Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Revived

Yes. The NGE BROKE the game, however its been proven that it’s possible to patch the damage and mend the broken hearts of Star Wars fans willing to give the game one more chance.

Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided was one of the most innovative MMORPG’s this globe has ever seen. From it’s release in 2003, to November 2005, this game was my favorite game, period. I played it for two years without buying a single other game.

In 2005, Lucasarts proposed that SOE “Revamp” the game with NGE, New Game Enhancements. This huge patch was to strip the game of its DOZENS of classes, and limit it to 9 exclusive (non-mix-able) classes. The system was dumbed down from skill, to stats. What I mean by that, is that instead of learning to play your class, you had to focus on good statted gear and loot items, as skill was irrelevant. 4 year olds could beat experienced vets if they had enough gear. The game became a time-sink.

The game had all but died in late 2006. SOE wasn’t admitting they’d made a huge mistake, and they were only fixing bugs and adding to the professions (with every change they made to a class with a patch release, that class would become overpowered).

The game was effectively dead until recently, SOE decided they would admit they had wronged the masses with the NGE, and go on a quest to fix it.

Fixing what IS broken
It’s 2009. They’ve merged servers by providing free character transfers. Now only a small number of servers are active, but their player population is “Heavy” and “Extremely heavy” on those few servers. My server, Starsider, has HUNDREDS of people in Mos Eisley every day, and MANY HUNDREDS MORE in places like Theed, Coronet, Mos Espa, Bestine, Tyrena, and exploring the galaxy doing Collections and Heroic Instances, two things SOE added to entertain players.

Now that the servers are once again booming, they seem to be listening to players’ complaints! Every patch is a major bug fix. They are fine tuning classes, and while there still are some underpowered and unbalanced classes, its considerably better, and each class has plenty of content now (when the NGE came out, Jedi were just jedi, now, there is a force system with Light Side templates and Dark Side templates with parry/saber defense for guardians and drain-life for killing machines).

Also, the new TCG (Trading Card Game) gives ingame players yet ANOTHER source of entertainment, dropping rare loot that you can wear/ride/put in your house/USE as a house! Player events are more frequent than ever. Life Day is booming, Ewoks are throwing Valentines festivals, Durnis are celebrating Easter, the team is getting very personal with their players.

SWG is reborn.
No, it’s only a shadow of it’s former glory, but it is alive again. All the servers are merged, so it FEELS like its popular again. There are plenty of people to meet and hunt with. There are plenty of ways to play each profession. There are plenty of ways to socialize with new crafting, new entertainer content, new furniture to decorate with, and even new houses coming in the next patch, along with several other updates to fix Space, player cities, and some of the professions.

The game is also VERY mod-able. http://mods.mandalorians.de is a great website for mods. Since they’re all client-side (meaning if you turn your bantha into a death star, you’re the only one who sees that change, it looks like a bantha to everyone else), that means the mods are perfectly legal, as they don’t give you an upperhand in game, so it’s not cheating.

SWG in its current state receives an 8.5/10 in my book, you should try it yourself (new players create a trial, old players I urge you to resub for a month on your old toons and play for 2 weeks of the month, not just 4 days).

SWG is still nothing like it used to be, and it’s still slowly dying, but for the 2009 and 2010 years, it should continue to boom with activity. SOE planned for 10 years of gameplay, and I can definitely see the game dying in around 2013, but that’s a ways off, and there is PLENTY of time to enjoy this phoenix that has risen from the ashes.