1. Star Wars: Galaxies
All right! Put down the pitch forks and torches, this is an opinion! However, let me at least try and convince you while I make an argument for this choice as number one.
Star Wars: Galaxies was truly a one-of-a-kind video game
in regards to the Star Wars brand. This game had all the elements in one game.
For the combat, it could be first person or third person. In space, the combat
felt like TIE Fighter mixed with elements of an RPG – but with more types of ships to
choose from, and more customization of those ships. For adventure, this game was wonderful, because you could truly choose
your own. There were a million different
things that a player could do in this game, action-oriented and not.
A person so inclined could join
the Imperial Army or the Rebel Alliance as a common soldier – helping to battle
across contested worlds. You could hunt bounties and become a feared bounty hunter – and those bounties included hunting human players who got a little too
big for their britches. If you’d rather go off adventuring with your buddies,
there were tons of quests that ended up with challenging bosses that couldn’t
be defeated by a lone player. These bosses would, of course, drop awesome loot
for a player so inclined.
When fighting on the ground isn’t
your style, or gets boring, you could join one of the galactic navies and fly your own ship. There were regular events in which large space battles took place. For a different experience, you could get a gunship and
crew, and join the battle on an assault ship, just make sure all the guns are
manned and that you have a competent engineer on board to fix
the ship’s subsystems when you take a bad hit! Imagine an experience where you
are sitting aboard an Imperial gunship, sitting at your station while you unload on rebel fighters, watching them fall like leaves in autumn - only each of those ships is controlled by a human player!
If you wanted to play a game for an experience other than combat, there
were a million other things you could do. For one, you could just pick an
alternate profession, and spend your days making food for
hungry adventurers, among other things. Food was useful in that it provided buffs and bonuses, so
some of the wealthiest people I knew in the game were chefs. Don’t want to be a
chef? Try your hand at being a politician, a droid engineer, or a weapon smith. Politicians
were necessary to build player cities – something this game supported. Yes,
there were entire colonies built by players – with roads, stores, police
forces, and regular elections. Some of the people involved in the infrastructure of
these towns made their entire living governing these cities. There were players
who owned their own cantinas. Some of these players became ludicrously wealthy
by symbiotic arrangements with all the artisans in their area, making that cantina owner a merchant mogul.
Perhaps you want to do something
a little more entrepreneurial like the cantina owner mentioned above? Why not start
your own surveyor business where you mine the finest resources for the artisans of the galaxy. You could spend your days mining on the ground with surveying
equipment, or you could hire a crew, buy a mining ship, and fly through space
mining asteroids (beware the pirates coming to steal your cargo!). Mining was
actually a tricky profession, because the resources were not infinite, and
would rotate regularly. This made buying in bulk usually a wise investment.
Speaking of buying in bulk, some
players became merchants and had businesses as wholesalers, buying resources or
items in bulk from suppliers and parceling these items out to the customers for
a profit. People could hold those goods until the market changed, or buy enough
of the goods to corner the market and affect the price point, making themselves quite wealthy. A person with sufficient time and energy could do the market
research and choose the best time to sell their bulk items at a premium.
Players could build entire enterprises around this type of business – a
business that ultimately needed multiple holdings on multiple worlds. In some
cases, needing their own security forces to prevent thieves and robbers from
taking whatever they wished and destroying their commercial assets.
Many other things were possible
in this game. Players would pay other players to decorate their houses… yes,
Star Wars interior decorators. My favorite thing: interior decorating could also
be done on your space ship. You could fly your luxury space yacht to the
scene of a battle, park at a safe distance, and drink brandy from the lounge area as a space ballet unfolded before you. Interior decorating was so popular
that many of the servers had player-run decorating competitions. To put it into
perspective, WoW doesn’t even let you own a house. In the majority of games where you can
own a house, you can't decorate them in the slightest.
All of this stuff with crafting,
starships, houses, and consumable items was thanks to the player base. In fact,
the economy would not work without players who were making the items to be used
by the other players. This game featured an almost entirely player-run economy, with all the ups
and downs that you see in reality. There were genuine feelings of frustration
and loss when one of the more well-known weapon manufacturers decided to call
it quits. Player-driven economies in games are very highly regarded, and it can
be easy to see why. Each person can get a custom-made item that is actually
good. Maybe you don’t want to spend 5 hours raiding for one item that the other 5 people in your party also want. Instead, go buy a custom rifle from an artisan weapon smith that only uses the best materials and methods.
It’s true that the game had issues. There was server lag, problems with mobs teleporting, and
sometimes the quests wouldn’t spawn correctly - all to be found in every game. Not to mention, there were
players that ruined the immersion of the game by doing all sorts of bizarre things. Some things were mundane, like naming themselves “Jewbacca,” or “Furry Face" as a wookiee, but others were less so… there were some seriously awful names. Despite these things, if you
want a game that gives you the best Star Wars experience, this one is easily the
best choice. Truly, this game is as close to you can get to actually playing/living in the Star Wars universe without having to resort to the pen and paper RPG.
Indeed, the game was so good at giving this experience that it persists to
this day, despite being officially shut down in 2011. There are a few groups that are currently building their own
clones of this game, keeping the dream alive.
It’s really remarkable what work that has been put into making this emulation of the game
a real thing, and it goes to show notable and remarkable this game truly was.
For a similar gaming experience: There really isn’t a game that
will scratch this itch in existence anymore, Star Wars related or otherwise. I’ve spent a LOT of time looking,
and I haven’t been able to find anything even close, but SOE says their next MMO is for SWG fans... let's see what they come up with!
That's it for this list, I hope you enjoyed it! I'll be going back to "single issues" for my next article, stay tuned. As always, comments are welcome!
-Jack
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