Star Wars Galaxies: The Ever Changing Experience
Written: May 18 '05 (Updated Nov 30 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The player base is awesome! Lots of content. Lots of different things to do.
Cons: Game constantly changes. New bugs every month. NGE is awful. Professions are not balanced.
The Bottom Line: I still play after almost 2 years, but I cannot recommend it after the NGE. Star Wars fans that like FPS games may like it. Try CoH or Runescape instead.
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| cottrell's Full Review: Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided for Windows |
I have been playing since Jan 2004 and my wife started playing shortly thereafter. We now have three accounts total and we played 4-6 days a week for at least a couple hours each time until the NGE (New Game Enhancements) came online in mid-November 2005. We have not played much since then as they have completely changed the game and there are still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out that should have been worked out in development before releasing it to the player servers.
SWG prior to the NGE was a very different game than it is now. Some things are better and some things are worse, but if you are reading this then you probably only care about what the game is like today. I'm still evaluating the game at this point, but a lot of the veteran players got shafted by the changes.
One thing a lot of new players are concerned with is their ability to compete with characters that have been in the game for almost two years. I want to reassure you that this is not an issue. SOE has done a good job of making the game accessible to new players while keeping it exciting for veteran players. One small piece of advice would be to find a good player guild to join. Most guilds have some veteran players that are more than willing to dump their old stuff off on a new player and their are a lot of rewards given to players as they move up through the levels.
Another concern I hear a lot is how much time you need to invest in the game. In other words, can I be a casual player that only logs in once or twice a week? While the game is dominated by the players that are seemingly always online, you can have a lot of fun (especially if you are in a good guild) as a casual player. The game is much more quest based now, so a good game session should be a minimum of an hour in order to get online, get a quest (and possibly round up some friends to help), go do it, and then log out.
The game used to have over 30 professions to try and you could go back and forth between the professions by adding and dropping skills, but the NGE changed all that. Now you can choose from one of 9 basic professions and you are stuck with that profession forever (unless you are a veteran or if you can find a kit that allows you to switch professions, although you start over at level 1 when you do that). The professions are Commando, Officer, Medic, Bounty Hunter, Spy, Smuggler, Jedi, Trader, and Entertainer.
Everything but Trader and Entertainer is a combat profession and you play it much like you would any FPS (First Person Shooter) game. Each profession has some unique abilities, but in general they all play the same way. As you gain experience you advance through Combat Levels (CL) until you reach CL90, gaining new special moves as you progress. Advancement is automatic once you gain the xp for the next level (pre-NGE you had to find a trainer - either a player or NPC).
A lot of people might buy this game to play Jedi, but Jedi is one of the weakest classes in the game right now. It will probably get tweaked a bit in the months to come, but I would not recommend buying this game to play Jedi.
Trader is divided up into four subprofessions with different things you can craft, although most crafted items are no longer consumable as items do not decay over time and a lot of looted/reward items are better than what can be crafted. SOE is aware that crafting is pretty much useless in the current game and they are looking at different ways to bring it back into the game, so check the forums for an update on crafting if you are interested in pursuing that in game.
Entertainer is also fairly useless in game at the moment and I expect changes to occur for them as well. If you like to socialize and meet new people, but crafting or fighting is not for you, this is an interesting profession to play, but you can get the same thing from going to free chat rooms outside SWG, so why bother?
There are several species you can play, including Wookiees, Mon Calimari, Twi'lek, Bothan, Zabrak, Rodian, Transdoshan, Sullustan, Ithorian, and of course Human. Some species have special abilities and/or limitations, with Wookiees and Ithorians being the most different.
The game is not very friendly to solo players, but it can be done. The new combat system has a lot of issues that are being worked on, but it is very clear that group play is much easier than solo play. If you like to play solo, you might want to check out some of the other MMORPG's out there like City of Heroes or Runescape.
Another interesting aspect of SWG is that the economy is very player based. Almost everything you need to use in the game is created or gathered by another player. There are no NPC's (Non-Player Characters) selling armor or weapons, although you will receive some of these items as quest or level rewards... you have to find a Trader to craft you one. There are pluses and minuses to this, but I like it.
You can choose to be Imperial, Rebel, or stay neutral. Even as an Imperial/Rebel, you can choose whether or not you want to engage in PvP (player versus player) as a part of the Special Forces or if you want to only do PvE (Player versus Environment) as a Combatant or if you just want to go On Leave and essentially be neutral.
Currently you are only allowed one character per server, but in the coming months you will be allowed a second character per server on up to four servers. Most other MMORPG's allow multiple characters per server. Even two characters per server is less than the industry norm.
There have been three expansions to the original game. The first one added space combat (Jump to Lightspeed) and the other two added whole new planets, Kashyyyk (Rage of the Wookiees) and Mustafar (Trials of Obi-Wan). Jump to Lightspeed is now included with the game for free, but other two require purchasing them as add-ons. They are okay, but I would not recommend the game based on the expansions. You'll either like the standard ground game or you won't.
The game does require a subscription fee that is between $12 and $15 a month depending on how long of a contract you sign up for. SOE usually offers free trial periods if you just want to check out the game for a week and they recently started selling Starter Kits for $20 that allow you to play the first 30 levels of a character and comes with a month subscription included.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
cottrell
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Location: Brownsburg, IN
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 10 members
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