The rise, fall, and return of Star Wars Galaxies - The Daily Dot

[darkliefSG]

That was a great article, as usual Raph nailed it.

This article was great, glad the emu team is getting some props in the gaming press, its well deserved

This article pinpoints exactly when the best game ever created failed, the thing they always missed was that some people like being "uncle owen" the moisture farmer....

[Lolindir]

We will always be in dire need for dedicated testers on Nova.

[nee2earth]

Nice work everyone.

......

Pete! Come back to us!

...

The Force is calling out to you elpete!

QFE , We miss you elpete.

---------------

We will always be in dire need for dedicated testers on Nova.

If anyone has any questions , best bet is to login our official IRC chat and type: /join #openqa

Ask for me (Nee) or Scurby.

[Thrax989]

Good Job TEAM and Community

Popovici is now 27 years old. He still lives in Barcelona and works on distributed systems and servers. He is currently employed by a gaming startup that is trying to build a platform for mobile devices.

You always seem to Impress the community with your Long Dedication Very Good Job Victor


Don't forget the 5 Years worth of code Contribute Video For those who were not listed or left out your Name is in there! =]

[roman6]

Great article! I would of not minded it being a little longer. Its fantastic to read about the developers experiences and how there perception of the game has evolved over time. Im a FarStar Vet and ive been following EMU since the creation of the forums.

I Bow to the devs and the entire SWGemu community

[Darrkbeast]

Glad there is a way to enjoy SWG again. I sadly got the original game near the end after all the changes happened and didn't get to experience all the things people talked about. I look forward to experiencing them now. One thing that is totally true is things change when your the one working on the game. I am currently working on my own game and at the end of the development cycle I don't think I'll play it myself. Anyways glad to see this game being resurrected, keep up the great work.

[Delta One]

“The rule was, the best things in the game had to be made by players, and the other rule was everything had to break,”

“That sense of being part of a social fabric is missing in even most MMOs,” Koster says. “It’s just not there. We don’t have the social infrastructure for it to be able to happen. How can you be a loyal customer of a given weaponsmith in World of Warcraft? None of the infrastructure exists.”

And, like most veterans of the early days of Galaxies, Popovici eventually fell in love with the social scene, especially hanging out for hours in cantinas after a full evening of hunting other players.

Popovici only had a few months to enjoy Galaxies before the Combat Upgrade utterly transformed the game, and his friends began leaving. “Players had to restart and relearn everything they could do,” he says. “A lot of my friends didn’t want to spend months to learn the new game.” He stuck with the game for two weeks after the Combat Upgrade, but with most of his friends gone, he soon had no reason to stay either. He walked away from that virtual world.


I've been here for years and haven't been on EMU or on the forums more than a handful of times in the past couple years but saw this and these quotes really hit home for me and felt I wanted to post this. They very much speak to why I loved SWG. The way I read them is basically that the game wasn't built as just a sandbox. But basically intended to be a social playground in Star Wars. Everything built around fostering times where people would spend time TOGETHER, reliant on others. Everything had to break so that you had relationships with people (I read as intended to not be yourself on another account). As long as you have friendships in game then the game works and is amazing. When that is lost (as I feel is the biggest issue that happened with BOTH the CU and NGE) is the biggest blow to its "gameplay"

"There’s something about being on this side of the code that kind of ruins playing the game,” he says. “I know too much about how things work to actually play and be mystified by it again.” - This is my same problem and why I can't bring myself to play here anymore (might not unless jump to lightspeed comes as I just didn't spend enough time to know the ins and outs of it). But I don't really believe it is a knowledge problem itself. It's we have discovered the parts of the game that weren't ever balanced out to MAINTAIN the social aspect to the game. 90% composite didn't exist in the VERY early game (required hunting in groups EVEN FOR XP, which was maybe my fondest memory of the game. This meant needing a Doctor/CM for healing/rezzing, a scout for camps, even combat professions that became useless [state driven carbineer] were useful to the group). Doctor buffs - high ones didn't exist in the game leading to people wearing different types of armor and having players with just normal clothes in combat, along with HAM stats on weapons and armor (Weaponsmiths creating different weapons that had different HAM amounts, damage, or speed [lower HAM could be more useful than capping speed before buffs]), even specials in combat weren't always able to be spammed in combat unless you hurt yourself in another area (low base stats, no armor, lesser damage gun for low ham, etc).

Every profession had a role to play and REQUIRED cooperation with others. Prebuff/armor made parts of the game 100% inaccessible without friends. Doctors played ATK providing healing to wounds (I know I was one) at med centers. Entertainers required ATK play until macros were discovered (and guess what, with 1 character per account/server people still played them! And there isn't an excuse that the player base is smaller because as the team has pointed out many times, the population here often EXCEEDS SWG at its peak). There is COUNTLESS other examples of things like this that drive SOLO play instead of the original intended FORCED SOCIAL play. Unfortunately, I feel that it is the commitment to staying 100% true to the game (while the purest form), that may eventually cause those that really desire to have that experience again to never achieve it due to the broken endgame mechanics that the original team were never able to balance before they just scrapped the game. It's pretty clear the game wasn't intended to be group based UNTIL master elite professions existed then became a solo game.

[Delta One]

just another quick thing to add to that. Professions seem to be the same. I don't think it was ever the intention to make everything speed capped. It really makes no sense. I always assumed pistols were about close combat, carbines for crowd control and rifleman about heavy damage dealing from long distances. The speeds of those weapons reflected that. I think it's interesting, if you play with only master marksman there does seem to be some balance between the 3 in terms of what they do. But once you master all of them it turns into Rifleman=only viable choice

[Hoghi]

“The rule was, the best things in the game had to be made by players, and the other rule was everything had to break,”

“That sense of being part of a social fabric is missing in even most MMOs,” Koster says. “It’s just not there. We don’t have the social infrastructure for it to be able to happen. How can you be a loyal customer of a given weaponsmith in World of Warcraft? None of the infrastructure exists.”

And, like most veterans of the early days of Galaxies, Popovici eventually fell in love with the social scene, especially hanging out for hours in cantinas after a full evening of hunting other players.

Popovici only had a few months to enjoy Galaxies before the Combat Upgrade utterly transformed the game, and his friends began leaving. “Players had to restart and relearn everything they could do,” he says. “A lot of my friends didn’t want to spend months to learn the new game.” He stuck with the game for two weeks after the Combat Upgrade, but with most of his friends gone, he soon had no reason to stay either. He walked away from that virtual world.


I've been here for years and haven't been on EMU or on the forums more than a handful of times in the past couple years but saw this and these quotes really hit home for me and felt I wanted to post this. They very much speak to why I loved SWG. The way I read them is basically that the game wasn't built as just a sandbox. But basically intended to be a social playground in Star Wars. Everything built around fostering times where people would spend time TOGETHER, reliant on others. Everything had to break so that you had relationships with people (I read as intended to not be yourself on another account). As long as you have friendships in game then the game works and is amazing. When that is lost (as I feel is the biggest issue that happened with BOTH the CU and NGE) is the biggest blow to its "gameplay"

"There’s something about being on this side of the code that kind of ruins playing the game,” he says. “I know too much about how things work to actually play and be mystified by it again.” - This is my same problem and why I can't bring myself to play here anymore (might not unless jump to lightspeed comes as I just didn't spend enough time to know the ins and outs of it). But I don't really believe it is a knowledge problem itself. It's we have discovered the parts of the game that weren't ever balanced out to MAINTAIN the social aspect to the game. 90% composite didn't exist in the VERY early game (required hunting in groups EVEN FOR XP, which was maybe my fondest memory of the game. This meant needing a Doctor/CM for healing/rezzing, a scout for camps, even combat professions that became useless [state driven carbineer] were useful to the group). Doctor buffs - high ones didn't exist in the game leading to people wearing different types of armor and having players with just normal clothes in combat, along with HAM stats on weapons and armor (Weaponsmiths creating different weapons that had different HAM amounts, damage, or speed [lower HAM could be more useful than capping speed before buffs]), even specials in combat weren't always able to be spammed in combat unless you hurt yourself in another area (low base stats, no armor, lesser damage gun for low ham, etc).

Every profession had a role to play and REQUIRED cooperation with others. Prebuff/armor made parts of the game 100% inaccessible without friends. Doctors played ATK providing healing to wounds (I know I was one) at med centers. Entertainers required ATK play until macros were discovered (and guess what, with 1 character per account/server people still played them! And there isn't an excuse that the player base is smaller because as the team has pointed out many times, the population here often EXCEEDS SWG at its peak). There is COUNTLESS other examples of things like this that drive SOLO play instead of the original intended FORCED SOCIAL play. Unfortunately, I feel that it is the commitment to staying 100% true to the game (while the purest form), that may eventually cause those that really desire to have that experience again to never achieve it due to the broken endgame mechanics that the original team were never able to balance before they just scrapped the game. It's pretty clear the game wasn't intended to be group based UNTIL master elite professions existed then became a solo game.

So TA basically viaron'd this interview.

neat.

[No1Cal]

I stumbled across this article, came straight to this site, dug out my old SWG box, and can't wait to get started. Thanks to the reps that have helped me get started.

[novak64]

I stumbled across this article, came straight to this site, dug out my old SWG box, and can't wait to get started. Thanks to the reps that have helped me get started.

You don't happen to live in Berkeley do you?

[No1Cal]

You don't happen to live in Berkeley do you?

I do not live in Berkeley.

[Ivoryoasis]

“The rule was, the best things in the game had to be made by players, and the other rule was everything had to break,”

“That sense of being part of a social fabric is missing in even most MMOs,” Koster says. “It’s just not there. We don’t have the social infrastructure for it to be able to happen. How can you be a loyal customer of a given weaponsmith in World of Warcraft? None of the infrastructure exists.”

And, like most veterans of the early days of Galaxies, Popovici eventually fell in love with the social scene, especially hanging out for hours in cantinas after a full evening of hunting other players.

Popovici only had a few months to enjoy Galaxies before the Combat Upgrade utterly transformed the game, and his friends began leaving. “Players had to restart and relearn everything they could do,” he says. “A lot of my friends didn’t want to spend months to learn the new game.” He stuck with the game for two weeks after the Combat Upgrade, but with most of his friends gone, he soon had no reason to stay either. He walked away from that virtual world.


I've been here for years and haven't been on EMU or on the forums more than a handful of times in the past couple years but saw this and these quotes really hit home for me and felt I wanted to post this. They very much speak to why I loved SWG. The way I read them is basically that the game wasn't built as just a sandbox. But basically intended to be a social playground in Star Wars. Everything built around fostering times where people would spend time TOGETHER, reliant on others. Everything had to break so that you had relationships with people (I read as intended to not be yourself on another account). As long as you have friendships in game then the game works and is amazing. When that is lost (as I feel is the biggest issue that happened with BOTH the CU and NGE) is the biggest blow to its "gameplay"

"There’s something about being on this side of the code that kind of ruins playing the game,” he says. “I know too much about how things work to actually play and be mystified by it again.” - This is my same problem and why I can't bring myself to play here anymore (might not unless jump to lightspeed comes as I just didn't spend enough time to know the ins and outs of it). But I don't really believe it is a knowledge problem itself. It's we have discovered the parts of the game that weren't ever balanced out to MAINTAIN the social aspect to the game. 90% composite didn't exist in the VERY early game (required hunting in groups EVEN FOR XP, which was maybe my fondest memory of the game. This meant needing a Doctor/CM for healing/rezzing, a scout for camps, even combat professions that became useless [state driven carbineer] were useful to the group). Doctor buffs - high ones didn't exist in the game leading to people wearing different types of armor and having players with just normal clothes in combat, along with HAM stats on weapons and armor (Weaponsmiths creating different weapons that had different HAM amounts, damage, or speed [lower HAM could be more useful than capping speed before buffs]), even specials in combat weren't always able to be spammed in combat unless you hurt yourself in another area (low base stats, no armor, lesser damage gun for low ham, etc).

Every profession had a role to play and REQUIRED cooperation with others. Prebuff/armor made parts of the game 100% inaccessible without friends. Doctors played ATK providing healing to wounds (I know I was one) at med centers. Entertainers required ATK play until macros were discovered (and guess what, with 1 character per account/server people still played them! And there isn't an excuse that the player base is smaller because as the team has pointed out many times, the population here often EXCEEDS SWG at its peak). There is COUNTLESS other examples of things like this that drive SOLO play instead of the original intended FORCED SOCIAL play. Unfortunately, I feel that it is the commitment to staying 100% true to the game (while the purest form), that may eventually cause those that really desire to have that experience again to never achieve it due to the broken endgame mechanics that the original team were never able to balance before they just scrapped the game. It's pretty clear the game wasn't intended to be group based UNTIL master elite professions existed then became a solo game.

I hope someone takes these things....and mods a BOLD new server that strips away all of the broken end-game stuff. Heavily nerf poisons, armor, doc buffs, defense stacking, and much more.

It would create a really challenging game like the first period of SWG was. I would 100% play on a server like that, facing the real game like it was on live the first year.

I remember needing to be very careful about the types of armor (and how much) I would wear...doc / ent buffs weren't a real thing then.... and I remember using specials was , well, special. Not a replacement for default attack.

[snnort]

A friend of mine sent me a link to the article. I spend Christmas Eve reading it on a smart phone and could not wait to get home login.

So nice to be back and see something that was so huge to me a decade ago. I dug out my Collectors Edition box and looked at all the swag beauty and got started on my destiny again as if it was just on a brief pause.

[Ddrenai]

I truly appreciate this article Your hard work doesn't go unnoticed.