We all have our favorite games and, in some cases, our obsession with games that never let us go. Star Wars Galaxies is one of those games that made an indelible impression on me. We do a lot of things to save our time in the game. We take screenshots. We buy merchandise. We make our favorite video game art the background on your phone, computer or tablet. We use these digital keepsakes to remind us of our time with our favorite media. I do something a little different. Join groups and forums full of players on private Star Wars Galaxies servers.
Since I’m talking about a game that hasn’t had an official server since December 15, 2011, let me shed a little light on what Star Wars Galaxies really was. The MMO genre was still in its infancy and there were some different ideas about what an MMO could be. Star Wars Galaxies calls for the idea of a player-led experience where you’ve lived in a Star Wars setting.
This means that Jedi were extremely rare and being hunted. Players can create a character who has never been involved in combat, but has built amazing buildings or impressive vehicles. You need to be social because your personality can’t do everything on its own. They can only do a fraction of what you need during your time in the game. In fact, you can’t even understand every species when they speak unless someone of those types teaches you the language.
Star Wars Galaxies wasn’t just an adventure or a series of quests to collaborate – it was a sandbox for my best friend and I living in digitally. Player-made cities were very popular because the game had an overly ambitious player – the housing system. We had neighbors who were ship carpenters and creature handlers. We knew the doctors who repaired our wounds and the entertainers who polished us before we went on adventures.
Even now, I feel childishly dizzy in my memories of those experiences from 2005. Unfortunately, unlike your favorite single-player titles, MMOs are a living community. When the servers went down, I could no longer visit those old and familiar sites and memories. I certainly couldn’t re-experience things the way another fan might re-experience Knights of the Old Republic.
A few years later, I found a Facebook group dedicated to Star Wars Galaxies. I joined it because I wanted to connect with people who are nostalgic like me about this game that so many people have forgotten about. Well, it turns out that the set was more than just nostalgia. People were posting screenshots and talking about their experiences Right in that and there on private servers.
This prompted me to do some digging. There were quite a few groups like this. Not only were people recreating the Star Wars Galaxies experience, they were picking out their favorite years in the game.
Some servers are for the original experience with a rare handful of Jedi and all the sandbox items old school players remember. Other servers have modeled themselves on the version of the new game experience from SWG that followed the success of World of Warcraft. This made the Jedi a starting class and gave players linear missions to follow, cutting down on the idea of the sandbox and things like non-combat classes. Each server had their own community, rules, and a slice of Star Wars history that they kept.
I started hanging out in some of these groups because the communities were what I remember: friendly, welcoming people joined together by fan base. In fact, these servers turned that into 11 because those players were a job To maintain these servers. I soon found myself donating a small amount of money to a servant whose community I really do business with. It takes money to keep these things going, so communities often pool their resources together.
Occasionally I give the members tips on how to level up Commando, which is one of my favorite classes from back in the day. I recommended a heavy weapon called The Emperor’s Cigar Lighter, which was a small pistol similar to Men in Black’s Little Cricket. It was funny to think I had dusted off a cobweb of knowledge I hadn’t used in over a decade to help someone – I felt like a retired veteran, passing knowledge to a new generation that was exploring these worlds for the first time (sure, probably They are older players trying out new classes, but guide me here.)
Although I’ve never played on the server, I got to know some people and their life stories. Chatting in these groups wasn’t all that different than rubbing shoulders with someone in Cantina on Tatooine. These combos, even though I don’t play, allow me to keep a toe in the water.
One of my daily little delights comes in the form of screenshots scattered all over my social media feeds. People will post group photos or random screenshots of creatures in the world. At one point, several photos of those shooting moments where the crew was playing the instruments and recovering mid-flight gave me fond memories of the times I set up an elaborate camp with several tents on a nearby side—a sheer cliff.
These screenshots are never shiny, new looking images. It’s not 4K masterpieces that make you do double duty. They are low-resolution images of a nearly twenty-year-old game that was previously not known for its graphics. But I still look at my low poly armor piece and get sick. They bring me right back to my computer, to a late night with my best friend, to the adventures of taking down the Krayt Dragons for pearls.
So why not join a server and play on it? I ask myself this a lot. Seeing screenshots of people and hearing about their friendly communities makes the idea of playing again incredibly tempting. However, I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for. I love modern games and have a lot to play. I’m more busy today than I was in those days, and I don’t think I’ve had time to re-try the original MMO that took so long. Even with the amazing Star Wars Galaxies Restoration project by fans entering version 1.0 around the time of this particular article, I feel happy to leave those memories in the past.
Most of all, I don’t think I want a new experience, because I already It was Experience with Star Wars Galaxies, and it was a great experience. What I want is that little time capsule to remind me of something I loved. I want to remember the wonderful times with great people, because sometimes remembering a moment is more powerful than re-experiencing it.
[ad_2]
