Star Wars Galaxies Celebrates First Anniversary

Thanks to Sony Online for its official page celebrating the first anniversary of PC MMO Star Wars Galaxies, as they examine a timeline of the first year, from day one, June 26th, 2003 ("the most exciting and stress-inducing day of most of our careers"), through November 4th, 2003 ("The first Jedi appears in game"), through April 21st, 2004 ("We officially announce [space-based add-on] Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed!") In relation to this, the first veteran reward for the game is announced, "the deed for the multi-passenger ship model SoroSuub Personal Luxury Yacht 3000 the day Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed launches" - it's explained: "This starship model has been popularized in Star Wars fiction by Lando Calrissian's personal vessel, the Lady Luck." Finally, there's also a retrospective visual catalog of the original SW:G Beta test posted on the official site.

Comments

Re:SWG Disappointing

[will.murnane]

All mmorpgs are going to be disappointing until everyone has broadband. There is just too big a discrepancy between dialup and broadband for all of us with slow connections to play. When I get dsl (crosses fingers) I don't plan to play online-only games, but I'd be more inclined to think about it. If I have to wait 30 extra seconds to have a mediocre gaming experience for online versus having a great time single-player or over LAN, it's local every time.

The other downside of MMORPGs is the $10 or so monthly fee. I just can't see over $100 a year for a game I can't even win. It may be engrossing, but it isn't as engrossing as the 2 or 3 single player games I could buy with the same $120. Actually, if you wait for them to hit the bargain bin, you could get 6 or 10 games. The replay value there outweighs for me the replay value of a single online game. Anyway, when you get a yearning for something completely different, it's there. YMMV.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[sqrt(2)]

They also charge you to buy the game IN THE STORE! As if they weren't bending you over with the monthly subscription fee, they make you pay for a game that you can even use without shelling out MORE money.

Either you pay for it at the store, and have no subscription, or you give the game away for free (use bittorrent or p2p to help with bandwidth) and charge a subscription, but not both. That's what's keeping from picking up any of the MMORPGs.

Re:Been playing the last week...

[will_die]

The past few months have shown that the MMOG market is getting satiated (sp?) and already some big titles have stopped development. Not sure if staturation is really the problem, you can look at final fantasty,city of heroes, sims online, and even SWG and see they did bring alot of new people into the game.
The real problem and evidence in sims online, SWG, horizons, AC2, shadowbane and others recent releases is that you cannot release a buggy game with little or no content and expect to compete.
If the game is not better in functions and have decent new content people will go back to thier old games(daoc,eq,AC1)(Ac1 just added a new server) and wait for a next game. Also it is not like people are requiring a new game to compete with a game that has been out 4-5 years with new content added all that time, just new games that are comparable to thoses old games when they were released. With all those above games they have just not delivered, they figured they could compete on just graphics and an empty playground.
It is like if Doom 3 is released and while having better graphic game play wise it is equal to doom 1.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[YomikoReadman]

Actually, he's right. Everything in the expansion was originally slated to have been in the game at launch, but wound up being pulled out when LucasArts pressed SoE to push the game out as fast as possible.

On a side note, I have played the game, where it seems you have not, and I wholeheartedly agree that it was quite possibly the biggest letdown I've ever experienced. The game has had class balance issues since launch, many of which are still a problem. There are several classes which are still completely non functioning, and PvP is a complete joke. You can become a Jedi, but the only real viable way in which to do this is to grind out all 6 base jobs, as well as every other job which stems from them, totaling 32 jobs.

In short, this isn't a case of what you call the "miserable attitude generally present on Slashdot", it's the plain truth. SWG was a horrible game, and one year after launch, it still is a horrible, broken game.

So, before you get up on your soapbox and start decrying those who have paid $50 for the game, $15 a month in fees for a piece of crap like this, go pay all that yourself and be horribly let down like the rest of us.