The official seventh-anniversary logo for the game. While the game made it past its eighth anniversary, this was the last one used. This was the same team that created and supported the popular Everquest massively multiplayer online game. LucasArts would be responsible for all distribution of the Star Wars online game.
The announcement included an expected release date sometime in and that the game would take place during the classic trilogy Star Wars era. LucasArts officially announced the brand name of the game to be Star Wars Galaxies on November 29 , The game's official information site was launched on November 30 , in conjunction with SOE and featured frequently asked questions about the game and message boards fielded by members of the development team.
On May 17 , , even before the game went into public beta testing , the first expansion's development was announced. The release date of the initial product, the ground-based component, was updated to the second half of The staggered release schedule of the space component of the Star Wars Galaxies series was said to benefit players because they would have time to establish their characters and explore different elements of the core game before adding the space layer.
A new official site launched on the same day, which placed more of an emphasis on the community of the game. It included new screen shots, movies, an updated FAQ, concept art, development team members' profiles, features about the game, and a new forum. This content included information on species and locations, new images and movies of different game elements, and degree QuickTime VR panoramas of different locations.
In May , Verant began accepting applications from users who were interested in participating in a closed beta test for Galaxies. The closed beta test would begin in July This would include more screen shots, information on match making services, the fact that players would be permitted only one character per server, [14] and skill trees and how the skill-based system would function.
The year ended with LucasArts officially confirming a release date of April 15 , This represented one of the largest ever fan communities amassed for any game prior to retail availability. With a Star Wars license and veteran designer Raph Koster at the helm, expectations among gamers ran high during the development of Galaxies.
Many industry professionals expected that these forces would push the subscription numbers past the one million mark. As development wore on, the release date was pushed back, features were cut, and Sony canceled planned ports for the Xbox and PlayStation 2. Galaxies was most criticized for numerous bugs and broken features that plagued the game. In November , two of those most anticipated features, creature mounts and player-created cities were enabled.
Also, on November 7 , it was announced that the first player had unlocked a Force -sensitive character slot needed to become a Jedi. A localized version for the Japanese market was published by Electronic Arts Japan on December 23, However, Japanese acceptance of the game was low, and in November the servers were shut down and existing accounts migrated to US servers. Star Wars Galaxies did not begin with any sort of overarching story.
Originally, as the original opening crawl states, after character creation, the player started out on an Imperial Star Destroyer after being captured on a passenger ship suspected of illegal activity. After being cleared of any wrongdoing, the player was instructed to make their way through the ship towards the shuttle bay.
Along the way, various obstacles were used to educate the player in the basics of game play. After reaching the shuttle bay, the player was allowed to choose a starting planet, then city. The planetary choices were Naboo , Tatooine , or Corellia. A majority of the already established cities on the planet of choice could be chosen as a starting point, such as Moenia , Theed , Coronet , Doaba Guerfel , Mos Eisley , or Anchorhead.
After choosing, they were loaded up into their city of choice on the planet with nothing but a green and yellow R2 helper droid , a limited-use Z speeder bike and no real direction on what to do next. After the release of the New Game Enhancements in late , however, story elements became more important to the development of your character.
The introductory sequence was changed. This time the player started out on an Imperial space station. The player was quickly contacted by C-3PO , who familiarized the player with the basics of the controls, and informed them that Han Solo would arrive shortly to rescue them. Han, Chewbacca , and R2-D2 arrived and escorted the player to the hangar bay, where they were attacked by three stormtroopers. After killing the troopers, Han, the player and crew boarded the Millennium Falcon and escaped the exploding station, with TIE fighters giving chase.
The next sequence was meant to familiarize the player with the space-combat game play. After arriving on the station, the player was free to complete several story-driven quests on their quest for credits and experience the player had to reach level 5 before they could leave the station. Once the player was sufficiently experienced, the player had to aid Han Solo in repairing the Falcon. Before leaving, Han Solo set them up with a speeder, and a contact in Mos Eisley.
Further quests in this overarching chain known collectively as the Legacy quests took the player to other planets, including Naboo, Corellia, and Talus. From its release in June of until November of , Star Wars Galaxies used an opening crawl much like the movies as an introduction during character creation.
After the release of the New Game Enhancements in November of , a slightly updated opening crawl was used. Meanwhile, the existence of certain characters and quests indicated that the game was set before the events of Episode V.
However, another character named Sergeant Ruwan Tokai clearly mentioned that the destruction of the Death Star occurred a year earlier, suggesting a timeline closer to 1 ABY. Cryptic mentions were made in the game about the existence of Echo Base on Hoth. Han Solo's appearance on Lok proves that the game was set before the events of 3 ABY, when he became encased in carbonite.
This means certain portions of the game took place immediately after the Battle of Yavin in 0 ABY, some immediately before the Battle of Hoth in 3 ABY, and some in between, making a concrete date impossible to determine for the game as a whole.
With Chapter 11 in November , the developers added the Battle of Hoth to the game. However, the developers were quite clear that this did not advance the timeline. It was only intended to be a completely isolated "Star Wars Moment" [23] to give players the opportunity to participate in the iconic movie event without any effect on continuity for the rest of of the game. During the final day of the game on December 15, , the developers depicted the second Death Star over Endor, and included a bunker on the moon where Imperial and Rebel players could fight each other.
Not long before the servers were terminated, the second Death Star was shown being destroyed in the sky. This indicates that at least the final day of the game tenuously took place in 4 ABY ; however, characters like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine could still be visited after the Death Star's destruction. The original basic "game world" consisted of ten simulated planetary surfaces and associated structures.
The game's first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed , added explorable space sectors for every original planet. Two additional space sectors were also included, Deep Space and the Kessel sector. The chapter 8 update also added the Nova Orion Station. In the second expansion, Rage of the Wookiees , the Wookiee planet Kashyyyk was added. In the third expansion, Trials of Obi-Wan added the planet Mustafar the only planet without an explorable space sector. Each of the ten original planets were represented by approximately square kilometers 15 km x 15 km of game space, [24] with all established cities and locations compressed into that space.
In contrast, the expansion planets of Kashyyyk and Mustafar were smaller, constructed differently e. Kashyyyk was represented by several navigational zones that connected to each other via portals located throughout that planet. Many of these zones were instanced, meaning that only the player or group that selected that zone were likely the only inhabitants of that zone. Mustafar had a traditional layout similar to the original planets, but with many instanced dungeons scattered across the landscape.
With the release of Chapter 11, the planet Hoth was released as an instance. The player's character would have opportunities to meet famous Star Wars characters, earn in-game fame and fortune or infamy and notoriety , travel to iconic Star Wars locations, and obtain numerous items, artifacts, and "trophies" that could enhance his or her character.
Players of the game created characters to navigate through these environments. A character could be either male or female, and he or she belonged to one of nine iconic professions: Jedi , bounty hunter , smuggler , commando , spy , officer , medic , entertainer , or trader. Chapter 6 has introduced beast master , the NGE version of the pre-NGE creature handler , as a separate expertise tree.
There were a number of species that appeared throughout the game as NPCs non-player characters. These professions were available in the game's later releases, following the "New Game Enhancements":. Prior to the release of the New Game Enhancements on November 15 , , a player could choose from up to 34 professions to play.
The player was limited in their choice of profession by set number of skill points. Taking advantage of the different skill and combat modifiers offered by different professions, players could customize their characters to match their playing styles. This meant that a character could have skills in more than one profession, unlike the current system which allows the player only one profession per character.
Characters could erect, own and decorate a variety of buildings, including houses, cantinas, guild halls and city halls. These buildings, when grouped, could be organized into cities. Players held elections via ballot box for Mayor. Elected mayors granted city members certain rights to place structures within the city and eject players from cities as needed. Reelections were held every three weeks. If another player wished to run for mayor, they could add their name at any time to the ballot box to run against the incumbent.
As cities grew in population, they became eligible to add services and facilities such as vehicle repair garages, shuttleports, cloning facilities, hospitals, cantinas and garden displays. They could show up on the planetary maps alongside canonical cities such as Theed and Mos Eisley. There were twenty-five different servers—called "galaxies"—in which players could choose to play the game. Most of them were named after obscure ships from the Expanded Universe. Twelve were shut down on October 15 , , leaving thirteen, which were shut down with the game's closure on December 15th , At the time of its initial release, the game was very different than it was at the time of its closure.
Vehicles and creature mounts were not yet implemented. While player housing was in the game, player cities were not. Those features were added in November Each character and creature possessed three "pools" called Health, Action, and Mind; or "HAM" that represented his or her physical and mental reserves.
Most attacks specifically targeted one of these three pools, and any action the character took also depleted one or more of the pools. When any one of those pools was fully depleted, the character would fall unconscious. Combat required the player to carefully manage his or her actions to avoid depleting a pool.
Character progression was vastly different at release as well. Characters started out in one of six basic professions Medic, Brawler, Marksman, Scout, Entertainer, or Artisan and could pick up any of the other five at any time after character creation.
Each profession consisted of a tree-like structure of skills, with a single Novice level, four independent branches of four levels each, and a Master level which required completion of all four branches. Characters purchased these skills with experience points gained through a related activity.
For example, an Entertainer could purchase skills to get better at playing music, but only with Musician experience points. Dancing experience points were entirely separate and could only be used to purchase dancing skills.
In addition to the basic professions, characters could specialize into advanced professions such as Bounty Hunter, Creature Handler, Ranger, Doctor, and Musician. There were a total of 24 advanced professions, although there was no way for characters to obtain all of them at once. Each advanced profession had certain skill requirements from the base professions that had to be met, some more restrictive than others.
Jedi were not available as a starting profession, nor even as an advanced profession. The developers stated only that certain in-game actions would open up a Force-sensitive character slot.
The actions required were left for players to discover. It eventually turned out that characters had to achieve Master level in five random professions. The identity of four of those necessary professions could be learned via looted holocrons , but the fifth had to be found via trial and error. The first Force-sensitive character slot was unlocked on November 7, In addition to the base game, three expansions were developed by SOE and published by LucasArts since the game's inception:. The Combat Upgrade of April was a major revamping and rewriting of the entire Star Wars Galaxies combat, armor, and weapons system.
A more restricted tone was set, whereas only certain characters in certain professions would use specific weapons and wear armor. In addition, the method of fighting in the game was redone with skill levels assigned to both players and game creatures.
Under the new system, only a creature of equal skill could be attacked by a player, with lesser creatures rendering no experience if killed and the more powerful creatures deemed almost invincible to single player attacks.
The idea was, originally, quite a good one. The game was set at a time when the Jedi were dead or gone, but when new Force sensitives might nonetheless be born.
To simulate that, every character was assigned an invisible set of criteria involving multiple profession masteries that ultimately unlocked a Jedi character slot. Almost no Jedi emerged from the system in the early months. To accelerate the process, SOE added a rare item to the game called a holocron, which, once used, would tell you a profession you needed to master to earn your Jedi.
The result was chaos. The only items of any worth in the economy became gear for fast levelling and holocrons themselves. Shops were abandoned as armoursmiths rerolled as dancers, dancers rerolled as biotechnicians, biotechnicians rerolled as smugglers. A small underground of hologrind objectors clung on, making money from the chaos in service economies and wondering when the game would become about something other than unlocking Jedi.
It was, functionally, an alternate advancement system based on building reputation with a particular faction, unlocked by following a linear questline. Force sensitivity became accessible to the point of being normal and expected. This introduced space travel—although atmospheric flight was not added until later—and surprisingly adept space combat. As it was, it was a welcome diversion after a long period of uncertainty, and proof some of the ambition of the original design remained.
SWGEmu is an emulation project that allows users to run servers using modified versions of the game, typically from before the Combat Upgrade. These are small communities and, with limited official support, large parts of the game have been redeveloped from scratch.
Nonetheless, these efforts are a sign of how passionate the original Galaxies community was—and how far some are willing to go to save the game they loved. As the prequel trilogy progressed, LucasArts came to perceive the series in terms of iconic images and archetypal situations.
For Galaxies, they were a crippling imposition. The first major shift was the Combat Upgrade, which simplified and rebalanced parts of the combat system. It was a success in several ways—karate was no longer preeminent—but a shock to players. The NGE took what had been a skill-building character advancement system and transformed it into a level-based system with very specific classes.
One of these classes was even the Jedi, meaning that players could create force-using characters from the very start. No more holo-grinding. Along with the loss of holo-grinding, the playerbase's sense of what the game was shifted.
Many players at the time of the NGE had been there since launch, happily chatting and socializing in cantinas or going on hunting trips with their friends. Now they found their characters in a strange new world, populated by classes and systems they didn't understand.
The sense of outrage, in-game and out, in the forums and online, was palpable. Emotions ran hot, with "betrayal" the running theme for most individuals that experienced the changes firsthand.
It's not clear how large a drop in subscriptions resulted from the NGE, but it was large. First in drips and drabs, and then in increasing waves of departures as a cascade failure hit the social fabric of the game. Ironically, the real problem was almost certainly not the changes themselves. As a player of the game today can tell you, the title is almost certainly better off for the firestorm of change that the NGE introduced.
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