Did anyone here play the ORIGINAL Star Wars Galaxies? (back in 2003/2004)

[Sussex]

RIP the original and TRUE Star Wars Galaxies. June 2003 > April 2005.

April 2005 - CU "Combat Upgrade" (turned the game into a completely different game, no trace of original game left)
November 2005 - NGE "New Game Enhancement" Ie the "CU version 2" (yet again turned the game into something completely different, no trace of the first CU let alone the original game)


I've browsed the forums unregistered for ages and never saw this brought up. Just wondering...anyone here use to play the original SWG back in the day when it was in it's original form? Not the Combat Upgrade version (2005-2006) or the NGE (2006-2012?) Im talking about the ORIGINAL game. Back in 2003/2004 and very early 2005 before the CU hit the game.

I really missed that game when they ruined it by completely changing everything about it with the "Combat Upgrade" in early 2005....they fucking put the thing on the TEST realms for 2 weeks, then just popped it on LIVE even though everyone said it was fucking AWFUL. What the fuck kind of development team was working there LOL? 2 weeks of PTRing..."KAY GUYS PUT ER ON LIVE, COMPLETELY CHANGING EVERYTHING ABOUT THE GAME IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE, ONLY NEEDS 2 WEEKS BRAH!" --------- and to think WoW PTRs are literally months...and all changes made aren't even big, they're just small changes....where as the change in SWG with the "CU" was literally a different game all-together.

That said....I quit the day that went live. Everything about the game changed, everything became worthless. Imagine logging into WoW one day and it's now Rift. That is exactly what happened.

I quit instantly and started playing WoW a few days later.....I was shocked the second I logged into WoW. WHY? because it reminded me of the CU in SWG, except it felt right in WoW...I had no history with WoW...WoW started off as being the "shitty game, underdog" in my eyes. I literally could not play SWG anymore because for almost 2 years the game had been a certain game...then suddenly it was something completely different....and NO...the changes you've seen in WoW from expansion to expansion are LITERALLY NOTHING like the change the happened to SWG in 2005. As I said the change was like literally waking up one day to find out that WoW is now RIFT. That is how different it was. I'm not even going into how every single item/class/stats/EVERYTHING was removed/destroyed/made useless/flipped inside out.....the core game mechanics were all different/changed, even the coding of the game was different.

( NOTE: this was before youtube or people really cared about fraps/videos so I had never seen WoW stuff, when I logged into WoW for the first time that was the first I had ever seen of it)


Even though I loved vanilla and TBC and did play WOTLK and Cata. The experiences I had in the original SWG back in 2003/2004 were 100 times greater in fun factor than I ever had in WoW. No top 30 world kill Ive been in, no glad title, no achievement in WoW has ever come close to the enjoyment of stuff I did in the original SWG....and SWG had PRETTY MUCH ZERO CONTENT, it was 99.9% PLAYER DRIVEN.

After all these years on WoW how does that make sense at all I still don't understand.



PS. Yes I know about SWGEMU and have known for 7 years+ now, but I don't care for private servers ran by randoms. All private servers are junk, including the WoW ones. I don't support that at all.

[Drakainen]

Yep, played on Intrepid with some friends on Imperial side. Raided Anchorhead pretty much daily even had 2 houses outside the town in opposite directions to run to when the 20+ people showed up to try(Key word there TRY) to kill us. We would run through the desert leading them around till we got inside then would pop out, kill 1-2 people then backup inside. Constantly called exploiters cause it looked like we would be shooting through the door/walls. Had Rebs building harvesters outside our houses named stuff like "Gay exploiting imps live here". Got even better when we got our AT-STs out and pretty much wiped out said group of 20+ people with the 2-3 of us.

Ahh the good ol days of PvP and sandbox games. I miss games like 97-98 UO and Pre-CU Galaxies..

[Sussex]

Yep, played on Intrepid with some friends on Imperial side. Raided Anchorhead pretty much daily even had 2 houses outside the town in opposite directions to run to when the 20+ people showed up to try(Key word there TRY) to kill us. We would run through the desert leading them around till we got inside then would pop out, kill 1-2 people then backup inside. Constantly called exploiters cause it looked like we would be shooting through the door/walls. Had Rebs building harvesters outside our houses named stuff like "Gay exploiting imps live here". Got even better when we got our AT-STs out and pretty much wiped out said group of 20+ people with the 2-3 of us.

Ahh the good ol days of PvP and sandbox games. I miss games like 97-98 UO and Pre-CU Galaxies..

Its kinda sad we'll never see anything like them again. They just don't fit the current trend. Just remembering old times in SWG makes WoW look like a singleplayer game with a little multiplayer element on the side :/

[Riavan]

I played like 2 months before and 2 months after.
I did like the class system in NGE more, but than the floating one pre-NGE. But yeah, the combat, whilst being more "interactive" in NGE, just made your hand really sore and probably destroyed your mouse.

---------- Post added 2012-08-10 at 02:10 PM ----------

Its kinda sad we'll never see anything like them again. They just don't fit the current trend. Just remembering old times in SWG makes WoW look like a singleplayer game with a little multiplayer element on the side :/

Maybe, but not if you remember the old times in WoW too, back when no flying mounts existed, the world was a bit smaller and world pvp happened. I remember killing huge groups of alliance trying to get into the mountain for MC/BWL with tons of horde guilds. Alliance ambushing us in kargath a lot. Crazy chases and dramas over world bosses in silithus. Massive ganking in STV at nessingways and barring the gate to ZG from the other side.

[ckpschafer]

Ah! Yes I played it back in the day pre-cu!
I was a doctor / tk
I miss the community & how everything is player driven like you say,
I remember one day we had a guild meeting, there was like 30 of us imperials all standing around outside listening to our GM talk when about 10-15ish rebels starting attacking from all sides. Alot of them were beast masters (i forgot what they were called) so there was rancors running everywhere. They eventually wiped us since we were so surprised and a decent portion of our guild was entertainers & architects. It was so crazy & something i will never forget!
There was definitely alot of things great about vanilla-SWG. Without the CU & NGE, it could of lasted way longer then it did, maybe still be alive today who knows.

[Solitare-sp]

i truely do miss a lot of SWG, it's a shame its still no around, although theres so much now which would just be very very annoying and frustrating to modern players. Especially 'post WoW'. It was my first MMO and as such will always hold a place in my heart.

The good:
Crafting being a truely important part of the game
Non-combat characters being hugely feasible, from entertainers to doctors, to crafters
Housing, with the ability to at furniture, trophies etc etc
World PvP with the ability to be 'overt' or not
Player Shops!


The bad
Oh dear god, where to start? Only having one character per server would be unacceptable nowadays.
Huge balancing issues, and reskilling leading to FOTM builds being overpowered
Having to pay other characters for buffs just to wear armour...
lack of 'directed' content (yes i know it was a sandbox, but even so)

and thats just the surface of both good and bad...

[madatar]

RIP the original and TRUE Star Wars Galaxies. June 2003 > April 2005.

PS. Yes I know about SWGEMU and have known for 7 years+ now, but I don't care for private servers ran by randoms. All private servers are junk, including the WoW ones. I don't support that at all.

Check it out when they release 1.0 which will be an exact copy of 14.1 SWG the last update before the dreaded CU.

Even in alpha testing the server hits the 3000 cap for large portions of the day.

[WarpedAcorn]

I played it when it launched. I really liked their style and mentality that you can "level" your character to max without ever picking up a blaster. If you wanted to make houses and furniture and play the Trading Post game, then you could do that. No every character was suited for combat. And players created A LOT of content, which made it exciting to play. I remember very specifically competing in a Teras Kasi tournament and coming in 2nd place. It was a lot of fun.

That being said, my friends moved on and I followed shortly thereafter. SOE banned my account because I was leveling and selling Bounty Hunter characters. This was right before the Jedi's started coming out I believe.