The Story of the Week is a tough thing to really write all the time.  Sometimes there’s just not much going on, and in those cases, there’s just no real story to comment on.  This week luckily, that was not the case as the most anticipated MMORPG of the year finally opened its doors to pre-order customers.  Star Wars: The Old Republic officially launches next Tuesday, but for all intents and purposes the game is live and humming along now for the droves upon droves of excited players who bought the game ahead of time. 

In all honesty, despite the hurt feelings over those folks who got in early and those who had to wait longer and longer while waves got in ahead of them (it has to suck, we understand) it has been an incredibly smooth launch.  There was some brief downtime this past Friday morning for server maintenance, but beyond that not much can be said for how SWTOR screwed the pooch.  People are in, loving it, leveling, and rollicking through the galaxy. 

But then there’s the Dark Side of Star Wars this week and it doesn’t have anything to do with The Old Republic.  Star Wars Galaxies is no more.  A lot can be said about the title’s troubled history, but one thing’s for certain: its fans were unparalleled and its community was once the greatest of all MMOs bar none.  Hell, many of you may not realize this but SWG and the tumult it went through is a huge reason MMORPG.com grew into the site it is today.  But that’s a story for another time. 

So this week, as we say hello with open arms to a brand new Star Wars MMO, we bid farewell to another and hope anxiously that we’ll never have to go through the same bumps and bruises we once did with Galaxies in The Old Republic.