User Rating: 3.4 | Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided PC
I should make one thing clear before I kick off this review: I do not like MMORPGs. I have never played a MMORPG that I liked, however I always go into these games with an open mind, so understand that this is not MMORPG bias i'm basing this review on. It had to happen sooner or later: Star Wars as a MMORPG. I was very hyped up and very interested in this game for about 5 or 6 months. Since I harbor such a strong dislike for Ever Quests, I dismissed this game initially as EQ in Space, but as I read on about all the features Star Wars would have, I was generally intrigued. I bought the game on launch day, and the disappointment began. The launch day problems were rampant, which is to be expected of course, since so many people were trying to get in that the servers were overloaded. I was able to finally register and log in about a day after I got the game. Character Creation was decent...you can edit alot about the character, from body type to facial construction. You choose from a few base classes, and then go on from there to expand the class and branch off into a more advanced class, such as Bounty Hunter or Weaponsmith or Commando. What is good about this is that you can take a little bit from every class and mix and match it to design your very own unqiue character. However, level progression is very slow, and it becomes necessary to teach your skills to others in order to progress. Interesting concept, if a little flawed. There are no Jedi's running around yet, simply becuse the method of becoming a Jedi is a 'secret' which players have since discovered, but it is still difficult to do. Thankfully this limits the Jedi population and keeps balance. As for the game itself, it just wasn't really that interesting. The world is huge, but devoid of life. Lots of quests require you to hump your way all the way across the planet for pathetic rewards and little experience points. Other quests require you to destroy objects, like dirt mounds or junk piles, which creatures spawn out of. What's bad is that these quests cannot possibly be undertaken alone, since attacking one of these mounds causes a tremendous group of creatures to gang up on you and tear you to pieces, and if you do manage to fend them off, there are other creatures healing the object, making your effort useless. There are some quests unique to sides, if you join the Imperials or Rebels, which is a decent change, but its still the same: Find and Kill soandso, bring this item here, etc. etc. Items in the game are all made by players, which is utterly ridiculous. There are no shops in the game at all, except for one Bazaar that holds player auctions. Since everyone is making the same stuff, the same items appear over and over. There are no unique items anywhere. One of the problems with this is that making weapons and armor is a career for some players. Funny, but that sounds like nothing more than a job to me. I'll go to my real job if I want to be productive, thanks. I'm sure many other players will begin to realize that too, and the items in the game will start becoming scarce. The game is just very monotonous, but I should expect no less from the makers of EQ. Sure, its fun for the first few hours, when you're exploring and getting familiar with everything, but the experience degenerates quickly. When I got this game, I was hoping to be surrounded by Star Wars nerds role-playing their characters...but I forgot that Role-Playing is not allowed in MMORPGS. Try role-playing your character for one minute around other players and watch your text screen fill up with people screaming 'St0p r0lE PlAyinG j00 n00b!' and garbage like that. Hence, the 'Wow, i'm in Star Wars' feeling wears off extraordinarily quick. The realization that this is just another online game and the fact that no one cares that its Star Wars becomes evident quickly, when you see players running around with names like 'Potthead Smokey' or 'Do0bi3 Sm0k3r' or 'L000k3 Skyywaalk3rrr123441' (all of which were names I actually saw). Its the idiots like that which completely take away from the game experience. You can barely understand what anyone is saying, because everyone talks in '1337 speech' or whatever the popular term for it is among the little kids. Overall, I found the rampant childish behavior and boring, pointless gameplay to be a huge turn off. I was off the game 3 days after getting it. I really, really wanted to like this game, but in the end the boring gameplay just got on my nerves, and the immature players didn't particularly help much either. This game was clearly just very over-hyped, and I was extraordinarily disappointed. Luckily I didn't get slapped with the rather high (over $15) monthly fee since I was off the game in 3 days. If you want a great Star Wars Role Playing game, then I suggest checking out Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for XBox, or waiting for it to come to the PC. Its a much better game, and well worth the money. Since Galaxies doesn't really seem to qualify as a role-playing game, you're better off saving all the money you would waste on the hefty monthly fee. A nice try, but i'm not impressed at all. Just another run-of-the-mill Massive Online Game ruined by childish players and boring gameplay.
