Star Wars: Galaxies - the Retcon(s)

The thing about SWG, is that it sucks to be a roleplayer in there. A serious, supergeek, non l337 speaking RP'er is just going to get so frustrated by continuity issues & other players that don't ar pee, that soon they'll just stop having fun. With a game.

SWG tried at the start I THINKS, to fit everything in the game into the ANH era, even tho right from the start a buncha whiny players wanted starting character Jedi. Instead SOE made them complete like 3-4 professions to Master & made them follow a secret code to get their Jedi & Sithies. That wasn't good enough. It wasn't enough to be able to visit Vader & the Emperor & do missions for them, or to do the same with Leia & Rebel operatives, or be any of the other 20-30 professions like Bounty Hunter, Rifleman, Dancer, Cook, Architect, Weaponmaster, Teras Kasai Master, Swords, Handguns, Scout, etc, peoples wanted their Jedi/Sith chars right now, no waits!

You just got to let all that nonsense go: too many Jedi, even more Dark Jedi, too many guys playing female avatars, 1337 |<1dd5, ships/weapons/people in the game that aren't supposed to be...there's no way to fix all of that. Make a character that looks exactly like you do in real life only better, unless you're going to be an aliens, do missions to level up, meet some cool people cause they're there almost everywhere, have a good time, smack Darth Vader when he visits the Theed, Naboo spaceport & kill at least a 100 Jedi PC's in PVP/bounty hunter combat. Good times, homie. No fixes for SWG.

 

Personally I just ignore other players as not being part of the canon storyline. Ditto with ordinary cannon fodder mob Jedi or Sith that you kill by the bucket load.

I have no idea how many actual Force-sensitive NPCs there are in the game, but I'm going to assume it is not actually that large. I'd guess a hundred tops maybe? SWG was never really a heavily plot driven game (at least when I played it up until the NGE) so there were not that many actual Force-users. Aurilia only had like a dozen people or so. The Sith Shadows only had a few dozen named NPCs maybe, with most of the enemies you fought just generic mobs.

Basically: kind of like how if you raid the Emperor's retreat on Naboo and kill Thrawn's NPC (no clue if you can kill important NPCs or not, but this is just an example), he doesn't actually get cloned when he respawns, it just didn't really happy.

Apart from the Jedi and Sith Armies the player driven part of the game bolsters, I fully support making sense of things like Aurilia and the Sith Shadows though. I just don't think there is much need to worry about the numbers too much, as that's just game mechanics.

 

I always thought certain parts of it looked a little like a Sith temple... there are a few things that look like you might find them in a Daedric temple in Elder Scrolls III. There were also some Korriban-like pillars evident in the preview documentary that weren't used in the film.

 

I actually believe that World of Warcraft should be acknowledged for this activity rather than the Matrix Online, which assumes everything is canon. World of Warcraft basically presumes that not all of the online gamers are actually "there." Thus, the Black Temple is not being invaded every other week by raiding parties. Ilidan Stormrage is slain ONE time and only once by a specific unnamed group of heroes.

Likewise, gameplay elements don't effect Star Wars canon.

Thus, I suggest the following assumptions for any Galaxies Retcons.

1. Only NPCs introduced in Galaxies are canon.

2. Only quests introduced in Galaxies are assumed to have happened in some form, not the details.

3. No particular number of heroes is assumed to exist but the bare minimum.

4. Gameplay mechanics are non-existent. I.e. Cloning doesn't exist in any great massive form necessarily because there's no assumption of dying and returning.

I.e. just like returning from the dead on Azeroth is a BIG HUGE karking deal. It's a bit like the fact that your heroes take 40 blaster bolts in KOTOR and don't die.

It's gameplay.

Am I wrong to feel this way?

 

[double post]

 

I fully agree with you here.

I think Leland Chee already said a few years ago that only the stuff that was put into the game by the developers is considered canon. So, the thousands of glowstick brats and people running around in mando armor aren't really canon, only the npcs, quests, cities, etc.. are.

And I agree that mass cloning and cloning centers in every city should be considered more as game mechanics than actual canon. The developers had to find a way to let players continue playing even after being slain. And cloning, which already exists in the SW universe, is IMHO more immersive than spirits of dead players floating around and waiting to respawn from thin air.

There's of course still a lot of stuff that could need some further explanations or even small retcons. Like the existence of Aurilia, Serji-X Arrogantus being alive in SWG, non-imperial activities on Endor (smugglers, Black Sun, Deathwatch), the exact timeline placement of the Battle that kicked Mustafar from its orbit and turned it into a volcano world, and parts of the background story of N-K Necrosis that differ from the one in Abel's The Story of General Grievous: Lord of War.

But overall, once you ignore player actions and gameplay mechanics, there aren't a lot of huge contradictions that need retconning.


Kam

 

Thanks Kam Solusar,

I think that Galaxies should be considered somewhat like the West End Games RPG and Abel did a great job of making an homage to the old Star Wars adventure modules when he wrote the final fate of Necrosis N-K. Basically, an unnamed group of heroes (called "Spacers") killed Necrosis N-K and then looted his corpse.

Likewise, in Star Wars, all of the adventure modules of West End Games are presumed to have happened. Cloud City was once taken over by a insane A.I. that nearly turned everyone into droids using nanotechnology, Walex Blissex escaped a VSD under attack by the Rebel Alliance, Adar Talon was rescued from Tatooine, and the Charon were destroyed after a prolonged battle with the Rebel Alliance that ended in the death of Grand Moff Ravik.

They were just stopped by an unnamed group of heroes. Same as the events of Dawn of Defiance.

It's even funnier if you assume the same group of spacers did all of this

There's a group of "proxies" that are unnamed yet who accomplish all of the great deeds of Galaxies heroes.

 

Yeah. WoW, being strongly quest driven, is a very good example of this. For instance, Onyxia does not infiltrate the Stormwind council a thousand times as Lady Prestor. The scene where she is outted in public only happens once, despite that players might do it every other week (or at least did, WOTLK killed that quest).

Ditto, in SWG I don't think canon need recognise the thousands of Jedi running around. Maybe one person was met by the Old Man, and maybe one Force-sensitive went and helped Aurilia, and maybe one Force-sensitive went and did all the other Jedi quests they have, I assume, introduced on Mustafar (or wherever).

But apart from that one character doing all the quests one time... I don't really think we need to recognise the other ten thousand people who do the same things.

 

I think Galaxies should be decanonised.

 

I usually don't agree with this sort of sentiment but there's a lot of random and weird stuff there. I have no problem with most of it but Durge being ressurected after being knocked into the Sun is one of those things that is just too hard to swallow.

On the other hand, Necrosis is pure awesome.