Tag Archives: Star Wars Galaxies

Blog: Game Tourist – 06/30/21

I remember back around 2004 or 2005 a friend of mine managed to get me into Star Wars Galaxies, an incredibly popular MMO at the time that ran from about 2003 to 2011. This game was significant to me both because it was one of the first real games that my new friends and I could bond over, but also because it was the first and last game that I can remember religiously playing. Star Wars Galaxies was a daily event for us and was often times our congregation point as friends. Nowadays I see people playing things like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, League of Legends and Destiny 2, all of which have these thriving communities around them that kind of leave me feeling wistful when I think about them even though I know I could never engage with games like that ever again.

We’ve seen a ton of games-as-service games release over the past few years, often boasting these long roadmaps of events, updates and content drops, all in service of cultivating a consistent and engaged player base. Some these games land while most of them do not, but regardless of how they perform I always feel that despite how alluring one of these games might be, I know that I’m no longer the kind of person who will play a singular game for years on end. Some people are just able to pick a handful of games to play throughout any given year and just stick with them until something else comes along, but for better or worse, I am not one of them.

*What’s even happening in this Final Fantasy XIV screenshot? I don’t know, but it looks pretty fun.*

I consider myself more of a video game tourist that drops by these video game landmarks, taking some photos, seeing the attractions, buying a souvenir and then moseying onward to the next thing. I don’t consider this to be a negative thing, but it does lead to a lot of instances of me not being able to engage with these overwhelmingly popular products in ways that others can. For instance, The Elder Scrolls Online looks pretty cool to me, but I know that I won’t stick with it long enough to see all of the rad new shit they’ve added to the game over the years. Sure the expansions seem really well done and positively received, but there’s no way my enthusiasm will propel me through the base game and onto an expansion.

Clearly I’m just a broken individual who can’t enjoy things, because just by looking at the Steam concurrent charts you can see that the top performers are by and large older games that have endured for years thanks to their thriving and possibly toxic communities. There isn’t one game in the top 10 of this chart that came out this century. The most recent game in that selection is 2019’s Apex Legends, which Steam lists as a 2020 release because that’s when it came to Steam itself. Yet here I am unable to fathom playing any of the games on that list that weren’t released in 2021 for some reason, one of which might be my weird desire to stay up to date on video games for the purpose of having things to write about on this site.

Maybe this is all just a big case of “the grass is always greener,” and I’m just looking at these games and manufacturing a feeling of longing, or maybe it’d just nice to be a part of a community once more especially after the forced isolation of 2020. Ultimately I’d like to be able to find games I can consistently resonate with that aren’t annualized sports franchises, but getting into a game like that seems like a lot of effort. Maybe the real thing that’s happening is that I’ve gotten so lazy that the idea of starting a new game is just something I don’t have the energy for anymore. Now that I say that out loud, I think I need to change some stuff in my life.

Blog: You Can’t Go Home Again – 08/28/19

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It would be generous to say that I have any experience with World of Warcraft considering I’ve only played it for about a week almost a decade ago. But while the fervor around the 15 year-old game has waned in popularity from time to time, it hasn’t stopped people from losing their minds over the release of World of Warcraft Classic.

From the time when WoW Classic was announced to its recent release, I’ve gone through varying degrees of confusion about the desire people have to jump back into a game from 2004, with all of its quirks and hiccups intact. But now, days after it’s dropped, I think I get it.

Like I said, I have basically no experience with WoW Classic nor any desire to get in there and see what all the fuss is about. I just figure that considering most of my friends have fallen prey to its wiles, I should at least pay some attention to the arc of this whole experience and try to get some insight into people’s excitement.

I asked some of my friends if they were genuinely excited to play WoW Classic as a game, or if they were actually just trying to chase those feelings and memories associated with it. Most of them agreed that the latter was the primary driving force for them, which is evidenced by the fact that suddenly, people I haven’t spoken to in over a decade started popping up and coming together to plan out their game nights. It’s kind of incredible when you think about it. It’s really the only game I can think of that has the cultural cache to become the equivalent of a high school reunion.

I was in high school when World of Warcraft burst onto the scene, taking the world by storm. At the time, the only MMO I was playing was Star Wars Galaxies, and that was purely motivated by my love of the movies along with a dash of peer pressure. I enjoyed playing it with those people at that moment in time, but if it was suddenly announced that Star Wars Galaxies was getting a faithful re-release that encapsulated everything about the game at that time, I don’t think I would care that much.

I know that’s just me though, as evidenced by the mass of players bombarding the WoW Classic servers. I’m not writing this with the intention of raining on the parade of anybody who is having a great time with the game. Chase your bliss. But for me, the way I felt when I played games with other people back then, are relegated to pleasant memories now. Sure I miss the carefree days where I could play games online with my friends till 3 in the morning, but those days are gone, and that’s okay. I did that when I had the time to do it, and I don’t regret it.

If you’re playing WoW Classic, I hope you’re enjoying it. It has to be this time capsule of a game that evokes so many memories, and that’s wonderful. A similar situation is soon to crop up with me and the Halo games when they start getting released on PC sometime this year. Yeah, it’s going to be fun to dive back into those games and play them again, but I know I’m not going to stick with them the way I did when they initially released. I must have over a thousand hours in Halo 2 alone, but when it drops on PC, I know I’m never going to come close to even a tenth of that.

My point is that these games are like looking through a photo album or something. You get that burst of positivity and warmth while the memories flood back in, and then you turn the page and keep going. I’m glad that Blizzard released WoW Classic, allowing so many people to come and visit Azeroth in just the way they remember it, but it’s never going to feel the same as the first time you had to kill 100 boars in hopes of getting 10 tusks.

Blog: War Stories – 03/27/18

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There are some people in your life whose mere presence brings you back to a time and place you though you forgot. I was lucky enough to have an old friend reach out to me recently. They were such a presence in my early twenties and I’d basically forgotten how influential they were in my life. It’s important not to dwell on the past, but taking a pit stop there can be a nice reminder of where you’ve been and how those experiences and people shape where you’re heading.

Just talking to my friend reminded me of how after long days of class or work, I could come home, fire up my Xbox 360 and be greeted by my friends who were always ready to play something. In this case it was Battlefield 3. It was almost a nightly tradition in our circle. I remember piloting a helicopter and flying my friends around while they manned the turrets. I’d get them in a great position and they’d just level the ground below us. Scorched earth was definitely our policy and we were good at it.

Or maybe we weren’t. For every successful run we had, I can remember several instances of me crashing our copter into some trees, or getting sniped in the face from what could only be described as a “murder ghost” who definitely existed and was invisible and cheating and I hated them.

The point I’m making here is that I can track certain times of my life via what games I was playing and with whom. Nowadays you can see where I’m at by just watching us stream Overwatch or PUBG or whatever else, but it wasn’t always like that. I played Battlefield with one group of friends, Call of Duty with another group who was different from my friends who I played Halo 2 with, who were definitely different from the people I played Star Wars Galaxies with.

I think of what games I used to play and immediately can remember who I was friends with at the time. Being able to track my life in that way is something I uniquely share with games. Sure I’ve seen movies or concerts with different people in my life, but those are just a few hours at a time. Whereas I’ve played games with various people for dozens upon dozens of hours over long stretches of time. That to me is special in its own right and is a feeling that isn’t easily replicated by anything else.

I guess that’s a big part of the emotional attachment I have to certain games and the gaming industry in general. Like many people, I grew up with this stuff, formed bonds with people around them and even made some friendships that still persist to this day. Hell, most of the people in our videos are people I’ve known for over a decade and I can tell you exactly which games we played together when we first started being friends, and that’s pretty darn cool if you ask me.