Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve entered the world of Star Wars: Galaxies. Please, keep the comments about going to the “Dark Side” to yourself.
I read what Warchild had to say about it, and laughed appropriately at all the right times, guffawing at the foolishness that would drive people to play such a poorly released game.
And yet… This weekend, Yellow Rat brought along Flatu with him to the NeenerPalooza. And Flatu brought along with HIM his copy of SWG. Which he installed on my computer to let me see what the game was like.
You see, I was just going to see what the game was like. I swear to you, that’s all I wanted to do. I was going to look at it, make a bunch of insulting comments deriding it, the developers of it, the people that play it, anyone working at a store where it’s sold and generally feel smug and self-confident in my masculinity.
Instead, I tried crafting.
“Hello, my name is Kwip, and I’m a SWG addict.”
“Hi, Kwip!”
That’s about all it took. Look, I’ll be the first guy to say how horrified I was by some of the stories floating out of the SWG player base. I heard tales of bugs, and horrible lag, and… and… and… CSRs showing up at people’s homes at 3am to punch them in the throat and steal their lunch money while they were sleeping!
Yeah. I heard about all these bugs. But… I have to admit it. The game ran smoothly. Granted, I didn’t do much, and I had most options tuned very low to accommodate the Doritos chip powering my PC – but it ran. And, more importantly… it was fun.
I have never been one for crafting. The only game I’ve ever seen come close to making crafting anything worthwhile is PuzzlePirates, and that’s only because I really like the puzzle games you do for crafting. But the way crafting is in SWG… I want it! I want my own cantina! I’m actually foaming at the mouth right now and touching myself very inappropriately just thinking about it!
And horror stories about how SOE treats subscribers. After everyone screamed and yelled about one character per server, I thought nothing could cause such an uproar again. But THEN I heard everyone yelling about this five-day deletion after you cancel your account, and felt for certain SOE had just declared war on their entire customer base. But – and I know this is going to surprise you – it turns out that decision was wrong. Yes, either someone at SOE made a mistaken announcement, or someone on the web misunderstood, or both – but that’s just not true. Because both announcements are from the same person, I guess that confuses everyone (especially me). But you have to admit – it would be really funny if SOE just said, “Alright, we’ve got the most popular license out there right now, Tolkien be damned. Let’s see how far we can push our customers!”
There are apparently still a lot of bugs, and SWG is going through the growing pains that every other MOG in history has undergone – even worse because of the speed that they’re growing. But after trying it once – I’m going to put my good money down; money that I could spend on a lucious pint or five of Ben & Jerry’s!
This doesn’t mean the game’s perfect, or that I’m going to play it forever. However, it does mean that my first try at it was very entertaining and interesting enough to hook me. Make of that what you will – but I’ll be the one standing in the corner making spiced tea while you’re deciding!
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