Star Wars Galaxies

Anyone play it?

I was in the beta and played for about a year. It was amazing how much a part of the SW universe it felt. Even playing a race (Bothan) that was never on the screen I really felt like I was helping rid the galaxy of Rebel scum.

One of the things I loved best about the game is also what I feel led to its eventual downfall: the user-based economy. Pretty much every other game of this ilk has a large selection of NPC vendors where players can buy and sell items. SWG did not. All vendors were player-owned and run. There was even an in-game eBay. Players were able to buy houses, create their own cities, elect a mayor, etc. I thought it was a brilliant move that would allow the players themselves to help craft the universe in which they played.

And it worked. Too well. What happened is that the economy began to mirror real life, in which a few mega-corporations ran every thing and the little guy was forced out of business and was left picking at scraps in the outlands. I am a more 'casual' gamer (in play style, I still put in over 30 hours a week playing) and eschewed the larger guilds and it began to be a lot of work just to break even.

THEN they basically wiped the slate clean and started over with the classes with the NGE (New Galaxy Experience or some crap like that), at which point I threw up my hands and canceled my account.

It's sad, because there were some BRILLIANT "Star Wars" moments. Riding a speeder bike on Endor. Cruising the desert and coming on the Lars homestead or better yet an escape pod with droid tracks leading off across the dunes. The "Jump to Lightspeed" expansion was in-fricking-credible and could have been a standalone game by itself. I remember combing the skies in my TIE Interceptor, looking for pirates or better yet, Rebels, hoping to earn enough cash to upgrade my engines just one more time. Defending Mos Espa with my fellow Imperials from an attack of 50 screaming wookiees...good times, good times.

Ultimately, the game wasn't FUN, and that's really what games are about (for me, at least). That was the best thing about WoW and why I stuck with that so long until it just became one raid after another. If SWG had been as fun as the lower levels of WoW are, I'd be playing it still.