A Farewell to Galaxies: Escapists last stop in SWG

piscian18

piscian18

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Yep another thread where we wax poetic about SWG

Anyway pretty good article from the escapist on some of the things you post SWG'ers missed out on. For better or worse the last unique gameplay MMO. For now anyway

When I heard the announcement that Sony Online Entertainment would be closing the Galaxies servers down on December 15th of this year, I had to go back. Imagine finding out that your home town, of which you had fond childhood memories, was going to be razed to the ground in six months, with nary a brick or foundation left standing. You might want to go back and take some pictures by which to remember the place. In this case, I wanted some screenshots.

Galaxies has been called a "sandbox" game by critics, but that doesn't do the game justice. A sandbox is a place where we play; Galaxies was a world where people lived. It was all about community.

The cantinas were always packed because watching Dancers and listening to music provided by Entertainers provided healing and stat bonuses. Everyone needed something to do while the wounds faded and the buffs took effect, so they talked and shared and laughed like you'd expect to find in any popular bar or club out in the real world.

The best way to learn skills was training from other players. Major transportation hubs like starports weren't a place to breeze through on your way to something better. Lag-inducing knots of characters were omnipresent, with scores of people /shouting out the skills they needed, and social butterflies flitting around the edges of the crowds while they roleplayed.

When player cities went live, they sprung up like weeds. Guilds couldn't wait to build their private megalopolis, declare residence and start elections for Mayor. Merchants and Craftsmen moved into those player cities and set up shop, providing constant traffic and an endless stream of passers-by.
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9054-A-Farewell-to-Galaxies
 
SWTOR is going to be a great game but I bet I'm going to be greatly dissapointed with its lack of SWG features like player cities...

I just dont think its possible for me to go into it and not compare the two after playing SWG for so long.
 
It's unfortunate that SWG didn't feel like Star Wars and had shitty (almost non-existent) content.
 
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Dan_D said:
It's unfortunate that SWG didn't feel like Star Wars and had shitty (almost non-existant) content.
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Why do you have to hate on SWG in every thread that mentions it? We understand you disliked it and I don't see how reiterating this stance adds to the thread every time it comes up.

I personally loved SWG, twice. Took me about 9 months to bore of it the first time and came back for about 6 or so after the CU. NGE killed it for sure. CU wasn't great but had some decent areas to explore and JTL was spectacular. Pre-CU was great. Yes, there was little in game content but the player community and player economy and awesome class system made it so unique I don't ever see another game coming close in those three categories. I'm tempted to go back and look around one last time before SWTOR comes. Get stomped by a womp rat one last time maybe.

I'll pour out a forty on 12-15 for sure.
 
SWG was easily the best MMO out there until the CU. Then they made it into the same crap that SWTOR is aiming for.
 
renixinq said:
Why do you have to hate on SWG in every thread that mentions it? We understand you disliked it and I don't see how reiterating this stance adds to the thread every time it comes up.

I personally loved SWG, twice. Took me about 9 months to bore of it the first time and came back for about 6 or so after the CU. NGE killed it for sure. CU wasn't great but had some decent areas to explore and JTL was spectacular. Pre-CU was great. Yes, there was little in game content but the player community and player economy and awesome class system made it so unique I don't ever see another game coming close in those three categories. I'm tempted to go back and look around one last time before SWTOR comes. Get stomped by a womp rat one last time maybe.

I'll pour out a forty on 12-15 for sure.
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Because it's the worst Star Wars game ever made? While I can recognize on a technical level that there were a few really awesome things about SWG, it's still a horrible game. Administrating Exchange servers or Active Directory is actually more fun. I suppose I'm still bitter that I paid $50 for that piece of shit. It's the biggest aborted fetus of a Star Wars game ever. After my wallet was raped, I suppose I never fully recovered. The betrayal I felt after several friends of mine recommended this steaming turd to me still feels like a stabbing pain through my very core. (As well as that empty spot where $50 used to be.) I still have nightmares about that crappy game. I expected to get a Star Wars game and instead I found X-Wing and TIE pilots who were permanently grounded running around in flight suit. There were endless lines waiting to be "buffed" just so they could accomplish the simplest of tasks in the game. Even with all the iconic music and seemingly Star Wars specific visuals, the game felt like anything but the worlds Ultimate MMO based on one of the most badass Sci-Fi properties of all time. It was like a twisted parody of Star Wars. To this day I still sometimes curl up in a corner with my Boba Fett coffee mug and try and tell myself it's OK.

Group therapy doesn't seem to be helping either. :(
 
renixinq said:
Why do you have to hate on SWG in every thread that mentions it? We understand you disliked it and I don't see how reiterating this stance adds to the thread every time it comes up.
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Meh its his right same as I go out of my way to "troll" COD threads. Because COD is nubcandy.
 
renixinq said:
Why do you have to hate on SWG in every thread that mentions it? We understand you disliked it and I don't see how reiterating this stance adds to the thread every time it comes up.

I personally loved SWG, twice. Took me about 9 months to bore of it the first time and came back for about 6 or so after the CU. NGE killed it for sure. CU wasn't great but had some decent areas to explore and JTL was spectacular. Pre-CU was great. Yes, there was little in game content but the player community and player economy and awesome class system made it so unique I don't ever see another game coming close in those three categories. I'm tempted to go back and look around one last time before SWTOR comes. Get stomped by a womp rat one last time maybe.

I'll pour out a forty on 12-15 for sure.
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No offense but while Dan may be trolling a bit SWG was for all intents and purposes .. a shitty game. Not because of the players but because of Sony. They left the game in a really shitty state forever then suddenly came back and took a massive shit all over it by completely revamping classes.

I'm sure the die hard fans remember when becoming a force user was a random event , then suddenly anyone could be. Sony didn't know what to do with it and enjoyed the easy revenue.

The ideas that surrounded SWG were awesome but few of them truly worked out well that benefited the players. I'm sure die hard fans like you had some great memories but in actual honesty you probably enjoyed the interactions between other players and that's less to do with the game but in fact the social atmosphere of MMO's by there very nature.
 
Loved pre cu swg. I was a combat medic. There has yet to be anything like it in any other game I have played. It had the best pvp to me, when the imps would raid ancorhead or what ever it was that was awesome. BG's get old quick, actual world pvp was awesome. Oh and I didn't have to spend hours in lame dungeon trying to raid for gear or grinding bg's was sweet too, I play to pvp, not to grind gear to pvp.
 
Splinter24 said:
Whoa whoa whoa

anything related to the prequel tie-in's takes that special honor.

SWG may come after...
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Nope. I'd rank it at the very bottom. Only Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is horrible enough to come anywhere near Star Wars Galaxies in terms of being bad. I'd even put the Phantom Menace Movie game above Star Wars Galaxies.

Godmachine said:
No offense but while Dan may be trolling a bit SWG was for all intents and purposes .. a shitty game. Not because of the players but because of Sony. They left the game in a really shitty state forever then suddenly came back and took a massive shit all over it by completely revamping classes.

I'm sure the die hard fans remember when becoming a force user was a random event , then suddenly anyone could be. Sony didn't know what to do with it and enjoyed the easy revenue.

The ideas that surrounded SWG were awesome but few of them truly worked out well that benefited the players. I'm sure die hard fans like you had some great memories but in actual honesty you probably enjoyed the interactions between other players and that's less to do with the game but in fact the social atmosphere of MMO's by there very nature.
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I'm probably trolling just a bit. I agree with you completely though. I know a lot of people who loved SWG but it was their interactions that kept them playing it more than anything.
 
If nothing else, I have never found another MMO that let you customize your house with loot from corpses the way you could in SWG. That made it enjoyable for my gf and therefore the only MMO she's ever played with me.

I had fun with it pre CU. Can't say I miss it though. Only MMO I really get nostalgic about is EQ1 and that's probably more just because it was my first MMO experience rather than the game itself. You can't really capture that feeling of uniqueness all over again.
 
Also Galaxies deserves to be hated on not only for how bad it was, but for how much potential it had. There was some really solid design ideas in that game. It still is the only MMO I've ever seen where player housing was actually cool, it actually had a reason to be and was something other than a place to keep your shit.

However the execution was just completely awful, so the game was awful.

That makes it easy to hate. A game that is just awful in all respects, well you probably just give it a miss and don't care. However a game that you can see the potential for greatness in that then fails to live up to it in any way shape for form, that really sucks.
 
Sycraft said:
Also Galaxies deserves to be hated on not only for how bad it was, but for how much potential it had. There was some really solid design ideas in that game. It still is the only MMO I've ever seen where player housing was actually cool, it actually had a reason to be and was something other than a place to keep your shit.

However the execution was just completely awful, so the game was awful.

That makes it easy to hate. A game that is just awful in all respects, well you probably just give it a miss and don't care. However a game that you can see the potential for greatness in that then fails to live up to it in any way shape for form, that really sucks.
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I see some truth in this. From a license perspective, I think it's a great idea and there were good ideas in the game but you are right. Execution was abysmal.
 
Dan_D said:
Nope. I'd rank it at the very bottom. Only Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is horrible enough to come anywhere near Star Wars Galaxies in terms of being bad. I'd even put the Phantom Menace Movie game above Star Wars Galaxies.
.
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In that case, I weep for you. Emotional scars, deep they are :(
 
SWG was like a really hot bi-polar girlfriend. The good times were really, really fun. The bad times...well...
 
SilverSliver said:
SWG was like a really hot bi-polar girlfriend. The good times were really, really fun. The bad times...well...
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If you consider putting your nut sack in a table vice fun, then yeah, Galaxies had some fine moments. :p
 
Sycraft said:
Also Galaxies deserves to be hated on not only for how bad it was, but for how much potential it had. There was some really solid design ideas in that game. It still is the only MMO I've ever seen where player housing was actually cool, it actually had a reason to be and was something other than a place to keep your shit.
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DAOC says hello... you could decorate your house, attach a consignment merchant, place trophies from downed rare/epic-level mobs in it, store stuff, add crafting supplies/merchants/travel teleporters/etc. to it, etc. :D. I spent wayyyyyy too much time playing with housing in that game, and that was hardly the focus of my time :eek:.
 
Dan_D said:
If you consider putting your nut sack in a table vice fun, then yeah, Galaxies had some fine moments. :p
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I put my nutsack in that table vice for 2 years. I loved that game. Everything bad about it can be attributed to Sony and their mis-management. They never really knew what they had, and as someone said, it fell on the player interaction side to help fill in the void that SOE left as far as content was concerned. Having friends to play it with made all the difference.

After SWG, I never could get into something like WoW. I tried. It was just, find a monster, hit it with a stick. Get a bigger stick, find a bigger monster. Now RAID. RAAAAAAAAAAAAAID. I also prefer my fantasy science fiction. The only non sci-fi MMO I've played since SWG, was Age of Conan, which was awesome, until, you know

I felt that SWG was like an awesome choose your own adventure style of game. There may not have been the most 'hand-fed' questing system like we have in, say, every other MMO that's been released since, but looking back, that's what I liked the most. You had crafters making crazy ass weapons, custom vehicles, custom armors. There were so many classes it was daunting, but the variety was entertaining.

When they did start releasing the story quest stuff, we would load up our little 10 person guild and go run that shit. Instant fun, again, probably because of the little gang of mischief makers I ran with, but the game was the counduit for that. Totally open to whatever you wanted to do.

I remember the bad too: endless character nerfing and respeccing because SOE just blew your goddamn build with some half-assed skill revamp because it was too powerful in PVP, or too powerful in PVE. Complete revamps of the Combat XP system and the way cool-downs and Abilities hit, removing classes completely, and that god-awful New Game Edition.

Holy shit, that was a clusterfuck to end all clusterfucks. Let's bolt on a FPS/TPS control scheme to a cooldown based point and click MMO. Wow. I hope somebody got boiled in oil for that shit.

The last best thing about SWG that noone can say has never been matched to this day in any game since, was the JTL expansion. Space bitches. Completely customizeable weapons, droid, and shield layouts. Custom colors, badass weapons as quest rewards, rare ships as loot. That was awesome. It was like the XvT game that we never got, and still don't have. If you didn't think JTL was badass then you are a bad human.

No soup for you.

I get that the game wasn't for everybody, but it deserves credit for being different, and unfortunately, failing so spectacularly that nobody has had the balls to try it again.

I'm hoping that TOR isn't just a WoW engine copy with a Single Player hard-on. I'll be there day one, but I'll be cautiously optimistic.
 
Dan_D said:
It's unfortunate that SWG didn't feel like Star Wars and had shitty (almost non-existent) content.
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Just gonna quote this here. SWG blew nuts from Beta to live. If content = killing Banthas then all the SWG lovers need to get into Korean MMOs. I hear those are GREAT grindfest
 
Bah, Haters gonna Hate.

:p

And seriously, The Phantom Menace the movie game?

Trollery of the purest form, sir.
 
I do feel that the game was pretty bad but had massive potential. I really enjoyed the creature handler in the short amount of time I played it.
 
To date it is still my favorite MMO. The crafting system there is the best I have ever seen, and have yet to see. PvP was a lot of fun, even if it was mostly dominated by a few certain classes, there were always those people who had some exceptional, or legendary items, or buffs that you knew to watch out for.

SOE made me lose faith with them, I will never again buy anything SOE has any part in...unless they re-open pre-cu servers, haha.
 
Dan_D said:
Nope. I'd rank it at the very bottom. Only Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is horrible enough to come anywhere near Star Wars Galaxies in terms of being bad. I'd even put the Phantom Menace Movie game above Star Wars Galaxies.
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Oh, I don't know, there have been some pretty bad Star Wars games; Rebellion is pretty bad, for instance. Great scope, incredibly bad game.
 
Balthazor said:
Oh, I don't know, there have been some pretty bad Star Wars games; Rebellion is pretty bad, for instance. Great scope, incredibly bad game.
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I've played most of the Star Wars games that have come out for PC and many that have been console exclusives. I'd still rank Galaxies dead fucking last. It's that bad in my opinion. Yes, even below Rebellion.

I know people loved the crafting system and while I had no interest in it, I saw it as a good thing. I had friends who were seriously into the crafting portion of the game and I got great items out of it. The player cities / housing was a cool idea, though it was rendered badly graphically speaking. Player controlled economics was an awesome idea and again, I've never seen anything like it before or since. All these are good things but none of that could make up for the boring quests, bad graphics, horrid system performance (given the way it looked) and other shortcomings. The features in JTL should have been there from the very start of the game.
 
GoldenTiger said:
DAOC says hello... you could decorate your house, attach a consignment merchant, place trophies from downed rare/epic-level mobs in it, store stuff, add crafting supplies/merchants/travel teleporters/etc. to it, etc. :D. I spent wayyyyyy too much time playing with housing in that game, and that was hardly the focus of my time :eek:.
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+1 for DAOC
 
Dan_D said:
It's unfortunate that SWG didn't feel like Star Wars and had shitty (almost non-existent) content.
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Sorry brother but this No content you talk about gave me lots to do in game for 5 years! Yes it was killed with the NGE but Sony wanted what WoW had a no brain game play for all the 15 year old's and that killed it.

don't know if you ever got to play the original game but it was and always will be an unreal game in my heart!
 
Dan_D said:
I've played most of the Star Wars games that have come out for PC and many that have been console exclusives. I'd still rank Galaxies dead fucking last. It's that bad in my opinion. Yes, even below Rebellion.

I know people loved the crafting system and while I had no interest in it, I saw it as a good thing. I had friends who were seriously into the crafting portion of the game and I got great items out of it. The player cities / housing was a cool idea, though it was rendered badly graphically speaking. Player controlled economics was an awesome idea and again, I've never seen anything like it before or since. All these are good things but none of that could make up for the boring quests, bad graphics, horrid system performance (given the way it looked) and other shortcomings. The features in JTL should have been there from the very start of the game.
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I'm not sure if it was widespread or not... but the whole idea of solo grouping (pre-NGE/CU) was bizarre.

Randomized quests from quest kiosks gave monetary rewards based on total group 'levels.' The more people and the higher their skill levels, the tougher the quest NPCs and the higher the monetary reward for completion. 'Solo grouping' is the idea of grouping temporarily to get some extremely difficult and rewarding quests, but then break your group to actually go do the quests, thereby keeping the rewards to yourself.

Of course the difficulty of these quests was too much for a normal single player, so ahead of time you would need to get super-buffed by doctors and entertainers, which entailed standing in line (literally, in the game world, standing in line) and then paying a highly skilled doctor to buff you until you were incredibly tough and able to beat the the aforementioned difficult quests without too much trouble. These ultra-buffs cost a pretty penny, so in order to afford them you had to have a good source of revenue of coming in, or you are stuck doing 'solo grouping' for cash, which itself requires the ultra-buffs in order to make viable.

The whole system was bizarre!

No argument it was a game with a lot of lost potential. I really enjoyed the idea of the different skill trees and the sort of Elder-scrolls-esque way of levelling skills, and the player-based economy was certainly interesting. But too many things got way out of hand or were badly implemented.
 
I played SWG for months before CU or the NGE and even then it was crap. Its a miracle the game has made it this far.

I remember mastering my profession on my wookie and trying to make him a Jedi. I started the quest just to find out that it would take six months to grind it out. Ridiculous.

SWG had a great social Star Wars feel to it. I remember going on this one website to find out where the quality meats were dropping so I would go kill three rancors BY MYSELF buffed to harvest them.

One day after killing my 1 millionth rancor I stopped and realized how absolutely garbage this game was and walked into one of the towns and gave all my stuff away to the first wookie I saw. Done.
 
fdiaz78 said:
I played SWG for months before CU or the NGE and even then it was crap. Its a miracle the game has made it this far.

I remember mastering my profession on my wookie and trying to make him a Jedi. I started the quest just to find out that it would take six months to grind it out. Ridiculous.

SWG had a great social Star Wars feel to it. I remember going on this one website to find out where the quality meats were dropping so I would go kill three rancors BY MYSELF buffed to harvest them.

One day after killing my 1 millionth rancor I stopped and realized how absolutely garbage this game was and walked into one of the towns and gave all my stuff away to the first wookie I saw. Done.
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The buff system is one of my main complaints about that piece of shit.
 
Dan_D said:
Nope. I'd rank it at the very bottom. Only Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds is horrible enough to come anywhere near Star Wars Galaxies in terms of being bad. I'd even put the Phantom Menace Movie game above Star Wars Galaxies.
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You must have never "played" Rebellion....
 
Splinter24 said:
You are one scorned lover.
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Well if you grew up with Star Wars (which I'm sure many of you didn't grow up watching the originals in the theaters) then it would be easier to understand why someone might be jaded on what Lucasarts has done with video game arm of its franchise in the last 15-20 years. Galaxies was the kind of Star Wars sandbox game people had dreamed of for years. Seeing it end up a neglected and abused child despite the massive amount of potential was really disappointing.

Some of you were far more forgiving and willing to look past the many glaring flaws SWG had. Most of us that really loved the franchise were just completely put off by what Sony did with it.
 
Godmachine said:
Well if you grew up with Star Wars (which I'm sure many of you didn't grow up watching the originals in the theaters) then it would be easier to understand why someone might be jaded on what Lucasarts has done with video game arm of its franchise in the last 15-20 years. Galaxies was the kind of Star Wars sandbox game people had dreamed of for years. Seeing it end up a neglected and abused child despite the massive amount of potential was really disappointing.

Some of you were far more forgiving and willing to look past the many glaring flaws SWG had. Most of us that really loved the franchise were just completely put off by what Sony did with it.
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Pretty much. It had so much potential and what we got wasn't even as good as being half-assed.
 
Godmachine said:
Well if you grew up with Star Wars (which I'm sure many of you didn't grow up watching the originals in the theaters) then it would be easier to understand why someone might be jaded on what Lucasarts has done with video game arm of its franchise in the last 15-20 years. Galaxies was the kind of Star Wars sandbox game people had dreamed of for years. Seeing it end up a neglected and abused child despite the massive amount of potential was really disappointing.

Some of you were far more forgiving and willing to look past the many glaring flaws SWG had. Most of us that really loved the franchise were just completely put off by what Sony did with it.
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The TIE Fighter and X-Wing games were fairly good for their age. The Old Republic games were good (the first moreso.) Dark Forces & Jedi Knight games were good. Empire at War, Battlegrounds, and Republic Commando were fun but didn't rise to the level of greatness.

It is really unfortunate that SWG didn't rise to the level of any of these games. It had some compelling ideas.
 
TIE Fighter is still my favorite Star Wars game of all time. I enjoyed it more than anything else I've played from the franchise. X-Wing is second to that as well.

But nothing has really come up to that level since then.
 
Godmachine said:
TIE Fighter is still my favorite Star Wars game of all time. I enjoyed it more than anything else I've played from the franchise. X-Wing is second to that as well.

But nothing has really come up to that level since then.
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I liked x wing alliance too but had the most fun in X VS Tie 33.6 dial up gaming with people all over the word was mad!

I spent most of my SWG time in space master's in all 9 and some more than 1 time this will be what I miss the most too bad we can not pull it out and just have that as it is an amazing space sim!
 
Never really played galaxies (outside of a friend letting me mess around on his account for a while), but it's a very interesting article all the same
 
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