Development Cycle Archive

180° - From Galaxies to Grind
By Matt "Mattt" Kirschnick

Star Wars Galaxies once promised to overcome the grind hated by casual gamers, while still managing to entertain the powergamers. Unfortunately, the infinite struggle to please the latter sent the game in the total opposite direction, upsetting the former for too much grind, and the latter for too little to grind through.

A long time ago, in a development forum before release day, we were introduced to a dream come true, a chance to live in that far away Galaxy we all grew up with. We were promised more than just a Star Wars game, however. We were told of many great wonders, from no down-time or camping to vast worlds, with dynamically generated content, to a casual gamer’s paradise; there would even be an extremely difficult and very rare Jedi class to play. To make things more exciting, the dream would be truly complete with the already-conceived Space Expansion. Unfortunately, from the Beta test until this very day, for better or for worse, Star Wars Galaxies has taken a 180° turn in the opposite direction.

I had the opportunity to test Star Wars Galaxies during the second and third phases of Beta. It was an exciting experience: it, at first, appeared the many promises would come true. Random, dynamically generated, events would happen out in the wild, giving players choice on how to proceed. Crafters with little time to play could log in to find they had gained enough experience to get their next skill box through the automated construction of their items in a factory. Marksmen could log in, take a quick mission from the mission terminal, and grab some needed experience points. Jedi were nowhere to be found yet but that was exactly how things were supposed to be. In fact, we were later told at E3 2003 that Jedi in Galaxies would lead lives much like the Jedi of the time. Like Obi Wan, Jedi would be forced into hiding, as they would be actively hunted down by the empire.

As time went on, however, it became clear the direction had changed. Powergamers got their hands on the Beta and quickly showed the developers how fast they could plow through the game. Using factories, crafters propelled through the trade skills in no time. The dynamic quests could not be camped, nor did they have exciting items to loot. In a subscription-based game, this was unacceptable. There had to be reason for players to renew their subscription month after month. Experience from factories was gradually reduced to zero, leaving casual gamers with little choice but to spend hours building the same item over and over to gain but one skill box. Dynamically generated content all but disappeared in favour of static, camped dungeons. Of course, trying to fill ten, vast worlds with static content proved to be an impossible task, one the developers are frantically trying to complete even today.

Missions, too, became an outlet for powergamers. With a favourable cash reward, missions were a way for grinders to print money to fuel the player-run economy. Consequently, inflated prices became the norm. When asked why their armour, vital to the survival of many melee-types, was so expensive, armoursmiths simply repeated, “hey, why don’t you just do some missions?”

Powergamers and grinding has become the way of life in SWG. With the first appearance of a player Jedi, it became crystal clear that the developers not only approved of this way of life but they actually encouraged it. Having once been promised that the path to becoming a Jedi would be unique and exciting for each player, players were dismayed to discover the simplicity of the temporary system put in place to reach this goal. Rather than complete some long series of quests or conduct themselves an appropriate way, players simply were required to grind their way through five random professions, four of which were revealed to them through rare items, dropped by various, heavily camped spawns. Knowing that there was now no barrier keeping them from becoming Jedi, many players began the long, boring process of advancing through professions they had no desire to play. Cantinas became filled with “Holo-Dancers”, players who needed to master the Dancer profession to find out which profession they next had to master. Worst of all, not knowing the last profession often left players to systematically grind through every profession in the game until they happened upon the correct one. Worse still, the first Jedi freely paraded up and down the streets, laughing in the faces of those who actually believed Jedi would be a hunted people. With player Jedi names like “Ima Forcesensitive”, it became clear that the original vision was no where to be seen.

Through all of this, Bartle Achievers were leaving left and right for the next “big thing” or a previous favourite, dissatisfied with the amount of content in the game. Neglected by the Developers, PvPers, Bartle Killers, also began to drop out of the game. In the quest to satisfy the content-seeking players, the Galactic Civil War quickly became stagnant, made boring by a stale and unbalanced PvP system. Bartle Explorers, too, looked to other games to discover. The vast worlds of Star Wars Galaxies are still largely barren, many with unexciting cookie-cutter cities and dungeons. Recently, in an effort to make players aware of all the hard work the they had done to populate the world, the Developers added Points of Interest waypoints to the Datapads of all players, effectively neutralizing any sense of discovery and exploration. With the Achievers, Killers, and Explorers all closing their accounts, Social gamers began to take notice. Guilds emptied and collapsed. Like boom towns after a gold rush, player cities emptied out, leaving behind abandoned ghost towns. Entire static cities were deserted, leaving only one or two major cities per planet with essential services, like physicians and entertainers. With nobody to talk to, social gamers followed their friends to whatever games they had decided to move on to. Once proclaimed the second-largest game in North America - second, of course, to Everquest – Galaxies at least feels like it has lost that title, ironically, in its attempt to be like Everquest.

With all this doom and gloom, it sounds like nobody plays SWG. Well that is not entirely true. Many of us log in every so often to do whatever tasks we are obligated to do, like power our ore harvesters, pay the maintenance for our houses, or clean out all the “member left guild” notices from our in-game mailbox. Some stick around, desperately hoping for the distant Space Expansion. While a 2004 release date has been promised, release dates, today, must be taken with a grain of salt. Galaxies has certainly come a long way since its inception; however, one thing is seemingly for sure. The Space Expansion had better make a big splash at this year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo. For players, many of whom feel betrayed or simply bored, SE is SWG’s last hope.