Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
Studio	Responsible for Interactive LucasArts
Publisher	Sony Online Entertainment
Senior Developer	Raph Koster Haden Blackman
Erstveröffent- lichung	June 26, 2003 November 7, 2003 December 23, 2004
platform	Windows
genre	MMORPG
Game mode	Multiplayer
control	Mouse , keyboard , joystick (Jump To Lightspeed)
medium	CD
language	English , Japanese
Age rating	USK PEGI
information	Monthly costs: around € 15, with station access around € 25

Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (also known as SWG or Galaxies by fans ) was an MMORPG for Windows that was set in the universe of the Star Wars saga by George Lucas . It was developed by Sony Online Entertainment (initially as Verant Interactive ) in collaboration with LucasArts . Raph Koster was primarily responsible for the game design as creative director . Haden Blackman appeared as a producer .

The game was shut down on December 15, 2011, about a week before the start of the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic .

Gameplay

As usual in all MMORPGs, all components of the game are subject to possible changes. Star Wars Galaxies takes its place in the storyline between Episode IV: A New Hope and Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back , but elements from the prequel episodes have also been implemented over time.

The game world of the base game consists of ten planets that appear both in the films and in the Extended Universe : Tatooine, Naboo, Corellia, Yavin IV, Talus, Rori, Lok, Dathomir, Dantooine and the forest moon Endor. Two of the three published expansions also introduced the planets Kashyyyk and Mustafar.

The planets mostly consist of a landscape theme (e.g. desert for Tatooine) on which some cities, albeit identical in architecture, have been placed. The rest of the area is populated with moving enemies ( MOBs ) using a dynamic spawn system . There are also a few sights ( POIs ) and a few dungeons, mostly in the form of caves. Free spaces can be used by players to build houses and player cities ( see below ).

The player can create a total of eight avatars , but a maximum of two per server, with which he moves through the game world. The avatar can be male or female and belong to one of ten species (without extension eight). The choices are: Bothaner , Mensch , Mon Calamari , Rodian , Trandoshan , Twi'lek , Wookiee , Zabrak and with the Jump To Lightspeed expansion , Sullustan and Ithorian .

In addition, each avatar can exercise one of nine professions (also known as classes from other role-playing games). The following are available: Bounty Hunter, Commando, Entertainer, Force Sensitive (Jedi), Medic, Officer, Smuggler, Spy and Trader, which is divided into four subclasses (Domestic Goods, Engineering, Munitions, Structures). In addition, each avatar can optionally learn the professions of politician, beast master and / or pilot.

With the Expertise System, which was introduced in the course of 2006, the player can differentiate the skills of the avatar during the game and select suitable skills from two skill areas for each profession or improve existing skills. As usual in MMORPGs, the avatar becomes stronger during the game and improves its skill values ​​via XP (Experience Points), and it rises in levels. The maximum level is level 90.

As a basic game principle, the player can colonize the planets, produce items, complete missions from NPCs , fight MOBs, breed pets or compete in PVP against other players. The player can improve the avatar's level by collecting XP and collecting awards (so-called badges) for visiting certain locations or completing certain tasks. In addition, the player can operate PVE or PVP with a space fighter (such as a TIE fighter or X-wing) in space. In addition, there are a variety of items that the player z. B. can collect as a decoration for the house of the avatar.

Unlike in most MMORPG, the combat system is no longer turn-based since NGE. First of all, the system was changed in such a way that point & click (similar to first-person shooters ) attacked and skills were used. The player had to aim at the target with a crosshair and individual attacks were started with the mouse button. Due to the massive protests of the players, the system was changed again in mid-2006 so that it is no longer necessary to manually hold the target in the crosshair (to aim) in order to launch attacks. However, manual aiming is still possible - optionally - and has a slight bonus in effect.

Mission system

With the introduction of the NGE ( New Game Enhancements ), an extensive mission concept was also integrated into the game. Using a special quest interface, the player sees exactly what he has to do and what rewards (experience, items, money) await him before accepting a mission. It also shows whether the difficulty level of the mission is appropriate for the level of the avatar. There are extensive lists in the community that show which missions are suitable for which avatar level.

During a mission, the player is sometimes guided to the individual stages of the task with new waypoints and radio messages from the mission commissioner. With the help of these quests and the experience points gained through them, players can manage a large part of the way to the highest character level (level 90) behind them. In the course of the missions you can meet many of the characters known from Star Wars films and novels (including Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker ).

Many missions can only be completed by small or large groups. But there are also missions that can be completed alone or that are intended to explain certain aspects of Star Wars Galaxies to the player in the form of a tutorial .

Heroic Encounter

In these encounters, a group of players meets one or more very strong NPC opponents. The opponents are mostly well-known characters from the expanded Star Wars universe. The fights are of a relatively high degree of difficulty and require a well-planned, tactical approach. They take place in closed instances . Examples include repelling an attack by Tusken robbers on the city of Mos Espa or a fight against Exar Kun.

As a reward for a successfully completed instance, there are sometimes very valuable items, player titles or other awards.

Collection system

Players can complete all sorts of collections to earn rewards. Rewards are, for example, valuable, rare items or special titles. The collections replace or expand the existing badge system.

There are collections for

• Defeating certain numbers of enemies
• Finding certain objects
• Successfully completing Heroic Encounters
• The successful completion of certain missions or quests
• Visiting special places

Special features of the user interface

A rudimentary Firefox-based web browser and a voice chat comparable to TeamSpeak are integrated directly into the game's user interface .

Customization of avatars

Despite the points of criticism mentioned below, there are still aspects of the game that positively stand out from competing products. Regardless of the race, gender and occupation or expertise settings selected, there are other options for personalizing your avatar.

Appearance

When creating the avatar, the player determines the race, gender and appearance of his avatar. Later in the game there is an option to customize the look even further. The entertainer professional class in the game has the possibility (like a powerful cosmetic surgeon) to completely change the appearance of the avatars according to the player's wishes. An even larger range of features is available than with the initial design of the avatar.

Gender and race cannot be changed afterwards. Since 2009, the name of the character can be changed at least 90 days apart.

Background of the avatar

Avatars can collect badges through special achievements such as defeating strong opponents or successfully completing missions. In addition, the player can write an extensive background story about his avatar.

dress

Clothing for the avatar comes in 18 categories (shirt, pants, jumpsuit, robe, etc.). There are between five and 30 different types (e.g. trousers) for each category. These types can be colored almost as desired. As a result, only in rare cases does one avatar look like another.

Player houses and towns

Each player can, provided they have the necessary play money, buy houses for their avatar. These are created by players of the Structure Trader class and differ primarily in construction style and size. They can be placed almost anywhere on seven of the twelve planets, with certain architectural styles being restricted to selected planets. A wide range of furnishings (various colors and shapes of tables, chairs, couches, cupboards, lights, pictures, etc.) are available for interior decoration. In addition to the furniture and other decorative objects, almost all other objects available in the game can be stored in the house and freely positioned in the room. Hardly any house is the same as another, at least in terms of interior design.

Players can also join forces and set up player cities. As the number of residents living there increases, they receive various bonuses as well as additional city decorations and buildings such as bars, hospitals or space shuttle landing areas for better transport connections. Regular elections take place between the residents of a city for the mayor, who has the rights to place buildings and can determine other settings such as taxes.

Since the houses do not automatically disappear after an account is closed (which is only dormant and not deleted), the planets are partly very heavily built up. In order to make room for houses for new players and new cities, the houses of longer inactive accounts were released for demolition by the other players and thus removed from the game world in 2007 and again in March 2009. The houses and all the objects in them were not deleted, but placed in the player's inventory so that they can be rebuilt in a free place at the next opportunity. As of May 2009, houses in player towns will also be released for demolition if their owners have not logged into the game for more than 90 days.

Development history

Galaxies was released on June 26, 2003 in the US with its own east and west coast servers. On November 7, 2003, European sales and European servers followed. The client was identical and avatars could be created on all available servers regardless of version. A localized Japanese version was released on December 23, 2004 by Electronic Arts Japan. The game is held in English except for translated, printed instructions and the localized Japanese servers.

Star Wars Galaxies has sold over a million times in total. However, the number of subscribers only rose to around 300,000 in mid-2003. This result was achieved again in July 2004, but overall it fell continuously until July 2006, according to unofficial sources. The Japanese servers were closed again just one year after their opening, in December 2004, and the existing user accounts were transferred to European or US servers.

Since the expectations of the operating companies were not met overall, LucasArts and SOE decided to make far-reaching changes to the rules, which were made in November 2005 under the name NGE (New Game Enhancements). For the first time in the history of the MMOG genre, essential elements of a running game were changed. Contrary to what had been hoped, the changes resulted in some loud protests from active players, which can still be read in the official forums run by SOE.

After the transition phase, which lasted until summer 2007, the introduction of the NGE was completed for the time being. Most of the community protests have since fallen silent. Officials have not published any figures on how the number of paying customers has developed since the NGE was introduced.

The new Expertise System (see next section) is now available for all professional groups, which means that the design of the avatars is less straightforward and more customizable. Further changes to the basic gameplay have not been announced for the time being. Instead, future innovations will focus on missions / quests and game content. So u. a. the Jedi enclave Aurilia will return to the game and longer missions especially for supporters of the rebel alliance or the empire will be completely revised.

Since the beginning of 2008 the game has been expanded to include the heroic encounter element . It also received a collection system .

Extensions

Jump to Lightspeed

Since the appearance of the add-on Jump to Lightspeed , the player has been able to join one of three factions as a pilot: Alliance, Empire or Freelancer. With this add-on it is also possible to fight battles in space. This expansion became the basic component of the game with the introduction of the so-called NGE.

With this expansion, 2 new races have been added to the game:

• Ithorians
• Sullustans

There are also three pilot careers that you can pursue as a player. These can be chosen independently of the selected character class or race. For every pilot career, you can choose one of three squadrons that you ultimately join.

• Imperial Navy pilot
  • Imperial Inquisition
  • Black Epsilon Squadron
  • Storm Squadron
• Rebel Alliance pilot
  • Crimson Phoenix Squadron
  • Arkon's Havoc Squadron
  • Vortex Squadron
• Independent pilot (freelancer)
  • RSF Squadron (Royal Security Service Naboo)
  • CorSec Squadron (Corellian Security Service)
  • Smuggler Alliance

Episode III Rage of the Wookies

This expansion mainly deals with Kashyyyk, the home planet of the Wookiees . Some of the new features are:

• the exploration of the planet Kashyyyk and the surrounding space
• over 100 story specific quests
• the Jedi Starfighter , the spaceship of Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
• artificial arms for the player character.

Trials of Obi-Wan

The third expansion was released on November 1, 2005 (pre-orderers received it a week earlier) and deals with the lava planet Mustafar known from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith . Players have the opportunity to take on quests from Obi-Wan Kenobi , who in his ghost form gives the player various tasks to better understand the power.

With the purchase of the add-on, players also receive a new mount (the Lava-Flo) and a new house (Mustafarian Bunker). Pre-orderers also received a so-called Skiff - a vehicle for 8 people from the film Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi Knights . The pre-order required a credit card. Many German players were therefore unable to take part.

Online trading card game

In August 2008, SOE published the “ Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game ”, an online trading card game . In this the player can compete against the computer and other players. Using a variety of different cards with different abilities, functions and values, the player must tactfully tact and defend himself against the strategy of his opponent. The game can be played both as a stand-alone client and within Star Wars Galaxies . A SWG subscription is required, there are no additional costs for SWG players. The game was developed by a SOE development team in Denver who previously developed the trading card game Legends of Norrath for EverQuest . After the first set of Champions of the Force cards, the expansion Squadrons over Corellia followed in December 2008 and Galactic Hunters in March 2009 .

Every Galaxies player receives several free packs of cards per month, the contents of which, however, cannot be exchanged with other players. Additional card packs with exchangeable cards must be purchased in the SOE online shop. In addition to the actual playing cards, the card packs sometimes contain so-called loot cards, which can be redeemed for game items in Galaxies . Since many of the game items only available through this - such as new vehicles or houses - had long been requested by players, there was sharp criticism of SOE from many players, as the small chances of these items can only be increased by additional purchases of card packs.

Sales versions

Since June 2003, various sales versions and extensions have been published for SWG . Some sales versions are no longer available in normal specialist shops and have been replaced by newer versions with different additions (add-ons, bonuses, ...).

• Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
• Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided (Special Edition)
• Star Wars Galaxies The Complete Online Adventures
  • Contains SWG: An Empire Divided, SWG: Jump to Lightspeed, SWG: Episode III Rage of the Wookies, SWG: Trials of Obi-Wan and all updates from the past three years
• Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit
  • This version is identical to the retail version of Star Wars Galaxies: Download
• Star Wars Galaxies: The Total Experience
  • Includes SWG: An Empire Divided , SWG: Jump to Lightspeed, SWG: Episode III Rage of the Wookies
• Star Wars Galaxies: Download
  • This version can be downloaded from SOE and includes SWG: An Empire Divided, SWG: Jump to Lightspeed
• Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed
  • This add-on is available online through SOE and in retail packaging
• Star Wars Galaxies: Episode III Rage of the Wookies
  • This add-on is only available online through SOE or in conjunction with SWG: The Total Experience
• Star Wars Galaxies: Trials of Obi-Wan
  • This add-on is only available online through SOE

Criticism of the developer

With a development group around Raph Koster , the players had very high expectations in Star Wars Galaxies . It was assumed that it would be the first game after the Asian MMORPG Lineage , which would surpass the million mark in subscriptions, which would eventually be achieved by World of Warcraft .

In an interview, Raph Koster, who was responsible for creativity at the time, admitted that there was hardly a game during the first beta test . When the game was released, it was widely criticized for being premature release.

In the period that followed, the game system was revised several times, sometimes drastically. Changes made earlier were also discarded. There was also a tendency to bridge the shortage of content by introducing so-called treadmills. The system for unlocking the Jedi, initially thought to be secret, was partially published and special items (so-called holocrons) were built into the game in order to lead the players to this very time-consuming aspect. In order to unlock a Jedi character, the player had to bring his avatar to several professions one after the other up to a certain level, i.e. to collect very large amounts of experience points.

Combat upgrade

Over time, some design flaws became apparent.

• The players had found ways to produce items such as weapons and armor and so-called buffs (temporary bonuses) that were far above the values ​​that the developers had intended as standard. As a result, the entire combat system got into trouble. On the one hand it was now impossible to achieve something without buffs, on the other hand playing with buffs had become very easy.
• The system originally consisted of freely selectable and combinable professions, some of which were based on one another. Players had found out which professional combinations were overpowering and used them extensively and thus contributed to the general deterioration of the balance.
• Originally, every avatar had three reservoirs ( health , action and mind ). If any of these reservoirs were depleted (through the use of certain skills or through attacks), the Avatar passed out and could then be killed. The HAM system (after the English first letters) revealed inherent weaknesses, as the mind pool was difficult to cure. Thus, attacks on the mind pool were overpowering.

These design errors should be corrected with the Combat Upgrade (CU), which was released on April 27, 2005 on the server. Here the developers had rewritten the entire combat, weapon and armor system. Certain professions could only use certain weapons or armor. The level system, which was previously working in the hidden, was now openly displayed, the award of XP was more firmly linked to it and the level of difficulty was generally increased. The Combat Upgrade failed to meet the expectations of many players.

NGE

In early November 2005, just a few days after the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion was released, the New Game Enhancements (NGE) were announced. These were in development for a year and discarded the changes previously made by the Combat Upgrade. The previously combinable over thirty professions have been replaced by the nine rigid professions mentioned above. The previously more turn-based combat system has been replaced by a real-time system. In addition, the core of the game was shifted from the rather free game principle to central quest series, where the majority of the XP was distributed now. In addition to this general simplification of the game, a new tutorial has also been added. In this the player is freed from Han Solo and Chewbacca and taken to the new zone of the Tansarii station, where the player has to complete his first quests. As part of the conversion, previously valuable items that players had acquired over a considerable amount of time became practically useless.

This paradigm shift, later revised in parts (expertise system, return to auto target, etc.) had, contrary to what had been hoped, alienated the players who had got used to the previous system. In the following period there were numerous protests in forums, reviews in magazines or newspapers (including the New York Times on December 9th) by the disappointed players. The developers finally had to admit that these changes were unsuccessful and that the already falling subscriber numbers continued to collapse. The President of SOE, John Smedley, also took part in the discussions.

Veteran gamers recently joined forces and are currently programming emulators for freeshards with other, former variants of Star Wars Galaxies. Most of the time, this development is aimed at restoring the original game design.

The end of SWG

On June 24, 2011, SOE announced in an email and on the game's website that the SWG servers would be shut down on December 15, 2011. Both Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and LucasArts have come to this decision together. The game was finally shut down on December 15, 2011.

Others

Sony Online Entertainment customers who lived in the region of the United States hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were exempt from contributing to SWG and other MMORPGs from the summer of 2005 through September 17, 2007.

literature

• Kurt D. Squire, Constance A. Steinkuehler: Generating CyberCulture / s: The Case of Star Wars Galaxies (PDF; 215 kB). In: D. Gibbs & KL Krause (ed.): Cyberlines: Languages ​​and Cultures of the Internet (2nd ed.) . James Nicholas Publishers, Albert Park 2006. ISBN 1-875408-42-8

Web links

• Official Star Wars Galaxies page ( English )
• Star Wars Galaxies in the German SW Wiki Jedipedia

swell

1. ^ Content by combat levels , SWG-Wiki at Wikia
2. ^ Sony Online Entertainment : Star Wars Galaxies: Game Update 10 Publish Notes, June 2, 2009 ( Memento of April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) . June 2, 2009. Retrieved April 18, 2010.
3. ↑ "MOVE IT OR LOSE IT!" ( Memento from September 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Massively.com: Player city changes abound in Star Wars Galaxies Update 8 ( Memento from January 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). March 15, 2009.
5. ↑ http://mmogchart.com/ MMOGCHART.com
6. ↑ Friday Feature - Chapter 7 Sneak Peek - 08/10/2007 ( Memento from August 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Chapter 7 Preview
7. ↑ Interview with Raph Koster ( Memento from July 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ For Online Star Wars Game, It's Revenge of the Fans , New York Times
9. ↑ http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=swggpdiscussion&message.id=979500#M979500  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT STAR WARS GALAXIES ™ ( Memento from June 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.