Written by Jeff Buckland, 8/11/2003
Played on:
Windows
Few games have been more anticipated over the last couple of years than Star Wars Galaxies, Sony's flagship MMORPG which is their most highly-touted product since Everquest. After a somewhat-successful beta, SWG has been out for over a month now; it's definitely a unique game, but is it worth it for a Star Wars fan to play? How about your average MMORPG player?
Galaxies uses a new game engine that is quite beautiful; the visuals give off a great first impression. Frame rates aren't the best, but then again, frame rates aren't the most important thing for these types of games. There are quite a few graphic options available for you to tune performance, although it seems that every once in a while, choppy gameplay is a bit unavoidable.
SWG started off with a rather rocky launch; it wasn't as bad as some other games, but several server issues turned people off of the game right away. It's been mostly smooth sailing from there on out, though, and improvements are being made to the game's overall stability at a very rapid rate.
The one key area that Sony has made little progress in is with the chat system; on the Bloodfin server (and possibly on other servers), chat channels will just stop working randomly, with no notice or feedback at all. This is unacceptable for a game where communication is key; having all private tells or guild chat go out on you is infuriating. How the game has gone this long without any headway towards a fix is unbelievable. Again, the assumption is that eventually Sony will get around to a fix, but the fact that it's been this long is very disappointing.
Star Wars Galaxies has a very complex interface that may take you a bit of time to get used to, but it's probably the best one out there for any online game. Just like Windows itself, the game includes plenty of configurable options that pop up for you to mess with, resize, and otherwise configure to your liking. The controls are robust and allow you to play it like a first person shooter, third person action game, or even from something like a top-down, Ultima Online like isometric perspective.
The learning curve on SWG is pretty high; first-time MMORPG players will undoubtedly get lost in the myriad of windows, menus, and more. And that's not even considering the gameplay. Sony does supply plenty of help, and the descriptions of each window that pop up are very useful. Still, the interface does take some getting used to, but once that has been tackled, it's an excellent platform from which to play.
Many of the best options that were added into Everquest's interface are here, although some of them have changed. You can configure your chat windows and text colors, although here multiple windows show up as "tabs" which you can switch through. Full control configuration and even a choice of HUD color schemes all add up to the best interface in any game in the genre.
I haven't played every massive game out there, but SWG is the first MMORPG I've seen with a full email system; you can even attach things like a waypoint to a specific location into a message. The best part is that just like internet email, the recipient doesn't have to be online to receive it. It baffles me that MMORPG's have gone without this highly useful feature for years. Anarchy Online did include a rudimentary offline messaging system, but it was nowhere near as robust as this one. Hopefully this will spur other companies into putting this into their games, as it is extremely handy.
As I said, SWG gives off a great first impression; visually, it feels very much like Star Wars. The character creation system is excellent, and the worlds themselves are a sight to behold. After a few days of seeing the highly expansive territory, though, you might start wondering where the uniqueness is.
Each planet has huge areas full of enemies and the like, but there are few unique landmarks or major sights to see. Basically, exploring just for the sake of going out to explore is boring in SWG. While the seamless, no-zoning world is great on paper and has been seen in a few MMORPGs so far, I have to wonder if it's really helped the genre overall. Everquest had separate zones, each of which was a unique experience with its own monsters, atmosphere, and look. In SWG, you can travel a mile and just see a few similar monster variations and the same hills and lakes as you do everywhere else.
The visual effects are overall pretty good, although you won't see them that often. Explosives look great, but so few players actually use them - most of the time you'll see melee attacks and some blaster shots. The cities are large and convincing, and there are several of them on each of the game's major planets. We also get a full day/night system that thankfully doesn't leave you totally blind at night. The rain effects aren't the best looking, but this game makes up for it visually in other ways.
The enemies you fight are disappointing at best, and they are far more like your average MMORPG than what you'd expect from the holy trilogy. You'll go up against all kinds of fantasy-style monsters, a mix of humanoid NPCs, and there are a few of the good Star Wars-type enemies like AT-ST walkers. Most of the time, though, I found myself going up against random monsters that have little to do with Star Wars at all; this sort of thing just kills the immersion for me. Simply having the familiar soundtrack playing during a fight doesn't convince me I'm in a Star Wars world.
The first thing to notice is that Galaxies is a completely skill-based game where there are no true levels. When you create your character, the stats you have aren't going to go up any more - although you can rearrange stat pointsd at the beginning and even after your character has been created. Even though there are no levels, you do gain experience which is gained in specific categories; kill enemies with your pistol and you will gain Pistol experience which allow you to level up that specific skill.
SWG is a pretty ambitious game when it comes to player interaction. Armor, weapons, clothes, buildings, food, and more are all created by players that harvest or mine raw materials to make these items out of. This is both good and bad; crafters will have to locate these raw materials, either from monster corpses, bought from other players, or mined from the ground. Then they must go through some tedious clickfests to build their skill, and then sell the finished items to other players.
SWG does offer up plenty of professions: melee weaponry, rifles, pistols, healers, creature handlers (Rancors included), droid expert, and the various crafting and entertainment classes. Characters have the option to pick any number of skills they want, and in any combination as long as they follow the skill trees. Want to be a Novice Dancer and an Expert Pistoleer? It's doable. There is a limit to the number of skills you can have, so you can't wind up being an expert at everything. Unlearning any skill is as easy as a click, although any experience points you learned for that specific skill get flushed down the toilet.
Combine this with the stat migration tool which allows you to slowly change your character by little amounts, and over time he or she could be totally different in almost every way. You are limited to having only one character on a server, though, which is really annoying when you want to stay on a specific server and experiment on a new skill without removing existing skills. The only other solution is to buy a second copy of SWG to have a second account.
One of the game's most brilliant yet under-used features is the Bazaar interface; it is a full auction system much like eBay, with Buy it Now options and everything. The problem is that the maximum sale price for anything in the Bazaar is 3000 credits, which makes selling almost anything better than junk-quality gear useless. Instead, players have to shout in towns or set up a shop way out in the boonies to sell their items.
