I began playing Star Wars Galaxies in the summer of 2003, within weeks of its release here in North America. My foray into the world of An Empire Divided lasted, oh... two months or so. I remember thinking to myself every time I logged in, "This game would be so great, but..." But, the servers were always going down. But, the combat system was underdeveloped. But, the game had more bugs than a cheap New York City apartment. BUT, the game just wasn't finished yet, and needed more time in development. I know every game has its kinks at release, but this just seemed excessive to me. To make it worse, the game had so much potential, if only all the pieces would fit together. It became a major frustration to me, because the game could have been great.

I know I should have stuck it out through the rough times, but playing a game that buggy just wasn't fun for me. I decided to take some time away from the game, let them smooth out the rough spots, and come back in a month or so. I knew Star Wars Galaxies would be great, given just a little time. But then, Final Fantasy XI came out to distract me, followed by World of Warcraft a year later. Despite my intentions, I never went back to Star Wars Galaxies.

June 16th marked the five year anniversary for Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. FIVE years. Had it really been that long? Word of drastic changes - their merits debatable - intrigued me, and two weeks ago, I decided it was time to go back, and check it all out again.

Logging on to the character creator, I noticed the available professions had changed drastically. Gone was my beloved Scout, Artisans had been replaced by Entertainers, and the Officer profession was among additions. In fact, the 32 possibilities of professions and specializations have been radically altered. The most noticeable - and shocking - addition though, was the Jedi. Really? Is it really that simple, that you can just click a button and decide to be a Jedi? That's like having a booth at your high school career day for becoming the President. Now, I'm sure it's really not as easy as it looks. Even after choosing that profession, I'm sure there's a ton of training that goes into becoming an actual full-fledged Jedi. But still, it seems far too simple and straightforward to me. Granted, I feel that the old Jedi path was excessively difficult; it took over four months for the first player to earn Jedi status. But really, a middle ground would be nice. Then again, maybe I'm just a nerd who places too much reverence on the Jedi. That's a distinct possibility.

After choosing a race and profession - I chose human bounty hunter - and tweaking the character's appearance with the delightfully extensive character creator that I remembered so fondly, you're presented the choice of going through the newbie tutorial, or just jumping straight in. I love this option, and really wish they had this option in WoW. Sure, in WoW you can choose to turn the tips and hints off, but you still have to go through all the newbie stuff for each alt you roll up. 

Since it had been quite a hiatus, I opted to go through the tutorial. I have to commend SWG for being extremely newbie-friendly. Seasoned gamers will find some of the tutorial painfully rudimentary (it teaches you how to use W, S, A, and D to move around), but if you can step outside of your uber-leetness for a while, you can see how helpful this would be for first-timers. It's also comforting to find the familiar faces of Han Solo, C-3PO, and R2-D2 there to greet you. What is Star Wars without the characters you know and love? 

Even those familiar with other MMOs can appreciate the tutorial. Using ALT to switch between cursor modes is something I've not come across in other games, yet it is extremely useful to know. On that note, though, I have one gripe; every time you travel to a new area, it defaults back to the very awkward non-cursor mode. Sure, it's no big deal just to press ALT again to switch it, but it's still a minor annoyance, since if I set it one way I probably want to keep it that way throughout my gaming experience. But I'm nit-picking.

My only other complaint about the beginning tutorial is how long it takes to get Han Solo to agree to let you out of the station. After a few quests, I got the idea of what to do, but he refused to let me leave for a planet until I'd done practically every beginning quest available. (Note: I also tried the tutorial as a Trader, and it let me leave the station MUCH faster. I guess it's on a profession-by-profession basis). 

After finally making it off the station and on to the planet, I'm immediately struck by the vastness of it all. I LOVE the guides to quests that give you the general direction and approximate distance, since the "breadcrumb" blue line from the tutorial disappears. This serves to bring the expansiveness into management, for otherwise it could all be a bit overwhelming. Sure, this feature is available in other games with add-ons, but it's nice to see that SWG gives you directional help right off the bat. Also combating the huge size of the planets is the fact that I was given a vehicle right away. There are many better and faster modes of transportation to be earned later, but this basic landspeeder was helpful in getting around. Thank goodness for this, too, since after the couple of basic training quests, the missions from the terminals seem to be light years away. The missions I was involved in were rather, well, boring. Go here. Kill this. Come back. Wash, rinse, repeat. It's quite possible - and even likely - that things will get more exciting later on. For now, though, I have to say that the repetitiveness is a bit trying. 

For an MMO, the graphics aren't bad. Not at all. Though there is a bit of skating in combat and the humanoids faces are rather expressionless, the architecture and overall environment are extremely detailed. I also ran across a major graphical glitch a few times, though only inside the tutorial. I'd turn a corner, and suddenly find myself in the middle of space, surrounded by nothing but blackness and stars. This would usually correct itself within 15-20 seconds, but a few times I had to re-log to continue playing where I was.

Inside the larger cities, though, I feel like the designers were a little too proud of their textures. "The walls look so good," they seem to have said, "that we should put them everywhere! Sure, a lot of them have no purpose, but we can build corridors and random jutting walls, just because they look so pretty!" And they do look pretty, but they're rather annoying, too, when you're trying to get somewhere. The sound is also pretty good, with many tracks that seem to be taken straight from the movies. I found it a little quirky that the volume of the music really amped up during certain activities, such as combat. You get used to it, but it's a little unnerving at first.

Combat was rather straight forward: left click on target. Repeat. Before too long I discovered the auto-fire feature, but it's really not as convenient as it should be. You actually have to go into the options and key bind it, and then add it to your radial menu if you want to keep using it. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to have this option explained early in the tutorial, and really, auto-fire should be standard on a toolbar. I really miss the ability to queue up attacks. In the revamped combat, you may use one attack at a time, and each attack has a cool-down of varying lengths. While this is the standard MMO format, the queue system was really pretty handy.

One huge change in the game since I first played is the ability to create player cities, complete with non-NPC political systems. In the early days of SWG, players could create houses, and if you were friends you'd put your houses near each other. That was a city. Sort of. Today, the city system is complex and intriguing. Players can actually found cities with outposts, populate them, assign guards, and even hold political positions. In order to become a Master Politician, you simply need to place a house and declare residence. Master Politician in itself is rather meaningless, but necessary to become Mayor of a city. A player can become Mayor of an existing city through election, or is automatically Mayor if they found their own city. At a glance, this whole system seems unique, and really cool. Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to thoroughly explore the player-created city experience for myself. The main question that I'm left with is why. Why join a city? What's the benefit of declaring residence in a city? Please correct me if I'm wrong, for as I said, I've only been back for a couple of weeks, but to me it seems like an RP element without any real bonus.

After giving Star Wars Galaxies a second try five years on, I'm left with much the same feeling that I had before: the game has so much potential, but it's not quite there. The tweaks needed to make it a really great game are few, but significant: revamp the combat system to make it less like button-mashing. Bring back specialization within professions. Make Jedi more of a challenge. It's not much, really, and an okay game could become something quite remarkable.

Amanda "Amandasaurus" Norris
News Editor, ZAM Network