by Jody - August 1, 2003

Although friendlier in many ways to non-power-gamers and non-MMORPGers than other persistent world games, Star Wars Galaxies remains, like the others, not for the faint of heart. Especially now, nearly a month after its launch, SWG is very much in the throes of gangly adolescence. Though it's possible to spot the mature game creeping out from underneath, it takes the adoring eyes of a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fan to look past the bugs, imbalances and half-finished content to see the underlying attractiveness. That attractive game is there now in places, and more attractive features lie just beyond reach, visibly installed, but not yet working as intended. When it's all working, SWG boasts an impressive under-girding.

MMORPBuggy

Early confusion for the new player is partially a result of some of SWG's innovation. In most games in the genre, you create a character by picking a species and picking a character class or profession that will be yours until you stop playing. If you want to play a different class, you create a different character. Here, you'll pick a base profession at creation, but almost certainly want to learn a couple more base professions as soon as you get into the game proper. While there are defined paths to certain advanced professions, nearly all of them leave you with the ability to take on extra skills from professions outside your primary. In other words, you might be a shooter who crafts, a crafter who shoots or a medic who dances and scouts. And you're not stuck with any of those choices. At any point, you can trade skills in to recoup their cost to you (other than the experience accrued) and spend them elsewhere. What is true for your skills is also true for your stats. If you choose to be a dancer at character creation, the game will tilt your personal statistics to aid that choice. But if you change your mind and want to be a fighter, you can trigger a "stat migration" to rearrange them as befits your new direction. This system can leave new players puzzled at first, but is also an interesting change of pace for long-time MMORPGers.

But here's the kicker. Unlike other games, you only get one character slot per server. As with many of SWG's designs, this is both a blessing and a curse. Players do, in fact, seem somewhat more mindful of their in-game reputations knowing that they can't simply slip in and out of their "good guy" and "bad guy" characters on the same server. Some people are born jerks no matter what you do, but those on the bubble seem to understand the incentives here. One character per server also makes it easier to find that player you like to hunt with. If he's on, he's on as the same character you hunted with before. Finally, the system cuts down on self-twinking (where you use your higher level character to provide otherwise unattainable levels of cash or items for your lower level character) in favor of coordinated efforts among players, particularly within player associations, to reach expensive goals. These are good things.

On the other hand, one-character-per-server punishes experimenters and tears at player associations. So you've made it most of the way up the ladder as a Combat Medic, and it's taken you a month to do it. And guess what, you decide you hate it because your poisons are underpowered or your heals too expensive or whatever. Most gamers, having invested that much time in a character are loathing letting him go. In other games, you put that character on a shelf, hope for some changes down the line that improve the profession, and create a new character to play in the meantime. In SWG, however, you're faced with a horrible quandary. You can trade in those skills and lose all the experience that went into them, you can create a character on a different server and lose your player association or other network of friends, or you can keep slogging away hoping for a patch sooner rather than later. In a game like Shadowbane, where your character levels up relatively quickly, letting go of one to try another doesn't seem so tragic. The pace of growth is slower in SWG, however, and giving up well-advanced position is agonizing. Worse, maybe you actually enjoy your character and would never give him up, but you just want to try something else. You'll have to do it on another server and probably without your friends.

Skills, as mentioned before, start with the player choosing a profession. Each profession has a huge skill tree of four sub-skills, most leading to master-level skills with their own skill trees in turn. Experience comes from both specific activities -- use of a certain weapon -- and general activities like combat or crafting. Once you're able to level up in a certain skill, you can hit up an NPC trainer (which costs cash and a whole lot of XP) or hope to find a player willing to teach (which costs half the XP and can be free, depending on the player).

Combat isn't an elaborate affair. Really, you point and click, and sit back (or dodge around). Yes, special moves or attacks are available as you get more experienced. Add 'em to a hot-button list or macro, but combat is still fairly hands-off. That said, combat skills are absolutely necessary, even for non-combat professions. There's just too much exposure to hostiles even in cities to go without.

Are there growing pains? Of course there are. We'll ignore the first-day lag horror -- nowadays, lag is only occasionally bad at peak hours, and rarely is it bad enough to disrupt gameplay. No, my major beef is with missions. Some are outright broken. Objectives don't appear, or aren't provided from the outset. Some make no sense; I had to deliver one item to a contact swimming -- no kidding here -- way out in the middle of a lake. Destroy missions are just too difficult for newbies. Yeah, it encourages teaming up, but that's not always an option. (There are still off-peak times when the cities look like ghost towns as far as player characters.)

Also, city-to-city travel on planets without a shuttle system is a long, tedious process of walking (and for newbies, avoiding wildlife -- sometimes hard when it spawns in close by). The good thing? All of this can be fixed. A vehicle expansion, for example, is already under construction, which will reduce travel times.

The best looking MMORPG to date? Maybe, maybe not.

When Asheron�s Call 2 released, it set the bar for the graphical quality of MMOs. SWG raises that a notch. This game has some of the best special effects seen in the genre. You are hunting in a field and are a little weary (your health, action and mind bars are down) from the battles. Well, since you happen to be far enough outside of a city, you can set up a camp. Smoke rises from the campfire is a very realistic fashion. Surveying also produces some wonderful mist and smoke graphics. Swim in a river and you are likely to see vegetation at the bottom swaying with the current. The grasses of the field, the ferns of the forest all sway with gentle breezes. The weather effects are also incredible. On the Fourth of July, fireworks lit the skies over the worlds in a very realistic fashion. Mob animations are also great. Some of the bigger beasts fall with a resounding thud that will have your monitor shaking. If you have a good sound system, you will feel the thumps of each footfall. Player animations are also very good. Dancing skills are amazing to watch, and the musicians boogie down with the best. Hunters can go prone and crawl realistically through the underbrush. If not for the radar, it would be almost impossible to tell if other players were in the vicinity.

Less Star Warsy as I expected.

Sound is another area where the game excels, especially the wide range of ambient sounds such as the turbulent winds that howl across the deserts of Tattooine, and the singing birds among the trees on the planet Corellia. Just about every creature you come across emits unique sounds, both in and out of combat. Droids whirr as they meander through cities, while the engine roar of familiar spaceships from the Star Wars universe can occasionally be perceived moving through the sky. John Williams' original orchestral movie score plays forcefully during battles, and is heard sparingly at other times. The infrequent usage of background music when out of combat prevents it from becoming tiresome, although long journeys do become rather quiet.

General concept = Cool. Game = not.

The character skill trees are incredible. Each player has a set number of skill points (250) that can be spent as you accrue the experience points to qualify you for new skills. Each skill has a cost value to learn. It is possible to master two trees, with a few skill points left over to minor in something else. From smuggler to bounty hunter, bio-engineer to droid engineer, gunfighter to ranger, and yes, even becoming a Jedi is possible, though incredibly hard. However, if you are chosen to become a Jedi and you die, you don�t regenerate like other players. A death is that -- the character becomes a blue ghost, nothing more.

The game interface allows for language blocks, as well as reconfiguring the keymaps for controls, graphics and sound volumes. The game does have a learning curve, and players should expect to invest at least 30-40 minutes getting comfortable with the controls.

Because of the skill tree configuration, SWG ensures player interaction. This is not something that can be played solo. You may be solitary, but you will never be able to survive without some interaction with other players. The game has a guild system and the free enterprise structure is such that players can unionize and drive independents out of business through cut-rate prices. No one will truly corner the market on something, but they can make it tough for other players to rake in the credits (money).

This is also a game that requires serious time investment in order to advance up the skill tree. Each skill tree is divided into the lower-end skills and the specialization skills. For example, if you wish to be an architect, you have to complete the requirements of the Artisan tree, then specialize as an architect. Oh, but wait, just completing the lower tree doesn�t mean that you immediately move into the architect line. No, you have to gain another 33,000 experience points in engineering to be able to train (apprenticeship points and credits are the cost here) as a novice architect. And once you are a novice architect, you need to skill up that tree to the point of being able to make the really big buildings that will be sought down the road.

Developers have hinted that player-owned and run cities are coming, with shuttleports, banks and all that a city needs - including a police force that can take offense with anyone. You may be a Rebel and steering clear of Imperial forces in certain areas of the world, but you may also have to steer clear of certain towns which have a shoot-on-sight order issued on you.

I advise you wait until expansion.

Overall, Star Wars Galaxies allows players to experience many diverse avenues of gameplay beyond that of combat alone via features such as housing, non-combat clothing styles, tamable creatures, and a sophisticated crafting system. If you enjoy the role-playing aspect of a persistent state world, you will find a wealth of tools to help further your cause, along with elements that celebrate player socialization and interdependence. A potential quandary for some players might be that the enjoyment of such aspects can depend to a fair extent on what each player makes of them. The requirement to watch Entertainers perform in a cantina for healing is one example of how the game actually requires players to participate in role-playing activities, at least to a small extent, and depending on your gaming preferences, you may or may not find this type of forced interaction to your liking. However, there are good reasons for the required interdependencies; they ensure certain professions are both useful and viable.

Star Wars Galaxies is very successful at recreating the popular universe in beautiful detail and immense scope. It also offers an exceptionally diverse amount of virtual world content, not merely combat. This means there's a lot for players to learn, but also suggests the game has the potential to attract and hold a user base having various play styles. While it has areas to be fixed and improved, the overall experience at this time is both stable and enjoyable, with substantial promise to grow and progress over the months and years to come.