Star Wars Galaxies/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Broken Base: Galaxies was plagued by this. Even in the last months before the game's closure people were still arguing about the following:
    • The entire Jedi profession start to finish, not helped by how many times it was changed.
      • For a while, there were no player Jedi. Some were fine with that, other felt it was false advertising since the box mentioned the possibility and the game's staff gave cryptic comments about it.
      • Holocrons. These told people to master certain professions to unlock a Jedi character. Some felt that was a unsatisfying path to Jedi hood, Jedi complained the major risks didn't merit the reward. (Bounty hunters could kill outed Jedi and dying three times meant you stayed dead.)
      • A village where players could train in the ways of the force after helping the inhabitants, the Jedi profession broken into five separate disciplines, XP debt instead of permadeath, and Sith and Jedi Councils were added. Yet insane amounts of grinding were needed at every stage and players not interested in Jedi were annoyed at the amount of time and resources being devoted to it.
      • The NGE made Jedi a starter profession, did away with the councils and the village, and gave elder Jedi a special robe and lightsaber crystal. This was also a major point of controversy and had the side effect of a disproportionate number of players choosing Jedi, making balanced groups a rarity
    • The combat upgrade. It capped a lot of overpowered equipment and buffs, added status effects to a lot of moves, and better defined different combat professions roles. It also added a Character Level system no one had asked for, turned years worth of amazing equipment into junk and wreaked havoc on every support profession. Medics buffs were mostly worthless now, crafted goods were no better than common quest rewards, and entertainers had almost no role during the CU. The following months did address some of these issues, but then…
    • The New Game Enhancements are ready! Released less than six months after the last massive change, 32 professions were consolidated or outright dropped to make room for nine iconic classes, and pretty much everything was overhauled all over again. The simpler set-up did require less balance tweaks, giving the dev team more time to build new content, but many felt at far too high a cost.
  • Christmas Rushed: For summer, not Christmas, and only after it been delayed a few times. The CU and the NGE were also likely rushed to conincide with the expansions, which themselves had to be ready by Episode III's film and DVD releases.
"Here's what I would have done differently…I would have given the game another year to develop and really polish it quite a bit…I would have really taken our time and polished combat right so we never had to do the NGE."
—SOE CEO, John Smedley
  • Game Breaker: Doctor buffs pre combat upgrade. They tripled your health and action for a few hours and boosted your secondary stats, allowing you to the wear the heaviest armor and spam specials almost without penalty. Future dungeons and enemies had to be made with them in mind to remain challenging. Unfortunately the massive nerf they got post-CU made them nearly worthless, actually gimping Doctors main source of income and XP and greatly marginalizing the role of their profession.
    • Entertainer buffs introduced after NGE tended to be game breakers in their own right. They could add another 50% to your armor, greatly increase stats, and infuse people with useful effects like a chance to randomly heal damage every hit. Ironically they were usually needed for PvP and high end PvE, which was the exact same complaint some people had about doctor buffs two overhauls ago.

"The circle is now complete."

  • It Gets Better / They Changed It, Now It Sucks: After a rocky start, SWG began to improve. It became less buggy, players were given access to vehicles and riding animals so that they didn't have to spend ridiculous amounts of time running to where they needed to go, etc. "Jump To Lightspeed" was a good addition to the game as well. It looked like the players were finally having their patience rewarded with an overall good game. But it wasn't long afterwards that the "Combat Upgrade" came along, and things started going downhill.
    • It Got Worse with the NGE in particular. There was no end of misery for pretty much everyone remotely involved with Galaxies, players and developers alike. Even the game's former creative director said he was annoyed at all the NGE backlash on his website, despite the fact he didn't even work at SOE anymore. At around the time of the game's closure, he admitted the sudden nature of the NGE was deeply unfair to the game's customer base.
"I'll make an exception (on commenting about changes) for the NGE. I don't think you can or should change a game that radically out from under a user base. You dance with the ones that brung ya, whether they are the market of your dreams or not. Changing things out from under them isn't fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
—Former SWG Creative Director, Raph Koster
  • Misblamed: All though he did later say the NGE shouldn't have been implemented in way that it was, Raph Koster claimed that people were wrong for pegging all the blame on a just a few people who probably weren't even responsible for it. (Specifically John Smedley, Julio Torres, and Jeff Freeman.)
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • Or join them if you wanted to do more than root.
    • Also, depending on what the Rebels on your server acted like, this may have been an easy sell.
  • Tear Jerker: The ending of the game, especially as memorialized in these [dead link] threads [dead link].

Bought a round of drinks in the Mos Eisley cantina, sat with the only other person in the bar, shared a drink and 10 seconds before being disconnecting said to him " may the force be with you" and he said " and you as well my friend". That was awesome, never met that person before, yet in a few short minutes just before the game died forever, I made a new friend. Thats how awesome SWG was, you could meet and make new friends in the wonderful world it was.

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