Galaxies was launched 10 years ago today! And I know what you're thinking.

Let it go...

And you're right. But this isn't a post about how SWG should be brought back, or debate if it was the "greatest MMO ever made ever you guys." I just thought it would be fun to see if any duders out there had any favorite SWG memories to share.

As for me, I remember I couldn't care less when it was released. It was Jump to Lightspeed that hooked me in, because I thought it would be a modern update to the X-Wing series. Well, JtL turned out to be a massive pain-in-the-ass grindfest (though I finally did earn my own Millennium Falcon, with a bugged zero-weight engine from a friend that made it haul ass), and the planetary gameplay ended up stealing most of my interest.

I played as a doctor on Bria, and to this day can't explain what was so curiously fun about that. I loved heading out to the market to buy and then craft my repertoire of powerful medicines. Stims for health, stamina, diseases, bleeding, and more - and the grand quest to get them up to server-capped potency. I loved hanging around the Coronet med center and talking mess with whoever wandered in for healing (also learned quite a bit about the game this way!) I remember a few fights with the docs just there to heal tumblers and get a piece of that sweet Buff Bot pie, but those were short lived.

In short, there was something about working to actively help and enhance others' gameplay that I found tons of fun. Maybe why I've chosen healing roles in every MMO since. I suppose EVE offers the closest example to what I'm talking about - building up an industry and cranking out the best guns in a solo game (like the X series) feels kind of dumb, but doing it knowing that it actively supports other players is different. "Your weapons could be the ones that win the war" and such.

Oh, and there was walking in on my guild leaders cybering. That was fun.

Literally 5 seconds after I mastered weaponsmith a game wide broadcast went out indicating there was a disturbance in the force ie the first jedi, I thought it was me and I was freaking out for awhile.

That first year was magic, I really loved that game for a while and if they had built dungeons and raids the way wow did that game would probably still be popular.

The first time one of my characters went on the mighty path of becoming a Jedi. Those were fun times and it's one of those games I went crazy with the insane roleplaying with. So I left my friends to go on my.. quest.. Do Jedi go on vision quests? I don't know. But that was pretty epic, especially when people in our guild started finding out slowly what I was doing.

And the last days before they ruined it and made it idiot friendly(as in, "Nono, you just have to hold down Left Mouse now to attack and then. use a skill if you feel like it. You don't have to though, so don't you worry Han Solo Number 10" or "Jedi Number 2302302402302")

We held a big ass party(there were a lot of people on Tatooine that day) where people just joined up and started having fun, playing music, dancing, drinking shooting off fireworks and fight my Jedi. Man, I liked that game best when Jedi were a rare thing to see. When I became one I knew others were Jedi as well but I never ran into anyone that often. I could go months without seeing one and feel like a badass.

I ran a really fun guild in SWG for 5 years.

When the game first came out it was completely open ended. To a fault really, it had no real actual story line- you just went and did stuff and upgraded whatever trees you wanted and stuff- it was kind of what made it special too.

Anyway, we regularly PvPd and one time I was running through an enemy city and a smuggler attacked me (I was flagged, but I regularly do not attack people, even when flagged, unless they attack me- it's just how I am). I was playing a commando, and anybody playing at the time knows I was technically fairly weak- we would often get stunned locked so if you got a TK up to us we were done (which was almost always, either that or Combat medics). I was, however, able to wound people which was really expensive to fix and real a pain in the ass. I was beating him at the fight so the guy, as Smugglers did all the time back then, he feigned death. There was no timer on the skill back then- he could do this indefinitely- which means (for those that may not know) he could lay there indefinitely and not be killed.

I wasn't going to give up there, commandos almost never win a 1 on 1 fight, and I had almost his full health bar blackened with wounds (which means he could only use up to like, i think the lowest it would go before it stopped was 15%- so he could only use 15% of his health until he saw a doctor to fix it which would have taken him HOURS to heal).

He kept lying there, and I kept burning him with my beautiful Flame Thrower. A lot of my guildies gathered around and we took pictures. It was really funny, mainly because he started it and didn't want to be a man and let me get the win, so we made it so he couldn't do anything unless he gave up and died (which he never did).

I have pictures of the occasion as well:

Gallery

Ah, Good times. I have other pics of SWG (I have a ton) but those are of that incident in particular. It's one of my favorite SWG memories.

I remember spending time in a small settlement on Naboo, named Moenia, it got my little rodian outside of the major hustle and bustle of other areas into a smaller more tight knit community. I was playing on the rebel side for most of that time, this was before the mounts were even available. I never leveled too far in SWG, I dabbled in a few different things but never mastered a profession, but that was ok for me. I enjoyed joining a rp guild that I still remember the name of called Enclave. I haven't experienced positive player run experiences since that time. On another note I hear that pre combat upgrade SWG emulated servers are getting pretty proficient to simulate the retail environment as it was during SWGs most enjoyable time.

@cornbredx: That is a pretty awesome story. It sums up a lot of players in SWG. Man, the days when everyone was trying to become a Jedi was the best. In fact, that game captured the Star Wars essence; Something TOR never did. Pre-NGE was the best part of that game. No MMO has come close to what I felt those years playing SWG.

@patman99: I agree, it was an amazing game- best I could have picked for the first MMO I ever played.

I had always respected SWG for being an MMO in that era wasn't the usual STR/DEX/INT game. I never played it for any length of time due to EQ and was confused why they abandoned it for the reboot.

I was fucking terrible at the game and never made it past the first tier of carbonear as my highest level character, but that game left a strong impact on me. It was the first time I played a game and I actually felt like I was living in a world and not just a guy sitting behind a monitor hunched over a keyboard and mouse. I have no idea why it happened or how it managed to do it, but I became engrossed in that game and lost days just walking around and exploring the universe. No game has ever made me feel that way.

It was always my dream/goal in that game to get a full set of Composite Armour for my character because I thought it looked bad ass. The best I think I ever got was an armband and the boots, but even just having that made me feel like a badass.

RIP.

@extomar: They were pretty explicit on why. They wanted to chase WoW subscription numbers, which they never got, and in fact they lost a large chunk of what they had to begin with. They considered this an acceptable risk- and said as much; that they expected they might lose players.

At it's peak, SWG had around 250k subscribers. At the time this was pretty good- dare I say profitable- until WoW began getting amazing subscription numbers (and even then your average MMO still only ever had maybe 100k recurring Subscribers- WoW was the exception).

The only thing that we may never know is who was pushing so hard for it to be bigger. It is the Star Wars license after all, they expected it to mean more. I don't know if it was SoE or Lucasarts who made the call to upheave everything about the game and change it 3 times, my money was always on Lucasarts.

@cornbredx: Cornbred, that is the kind of weirdo MMO story that I love to hear about. Makes me sad that most MMOs are still trying to be WoW. Thanks for sharing.

I remember riding around on my speedbike and setting up camp in the wilderness of Naboo. Good times. You really can't mention SWG without the change and I left around the first change. Real unfortunate.

@cornbredx yeah, shame is that EVE Online has shown you can have a quality mmo with a good strong base even with sub-million subscribers. They should have accepted that the game wasn't going to make them own 60 Ferrari's and create a worthwhile experience for fans.

Galaxies was my first MMO experience, though I doubt I knew what that term meant at the time. Still one of the most enjoyable MMO's I've played, nothing as really ever matched it, that or I've just gotten older.

As for memories, I have a few. I remember discovering player cities. I recall quickly embracing how open SWG felt, unfortuantely that's meant every other MMO I've played felt way to linear and controlling for my liking. But joining a community on the Ahazi server was great, with all that weird political system they had implemented to elect a mayor of the player city and all. Ironically I barely upgraded my character or leveled him up if I recall, all I did at one point was go on hunts with the guild every so often and 80% of the time I was harvesting on different planets which I loved a little to much. There was something about the harvesting system I couldn't get enough of. I'd harvest and stock my wears/sell my wears and buy stuff for the house. That's what I loved about SWG, you could sort of do what you wanted, I miss that.

I remember Jedi being a big deal at one point to. Maybe I'm looking at it with rose-tinted glasses, but I recall Jedi's being a reasonably rare occurrence until they went and made it easy to become one. You needed to get some Jedi cubes or something if I recall. I never bothered in that though, I got into simply harvesting till my hearts content.

Sadly I also recall being away for a week on holiday, coming back and going online to discover our player city empty and a bucket-load of mails from in-game friends who had left within that week, why? NGE of course where everyone left so quickly. But I had fun. Can't go by without celebrating in some way.

@machofantastico: Ya, I remember the first person to ever get Jedi in the game was in the news or something (I had read about it online at the time) and it was a big deal because it was so obscure and difficult to do. Shortly after that became a thing for what was called Alpha players (this term largely no longer exists in MMOs, but these are players that are technically better than everyone else and by sheer fact that they spent a lot of time doing it- in the case of SWG- had a character that could dominate).

Jedi were a rare occurrence (to be fair- in the time line- they were supposed to be all but extinct so for them to be incredibly difficult and rare to ever see made sense). They also had implemented that really interesting bounty system for them, which made it so seeing Jedi was even more rare because if you did they would get flagged on the bounty hunter listings and would get hunted. So basically it was like, the players who played the most and figured out the systems at the time had the most difficult characters to take down, but then couldn't really interact with the world without getting a bounty on their head. I always thought that was such a cool system, although some players that made Jedi at the time hated it because the game had several very punishing systems in place, such as Combat Fatigue, wounds, and equipment degradation; for a jedi to get gear at the time was also very hard to do as all their gear was created by drops from world bosses (although if I recall they could heal wounds by meditating).

The one thing, from a gameplay perspective, that SWG got so incredibly right was the sense of exploration and atmosphere. It really captured the world of Star Wars even if it faltered on giving any sense of direction. It basically just said "here's the world that Star Wars takes place in, make your own story" and we did.

Such cool times.

Sorry, I'm getting all nostalgic today. Just keep remembering all this cool stuff haha

As far as the NGE, my review I posted shortly around that time is still on gamespot where I basically complained they no longer cared about their player base (which was true) and they were trying to appeal to new players and basically dumbing the game down (I left when they decided to let anybody use flame throwers, including Jedi, which before that had been limited to Commandos only; it was like giving everyone access to a lightsaber- it really irked me. For reference they changed that back a few months later but I had already left by that point and so did most of my guild).

God I am writing to much. I'll shut up now.

I never got to play the game, but I used to play games in a group ran by the second and third people to become Jedi in SWG, a husband and wife duo who met because of it, and they always had incredible stories about running from bounty hunters and stuff like that. I wish I could have been around to experience the magic.

Ok this is scratching way too many itches. How hard would it be to set up a original private server? On a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being impossible?

I started about two weeks after launch. I remember joining the Imperials because I wanted to be a Stormtrooper because their armor is awesome as heck. At the same time I talked to the recruiter, so were four other players and a sixth person was standing nearby, obviously a veteran of the game in some capacity. As soon as we joined up he introduced himself as an officer of the Empire and told us that we were now a squad; we lived together, fought together, we died together. We were immediately given orders to patrol Tattooine and search the deserts for Rebel hideouts and report all findings, even if they were nothing, in person to an appointed officer.

So that's what I did for a week. Me and the same four people logged in at the same time for seven days straight to patrol the deserts of Tattooine. We never did find any Rebels, but every hour somebody was told to run back to find a specific somebody standing next to the Imperial NPC and tell them what we had found or what we were doing, and they would then run back as quickly as possible. After the third day command had set us up with a sort of system where we would pass the baton, so to speak. One person would run to someone nearby and tell them who would then run to somebody nearby to relay the message who would then run to somebody nearby and you get the idea. I asked my Officer on the fifth day why we did this and his answer was "To build trust." He believed that by working together so closely, without relying on any "simple technology like communicators" with my fellow would-be Stormtroopers we were building relationships and strengthening bonds with our brothers in arms.

We were eventually promoted and allowed to work guard duty in Anchorage, then I moved up to Mos Eisley. All I did was walk up and down the streets and stop to ask people that looked like they were having trouble if they needed any help; directions, some starting advice, armed escort... the occasional firefight with some Rebels in back alleys and marketplaces. god damn it this game was awesome i am never going to shut up with some of my stories if you let me keep going

@nictel: there was a project to reverse-engineer the code to release state and set up private servers, don't know how lively it is though.

Such a beautiful game, I never forget bounty hunting. I had tracked a guy back to his house and was prepping my usual buffsand stims before going in to get dem credits.

What I entered is still marred in my brain to this day. Entering his house instantly turned the sands of tatooine into some form of silence of the lambs buffalo bill den. About a hundred candles lined a carpeted rug that was causing all kinds of glitchy textures.

I kept walking and remember I kept turning around on the spot trying to figure out wtf was going on. I eventually found him /kneel and he just kept typing . "I'll see you soon father" I don't know if he was the greatest roleplayer I've ever met but he comes close for genuinely frightening me and making me retire as a bounty hunter, after that all the other hunts felt mundane and I spent my time grinding to build droids and stayed around during ftl, after the NGE I roleplayed as a silent wookiee companion for people for a while with the folks from SEA, alas it couldn't last forever sweet prince SWG.

@aronman789: @nictel:

Ya, I don't know. I didn't follow that project much so last I heard about it was like... 2006. I have no idea how far they got. I have heard there is working servers but I have no idea how it plays or where you find it. I'm pretty sure it's illegal technically anyway (which is kind of lame if you think about it).

I played the EMU, its riddled with entertainer bots grinding infinitely and there were no beast master pets working when I last played but its definitely playable.

@primalhorse: wow. That's a pretty awesome story, duder. Cheers! =)

@cornbredx: Nice story! For some reason, reminds me of my first pathetic attempt as a Bounty Hunter.

When the CU hit, they removed the Doctor profession as it was and turned it into a field medic. I hated the change, but I understand - buffing was out of control, requiring players to rely on other players to heal them was a great system when it worked and pure hell when it didn't - but it still left me with nothing to do. So I respeced around and dabbled in different professions for a while.

Bounty Hunter seemed interesting, so I speced into a max lvl BH, but of course, with no leveling period to learn what I was doing. Bought some gear, bought some droids, and took a medium-level mission from the BH terminal.

For those who don't know, at this time the BH system was all about forced PvP between BHs and Jedi. Jedi automatically collected bounties for using their powers in public, even in front of their friends. Jedi also had a ridiculous conversion rate of regular XP to Force XP, and lost a notable amount of Force XP when killed by a Hunter. It was meant to limit the number of Jedi, but basically ended up making the grind even more of a pain in the ass. Jedi hated Bounty Hunters.

Anyway, the BH droids flew off to find my target. The first one reported him on Endor, so I headed there, sent up the second droid to refine the position, and zipped off on my speeder. Found him out in the middle of nowhere with another Jedi, grinding on local beasts. This was a common setup, because it allowed them to easily spot on the minimap when someone was approaching, while limiting their exposure and increasing their bounty.

I decided this would be a good time to try my new stealth abilities. I went prone and crawled (so not to break stealth) for something like 10 minutes, inching closer and closer to my prey, convinced I'd totally get the drop on him.

I'd never used stealth before, so I didn't know what the detection radius was. Suddenly *ZAP* the cloak drops and there I am, laying on the ground in front of a Wookie Jedi and his padawan.

The jig is up already, so I say the first thing that comes to mind. "Um... I'm looking for my contact lens."

After getting handily killed, I decided BH might not be for me. If I remember correctly, I respeced to Commando, got a full suit of trooper armor, and tried playing as a patrolling Stormtrooper in Theed for a while.