Due to the Free Character Transfer Service, a number of servers have essentially become ghost towns as much of the game's remaining population has chosen to converge on a small number of servers (example: Starsider).

As a result of this, Star Wars Galaxies Community Manager, Draakull, has announced today that 12 servers will be shutdown on October 15th, 2009, at 5PM PDT, leaving 13 remaining. The creation of new characters on these servers is now disabled.

The servers listed below will be shut down:

• Corbantis
• Europe-Infinity
• Intrepid
• Kauri
• Kettemoor
• Lowca
• Naritus
• Scylla
• Tarquinas
• Tempest
• Valcyn
• Wanderhome

To help facilitate any players still remaining on these servers, the Free Character Transfer Service has been extended through to October 15th, 2009. Beginning today, all characters still remaining on the aforementioned servers are eligible for a one time free transfer to any of the remaining 13 servers. 

In addition to this announcement, a FAQ has also been made available for more information on the situation.

The announcement and FAQ are both available here.

What do you think about this move by SOE? Personally, having played Star Wars Galaxies in recent months, I think it's a great move. When I played on my home server of Starsider this summer, the place was hopping like it was launch day.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

 For those still playing, having more people per server can only help.... for a while.

Why is this even making me sad?

Originally posted by MikeB

 

Haha, I like the toon in his skivies, did you guys do this mmorpg.com?

Originally posted by Draccan

Why is this even making me sad?

Same here, it's really odd since I haven't played it since pre-CU (other than a pathetic jaunt this summer). 

I think both the free transfer service and the consolidation of servers is a good move. This is coming from someone who rarely has something nice to say about $oe.

Originally posted by m240gulf

Originally posted by MikeB

 

 

Haha, I like the toon in his skivies, did you guys do this mmorpg.com?

This is actually an old image that was posted on the SWG forums on launch day, when no one could get on. I've had the image on my hard drive for years and thought it would be appropriate for this story. By the way, I too am saddened by this news, if only for its implications, but I figured injecting a little humor might be helpful! :)

 This shouldn't be a sad thing. They have needed to merge servers since I stopped playing over a year ago. They said they couldn't technically do it, but I believe it was pride. SOE is the "Bagdad Bob" of the MMO world.

Increasing player density to help repair the population?

This is definitely a good move. At least SOE is showing interest in wanting to see the game persevere on some level.

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by m240gulf

Originally posted by MikeB

 

 

Haha, I like the toon in his skivies, did you guys do this mmorpg.com?

 

This is actually an old image that was posted on the SWG forums on launch day, when no one could get on. I've had the image on my hard drive for years and thought it would be appropriate for this story. By the way, I too am saddened by this news, if only for its implications, but I figured injecting a little humor might be helpful! :)

Nice save Mike!  I ripped their Mothers-Against-Star-Wars-Galaxies website on April's Fools a few years ago...wish i could still find it.

It is a good move, but it is something that really should have happened a long time ago. 

Crap, welp. Thanks for the heads up... SOE didn't bother to let me know. Still have four accounts on Kauri; all of which are being charged TODAY.

Time to also change my "active" games roster, looks like.

All I really have to say is that it looks good on SOE the game that was massive and epic and they managed to kill it in one "New Game Experience", even after people closed accounts and they knew this was a big mistake, rather than be the big company and admit they were wrong and change it back they just took the old Smedly line of not being influenced by threats of accounts being closed.  Where is your big mouth now Mr. Smedly??? Before you speak take your foot out and I hope this is a lesson to other companies of WHAT NOT TO DO to your games fans.

We do not pay you to give us the middle finger that is out job when you mess up.

Well, this will certainly sever all ties I've had with SOE (and possible LA as of right now I have no intention on purchasing TOR). My 3 accounts on Kauri are about to ride off into the MMO sunset. Was a good run until the NGE. I have to thanks SOE for that time just as as I blame them for taking away my second best MMO gaming experience.

Was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Some mmo's I just dont understand how people are still playing them?

some mmo's just wont die.. and who are these people playing em?

I could make a mmo about a turd that you lvl up to a bigger turd in a toilet and some people would be playing it for years  

Originally posted by Postal13

Originally posted by Draccan

Why is this even making me sad?

 

Same here, it's really odd since I haven't played it since pre-CU (other than a pathetic jaunt this summer). 

me 2 lol

I too have all 3 of my characters on Kauri. Sad to see our great world and everything we built up destroyed, but it was destroyed to me 4 years ago anyway.

SOE really has fallen low. Once the KING of MMO's with the biggest line-up in the west, now...

But lets not fool ourselves. We can blame Smedley for the NGE and the CU, but it was the players who killed the game with their min-maxing that led to doc-buff, the true beginning of the end.

For those who have forgotten. SWG had a unique skill system, rather then a health and power/mana bar, you had three bars that represented your Health, Action, Mind (HAM). If any one of them dropped to zero, you fell unconcious (it took a killing blow to actually finish you off, not all NPC's did this).

The unique thing was that each action took a fixed amount from each bar, the amount varying per skill. So, in SWG, you could knock yourself out. This was often seen as silly, but only by those who don't realise that knocking yourself out is highly possible. Go into fast, over exercise yourself, you fall down.

Each player had a certain amount of regeneration, you could decide, within certain limits, how much you regenerated in each area. Since each fighting speciality tended to focus on certain areas more, you would have the regen highest in the area you needed it most.

But there was a downside. Armor would hamper natural regeneration. Wear to heavy an armor set and you wouldn't regenerate at all, effectively stopping you from healing by yourself and since your combat actions depleted your health (and action/mind) you wouldn't be able to fight long at all.

There were food buffs but they were expensive. Well not that expensive but those who focusses solely on combat had no gathering skills, no crafting skills spent a fortune on equipment. They wanted something better. Surely everyone HAD to wear the heaviest armor all the time!

And here it is that Smedley and his devs failed. They probably had a design in mind and that is that heavy armor should only be used rarely (none of the movie heroes us armor at all) and would thne only give you an edge for a very short time. They probably NEVER imagined that EVERYONE wanted to look like Boba Fett (who dies in seconds people) but had probably imagined something different. 

But whatever it was, the players refused to experience it and demanded something be done. So, we got the doc buff. Doctors could create a long lasting buff to all regen. The idea itself was not totally invalid, but for some reason they got it totally wrong. It was WAY to powerful and player used it like it was candy. The game grinded to a halt when there was no doctor around to buff and when one was a around, a long cue would form and one by one players would head off, to slaughter lairs of rancor with an AoE macro'ed attack. Cleaning up. Buffs were "expensive" but even the crappiest player could easily regain the costs in minutes and the buffs laster 2 hours and longer. And as players learned to find the best resources (bird meat on my server dropped that had 1000 points, I made an absolute fortune as a scout) they buffs got better. There was NOTHING that could harm you.

Originally meant to allow people to wear full armor, as a scout/Terra Kasi, I fought in plain clothes, just as effective and saved me a fortune. 

When the solo-group became the only way to play, that was when the game died. Gone were the days of Rancor hunts with a large group, everyone having to work together or be eaten. Gone were explorations, gone were expedictions to remote planets. There was no challenge left.

Oh, we got death-watch-bunker where enemies had 100% resists on all damage types expect one, that was at 90%. We got a patch to end the solo group but it didn't matter. The game had died, some of us hanged on and tried to make fun experiences in our groups but it is hard to make a terrifying Dathomir experience when some twat wearing no pants in heavy armor just walking into the battle and kicks everything's butt.

The CU and NGE just finished the job. They were introduced to try to create some balance again after the disaster that was the doc-buff.

It was the players who cried for the doc-buff. They got what they wanted but it ruined the game. 

The greatest pity is that since SWG nobody else has been willing to try something similar. Everything is now twitch gaming or PvP and while it doesn't seem to appeal (Warhammer's PvP and AoC's twitch failed to keep punters intrested) it seems to be the way to go.

A real pity. The original was far from perfect, but it deserved better then min-maxers.

Stepping backwards is not progress. It should be viewed as stepping backwards. Populations on once thriving servers now having gotten so low as to justify the server's closure? Good idea to unite the remaining subs - sure but is this a good sign? No.

That and I can't imagine the lag-o-delic goodness that will result from a server running NGE on it with an artificial PreCU population on it.

What I could never understand is why could not just re-verse the game to pre NGE state, it would have brought them masses and masses of people back.

thats what happens when old farts in suits make decisions.

IDIOTS.