Steve Wilson continues his short series on the world vs. game debate by taking a look at his second game, Star Wars Galaxies.
Following in the footsteps of Ultima Online the second big 'world over game' MMO was Star Wars Galaxies. Like its spiritual predecessor it had a vast empty landscape with little hand crafted content and nothing more than hopes and dreams that its player base would generate enough content to keep each other entertained. While it didn't fail miserably it performed well below expectations in converting new players into the MMO fold. Which was shocking at the time considering the huge audience that the Star Wars license held. No game had broken a million US subscriptions and it was hoped this would be the one. In the end after 3 years of development, endless cycles of hype and fan hysteria it would only manage to barely increase the number of subscribers that UO had once commanded.
Most of the problems with Star Wars Galaxies from an outsider's perspective can be summed up on one sentence; It's the content stupid.
You can read the whole column here.
