Remembering Star Wars Galaxies: Episode I

A long time ago, in a MMO far far away something called fun was happening. That fun was maintained by a rather large amount of players any decent MMO could have wished for playing all sorts of reasons and paying what they owed to the Overlords of that MMO in return for more better quality fun.

Then the Dark Lord, John Smedley stuck with the Combat Upgrade and stunned the community. Of course, being happy resourceful gamers a majority went with it and recovered. Sadly, Dark Lord Smed was jealous at World of Warcrafts Popularity and wanted to pay off the new Boat he bought so he struck again with what is known as the hated NGE, ripping a huge amount of fun from the game and replacing it with cheap copied gimmicks from WoW thus killing at least 95% of its player base overnight.

This, the insanely stupid lag and the fact that 99% of the free land was covered in abandoned houses, towns and harvestors of long quit players was part of the death knell of SWG. Despite all this, the game still is incredibly just surviving today.

The tale of Star Wars Galaxies is indeed a tragic one, one of Alpha Classes Professions going over the top, a tale of overpriced and buggy Expansions and tale of loyal suffering for many players. I was one of them.

But what out weighs the memories of the bad side of the modern Star Wars Galaxies is the good memories. The fun I had, shooting Gungans with my Novice Commandos Flamethrower on Naboo as well as the hours of chat madness in the Mos Eisley and Theed Cantinas come to mind along with many other examples we'll talk about.

In the year 2004 Star Wars Galaxies was doing fine, what with no other alternitive of Star Wars MMO goodness on the market and the up coming Jump To Lightspeed Expansion pack where everyone could finally go into space. There was plenty of things to do including Mastering the 32 diverse Professions and exploring the massive Galaxy with your friends as I discovered when I began my two week free trial in August which I got with my copy of PC Gamer. I choose the European Server FarStar (Well, It was reccomended after all) and breezed through the surprisingly detailed character creator and tutorial. Back then, the SWG Tutorial was pretty neat.

My toons name? Romuski Til. His Profession? Marksman of course. Why wouldn't he use a Blaster Pistol like Han Solo? the starter Planet? Tatooine duh! I AM a big Star Wars nerd after all. Despite the restrictions of the two weeks trial (Not allowed more than 20k credits in your pocket or allowed to own property) I had oodles of fun. After wandering around Eisley, gawking at players and NPC alike I accidently picked up mission where I had to deliver a package to some guy in Mos Espa. Off I went, utterly confused about waypoints and walked a massive circle around the area outside Mos Eisley avoiding death by running like a coward at the slightest hint of a red named NPC. I almost blundered inside the infamous Tusken Bunker, and had a chat with an armoured TKA Twi'lek and his Speederbike outside. I eventually returned to Eisley and ignored the mission. Later, I found out I had a hired Landspeeder (Luke Skywalkers cruddy one from ANH) which I was overjoyed at owning. I remember flying around later in the hunts in first person view.

I remember trying out the turn based combat, and enjoying it. The HAM system, the epic music that played as my character ran about like Benny Hill trying to shoot something that looked like the lovechild between a Toad and Louie Anderson was hilarious yet epic at the same time. Everyone who has played SWG or any pre-WoW MMO has experinced this.

The first thing I did was try and ditch the rather cruddy looking n00b clothes and get myself a sexier blaster. Sort of went well. I traded my Jumpsuit top for a n00b Brawler jacket on the bazaar and bought myself a cruddy CDEF Carbine and spent half an hour playing city outskirts pest Control. Bored of that, I stumbled into the Eisley Cantina to watch an Entertainer to rid the battle fatigue making my n00b skills suck and chatted with a friendly Axe Wielding Brawler. We teamed up and took a mission together. We had to destroy a Kreetle nest. I remember us slowly ploughing through the defending Kreetles, me quite the way away from the next kneeling on my belly sniping with the n00b laser Rifle while Brawler boy chopped away at the Kreetles and nest. Mission done, credits in the back and team disbanded.

I never saw the guy again on FarStar. Maybe he was another free trial guy? A day later, I had saved up enough credits and got my first skills I joined my first Hunt on Tatooine. Now, SWG hunts were EPIC. In the old days, you could have up to twenty players on a single team. Seriously. I am not kidding. These weren't hunts, these were freaking Safari Expeditions into the deserts. Seeing a Column of Speederbikes and Landspeeder (Back then, there was only one. And it only had one seat sonny!) whizz through the desert like some Futuristic Hells Angels was breath taking. The amount of experince and credits on these hunts was well damn worth it, as well as the sights you saw because of the ramdomly placed mission beacons. It was always a delight in seeing all these uniquely dressed and armoured people, including the aliens of SWG (Rodians, Mon Calamari and Wookiees were the favourites) punching, blasting, stabbing or trapping the crap out of the poor creatures of Tatooine.

In between killing colonies of these creatures, we'd stop and make camp thanks to one of the guys who was a Scout or had Novice Scout and a few amateur Entertainers would step up and flaunt or play our battle fatgiue away. There would be jokes to share, trade deals struck and the odd amateur duel (I always remember getting my arse handed to me with these). We even lived off the land, Scouts could always use the bones and hide of the creatures they just killed for the camp tents for example.

The greatest places to go to Tatooine for Experince if you were a Noob in those days was either Fort Tusken or the Squill Cave. Both were popular with n00b, medium and heavy Profession toons as well as both crammed with loot, POI and badges. You HAD to go and explore the entire Squill cave if you dwelled on Luke Skywalkers homeworld. Squill are not nice, they are one of the most agressive damn creatures on the planet too. The mansized Green types were nothing compared to the massive Red ones at the bottom of the cave though. Teams in the Squill Cave that broke up casually risked a lot of damage to their equipment if they died because there is no chance of escaping the place alive without being knocked out more than three times by the huge gank fest crowds inside. I remember seeing my first actual Jedi in action in the Squill Cave, this was before the wave of Jedi that simply became Jedi by visiting POI I may add. I and many players were not yet embittered and Bounty Hunter Jedi conflict was still quite tiny.

Speaking of conflict, I was eventually pulled into the Galactic Civil War. I wasn't much of a PVPer, but I did like the hang with the Rebels in Anchorhead. This was before JTL mind you, and Anchorhead was a pretty hot spot. The Cantina especially. Sometimes, Imperial Players that were overt loved lurking beside that Cantina waiting to gank the foolish n00b that went overt for fun. I certainly didn't go Rebel for the ugly ugly faction armour that is for certain. When JTL rolled around (By now, I was paying subscriber) it was worth it because I joined the Rebel Navy, learned the basics in my Z-95 Headhunter and Y-Wing to finally learn to pilot an X-Wing. A close friend of mine gave an X-Wing chassis away for virtually nothing, I had to fit the parts myself which were cheap to buy or loot from space. I still sort of miss Hurricane, My X-Wing named after the fighter Hawker Hurricane.

I also remember starting my own PA (The games name for Guilds) The Neutral and Pro-Rebel Outlaws and Spaces or as we called ourselves OaS. We eventually became a Rebel PA and has Rebel Officer uniforms tailored for all active members which we wore ocassionaly. By now, I had chosen a proper set of clothes for my toon. Camoflaged Duster Overcoats, Matched with a dark long sleeved shirt, Camo trousers and leather boots. Sometimes I also wore Bone armour gloves to complete the Desert Gunfigher look.

I remember dabbling with my skills when I finally discovered I could have as many as I wanted as long as I had the skill points to pay for them (Those were the days, 160 skills points the sky was the limit...) and I picked up Medic to help me and my party on those long hot action packed hunts through the planet of Tatooine. I also recall having Scout for a brief peroid, but dropping it. I Mastered Marksman Eventually and took up the basic Hand To Hand combat of Brawler which was needed for Commando. I also, for fun, became an entertainer. I would bemuse many players in my cantina clad in Blue Winged Hawpants, boots and gloves and play with my Snizzlehorn which was the name of the musical instrument, you rude rude people. Me and a few of my friends busked outside Mos Eisley Cantina in hawtpants and our underwear, using the /sing speak command and singing made up music. Won't see that even in the Special Edition cuts of the Star Wars movies eh?

I remember during the last week of my two week free trial deciding to at least see as much as the Galaxy as possible. I bought some Greener Camo stuff from the Eisley Bazaar and boarded the shuttle for Naboo first, then Corellia and finally Dantooine. It stunned me how each planet was incredibly different. Corellia was full of wild yellow plains and brown earthy beaches as well as the most laggy and densely populated city in the game (Coronet in its Corolag days) and Naboo, green hills and swampy forrests with Spiders (Ugh) and Gungans (KILLKILLKILL).

I also remember, with great pride owning a home in the game. In the free trial, I wasn't allowed to actually own property but a nice lady Twi-lek put a house down for me and let be the co-owner. I tried to decorate the thing at first but I was so busy exploring the game I just logged out there and dumped neat stuff I wanted to keep I looted or bought off the bazaar. I named it Romuskis Dacha. When I finally got the game, I was given the actual house and the contents to me and I searched for a place to plant it myself. I found a rather empty area at the foot of the series of hills surrounding Mos Eisley and dumped it there. A player town was nearby too, with a shuttle port so it was indeed a great place. I started decorating the house too a lot better, even through the thing only had two rooms I managed to fill it up with some spartan furniture and mount my most prized loot and weapons on the wall like a proud space Redneck. As times changed, I too changed my home and its location as well as the property inside the house that grew with my toons experince and wealth. My most prized items in that house were two rugs I had gathered pieces of glue and thread throughout the Galaxy to complete. I remember being offered hundreds of credits for them which I always turned down.

Sadly, When the CU hit sadly FarStar became much more quiet due to the exodus and some of my friends were among them. I closed the PA down because most members were quit, sold the furniture inside and kept the deed for one of the players who bought the Hall from an Architect and started investing more time on my Imperial Bria toon, Akrady Renko.

That toon, dear readers we shall hear from another time in another entry.