Star Wars is one of my favorite franchises. I’m not really someone who wears my interests on my sleeves, loudly and proudly. It’s more of a personal appreciation of mine; an interest that when asked about it, I could passionately divulge my opinions for hours. My love mostly centers around the original trilogy, but there are aspects of the prequels that I love, and large swaths of the Expanded Universe. I generally feel that the Disney era has been an enormous missed opportunity, save for parts of The Mandalorian, and the incredible Rogue One. Nevertheless, it remains one of my favorite fictional universes from top to bottom.
Star Wars rides this really fascinating line where it tries, and mostly succeeds, to marry science fiction and fantasy. You have swords (lightsabers), magic (the Force), knights (literally called Jedi Knights) and countless other connective threads to serve as genre blending elements, that help fantasy lovers like myself feel right at home. All that being said, I think one of my favorite aspects of the Star Wars universe is the sheer number of species and cultures within the franchise. If I check any Star Wars wiki right now for the number of unique, sentient species, the site wants specification on whether or not I’m referring to strictly mammals, or if I mean reptiles, or bird-like creatures, or invertebrates or any other classification that you can think of to provide more succinct results. If I go to the “All” setting, it appears that there are something like a few hundred sentient species, at least. For someone like me, who loves creativity and imagining the planets and homes and societies that all of these creatures live in, my brain immediately wants to explore these places. Short of using our imagination, the most capable way of doing this, that we currently have at our disposal, is through video games.
I
have been an enjoyer of video games for my entire life. One of my favorite genres of games are
MMOs, or MMORPGs. Most MMOs allow you to play cooperatively with
others, toiling away at difficult quests together or tackling dungeons
or raids with each other’s help. While cooperative play is what I go in
for, many people enjoy the style of play that is fighting against your
fellow players, otherwise known as PVP (player-versus-player.) One of
the greatest things about most MMOs though is the option to create your
own character to experience the adventure. Some games limit your
character creation to humans or human-esque races, which I think is so
limiting. If I’m exploring the fantastical wilds of Stonetalon Mountains
(from World of Warcraft) I want to experience that
as something other than what I currently am in my real daily existence.
So I like to opt for the races/species that provide me the most
immersion into this alien world.
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| The diverse and varied playable species of Star Wars Galaxies |
So you can only imagine the way my eyes lit up when I launched Star Wars Galaxies for the first time and realized how many iconic alien races that could serve as your player character. From the furry, towering Wookies to the reptilian Trandoshans, the aquatic, squid-like Mon Calamari and a handful of other unique looking species from the Star Wars universe, you had myriad options to make your character truly yours. Galaxies served as the first MMO of the Star Wars franchise, which has since been replaced by The Old Republic. I believe that Galaxies did a far superior job of letting you immerse yourself into the Star Wars setting, with one of the major components being this selection of playable races. The Old Republic opted, for some reason, to only make mostly humanoid playable races, which ends up feeling like you're just a human (or human-adjacent species) adventuring in an alien setting. Honestly this alone, has kept me from ever truly connecting with Galaxies' successor, though I won't argue that The Old Republic's writing is vastly superior, as it was made by the once-famed RPG studio Bioware.
There are several different Star Wars species that I love, from a design approach; some of them playable in this very game. I almost made a Mon Calamari, as I love the inimitable Admiral Ackbar and the incredible Mon Calamari featured in Rogue One. But truthfully, I had to go with another choice, as one of my very favorite races was an option in Galaxies; the bizarre, tall beings known colloquially as "Hammerheads," but in actuality are named Ithorians. I was able to specify his height, his skin tone and the size and overall shape of his unusual and iconic head. Now it was time to choose his class.
Star Wars Galaxies has sundry classes, offering different options for a few different playstyles, including a couple that aren't used in combat at all. I'll blow through these in a general, rapid-fire fashion. Commando is what you would expect from a clone trooper or stormtrooper; they hurl grenades and lay down fire with rifles, blasters, pistols, etc. Spies serve as your "rogue" archetype, preferring stealth and subtlety to in-your-face action. Smugglers are somewhat similar to Spies, though without a stealth-focus. Smugglers use either a pistol or their fists to deal damage and have access to unique world abilities like smuggling spice and being able to sell good anywhere in the galaxy, via their connections to the underground crime world. The Jedi is somewhat self-explanatory, though via their talent tree, they can choose to lean more into Light or Dark side powers: like utilizing Force Lightning or Healing. Medics, as you would expect, are the go-to healer class. Bounty Hunters use arms like the Commando, while also having access to sniper rifles and various traps. They also have unique access to PvP abilities, like being able to track players that have a bounty on their head. Officers can shoot guns and toss grenades, and they also have the distinct ability to be able to call down supply drops for their party, as well as offering buffs and boons for their team. They can also summon artillery barrages and strikes to be inflicted on the enemy.
The two non-combat roles are that of the Trader and the Entertainer. Traders choose areas of crafting expertise and sell their goods to players in need. They can specify their crafting to clothing/armor, food, building starships, weapons or droids. Traders don't do any combat whatsoever, and their experience is gained via crafting. Entertainers are dancers or musicians, and they typically can be found posted up in a cantina, performing for a crowd of other players. Why would that be included in Star Wars Galaxies, you may ask? Well, Entertainers provide massive buffs to players through their music and dancing. Buffs that are needed for raiding, PvP and end-game events and activities. So Entertainers have a necessary, quirky niche for themselves. The idea is that other players are expected to tip you for your services. Entertainers also have the unique ability to edit another player's appearance, if that's something they want. Entertainers can even access hair colors that aren't available from the character creation menu, so if you're wishing to customize your character, you can hire an Entertainer to remake your character's design.
You're probably wondering what I chose. I generally like the Smuggler/Bounty Hunter, criminal underbelly side of the Star Wars universe, but for this, I chose the iconic Jedi. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to play as an Ithorian Jedi and get a cool lightsaber color. For the record, I stand with Mace Windu - Purple is the superior color of lightsaber. Yellow is a close second for me.
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| Here's a shot of my Ithorian Jedi cutting down a Gungan religious extremist on Naboo. Honestly this was so satisfying, imagining this to be Jar Jar or a friend of his. |
Star Wars Galaxies does a solid job of making it feel
like your character both exists with his or her own agency and story
within the galaxy, while simultaneously interacting with existing
characters from the franchise and visiting famous locations, such as Mos
Eisley, Jabba’s Palace, the Theed palace on Naboo and countless other
familiar spots. There are several planets to check out during your adventure, such as: Tatooine, Naboo, Corellia, Kashyyyk, Mustafar and more. In my opinion, where the game shines is where it shows off aspects of iconic Star Wars planets that we've never seen. We see cities and towns that have never been visually shown in any movie or game before this one. The planets also have interesting plot-lines happening on them that give them additional depth. For instance, Tatooine is crawling with various criminal organizations that you have to infiltrate, and Naboo is in the throes of a Gungan religious extremist faction attacking various cities. These aren't well written stories by any stretch of the imagination, but it does give you some more culture and history to explore on the various worlds, beyond just running through the main story. The biggest complaint I have with the game is that the "Golden Path" of quests ends at some point, and you likely still have many levels left before you're at the end game. At which point, you're expected to take generic randomly generated quests from Mission Terminals, grind out experience in combat or do dungeons to finish the rest of your leveling. It's a design choice that has aged terribly, in my opinion.
Gameplay-wise, Galaxies largely plays like a standard MMO, similar to World of Warcraft, just without a lot of the refinements and quality-of-life updates that WoW brought to the genre. Star Wars Galaxies initially launched in 2003, a year prior to WoW. And technically speaking, the game did have a highly controversial complete overhaul in 2005, and the version of the game that I played was post-overhaul, but many of the older, uglier design choices from 2003 remained. And a common complaint with Galaxies is that the game is very buggy, which remains an issue. It seems almost like an engine issue more than anything. I think the graphics have aged very poorly, and a large part of that seems to be the way they designed the game world. If you move your cursor over almost any object, it highlights like it is an interactive piece of the world, but in reality, almost none of it is, and every one of those pseudo-interactive objects has a visible name. I'll share an image below to give just a rough idea of what that looks like. It creates a wildly cluttered in-game user interface, especially in a large city like Mos Eisley. And though it's ugly, if you find yourself nostalgic for PlayStation 2-era graphics, I'd argue that there's some sort of a charm to the way the game looks. And I'll be clear that although the game isn't easy on the eyes, it didn't ruin the game for me by any means. I still sunk dozens of hours into Galaxies.
I chose Star Wars Galaxies to feature in a 'Run It Back' because despite the game's glaring flaws, I still hold it dearly. It's easy to look past some of the frustrating, poorly aged design choices like the "Golden Path" questline ending well before you're done leveling your character up, or struggling to navigate the cluttered user interface, ultimately because of the sheer potential that the game holds for living out some degree of your Star Wars fantasy. The fact that I could design and name my very own Ithorian, a Star Wars race that I've always enjoyed, and choose a class and then travel the Star Wars universe making my own story, was an experience that I quite enjoyed. If you're a Star Wars nerd like me, and enjoy MMOs, and a somewhat retro aesthetic, I think Galaxies is worth checking out.
The last note is perhaps the biggest. Star Wars Galaxies was officially killed in December 2011, to be replaced by Bioware's follow-up Star Wars MMO - The Old Republic. You're probably wondering how I can recommend the game. Galaxies is fortunately a game that is beloved by enough people that it warranted multiple private servers to be created after the official servers went down. You can choose to play the game as it was when it originally came out in 2003 on the private server called SWG Emu. Or you can play the updated version of the game (the version that I played), on the private server known as SWG Legends. Both sites have walkthroughs featured for how to set up the private server, and it's something that can be done in probably an hour. They're both free to play. I'd recommend SWG Legends if you want a somewhat familiar MMO experience, though you can easily find footage on YouTube of either version, to see which looks preferable to your tastes.
Star Wars Galaxies holds a place of royalty for many in the MMO community. It broke new ground on many fronts, and as janky and awkward as it looks and plays, it deserves to be remembered and respected.
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