on June 26, 2003. As of March 2006, Galaxies is fifth among MMOGs in North American subscribers. [link]

Galaxies, like most MMORPGs, has a monthly subscription fee. The basic monthly fee for playing the game is US$14.99, with discounts for three-, six-, and 12-month plans. Galaxies is also part of Sony Online Entertainment's "Station Access", which allows access to all SOE games for US$24.99 per month.

Contents

Gameplay Features

As with all MMORPGs, the feature set of Star Wars Galaxies is subject to change.

The setting of the game is the well-known Star Wars universe, with the time period currently set in between the events in Episodes IV and V.

The basic "game world" consists of simulated planetary surfaces and associated structures. The ten different planets are taken from the Star Wars movies and the expanded universe: Tatooine, Naboo, Corellia, Talus, Rori, Dantooine, Lok, Yavin IV, the forest moon of Endor, and Dathomir. Each of the ten planets is represented by 256 square kilometers (16 km x 16 km maps) of game space, with all established cities and locations compressed into that space.

Scattered throughout the game worlds, in addition to new places created by the game's developers to fill out the fictional worlds, are cities, characters, and points of interest that have been seen or mentioned in the various Star Wars media. Examples include R2-D2 and C-3PO's escape pod on Tatooine, the Naboo royal palace, the city of Coronet on Corellia, the abandoned Rebel bases on Dantooine and Yavin IV, the notorious pirate Nym in his stronghold on Lok, Ewoks on the Endor moon, and rancors on Dathomir.

Players of the game create characters to navigate through these environments. Characters in Star Wars Galaxies can be one of ten species, again taken from the films and the expanded universe: human, Twi'lek, Zabrak, Wookiee, Trandoshan, Rodian, Mon Calamari, Bothan, Sullustan, or Ithorian. A character can be either male or female, and he or she belongs to one of nine primary professions: Jedi, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Commando, Spy, Officer, Medic, Entertainer, or Trader. A character can also optionally advance in the Politician and Pilot professions, independent of his or her primary profession.

In basic gameplay, the player uses his or her character's skills and special abilities to attack targets, complete quests, undertake missions, create useful in-game items, and/or entertain other players. The player's character will have opportunities to meet famous Star Wars characters, earn in-game fame and fortune (or infamy and notoriety), and obtain numerous items, artifacts, and trinkets.

Ground combat in Galaxies is fast-paced and real-time. Unlike most MMORPGs, whether an attack hits is not solely based on the character's skill numbers. The player must aim a targeting reticule at a target and left-click the mouse to fire. As characters gain levels, they gain access to additional combat abilities, called "specials", which are "fired" by using the right mouse button. These specials usually have a cool-down period during which they can't be reused, but they are much more powerful or versatile than the basic left-click attack. Specials are also used to heal characters and enhance their other abilities.

Characters in Star Wars Galaxies can erect, own, and decorate a variety of buildings, including houses, cantinas, and guild halls. These buildings, when grouped, can be organized into cities, with members of the Politician profession serving as mayors. As cities grow in population, they become eligible to add services and facilities such as vehicle repair garages and shuttleports, and they start to show up on the planetary maps alongside canonical cities such as Theed and Mos Eisley. Cities and housing allow players, via their characters, to shape and define the game worlds, and their presence means that Tatooine on one "galaxy" (unique gameworld server) is different from Tatooine on any other "galaxy."

Additional features of the basic game include:

Expansions

The three expansions to Star Wars Galaxies have added additional features to the base game. The first expansion is now, as of November 2005, free and its content is fully available to all Galaxies players. The other two expansions must be purchased, either separately or as part of a package (The Total Experience) containing the full original game and the expansion.

Jump to Lightspeed

The first expansion, Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed, was released on October 27, 2004. The expansion added space-based content to the basic, "ground-based" game, along with the option to create characters of the Sullustan and Ithorian species. Characters are allowed to choose one of three piloting professions, each one based on the character's Galactic Civil War faction -- Rebel, Imperial, or Freelance. This profession is separate from the character's ground profession, although earning experience points in space will also give the character experience points toward a ground combat profession.

The playable areas for space content include ten space sectors: Tatoo, Naboo (containing both Naboo and its moon, Rori), Corellia (containing Corellia and Talus), Dantooine, Karthakk (containing Lok), Yavin, Endor, Dathomir, Kessel, and Deep Space. Each sector is a cube 16 kilometers on a side, and each contains at least one of the ten ground planets, except Kessel and Deep Space, which are for high-level space gameplay only.

Space combat in Galaxies is similar to ground combat. Players must aim at their targets (often needing to "lead" their target in compensation for the target's movement) and click a button on the mouse or joystick to fire. Success in space combat is largely dependent on player skill, but not quite to the same extent as seen in previous Star Wars space-simulator games.

As characters advance in their piloting professions, they gain access to a widening variety of tactics, starship chassis, and starship components. Their ships can be completely customized with components looted from enemies or crafted by shipwrights. Available chassis include the X-Wing and Y-Wing for Rebels, TIE Fighters and TIE Bombers for Imperials, and new Hutt and Black Sun ship designs for Freelancers. Characters who have mastered a piloting profession get access to PoB (Player on Board) ship designs such as the famed YT-1300. PoB ships allow characters to walk around the interiors (which can be decorated just like a building on the ground) and man additional shipboard stations such as laser turrets.

Rage of the Wookiees

The second expansion, Star Wars Galaxies: Episode III Rage of the Wookiees, was announced on March 9, 2005 and released on May 5, 2005. It added the ground planet of Kashyyyk and its corresponding space sector. Kashyyyk is different from the previous ten planets; rather than being 16 square kilometers of openly navigable area, it is divided into a small central area with several instanced "dungeon" areas, with no space available for open exploration. Other content added in this expansion included the ability to add cybernetic limbs to a player character.

Rage of the Wookiees contains a large amount of content adapted from and associated with the film , which was released to theaters at about the same time as the expansion was released.

Trials of Obi-Wan

The third expansion, Star Wars Galaxies: Trials of Obi-Wan, was announced on August 19, 2005 and released on November 1, 2005. This expansion added the ground planet of Mustafar to the game. No new space sector was added with this expansion. Like the previous expansion, much of the content is related to Revenge of the Sith, which was released to DVD at about the same time as the expansion was released. This expansion met with controversy as, two days after the expansion was released, the development team announced the extensive changes known as the "New Game Enhancements" or NGE (). Many players objected that they would not have purchased the expansion if they had known in advance about the NGE. Sony Online Entertainment eventually offered a refund to any players who had purchased the expansion prior to the NGE.

History

Development and release

With a Star Wars license and veteran designer Raph Koster at the helm, expectations among gamers ran high during the development of Galaxies. Many industry professionals expected that these forces would push the subscription numbers past the one million mark, a feat accomplished only thus far in Asia by MMORPGs such as Lineage and more recently by World of Warcraft. As development wore on, the release date was pushed back, features were cut, and Sony cancelled planned ports for the Xbox and PlayStation 2.

At the time of its initial release, the game was very different than it is now. Vehicles and creature mounts were not yet implemented, and while player housing was in the game, player cities were not. (Those features were added in November 2003.) Combat was based on an original model, where each character and creature possessed three "pools" (called Health, Action, and Mind; or "HAM") that represented his or her physical and mental reserves. Most attacks specifically targeted one of these three pools, and any action the character took also depleted one or more of the pools. When any one of those pools was fully depleted, the character would fall unconscious. Combat, then, required the player to carefully manage his or her actions to avoid depleting a pool and thereby becoming an easy target for an opponent.

Character progression was vastly different at release as well. Characters started out in one of six basic professions (Medic, Brawler, Marksman, Scout, Entertainer, or Artisan) but could pick up any of the other five at any time after character creation. Each profession consisted of a tree-like structure of skills, with a single Novice level, four independent branches of four levels each, and a Master level which required completion of all four branches. Characters purchased these skills with experience points gained through a related activity. For example, an Entertainer could purchase skills to get better at playing music, but only with Musician experience points; Dancing experience points were entirely separate and could only be used to purchase dancing skills.

In addition to the basic professions, characters could specialize into advanced professions such as Bounty Hunter, Creature Handler, Ranger, Doctor, and Musician. There were a total of 24 advanced professions, although there was no way for characters to obtain all of them at once. Each advanced profession had certain skill requirements from the base professions that had to be met, some more restrictive than others.

Jedi were not available as a starting profession, or even as an advanced profession. The developers stated only that certain in-game actions would open up a Force-sensitive character slot; the actions required were left for players to discover. It eventually turned out that characters had to achieve Master level in six random professions; the identity of five of those necessary professions could be learned, but the sixth had to be found via trial and error. The first Force-sensitive character slot was unlocked on November 7, 2003[[Citing sources citation needed]].

Combat Upgrade

As the game matured, the unique crafting system presented some problems. It was possible, with the proper resources and character progression, to produce weapons, armor, and "buffs" (temporary enhancements applied to characters by Doctors and Entertainers) with statistics far beyond what the developers envisioned as being common. These items were produced on a mass scale, with Doctors in particular in high demand for their buffs, which provided such an advantage that to go into combat without them was considered foolish.

In response to this, the developers promised a combat re-balancing, which gradually mutated into a combat revamping, and finally a complete "Combat Upgrade". The Combat Upgrade was finally released April 27, 2005 and was a major revamping and rewriting of the entire Star Wars Galaxies combat, armor, and weapons system. A more "realistic" tone was set, whereas only certain characters in certain professions would use specific weapons and wear armor. In addition, the method of fighting in the game was redone, with skill levels assigned to both players and game creatures. Under the new system, only a creature of similar skill level would give experience when killed and the more powerful creatures were almost undefeatable by a single player.

The Combat Upgrade drew tremendous criticism from gamers even before it was released. Upon its initial release, a number of player issues were reported, not the least of which was that players logging on found most of their weapons and armors useless under the new system. Another concern among many of the players was the lack of official documentation for the new system, leaving them to rely on FAQs posted in the game forums to learn to play this "new" game. To adapt existing characters to the new skill system, the developers implemented a "respeccing" system. Characters were allowed to trade skills gained in one profession for another in order to find their preferred skillset or role under the new system. This was done because many professions' roles were changed (Doctors and Combat Medics no longer had crafting abilities, and Smugglers gained crowd control abilities). Many long-time players chose this time to leave the game.

New Game Enhancements (NGE)

In November 2005, SWG Lead Developer Julio Torres announced that a series of wide-reaching changes were planned to enter testing on November 4th. These changes included "faster paced, more heroic Star Wars action", more like the 'pseudo-shooter' space combat already present in Galaxies than like traditional MMORPG combat. The profession system was revamped into what exists today. The first several levels of a character's life in the game now take place in a separate 'New Player Experience' area, which is also available as a free downloadable trial for new players. Here, the basic mechanics of the game are introduced by C-3PO, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. Also among the changes was the return of an ongoing plot to Star Wars Galaxies, told largely via a new cutscene engine and interactions with famous Star Wars characters.

Online polls, gaming reviews, and newspaper articles (including a major December 9 New York Times story [link]) reported overwhelmingly negative feedback for the 'enhancements'. It remains to be seen how this significant change will affect the subscription numbers and long-term success of the game. Some of the more vocal segments of the playerbase, especially on message boards, accused SOE of dishonesty with the implementation of the NGE, as the developers had been promising for quite some time to fix some of the broken playable professions — professions that were removed from the game with the NGE. The changes, along with the new downloadable trial, were pushed to live on November 15, and the Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Set retail box was released on November 22.

The new system was intended to restore a more "Star Warsy" feeling to the game. A large part of the change also came about due to the realization that the actual code of the game did not lend itself to modification. Many of the changes were directed to allow the game code to be more modular, allowing further changes and enhancements in the future. Unlike the first Combat Upgrade, SOE decided to show off the new system to only a very few players, mainly comprised of former SWG players and correspondents, allowing the word get out via word of mouth before making an official announcement[[Citing sources citation needed]]. Nevertheless, SOE continued their original plan and pushed the changes live. Less than an hour after the announcement thread was posted, the official SWG forums crashed. The forums remained unstable for a week as hundreds of thousands of posts were made. The overuse resulted in login issues. Many players saw this as a miscommunication problem with the Dev team (a common complaint even before the NGE). In reality, the team couldn't log in to communicate. These problems resulted in the Community Letter by Julio Torres being a few weeks late.

The NGE remains controversial, but the development team has repeatedly affirmed that this is the direction they want to take the game, and they are slowly but carefully modifying the game to address Players' desires. [''Star Wars Fans Flee Net Galaxy']

Controversy

The NGE was not the first time players of SWG strongly objected to changes being made. All MMORPG development teams encounter vocal players opposed to the changes they wish to make, but SWG's forum participants are well-known for their passion, and for their willingness to voice it. This may be due to the iconic status of the Star Wars franchise among the gaming populace.

Controversy developed even before the game was released, with extensive debates over "perma-death" and the presence (or absence) of Jedi in the game. After launch, these debates subsided but others, too numerous to list, took their place.

Some of the most contentious issues have involved the development team's responsiveness to player concerns. Perhaps the most egregious example is the issue of Smugglers. Players who have played Smugglers in SWG have long wanted the ability to smuggle items in-game, but no such system has ever been implemented. Several times, implementation of a smuggling system has been promised, but none ever came to fruition. The situation became so notorious amongst the gaming community that GamePro named SWG's treatment of Smugglers the #11 Gaming Low of 2004. [link]. As of May 2006, a smuggling system compatible with the NGE is currently on the development schedule, but many players remain skeptical.

The Jedi in SWG

Unlike the historic chronology of Star Wars, where the Jedi are all but extinct by the time frame of A New Hope, the concept of Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies is modified to have several hundred, if not thousands of Jedi capable of playing in the game which is set in the period of time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In a poll on the Galaxies forums, 38% indicated that their main character was a Jedi.

All Jedi are live players, but unlike the old Jedi system, where one could only become a Jedi by completing a set of rigorous missions and tasks, the NGE has made Jedi a starting profession.

Under the first Jedi system, a player could only become a Jedi after mastering professions chosen randomly for you at character creation. When fewer Jedi entered the game than was anticipated, players were helped by finding several holocrons that would tell a player which game professions to play and master. This resulted in several "career" players spending hours on end writing program macros and mastering almost every profession in the game (hologrinding). However after complaints from a large portion of the player base (especially those that weren't hard core and thus not willing to master multiple professions), Star Wars Galaxies was altered to add a new system for creating a Jedi character called the Force Sensitive Village of Aurilia.

The majority of Jedi who unlocked their Force Sensitive Slot under the old holocron system were called hologrinders. Many players saw this as a waste of time, and that it ruined gameplay, because people were too focused on getting the Jedi character and not on playing the game. Others saw it as a worthy way for players to achieve Jedi status as under the holocron system a player would have to play through most of the game before given the privilege of having their force sensitive slot unlocked.

Under the new system, players attained Force Sensitive Skills by completing quests and gaining massive amount of experience in order to allow their character to become a Jedi. Quests in the Village of Aurilia are artificially gated, so that a player can only complete one quest every three weeks. The intention was to keep the new Jedi population in check, but once the 4 month mark had passed (the time it took to complete the necessary 6 quests to unlock), every 3rd week a new legion of Jedi would explode onto each server - making the increase in Jedi much more noticeable.

Even with the Jedi revamp in place, many in the Star Wars Galaxies community have expressed feelings that eventually the game will become an "Army of Generals" where the number of Jedi playing in the game will be extremely high, thus making the game less interesting for those who like playing regular, non-Jedi characters.

It is important to note that a limiting factor on the number of Jedi in the game was the bounty hunter system allowing characters who acquire the requisite skill in the Bounty Hunter profession to hunt Jedi and kill them. This resulted in an experience point drop for the Jedi, slowing their progress.

A new Star Wars Galaxies update released on November 15th, known as the "New Game Enhancements", revised all professions, and has also significantly affected the path to becoming a Jedi, as well as the Jedi profession. Jedi has now become a starting profession and the Village Quests have been removed. The Jedi profession's strength has also been reworked in order to have a combat effectiveness similar to the other professions. Bounty Hunters were recently given back the ability to hunt and track PvP Bounty targets, although bounties are no longer limited to Jedi, which has been met with controversy by those who hunted before the NGE.

Questionable tactics

The NGE was announced two days after the release of the Trials of Obi Wan expansion. This was seen by many players as underhanded. Some stated that they would not have bought the expansion if they had known of the changes to the core game. Others were angry at the fact that there were enhancements announced for their characters' professions, only to then have such classes removed when the NGE was rolled out. After days of complaints, SOE did offer a refund of the price of the expansion to unsatisfied players.

Customer voice

Many SWG players feel that SOE does not listen to them about issues surrounding the game. SOE does provide an online message forum for their customers to discuss issues. However, a lack of development team response to messages has angered some forum goers. Banning and deletion of posts has angered the customers even more, for posting about changing the game back to Pre-NGE days can result in a suspension or ban. For their part, the team has acknowledged this and pledged to improve, particularly after the NGE controversy.

The NGE, in particular, has increased these feelings. Many players feel that the NGE ignored their myriad concerns about the game and didn't take into account what they, as players, wanted from the game.

Ongoing Concerns

There has been a great amount of controversy on the forums from players claiming that they are paying to play for the game whose quality could be compared to that of a game in beta testing. John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment gave this response on the game's game play discussion forum:

"...my preference is that all the posts in the gameplay forum are discussing gameplay balance.. and in-game issues.. but they won't until we get the game to a baseline fun level. We're not there yet. We know that. We're working to fix it. There is no other answer." [link]
Some community members have not been satisfied with this answer and voice their opinions by lashing out with spam posts, holding in-game demonstrations in high traffic areas, and participate in other disruptive acts, demanding a rollback of the game mechanics to Pre-NGE (New Game Enhancements) status. The developers of Star Wars Galaxies have stated repeatedly that doing so is effectively impossible. At least one major reason for the NGE changes was to restructure the game's code to be more modular allowing for more expansions, additions, and overall improvement to the gameplay in the long term and, according to them, reverting those changes is not an option.

It is unknown as to what percentage of the actual playerbase agrees/disagrees with the direction of the game. Many long-term players have left, either out of disgust or frustration, but others have returned to the game after previously leaving, and the game continues to attract new customers.

Several websites have been started up specifically for former players of the game to stay in touch with their friends and the rest of their former gaming community to discuss matters pertaining both to Star Wars: Galaxies and whatever games they are now playing. One of the most prominent of these sites is [SWG Refugees], which was featured in an article by Wired News. [link]

As of July 2006, former and current players of SWG are working on an emulation project, which would emulate a pre-Combat Upgrade version of the game.[link]

Trivia

A screenshot from the SWG website of Life Day.
Enlarge
A screenshot from the SWG website of Life Day.

Awards

External links

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' | ' | '
: The Star Wars Holiday Special
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: ' | ' |
Star Wars live-action TV series
Books: Splinter of the Mind's Eye | The Thrawn trilogy |
The Jedi Academy trilogy | The New Jedi Order | Legacy of the Force
Comics: Tales of the Jedi | Dark Empire |
Games: Super Star Wars | | |
| | |
Other projects: Star Wars radio dramas | | Clone Wars | Star Tours

 

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