Why Star Wars Galaxies was the best video game ever

Hi, so today I want to talk about the best

video game that I have ever played.

It's called Star Wars Galaxies, and I

wouldn't be surprised if most of you don't

even know what it is because it was a

pretty old game, and I don't even know if

it was that popular back in the day. So I

think it hit its peak at around 2003

to 2004. I think I played it around 2004

when I was about 15 or 16 years old,

and it was honestly one of the best games

I have ever played. And I have a lot of

good memories from when I used to play it,

and I wanted to talk about it, reminisce.

Maybe there's some people here who knows

what it was and used to play it as well.

I don't know. I don't care. So the story

begins all the way back around 2004. It

was the summer holiday and I wanted a new

game to play. I had currently been playing

a game called Guild Wars, and that was an

online MMORPG. And the good thing about

Guild Wars was it was free to play. Most

of the other popular MMOs, you had to pay

a monthly subscription. And as a 15 or

16-year-old, I didn't really have my own

money. I used to get pocket money from my

dad, which was about £20 a month, which I

guess I could have used that to pay for

it. I'm not sure why I didn't. Anyway, I,

I kind of got fed up with Guild Wars

because it was— it wasn't a very open

game. It wasn't like a sandbox MMO. You

had instanced outdoor areas where

it wasn't really completely open. You

couldn't randomly bump into strangers.

You could only go out into the outside

world with a party. Um, anyway,

I got fed up with Guild Wars and I was

looking for a new game. And I can't

remember how or why, but I found out about

this game called Star Wars Galaxies. And I

used to be a massive fan of Star Wars. I

grew up during the time when the prequels

were coming out, Episode 1, 2, and 3. And

as you can imagine, I was a big fan, huge

fan of Star Wars. And I thought, wow,

this game looks amazing. So basically what

Star Wars Galaxies was, it was a massively

multiplayer online role-playing game,

and you could do pretty much anything you

wanted. You might be thinking, oh, it's

Star Wars, it must all be about fighting.

No, no, it's not all about fighting. You

could do anything you wanted. But the

bad thing about it was it had a monthly

subscription fee and you had to pay about

£10 a month. So I begged my dad to

pay it for me. And he said, okay. And I

started playing and I instantly got

hooked. I got so hooked I ended up

becoming addicted to this game for about

nearly a year. And that was before the

whole game kind of shut down because the

stupid Sony developers ruined the game so

much everyone left and then we all left to

World of Warcraft. Anyway, before it got

ruined, it was a really good game. And let

me tell you why.

So in Star Wars Galaxies, you first start

off by choosing your race. You can be

human, or you could be any of the other

alien races that— I mean, alien species

that appear in Star Wars, in the Star Wars

franchise. You could be a Wookiee, could

be a Twi'lek, you could be that ugly thing

that appears in one of them. And then you

choose your profession. Now, there were so

many professions in the game. You had your

obvious professions like rifleman or

martial artist or commando, combat medic,

you know, the typical combat professions.

But then you also had all of these

non-combat professions. The thing about

Star Wars Galaxies that made it so great

was it wasn't just about fighting. You

didn't have to fight if you wanted to play

the game. You could be a farmer, you could

be a weaponsmith, a gunsmith, an

armorsmith. You could even run your own

shopping mall and have vending machines

that sold goods that you made or you

bought off someone else. You could run

like a little business in the game and

make money that way. Or you could be an

entertainer. You could be a dancer, you

could be a musician, and they would stand

in the cantinas and they would buff

fighting players, combat players, and then

the combat players would give you money in

exchange for a nice buff. But that was

kind of boring because you would just be

AFK in the cantina doing your dancing

stuff and people would, would set up

macros and automated programs so they

automatically buff people who give them

money. I didn't see the point of playing

the game. If most of the time you're just

AFK in a cantina doing automatic buffing.

Uh, anyway, what else could you— yeah,

you could be a farmer. You could set up a

farm and then harvest crops and then sell

that on the marketplace, which was

completely run by the players. And there

were all different planets in the game,

and you could go to them and it would just

be a completely blank world. There'd be

like a main city, a main town hub where

you would land, and that would be

recognizable from the movies. But then the

rest of the planet would just be like a

blank canvas. And you might be thinking,

well, that sounds boring if it's just

blank canvas, there's nothing on it.

Well, the whole point was players would

build their own towns on the planets,

and it was quite difficult to build a

town. You needed a lot of credits, you

couldn't really do it by yourself, you had

to band together as a guild And then you

had to make a town hall and then do all

this mumbo jumbo that I didn't really

understand. And there'd all be these—

there'd be all of these different

guild-created,

player-created towns scattered around the

planets, and you could visit them, buy

stuff from the towns. And if you join one

of the guilds, they will let you have a

house, and then you could buy a house,

place it in the town, and then you could

go inside the house and decorate it and

make it like your own little personal

space. And it was a lot of fun just

getting— trying to save up money so you

can decorate your house and chill out,

relax in the house with friends and other

guild members and just chat and socialize.

It was a very social game, and I feel like

games these days kind of lack this social

aspect. It was a kind of game where you

could just hang out with other people who

were also into Star Wars, and then you

would either roleplay or chat about real

life stuff. And there really was this

sense of community that I never really

found again in any other game. And I

really felt like I had friends. You have

to remember, at the time I was about 16.

I only had 2 friends at school and we were

reaching the age where we were drifting

apart. I didn't really feel like I had

friends anymore at that point,

and I didn't really have a social life.

And it was just great to be able to play

Star Wars Galaxies and be part of a guild

and be playing with these people that they

would be the same people I would play with

every single day and would get to know

each other. And there was this real kind

of family-friendly atmosphere in

the game that I never really found again

in any any other game, and I really miss

it. So what did I do in the game?

I wasn't really interested in farming or

becoming a business owner or running

a shop or anything. I was more interested

in becoming a Jedi. So you could also

become a Jedi in the game, but it was

really difficult. You couldn't just become

one at the beginning of the game. It took

months of grinding and it was a really

complicated process. And I was so

close to becoming a Jedi. I think I had

grinded for about half a year, and finally

I got the old man to appear. So what

happens is you have to grind and grind and

grind and grind, and then you have to do

something to trigger the Jedi thing

to start, and then this old man appears

and he'll take you to the Jedi Village. I

did think I got to the Jedi Village before

the whole game got completely revamped

They changed it so you could become— so

anyone could become a Jedi at level 1,

and that just ruined the whole thing. It

was really annoying actually, because I

spent all this time trying to become a

Jedi, and just as I was about to become

one, they make it so everyone can become a

Jedi right at the beginning. It was so

frustrating. Anyway, becoming a Jedi was a

really difficult task, and most people

didn't have the patience to do it. So you

had like a small number of Jedi on the

server, and they would be kind of famous

because the server would be kind of like a

tight-knit community of people. It wasn't

a massive server with loads of people.

Everyone kind of knew each other and you

could create like a reputation for

yourself. And the top Jedi had like a

reputation. Everyone knew who they were.

Some were feared, some were respected,

and they would meet in towns. You'd have

different factions. There would be the

rebels And then there'd be the Empire,

and then you have Sith and the Jedi, and

then they would like meet up in the towns

and shit talk each other. It was kind of

immature, I guess, but they would start

roasting each other and they'll have duels

in town, and then people would gather

around and watch. It was quite fun,

actually. What else did you

do in the game? Um, what did I do?

Yeah. So I was trying to become a Jedi and

I was grinding and grinding. And the

profession I chose to play as was bounty

hunter slash combat medic. And you could

combine 2 professions so you could combine

any of the 30 professions with each other

for a total of 2. So you could combine,

I don't know, martial artist with pikeman

or rifleman with Commando or

something like that. I had Bounty Hunter.

So what a bounty hunter did was he could

get contracts. This is one of the most

interesting things about the game. As a

bounty hunter, you could pick up contracts

to hunt down other players who are Jedi.

Only Jedi players you could hunt. And it

was really exciting. So this is how it

worked. You would first pick up a contract

at a terminal and it will give you the

name or tell you who you had to go and

hunt, and it'll give you a rough location

of where that person was, and you'd have

to go and track him down. And the closer

you got to him, the more in-depth

it will tell you where he is. It'll give

you more information on his location, and

you had to sneak up on him. And you have

to remember, Jedi were really powerful,

but not all of them were really powerful,

because when they start off in the

beginning as a Padawan, they'd be really

weak. Beginners— beginner Jedi

were quite easy to take down because they

were new. They didn't have a lot of the

skills, they didn't have a lot of the good

gear, and they were kind of vulnerable, I

guess. So those were easy pickings, but

you get paid less for the bounty. When the

level of the enemy Jedi raised and got

stronger, it would be really difficult to

take them down, sometimes even impossible.

I remember one time I got a contract for

quite a high-level Jedi, and this other

bounty hunter also had the same contract,

and we actually teamed up to take this

Jedi down. And it was a really close

fight. We only barely managed to take him

down. It was 2 versus 1, and it was a

really close fight, but we managed to take

him down and we agreed to split the

reward, which is quite nice. And there was

this other time when I snuck up on an

enemy Jedi when I was tracking him down,

and he was in his house and he didn't even

notice I was there. And I don't know,

maybe he was AFK or looking at something

else, but I managed to kill him before he

managed— before he reacted. And then a few

other times, uh, it was quite common that

you'd sneak up on the Jedi you're tracking

and he'd be fighting creatures and then

you could— the best thing to do was be a

sniper or a rifleman and then you could

snipe at him from a really long way away

and he'd be distracted by fighting

creatures and then you could easily take

him down that way. And I was part

of the Rebel Alliance in the beginning

because I thought that was nice and I was

part of this really tiny guild and we kind

of got to know each other but then I

decided to switch sides and I joined the

Empire and they got angry with me. And I

joined this pretty big PvP guild called

Exile Corp, and they were one of the

biggest guilds, PvP guilds, on the entire

server. They had quite a reputation. I

would even go as far to say that we were

the most— we were the strongest PvP guild

on the server. And we used to have these

epic battles from our town with the

surrounding Rebel Alliance towns. It was

so much fun. So what would happen is we'd

all gather up in our town. I think our

planet was Dantooine. I don't know why I

remember that. And then there was another

Rebel Alliance town nearby, and then the

rebels would all gather up and then we'd

meet halfway in the middle in the field

and then just have this huge fight. There

would be about 100 people, maybe 50 people

on each side. Just— it was so chaotic.

And then we'd usually, most of the time,

would beat them back, drive them back

because they were trying to attack our

town and then we'd drive them back to

their town. And then it was like this push

and pull struggle going backwards and

forwards between our towns that never

really ended. It was a lot of fun.

And you could also do space battles so you

could buy some kind of spacecraft like an

X-wing or TIE fighter take it up into

space and then do space missions. I was

actually a master pilot as well, and I had

the master pilot uniform, the jacket, the

helmet, and one of the most powerful ships

in the game. And you could decorate the

inside of the ship and walk around inside

the ship as well, like it was a home. And

it was a lot of fun. And that was about

the time when Sony decided to completely

ruin the game by trying to make it more

like World of Warcraft. So they got rid of

a lot of the professions They cut down the

professions from about 30 to about 10.

People were really upset about it, and

they just completely ruined the game by

changing it so much. It was basically a

completely different game that was much

worse. And my guild, we all decided to

move to World of Warcraft because we all

hated the changes. And that was the

end of my Star Wars Galaxy story.

I think I played it for almost an entire

year. I was so addicted to it. I used to

play all day long. I used to run home from

school just to play it. And, and that was

all I could think of. I couldn't think of

anything else, couldn't concentrate on

anything else. All I could think of was

playing that game so I could grind and

grind and grind and become a Jedi. That

was like my only goal in life was to

become a Jedi. Now that I think about it,

it's kind of sad, but At the same time, I

have a lot of good memories from the game,

and I do kind of miss it. I'm not sure if

a game like that exists nowadays. I don't

really know what's popular these days.

I'm not really that into gaming. I just

play simple mobile games now.

Uh, yeah, that's, um, my favorite game in

the entire world. Don't know if I

explained it very well. It was kind of

rambly. Here and there, but that's fine,

I guess.