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

SWG Disappointing

[jxa00]

I can't help feeling they blew their chance with this. I know it has gotten progressively better over the year since the launch, but I feel this more than any other MMPORG had the potential to break that 1,000,000 subscriber barrier. (If any of them ever will) Or in other words gain that mass acceptance.

Maybe the expansion will cause a spike in the player numbers but I from what I have read it will be adding in features that probably should have been in the game originally.

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.

hmmm

[u-238]

I remember it like yesterday. After years, literal years of hype, when the game finally released to the 1,000's of people who had already preordered the game, their credit card registration webpage woulden't work. The entire community, many of whom literally had the date makred off on their calanders (my time in the forums lends credence to my statements), were left to sit, wonder, and wait. It wasn't until hours later that day that it did work, and when it had, many of the game servers didn't work.

This bumpy start acts as a painfully accurate analogy to the overall zeitgeist (oh god I love that word) of the game, the game's gameplay, the developers struggling and meger attempts to suffice their loyal, rampant and huge fan base; and almost every aspect of the Star Wars Galaxies experience.

It's gotten this far, and, well, cheers for that.

SWG just another average MMORPG now

[servognome]

I was lucky enough to be in beta 2 & 3. The thing I remembered most was a couple weeks before launch somebody named "Swiggy" managed to crash the server for 3 days. It was amazing that when the launch date was announced, pretty much everybody in beta said, It's not ready, entire classes were broken, others overpowered. Even post launch some servers had significant downtime and bugs like all of somebody's stuff disappearing, dupe bugs, and my favorite all the buildings on one planet relocated to the middle of the planet map overnight.
I took 2 weeks off from work to play, it was very fun, even fighting all the annoying bugs, then I ran out of content about 3 months in. SWG has a great crafting and world system, there just isn't enough to really do. I just sat there with 30 million credits, nothing to spend it on, and nothing really to do except just make more credits that I couldn't spend. It was the first MMORPG that I felt like I beat the game.
It's sad, the game really had potential, I log in from time to time (my friend kept my account alive) and they've added alot of stuff, but I'm too psyched about EQ2 to rejoin SWG.