Star Wars Galaxies

...and I decided, "Why not?"

Galaxies was my first MMO. I have some really great memories of the post-CU pre-NGE era in which I played. The first few days I played I didn't even do much of anything other than wander around those fantastic, lush environments just marveling at it all.

I found my niche in Droid Engineering. I never thought I'd have so much fun playing what amounts to a business simulation. I loved that there were lots of such non-combat related activities, and near the end I was making millions every day.

That was then.

My 15 days are ongoing, I think I have 11 or so left. Here's my impressions so far:

The environments are as good as ever. This game still has a fantastic sense of place and ambiance about it. I'd stack these environments up against any MMO, they're just terrific.

The crafting is about as good as ever. Droid Engineering especially. I really missed assembling my little friends, and I love how intricate the crafting is. This is quite possibly the best crafting in any MMO even today, I don't think you'll find better anywhere. And they have Droidekas now. First thing I did when I got in was craft a Droideka.  Level 60 seems a bit low for something that should be able to give a Jedi a run for his money, but I'll take what I can get.

The game seems to run much, much better than it did when I left.  Way less lag.  My system is basically the same old tired work horse today as it was then, so something else must have changed.  Which brings me to my next point.

The population.  Ahazi used to be the #2 or 3 server in population.  It's dead even during prime time now. Rarely do you actually see other people. This is probably at least one factor in why the game runs so smoothly now. Less people hammering the server.  Way, way less.

The combat is as junky as ever. If I wanted to play a first person shooter, I'd play a real first person shooter and get a far superior experience. MMOs should have MMO combat.  To me, City of Heroes has the very best MMO combat.

I"ve made some Droids, but I doubt they'll sell with so few prospects for customers. A transfer to Bria, the best post NGE population you're going to find post NGE on the North American servers would be nice, but $50? No way. If I resubbed, I'd just grind Droid Engineer anew.  Excuse me, Trader: Engineer.

I won't be resubbing, but it's nice to see all my old stuff agin, and craft a Droid or two with the finest MMO crafting system in existance.

I'll still sometimes look at my collector's edition and just sigh...

He said "I won't be resubbing, but it's nice to see all my old stuff agin, and craft a Droid or two with the finest MMO crafting system in existance."

Its nice of SOE to offer these fine oppertunities that allows you, the player customer to confirm once again that you wisely left the SOE games for bigger and better MMO experiences . But I have to agree , the crafting systems is the best , too bad its in a game were just about everything else was changed three times or more.

I started in CU and left with the NGE.  I came back for a while because I missed the crafting and had goals there to complete.  I also came back for the JTL master pilot and squadron goals I wanted to complete.  Once those goals were complete there was no reason to craft any more as there were no customers.  Some stuff did sell in my vendors that were crafted, but compared to CU sales, it was off buy 95%.  Infact the only things that sold regulary were space rewards that sat in my storage vendor for 99mil.

I then rolled a medic since they give two toons a server per account and gave the legacy quest a go.  BORING.  I hate the linear forced quests that is the NGE.  So I left.

Later came BM.  I had crafters so I subbed to try it.  I had a good time crafting the parts for and the Incubators.  I built like 20 max high mutation and 20 of the opposite kind.  I forget what the term is.  I thought I could have multiple Incs running.  Learned later I couldn't.  Put the extra incs in a vendor for like 10Mil each and they were selling regulary.  None of the other stuff I crafted was.  Especially maxed out weapons.  When I finally made some creatures, I made one mount for Kash.  I had no desire to make combat pets.  I wanted to make a zoo.  To bad for me SOE decided that wasn't fun and left the ability to stuff incubated pets out.  Frustrated I left again.

Came back one more time Dec 07 taking a break from EVE.  I unsubscribed after two days.  That was my final time and have no desire to go back ever.  I don't care about the scavenger hunt system they have.  The JTL add ons aren't even enough to make me care.  To those that play and think it's great...good for you, enjoy your game.

To  the OP's point about the still lush environment, I agree.  However since the NGE, walking into evey major city seeing billboards in place with the unrealized desire to do in game advertising kills some of that lush environment for me.

As to lag.  Imho, yes the lag is higher than even the CU.

Those billboards, yeah, they sure do frustrate me looking at them.  At least they have no ads.  How dare they muck up such a great, immersive environment like that.

JTL never really did it for me. Felt like a second-rate X-Wing, if you remember that old PC game. The missions in X-Wing were far more engaging and the features were vastly superior (including Target memory which JTL frustratingly lacks). It is fun optimizing your ship with various parts, and JTL remains more or less untouched compared to the rest of the game.  NGE didn't hit it at all really.

I've been messing around with the Storyteller feature. The system has promise, but you need to be able to name bosses and create dialogue trees, otherwise it makes for a pretty, but hollow experience (just like the NGE itself, eh?)  Points for effort, but they need to flesh it out to make it truly useful. Boss naming and dialogue trees will probably never happen thanks to exploit/abuse concerns. Too bad, the system could be great. And the scenes need to last at least 24 hours, not just 15.

P.S.  Oh, and the interface.  It's as craptastic as ever.  Galaxies has never had a good interface, but the NGE stuck that awful reticle in the center of the screen.  For a noncombatant like a Trader, this interface is just junk.  I hit Alt to switch it to mouselook, and have mouselook as my default, but boy, this interface just blows.

P.P.S.  Does anyone know how to clear the right-mouse button target?  You use an ability and it gets put on that little side window thing so that every time you right click after that it activates that ability/item.  I have no idea how to clear it, and it's frustrating the heck out of me.  Boy this interface stinks!

Originally posted by OSF8759

Those billboards, yeah, they sure do frustrate me looking at them.  At least they have no ads.  How dare they muck up such a great, immersive environment like that.

JTL never really did it for me. Felt like a second-rate X-Wing, if you remember that old PC game. The missions in X-Wing were far more engaging and the features were vastly superior (including Target memory which JTL frustratingly lacks). It is fun optimizing your ship with various parts, and JTL remains more or less untouched compared to the rest of the game.  NGE didn't hit it at all really.

I've been messing around with the Storyteller feature. The system has promise, but you need to be able to name bosses and create dialogue trees, otherwise it makes for a pretty, but hollow experience (just like the NGE itself, eh?)  Points for effort, but they need to flesh it out to make it truly useful. Boss naming and dialogue trees will probably never happen thanks to exploit/abuse concerns. Too bad, the system could be great. And the scenes need to last at least 24 hours, not just 15.

P.S.  Oh, and the interface.  It's as craptastic as ever.  Galaxies has never had a good interface, but the NGE stuck that awful reticle in the center of the screen.  For a noncombatant like a Trader, this interface is just junk.  I hit Alt to switch it to mouselook, and have mouselook as my default, but boy, this interface just blows.

P.P.S.  Does anyone know how to clear the right-mouse button target?  You use an ability and it gets put on that little side window thing so that every time you right click after that it activates that ability/item.  I have no idea how to clear it, and it's frustrating the heck out of me.  Boy this interface stinks!

Yes I do remember X-wing.  It was the first game I bought for my first computer and it ran under DOS not windows (1994).  You are right it was overall better.  I like JTL not so much because of the leveling missions.  I like earning master through the squadrons and attacking the corvetes.  Every time I would run across a random fellow player waiting for the spawn.  We would chat and quickly form our stratagy to defeat it.  Sometimes they would have a fellow Master there helping them out.  It was great.  I actually felt like I was doing my part to stick it to the sadistic Empire while working as a team.

By the way the second game I bought was "The Seventh Guest."  It was a horrer genre game.  Very good to play if you are nostalgic and rememer some of the games in the 90's.  It was like Myst for PC users at the time.  I wish I still had it.

I remember Ahazi being one of the top populated servers back then, it isn't even in the top 5 populated server anymore. I came from Lowca (also had Radiant & Tarquinas alts), and I've seen a significant impact on population changes on both servers, especially with the latest game update 4- a month ago acording to swg.activeframe.de, Lowca had 60+ bounty hunters and as of yesterday's update, there are only 22 of them now, this is due to the flawless strike and armor break nerfs.

Also there is a thread on the official forums "growing or declining?" and the majority agrees it's declining. Back to swg.activeframe.de, just over a month ago there were 9300 active ranked officers, as of yesterday 8600+, that's a huge drop over 4 weeks; but AoC's launch has something to do with the impact and so will WAR 40K in the fall.

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Originally posted by OSF8759

The combat is as junky as ever. If I wanted to play a first person shooter, I'd play a real first person shooter and get a far superior experience. MMOs should have MMO combat. To me, City of Heroes has the very best MMO combat.

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SWG's combat is beyond junk, even the combat rolls are busted, for example, a Jedi with 20% parry and doesn't put saber block up, parried 8 of my attacks in a row and kept parrying it more afterwards, don't ask how it was when he put up saber block (he had 65% rating). Pistols are worse than shit, funnier yet Badgersmaker thinks pistols are the best (that guy's bonkers, he even said Kauri is fine).

Originally posted by sookster54

 

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Originally posted by OSF8759

The combat is as junky as ever. If I wanted to play a first person shooter, I'd play a real first person shooter and get a far superior experience. MMOs should have MMO combat. To me, City of Heroes has the very best MMO combat.

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I have to agree here, the transition going from pre-CU SWG style combat to CoH/V combat was perfect and identical. It's the only best overall MMO game to this date for me, and I still love and play CoH/V.

 

SWG's combat is beyond junk, even the combat rolls are busted, for example, a Jedi with 20% parry and doesn't put saber block up, parried 8 of my attacks in a row and kept parrying it more afterwards, don't ask how it was when he put up saber block (he had 65% rating). Pistols are worse than shit, funnier yet Badgersmaker thinks pistols are the best (that guy's bonkers, he even said Kauri is fine).

he gets free gametime to cover sony ass. and he drank a can of no brains long ago.