Star Wars Galaxies

Well, to prevent this thread from being locked due to non-debate, I guess I'll start some.

Does anyone still play this game? I played it from July 2003 till around October, then again in Februrary 2004 to see what changes had been made (they just put in player cities, a few jedi have sprouted cause they finally revealed the secret to getting them at the time, which was to grind 8 random professions based on what the holocrons told you to, and mounts/vehicles were in the game).

They have since made so many changes to the game that it only seems to superficially resemble Star Wars now (heck, when I played, it sure didn't feel like Star Wars). Even one of my friends, who's a hardcore Star Wars fan (he has a ton of the toys and comics) quit recently because they eliminated a lot of classes, including his (I think he said it was a scout), so all his hard work went to nothing (they sure elminated my favorite class, the creature handler, so I will never go back to it either).

One major problem for me with the game was, it never felt like Star Wars. Sure, I could destroy some random stormtroopers and imperial bases, but whatever I did, it never really felt like I was contributing to the Rebel Alliance like in the single player games. Getting crappy rewards for quests sure didn't help (I remember Luke giving me a broken holocron or something, which basically amounted to junk, and if I recall, there are no NPC's who will buy junk from you, which is kind of stupid).

To make a comparision, in World of Warcraft, there is this event called the Ahn'quiraj (spelling?) War Effort. I haven't read too much about it, but apparently if you gather enough resources, a special dungeon opens up, where players can then go and "fight off the invading forces" (it's just an excuse to raid it, but I like how they put a storyline behind it). It boils down to basic grinding for resources (like gathering leather, or cooking food), but the NPC's on both sides (alliance and horde) are working together on this, and they want a TON of resources (for instance, they want like 400,000 linen cloth bandages, which is going to require the entire server population to contribute).

Why is this different? Because I know that any items I give to them that they want is going to this cause. Not only that, anytime you turn in those items, the NPC's reward you with commendation medals and a box filled with various items (usually junk, but it's great for my enchanter to break down into stuff needed for enchanting). The medals you can turn in for faction gains with the 4 factions your allied with (great for working on discounts with that faction, as well as purchasing one of their mounts).

In light of other games out now, like D&D Online, as well as the behemoth that is World of Warcraft (6 million+ subscribers as of this writing, something no other MMO game has ever gotten too close to. Unfortunately, this is also bad because a lot of servers experience massive lag during primetime and Blizzard has yet to reliably fix that problem from what I've seen/read. Hasn't slowed it down its popularity much though lol), I wonder how many players still play SWG.

Sorry for the many WoW references, but I was making some comparisions. I'm sure SWG has changed a lot since then, but it's probably still largely the same from when I played. I will say this though, gathering resources in SWG for crafting was actually kind of fun compared to other MMO's I've played (Ultima Online's was kind of fun too), and were it not for those stupid "critical failures" (where you lose all of your materials for making it, which can be bad if you spent a real life week gathering stuff to make, say, a house), and the fact that crafters also needed some combat skills to earn money early on (only way to get money at first was selling stuff to other players, which is usually junk early on, or running missions, which were boring and sometimes bugged so the camp wasn't where your radar says it is), I would've considered rolling a crafter.

They also brought mounts and vehicles in to make travelling less cumbersome (I remember running around all the planets, and going on foot sucks let me tell ya lol) a lot faster than most other games at the time (Dark Age of Camelot, for example, took 4 years to bring out their mounts, and although you could buy a basic one, to get the good mounts you had to purchase an expansion pack. I think the reason they took so long is smaller dev team, and the fact that the speed classes whined they'd be useless if player-owned horses were brought in).

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yeah, this game had so much potential. I mean, it was STAR WARS. Although the prequel movies were kind of a let down, it was a chance to live in the Star Wars universe. Too bad it never really happened...

There's nowhere I can't reach.