Star Wars Galaxies

For other uses, see Star Wars Galaxy.

Star Wars: Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies box art.
Developer(s)	Sony Online Entertainment
Publisher(s)	LucasArts
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release	26 June, 2003 7 November, 2003 23 December, 2004 (discontinued)
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer

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 26 June, 2003 in the USA and on 7 November, 2003 in Europe. A localized version for the Japanese market was made in 2004, and was published by Electronic Arts Japan on 23 December, 2004. Japanese acceptance of the game was low, and in November 2005 the servers were shutdown and existing accounts migrated to US servers.

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.

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 twelve 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. In the "Rage of the Wookies" expansion the planet Kashyyyk was added, and the latest installment "Trials of Obi-Wan" has added the planet Mustafar. Each of the twelve planets is represented by approximately 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 and much more.

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. These are known as sub-professions.

The game has a system of customization called "expertise." Expertise is a set of skills within a certain profession, designed to afford more individuality and encourage specialization. As the character advances in level, expertise points are granted. These points can be spent on additional abilities. Each profession has a unique set of expertise, ranging from simple enhancements to the acquisition of new abilities. For example, Jedi can select a "Light Side" (Good) or "Dark Side" (Evil) path using these abilities. Depending on the allocation of points, new special attacks and abilities are granted.

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 which can to help advance his or her character, or just for the fun it.

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(by gaining experience points, know as xp), 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 as well as decrease an enemy's statistics. 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, guild halls and city halls. These buildings, when grouped, can be organized into cities, with members of the Politician profession serving as mayors(all cities require a city hall). As cities grow in population, they become eligible to add services and facilities such as vehicle repair garages and shuttleports and all important cloning facilities(used when a player dies), 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.

CBS News on Expansions

Feb. 22, 2006 CBS news report (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/21/tech/gamecore/main1335511.shtml)

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(CBS) GameCore is CBSNews.com's video game column, written by William Vitka.

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Star Wars Galaxies is not the creature it used to be.

"The game's been severely dumbed down," former Galaxies player Garrett Johnson told me. He played SWG from its inception until Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts implemented the "New Game Enhancement," or NGE.

"They moved from a profession-based system to a class-based system," Johnson explained. "Instead of balancing all the professions, they just reduced the number of combat classes and turned it into a rock/scissors/paper game."

There is something to be said for evolution, which is how Sony Online Entertainment views the change to its massively multiplayer online role-playing game. It sees improvement. Many fans have yet to be convinced.

In our last mailbag, we posted the complaints. Many are not just disappointed — they are enraged.

One e-mail in particular was a stick of dynamite. Written by an anonymous source, it claimed that Sony Online Entertainment had released unfinished software, and it went on to attack company president John Smedley for an alleged narrow focus on only one thing: exploiting the Star Wars license.

"I'm bent about that one," Smedley admitted in a phone call. "As a person, I have zero problem with criticism. I don't have any problem whatsoever with our customers complaining. I think it's perfectly legitimate, and I think it's perfectly legitimate for you guys to have a mailbag with hate mail from Star Wars Galaxies. But of all the mail, that's the one that bothered me because it's filled with a bunch of BS."

"There has never been a release by Sony Online Entertainment that has been incomplete," Smedley said.

How do we define "incomplete?"

A widespread problem, from the player side, is the number of bugs in the game. Smedley admits that Star Wars Galaxies has its share.

A bug is a defect in the code of a program. That is a basic definition. I prefer Ben Silverman's translation: "a bug is the crap that was supposed to be fixed before they sold you the game and ruined your day."

"For some reason or another, the gaming industry has grown used to the idea that a game can ship with some bugs and that this is somehow an excusable side effect of dealing with computer software," Silverman contends.

If a CD doesn't play the last track, you go get your money back. If a DVD is missing a chapter, you go get your money back. If the display on your television doesn't work properly, you go get your money back. If a car company forgets — I don't know, the seat belts, you go get your money back (assuming you were dumb enough to buy a car without seat belts in the first place). Moreover, if one particular company keeps releasing CDs or DVDs or TVs or cars with bugs in them, people start to avoid that company like the plague because they're releasing "incomplete" products.

Of course, this is not only a problem with Sony Online Entertainment. It has infested the entire gaming industry.

Despite a multitude of furious postings at the Star Wars Galaxies forums about the NGE, Smedley told me the postings are only a vocal minority. Most players, he said, are in the game.

Now, I am strongly in favor of common sense, honesty and decency (which undoubtedly bars me from holding public office), but it's hard not to wonder whether Smedley's vocal minority contention is spin — counter-clockwise to Richard Nixon's "silent majority."

This is not to suggest in any way that Smedley is Nixonian, but there is the matter of logic and numbers.

According to MMORPGChart.com, Star Wars Galaxies had approximately 250,000 subscribers in July 2005. Recently "hacked" numbers purporting to show how many active players were in the game potentially put current player numbers far below that.

When I asked Smedley whether those statistics were authentic, leaked or not, it was hard to get a direct answer.

"For years," he said, "we have not put up the numbers for competitive reasons." "Somebody hacked to get those statistics. They did it on the client side. Those [numbers] are not public information, nor is all the information there."

The post, which has been duplicated on many sites, alleges that on a Friday evening, there were only 10,363 subscribers playing.

These numbers never claimed to be a count of Galaxies subscriptions. They are merely an alleged snapshot of how many people were on the servers at a certain point in time.

Smedley is more candid when he speaks generally, saying, "Have the numbers in Star Wars Galaxies gone down? I will tell you that the concurrent numbers have gone down. Are they as low as what was shown there? Absolutely not."

By "concurrent numbers," Smedley is referring to how many people are online at once.

Mark Wallace, a journalist and MMO blogger who maintains Walkering.com, ruminated on what the numbers could mean. "I'm not sure how 10,000 concurrent players compares to SWG's former levels, or to other games with a purported 250,000 subscribers. In part, it depends on how many shards there are. As a point of comparison, EVE Online, which has no sharding but just takes places in a single universe, has just over 100,000 subscribers. Yet it sees concurrency rates of 20,000 on a regular basis, which is fantastic."

"Second Life, on the other hand, also has 100,000 subscribers, but sees concurrency rates of around 5,000 or less most of the time," Mark told me.

I sought out LucasArts to ask about the hacked server numbers and community outrage, the company replied in the following e-mail:

"...it took a couple of days to touch base with the key members of the Galaxies team. Unfortunately, LucasArts has no comment for this story. I'll be sure to keep you informed with announcements for future Galaxies' plans and our upcoming titles."

And then a review-copy of Star Wars: Empire At War arrived on my desk.

Despite rumors that LucasArts imposed the changes, Smedley says the "Combat Upgrade" and "New Game Enhancements" were mutually agreed on. The decision to modify Star Wars Galaxies was made by both companies.

"There's a reason that we did this. The story … is kind of getting lost here…the game was losing subscribers. We had to make this game more accessible to a wider audience or eventually we would not have a business," he told me.

Smedley is not an unsympathetic character. I've rarely — if ever — been able to speak so candidly with a major company's president as I did with Smedley. And to his credit, few other men in his position take it upon themselves to personally respond to players on their forums when serious accusations are made. One has to respect that.

Smedley told me that focus groups drove the changes and what was best for the game.

Those focus groups started after the decision was made to alter the game, and they originated at LucasArts, not SOE.

LucasArts again declined to comment.

"LEC [LucasArts Entertainment Company] handles the marketing for SWG (in the past, Sony Online Entertainment has served primarily in a developer capacity, something that's changed a bit in the last year), so they take the lead on activities like research. However, the surveys were developed jointly between the two companies," Chris Kramer, Director of Corporate Communications for SOE, told me via e-mail.

Sony Online Entertainment never ran its own surveys for the NGE.

Enter Jason Gould, who describes himself as an avid supporter of the original concept in which players were given the tools to create their own world. Gould is one of the administrators of SWG Refugees, a kind of user-created cafe for disenfranchised Galaxies players. He said he was "part of the original 'Combat Upgrade sandbox testers' who in the last months of 2004 and early months of 2005 were told we would be helping to test the new combat upgrade to come."

"All information we were originally told was scrapped and a new system that nobody had asked for and which was obviously not in development for the last year was thrust on the game, which began the alienation of the non-combat players."

To Sony Online Entertainment's credit, the most recent software patch, called "Publish 27," is considered to be a step in the right direction. It adds new content and fixes some of the previous bugs. There are, unfortunately, new bugs; but, the SWG development team seems to have started working on the problems in the game. The community has some proof that they are being heard.

One poster said simply, "Thank you for Publish 27!" Another Publish is on the way.

As it happens, each patch to the game that SOE releases seems to be something of a small step towards making Star Wars Galaxies similar to its pre-NGE state.

SOE knows that they’ve dug themselves into a hole. They're trying to get out.

But the question remains: Is it too little, too late?

It is Gould who writes this possible epitaph in his own words: "SWG is a story rife with broken promise after broken promise, nothing was ever finished or polished, corporate greed and yearn for making current quarter profits pushed development, instead of meeting the real needs and wants of the players."

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 eleven space sectors: Tatoo, Naboo (containing both Naboo and its moon, Rori), Corellia (containing Corellia and Talus), Dantooine, Karthakk (containing Lok), Yavin, Endor, Dathomir, Kashyyyk, 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 Interceptors 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 (Made famous by the Fett ship Slave 1).

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 a space section 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.

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.

History

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 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 Merchant 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.

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.

New Game Enhancements

In November 2005, LucasArts' Julio Torres announced that a series of wide-reaching changes were planned to enter testing on 4 November. 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 15 November, 2005, and the Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit retail box was released on 22 November, 2005. Reviews were largely critical of the changes. The President of SOE, John Smedley, admitted subscriptions fell drastically after the inception of the NGE. Some of the more vocal segments of the playerbase 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. 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 player's desire. 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. Many of the changes taking place after the NGE have been received with a degree of praise.

Trivia

File:Lifedayimage.jpg

A screenshot from the SWG website of Life Day.

• 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 or vehicles 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.

External links

• Official SWG website
• Star Wars Galaxies at Curlie
• Star Wars: Galaxies - An Empire Divided at MobyGames
• SWG Wiki
• SWG Emu