Star Wars Galaxies: My Rambling Thoughts
As previously promised in the “Whatcha Playin’?” thread that I started recently, I’m putting up a short review along with some brief thoughts on Star Wars Galaxies, the MMORPG from Sony Online Entertainment and Lucasarts. While this will probably feature a bit of my trademark rambling, as well the occasional side note or wayward thought, I’ll try to be as concise as possible.
I picked up SWG last week after class and before work, on Thursday. I didn’t get around to installing it until Friday morning, after I got home from work. I was still unsure as to the wisdom of my purchase, as I’d heard things both good and bad about the game, but I figured that it was worth a shot. First, the install: this went nice and smooth, without any hang-ups. It was a lot of data (something over 3 GB, if I remember correctly, but I’ve got enough free HDD space to not have it be a major concern). Other concerns that I had addressed previously were the system requirements for the game, which are, by most standards, pretty steep. To avoid later mention, my system has the following specs: 3.06 GHz Pentium IV, 1024 MB of PC 2700 SDRAM, (2) 80 GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100 Western Digital server grade HDD’s, a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9700 Pro video card, a Soundblaster Live audio card with 4.1 surround speakers by Creative Labs and a 19” Viewsonic monitor. I connect to the internet using DSL, which I consider to be vital for this game, given that I was still experiencing game lag due to the large packet transfers that were taking place).
So, really, that covers my first big complaint about this game. It’s really made for higher-end systems (which limits its practicality for many gamers) and really demands a broadband connection for decent playability. Still, with a quality system that has higher-end graphics capability, the game does look quite nice, which I’ll discuss in greater detail shortly.
So, now it’s installed. I then proceed to update the game with all the patches that have been made available since the games launch (which took about 15 minutes to download at 150 kbps). Having done all that, and having previously registered on the SWG website, I was ready to launch the game.
At this point, I was feeling quite a bit of nervous energy. I mean, it’s Star Wars, after all! The fanboy in me was thinking, “This better rock!” while the miser in me was thinking, “This better be worth the $50 bucks I just spent, plus the $15 bucks a month that Sony wants me to pay to play this game!” I will note, though, that you can get a cheaper subscription rate if you sign up for longer subscription periods at a time, instead of the month-to-month plan that I’m using. If memory serves, it drops to $12 per month or so if you sign up for 6 months at once.
As I’m thinking about this, the familiar text, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” appears on the screen, and then the classic John Williams Main Theme hits my speakers, and I start to feel a bit giddy. Then the intro begins, which is pretty classic Star Wars, and sets up the introductory tutorial for the game. So far, so good, in my opinion (especially since you can skip the intro if you want).
Next, you choose a server, or galaxy (hence Star Wars Galaxies…clever, eh?) to play on. I’d heard quite a few good things about the Starsider galaxy, as it’s apparently the ‘unofficial’ roleplaying server, so that was where I opted to generate my first ‘1 character per server’ character.
The selection of character appearance in SWG is, by far, the best that I’ve found for any game yet, bar none. There are numerous elements of character appearance to manipulate, from height, weight and skin color to hair color and style, facial hair color and style, eye color, eye slant, eye size, mouth size, lip appearance, nose features, chin size and cheek appearance to freckles and even wrinkles to simulate age. I was extremely impressed with this part, and spent quite a while tinkering with the appearance of my character The only annoying part about this was that there was nothing to gauge height against, and while I went for approximately middle-of-the-road Human height, I ended up significantly shorter than a Stormtrooper. A measuring gauge with height and mass (in meters and kilograms) would have been nice.
While I opted for Human, there are other races to choose from. The list includes: Rodian, Twi’lek, Wookie, Mon Cal, Zabrak, Bothan and Trandoshan (I think that’s all…I’m typing this at work, and I don’t have my SWG book with me).
So, now that race (or species) is taken care of, it’s time to choose a starting profession. Unlike many other MMORPG (or, at least the one I’m primarily familiar with, Asheron’s Call, by Turbine and Microsoft) the choice of starting profession is as ‘make or break’ as it is in other games. The starting professions include the following: Artisan, Brawler, Entertainer, Medic, Marksman and Scout (I think that’s it…don’t quote me). Given my passion for shooting things, and the fact that I can’t start off playing a Jedi (or even being Force Sensitive…another game gripe that I’ll cover later), I opted for Marksman.
Without going too far into the game mechanics and rules, the profession system essentially works like this: There are Starting Professions (the ones listed above), Elite Professions and Hybrid Professions (basically advanced professions). To achieve an advanced profession requires certain elements of other professions. For instance, given that, when I can’t play a Jedi, I often enjoy playing smugglers, I’m interested in pursuing the Smuggler profession. This requires elements of the Brawler and Marksman starting professions, as well as the Elite profession of Pistoleer (I think…again, no book with me, so I’m going from memory here). Adding professions is relatively easy, so long as you’ve either got the cash, or someone to teach you. Each character has 250 skill points with which to purchase skills as the game progresses (most skills aren’t open for you at the beginning, so you’ll buy them when you can). Additionally, you can cash in skill points at any time (if you’re tired of having a certain skill, for instance), so that you can use the points for something else. This prevents the need for ‘rerolling’ a character if you think that he’s ‘broken’ or ‘gimped’ (online gamer speak for a weak or useless character, at least in the eyes of other gamers).
Also, on the matter of character creation, there’s not as many initial choices to make, in terms of character skills and attributes, as there are in other games. For instance, each starting profession has pre-assigned score for each attribute (modified, if appropriate, by race) and the ‘novice’ skill set for the given profession. Stats can be altered by using Stat Migration, which involves moving stat points from one attribute to another. The change isn’t always immediate, and may take some time, as the points ‘migrate’ from one attribute to the next. Stats also figure directly to your vitals, in SWG terms, this means Health, Action and Mental (or HAM, as they call it). All are pretty self explanatory, and all can be reduced by a variety of activities, including combat. Also, attributes can suffer wounds, which are tougher to heal (requiring Medics or someone with Medic skills, which I highly recommend any character to have). Finally, you can suffer Battle Fatigue, which, I can tell you firsthand, sucks. This is eliminated by resting in certain locations, like medical facilities or cantinas, or by having an Entertainer dance for you (or dancing yourself, if you have the skills). Battle Fatigue can slow down your healing process, which, as we all know, is bad for business.
Right, so, with that all in mind, (actually, it wasn’t, because I’m notoriously bad when it comes to reading manuals for games, or anything else, so most of this stuff I had to figure out as time went by), I was ready to enter the tutorial. While movement took a bit to get used to, I have to say that the tutorial was quite fun, and pretty informative. It covers, as it should, the basics of gameplay, from movement, to camera control, to conversing and interacting with the game environment to combat. At the end of the tutorial, you get to choose where you want to start the game. There are a number of Star Wars standard planets to choose from, ranging from Corellia to Naboo to some more little known planets, but, being a fanboy, I had to go with the all-time classic, Tatooine. After selecting a planet, you can choose a starting location, which, for me, became apparent as soon as I saw it: Mos Eisley, the wretched hive of scum and villainy itself (what better place for an aspiring smuggler, right?).
Arriving in Mos Eisley and looking at the twins suns of Tatooine reaffirmed to me the graphic beauty of SWG. With various Star Wars audio tracks being generated and played for background music (which I found to be highly enjoyable), as well as the sounds of ion engines flying overhead, I began to explore (actually, I began to hunt for the famed cantina, but, since I didn’t know about the convenient map feature, I had to look around for it).
While I didn’t bump into too many fellow PC’s, I did find a number of NPCs, most of which weren’t very talkative or friendly. And then there are the ‘spice fiends’. Let me tell you, it’s best to avoid them, unless you’re tougher than they are. They like to lurk near the entrance to the cantina, and will attack you if the mood strikes them, which can prove pretty fatal, pretty fast…as it nearly did for me. Fortunately, there’s a cloning facility nearby (a respawning point, basically, where you store your character information, for an in-game fee, and will respawn at if you die. I still can’t afford to get myself cloned, so I’m ‘tied’ to the spaceport in the tutorial, I suppose, though I haven’t died yet and haven’t had the opportunity to find out). On that point, you can also get your equipment ‘insured’, so that you won’t lose it when you die, though this costs money as well. Finally, you can keep money and possessions in the bank, from which you can access your credits from any banking terminal, but will have to travel to the appropriate location to retrieve your possessions.
So, I make it to the cantina, having narrowly escaped the spice fiends, and having suffered damage and battle fatigue. Fortunately, by now I knew about the recuperative powers of the cantina and knew that my battle fatigue would go away given enough time there…and let me tell you, it took quite a while to get rid of it all (I averaged 3 points of battle fatigue reduction every 6 minutes, and there’s only so long a person can really listen to cantina music before insanity sets in). I expected to see a cantina bustling with all sorts of seedy activity, but, alas, that wasn’t the case. Only a couple of PC Entertainers doing their thing, and a bunch of NPC’s (including a couple of Stormtroopers). All in all, not exactly what I had hoped for.
(to be continued...)
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). You only need to be a pistol "specialist" (which also qualifies you for the elite profession "pistoleer," but you don't have to be a pistoleer to qualify for smuggler) and a unarmed combat specialist. For me, I shoot everything, and I just recently qualified for pistol specialist (although I haven't trained in the skill yet). However, unarmed combat is much deadlier if you're outnumbered, making it more difficult to solo unarmed (and I'm only about a third of the way towards qualifying for the skill).
