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Star Wars Galaxies - Jedi, Vehicles, Speeder Bike Racing
Thanks to GameSpy for their interview with Lucasarts staff about playing as a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies. The article discusses the powers granted to the newly-unlocked Jedi in this PC MMORPG ("There are over fifty Force powers, ranging from Force Lightning, Force Weaken, and Force Throw, to Jedi Mind Trick, and a variety of lightsaber moves"), and the possibility your Jedi character could be lost forever ("We have partial permadeath for a Jedi. Basically, a Jedi is allotted a certain number of deaths before they lose all progress that character has made.") Elsewhere, player-owned vehicles were enabled in the game earlier this week, and the official SWG page has information on the types, including the X34 Landspeeder, Swoop bike, and Speeder bike, and even documents player-hosted races that are being attempted, showcasing an in-game reproduction of the Mos Espa Circuit from Star Wars: Episode 1.
I don't know why anyone cares about becoming a Jedi. You'll be grinding through professions for countless hours and days.. just so you can get to a new profession to grind through. The game doesn't suddenly change once you're using a light saber instead of a pistol. I don't know anyone who has lasted more than 4 months in this game, even people who usually love MMORPGs get sick of the repetitiveness and lack of incentive to do anything other than grind. Such a pity too.. the Star Wars universe is a lot more interesting than the usual EQ/DAoC type thing IMO.
I think I'd rather fire up mame and play the original arcade game to get my star wars fix.
Half the fun of the orignal film was the idea of flying around in cool spaceships, having battles, but that seems to be totally missing from this game. So they finally put in the vehicles that should have been there on day 1? All you get is a beaten up hovercar and two motorbikes that the wheels have fallen off.
Get back to me when I can win a souped-up smuggling ship in a game of cards and use it to run empire blockades.
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If you don't know how the developers decided to allow you to unlock a force-sensitive (FS) character - let me give you the lowdown. The "top secret, dynamic, non-random, biological..." method they chose:
You have to master 5 random professions that are assigned at the time of your character creation. That's 5 out of 32. Sound like long odds? Don't worry, the developers thought sooooo hard on this, they figured out a way to give people a leg up. That's right, they placed Holocrons across the game as loot drops on uber characters (well, uber to casual gamers, not really to hardcore grinders) that will tell you 4 out of the 5 proffesions your character must master in order for you to unlock the FS slot.
What does that mean? Well, if you wish to unlock a FS (force-sensitive) slot, you have to grind up to a combat profession so you can solo these holocron dropping MOBS. Then you have to get a holocron (the drops are pretty rare). Then, you have to listen to the holocron on what profession you should next master.
Soooooo, imagine you become a great pistoleer. What happens if your first holocron tells you to be a master weaponsmith? Well, you start the mindless grind to a profession that you are mastering for the sole purpose of filling a randomly assigned profession, so you can be 20% closer to unlocking a FS slot.
Great.
They've basically removed the ability for anyone wanting to be a Jedi on creating a character that they've invested a lot of time personalizing and leveling, because now you have to spend your limited profession points to master wild goose hunt professions.
That's not even mentioning the fact that after you've completed four of the five professions, the holocrons you manage to pick up as loot stop giving hints and you're left blindingly hunting for the one last profession.
It totally sucks. It ruined the game for many players that thought the dev's would be a litle more caring and have a little more thought behind the end-game. It completely de-values the intent and any sense of caring that you may have thought the dev's had for the game.
Bottom line, the Jedi path is bullshit.
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Interestingly enough, with the ever-expanding star wars featurelist, it could someday achieve that beautiful glory of the original design doc.
With staying power and adequate funding, who knows how far it could go. If Episode 3 doesn't incinerate the heart of the series that Episode 1 ripped out and Episode 2 stomped on, this MMPORPG could be in development for many, many years.
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To clarify a point that the blurb muddled (played the first couple months quit from lack of time. it's fun if u have enough friends.) anyway, to unlock the Jedi slot you have to take your regular character and get them on a specific (seemingly random from most accounts) career path.
When you unlock a FS (force sensitive) character slot, you create a character that you level up through the Jedi tree. This Jedi can die after I think 3 or 4 deaths (regular character slots can be cloned and blah blah Jedi cannot.). However you don't LOSE the FS character slot. You do however have to create a new Jedi (you start sub padawan I believe, but this is 2nd hand from Sept, it could have changed by now). Unless you reach Jedi Master, then you become a blue glowy, but what impact you can have on the game, I dunno.
I don't see a big problem with the way it works. It keeps to the idea there aren't a million true Jedi around during the OT, however I'm sure the Galaxy is full of force sensitives during the time period.
Slightly Off Topic: I was thinking of buying a 30 - 60 day game card just to check out the new features, what I'm really lookin' for is a MMORPG that players run on their own. Setup your own servers and play with friends, like NWN Persistent worlds, but gameplay more along the lines of Zelda games or FF Crystal Chronicles. Anyone know of such a thing?
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