Star Wars Galaxies

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For other uses, see Star Wars Galaxy.

Star Wars: Galaxies
Developer(s)	Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher(s)	LucasArts
Release date(s)	June 26, 2003 November 7, 2003 December 23, 2004 (discontinued)
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows

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 in the USA and on November 7, 2003 in Europe. A localized version for the Japanese market was made in 2004, and was published by Electronic Arts Japan on December 23, 2004. Japanese acceptance of the game was low, and in November 2005 the servers were shutdown and existing accounts migrated to US servers. As of March 2006, Galaxies is fifth among MMOGs in North American subscribers.^{[citation needed]}

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 1 Gameplay Features 2 Expansions 2.1 Jump to Lightspeed 2.2 Rage of the Wookiees 2.3 Trials of Obi-Wan 3 History 3.1 Development and release 3.2 Combat Upgrade 3.3 New Game Enhancements (NGE) 4 Controversy 4.1 The Jedi in SWG 4.2 Questionable tactics 4.3 Customer voice 4.4 Ongoing Concerns 5 Trivia 6 External links

[edit] 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 Episode IV: A New Hope and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

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 iconic professions: Force Sensitive (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 in 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. Auto-aim and auto-fire features are available, creating a more traditional combat experience, but players eschewing those options are rewarded with an increased chance to do maximum damage. 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. In addition to these specials, players gain the ability to use more powerful and varied type of weaponry as they climb the ranks in their chosen profession.

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:

• Single- and multi-passenger ground vehicles (landspeeders, speeder bikes, and swoops)
• An almost completely player-run economy, wherein player characters are responsible for creating nearly every in-game item, from blasters to starships, all from raw materials collected by player characters and with other player characters as the only consumers. Recently, the developers have added more high-quality equipment to loot tables and as quest rewards, but player crafters remain an essential part of the economy.
• An extensive set of emotes, moods, and associated animations, which affect not only an avatar's physical appearance but also the text used to describe a character's speech, and even the shape of the speech bubble displayed on-screen.
• Standard MMORPG features such as player guilds, chat functionality, and other community features.
• The ability for players to place bounties on opponents that defeat them in PvP battle. Player character bounty hunters can then pick up another character's "bounty mission" on the terminals and track the character down. A bounty can be claimed at anytime, regardless of the target's PvP setting. Up to three bounty hunters can be tracking a character at any given time.
• An extensive avatar-creation system. Characters can hire Entertainers to change their appearance in-game, with even more options than those available at creation. Every visual aspect of a character is thereby changeable at any time after character creation except species and gender.

[edit] Expansions

The three expansions to Star Wars Galaxies have added additional features to the core game. The first expansion, Jump To Lightspeed, has been free to paying subscribers since November 2005 and its content fully available to all Galaxies players. The other two expansions must be purchased, either separately through digital download or as part of a package containing the full original game and the expansions.

[edit] 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 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. Some high-end ships are obtainable only via difficult quests; such ships include the ETA-2 Actis Interceptor (commonly called the JSF or "Jedi Starfighter") and the KSE Firespray.

[edit] 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 Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which was released to theaters at about the same time as the expansion was released.

[edit] 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 (see below). 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.

[edit] History

[edit] 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) and 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^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] 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 criticism from veteran Star Wars Galaxies gamers. Upon its initial release, a number of player issues were reported to the development team. To adapt existing characters to the new skill system, the developers implemented a "respeccing" system. Characters were allowed to sample and trade skills across all professions; skills gained in one profession could be traded. In this manner, players were able to find their preferred skillset or profession/role in 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.

[edit] New Game Enhancements (NGE)

In November 2005, LucasArts' Julio Torres announced that a series of wide-reaching changes were planned to enter testing on November 4. 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 changed 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 cut-scene engine and interactions with famous Star Wars characters.

The new game enhancements, along with the new downloadable trial, were pushed to live on November 15, and the Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit retail box was released on November 22. Online polls, gaming reviews, and newspaper articles (including a major December 9 New York Times story [1]) 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, though John Smedley himself, the President of SOE, admitted subscriptions fell drastically after the inception of the NGE. 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 new system was intended to restore a more "Star Warsy" feeling to the game—to bring the game closer to player expectations which were more in line with a game that felt like the action seen in the movies. 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. 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.[2] This progress includes the re-introduction of many pre-NGE features that were removed, such as target locking, autofiring, the ability to fire special attacks from their keys, and the option to keep the camera behind the character, rather than the NGE's over-the-shoulder perspective.

[edit] 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 smuggling system was included at launch. The development team indicated on multiple occasions that a system was being planned, but none 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. [3]. It was not until September 2006 that a smuggling system was put into the game, over three years after the game's initial release.

[edit] 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.

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 were 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 15 November, 2005, 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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." [4]

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.

Although charts from MMOGChart.com show a significant loss in active player accounts from late April (when the first combat upgrade came out) to August, many of those that left have come back to try out some of the subsequent changes for the free 21 day trial that has been offered. There are no recent official postings on the servers populations, but it is assumed that the populations of all the servers continue to decline.

Several websites have been started up specifically for past and present 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. Such sites include Corbantis.org for the players of the Corbantis server, and Wanderhomies for the players of the Wanderhome server, and RLMMO.com, a forum which is home to many Star Wars Galaxies veterans from all servers.

[edit] Trivia

• The game references and features elements from The Star Wars Holiday Special, such as Lumpy's stuffed bantha, and the customs of Life Day, when the viewer visits Kashyyyk. The red Life Day robes the Wookiees in the special wore are also available during special events in the game.
• The game also references the other two Star Wars spin-off films, in that the player may encounter the Gorax species from Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, and the base of the Sanyassan Marauders, as seen in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
• The game references characters from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, such as Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade from the Thrawn trilogy, and HK-47 from the Knights of the Old Republic series of games.
• All of the names of the galaxies (servers) in Star Wars Galaxies are references to starships in the Expanded Universe.
• Star Wars Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine is a novel based in part on places and events in the game. It was authored by Voronica Whitney-Robinson and Haden Blackman, the LucasArts producer of the game.
• Like many other MMOGs, the game design of Galaxies includes realistic social institutions such as a dynamic player economy and other real-life social phenomena like a complicated division of labor. According to Star Wars Galaxies and the Division of Labor, the division of labor in Star Wars Galaxies around April 2005 produced in-game results similar to those in real life. Galaxies' original game design socialized players to specialize their characters by mastering one or two professions, and to join guilds, in which players relate to one another primarily in terms of their professions (I am the weaponsmith, so I make weapons for the guild) — just as in real life, people are tied to one another by organic solidarity.

There is a radio show based on the game called SWGack that is hosted by Alex Albrect and Joshua Brentano. It is available on ITunes and mmoradio.com

[edit] External links

• Official SWG website
• Star Wars: Galaxies - An Empire Divided at MobyGames
• Can A Table Stand On One Leg? Critical and Ludological Thoughts on Star Wars: Galaxies

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