The ultimate review from a SWG beta tester.
Written: Jun 28 '03 (Updated Jun 29 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Graphics, variety of gameplay, ability to build houses & cities, STAR WARS.
Cons: Not really that different from other MMORPG's, Server Problems from the start.
The Bottom Line: A good Online multiplayer game that star wars fan will love, and is a good game for other online rpg fans but doesn't break new ground and still has bugs.
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| zlmajors's Full Review: Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided for Windows |
Anyone who grew up either in the 70's or 80's and has a little bit of geek or nerd in them is probably a star wars fan. I myself waited in line at the midnight first showing of the phantom menace, and was very excited when I heard about Star Wars Galaxies.
This has been the game that all the hype has been about for about the past two to three years. Anyone who is a fan of the Star Wars series of games knows about it, and many people who aren't big gamers are curious. This game could be the one to dethrown Everquest, Ultima Online and all the other MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG for short). Being a Star Wars fan I wanted this game to be great, be wonderful be innovative, I wanted all this desperately.
But alas I was let down.
After being selected as a early beta tester for this game (a beta tester is a person who tests out a game prior to release, often in the developmental stages in order to "work" out the bugs or flaws in the game) I was very excited and jumped into the game with both feet.
What I discovered rather shocked me and it may just shock you. It shows what kind of damage extreme hyping of a game can do when the game doesn't live up to the hype. But please read on and form your own opinion.
Installation: A
I try to start with installation with all my reviews because this is where you will start with the product or in this case game. Installation is a relatively straight forward process that will take some time but shouldn't pose any problems. The total size of the installation is just under 2 gigs. Now this was the Beta size installation which included 3 cd's. Good sized game for sure, so make sure you have ample room on your harddrive.
Connection: B
During the Beta, they had pretty consistant server problems, they would be down at times for almost a day. Everytime they would have a good sized influx of new players the servers would go down. It was of course a trial and error phase, but you would expect that when a company sells 500,000 copies of a game, they would have the servers ready. When I tried out the game with a friends brand new copy I learned, as did all the other 500,000 people, that the servers were not working on the day the game was released. This could be due to the fact that they had a patch for the released version from the getgo, so everone that was connecting was also having to download the patch. If the game had been out for longer I would give it a lower score but due to the fact it has just been released I will give it the benefit of the doubt and give it a B.
Character Selection: A
Following classic star wars diversity, when you do connect for the first time you have a large diversity of possible characters to choose from. All and all there are eight different races to choose from. Here is a list of the choices with a brief description of them for the those of you not intimately familiar with star wars.
Humans - i.e. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker.
Wookies - Big 8 foot tall fur covered guys i.e. chewbacca
Rodians - Wirey creatures i.e. the guy han solo shoots in the bar in the first star wars.
Zabrak - mysterious human like creatures with small horns sticking out of their head. i.e. darth maul from phantom menace (guy with the double light saber and red and black tattoo's on his face).
Mon Calamari - amphibian creatures. i.e Admiral ackbar from jedi strikes back, you know the one who from the moment the rebel fleet goes to attack the 2nd death star is screaming about it being a trap and wants to retreat.
Twilek - Human like creatures with head tails. i.e. The skinny dancer with two head tales that Jabba the hut feeds to the rancor in Return of the Jedi.
Trandoshans - Scary looking lizard guys, enemy of the wookies. i.e. One of the bounty hunters shown in Empire Strikes Back.
Bothans - Um very ugly horse face looking guys. i.e. Not shown in any of the star wars movies but referenced by mon mathma when she says "many brave bothans gave their lives to bring us this information (the death star plans).
In addition to many different species, you also can choose male/female, hair, skin color, eye shape, body shape, height, muscle tone, nose, mouth shape, tatoo's, and a a few other species specific choices. Bottom line is they offer enough choices to make sure that your character is as unique as possible.
Professions: A-
There are a ton of professions, more than I've seen before, with the possible exception of Ultima Online. The biggest difference is every single profession in SWG is totally unique. There are things a master marksman will be able to do that a master Rifleman will not be able to do, even though both share some of the same skills.
The professions in SWG are broken down into skill trees. As you advance you gain skill points that are applied to the area that you advancing in. As you gain more skill points you advance up the tree eventually topping off. Now some professions are made up of different branches of skills. For instance Marksman has Rifle, Carbine, Pistol, all of these have about 5 level's that you need to achieve before you will achieve the title master marksman. But ah the fun doesn't stop there. Ok you have mastered rifle but you find out you don't like pistols very much, well once you achieve the base tree of rifle, you can move onto the MASTER rifleman tree. This is basically like Master Marksman but everything revolving around rifle.
So you can see that there are a LOT of branches to choose from. I believe there are about 50-60 total professions in the game as of the release. From animal tamer to Architect. Basically whatever floats your boat will be in the game.
The only downside to this plethera of professions is that to the newbie online gamer, it can be a bit confusing and daunting to say the least.
Player Driven: A
Weird category but I couldn't think up anything else. Unlike most other MMORPG's out there, SWG is very much player driven. The best weapons will be player made, when will degrade over time. Meaning you will have to buy or have your weapon serviced from time to time. Other items that will be made are droids (robots) that can help, or be used offensively (using them offensively is a skill), armor, clothing, land speeders (sort of like hovering cars) and houses plus so many more.
Graphics: A
While the graphics in SWG are good, they are not ground breaking, you won't see them and think "that is the most amazing thing ever!!" but they do match almost all the other MMORPG's available to date.
Sound: A
This too matches almost everything out there, but won't be something totally amazing for your ears. I enjoyed the sound but it didn't have me writing home.
Gameplay: A
Most of the game is centered around groups. Especially at the beginning it is very easy to get killed unless you are in a group and team up to combine different skills and get more experience. I liked this aspect but at the same time I didn't like it, it really made it hard to play solo when I didn't want to either play with someone who was newer who would ask me a lot of questions or someone who was more powerful and would get all the the good kills.
COMPARISON CONCLUSION
Finally when comparing SWG to other MMORPG's you might be a little dissapointed. Nothing that is in SWG, isn't in other MMORPG's. When comparing directly to Anarchy Online for instance, it is almost the same, sure there are a bit more trade crafting professions in SWG but really it has the same basic premise with the addition of the star wars universe.
FINALE
I enjoyed this game, especially as a star wars fan, but I didn't think it was especially different from Anarchy online, and I do think this game has bugs that need to be worked out. Because it still has bugs in it, especially with the ride system (landspeeders) and with the servers, I have to only give it 4 stars.
Fans of Star wars will love it, people who are already playing anarchy online or EQ maybe should stick with what they have and especially don't have expectations that SWG will be something spectacularly new and improved.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
zlmajors
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Member: Zach Majors
Location: Portland, OR
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 16 members
About Me:
Husband and father, picky when it comes to products for my family or myself.
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