Regardless of The Old Republic, do you think it’s about time Lucas Arts lets Sony bring back Galaxies?
Tag: Galaxies
It All Ends Today: Star Wars Galaxies To Shut Down
It’s been eight years since Star Wars Galaxies first came on to the scene and amazed us with an endless amount of content, a sprawling world to explore and allow our characters to live out their lives. Since then Galaxies has become one of the most controversial MMOs in history, and I don’t think I have to tell you why. If we learned anything from the New Game Experience, it is that MMO players are passionate and unforgiving, but mostly unforgiving. But at the same time, the most nostalgic. Not a day goes by (at least judging by my inbox) without players lamenting back to the old days of Galaxies, where they could set up camp and go hunting, to come back to the Mos Eisley bar and watch a Wookie dance to relieve their battle fatigue. Where playing doctor was a profession and not merely sexual innuendo.
Unfortunately, I’m terrible at eulogizing. Despite the absolute loathing many Galaxies fans hold (and will hold for a long time) for Sony and Lucas Arts, I think Galaxies will go down in history as one of the most determined and resilient MMOs in the industry. There is so much to learn from this game that allowing it to fade into history would be a disservice to the work the developers put into it.
And speaking of history, what better to send this game off than the original Xplay review?
Star Wars Galaxies: One Month In
It’s been one month since I started playing Star Wars Galaxies on my new character, and by now I had completely forgotten that I never set up a subscription after entering my serial code, so that was a bit of surprise. Since last week, I managed to find a few items in my bag that took me back to Tatooine to complete missions I never finished the first time. One of those missions turned out to be the Death Trooper line of quests, that started out as very low level (level 1) and immediately sprang to level 10 and then level 90. So I still have the level 90 Death Trooper mission in my journal, that will sit there for a long time.
The Death Trooper mission, what I did play of it, was a massive pain in the ass even from the Galaxies point of view. I found myself traveling back and forth every other mission between Tatooine and Dathomir, two planets that are not connected meaning I had to travel to Corellia, then travel to Dathomir so I could talk to one person, then travel to Corellia, then travel to Tatooine so I could talk to a scientist, who would send me back to Dathomir, and back and forth. I own the book that the mission is based off of, as seen to the left, and apparently the Death Trooper saga is canon.
My current role, as I talked of last time, are working for the Royal Security Forces on Naboo, tasked with defeating terrorists, preventing local thugs, and being randomly de-mounted and scanned in Theed. In my previous few missions, I had to go to several locations and kill 14-16 mobs to distract them, and then bug their antenna. This confused me from a continuity point of view: If I’m killing large amounts of a group to distract them, why am I the one who has to plant the bug? Isn’t the point for me to distract so someone else can plant the bug? Someone didn’t think this mission line through (probably me).
But this wouldn’t be a Galaxies episode without me whining about issues I’m having in-game. I’ve talked before about the game showing its age, but no more so than the slow reaction that Grandpa is showing me here. I walk through a group of terrorists and can make it about ten seconds away before they notice and start shooting at me. In some cases, I’ll fire at a guy and his buddy standing two feet away won’t move a finger. About ten seconds later, just before I kill the guy I’m attacking, he’ll finally snap up and start shooting me. For what Galaxies adds in atmosphere, this takes a lot of it away.
What really annoyed me is that apparently Qa’ashi has become quite a poor aim. Earlier I complained that I had trouble with the locking system being too strict, in a “No, you will aim at this person because I told you to,” sense. I’m not sure if this is just part of the process, or if I hit something somewhere to turn it off, but now I can’t get the target to stay on at all. If I move away from the person I’m aiming at, I stop targeting them. Normally I’d follow the “maybe you should learn to aim” people, but when mobs have lag and terrible pathfinding issues like in Galaxies, where they go into 50 mph sprints about two hundred feet in the opposite direction (to better hit me with their pistol?), keeping a steady aim can turn into a real pain in the ass.
Star Wars Galaxies: Week 3
*Note: I finished writing this before the double exp update, this does not include any gameplay spent after today’s update*
Hallelujah! Week 3 of Star Wars Galaxies is over and done with, and I am finally off of Tatooine. Although my time working for Jabba was just grand (A little run in left me with -450 standing with the Hutts, but 3305 with Jabba, if that makes sense), I was finally able to get the droid head I’d been looking for and get my fully functional R2 droid from Watto. I was quite surprised as to how long that particular quest series took me, and by the end of it I was still level 21, still working my way towards end-game.
Despite what tone my opening image may convey, I’m finding this game extremely addictive. Despite some issues with availability over the past week, I was able to get two levels, although I finished the Jabba The Hutt line (for now) and even managed to speak with the big guy himself. Walking around Jabba’s building adds to the atmosphere I talked about in earlier articles, because there are certain places you cannot go until you raise your faction rating with Jabba. I wasn’t even allowed to be in the same room as Jabba until I finished mission lines for two of his followers, and even then I had to complete missions for his assistant, Jabba himself, and then a torture droid to finally get the head I was looking for.
The Hutts are just as seedy and disgusting as you could hope for in a Star Wars game, and my missions involved sabotaging competing pod racers, killing their champions, murdering opposing traders, and just generally enforcing Jabba’s will wherever it need be enforced. At the end, however, I was forced in a mission to bring information to either a Rebel or Imperial messenger (this sets up your allegiance). I chose the Rebels over the Imperial scum, no offense to any Imperial scum reading this.
I can’t get away from the issues with context response in this game, however. As in the first image, there are problems with interconnecting rooms and being able to shoot through them, but not be within line of sight of the enemy. Having to step into the room just to shoot a guy through an open doorway takes away from the immersion, as do my attempts to move from target to target, even though the game tends to go completely off screen to someone who is out of range, rather than the guy standing two inches away from the person I just killed.
I only gained two levels, but I did accomplish a lot. From now until who-knows-when, my smuggler has been transferred to Naboo, where I am working for the Rebel Alliance, getting in good with the Royal Security Forces on Naboo, meaning I can look forward to missions involving killing thugs, gangs, and murderers rather than helping them along. Oddly enough, I still have a higher status with the Empire than the Rebel alliance, but that is because I started out at a disadvantage (missing that rebel checkpoint in an earlier article).
Leveling has slowed down, a lot, likely because of the insane amount of time spent traveling from spot to spot to finish quests. On Tatooine, having to travel five thousand kilometers or more just to get to one area, then kill ten mobs and have to travel three thousand kilometers to the next, is not uncommon. I can only hope Naboo will provide quicker leveling.
My house will stay on Tatooine. I have still yet to go back and put some of my new posters on the walls. This may just be my time playing, but I’ve yet to see any players since the prior week.
But still, if you haven’t played Star Wars Galaxies and want to check it out, I would suggest doing so. If you’re a “veteran,” even a disgruntled one, come back and give it a go. Create some new memories before the game goes offline for good.
Star Wars Galaxies Bonus Everything Begins Today
There are five months left until Star Wars Galaxies passes on, is no more, ceases to be, expires and goes to meet its maker, rests in peace, and all of that. Until then, however, Sony Online Entertainment is getting a jump on the usual funeral procession and enabling bonus everything starting today. The servers went down at 7am EST
Everyone logged in will earn Double XP, Double GCW Points, Double Heroic Tokens, Double GCW Tokens from Battlefields and City Invasions, Double Pet XP and Loyalty, Double Duty Mission Tokens, Double Chronicles XP, Double Chronicles Silver Tokens, increased chance to earn Gold Chronicles Tokens, increased RLS chance, increased chance to catch real fish (instead of junk loot and collection fish) and bonus Restuss Commendations!
Bonuses will stay on until the end (December 15th), meaning I might actually have a chance at hitting end-game with the Star Wars Galaxies articles.
LucasArts Breaks Silence: Talks Galaxies
With all the talks from Sony Online Entertainment regarding Star Wars Galaxies shutting down, LucasArts has been silent on the issue. Not anymore. In a letter from LucasArts, Gamepro has published the following:
The decision to shut down the game has not been an easy one. SOE and LucasArts investigated every option to keep the game open, including taking it to a free to pay model. However, that model just isn’t financially viable. Changing the business model for an experience like Star Wars Galaxies takes a major investment and overhauling of the existing infrastructure of the game. We’re unfortunately at a point in our life cycle where a change of this magnitude is just not possible. The harsh reality is that we’ve reached a point where the game is no longer a sustainable business. None of us wanted to see this point, but we’re extremely proud of the last eight years of the game and the community that has supported it.
We have a lot planned between now and December and we want to make sure that from now until then, we send off Star Wars Galaxies in a style befitting such a great game. We’ll be right there in the game with everyone else, counting down until the end, making sure we connect with all the friends we’ve made over the past eight years. It may be bittersweet, it may feel like it’s happening before it should, but we have approximately five months remaining where we can all enjoy the game together. We sincerely hope the community will join us.
Well it’s certainly a response, and it does show that a free to play model was at least considered.
Star Wars Galaxies: Week 2
Week 2 into the Star Wars Galaxies “Let’s Play This To Death,” and I’m still going strong. As of the end of Week 2 (Sunday) I’ve managed to attain level 21 and my quest line as a smuggler on Tatooine has taken me to Jabba the Hutt’s own palace, where my attempts to shoot the bastard in the face with my blaster pistol have proven fruitless. Instead, I’ve been doing a large number of quests that involve pretty much what you’d expect from the Hutt family. Stealing pod racer parts, killing competing champions, finding ingredients for Jabba’s dinner (no jokes).
I can see what Sony was talking about with the community being engaging and friendly. I’ve come across a few players in my travels who were very kind, talkative, and willing to do some quests with me. The first, pictured above, Neesli Ofe. The second, to the left, Ihaf Iypisen. In both instances, I had to log off before our questing party was finished, so I apologize to both. Generally I’m not the one to finish first.
Having a friend to play is a big help in some areas, as population density makes Star Wars Galaxies a game of shoot once, pull ten mobs. Luckily for me the game has a system where your first “death” simply incapacitates you for ten seconds. Get up and allow the timer to run out (three minutes approximately) and you won’t have to worry about death. This feels like a copout, but it’s a blessing in an otherwise very unforgiving game.
The world of Star Wars Galaxies is massive, and I haven’t even left Tatooine. You can easily spend ten minutes just going from waypoint to waypoint for a quest, and that is with the added speed of a mount. Despite the game’s aged graphics, the game holds up rather well and instead opts to focus on the living, breathing world rather than trying to keep up with the current generation of games.
Speaking of atmosphere, the rebel vs empire battles are great. I occasionally see pockets of rebel and alliance, and at one point I came across a shootout outside of Tatooine between a storm trooper, Imperial officer, and a few rebel soldiers. The whole fight lasted just a few minutes before the rebel soldiers were cut down, but the spontaneous aspect kept me watching and observing. At this point in my Star Wars career, I assume I’m not affiliated well enough to engage in such a fight.
I want to talk about some of my gripes with the game, however. In a few aspects, the game has aged rather poorly. Although Galaxies is more action than its previous incarnation, I often find that putting my reticle on an NPC and firing is not sufficient in actually engaging in combat. Instead, I have to place my reticle and hit tab to target, and more often than not this still doesn’t target the NPC I want to target. When you are in the midst of fighting more than one person, quickly tabbing can be the difference between life and death. For me, this generally means death as the targeting system will skip over the person I mean to attack and focus on someone 200m away out of range, or worse someone in-range causing me to fire and bring yet another mob into the fight.
The targeting is my biggest issue this week, as it is my chief cause of death. Other than that, I’m really enjoying my escapade through Galaxies. The quests are well fleshed out, there are a ton of factions (as seen below) and the music is well done if not repetitive. With that in mind, I will cut this short until next week.
Star Wars Galaxies Shuts Down December 15th
Six years. Back when the New Game Enhancements and Combat Upgrade hit Star Wars Galaxies in 2005, players asked: How long can the game last now that Sony has alienated its core group? The answer is six years. What can be called the biggest PR blunder in the history of the gaming industry, spawned a game that survived six years, countless updates, and a steadily dwindling player base. Here at MMO Fallout, I always hate having to write these articles, and thankfully for the past two years I’ve only had to write them once every few months. I’m the only person in my room currently, so to say that the room fell silent at this news may not make sense to anyone but those dwelling in my mind.
Over at the Star Wars Galaxies website, John Smedley has announced that Galaxies will shut down on December 15th.
In recognition of your incredible loyalty, we are extending special Fan Appreciation offers to the current SWG community. We also plan to go out with a bang with a galaxy-ending in-game event in December and hope to see you all there. The details relating to these offers and events as well as the timeline and specifics regarding the discontinuation of the service, are provided below.
In an interview with John Smedley at Massively, Smedley reveals that the contract for Galaxies was up in 2012, and with the release of The Old Republic late this year, the two companies mutually decided that now was a good time to end the game. Smedley talks about numerous things, but most interestingly he brings up the NGE.
There’s really nothing we can do about it. We’ve taken some hard-knocks for SWG in years past with the NGE. We’ve apologized for it. It was a mistake, and not one we’re going to make as a company ever again. But we’re really proud of the great work that we’ve done over the years since then. I’m really proud of the game. It’s great. Is it going to bum people out that it’s over? Yes. Including us. Maybe even especially us.
On one note, according to Smedley no one is losing their job over this. They are moving to an undisclosed project.
You can read the entire announcement above. For those of us who have followed or played Galaxies since its inception, this will truly be the end of an era.
More on Star Wars Galaxies as it appears. And just before Galaxies’ birthday…feliz navidad.
Really? ANOTHER Star Wars MMO?
TenTonHammer is reporting on a rumor that Sony Online Entertainment may be working on a more casual Star Wars MMO, that might be based on the Star Wars: Clone Wars CGI film. Not much is known on the title, but it is very likely that Sony will build the game off of the Free Realms engine, delivering the MMO as a freemium, browser based game, not necessarily aimed towards children, but instead a wide variety of players.
With Star Wars: The Old Republic being released next year, will this title be launched close-by as a free alternative? Does Sony really need two running Star Wars MMOs at one time? Will players be willing to take Sony up on a new Star Wars MMO on the idea that they learned from their mistakes with Star Wars Galaxies?
More on the rumored Star Wars MMO as it develops.
MMO Fallout 