"Obi-wan has taught you well, but you are not a Jedi yet..."
 — Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

Figure 1:  An early guild hunt

Star Wars Galaxies^TM inhabits a strange place in the MMORPG universe.  Much like a fledgling padawan, seemingly unlimited potential rests within it, but much of that potential has yet to be fully realized.  Indeed, many would say that the dark side pervaded during the development and launch of the game, and lots of people left due to some of the problems and questionable design decisions that have plagued it.  Those who stayed, however, are finding that balance is slowly returning to the universe as the game continues to improve and mature.

This monthly feature will take a look at the beginnings of SWG and explore how the game has developed since its launch.  Many things have changed, and many more things are still changing.  The game in its current incarnation is quite a bit different than when it started, and is in general more fun, less tedious, and more varied.  Who knows, maybe some of you who left at the beginning might want to give it another shot!

More importantly, the feature will look at how our own Echelon Chapter has grown, changed, and strengthened during the course of the game.  It is often said a good guild can overcome any deficiencies in game design and make any game fun, and in our case that is overwhelmingly true.  As one of our largest and most active chapters, the SWG Echelon Chapter is doing well and remains the most professional, well organized, and fun guilds on the server.

"LUKE:  Is the dark side stronger?
 YODA:  No...no...no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
 LUKE:  But how am I to know the good side from the bad?"
 — The Empire Strikes Back
It's probably safe to say that no MMORPG was more anticipated than SWG.  The early days of the game suffered from the same problems that most do — full servers, lots of lag, etc...  These problems, however, were relatively minor.  The real troubles began when people had played for a month or two, learned how the system worked (or didn't work) and either decided they liked or hated the game.  There were some of both.

Star Wars attempted to do things in a much different way than the classical MMORPG model:  some of these design decisions were novel and fun and others were not.  One of the most significant characteristics of SWG is the ability to choose, change, and mix and match professions at will.  This allows a fantastic degree of character customization and freedom to do what you find to be fun, and many loved the idea.  As in any game, there were some professions that were clearly superior to others, especially on release, when Commandos, Chefs, Rangers, Pikemen, Squad Leaders, and Droid Engineers were all broken beyond hope.  (Yes, commandos used to be one of the worst professions in the game!).  The important part is that you were not bound to a specific profession upon character creation as was the paradigm in most other MMORPGs.  This allowed an unprecedented amount of freedom.

It also had its drawbacks. For one, mastering a profession took anywhere from a day to several months depending on the profession in question and the grinding tolerance of the player.  Once a profession was mastered, however, there often wasn't a lot to do.  A master pistoleer no longer had any motivation to hunt for more experience, for example, because the experience gained could no longer be applied towards anything.  While not a problem for crafting professions, who don't really even get started until they make master, it was discouraging for combat professions.  Later on, of course, the whole Jedi hologrinding madness would pervert the profession system beyond all recognition.

Other than these issues with the basic structure of the game, the most common complaint in these early days was "lack of content."  The Star Wars feel of the game was exciting for a while, but once people settled into the game it became a very repetitive cycle of getting missions, killing the assorted creatures with your gun or melee weapon, rinsing and repeating.  The missions were all dynamically spawned to eliminate camping, but this left little room for interesting encounters.  All this was exacerbated by the lack of vehicles, and many miles were slowly jogged on the tedious runs back and forth between mission spawns.

Figure 2:  A few of us contemplate how to take down a Kimogila on Lok.

Combat took on a very different flavor than other games as well.  The traditional roles of professions that characterize other games, such as healer, tank, nuker, crowd control, and so on didn't exist to any great degree.  Because people could take skills from any profession, every combat class took some medic skills to allow healing skills that were actually decent for even a small investment of skill points.  The experience system for combat skills was also based on the amount of damage done, so many battles became a matter of trying to do as much damage as quickly as possible to maximize one's own experience gain.

Despite these problems, there was a real sense of potential that I believe everyone felt.  The game was unfinished in its early state, but the game was still a lot of fun, and it was, of course, still Star Wars.  If they would only add some content, iron out the bugs and fix useless professions, and maybe throw in some spaceships and Jedi, many of us felt that the game could reach the lofty heights we had all dreamed of.

The Echelon guild was formed during this early part of the game, and settled in a nice shady glen south of Keren, Naboo.  The site, while far away from the bustle of major cities, was peaceful and served well the needs of the guild before the player cities entered the equation.  Many successful daring raiding parties were launched from this base to the wild plateau of Endor or the bleak pits of the Nightsister cave on Dathomir.  In addition, the Echelon Trading Post was established near the major economic center of Corellia, Coronet city.  Many Echelon crafters made their initial fortunes in this spot.

Figure 3:  A major guild hunt on the plains of Dantooine

Figure 4:  The guild braves the wilds of Dathomir

"For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.  Before the dark times, before the Empire."
 — Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope
A few months after launch, after many of the initial bugs had been worked out of the code and things started to become a bit more stable, the galaxy saw its first major changes.  This was a period of upheaval, as three major developments would change the character of the game.  These changes were, in order of increasing importance:  player cities, vehicles, and Jedi.

The addition of player cities added a completely new and varied aspect to the game.  These cities could have shuttleports, cantinas, and hospitals, and completely redefined the landscape of the planets.  Before player cities, housing clustered as close to the main NPC cities as possible, as players were unwilling to run very far to reach other parts of the galaxy.  Shuttleports in player cities allowed the establishment of player-made shopping malls that did not depend on proximity to a major city.  Guilds formed alliances and moved into cities together, and the bigger cities saw high-density traffic as word spread of the quality of crafters in a particular metropolis.  Some cities became factioned bases, becoming bastions of resistance for the Rebellion or major centers of operations for the Empire.

The Echelon allied with another Rebel guild, called The Old Republic Loyalists, and for many months enjoyed the prosperity that accompanied living in one of the largest cities on the server.  Tantive, the largest metropolis on Corellia, was a major economic center and our crafters literally made millions upon millions of credits during its heyday.

Figure 5:  Alithea, Merai, and Snaproll entertain at the Tantive cantina party

Vehicles, however, really shrunk the world more than the additional shuttleports and, for many, vastly increased enjoyment of the game.  No longer were there interminable runs to missions, hour-long surveying sessions to track down high concentrations of a resource, or 20-minute runs to your house from the closest starport.  Speederbikes shot through trees on Endor and landspeeders crisscrossed the landscape on Tatooine, greatly increasing the Star Wars feel of the game.  Many of the locations that were prohibitively far from a shuttleport opened up to explorers, and every corner of the planets was soon settled by player cities.

Figure 6:  All my friends drive low-riders...

Figure 7:  Hero shot after the successful annihilation of an Imperial Base

Most importantly during this period, however, was the developers' revelation of the process required to obtain a Jedi.  The game was about 6 months old at this point, and no Jedi had appeared yet.  In order to speed the process along new loot drops, called holocrons, were introduced into the game world.  These holocrons, when found, would reveal to the player that "In order to continue your path to enlightenment, you must master XXX profession," where XXX could be any of the available professions in the game, randomly chosen.

Figure 8:  A sample of the holocron madness

In introducing the holocrons, the devs also revealed the process to obtaining enlightenment.  It seemed that a given player must master 5 randomly chosen professions, after which a second, force-sensitive character slot would be opened.  The holocrons would tell you up to 4 of the 5 professions that you had to master.  After that, you were left on your own to find the final profession.  This system would have dramatic and disastrous effects on the game.

First of all, the system required people to drop professions that they loved and identified with, and possibly had been playing for months, to pursue the goal of obtaining a Jedi.  This violated the fundamental reasoning behind the profession-based system in the first place — allowing players to play characters that suited them.  Under the holocron system, a power gamer who played a perfectly balanced PvPer with skills from say, rifleman and Teras Kasi artist, might have to drop those skills to become a chef or hairstylist.  A famous dancer might have to take up a vibroaxe and ruthlessly slaughter bunnies.  Many people dropped their favorite professions to pursue jedi, and in the process lost what they enjoyed about the game.

Figure 9:  Relluc chooses to grind exp by fighting a Krayt Dragon...

For many, however, the problem was the intense and arbitrary grinding that obtaining the slot entailed.  The first 4 professions revealed by the holocrons went by fairly quickly, but the final profession needed to unlock the slot remained hidden and was completely random.  What this meant was that it was possible to unlock your Jedi with the very next profession mastered, or you could conceivably still have to master all of the professions in the game.  It was blind luck.  The game became a grinding fest as people tried to master as many professions as quickly as possible.  The game lost all flavor, fun, and variety as players either stayed home from hunts they would have normally participated in to grind out crafting professions (double-clicking), or soloed mid-level monsters for maximum experience gain.  The numerous holo-crafters flooded the market with cheap goods as they raised and then immediately dropped crafting professions, severely disrupting the economy.  A favorite crafter that had provided you with weapons or armor for months would suddenly drop their profession, forcing you to find a new supplier and hope that they wouldn't also drop a week later.  Most tragically, players that had enjoyed the game before the holo craze lost all interest as they ground out profession after profession and didn't unlock their slot due to bad luck.  In addition the Jedi profession turned out to be pretty tedious and buggy, once unlocked.

Figure 10:  Relluc and Snaproll get a personal display by a player Jedi

The Echelon Guild suffered through this period as much as everyone.  Many of our long-time active players charged off on the Jedi search as much as everyone else on the server did.  In fact, I think most players tried it to some degree.  Those who fared best were the ones who quickly grew tired of the grind and decided that Jedi wasn't something they wanted to pursue, but some diligently ground and ground their way to futility.  Three of our players at least mastered well over 20 professions and never unlocked.  It was a terrible system, and discouraged the most active and hard-core players by design.

"LUKE:  Master, moving stones around is one thing.  This is totally different.
 YODA:  No!  No different!  Only different in your mind.  You must unlearn what you have learned."
 — The Empire Strikes Back
Fortunately, the developers are learning.  Things have really started to pick up in the last few months, and the amount of content is increasing dramatically.  The Jedi system is being completely reworked, as is the combat system.  Many of these changes have yet to be implemented, but they are on the way.  Most importantly, the Space Expansion has been announced and the screenshots look incredible.

There has been a lot of new content added lately.  Most innovative is the Corellian Corvette, an instanced dungeon.  This is a mission that is spawned for an individual group instead of existing for everyone in the game world, and really has a Star Wars feel.  While still unbalanced at this point, it has gone a long way towards adding something new and different to the game world.  Loot, traditionally a non-factor in the SWG universe, has started to emerge as well, usually in the form of ultra-rare schematics that master crafters can use once to produce uber-weapons, armor, and even vehicles.

Figure 11:  Our Executive Officer (XO), in the guise of Relluc, braves the Corellian Corvette

The Jedi system is being changed to a quest-based system.  While the details are very scarce, this will eliminate the random profession grinding that characterized the holocron phase.  Jedi will still be very difficult to obtain, but we are all hoping the path will resemble a dangerous journey worthy of its reward rather than the unrelated mess it used to be.

The combat system is also under a lot of changes.  I'm not too familiar with all the plans, but I know that some, possibly major, redesigns to the basic structure of the combat system have been considered.  More effort is being made to differentiate and balance the classes so that all professions have roles in combat.  There is some question if this goal is achievable within the framework that the developers have set up, but if they can pull it off it will be a major improvement.  There is still a lot of work to do, as there are still several worthless professions, albeit different ones than the list I gave at launch.

The Echelon continues to prosper, despite recent severe setbacks.  We were force to move out of the city of Tantive when our mayor, who belonged to another guild, suddenly disbanded the city.  After a period of controversy and scrambling, we have relocated to a beautiful city on Naboo with two other rebel guilds.  We've taken some lumps along the way, but we are all looking forward to the game and the changes and improvements that are yet to come.

Our guild is organized into three squads that each concentrate on a particular aspect of the gaming experience.  We have a Player vs. Environment squad that most of our members belong to, as well as a Player vs. Player squad and a Crafter squad.  Traditionally, we have one major guild hunt on Sunday afternoons.  Many of these hunts have been incredible experiences and will provide lasting memories for our players.  In addition, there are generally impromptu hunts every night that span the entire galaxy.  We have a guild meeting about once every two months that takes place in our lavishly decorated PA hall.  And, of course, we are always open to suggestions for fun from any member of the guild.

Figure 12:  Echelon Guild Meeting in our wondrous PA hall

The SWG chapter of the Echelon remains one of the most mature, successful, and prosperous guilds on the server.  We are always looking for new additions to the ranks, however, so if anyone reading this would like to get in on the action and witness the changes that the game has undergone since the beginning or be a part of those yet to come, please, join us!

"May the force be with you, always!"
 — Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

Figure 13:  Snaproll takes a moment to reflect

Snaproll, a United States Air Force 1st Lieutenant and Aerospace Engineer, is the Game Manager of The Echelon Guild's SWG chapter.