In 'Galaxies' Far, Far Away...

There Is Discontent, Evolution And Outrage In Star Wars Galaxies

(CBS) 

"LEC [LucasArts Entertainment Company] handles the marketing for SWG (in the past, Sony Online Entertainment has served primarily in a developer capacity, something that's changed a bit in the last year), so they take the lead on activities like research. However, the surveys were developed jointly between the two companies," Chris Kramer, Director of Corporate Communications for SOE, told me via e-mail.

Sony Online Entertainment never ran its own surveys for the NGE.

Enter Jason Gould, who describes himself as an avid supporter of the original concept in which players were given the tools to create their own world. Gould is one of the administrators of SWG Refugees, a kind of user-created cafe for disenfranchised Galaxies players. He said he was "part of the original 'Combat Upgrade sandbox testers' who in the last months of 2004 and early months of 2005 were told we would be helping to test the new combat upgrade to come."

"All information we were originally told was scrapped and a new system that nobody had asked for and which was obviously not in development for the last year was thrust on the game, which began the alienation of the non-combat players."

To Sony Online Entertainment's credit, the most recent software patch, called "Publish 27," is considered to be a step in the right direction. It adds new content and fixes some of the previous bugs. There are, unfortunately, new bugs; but, the SWG development team seems to have started working on the problems in the game. The community has some proof that they are being heard.

One poster said simply, "Thank you for Publish 27!" Another Publish is on the way.

As it happens, each patch to the game that SOE releases seems to be something of a small step towards making Star Wars Galaxies similar to its pre-NGE state.

SOE knows that they’ve dug themselves into a hole. They're trying to get out.

But the question remains: Is it too little, too late?

It is Gould who writes this possible epitaph in his own words: "SWG is a story rife with broken promise after broken promise, nothing was ever finished or polished, corporate greed and yearn for making current quarter profits pushed development, instead of meeting the real needs and wants of the players."