Templecon 2012

A Galaxy Too Far Away: A History - Part 3

After Jump to Lightspeed had taken its course, there wasn't much else to do in the game beyond what few events took place, or becoming a Jedi. Being a major staple of the Star Wars franchise, Jedi were an important factor to the development team. They wanted to do it right though, as in the games time line, there really weren't supposed to be other Jedi beyond the characters from the movies. Players didn't even know how to become one until months after the games release. The dawn of holo grinding had begun.

 The Jedi Trials were tough, this guy had to be a master musician, chef, medic, bio-engineer...

Holo grinding was a term for grinding professions that items called holocrons told you to. When making your character, a random selection of master professions are chosen that must be leveled in order to obtain a Jedi character slot. In order to find these out, you needed to use holocrons to figure out the first 4, the rest being a mystery. The idea behind this was that a player who went through the trials to become a Jedi would then be very familiar with all the other facets the game had. Unfortunately what this created was a world where most people weren't the same job week to week. Imagine playing World of Warcraft, and your entire guild would change professions every week at random. Kind of hard to get raid night together with all that chaotic change.

This system would go on to be revised into a quest later on, but the damage had been done. Quite a few players had left to join World of Warcraft, which had launched that year to record breaking sales. The MMO scene had changed forever, and Star Wars Galaxies found itself playing catch up from here for the rest of its life-cycle. In response to this, SOE announced a new expansion early the following year titled Rage of the Wookiees. The expansion would take place on the Wookiee home world, and have tie ins to the recent Star Wars prequels in theaters. Their hope was to keep what players they had with regular content updates to keep them busy, but the games numbers would continue to bleed.

 All that rage!!!

Shortly after the announcement of the expansion, the combat update was implemented. This update was designed to overhaul the entire combat system, restricting certain weapons and armor to specific classes, and giving players levels instead of simple profession progression as a measurement of advancement. This update was met with much disapproval from the community, who felt they were trying too hard to mold the game into something it wasn't to compete directly with World of Warcraft. Despite these concerns, the update was implemented shortly before the expansion release without much change.

 That's no moon...Wait

Around this time, I had taken a break from the game to enjoy World of Warcraft, which at the time was a breath of fresh air to the usual MMO affair. My character began to fall behind, being only level 40 of 80 by the time I came back to try the expansion content. After coming back to the game, my only option was to grind until I reached the correct level to even see the new content. This didn't sit well with me at all, mostly due to the fact that I was just killing random wildlife to do this without any other options. Any content that had actual quests to them was beyond me, forcing me to drag through old content that felt broken with the updates to the game.

Luckily there was a quest exploit in the expansion that allowed me to repeat a high level quests turn in until I was max level. Usually I frown upon this, but the only thing I was missing was shooting some space lizard 700 times in the face until I gained a level, so I felt the game owed me a solid on this one. I started to enjoy some of the content at this point, trying out a lot of the quests, and even getting some really cool gear and Darth Vader's own Jedi starfighter, yeah.

 Thanks Uncle Vader for the slick new ride!

Wanting to keep things rolling, SOE announced another expansion to be released later that year titled Trials of Obi-Wan. This would give us yet another planet to explore, and a questline involving the Jedi ghost of Obi-Wan guiding us on a journey to save the galaxy. It looked neat, so I was on board for another adventure, especially after getting my character back on top of things. Things weren't as optimistic at SOE though, with World of Warcraft destroying the market for any other MMO's. The combat upgrade and following expansion weren't enough to stop the dive in subscription numbers, something major had to be done.

 Dude was a busy guy as a ghost

On November 1^st, 2005 the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion was released, giving players multiple hours of new content to explore. I remember this time as being some of the most fun I had doing quests in Star Wars Galaxies, as everything seemed to take some lessons from World of Warcraft in terms of quest design. This would have been great for many, but SOE wasn't satisfied with just adding new quests to the game. Internally they felt the game was not accessible to new players, which made it impossible to compete with World of Warcraft. On November 15^th the game would make its most radical change under the New Game Enhancements update.

The game was completely changed from the ground up. 32 professions went down to 9, Jedi were a class right out the gate, many aspects of the game that players had spent years playing with were simply removed from the game in an instant. There was never any time to contest these changes, as the player base didn't even know about any of them until they were implemented into the full game. All testing was done internally, and in secret. SOE didn't want the players it had, it wanted the players it would never get, at the cost of us. This was the beginning of the end for the game, as people demanded refunds for the expansion that they would have never gotten had they known such major changes were coming.

 Just like in the original movies, thousands of Jedi!...Right?

Trials of Obi-Wan would be the last official expansion for the game, with only content patches to replace them. I had mostly given up on the game at this point, leaving it behind for World of Warcraft, and the new generation of MMO's that would follow. I wasn't completely gone however, as I couldn't leave behind all the years I had spent with the game. Every year around Christmas time, I would resubscribe and get all the Christmas rewards that year. I would then spend the rest of my month exploring what had changed over the past year, in hopes that maybe things got better. In some cases they did, but the game was already on the decline.

Star Wars Galaxies was a grand project from a bygone era in video games. Many like to look back on it as a complete failure, a dinosaur, and a horrible mess from the start. Some of these claims are true, as it was a very bumpy road all those years. I wont take that from my experience with the game though. I will remember Star Wars Galaxies as an example of ambitious game design. Today’s MMO's try too hard to design set pieces around the player to make the journey seem more epic than it really is. While this is great for a bit, it waters down the adventure. Nothing will ever be as epic as the night a Krayt Dragon wandered into our town and we spent the whole evening fighting it off.

 Memories...

As we close the book on Star Wars Galaxies, I hope that something good is taken from it for everyone. There simply wont be another game like it to come, and I think that's important. This is a rapidly evolving genre, growing stronger every day. From the day my mind was blown when I realized a world like Ultima Online existed, to killing my first dragon in Azeroth, this has been a wild ride that is only going to get wilder.  

A Galaxy Too Far Away: A History - Part 2

As the game progressed, people found their place in the world. The adventurers went out and hunted wild beasts, while medics sold buffs on the streets. The crafters would make their droids and blasters, and the musicians would play their sets. Unfortunately for my smuggler though, trouble was ahead. Vagabonds Rest was failing to keep people interested till the player city update, and it wasn't really their fault. Once again, the lack of certain game mechanics would come to decide the fates of many in this game.

 Star Wars, right?

One thing that contributed to this was the lack of any decent way to travel. Originally the development team wanted the world to feel massive, and make traveling a big deal. They felt that giving the player the ability to simply teleport anywhere made the world feel small and unimportant. While they weren't wrong on this idea, this is another example of something that sounded great on paper and no where else. They wanted going somewhere to take time, and create a player economy around transport. Think of the scene when Obi-Wan charters Han Solo to transport them to Alderaan, they wanted this. The problem there is nobody wants to pay $15 a month to be a galactic bus driver. As a result, the transport system was left barely functional at the time of launch, which created a huge mess when it came to getting around.

To get to Vagabonds Rest, you needed to fly to the Naboo moon of Rori, land in one of the 2 cities on the planet, and walk for roughly 20 minutes through monster infested swamps, if you made it through alive. This whole deal didn't sit well with the people of Vagabonds Rest, and eventually they split as a result. With no player vehicles, or ways to get to other parts of the map in any convenient fashion, we were left with staying close to town. This would create a housing situation somewhat like Ultima Online, where you would constantly run into player houses in the wilderness. Cities like Mos Eisley were turned into commercialized suburbs simply out of player convenience.

 They didn't always look great, but they were home

In later updates, this would be corrected with the introduction of player mounts. The downside to this is it never felt very Star Warsy going places on alien camel back. Fortunately with the player city update also came Star Wars style vehicles to get from place to place. Around this time The Dark Blade was looking into making its own town, which was probably the better route all along. We scouted a nice piece of land a few minutes outside of Coronet City, which was one of the major player hubs at the time. From there, Wrixwood Ford was born, a city to call our own.

The player city update was quite interesting at the time, allowing players to really have a presence if they worked hard enough for it. Politician was a player class in the game, so people could run for government positions in these towns and work to create a better city. Player city shuttle ports were also added, giving players more options to land near good hunting spots. I was still into mining and selling resources, and I did well for myself around this time. Eventually I would have operations on several planets making credits for me.

 My office on Tatooine

Player housing in SWG was always a mixed bag for most people. Some house models were amazing, but could only be placed on certain planets, while others were useless but could be placed anywhere. Some made the best of it with customizing the interior to suit their liking. Items could be placed and moved around in 3D space with commands, allowing players to decorate just about any way they wanted. The game also had quite a lot of useless junk you could use to decorate with, and I had a knack for it. Some of my homes were art galleries, or offices with trophies detailing my past adventures. I miss this part of some MMO's, which have decided to shift such things into achievement systems and titles. I always found it neat that I had mementos with so many stories on display.

While things were settling on the ground, our journey into space was fast approaching. Jump to Lightspeed was the first major expansion to Star Wars Galaxies, and was announced before the core game even launched. With it came the pilot class, and many ships to conquer the heavens with. They had made some interesting control choices, allowing players to use flight sticks if they wanted to. This added a whole different dynamic to the game, and was one of my favorite additions. Players could even crew multiplayer ships and go on missions together. This was always something I wish was done more in MMO's, as I love the crew experience in vehicles. There is just something about everyone having their specific task, and performing it to the best of their abilities to make that ship soar.

 F yeah space!

Space would bring about new mining opportunities, and plenty of ventures as a privateer looking to make a quick credit. Wrixwood Ford was doing well, and the Blade was more powerful than ever. But with space now behind us, where would the game go from here? This was a scary question for the developers, as it didn't seem like they had any direction beyond that expansion. Find out what got us to where we are today in part 3 of A Galaxy Too Far Away: A History.

Continued in part 3...

A Galaxy Too Far Away: A History - Part 1

My history with the MMO genre has been quite a trip over the years, with Star Wars Galaxies being one of the more memorable experiences. Before I get into the specifics of the game as it is today, I wanted to go over my history with the game, and how it molded me into the MMO gamer I am today.

The year was 2000, and the MMO space was completely alien compared to today. Games such as Everquest were still dominating the market, Ultima Online was still releasing regular content, and mostly everyone wasn't quite sure what to do with this rapidly growing sub-genre of online gaming. Juggernauts like World of Warcraft hadn't even been announced yet, so everything still felt like it was a niche market. Modern quest progression, accessibility, and overall high levels of quality were no where to be found in the MMOs of this time. It's here that Star Wars Galaxies made its way into our hearts and minds as the new champion of the MMO genre, or so we thought at the time.

 There was a time when this looked awesome...Really!

Before World of Warcraft was even heard of outside of Blizzard, Star Wars Galaxies remained the game that had everyone’s attention. It had the Star Wars IP, which was fresh on everyone’s mind due to the prequels being in full effect. It also bolstered an all-star development team of MMO designers from every great franchise that had come before. For its time it also had an impressive graphics engine, surpassing much of what was on the market in the MMO space at the time. Star Wars Galaxies had everything going for it right from the start, and it had my money immediately. Before I even had a chance to give them that money though, they saw fit to make me an early beta tester.

They called it Beta Phase 2, limited to only a hand full of testers. This has remained one of the strangest beta tests I have ever been in, mostly due to how rough everything felt. I was required to physically sign and mail my NDA paperwork, at which point they would send me a physical disc with the beta software on it. We would then wait in a chat client built into the games launcher for the QA Director to let us know if we would be testing anything that day. Most betas these days are simply stress tests for the games architecture. This was a real QA test, something you would normally see happen internally. When we tested, it was always something basic and isolated, such as combat, or travel from one town to another.

 Yeah, too big to download pal

We only had one planet at the time, and no monsters to fight on that planet. The user interface was definitely not optimized for actual play, and simply existed to test the core mechanics of the game. This was wild for me, because you almost never see these parts of a game first hand. It was an interesting experience being in a musical band with the games development staff while testing musician gameplay on Tatooine. Testing was a lot of work, but eventually we would get things to the point where an actual game was there. Unfortunately this is where everything else fell apart, with deadlines closing in the cuts came from all directions. As I mentioned in my previous article, the original design documents for Star Wars Galaxies had something grand in mind for its players. They set out to make a world for their players to live and function in, and sadly forgot to make a game in there somewhere.

There was a mad scramble to create content for players to do, with little result. The game would end up being released with a mountain of bugs, and no clear direction for the player as what they should do. Imagine making a new character in World of Warcraft, and not having any quest NPCs where you start. This was basically Star Wars Galaxies on launch day. In order to progress, you either had to take generic kill missions from mission terminals in town, or make your own adventure and just go hunting with a crew of people. The game suffered from not having any focus, and was best described as an ocean a million miles across and only one foot deep.

This was a different time in MMOs however, much of this was to be expected. Games like Ultima Online didn't even have a quest system until years into its life cycle. We didn't have games like World of Warcraft to show us that taking care in the progression of your characters journey goes quite a ways. At the time, I was part of a group of players intent on creating one of the many player made cities in the game. While the systems that allowed players to do this were not yet in the game, many prepared for that day. The city of Vagabonds Rest was founded on the moon Rori, on the Starsider server. My smuggler ran a small mining business out of that town for quite a bit, until I was contacted by some rather interesting people who wanted to form a business partnership.

 Why you would want to build a city in the desert? Not sure!

The arrangement seemed simple enough, different player companies would pool their resources and connections together to benefit each other. Things went great for a while, and I moved my way the organization quite rapidly. It was around this time that I noticed things were a bit funny about this gig. Turns out the trade organization was just a front for an underground society of players in the community bent on pulling the strings behind the scenes on Starsider. This stuff always reminds me of all those crazy stories you hear about the Eve Online community and their corporate espionage that goes on for years. It just so happened I liked what they had going, so I went on to become a member of The Dark Blade on Starsider.

The way things were, you had to make your own fun sometimes in this game. Having a group of like minded people to create that fun certainly helped. This was all about to change however, when the first expansion to Star Wars Galaxies would bring us to the very stars all these wars keep happening in.

Continued in part 2

Skill Check: League of Legends Dominion

Dominion is the new game mode recently added to the ever popular League of Legends. It's different, fast paced, and all action. I personally prefer it over the classic game mode, and hope they add more to it in the future. I'm also not too bad at it...Sometimes