This is a somewhat difficult post for me to write but it must be done... words cannot begin to describe what I feel right now.
I've just finished playing Star Wars Galaxies and I have to say that this game is now a pile of shit... I would like to say it's a steaming pile of shit but that would imply some sort of freshness the how bad this game has decended cannot be described. I stopped my accounts some time ago to make room in my budget for EVE online I had been considering going back to Galaxies for a couple of weeks now but after todays experince with the latest publish and the "New game experince" I'm no longer intersted in what this game has to offer me.
I started Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) in January of 04. I fell in love with this game immedatly. It was my first MMO and it helped me to escape a crumbling "realtionship" (didn't realize it at the time but hindsight is 20/20). The game was daunting but I got the hang of it. Within a month I had been hooked up with a group of fellow gamers known as IRON. I'm still belong to IRON and have moved to their EVE team. IRON is the best thing that ever came out of my time with SWG.
In the following months I became a "Master Rifleman" and "Master BioEngineer" I was a happy little wookiee doing my hunting for the materials to make my BioEngineering componets for a few people in my guild. I went on guild raids into the few dungeons that there were in the game and helped take down high end MOB's on a regular basis. I was a happy little camper. It wasn't unusual for me to spend my evenings on SWG rather then watch TV. I was interacting with people and it was fun to boot. The Geo-cave was added and IRON procededeed to wipe the floor up with our guild. People left the guild and people joined the guild but always there was the core group of Imperium, Silverwolf, Katana/Salinar/Ronin (dude could never decide on a name), Shuggs, Tailon, DeeDee, Atlantis, Zero, Masis, Excess3 (also known as Curtis to you regular readers) and Catalexiis (myself). Others came and went from but this was the core group through the summer and early fall of 2004.
When WoW and EQ2 came out we lost a couple of core people but the group carried on. With in 2 months most of the core group had come back and were splitting their time between games. I began experimenting with other professions keeping "Master Rifleman" but trying other various professions. In the spring of 2005 the long promised combat revamp became known as the "Combat Upgrade" or CU. The CU promised to change the game and make it more balanced and more dynamic for the older players and more enjoyable for the new players. The CU hit and the changes were dramatic to put it mildly. By this time the core group of players was less then half of what it had been a year before the CU killed the game for 4 or 5 players the day it hit and for all but 3 within 2 months.
The game continued I stopped my account in July of 05, I was one of the last core to leave. Curtis had left about a month and a half before me. By the end of September the last IRON member had stopped playing SWG full time and moved to another game.
In the middle of October news of massive changes started to circulate on the interweb... soon these rumors proved to be true these rumors turned into the "NGE" patch. This patch was supposed to balance the game and make it fun for everyone. Instead the patch made the game boring and it lacked the polish and dynamics of the game when orginally published. The UI was completely changed and not nearly as efficent as the orginal one, never mind that the guide interface keys were no longer editable.
The NGE hit on November 15, 2005
For me SWG died a slow painfull death from a once great game to a game that no one cared about at the publisher and was being pimped out because it was "Star Wars"
The Wookiee will not ride again... RIP Catalexiis 1-3-2004 / 7-27-2005
