Logging back in, I was extremely pleased to see that I was no longer being bombarded with an endless streams of group invitations, and since I didn’t have anything too pressing going on, I decided to hang out for a few minutes and check out the community, something I hadn’t really bothered doing up until that point, as I had played with my blinders on, ignoring everything but the game itself. Surprisingly enough, business seems to continue as usual in the game’s city hubs, without the pervasive morbidity that I expected. While there is no single unified “trade” channel, at least not that I could find, people seem to gather in groups inside of major towns and cities to socialize and trade loot. The chat is still filled with people organizing Sith duels, and the more standard practice of buying and selling… and they’re selling some odd things. From the Mos Eisley chat, you can acquire anything from “Anakin’s Cybernetic Arm” to “A General Grievous Wheel Bike”. Turning one-of-a-kind items into collectibles that any player can get just reeks of pandering to an ever-shrinking player base to keep them subscribed.
Getting back to questing, I went through the quests that weird stranger wanted me to do, learning to use the bank and the bazaar (auction house). Here I have to give Star Wars Galaxies somewhat of a nod. Most MMOs don’t bother themselves with familiarizing their players with the base mechanics of the economic system, and as a result new players have no idea how to make money in-game, and usually must have it explained to them. On the other hand however, I was never directed to this tutorial, and just happened to stumble upon a quest giver in the corner of a town that just happened to have some teaching to do. After completing his set of tutorials, I was told that both the Rebel and Imperial navies were recruiting. By this point, I really wanted to get back into the space combat, so I hopped in my starfighter and started making my way over to the Imperial Recruiter in a town called Bestine. On my way over there however, I stopped by yet another nod to Star Wars fans that I happened across, a crashed escape pod out in the middle of the desert…
The first thing I noticed when I arrived in Bestine was that, while the City is hailed by the game as the capitol of Imperial operations on Tatooine, it was controlled by the Rebels when I got there. This led to some pretty great situations, like the Imperial recruiter being next to a Rebel guard, so that when I joined the imperial military, the rebel guard immediately began shooting at me. Not the high-ranking officer next to me that recruited me, but the guy who just joined the military. Yep, I’m certainly glad I joined the Empire now. After dying to some guards and getting put on “leave” from the Imperial military, I talked to the Imperial pilot recruiter, who unlike the rest of the military NPCs, let me take misisons from him while I was still on leave, which I’m certainly not complaining about. What I will complain about however, is the fact that it seems like every time I talk to him the Imperial March plays. Is that really necessary? It certainly isn’t adding any drama to this super bland quest text that just told me to go shoot down some pirates…
I go and do a few of his errands, and come back to Bestine, which is apparently about to be under attack. At least this is what I was told by the paragraph of text that confronted me when I spawned in. This mechanism certainly takes the cake as the clunkiest possible way to teach you how something works, and to be completely honest, not much of it makes a ton of sense, but I doubt the developers really cared by the time they designed this system.
Not really interested in dying repeatedly to other players, I wandered off again and went exploring. This time what I stumble upon is the core of the prequel movies distilled into game form, SPACE POLIITICS! I get to choose a candidate for governor of Bestine that I like the best and campaign for them, and who doesn’t love being a volunteer campaign worker? Well I certainly don’t, so I took this chance to log off and end my third day in Star Wars Galaxies.
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