New Hope after SWG’s Combat Update

I specifically remember the afternoon about 6 years ago when I logged onto my Star Wars Galaxies account to find an unfamiliar, and in my opinion, irrelevant menu staring back at me from my monitor. This monstrosity of an emotion I felt… very similar to what is known as pissed off, overwhelmed me to a stupid degree. See, I thought that SOE would have stopped at the new numerical “leveling” mechanic they had implemented, but it pained me much to discover that no, no they wouldn’t. Thanks.

I was one of several thousands upon thousands of loyal SWG players who were royally smacked upside the back of the head. I say back because this was completely out of nowhere. Nowhere like a song title, and where a song with that title is going. Simply put; a retarded move on SOE’s part. My thoughts were that Sony Online Entertainment was attempting to be a runner up with the other MMOs that were out at that time, and compete with their leveling tactics to give players a more defined sense of growth with their character. What has always been, and still is, a mystery to me is that their profession leveling mechanic was one of the most original and fun things about the game! There was no other MMO out there like it.

It wasn’t your average number leveling MMO. You chose professions. Those professions had their own tiers of the generalized corresponding genre, and those tiers had their own tiers specifically for that mastery. For example: I chose to be a Swordsman paired with the Entertainer profession: Swordsman because at that time I didn’t believe in magic, and Entertainer because… it was fun. Let’s dissect the Entertainer Profession, and navigate through the requirements for the “Master” title – my favorite.

Entertainer has four different discipline branches to be filled with experience points of that discipline in order to get Master.

|(Master) E N T E R T A I N E R |

(4^th lvl): IMAGE DESIGNER | MUSICIAN | DANCER | ENTERTAINER ITEMS
(3^rd lvl): IMAGE DESIGNER | MUSICIAN | DANCER | ENTERTAINER ITEMS
(2^nd lvl): IMAGE DESIGNER | MUSICIAN | DANCER | ENTERTAINER ITEMS
(1^st lvl): IMAGE DESIGNER | MUSICIAN | DANCER | ENTERTAINER ITEMS

| Novice E N T E R T A I N E R |

You either “level” up all 16 boxes beginning from the bottom, or…

|(Master) D A N C E R|

(4^th lvl) DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF
(3^rd lvl) DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF
(2^nd lvl) DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF
(1^st lvl) DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF | DANCE STUFF

| Novice D A N C E R |

• You can go into that specific discipline and level that, which has its own mastery tree to complete. The possibilities were endless, especially if you were a trying to unlock the Jedi tree. Yes, UNLOCK the Jedi tree. That was no easy task. It took several months of Mastering professions, crafting expensive items, and following clues that also needed to be unlocked. Jedi were rare, as I always thought they should be. Being a Jedi or Sith in SWG was a notable accomplishment. So anytime I saw one, which wasn’t often, I was basically like omfg grats like whoa. At the time, it was something cool.

Then the changes started to come in, killing us ever so softly. Until one day, I logged on, and was able to create a Jedi at the start where I would choose my character. My Swordsman/Entertainer toon was all sorts of backwards. I now had to pick what skills to give her, instead of earning them. I had to fill in this goofy looking blank tiered panel with stupid circles everywhere with numbers that led to other circles that led to unlockable things I already had! And my pre-existing toon was level 83. What did that even mean? What happened to my profession tiers? The skills I unlocked by leveling up my chosen branches? I had to start over from Entertainer, and fill in a couple Dancer selections I already had MASTERED before this all went down. I quit, as did most of their player base, ultimately forcing SOE to merge their servers. All hope was lost. Until a guild-mate recently exposed to me a new project which has gotten me pretty damn giddy.

SWEmu is a team of developers that started a project aimed at emulating the actual SWG pre-combat update (aka Pre-CU) servers. They have been developing this project since late 2005, researching and documenting protocols between the SWG client and the live server. In doing this, they were able to build their own server daemon. So they pretty much are giving people like me who miss the old Pre-CU game an opportunity to be happy and not feel bitter when I hear the words “Sony Online Entertainment.” Not only that, but it also gives the opportunity for those poor dears who began playing SWG after the update, to play and not watch so much awful happening on their monitor. The coolest part of all is that these developers are doing this out of passion (and pocket) for one of the coolest MMO’s that was ever out on the market.

Currently, SWGEmu is already hosting a Test Server named Nova. From the looks of it, this project is still under works to have the actual physical servers up, but the team looks determined to make gorgeous Pre-CU magic. This has been one of the most uplifting things to find out about for me as a veteran and victim of SOE Heartbreak Syndrome. I for one cannot wait to see what these guys have in store for everyone out there who has suffered like I have over SOE’s biggest boo-boo to date. They also do a great job at keeping everyone posted on their forums. Perhaps, with the steps that veterans are taking involving such devotion, SOE could follow suit in their newer title.