I am standing in a place that shouldn't exist. It shouldn't exist because back in 2011 it was decided that this place and the countless others connected to it were no longer financially viable enough to warrant their own existence. Four years ago, almost to this date, thousands of players gathered where I am standing right now to witness the final moments of Star Wars Galaxies.
"When I was very little, I used to create trial accounts of the game for hours and hours just to continue exploring," John tells me. "Even though I never made it off of Tatooine or past level 12, I fell in love." That love is what inspired John, better known by his peers as Aconite, to get involved with the community dedicated to preserving and restoring Galaxies to what it used to be. He's part of a growing trend of MMOs that find a second life through the reverse engineering, emulation, and sometimes theft of their biggest fans.
]]>A quick primer for those who've been living under a rock: 1) SOE's making a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies that is also a zombie game, 2) yeah I know, and 3) zombies have transcended mere fad-dom and become immortal cultural icons for reasons I'll never be able to fully comprehend. H1Z1's impressively ambitious within a very narrow lineage, though. Think DayZ or Rust, but with thousands of players per server, huge areas for them all to build on, and realistic fire to purify all that the unholy hand of man has wrought. Or piss off your friends/enemies. Whichever. Quick trailer and lengthier recording of a recent Twitch stream below.
]]>Star Wars Galaxies was a lot of things to a lot of people. A largely barren land of infinite possibility, a janky pile of half-finished bantha poodoo, a player-driven sci-fi sandbox, a nigh-directionless walk through an abandoned Star Wars theme park. Maybe it was a little of all those things when it first came out, but people (myself included) came to love its quirks. And yet, though war never changes, Star Wars do. The New Game Experience (NGE) took SWG in a more cookie-cutter direction, and nothing was ever quite the same after that. Then the whole universe imploded in 2011. And in the game. Flash forward to 2014: SOE president John Smedley recently claimed that SOE's next game will be "dedicated" to longtime SWG fans. But what does that even mean? Speaking with RPS, he recently elaborated. A little. The game is still technically unannounced, mind.
]]>Back in my day, we played the original pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies, and we liked it. No seriously, we really did, and I think the tide of public (or at least, gamerly) opinion has started lapping at those same shores over the years. Sure, the MMO was a mess when it first tractor-beamed money out of thousands of wallets, but it tried to be legitimately different. It set out to let us authentically inhabit the Star Wars universe, a brilliant vision hampered by half-finished, well, everything. But then the New Game Experience happened, everybody became a Jedi, and SWG was never the same again. SOE, it turns out, regrets that one big time, and they'd like to apologize. With a new game.
]]>So that one might live, another must die. And so it was that Star Wars Galaxies went the way of Mark Hamill's leading man status last week, having been ushered out of existence by the dark forces of licensing in order to make way for The Old Republic. We've already posted news of the closure, but it's well worth having a look at the below player videos of its final moments. As well as all the epic space battle stuff, the death of an online world makes for a strange, and sad affair, where the evident outpouring of emotion is so often hampered massively by the constraints of the game. Yet for all that the stiff animations and looped emotes somehow make these farewells all the more poignant.
Also: watch Luke Skywalker get murdered by Ron Burgundy.
]]>There's always something a little melancholy about a game world being shut off for the last time, but this goes doubly for the ill-fated Star Wars Galaxies, which ran its last Kessel run yesterday. The MMO, which was first launched to much fanfare in 2003, was shut down as SOE's contract with LucasArts expired, and to make way for EA's The Old Republic, which is now imminent. Galaxies was always a troubled beast, of course, being controversially simplified and reduced in scope by 2005's "New Game Enhancements", an attempt to expand the appeal of the MMO which left it a shadow of its former self. I will always remember it most fondly for my time working on PC Gamer, where the guy who sat at the desk behind me became a ruthless and enormously wealthy architect, and also for having playable Ithorians, least commercial of all the alien races.
]]>Poor old Star Wars Galaxies will sleep the dreamless, eternal sleep in just a couple of weeks, not entirely uncoincidentally around the time EA's The Old Republic fires up its servers. For the valiant few who'd remained with SOE's bizzare, ambitious, messy, remarkable MMO, it will be an unhappy day. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in annoyance and were suddenly silenced, then went to a forum to complain.
However, an enterprising few mean to keep the game alive - specifically, in the form it was before the controversial Combat Upgrade that so upset many of the faithful.
]]>There's been a fair bit of grumbling and grief about the upcoming closure of olden MMO Star Wars: Galaxies, with some players reckoning the decision makes no sense and wasn't necessary. I should probably insert some sort of Star Wars quote here, but I'm a 32 year old man - can't I stop doing that now? There's a petition against the closure, of course. There's always a petition. Whether 3000 signatures are enough to change SOE's mind seems unlikely - especially given SOE boss John Smedley has shone a little more light on just why Galaxies was fed to the Sarlacc pit.
]]>A long time (well, eight years) ago in galaxy well, right about here, SOE launched a Star Wars MMO. It was... odd. To say the least. It was also extremely beloved by a significant few, thanks to being something of a sandbox with complex and ambitious features such as player-made cities and pet Rancors. WoW and its many followers might be a whole lot slicker than Galaxies, but they just can't hold a candle to its crafting and virtual economy. Sadly, an attempted relaunch as something more action-centric in 2005 made the dwindling Galaxies faithful love it a little less, and subscriber counts have continued to drop since then.
It's amazing it's kept going for so long, quite frankly. But now, its Jedi will return no more - Galaxies will close for good on December 15, 2011. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
]]>Anyone who previously subbed to Star Wars Galaxies will be able to play for free between February 1st and March 1st. This coincides with "Forces Under Siege", which is a hugely territory conflict add-on, which will allow players to contest for control of major cities. A captured city will confer benefits, such as quests and useful NPCs, to the controlling power. The Imperial types get to drive AT-ATs, so presumably they'll win hands down. Could this be the last hurrah for Galaxies with The Old Republic on the horizon?
]]>No, you don't get to get away from the zombie culture-plague by playing a sci-fi game, because it only pops up there too. A Halloween zombie event for Star Wars Galaxies, inspired by the recent Star Wars zombie novel Death Troopers, is now live (undead?). Assuming anyone is still playing the over-hauled Star Wars game, it seems they'll be able to get involved in a quest arc to fight zombie wookiees (probably, I mean they're in the artwork), among other craziness.
]]>Ooh, this is interesting. I came across this mess when digging out links for the Sunday Papers. Dan Rubenfield is an Ex-Sony Designer, relevantly a veteran of Star Wars Galaxies. He's gone into detail about the story behind the New Game Enhancements - the infamous NGE - and candidly explained what was going on, what went wrong and why it was necessary. The one on his site is considerably more measured than what was originally posted - stored by SWG fans - where he's a little sharper, advocating that those who only want to rant that He Ruined Star Wars Galaxy should go and perform the act of fellatio upon a phallus. Om nom nom, indeed.
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