Zabrak Speak

Hi, all! Wow, my first LJ post. Woo-hoo, right?!

Anyways, I was reading some old articles about Star Wars Galaxies, the Massively Multiplayer Online game, when I came across a link to Tiggs' LJ thread. So, I figured it's early in the morning here, the house is quiet, might as well write one for myself.

Why not? What to write about? I guess I might as well mention those SWG articles I was reading. I'm not gonna get into any details since you, the reader, can find all those negative articles very easily with a quick Google search. If you even care to. But basically, there was an on-line adventure I once spent many hours playing with my friends (who came from both in-game and in life) and then suddenly, some drastic changes were made to this game and almost everyone left. I left the game too, but not because of the changes Sony made. I'll get into why I left some other time, but the point is, I left Star Wars Galaxies for close to a year and a half, starting right before the New Game Enhancement changes were made. About a month ago, I logged back on to the game to see what all the fuss was about in the community- why everyone had left and why I kept running into all the negative articles on news feeds. To put things simply, the game isn't what it used to be. Only a die-hard few of my dozens of friends I used to play with are still there. And those few are constantly looking for another game that will give them the thrills they felt while playing SWG before all the changes. Everyone seems to be leaning towards the Vanguard beta now, which is funny since, Sigil, the company that makes it is working with Sony.

Star Wars Galaxies is still fun, but the Bria Server is a lonely place now. The city areas, which used to be crowded with players' toons, are now mostly empty save for a few wandering Non-Player Characters (computer robots). Sad, really, for a game that clung so much to community. I noticed there are still a lot of bugs though, so at least some things don't change, even though that isn't a very comforting thing to pin a safety net to. I joined a large guild called Mean Old Bastards (or MOB) and they're pretty cool. I barely made the age requirement to join- you have to be twenty-five and I'm twenty-six. I have my little house and my x-wing and sometimes I launch it into orbit over an outer-ring planet to destroy Tie Fighters and Pirate Cruisers. That stuff is fun, but I miss running into new and strange people every day like I used to. I'll keep my account active just because it's still a better game than Lineage 2, which I canceled yesterday right before I deleted the game from my hard drive.

Right now, the Vanguard beta is about two hours away from installing itself on my drive. Here's to hoping it sates my gaming fix. I hear you can chain attacks by setting up ques for teammates to deal heavy damage while hunting. I'm not sure if that's something new to MMOs but it sounds pretty dynamic, so I wanna try it out. I've read that magic users can counter spells in combat as well, which is straight out of a fantasy novel and has me interested. Reminds me of something I read in the Sword of Truth books. I'm not a big fantasy fan (hence the Star Wars Galaxies) but if this game is anywhere near as cool as the Sword of Truth books, I'm in.

Hmmmm... My first post and I'm writing about on-line games. I truly am a geek. I can live with that.

I guess I could write about being in the military, or the fact that I'm getting out in a month, or that I still haven't found a new job for when I get out, or that I had my appendix removed yesterday, but I spent all night reading dirt about SWG and I realized that I somehow feel gratified that so many people are squatting over that game and not even throwing the developers a towel to wipe themselves off. And I'm still playing it, hoping for something good to happen. But most of those articles were pretty old- more than a year, mostly. There haven't been any new negative articles about the game which probably means that SWG has finally dropped off the radar completely. The biggest exposure that game ever received was when it made its worst decisions. And then I guess, the press forgot about it. Since no one is talking about the game it seems that the servers are staying empty. I'd sure like to see the game make a comeback, but I can see that there's too much bad blood between the community and Sony Online Entertainment for that to happen. And reading the posts from Tiggs, the ex-SWG community moderator who now works for Turbine, I feel a bit sickened at how they could treat such a good, down-to-earth person.

Did I say that I wasn't going to get into any details about the game? Let me scroll up the page here a little bit... well, I guess I lied. I'd be kind of surprised if anyone reads this anyhow. When I think of all the information available on the interwub, how might this page be significant enough to earn that sacred click on the link that will send a hapless reader to my thread? That's one of the beauties of the internet. Chance and variety. You can get a professional opinion on anything. Or, you can go with Stu Bartow's meandering LJ thread with it's poor syntax and spelling errers (Ha-ha, I meant to do that). Maybe next time I'll have something other than games on my mind and I can write about that. But you can expect me to drop some info on SWG (or whatever other game I'm into) periodically.

Later, dudes!

Tags: bria, community, fantasy, games, military, mmo, nge, sci-fi, star wars galaxies, swg, tiggs, vanguard
Current Location: KY (why, God, why!? lol)
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: www.lineageradio.com, Vitalic

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