A complete History & Review of the game

A Rodian’s Tale

An Essay on Star Wars Galaxies by Justin Musick a.k.a. Xing Yuen of the Naritus Galaxy

“It says that it’s free for the first 30 days on the web site”, I said to my good friend Chad. He responded, “yeah, but we’ll end up like EverCrack if we play that.”I thought to myself and couldn’t even begin to understand the logic behind the infamous addiction that was brought with the MMORPG genre of gaming.

I was mostly a first person shooter gamer on PC with a good deal of real time strategy.I always enjoyed the role-play game genre through games like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star on the consoles when I was younger so I was interested to see what an online game like Star Wars Galaxies had to offer and see what the genre had evolved to.Not to mention it was pretty boring in my home town of Sandusky, Ohio.

We sat thinking about the possibilities of living the Star Wars universe through a constant evolving online world.Both of us being huge fans of the story finally decided that it was worth the chance of the $50 to give it a try.

We headed to the local video game shop and dropped $50 to buy Star Wars Galaxies - An Empire Divided.Upon reading the box, I was very excited that the game revolved around your immersion in the every day life of the game.You could be a smuggler or bounty hunter, not just a light saber swinging fest like every other Star Wars Game conceived.I thought how cool it would be to be a bounty hunter and hunt people, or maybe other players.It was very exciting just thinking about that concept.

On the way back to Chad’s house where we would spend the next few months playing Star Wars Galaxies, I began reading through the manual.I started reading about the different professions and how the leveling system worked in the game and it was very intriguing to me that you could do whatever you’d like in such an open ended system.Unlike most role-playing games where your “class” would predict your game play for the most part.

I flipped the page and read about the Fencer profession.Instantly I knew my calling.I study martial arts in real life and study a one handed sword form that made me relate to this idea entirely.I really felt like I was going to be able to convey myself into my character now, knowing I could be a fencer in game similar to real life.I felt a connection.

We arrived at the house and I was the first one with the CD in my drive and began the installation process.The installer showed some really impressive screen shots of the game and I was very excited to see what this was really going to be about.

Started the game client and downloaded a few small updates.The game started and a mutual friend of ours was playing the game already on the Naritus server so we decided to join him there.Then character creation came next.I began reading all the benefits of the different races.I decided on Rodian as I figured it would be somewhat rare and knowing I wanted to be a fencer, it showed some accuracy bonuses for one handed weapons.I figured that’s good of enough of a reason and went on to join the game world.I played through the initial tutorial to learn the basic controls and we choose Moeina as our starting location.

Chad was fanaticizing of being a droid engineer with an armor of droids obeying his every command while I wanted to be an honorable duelist that was quick and agile.

Once we where standing in the middle of Moeina we where amazed at the graphics and visuals that the game possessed.We decided that we should probably start earning some money and Chad found some terminals that where going to give missions to do.That sounded like a good start so we choose delivery since destroy sounded like it would require some knowledge of what the hell we where doing.We each picked a mission and accepted it.Low and behold, a blur pillar of light appeared not far from us.We ran to it and double clicked the NPC and where rewarded a few credits for our efforts.Things seemed pretty easy so far.We looked around and didn’t see another one for Chad’s mission but he said he had a blue arrow on his screen so we started following it.

It wasn’t long before the misty swamp look of Moeina faded and the beautiful Naboo sky was visible.We walked on and on.He was assuring me the arrow was still there so we continued on.In about 20 minutes we arrived at a town and in the distance a blue pillar was there.Sure enough Chad’s arrow led us there, and we had walked all the way to Keren.We began killing a few of the small creatures in the wilderness and I was pleased to have a survival knife that was giving me one handed weapon experience since that’s what I wanted to do anyway.

After a few days of general exploring the different areas we had learned of the shuttles and where back in Moeina where the cantina was livid with people dancing and playing music, all of them talking about the game and sharing stories of what had happened the day before in the wilderness.

Chad had begun learning of the crafting system and trained in Artisan to begin his journey into Droid Engineer.We began by just surveying around Moeina for the different materials he asked for to get started.Unit by unit or metal we mined.Slowly we built enough to get him started.Through the process we learned that we could get harvesters to speed up the process.Not knowing how to do this, Chad turned his focus to architect.We figured we would build our own.After the first week of the game, we all had an assortment of small personal mineral harvesters planted in various places around Naboo mining away for us.Chad continued to craft items to reach his goals.

As we mined minerals to build items, things began to feel very repetitive as we spent hours just surveying and sampling.This is the first time I felt what I learned to define as “grinding”.

In the meantime, we went on a Star Wars Galaxies recruiting spree convincing nearly every real life friend we knew to play the game with us.By this time there were a handful of us traveling around the galaxy a bit to check out different planets and creatures.I continued developing my fencing skills and along the way had decided to try out musician as a way to have something fun to do during combat downtime, healing and such.

I had a lot of fun stringing different flourishes together and began to learn the macro system to help develop strings of flourishes to get the timing and sequence how I wanted.

As group, we continued playing the game adventuring and learning about the different elements of the game.Chad had continued building items in architect until he was finally a Master Architect.We mined enough ore to build our first guild hall and then ARC was born, an in game representation of our real life friends that had all banded together in this virtual Star Wars world.

Not long after, I mastered the Musician profession and had a lot of fun writing funny parody songs in the local cantinas.The Moeina cantina was considerably less populated but its fun was replaced by the bustling Theed cantina.Whenever I wasn’t working on my fencer profession, I spent my time meeting people and having conversations with the other entertainers in the cantina.Many new faces as other entertainers I had played with began exploring other elements of the game.

As I became more accustomed to the game play, I decided to join the rebellion to explore another aspect of the game.I did various missions for the terminal to acquire 200 rebel faction points and talked to the recruiter to join the rebellion.During the conversation with the recruiter, I choose to “declare” my faction.I thought this sounded like a good plan, I could show everyone that the evil empire was going down!

I managed some inventory items and traveled to the bank to store a few items before heading to the guild hall near Theed.As I was placing items in my bank from my inventory, I heard the combat music start as if I was under attack…I immediately thought it was one of the small thug NPC’s that hang around the bank area there in Moe.

I closed my banking window to see a character with no colored “con” indicator.He had a circular symbol next to his name, a name that was pure red.I started seeing my health pool depleting rapidly so I dodged around the entrance of the bank to break his site of me.Then it dawned on me like a ton of bricks!“That’s another player!”, I shouted in my computer room in my apartment.Quickly I looked back around the corner and see him waiting for me to come out, sure enough the second I popped my head around the corner, I caught a laser blast to the head.I hid again trying to think of what to do.I had remembered reading about dizzy and lunge from the fencer profession forums where I had been reading about the profession’s details.With my hands trembling and my heart pumping, I darted around the corner of the bank wall and hit the Lunge 1 key on my keyboard and watched the assaulter drop to one knee.I then hit the Dizzy 1 key and seen the +Dizzy+ indicator above his head.I then hit him with a quick One Handed Hit 2 and he tried to stand to move away from me and fell flat on his back.I think applied a few more One Handed Hit 2 attacks and a Body Hit to finish off his health pool.

Upon examining his body, the radial menu showed an opinion…1. Deathblow.I choose this option to see his body turn to a corpse…I was in awe.I stared at the corpse for a few seconds and realized what had happened.I opened my character screen to see that my Faction was Declared Rebel. I realized he was a Declared Imperial. We where destined to fight.I then closed my character sheet to see my first foe’s body and it was gone.He had cloned.In all the excitement, I didn’t recall the name of my attacker but he started something that led me through the rest of my Star Wars Galaxies career.

I closed the game and immediately began reading the Star Wars Official Forums to learn more about what had taken place.I then learned of the different declarations and the entire Galactic Civil War that had been taking place right under my nose.I was intrigued.I began seeing more overt rebels here and there and was invited to a large group of rebels that where in the Moeina cantina.They asked, “We’re raiding Theed, want to come?”I said, “Sure”, and clicked the join on the group invite to see that there where another 15 armor wearing fighters ready to attack.I was in awe.

We assaulted Theed and ran into an equally large number of imperials.That was my first large scale battle.I remember all the fire of rifles, pistols, and carbines.The Teras Kasi Masters ravaging through anyone that came near.I was fighting well and I seen a white dressed imperial fighting 2 of my friends and he killed them both.I approached the imperial and began my attack, soon I too was killed by movements I had not seen in the game.My fight lasted a good deal of time and I held my ground well but overall outmatched in every sense.

The person sent me a private message, “you fought well”, said Sergi.I responded politely, “thank you”.I asked what he was doing and he said, “Cho Mok”.I asked what profession and learned that he too was a fencer, a master fencer.My mission was clear as day at that point.I immediately began killing every NPC and creature I could find in search of one handed weapon experience.I was in frenzy, I must master the one handed sword.I spent all my credits on new weapons from D’Tox, the best melee weapon smith on the Naritus galaxy at that time.I began hunting on Dathomir and killed everything I was capable of killing.I completed fencer in 3 days after that fight with Sergi.Every day seeking him out for additional training and dueling a bit for practice with other around the Theed cantina.I spent so much time in the Narglatch cave then, I began naming the different spawns.

I applied my Blademaster title proudly and for the first time, declared and traveled to Theed completely alone.I entered Theed and was surrounded by 3 red dots.I immediately used my spin attack a couple of times, then the two ranged fighters began fleeing and shooting at me.I faced a Teras Kasi Master.Immediately I found myself on my back and dizzy.My health bar disappearing quickly.I managed to type /stand and was overjoyed by the system message saying that “You stand up”.I immediately lunged at the TKM and applied both of my health bleeds.While he was kneeling I lunged again, this time at the pistoleer.I then applied dizzy and he was down for a few seconds and in 3 hits with a D’Tox Gaffi stick and Cho Mok, I applied /deathblow to the pistoleer, then the TK was back up and approaching quickly, I applied blind and dizzy and tried to lunge him, but I failed to change his posture the system message told me…Down I went again, but not before landing a stim on myself to bring me back to about 75% health pool.No dizzy so I stood back up and applied intimidate.The numbers over my head where much less and I was able to manage the damage much better.After about 2 minutes, I had won.I went on to kill about 5 more people in Theed that day.I realized that I was having the most fun I had ever had in the game.

I continued developing my character when I was not participating in the galactic civil war dropping off my musician slowly acquiring more combat abilities.

One of my good rebel friends sent me a /tell the second I logged in on a Sunday evening.“We’re under attack!” my friend said, “It’s Mortis Consortium!”.I didn’t think much of the 2nd part of his message, just knew that there was some fighting going on.I headed to Talus and off to their newly founded player city.I got there and it was a huge town and as I traveled south I came across some rebel bases that had been placed by the defenders and the most rebels I had ever seen in one group.Probably 30 rebels huddled around a few camps, very wounded.I asked how many attackers there where and the response confused me…“12”, I was told.“12?”, I asked, “how the hell are 12 people kicking the **edit** out of all of you?”A few moments later, some of the rebels decided they where sending in a squad to attack.I decided to go with them to kill me some imperials.

While approaching I seen 3 small green blocks in my overhead map and upon target the nearest one, I seen it was a turret and it read, “Mortis Loves You”.I thought to myself that it was cute but I’m going to send some love back.I seen my first target, at 90m and began to prepare to attack.Then immediately I noticed a system message, “You have been poisoned”.I thought to myself, “that’s nice” and figured that it could prove annoying in the fight.Then my mind pool dropped to about half.I began panicking, tabbing around trying to find the attacker.10 seconds later, I was starring at one mind point.Then I saw 12 red dots moving at me and my 1 mind point group like an arrow.They where moving like birds fly.I began seeing the people in front of me dropping and turning to corpses before their body’s fell..I popped a muon gold in my stomach and ran in, my target was Venga.I targeted him and immediately was met by his rifle.The rifle shots where blowing away what mind I had left, I hit him once with my lunge and he kneeled, I applied my dizzy and waited for him to fall.He didn’t… He kneeled there, cured his dizzy, stood up and shot me in the head.I was a corpse before my fall animation completed.

I cloned and left that town.I knew there was a level of combat I had not achieved.I shut down Star Wars Galaxies and hit the forums hard. I began studying the science behind the game.I learned defense calculations, damage modifiers, armor piercing vs. armor rating.I studied the game mechanics inside and out.

I went back to my roots.I began raiding Theed and other imperial towns by myself.Analyzing every mistake I made.Continually improving my game play.There where always a handful of people that I would end up teaming with that made my game play that much more enjoyable.

I hadn’t played much with my old friends from ARC.I explained how fun the PvP combat was that I was doing but none of them really took much to it.A few had talked about canceling and others just where not online very often.Even some more had fell victim to the holocron craze and where grinding professions mindlessly in search of Jedi.

As we PvP’d every day for hours on end, I grew very accustomed to teaming with a select group of individuals.After about a month of hardcore raiding against Theed, MrPunch, an amazing Teras Kasi Artist came up with the idea of making a PvP only guild and all of us could join up.I thought about it for a few days, because it would mean leaving the guild that I started the game with.Eventually I decided it was the best thing for me and I was asked to lead the guild.

In the back of the Coronet Cantina, 7 of us laid the foundation for a new Star Wars Player Association, The Synergy Experiment (SYN).We placed our guild hall and attacked Theed for the first time.

We held Theed our captive for 5 hours that night without a single loss among ourselves.Waves of imperials would assault us only to be escorted to the clone center swiftly.We maintained professionalism the entire time.I was an amazing night for us indeed.We slowly expanded our group.A few players at a time.

We attacked imperial city after imperial city every day for months.Only being defeated when enough MC (Mortis Consortium) would be called in.

One evening, a small group of us where raiding and heard word that MC was out in full force.Head count was roughly 15, plus 3 AT-ST’s.We hit Coronet and rounded up the rest of SYN and a few other allies’ we had online.We had a 14 man group count.

We entered Theed in the middle of town and split into two groups, one group heading around the back of the Star port and another in the front.We passed by the cantina with nothing in site.We then approached the Star port and seen one red dot and upon targeting knew it was an MC member, he disappeared quickly into the Star port and then we seen the entire group inside near the ticket collector.We knew we where spotted as the quickly became a formation and began cautiously approaching the Star port entrance.We drew them outside and began to separate the group as our second team entered the star port from behind and engaged with us.When the dust settled, there where many corpses scattered in front of the Theed Star port that night.Many of us, and to our surprise, all of MC.We had defeated our most feared and most respected enemy.

For the next few months, we had many battles, some won some lost with MC.Their player base became smaller and smaller until only a few played.For months we where unchallenged, now new imperial faces have shown themselves and the bar on Star Wars PvP are much higher on the Naritus server.

XingYuen

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