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Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches

If you already play the Massively Multiplayer Game Star Wars Galaxies, you're undoubtedly already aware that the Jump to Lightspeed space expansion officially launched today. For the rest of us, there are some details on the developer side regarding the ramp up to release available on the official site. Details on the experience of the new expansion is available at Gamespot and PC.IGN. More ... colourful analysis can be found on Grimwell's boards, and N3rfed has a post discussing the fact that the rest of the world has to wait until November 5th for their space-goodies.

11 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Cool by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does the game not suck now?

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  2. Re:OMFG by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Funny

    From "http://tribute4tasha.50megs.com/ewok_song.html"

    Ewok Version

    Yub nub
    eee chop yub nub
    ah toe meet toe pee-chee keene
    g'noop dock fling oh ah
    Yah wah
    eee chop yah wah
    ah toe meet toe pee-chee keene
    g'noop dock fling oh ah
    Coatee chah tu yub nub
    coatee chah tu yahwah
    coatee chah tu glowah
    allay loo ta nuv
    Glowah
    eee chop glowah
    ya glowah pee chu nee foam
    ah toot dee awe goon daa
    Coatee cha tu goo (Yub nub!)
    coatee cha tu doo (Yahwah!)
    coatee cha tu too (Ya chaa!)
    allay loo ta nuv
    allay loo ta nuv
    allay loo ta nuv
    Glowah
    eee chop glowah
    ya glowah pee chu nee foam
    ah toot dee awe goon daa
    Allay loo ta nuv
    English Version

    Freedom
    we got freedom
    and now that we can be free
    come on and celebrate
    Power
    we got power
    and now that we can be free
    it's time to celebrate
    Celebrate the freedom
    celebrate the power
    celebrate the glory
    celebrate the love
    Power
    we got power
    and now that we can be free
    it's time to celebrate
    Celebrate the light (freedom!)
    celebrate the night (power!)
    celebrate the fight (glory!)
    celebrate the love
    celebrate the love
    celebrate the love
    Glory
    we found glory
    the power showed us the light
    and now we all live free
    Celebrate the love

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  3. Re:OMFG by ebooher · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ahhh.... Indeed, your cut and paste kung fu is better than my dragon style typing

    --
    "Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
  4. my thoughts by theMerovingian · · Score: 5, Informative


    I've been playing SWG awhile, sometimes more than I probably should have been. The ground based game is pretty fun, although it can get a little repetitive.

    My biggest complaints:

    1) There aren't enough dungeons or cool things to do besides run around and kill stuff and hope for loot.

    2) The path to becoming a Jedi takes a filthy, sick amount of time. You pretty much don't have a girlfriend, wife, friends, or job if you can sit there for the required amount of time to make it all the way to jedi.

    I've played on the JTLS beta, and overall its pretty fun (but not very challenging). Once I figured out that you can target specific enemies by pressing the TAB key (this isn't immediately obvious), then it was a breeze to kill the enemy ships.

    I'm probably going to cancel my account soon, the game just doesn't have much to offer me after 3 or 4 months of playing. I made millions upon millions of credits, I've had most of the cool loot, and it just gets boring after awhile. The only thing I haven't done is make it to jedi, and I'm not about to invest 200+ more hours in the game.

    I think if you've been wanting to try out SWG, this is a good time to start. It's somewhat fun, but all the cliches about MMORPG's definitely apply. After my 3 month experiment, I just figured out that I play video games BECAUSE I'm antisocial - not because I want to be around people more often.

    --
    "If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
  5. Re:One or the other by Elsebet · · Score: 5, Informative

    The monthly fee is a fairly trivial ($10-15 normally, $40 for EQ Legends) for potentially a month's worth of entertainment. You could play 24/7 and never be billed more than your fee. When my boyfriend and I go out drinking it's at least $30-40, more if we go for dinner first.

    I used to play MuD's and enjoyed them back in 1996 or so. However now my opinion is, if I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time levelling up a character I'd prefer it have pretty textures all over it than be an @ or pile of text. :)

    --
    Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
  6. Re:What did you do in the original? by VGPowerlord · · Score: 5, Informative
    1) If the expansion allows you to move around in space, what the hell were people doing before this? Was the original game restricted to one planet?

    You were restricted to buying shuttle tickets to move between the game's 10 planets: Corellia, Naboo, Tatooine, Rori, Talus, Dantooine, Lok, Yavin IV, (the forest moon of) Endor, and Dathomir. Transitions were handled by annoying load screens. Of course, transitions to space are handled by annoying load screens too...

    2) If you bought the first, do you have to buy the upgrade? If you don't have the upgrade can you still play?

    You can still play, but you can't access the space areas or create Ithorian and Sulustan characters. Which is dumb, since the models for those character types are downloaded to your system anyway.

    --
    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  7. Too busy doing San Andreas missions by HarveyBirdman · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'm too busy jacking fucking cars and picking up crack hos with my fucking homeboys in GTA:SA. Gimme a fucking machine gun over a pansy-ass, phallic symbol light saber.

    I wouldn't find popping a fucking cap in the ass of some cocksucking dancing wookie, though. Or maybe I can pimp that bitch out to some fucking Star Wars fanboy. You know they'd fucking pay for that shit.

    Man I love being a fucking adult. These vulgar games have no gadamnned effect on me whatsofuckingever.

    --
    --- Ban humanity.
  8. I love this game by deathcloset · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I played the beta and was very impressed.

    The times I ran into lag it turned out to be client-side.

    the netcode is very impressive. I think the whole design of the SWG enterprise was based around scalability. Early in the beta I was flying towards the tatooine space station and I estimated that I was rendering around 100 spacecraft flying about the station (i have a screenshot, need to corraborate that)- the netcode "view distance" was then scaled down, since this undoubtedly caused processor lag (and the netcode was likely maxxed out), nevertheless I was very impressed by that many clients being rendered in realtime.

    The graphics engine is great, it's huge. it's expansive. eventually they will make an FPS with it (planetside seems to use a scaled-down version of this engine). I bought this game for the graphics engine - sometimes I just turn off the lights - turn off the games HUD and zoom in to first-person view, just to suspend my disbelief and pretend that I am actually standing in coronet on corellia.

    The sounds are wonderful as well :)

    I'm not a big RPGer, but I've had lots of fun playing this game. Now, I AM a big simmer - so JTL is just wonderful :)

    All in all I think this game is great. Of course, that's an opinion and as we all know, it's pointless to argue tastes.

  9. Dialogue from the new DVD set... by dabigpaybackski · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Luke...Luke..."

    "Ben?"

    "You must go the the Dagobah System. There you will meet Master Yoda. But first you must buy the new Jump to Lightspeed Expansion Pack. Preorder it now and save! Be the first in line..."

    --
    "OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
  10. Overheard in an SOE boardroom, circa Summer 2003 by Myrk · · Score: 5, Funny


    Board of Directors: How long before you can make the "Jump To Lightspeed"?

    Developers: It'll take a few months to get the code from the navi-computer.

    Marketing: Are you kidding? At the rate World of Warcraft is gaining??

    Developers: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like coding dancers, boy! Without precise error-handling we could fly right through a release date or bounce too close to a complete rewrite and that'd end your little trip real quick, woudn't it?

    Marketing: What's that flashing?

    Developers: We're losing another thousand subscribers! Go strap yourselves in I'm going to have to delay the "Jump to Lightspeed"!

  11. A short review of SWG and the JTL Beta by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Informative
    SWG is an Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game set in the Star Wars universe and extended universe. Right? Well no.

    It ain't really all that massive. Perhaps it would have been if SOE had managed the 1 million subscribers they had aimed for, although how their hardware and software would have coped is beyond me. The few people that are playing are further devided over a dozen different server clusters meaning they will never meet each other. So if you start on a server you will play with perhaps a total of 1000 other players if your lucky. Or rather more accurate, 1000 other accounts. Many hardcore players operate more then one account. The number of total players must therefore be lower then what sony claims.

    Is any of this important? Well yeah. SWG has a complex economy that is based on there being enough players to keep the economy balanced. Supply and demand and scale of economy. However because of the few number of players and SOE hopless balancing the player class of Image Designer can be very very very hard to find. Doctors are essential because they buff the stats and without them the fights become impossible very quickly. At times on my server the entire game grinds to a halt because no doctors are buffing the stats of players. This is ultimate the death of a lot of online games. To few people playing and to many advanced players so far ahead that many newbies are instantly turned off.

    But lets say you persist. You now create a character on one of the servers hoping to find the server with the most fun community. Selecting sex is pure cosmetic but race is not. Sadly because of some stupid decisions by SOE (you will see a lot of these but nothing compared to your stupidity to pay them each and every month) humans are the best class. Armour was absent for along time for wookies making them useless in the thougher fights.

    But you persist and choose a race. Now you gotta choose your starting job. Well actually don't bother. It costs 100 credits to train in a new job so any newbie can easily get basic training in every job out there (except politician I will come to this one). A smart newbie does this as early on it is really really helpfull to be able to help yourselve.

    The early jobs are melee (hit things with a stick), ranger (shoot at things), medic (poke players with needles), artisan (make things to hit or shoot thing with), entertainer (stand in boring cantina listening to a 10 second music sample being played over and over again watching the same motion captured animation that is fun once twice or a hundreth times but wich you will have to watch a gazillion times) and finally scout (walk faster up hills and get resources from critters).

    Well you can start as an artisan but artisan need resources to make things wich you don't have or any money to buy them with. There are crafting missions that pay you but they pay so low that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the most brafe.

    So we are going to be involved in some way with combat. Choosing melee means you will be running after everything running away from you while shooting at you. Ranged means you will be trying to snipe things biting your arm off.

    Your character has 3 main bars. Strenght, action and mind. They could have named them anything as strength does not make you stronger and action does not make you faster. The whole deal is that you have an X number of strenght but also a value Y indicating how much strenght something will cost and a value Z indicating how much strenght you recover. Same for action and mind. For instance when a medic heals someone he uses up a certain amount of mind points. How many exactly depends on how high Y is. If Z is high enough he will recover the lost points without the main bar ever dropping. If not then the act of constantly healing will slowly deplete the bar until you no longer can take an action.

    Weapon use deplets all bars but varies per weapon wich is used more. The smart people will have thought of something. The value of the main bar is of no imp

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.