Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided

2025-08-21
In a lot of ways I think MMOs started at their apex and only really devolved over time. You start with things like EverQuest and SWG, fully realized worlds in cyberspace to spend time in. You create a character in these deeply rendered spaces and build a life for them by fighting, grinding, investing in different professions, engaging in a server-wide economy, buying player-housing, and, really, by just hanging out with people online. Fast forward and WoW which, in my opinion, truly hit the zenith of fun in an MMO with the Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King era, eventually whittled it all down to a formula: make Disney World in a game. Come ye unwashed masses and get on our frictionless roller coaster ride of guided quests lines, breezy dungeons, simplified game mechanics, and dailies, dailies, dailies. Yes, like all things good and true, the bean counters crawled out of the holes where the dark things live and Skinner-box'd our asses to squeeze out yet another "revenue stream." And with that the golden age of MMOs entered history.

A long time ago in an internet far, far away there was Star Wars Galaxies. And it ruled. I only really dabbled but the feelings it evoked in my then 12 year old brain are indelible, and I've carried them ever since. I created a Transdoshan--because lizards are cool innit--and set off to do bounty hunting jobs on Tatooine. The work was slow and grueling. Largely due to the combat which starts off incredibly boring, full of waiting for auto-attacks from your blaster, full of watching you miss auto-attacks from your blaster. And yet I was transfixed. This was what it meant to be an adult and work a job you hate just to survive.

Wandering the world I was constantly amazed by how everything in the game seemed to be driven by the players. Player housing, player shops, guilds, PVP, so much of it was a basic set of systems that then had life breathed into it by people deciding to specialize in this or that, or build a new town here or there. When I got into piloting TIE fighters on missions I had to actually look around to find a player shop that sold the parts to upgrade my ship to progress further. Imagine a game in 2025 requiring you to interact with another player to progress?

Star Wars Galaxies wasn't afraid to gate your progress, and in one particular instance, in the coolest way possible. To this day, the Jedi unlock system alone is still one of the coolest game mechanics I've ever heard of in a game. Grind to max out every single profession till you proc the random one that unlocks your force powers, then spend hours doing a bunch of secret quests till you eventually become a Jedi, one of the most powerful players on the server. Then get killed by a gang of Jedi-killing bounty hunters and lose your Jedi. That is fucking brutal. How could you not love a mechanic that offers the highest risk and reward for the players willing to put in the most time? It's so full of friction, so idiosyncratic. All of these things would eventually be taken away as Sony Online Entertainment, fearing the rise of WoW stealing their subscriber base, wiped the slate with the "New Game Experience" (NGE). It took the Jedis I just mentioned and utterly castrated them, turning them into just another profession any schmuck could select after creating a new character.

The soul of the game lives on however due to a handful of private servers (pre-NGE of course) still going strong. For myself, I'm happy to let those memories etched into my brain when I was a teenager live on as they were.

(???2021)
What a tragic history this game has. Looking back I still think it holds up as much nostalgia as WoW. I'm sure objectively it's not as good but man I fucking loved it. And shit, I was only playing solo.

Timing is very important when you talk about SWG due to the New Game Experience (NGE) which straight up ruined the game. SWG was amazing because of how challenging it was, how old school it was. If you put in a ton of time you got a ton out of it. Jedis are the case and point of this. In order to become a Jedi you had to start maxing out professions. This is the equivalent of maxing out a class in a typical MMO, and a comparable amount of time. Probably 100 hours or something. And you'd have to do this multiple times along with a bunch of other stuff. But the reward? Well you become a Jedi, the absolute most powerful character in the game once you get all the way up to Master. You could fuck up anything. AND you can become Sith.

I was a noob so I just joined the Empire and since I joined after they added space combat spent a bunch of my time just going on missions shooting down ships. In order to progress I actually needed to get parts to upgrade my ship. There was a whole ship crafting professions I looked into. And then I think I dabbled in bounty hunting as a profession or maybe mercenary. And doing all of these things it was a blast.

There was player housing, crazy ways to grind, a big flourishing economy, everything you could want in an MMO.

And then the NGE came along and ruined everything. Those Jedis who spent literally thousands of hours grinding? Well now you could just play as a Jedi from the start. Horrible.

I think I quit before that happened and maybe came back and tried it and bounced off. The game didn't make sense and to make things worse most of the servers were completely abandoned. Truly tragic.

I still look back fondly. Maybe someday if I'm ever unemployed again I'll join a private server...