Star Wars Galaxies - My story

Back in the fall of 2003 I started playing Star Wars Galaxies. I remember I started the game and chose Tatooine as the starting location, because it was the only planet that I actually did remember from the Star Wars movies. Planets like Rori, Corellia or Dantooine were not planets that I had heard of before. I picked my starting profession as a marksman going with the pistoleer as my main branch afterwards. I played for a few days alone wandering around Tatooine when I met a guy named Steps Basic. I think I met him outside of Bestine Starport. He introduced me to the game and helped me out a lot. One day he and I went to Dar’Xun City. He was a member of the guild Dar’Xun Legion and they lived in that town. It was located south of Bestine and west of Anchorhead (A rebel town/outpost). I joined the guild a couple of days later and I met some really incredible people. I remember I stayed up all night playing because most of the members were from the US. There was also a group of Europeans playing in the guild but for some reason they decided to leave a couple of months after I joined to form their own guild in the playercity Mos Ari - If I remember correctly they chose the name L’A’W (Lowland Agedan Warriors). Their town was located northwest of Mos Espa. Later on L’A’W disbanded and became Dune Sea Warriors from what I remember.

So there I was, standing between the players from North America and Europe. I was asked if I would like to join L’A’W but I declined. I couldn’t leave the guild that I had started with. Over the next couple of months less and less people started came online. Sometimes there were so few people online and I was wandering around planets trying to keep myself busy. I mastered some more professions but I got bored over time. After some time some of the remaining members of the guild started to revive it a bit. I remember some of us created a guild outpost on Dantooine called Sierra. It was a beautiful planet actually. I had a house very close to the lake on the south-eastern part. After that a couple of us went off to join more active guilds like Protectors of Lok (LOK), L’A’N’C’E, SK (Shadow Knights) etc. I joined LOK for a couple of months. That was a bigger guild than DX ever was and I remember moving to the planet Lok to join their playercity. I do not remember the name of the city or where it was placed.

After a couple of months the expansion Jump To Lightspeed (JTL) came out and DX started to form again. Former players came back and I was asked to come back again. That is what I did. I thanked LOK for my time there and I quit the guild and rejoined DX. At that point between the time when DX wasn’t active and it being revived again, I decided to destroy Dar’Xun City. It had literally become a ghost town at that point. I had another character who had the politician profession and was mayor of the city. The upkeep of the city was becoming a burden and there was nothing going on there. The shuttle was even gone, but for some strange bug you could still travel to the city using the shuttle from other locations, but you couldn’t leave the city again using the shuttle. I think, it was a bug that was never actually fixed. Eventually I destroyed the city and nature took over the area such as creatures came into the city. Creatures didn’t spawn in player cities. The guild decided to move to Mos Ari. I think they did the move because lots of old former guildmembers were there. There was also a huge influx of new members from the city because L’A’W had eventually disbanded from what I remember. Dune Sea Warriors wasn’t active anymore at that time. I don’t remember what happened to them. This part of the game were really exciting. We were really coming into the game, having fun and it was a blast.

Another huge impact on SWG was the release of World of Warcraft, where players decided to switch to that game instead. This also meant that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) changed the game immensely. They first released the Combat Upgrade (CU) and then later they released New Game Enhancements (NGE) - both were received badly by the veteran community. The Combat Upgrade was acceptable but still a bit frustrating, and it wasn’t as bad as NGE. For new players it was very nice to be able to start as a jedi in NGE. Back in the old days grinding towards jedi was a task only doable for the hardcore of the hardcore of the players. People quit the game in droves. For me NGE did not feel right. It was not the same game anymore after that. I decided to quit the game. I remember I put almost all my money into maintenance of my two houses. I did that because maybe I would come back again. My first house was placed on Tatooine in what was Dar’Xun City. My other house was on Dantooine beside a lake. I called my house ‘Farview’ and outside just by the lake there was a tree. I went beside it and I signed off. I never logged on again. I believe this was in late 2005.

So that was it. This is my story of the game I played. This is what happened to me and the experiences that I had. I do have some regrets - I never got to know my guildmates outside of SWG. We did have a forum but it was rarely used. I never got their info like email addresses or instant messaging profiles (AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc). Sometimes I wonder what has happened to them.

People signed off and never came back again. One by one they disappeared and so did I.