My Star Wars Galaxies initial impressions.
I should probably start by saying that I didn't expect to enjoy this game. A few of my friends had been involved in the beta testing, and from some of their comments and frustrations I honestly thought that SWG wasn't really going to do much for me. However, I was wrong.
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Mixing and matching clothing allows
one to create a new profession: Flasher! |
For anyone who doesn't know about Star Wars Galaxies, a quick google search will sort you out. However, anyone with a passing interest in games, and more specifically in MMORPG's will have heard at least a little bit about this game.
After installing from the 3 CD's, the game connects to the SOE patch server and applies any relevant patches. On my lame New Zealand capped DSL connection this patching took about 50 minutes - so be prepared to do something else for a while during this time - reading the manual might be a good distraction!
After the patching, I logged in and created my first character. The level of character customisation is pretty impressive, this game has gone far beyond the "Select Race" , "Select Gender" , "Select Hair Colour" days of games like DAoC etc - you can customise almost every feature of your avatar, including height, weight, torso size, facial features (individually - ie, ears, eyes, nose width and size, as well as hair styles and colours). There is also a randomize section, and randomize all feature which throws in some random combinations and churns out some interesting results.
After that, you choose your starting profession and away you go. Initially the ways in which you can combine professions aren't immediately obvious. At a guess I'd say that most new players would probably pick a single starting profession and go wandering off looking for things to kill / harvest / craft (depending on your profession of course). However this approach has some downsides - for example, as a Scout one gets skills relating to harvesting resources from dead creatures - this is all well and good, but it's hard to harvest things if they aren't dead, hence some pistol skills are handy, which means that taking on a secondary profession such as Marksman as soon as possible is definately the way to go.
The Graphics are pretty stunning, although what you see initially might depend a little on which planet and city you start in. My initial planet was Talus, which was very sparsely populated, so all I had to look at was some mobs, scenery, NPC's and the occasional player. Once I moved to Naboo, things changed a lot - seeing a group of players wandering around in AT-ST's, and a creature handler who had tamed some rather huge Rancor style beast made for a pretty good impression of Naboo.
The combat system is a fairly standard MMORPG style affair - selecting targets, cycling through targets, using attack styles, equipping weapons and armour, all of that stuff is here. If you've played a game of similar style to this before, you should get used to the combat fairly easily. Having said that though, combat isn't an essential part of the game for every player. The unique thing about Star Wars Galaxies is the many different play styles that are available to people, from multiple different combat related styles, to tailors, weaponsmiths, chefs and dancers.
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The Penny Arcade analogy of
hitting small Rats with sticks
doesn't always apply. |
My first 2 days I spent wandering around Talus, killing a few mobs and harvesting what I could from them. I used the stuff I harvested to craft some simple items, a camping kit, and a couple of simple traps. Occasionally I wandered back into town to get some training (which I initially got through NPC's, however you can also obtain training from other players which can be cheaper, and also can benifit the other player in various ways) and get some healing done (again this can be through players or NPC's). The initial kick of getting used to the game combined with getting some simple skills makes it quite easy to get used to the game, however doing this on a sparsely populated planet can be a very bad thing for some characters. Fortunately for a Scout it wasn't too bad that the planet seemed deserted most of the time, but for professions relying on selling items to players, or interacting with other players for experience (dancers etc), you might want to research your choice of starting planet well - populations vary depending on which Server you're using, but the
Star Wars Galaxies Forums are a good source of information for that sort of stuff.
One of the first things that struck me after moving to Naboo was the Player cities and structures. From previous games, I'd gotten used to the concept of pre-created "NPC run" towns. To run through a city made entirely from player owned and created structures was pretty cool. Again, attention to detail is pretty impressive - structures can be locked, and can have access lists as to which players are allowed to enter them. Items, pets and droids can be left lying around inside, and it generally works in a very similar way to how a house would actually work in a non virtual environment.
The concept of a fully Player run economy was one of my initial worries about the game. My first day on a deserted planet somewhat reinforced this, as it was hard to find people to heal my character, but once I moved to a more populated planet things got a lot better. The cantinas on Naboo were a lot busier, and a simple /tell asking if any players wanted to train me in exchange for some credits received some very rapid replies - net result, thousands of credits saved in training costs! Again, reading the forums is a good way to tell what sort of stuff is in demand, as well as to get an idea of prices for certain items - for anyone playing a crafting style profession, your initial products aren't too flash, and it's just the act of making them to get experience that needs to be focussed on, but it doesn't take too long before you start churning out usable items. A friend who started at the same time as me, as a weaponsmith, was able to supply me with a new weapon and some powerups for it that drastically increased my pistol damage, and this was after only a couple of sessions of play.
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Setting up camp out in the
wilderness is required to gain survival
experience as a Scout. |
Basically, I think I'm going to enjoy this game. It really does have such a wide range of variety that there is likely to be something here to suit every player, and every playstyle. There has never really been a game before where one has had the option to be a fully dedicated crafter - while crafting has been a part of many games previously, it was usually added in as something to do as a sidetrack to the usually RPG style levelling grind of slaying mobs. While SWG still definately has it's own version(s) of levelling grinds, it does so with a lot of variety, and allows players to try completely different play styles by unlearning their skills and retraining (or by starting another character on another server - SWG limits players to having one character per server).
A few technical comments. There are a few people who have had various issues in getting the game to work, and a lot of these seem to focus on video card issues.
In my first couple of hours of play I had a lot of crashing, which in the end was fixed by removing the SmartGART utility that the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro drivers (SmartGART isn't specific to that model, it seems to come with most of the Radeon series) install. A few google searches revealed that this was a reasonably common problem, and that SmartGART seemed to cause issues for quite a few people.
I found this guide had a bit of useful information, and of course there was also a lot on the forums, however I can't find the actual URL I used that informed me to kill SmartGART. Anyway, it worked for me, and if you're deciding whether to buy this game or not you might want to check out this page, in order to get to the list of supported video cards and supported sound cards.
I found it quite funny that I also had a LOT of problems with an ATI Card (this time a 9700 Pro) with Planetside as well. The fixes for Planetside (well, the ones that worked) involved tweaking and changing a lot of settings via the ATI Control Panel - none of these settings seemed to work for SWG, however I wonder if removing SmartGART would have worked for Planetside? Unfortunately I've since rebuilt my computer, and can't be bothered reinstalling PS due to the time it takes to download all the patches, so I guess I'll never know.
One final note on the SmartGART stuff - in my ATI Control Panel I didn't actually have a SmartGART tab visible - a lot of people will mention making some other changes for other things on this tab in troubleshooting posts - as far as I can tell this doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have it on your system, so it's worth running the Smartgart removal utility, which you can get from here (or here for Windows 98, urgh!).
Although some google searches will provide a wealth of information about this game, here are some links to some useful SWG resources:
Official Star Wars Galaxies Forums
Allakhazam.com - guides
Stratics.com - Profession Guides
Stratics.com - Profession Guide: Scout
Master Scout Guide
Jaidien Ral's Framerate Guide