Steam recently had the old MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies on sale for only ten dollars. Now, I’m not a man to pass up a deal, but the sale itself was not the one thing which compelled me to play Star Wars Galaxies. About five or so years ago I played this game with about eleven of my real life friends. So I must admit that I am immediately biased when it comes to this game… well, I would have been five years prior. Not so much now.

The first thing that you notice when you start up Star Wars Galaxies, which from henceforth will be known strictly as SWG, is the quality of graphics. This is an old game. From everything that I’ve heard it’s about six years ago now, so having dated graphics is not something that surprises me. What does, however, surprise me is the comparison to games such as World of Warcraft. Speaking of which, let me give this quick warning:

I believe the best way to show the good qualities of a video game or any other piece of interactive media is to compare it to what is considered to be the top-tier. Some may argue, and often times we find ourselves abhorrent towards the popular simply because they are popular, that we cannot compare two things which are relatively different in terms of their gameplay. This, of course, is completely irrelevant since we are not comparing gameplay but rather the quality of a game in the genre.

World of Warcraft is about five years old and SWG is six, yet the differences in graphics are astounding. Sure, there is an argument to be made that World of Warcraft is cartoonish and lacks any graphical flare, but there is a reason it looks the way that it does. The developers were trying to mimic the RTS game and they managed to pull it off. SWG, on the other hand, looks outdated even for its time. Nevertheless, graphics do not make a game and I was easily able to ignore them. What I was not able to ignore, however, were the animations.

The most irritating issue with the animations comes in the form of the jumping, which is not actually jumping. Instead, it’s a rising hover which takes about two to five seconds to actually work. Don’t worry though, you don’t need to actually jump in the game. I don’t even know why they put it in here since there are no logical physics to balance the worlds around. Literally, you can run up the side of a mountain if you so wish. That is not where it ends, however. The melee fighting in the game is piss poor in terms of animations.

I must admit that the ranged combat is pretty fun, but not when your enemy becomes a fleeing criminal from a silent era movie. They immediately become ten times quicker than you and run out beyond your vision or, oddly enough, you’ll kill someone and they end up twenty feet away.

None of this helps, mind you, when you are forced to deal with a massive amount of lag. Yes, lag. Sure, you can blame my computer, but I just finish a quick Crysis round with some friends – 60FPS+, graphics at the max, and music and Ventrilo playing in the background. Yet, I am unable to run SWG at full because of the server lag. You would think that Sony Online Entertainment would have fixed something like this. I know that the amount of people playing SWG is limited, but those who are sticking with the game deserve to be treated well, don’t they?

Speaking of which, it seems that the game is fairly dead nowadays. There are a few servers which looked exceedingly popular, but beyond that I’ve been forced to live in a dead land. It almost feels like I’m playing a single player offline game. Unfortunately, if I wanted to do that in the Star Wars universe then I would play KOTOR.

As for the actual game, if I were to simply ignore the bad parts and play, I think it would be fairly decent. If I had my old guild from SWG and I started over then I am certain that I would be a very happy player. So with all of the issues and all of the things I want to see changed immediately, I must admit that I would play this game if I had others playing it with me. Unfortunately, this game feels like it is waiting for the sweet release of death to welcome it into the large pile of dead MMO’s. I’m talking about you, Tabula Rasa!… no, I’m not going to put a link up to the wikipedia site.

Screw you, Lord British.

My final judgment on this game: it’s a fantastic piece of nostalgic Bantha poodoo.

-Irish

P.S.: This review has no yet been edited or proofread. Please remember that any grammatical inaccuracies will be taken care of once I start caring.

So , nun ist es ja schon eine gewisse Zeit her das ich  einen Blog geschrieben habe !

Aber Heute ist es endlich mal wieder so weit !

Thema:

Star Wars Galaxies

Also das Spiel an sich kennen ja bestimmt einige unter Euch!

Ich selber habe eine ganze Zeit gespielt und auch bis zum Capture Level,vom Bounty Hunter bis hin zum Jedi !

Das Spiel ist heute noch ein großer Favorit und so musste ich nicht lange überlegen als ich die Installations – CD (8stk) in der Hand hielt!

Nach dem nervigem CD – gewechsel und einem 18 stündigen Update auf die neuste Version des Spiel/Client war ich noch immer voller Vorfreude und konnte es nicht erwarten mich einzuloggen !

Naja so schnell ging’s dann nicht .. !

Nachdem ich mich durch meine Postfächer gewältzt hatte sollte es nun zu dem Moment kommen …. Ich konnte mich einloggen, achja vergessen …..

Das spiel kostete ja monatlich was !  ….

Ich fragte einen Kollegen der das Spiel auch liebte und ich war mir ziemlich sicher …

Es gibt andere Lösungen !

Lösung 1

14 Tage Testaccount

Vorteile

-          Das Spiel zu spielen

-          Ganz neu in die „Welt“ einzutauchen

Nachteile

-          Nur 14 Tage Spielzeit

-          Der ehemalige Charakter ist nicht verfügbar ..

Lösung 2

SWGEMU

Vorteile

-          Kostenloses spielen

-          Große Deutschsprachige Community voller SWG begeisterten

-          Server stand auf alter Basis

Nachteile

-          Illegal

-          Gefahr dass die Community zusammenbricht

Naja momentan spiele ich die 14 tägige Testversion des Spiels und bin relativ zufrieden

Link Posts :

http://www.swgemu.com/forums/

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/index.vm

LG Hexx



This week I have been working with a forward thinking school who have recently established a Staff Welfare Group (SWG) with an aim of increasing the wellbeing of staff. This school knows that with happy, healthy and valued staff everyone benefits.

The school recognised that it needed to bring the Staff Welfare Group and Senior Management Team together to tackle a challenging staff-wide issue and brought me in to facilitate the meeting. A key outcome of the meeting was an action plan which aimed to deliver a measurable improvement over the next six months. There were some great actions within the plan but one interested me most.

The Staff Welfare Group members are positioning themselves as leaders in their school. They will be offering teachers the opportunity for a member of the SWG to participate in, and potentially lead, team meetings monthly. These team meetings are attended by the staff who work with a specific cross section of the student population, typically one-two teachers and about six support staff.

This initiative has many positive benefits including the potential to:
• promote a cross pollination of positivity and increased understanding of the pressures and concerns in other teams
• open up a new face-to-face communication route between the Staff Welfare Group and staff
• increase the support available to new staff in leading their teams from more experienced staff and everyone’s leadership skills benefit

The Staff Welfare group was formed from volunteers and includes a cross section of support staff, administrators, teachers and governors. The majority of members are not managers but they all have the potential to be opinion leaders. I look forward to watching the progress of this initiative and observing how individuals flourish within the leadership roles they are shaping for themselves.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’m still kicking around LotRO at the moment.  I was subscribed to SWG but my old PC bit the dust and I had to get a new one.  SWG is a moderately fun game but, with the new machine, I don’t feel like reinstalling a game I’ll hardly play across the Internet.

I’m interested to see what will come up in the Siege of Mirkwood expansion for LotRO.  There’s a dev diary about the skirmish system – sounds neat.  I’ll have to wait and see how the whole thing turns out.  I know MoM was devastating for my kinship.

Speaking of which, my kinship, a group of casual players who liked to do it all, is no more.  We’d been around since open beta, been through the Rift and Helegrod, raided the Moors together and generally had a lot of fun.  Sadly, the raid changes in MoM cost us too many good players (most of whom went to hardcore raiding kinships).  We also had several officers leave the game or take extended breaks as well as some members.  It was the perfect storm of crappiness.

We merged with an ally who wasn’t experiencing quite the same level of burnout and attrition.  Generally, I view the move as positive.  I’m still getting to know the new players.

I’m already being considered for an officer position in the new kinship.  I’m not sure I’ll take it though.  I’m a tad burned out from all the drama of the last couple of weeks and I’d like to spend some time with nothing more pressing to do than stab the snot out of some orcs.

Some of the folks taking a break from LotRO have been trying Champions Online.  I’ve also had a friend at work try the game.  The feedback I’ve been hearing is that it’s a good game and an interesting take on the superhero MMO but the story lines aren’t as developed as they could be.  I have no first-hand knowledge so I couldn’t say.  I’m sticking to fantasy at the moment so a new superhero MMO isn’t going to be in my near-future.

And that’s what’s going on.

Happy gaming!

In the month of October, I’ll be giving money to two MMO companies that worked hard to regain my attention and my business. Both CCP and Turbine have excellent marketing plans designed to entice former players into resubscribing.

Sony Online Entertainment, on the other hand, basically just gave former players the finger. Instead of taking a cue from successful MMO’s and offer free time to encourage former players to check out the game again, they’ve decided to delete characters unless former players resubscribe to the game to initiate a character transfer (or if you want to pay a $50 fee past today’s free-for-subscribers character transfer option).

I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve encountered this kind of decision making from SOE ever since the days of Everquest. Still, today is a sad day, because I really enjoyed SWG prior to the CU and the NGE, and I know that I’ll never play in that world again. A free weekend, like Turbine is offering for LoTRO right now, with the option to initiate a character transfer, probably would have been enough to get me to resubscribe to SWG for a couple months and maybe get hooked for longer. Instead, SOE initiated Order 66, and my character will be gone forever.

Yeah, I could have paid to extend the life of that character, but in today’s MMO market, I don’t have to give money to a company that doesn’t cater to their customers. It’s like an abusive relationship at this point; if I paid to preserve my character, I’d just be setting myself up for more insulting decisions in the future. Today’s the end. I’ll mourn the good times I had, but it’s not worth enduring future dumb initiatives from SOE.

A tip of my hat to my Mon Calamari artisan/architect, to days spent searching for high quality resources, building a home, building furniture and crafting stations and harvesters and vehicles, living in a player city, and enjoying maybe the best sandbox MMO the genre has seen so far, before SOE decided to “fix” the game. I have such great memories of that character, and today she dies a final death. May the Force be with you.

Felton…aka Felton Kel in SWG and Wes in real life, also wrote his perspective on the crafting experience in SWG.  Here is his experience in his own words:

It’s interesting to note that weaponsmith (and, I imagine, armorsmith) functioned in a very similar fashion as servers matured.

On a brand new SWG server, every resource — every bit of ore and metal and hide — had tremendous value. Automated harvesters (that would mine up metal or ore for you even while you were offline) couldn’t be crafted until players had acquired the skills to make them, which meant long hours of manually “sampling” materials straight out of the ground. This was mostly done via macro while AFK. Lowbie crafters would spend hours upon hours sampling raw metal and making semi-useless junk, just to acquire experience. With enough generic crafting experience, players could then specialize in making weapons, armor, buildings, droids, etc.

Weapons and armor, like meds, varied in quality and effectiveness based on the materials that went into them. It stood to reason that people who entered into the weapon- and armor-crafting professions for the long haul would improve their products steadily over time as new and better resource spawns replaced older, lower quality ones. This was further affected by the introduction of heavy capacity harvesters into the game. When an awesome resource spawned for your particular profession, players could stockpile millions of units of it — enough to potentially last them years. This had several effects. Not only did it further entrench long-time crafters into their chosen profession, but it pushed the quality of crafted items far beyond what the developers of the game believed possible.

Fenster talks about the holo-grind destroying the doctor profession, and I’m sure he was not the only one who had that experience. While the holo-grind had little-to-no-effect on the weapons market (beyond increased sales and demand for certain specialty items), the game’s maturity — and the amount of available credits in the economy — certainly did.

I think that players’ long-term dedication to their chosen crafting profession caught the developers flat-footed. SWG launched in what might generously be called a middle beta version, with a variety of unused crafting schematics, unequippable weapons, and borked crafting systems. After six or eight months in live deployment most of the heinous bugs had been fixed and overall things worked servicably, but it became increasingly obvious that the guys who wrote the code for the crafting and resource systems had never sat down over coffee to talk about some practical limits of what should be achievable. The crafting community had collectively pushed the boundaries of the system such that well-equipped players were essentially invulnerable to the creatures that populated 95% of the game. A select few creatures, such as rancors or krayt dragons, typically required small groups of players to topple, but some clever players were able to combine certain mixes of skills to even be able to solo these titans.

By the time SWG was a year old, credits had been more or less marginalized; comparable to the Russian ruble after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were so many of them floating around in the economy that a player could outfit themselves with top-of-the-line armor and weaponry in fairly short order. This, combined with the smuggler skill of slicing, created a demand for weapons that — similar to the pharmaceutical industry of the doctors of the game — called for mass production on a huge scale.

Slicing was a smuggler skill that allowed them to permanently modify a weapon or piece of armor to improve it in some fashion. Back then, the result of the slice was random, though I hear they’ve changed that now. In any event, players with money to spare, looking for every advantage the could get in player-versus-player battles or against the toughest creatures in the game, wouldn’t just buy a single weapon. Or two. Or three. They’d buy ten or twenty, and get them sliced until they got exactly the one they wanted. The weapons that got bad slices would either be junked, or re-sold at a deep discount to newer players still leveling up and acquiring their pile of credits.

As a weaponsmith, the resale of my weapons never bothered me. I got paid fair value for my wares; what my customers did with them after that was their business. But I had created a weaponsmith on Tempest with the intent of being one of — if not THE — top weaponmakers on the server, and by the time I finished up my own holo-grind nine months after the game released, it was clear that while quality was still king in the weapons market, available quantity of that quality was going to be critical to continued success.

Back when I opened my first shop in the early days of the server, I made every weapon by hand, and it was a good day when I sold ten or fifteen weapons. Often, I would be in the back of my small Tatooine house working at my crafting station when a player would come in to browse what I had available on my vendor droids. I could help them make a selection depending on what they were looking for, and maybe get to know them a little. Every person who came in gave me a little bit of a thrill, doubly so for those who made a purchase. This was my shop! My wares! I made this stuff with my bare hands (so to speak), and people actually wanted it! THIS was the way to run a business!

The price of success, though, was higher demand… more and more crafting done by my automated factories… and a loss of that connection to my customers that I enjoyed. It was sort of bittersweet. I developed ways to regain some of that by holding in-game auctions for enhanced weapons I crafted by hand, but it was never quite as special as it used to be. By the time I retired as a weaponsmith of nearly two years, I was running an in-game business that was grossing a billion credits a year, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun as it had been back in that little shop on Tatooine.

Fens and I had similar experiences in this regard, just at different times for different reasons.

There are readers who might be reading through this shaking their heads because they have never played an MMO, particularly one that encouraged as much ownership, creativity, and community as early SWG did.  Even if our readers don’t relate to the game itself, it’s not hard to pick up the pride of craft and creation  that both Andy and Wes express….as well as the deeply personal nature of the experience. 

It’s easy for people that haven’t played an MMO to think that it’s just a silly game…but while it might be a game, the experiences and memories of the people playing it are very real.

First and foremost, if you are trying to get the most out of your Combat Entertainer as possible, I strongly advise you to read this guide created by the one and only BadgerSmaker. This gives a great detail on how to properly prepare for combat and how to approach it. Read it, learn in, love it.

This guide is intended to help you understand what buffs your Combat Entertainer should have. I am going to specifically list the buffs I feel are best for me currently, and this information may change over time as I play with different builds. Please note, that I have recently started playing with a new toon. My focus with this character is 100% Drama Entertainer build and I will be using every attack and debuff.

Profession Buffs

Entertainer does not offer combat profession buffs other than Void Dance and obviously the Ent Buff. I use Void Dance when I run up and encounter 3+ mobs at a time. The entertainer buff is extremely important and can be the best buff you can get. I HIGHLY recommend that if you’re serious about combat, get your Ent Buff from another player. This is the Entertainer Buff that I find to most useful for me.

• 1/1 Action Cost Reduction
• 1/1 Critical Chance
• 1/1 Glancing Blow
• 2/4 Second Chance (Reactive Heal)
• 1/5 Strength

Obviously we need ACR, and I feel that getting it from the Ent Buff is vital. I stack Critical Chance, so I need this to make the most out of my damage. GB is great to stack with my already innate amount and also with my debuffs. Second Chance is my new toy. 2/4 Second Chance gives me enough to see the reactive heal occur often. Healing for 800 every few seconds is a huge boost, especially when we do not have an innate heal! If you’re stacking Healing Potency, it will increase the Reactive Heal, though I do not advise stacking HP being the stim heals from Officer and GCW do not increase.

In addition to the Ent Buff, you need to get Medic Buffs as well as Officer tactical stims.

Grouped Buffs

The buffs all follow a grouped order, so certain buffs will stack, while others do not. In my build for Combat Ent, I find the following buffs to be the best combo:

• Lair Crystal (Betray Obi-Wan)
• Mustafarian Injector (Sickness of the Storm Lord) or Bio-Capacitance Discharge Bracer (Glowies)
• Shard of Retaliation (Obey Obi-Wan)
• Wild Force Shard (Offensive Burst)

This combo of grouped buffs will give you some great bonuses. Not that the Lair Crystal and Shard of Retaliation are impossible to get on your own. You need to do the quest and get the Lair Crystal, then buy the Shard of Retaliation. You can only pick one and the Lair Crystal is No Trade.

Food

There is nothing specific that will help Combat Entertainers, but something to consider using is Flameout or Accarragm

Heroic Jewelry

Unfortunately, we only have Heroism set right now, but that’s not to say it is not worth it. Get it if you can as the extra +150 to all stats adds up fast!

Obviously, from here you stack your Power Ups and any other additions you get from your group members. Being self sufficient is important.

If you have questions, post a comment below!

-MC

I thought I should explain how I became a “Recovering Online Gamer.”   While I had much stronger ties to SWG, the friendships I’ve developed through both SWG and WoW are very real.   It shows in the goodbye post that I placed in the Vex guild forum when I made my decision to step away:

A client asked for a challenging commitment today that I could not turn down.  This has left me with a sad decision.  The only way I can share time with my lovely bride, continue my civic commitments, meet my responsibilities to our staff, and exceed the expectations of the client is to commit to working…well…a damn lot for the next  7-9 months.  I fear that by that time, the two significant community projects I’m starting are going to have reached a point that they’ll fill any gap that opens in my schedule.  While I haven’t been playing much at all, I spend a lot of time on the forums.  That, regretfully, is a luxury I’m going to have to surrender to keep my head above water.  

Three years ago this week I joined a tiny guild called Domus Lupus…along with some dear friends that are still here today.  We were “scrubs” in the guild we left because we didn’t place the game above everything else.

We decided to create a guild where the people behind the toons mattered as much as the toons themselves.  A lot of people have put a lot of time and heart into making that happen…and perhaps along the way, shaped things in some people’s lives as well.

Many of you don’t know me because my time is in the past, but to those that do, thank-you.  I cannot put into words what all of you have shared with me and what I’ve learned from each of you.  Yes, WoW is just a game…but behind every toon is someone very real whose life touches the game and for whom the time shared in the game touches their lives in some way large or small.

There is always the chance that someday I’ll be back, so I’m leaving my toons in the guild…but for now, I need to walk away from everything “here” to make sure I’m focused on what’s ahead.  I’m going to use some of the time I’ve spent here on Facebook, Linkedin, and a blog, because I can reach more of my friends at one time. I may try to log in over this weekend if I can find time, but If I don’t, I’m going to leave a few final words here. 

In honor of what Vex stands for….and to reflect what you all mean to me, I’d like to share some wisdom written by Robert Fulgrum:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

 Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. 

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

 And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

 Stick together my friends, because together anything is possible.  This guild has proved that.

Old guy, signing out.

So, besides playing my usual array of games, I’ve added two interesting titles/series to my arsenal.

I’m currently playing through all 8 of the original Mega Mans. Why do I say playing instead of replaying?

Well, that’s because I’ve never played them despite a few moments of 2 and all of 9. I started Thursday afternoon. I finished Mega Man (1) this morning, and I’m currently on the second to last boss of Wily’s Castle in 2. I’m finding them WAY easier than I expected them to be.

I tend to fly through the robot masters on my first run and than have a bit of trouble on the Wily stages but still get through it relatively fast. I’d always heard they were hard, I mean, I’m playing with a fucking keyboard and I’m doing this.

The other new game added to my arsenal is a program called SWGEmu. Which stands for Star Wars Galaxies Emulator. Well, if you look up SWG, you’ll see that it’s an MMO(RPG) that’s still going. Well, if it’s still going why emulate it?

Well, because there was a patch called the Combat Update, that completely revamped the game, and many patches after that that changed it, and not, in the eyes of the players, for the better.

So this game is emulating the Pre-CU gameplay. The reason this is better is because SWG has now moved into the normal MMORPG area, with a crappy generic story and basic character development with little room for variation. Where as before, the game was one of the few MMO Sandboxes. You can combine classes however you wish, do whatever you want, group as you wish, create, explore, ANYTHING. It’s incredible how vast it really is.

I’m not very far, but I’m beginning to grasp how expansive everything is, that I can really make a name for myself as if I’m truly living in the Star Wars universe.

It’s really incredible.

Due to the overwhelming success of the recent Free Character Transfer Service, we want to inform you that on October 15, 2009, at 5:00 PM PT, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will close the following 12 Star WarsGalaxies servers:

• Corbantis
• Europe-Infinity
• Intrepid
• Kauri
• Kettemoor
• Lowca
• Naritus
• Scylla
• Tarquinas
• Tempest
• Valcyn
• Wanderhome

It’s the first time in my life I see an MMOG success that causes a massive shutdown of servers… Not even EverQuest was so successful!

In July 2003 my business partner-Rick-and one of our senior engineers-Brett-started playing the Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) MMO. 

For those that don’t know what an MMO is, it’s a Massively Multiplayer Online game.   In games such as these, thousands-if not millions-of people create characters that interact in a virtual world that has both social and play aspects.  Players can interact with each other socially, cooperate to tackle aspects of the game, and engage in virtual Player versus Player (PvP) combat.   World of Warcraft is the dominant current example of an MMO.

…anyway…back to the story.  Rick and Brett were having a blast, so they cajoled me into starting to play as well. After some convincing, I went out and bought a copy of SWG.  Little did I know where that simple swipe of a credit card was going to take me.

I started a character named “Beyowulf Shaeffer,” who was named in honor of a character from Larry Niven’s Known Space stories.  I had really wanted to create a character named Louis Gridley Wu (after another Known Space character), but the system wouldn’t allow it.  Ironically, the archtype of the written Beyowulf character is not much like me at all…such are life’s little ironies.   I made Bey a doctor.  It seemed a logical choice because Rick and Brett needed someone who could heal their characters in combat and I like helping others in real life. 

We had a blast together.  The SWG universe was composed of ten worlds and we were exploring them a little bit at a time.  When the game first came out exploring a world meant that you did it on foot…and running across a world could take and hour or more of real-world time.  That of course assumes that you didn’t have to stop and fight wild beasts or native populace along the way.  I did a lot of healing.

Healing, however, required medicines, which were manufactured by doctors that specialized in crafting them.   All of my healing led me to find out that medicine prices were, well, insane compared to the cost of materials. 

People that know me in real life know that I have this Don Quixote-like habit of tilting at windmills and in confronting med prices, I found a nice, challenging windmill to tilt at….and just to make it easy, I was able to put a name on that windmill:  Fenster.   At this point, I must apologize to Andy, the great guy that played Fenster.  We’ve gotten to know each other over the last six years and I’m glad to call him my friend.  However, in 2003 I thought Fenster was a greedy robber baron that needed to be taught a lesson in competitive market economics.  

Thus began my slow fall into madness…..

Dear Star Wars Galaxies Account Holder,

Due to the overwhelming success of the recent Free Character Transfer Service, we want to inform you that on October 15, 2009, at 5:00 PM PT, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) will close the following 12 Star Wars Galaxies servers:

o Corbantis
o Europe-Infinity
o Intrepid
o Kauri
o Kettemoor
o Lowca
o Naritus
o Scylla
o Tarquinas
o Tempest
o Valcyn
o Wanderhome

Character creation will be disabled on the affected servers beginning September 15, 2009 at 4:00 AM PDT.

In accordance with the server closure date, the Free Character Transfer service has been extended through October 15. 2009. Between September 15, 2009 and October 15, 2009 at 4:59 PM PT all characters on the affected servers are eligible for a one way, one time Free Character Transfer* to any of the remaining thirteen (13) Star Wars Galaxies servers. After October 15, 2009 at 5:00 PM PT, any characters and their associated items and structures remaining on the identified servers being closed will no longer be accessible on your Star Wars Galaxies or Station Access account.

Please visit http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/freects/ for complete details on how to transfer your character using the Star Wars Galaxies Free Character Transfer Service.

We appreciate your loyalty and commitment to Star Wars Galaxies and value having you in the community. We hope that you will continue to play on one of the 13 thriving Star Wars Galaxies servers and look forward to sharing many more new and exciting Star Wars themed adventures with you in the coming months as we introduce the Chronicle Master System, Death Troopers, and the upcoming Galactic Civil War enhancements.

Server Closure FAQ

Sincerely,
Sony Online Entertainment

StationSony.com

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“Inchiesta sul lavoro che cambia”

in collaborazione con il Partito Democratico, i Giovani Democratici, L’Unità, Europa,

Bioware Austin announced Star Wars: The Old Republic at a press conference on October 27, 2007.  The game is one of the most anticipated in years.  It follows Star Wars Galaxies (the first SW MMORPG) from Sony.  Bioware is the company behind the hugely popular Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic series.  There are plenty of informative articles about this game already available on the net, but there are several key things about this game that I want to discuss.  Because it will effect my bias towards this game, I want to say that I am a Star Wars fan, I played Galaxies for years (and actually liked it) and was never a huge fan of KOTOR.

The Positive

1. Game Engine.  This game uses the Hero Engine.  This is an advanced game engine which will bring a new and unique feel to the game.  It offers loads of customization options for characters and is the key to the games “Consequence System” BW is so proud of (I’ll get to that).  This is also an important feature because it utilizes new technology that allows developers from different regions to work simultaneously on the server, greatly decreasing production time.  The fact that BW is not creating their own game engine from the ground up is also noteworthy because that will most likely save development time and money.
2. Its Star Wars.  I love the idea of a Star Wars MMO because the universe is perfect for it.  Star Wars has always had that adventurist spirit because the world is so big and filled with mystery.  Its a great place for Role Playing because there are so many options and any story can be realistic.
3. Visuals.  I am NOT a fan of the cartoon-ish graphics of games like WOW, and when BW started tossing around the phrase “stylized” I got worried.  However, the further this game gets in development, the more I like what I see.  It doesn’t have the realistic(ish) graphics that Galaxies has, but they look refreshing and new.  The landscapes are beautiful.  One thing about galaxies I did not like was the dull and drab landscapes, and BW has done a good job on what I have seen so far.
4. Voice Acting.  BW is really pulling out all the stops to make this an extremely immersive game.  Detailed cut scenes and the largest voice acting job in a video game to date really drive that point home
5. Consequences/Story.  If you have ever played a BW game before, you know that they revolve around story.  Most MMOs lately have tried so hard to appeal to the mass market, that they have taken a lot of the consequences out of the game.  You never really make a decision you are going to have to live with, post character creation.  BW plans on changing that:

As an attempt to appeal to a broader and broader audience, consequence has left gaming,” he lamented. “Everything is very low impact and there’s no real negative result that can occur. We’re going to start bringing that back but in a rational way, a way that doesn’t punish the player — but puts them on the spot. You have some level of choice in who you hang out with and what quests you go on. But once you go on a quest, you don’t have a sense of a choice. Your job is to get me some of these, get me five of these and bring it back. They’re often very unabashed in their mundane [approach to player choice].” Source

The Concerns

1. Not enough MMO in my MMORPG.  BW is very very VERY concerned about story.  In fact it is all they have been talking about.  If I didn’t already know this was going to be an MMO, there is no evidence out there that it is.  I will admit that at this early stage of development, its entirely possible that we will hear more before the game comes out, but I am ready for them to stop talking about story.  I get it already.
2. There is mass hysteria around the interwebs that the game will not cater to Role Players (like me).  We are die hard gamers and although we make up a minority, we have a big voice and are not above stomping our feet and holding our breath.  Things like dedicated crafting classes, a player driven economy, highly customizable items/clothes and general role player tools (emotes, cantinas, housing, guilds, player cities, etc…) could possibly be missing from this game.  The RP community is worried that BW is so concerned with telling a good story that they will forget many of us like to take a break and role play in our role playing game.  This is something Galaxies did extremely well and many Star Wars fans who enjoyed that aspect of the game are really eager to see if TOR will deliver.
3. Simple/Linear Character Development.  I know we haven’t even seen the release of all the classes yet.  (So far we have Trooper, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler, Jedi and Sith with 3 classes yet to be revealed.  That gives us 4 classes per faction.  We don’t know what kind of progression there will be but hopefully it will have a lot of options.  One of the things I disliked about Lord of the Rings Online was that the character development was completely linear.  Every Champion was exactly the same as every other champion.  In SWG (pre-NGE) there were limitless choices and combinations that really made the player feel unique, which is great for immersion and role play.

To Conclude

I’m really looking forward to this game.  BioWare has a great reputation for making RPGs and seems to be taking their time and trying to do things right as they enter the MMO world.  All my concerns for the game stem from the fact that I am a die hard role player.  BioWare seemingly loves to torture me by not saying word about that aspect yet, which makes me nervous and twitchy.  If the game does end up released as basically a single player game with a subscription fee, I will still most likely be checking it out.  It just won’t be the RPG replacement I’ve been waiting for.

the original file, colored pencil and some inks...

the modified image in PS3

I wanted to break from the caricatures and get a little more creative.  Thanks to my sons healthy knowledge of the Star Wars galaxies, I drew a Twilek gal some time ago.

Twilek are known physically for their brainstalks, braintails… whatever you want to call them.  Two of them were prominent in Jabba’s Palace. There was Bib Fortuna, the pink one who looked kinda albino, but was a pushover when Luke showed up and used some Jedi wiles on him.  The other was Oola, a green Twilek, exotic dancer and Rancor food.

I was just having some fun with photoshop and the blur, smudge and color replacement tools respectively.

As you can gander, I changed her coloration to blue, and I didnt want to mess with the fine detail on her eyes and freckles, so that area stayed put.  If I knew how to use the program more, I’d probably add some layers, maybe a background.  I’ll see about that down the road.

btw… My favorite aliens throughout the SW Galaxy, have to be the Rodians.  Greedo was one, and I look forward to drawing some of them in the near future.

I was feeling a bit nostalgic this weekend, so downloaded and installed an old PC game called Asheron’s Call. My intention had been to play a little bit of the game, remembering how much fun it was back in the old days, and maybe write some entertaining notes on it here.

Unfortunately the online sign up process appears to be what is technically known as borked. Thanks Turbine.

I’m quite disappointed actually as I was looking forward to a bit of reminiscing. Yes, in case anyone reading this didn’t know; I’m a bit of a gamer. Only a bit – nothing too hardcore – and I lost my console skills when my Sega Mega Drive died. However; PC games I like.

8 years ago I was introduced to online gaming. The game was Asheron’s Call. A fantasy MMORPG where you could master combat or magic, adventuring in a virtual world killing baddies and monsters of all shapes and sizes, the whole time meeting and teaming up with other players from who-knew-where. Ultimately making friends, helping each other out and having a good old laugh in the process.

I played Asheron’s Call on hideous dial-up for a few years until I was introduced to Star Wars Galaxies; a sci-fi MMO where you got to fly about in the Star Wars universe. As a fan of the original movies this was the ultimate game for me. I loved every bit of it. I played a Teräs Käsi master (unarmed martial arts-type combat to you), trying my hand at Bio Engineering, Creature Handling, Harvesting, Tailoring and even Entertaining. I flew from planet to planet, kicking Kliknik bottom, riding my very own Bantha, collecting DNA from serious monsters, and even setting up my own business and owning my own home.

All the while playing with people from all over the world, and making friends who I still keep in touch with even today (Hi Iker <3).

Sadly the day came when Sony released the Combat Upgrade that killed SWG. Whoever told SOE that taking out all the professions and making it impossible to solo anything would be a good thing should actually be locked up. The game lost all its appeal to me, and I cancelled my subscription.

But there was already another game drawing me and millions like me in. In fact, some say that the SWG CU was Sony’s way of trying to get rid of any players who had not already abandoned the game for the new sensational MMO on the block, so that they could cut their losses and shut the game down. Or at least the good bits of it.

The game in question was World of Warcraft. Everyone’s heard of it, most people have seen it being played, Ozzy Osbourne, Mr. T and Shatner have advertised it (to name a few) and people who never thought that they would be gamers have become addicted. Yes, addicted. Some guy in China was apparently so addicted that he had a heart attack from playing too much.

The game is pretty infamous because of this, and so the age old stereotype of a PC gamer becomes more and more negative. People picture pale unkept nerds sitting in their bedrooms of their parent’s homes, connected to the online world for 18 hours a day, eating at their desks, constantly barking instructions over their headsets. And while that stereotype exists for a reason, we’re not all like that – even those of us who, if we admit, play a little more than we ought.

But people don’t become online gamers in the same way people get into other addictive things. We aren’t pressured into it by some bad crowd we got involved with, we aren’t rebelling against our regimented upbringing or our parents who just don’t understand us. We play because it is fun.

World of Warcraft bought online gaming to the masses for a good reason – because it is a great game. It can appeal to anyone from the most obsessed l33t fr34k to the most casual on-and-offer, it can be as serious or light-hearted as you want and has something for kids (though, over 15 please!) and adults alike.

I can’t put my finger on what makes MMOs so appealing to me and I should probably mention that I haven’t loved every MMO I’ve played. I tried Neverwinter Nights, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, Guild Wars etc, but I just never felt the pull with those ones. I know exactly why with Everquest – that game took itself way too seriously. You can’t take an MMO too seriously, otherwise you do become the nutcase who lives and breathes the virtual world and never goes out into the sunlight.

There are so many things I feel I ought to talk about in connection with this. Gamers rarely feel like they can talk about their hobby to other people, just because of the negative perceptions of online gaming. Only last week I found myself frantically trying to hide the WoW icon on my netbook when we hooked it up to a 40″ TV at work for some testing. I wish it wasn’t like that – it’s just a hobby after all. And, in fact, while I might go home and spend 3 hours playing WoW after dinner, a lot of these people probably go home and sit infront of the TV until bed time.

WoW has been running now for over 4 years. In that time I have had some extended breaks, but still pop my head in from time to time and get grasped by the world’s atmosphere, ending up making a longer than intended stay. A lot of this is probably down to the great people I have met in my 4 years of playing though – some of which I have had the great opportunity to meet ‘IRL‘ – and many of which I now consider actual friends.

And there have only been two crazy stalkers, in case you were wondering ;D

Today’s Horoscope: The Moon’s return to your sign today presents you with a familiar conflict. Relevance: To play, or not to play. That is the question.

I guess “free” is a matter of opinion. I consider myself free because I am Done with work for a week and a half starting Wednesday, I’m getting married this Friday, and going on Vacation on Saturday.

While most people do not look at getting married as free, my life has taught me otherwise. I’m so excited for Friday, I wish it was tomorrow. This week will go very slow, I can already see that.

The bad thing about this week is that the forecast bounced around for the last week and it finally seems to be setting on the fact that it is going to RAIN all week! WTF is that?! This July has been a really lame summer month for Michigan. I’m used to insane heat, no rain, with a mix of some really beautiful days! What we have had so far has been a couple nice days and the rest are meh. We had almost no rain until the last couple days, and go figure it will continue for the next 10 days. Thanks Mother Nature! I will be sure leave my car running in your honor.

Once school starts up later in August, I have my final senior project to complete. I got the okay from the Dean to do a project for SWG and I am really considering it. It was either that or work on building a website like Pogo… I’m going to see what I can do to get as many resources for SWG as possible to make a web site worthwhile compared to all the other SWG fan sites out already… Mine really has to be something worth it…

Well, Monday is almost over. Hopefully Tuesday and Wednesday do not prove to be this slow!

-MC

Those who read my blog and know me in game (whether it be WoW, EQ, SWG, or any other world I’ve stepped into), know that I’ve spent much time as a raid leader. And if you didn’t know, you do now! If you know anything about raiding in MMOs, you know it’s hard work, but if you think that just being at the raid is hard, try leading it! I garuntee your stress level would be through the roof. Anything that goes wrong is pinned on the raid leader, regardless of actual fault. For some, being the leader of 25 (72+ when I was leading in EQ) is not an easy task, to others it’s a breeze. It can be game making, or game breaking. In the end it’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Clockwork Gamer had this awesome post yesterday about what it means to be a raid leader, and I thought I would share (full article at the link).

The Raid Leader’s Manifesto

I am a raid leader.

Time is my enemy. I recognize that the most important number on any raid is not the mitigation of my tank, the health of my target, or the damage of my raid force – it is time I have left on this raid.

Anything or anyone that interferes with the limited time I have before my raid breaks up is aiding my enemy. Raiders who show up unprepared, raiders who have not read the strategies I’ve written, raiders who do not listen while plans are discussed, raiders who get into conversations during fights, raiders who did not work on their character since the last raid – these are all collaborators I must halt or overcome in order to perform my duties within the time my raid force has alloted me.

As a raid leader, I am impatient. By definition, patience is a virtue that requires time. Time is my enemy. I grow frustrated when the raid is taking too much time. I do not care about dying…I care about dying slowly. I do not care about wipes…I care about recoveries which take too long. I do not care about careful pulls…I care about pulls which hold us up. If I must repeat myself, I am wearied. If I must wait for a recovery, I become irked. If I our raid wipes frequently due to the same mistakes, I grow upset.

When we run out of time, the raid is done. If I have lead my raid well, they will have accomplished something new, performed better, or moved faster than they have in the past. They win when they gain new loot, see new enemies, or learn something different. Any or all of these things are referred to as progression. When my raiders do not progress, I have lost the raid. In order to avoid losing, they must progress…and they must do so within our time constraints.

Whenever I am online, I am either raiding or preparing for a raid.  When I am online between raids, I talk about raiding. I discuss raiding. I ask questions about raiding. I try to get my raiders thinking about raiding. I want my raiders to understand that success in a raid does not start in a raid zone.

Groups are the way to success. Before I ever step foot into a raid dungeon, I know that our raid force’s success has already been largely determined. I realize that the best way to prepare for raids is to prepare raiders and the best way to prepare raiders for raiding lies in groups. I know that we bond in groups. We gear up in groups. We prepare for raids in groups.

Mine is a thankless job. I accept this. I accept that if I am polite and the raid fails, I will be berated. I accept that if I am kind and the raid is slow, I will be judged. I accept that even if the raid is a success, so long as I am not polite, I will be criticized. I accept that when I do well, I will rarely hear it. I accept that when the raid fails, it is my fault.

If I believe I am acting firm, I am being rude. If I ask someone to leave the raid, I am a jerk. If I call out someone on their performance, I am elitist. If I reserve any loot for a critical raid class, I have favorites. If I remain quiet, I am weak. If I chat, I am distracting. No matter what I do, I will never please all of my raid force. No matter what I do, I will always be compared to other raid leaders who do things better than I.

It is irrelevant that the very people who tell me what I am doing wrong as a raid leader are rarely people who have ever been a raid leader. It is irrelevant that the reason a raid failed is due to one person making the same mistakes over and over. It is irrelevant that the target was just too hard for the raid force we brought. Any time we fail the raid and any time I am criticized, the fault is mine.

I take failure personally. Each time we fail, there is something that I could have done differently. I could have explained the strategy differently. I could have benched a different raider. I could have chosen a different target. There is a never a raid which fails which is not my fault. That is the responsibility which is mine as raid leader.

There are no second chances on raids for the leaders. Each raid is a trial. Each raid is a judgement. Each raid is a review. If I perform well, raiders will continue to follow me. If I perform badly, they will stop attending my raids or even seek a new raid force. This is the reality I live with. This is the the only thanks I will ever truly know – that if I do my job well enough, I will be allowed to continue to do my job again in the future.

I am a raid leader.

110% accurate, so you followers out there, remember this the next time something goes wrong on a raid. Don’t be too hard on the guy organizing it all.

I’m updating my combat ent right now. I tried out a Combat Ent that didn’t use the pet, but the long battles ended up returning some very low DPS compared to with a pet. I’m doing really good at controlling where my pet goes and keeping it alive so I think I’m going to keep using a pet.

I’m deciding against stacking offense right now. I think I’m going to see what I can do with the rest of my defenses and go offense second. I’m already able to stack a ton of Dodge and GB so I might see where that gets me. We’ll see.

In addition, I’m also going to work on getting more pets and grinding them up to 90 and see how I do with those types of pets. The cat has worked wonders for me but I want to try some more, namely a spider and the Spined Rancor

It appears there are a lot of mixed reactions after the Fan Faire announcements. This is to be expected really, as every Fan Faire tends to lead to the forums exploding and the /quit threads to resurface more often.

It’s pretty much impossible to please everyone. This should be very obvious, especially in an MMO like SWG. Because there are so many sub-sections of the player base, it makes it difficult. We have RP, Space, PVE Combat, PVP Combat, GCW, Social, Crafting, City Management, Questing, Solo, Group, Grinders, Casual, etc. Coming out with any update will have the praises and the displeasure from much of everyone. I could see it would be extremely difficult as a developer to keep your head up while making a system or update in this game. You work long hours to get something huge into the game, only to have it blasted by the player base. Not saying everyone hates it, but true to customer service anywhere else, the spoken people are the ones that are complaining about something and very rarely will you get a call thanking you for the service. It’s expected to be good, so when it doesn’t appease to the customers, there’s backlash.

Now, with that said, I want to dive into some of the key points from Fan Faire that mean something to me: Chronicle System and GCW.

The Chronicle System is a new system to SWG coming out later this year (after the Engineer Update). The system is being designed to allow players to generate their own quests from pre-existing locations, bunkers, and enemies. The players will be allowed to create their own text, use voice-overs (including Vader), and process. For example, you create your own quest and call it “The Master Hunter”. You then can have the questers go out and kill rare mobs such as Ancient Krayt Dragons, the Gorax, Sher Kar, etc. and you control the order, and in the end, depending on how you design the quest, the player can receive certain rewards. In turn, you receive experience for creating these quests depending on difficulty, and you can earn unique rewards. This system acts like Politician and you will be allowed to level without having to respect out of your current profession.

To me, this system sounds like a great addition. I know many people are seeing it as the players doing the developers work, but our developers are small in number, and we have some extremely talented players in our game. Some of the RP’ers that can create some great stories will have a chance to bridge the gap between the RP’ers and non-RP’ers. This will also allow some people to make some great events for their guilds as well. Having the ability to create a mission set for your guild to complete using already existing elements in the game will add replayability to many areas and could have a positive spin to the game. I know we will not know for sure how it will play out, but I feel this will be a great addition to the game. Will it be a saving grace? Not at all, but it is something completely new to SWG so I will certainly give it a chance before bashing it completely. Heck, I am already in works of creating a Drama Entertainer Quest for all those Combat Ents out there to test their might!

The GCW discussion at Fan Faire was straight and to the point: Include everyone, It is important, No Promises!

I think one of the things that needs to be made clear is that we WILL see a GCW update soon. Maybe not this year, but it must be made 100% transparent that a GCW update is coming. The community has spent a great deal of time discussion the possibilities of the GCW and what it means and what it does not mean. I consider it a victory for the community for us to get the PVP update we got. We know that GCW =/= PVP and we have pushed to get that attitude that used to exist away. To me, the PVP update was something to hold us over for the time being in addition to more PVP content. I think it was a year ago that Blixtev stated that there will be no PVP or GCW update any time soon. The community pushed hard and we finally received acknowledgment that there is something that will be done to this important aspect of the game.

Many players have written novels on what they feel the GCW system should be or as some have stated HAS to be… But I trust the devs to know exactly how to handle the situation and do it right. I appreciated reading that the GCW will not be pushed out as a messy polish over what exists. They want to do it right and know it’s important to the game and for us. Everyone needs to read the slides that were presented at Fan Faire, which are also posted here – http://mastercosmo.com/2009/06/26/soe-fan-faire-swg/ (And a HUGE thanks to Senator Jod for keeping us all updated! /bagel for you). The developers presented a general layout they wanted to shoot for. Obviously everything is subject to change, but to get the best feedback, take what they have said and go from there. Post on the boards and keep the discussions constructive! We have a chance to have a great GCW system added for us all to enjoy, but they need to have the support from the community.

To make a short point, I think the whole Zombie’s in SWG is a bit nutty… But I do know that nothing means more to Dotanuki than the Horror genre so I trust that he will have a heavy hand in this release and make it fun. I know it’s being based off of an EU book so I can’t say it’s not Star Wars exactly, but it’s certainly stretching it. Hopefully it will be a nice addition to the GMF coming out around the same time. I think I’ll leave it at that.

Currently I’m funding this site and my Photobucket account. I had to upgrade my accounts to handle all the bandwidth and storage I’m using for images especially. All my graphs and charts are hosted by me and it’s getting expensive. If you have a dollar or two you’re willing to donate to help me fund my accounts to keep providing you all information I have gather over the years, then you can do so here.

If you can spare the funds then you have no idea how appreciative I am. Once things settle down in my life and I get my bearing again I might be coming out of retirement We’ll see.

Thanks again!