The Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) community, or what's left of it, is in an uproar, and they have good reason to be. The game they've devoted significant amounts of their time to has more or less been yanked right out from under their mouse pads. I was never the game's biggest fan, but I did play for a short period way back when, and I recently gave the 10 day trial a go to see what all the fuss was about.
SWG has seen more sweeping changes than any live MMOG to date, and it just underwent what may go down in the history of online gaming as "the mother of all nerfs." Only months earlier a controversial "combat upgrade" was implemented, and now they have made even more drastic changes, dubbed the "New Game Enhancements" or NGE, that have essentially transformed it into a different game. To make matters worse, these changes came with almost no warning right on the heels of the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, which many players considered an underhanded "bait and switch." Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and LucasArts ended up offering refunds to those that had purchased the expansion before the NGE went live.
The Enhancements in Brief
In an effort to make the game more enticing to beginners they reduced the number of professions from over 30 to just 9, which correspond more closely to the heroes from the films. Where becoming a Jedi formerly involved accomplishing an elaborate series of tasks in the game, it's now available as a profession right from the start. The introductory missions have also changed dramatically, bringing you into contact with familiar faces like C-3PO and Han Solo within the first few minutes of play.
Another major change is the new combat interface, which almost defies description. Notably, ever since the Jump to Lightspeed expansion arrived, SWG offered a mix of first-person shooter space combat and standard RPG-style ground combat. They've now tried to add shooter-like elements to the ground combat by having you select targets with the crosshairs and fire with the left mouse button. You can't just take a shot at anything, mind you, and once you have a target it's not a matter of aiming with precision, you merely have to keep it selected.
If it sounds convoluted in writing, let me assure you that it's just as convoluted in practice. Even after you get the hang of it, which is easy enough, it continues to feel a bit awkward, and if it is an improvement over the previous system it's a very marginal one. Granted, the game has always had shortcomings in this department, and it should rid Galaxies of automated play using scripts. Nevertheless, I still get the sense that the ground combat system is in the midst on an identity crisis, unable to decide which genre of game it belongs to.
Gamma Station or Bust
I was hoping to put enough time into the 10 day trial to find something positive to say about the NGE, but unfortunately, I found myself sinking in a perfect storm of game-stopping bugs. On a couple of occassions I managed to get stuck permanently in the turret of the Millenium Falcon, where I could enjoy the emptiness of space with C-3PO endlessly repeating the futile instruction, "Press L to leave the turret" in the background.
Undaunted by this, I restarted the game and managed to get almost all the way to Gamma Station before it crashed to the desktop, ironically bringing up a window prompting me to subscribe. So I fire it up again, patiently sit through the logo screens, and find my character back at the very beginning of the tutorial. Off I go, shooting crates and flying around with Han Solo, who doesn't seem to remember me even though we went through all this moments earlier. This time I don't get stuck in the turret, but when we arrive at our destination, it won't let me proceed because I already completed the next mission before the game crashed. Nor was there any way to delete the mission or clear the mission log.
