…in a galaxy far, far away, the NGE hit Star Wars: Galaxies. The date: November 15th 2005¹.
Five years later, despite server closures and merges and a minimal population, the game is still going and content has still been added to the game including, amongst other additions, the planet of Hoth which went live on November 20th 2008. The latest patch, Game Update 18, was released last month.
SWG was the first MMO I devoted a lot of time but I, along with the rest of my guild, ended up leaving shortly after the NGE hit. Even though I’ve now spent considerably more time not playing it than I did playing it, I still have fond memories of the game. I’m under no illusion that the game itself was lacking in several areas but it was different at the time and it could be a lot of fun and extremely social. A glance at the Player Cities list on the official website and I still recognise a couple of cities that still exist after all this time on our old server and that’s nice to see. Our old city, unfortunately, is not one of them.
A new Star Wars MMO is coming out next year – EA Bioware’s Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic Online, which, it seems to me, is eagerly anticipated and derided by MMO players in equal measure. Sony could do worse things than take advantage of this by making SWG free-to-play as there may well be a fair few players – like me – who would be tempted to go back and see what’s changed. And if SWTOR ends up being delayed at all then SOE could end up being quids in by attracting some of those who can’t wait for their Star Wars MMO fix and may be willing to shell some hard earned cash on some Mandalorian armour from the SWG shop.
SWG’s ancient graphics and hokey systems are no match for a modern game engine and I’m not sure that anyone could have forseen that it would have lasted another five years but, like the Jedi, it’s fire has not yet gone out of the universe².
¹ If I’d got my act together, I would have posted this last week. I didn’t manage either.
² I am truly sorry for this sentence.
there’s always SWGEMU…
i’m sure there are a few popular MMOs that could be mentioned with archaic graphics, and very few with a crafting system so good. eitherway all very supprising SOE’s SWG is still about!
I too mourn what has become of SWG. Not so much the game itself, but the player experience I and many others had. I’m still reeling from the loss of my player association, which worked hard to build it’s city and ranks.
When the NGE hit…my entire PA of about 40 active players vanished. Among them were a few real-life friends. The single worst moment for me in gaming.
I tried sticking with it and had since moved on to another PA, but it wasn’t the same. At that point, I just didn’t have any interest.
I don’t wish ill on SWG, but for any game…the most important piece is the players. They made a bad decision.
So many online friends/guilds left when NGE hit. And asking if SOE could open a server utilizing the pre-NGE rules give the answer that SOE never saved the old version…which is basically BULL…. Mythic COULD resurrect a server with the pre-TOA rules but choose not to…which is the same with pre-NGE SOE. They couldn’t justify the time & money spent…unless 250,000 players signed binding-contracts to return to the game. Yeah, right.
As for going back to the old graphics/game-style, I am once again exploring the halls of Yserbius via the INN Revival project. The site now has a Windows installer which will download and install DOS-box and configure INN automatically.
Sometimes old-school gaming makes you realize just how spoiled we are all today! -)
TQQdlesâ„¢,
Dolnor Numbwit
Eternal Newbie