The Great Holocron Hunt

I wrote this several months ago when I first heard about the cancellation of the MMOG (Massively Multi-player Online Game) - Star Wars Galaxies.  At the time I thought about doing a larger work on my expieriences with the game.  I started to write this article but did not get much further than this. Please enjoy and keep in mind that the statements expressed here are my opinions only.

Around Christmas of 2003, just six months into the life of Star Wars Galaxies, changes began to take place within the game that would foreshadow some of the many things to come and the foundation was laid for what would have drastic consequences for the game and its community of players.

The development team for SWG decided that for the first Christmas celebrated after the opening of the game they would give a gifts to the players in the form of an in-game package containing two items.  At the time they surly thought that it would be a good gesture towards the many players that supported the game and had dealt with the many bugs that the game seemed to have and the idea to help the players out by giving a free clue towards the quest to unlock the ever elusive Jedi character slot - seemed like a good one at the time.

Upon first log-in after the game update, everyone would see a message telling them that package was placed in the main inventory for their character.  This package would contain gifts for their character.  There were two item sin the package; a holocron and a piece of art.  Just like everyone else that Christmas I excitedly logged in and collected the items given to me, not realizing just how profound a change this was going to usher in to the game.

When I opened the package it turns out that my excitement quickly changed to disappointment and I was less than thrilled when the message that displayed told me that my character needed to master the Droid Engineer profession.  My disappointment coming because this seemed to be a nearly impossible task and my heart sank because I had been told that this profession would take a lot of time, in-game resources and credits - none of which I had much of.  I had hoped that my message would tell me that I needed to master a combat class, one I was already working on or one that would take time but not the in-game financial resources that a crafting profession would require.  I Knew full well that I would eventually receive a hint telling me that I needed to master one, or more, of the many crafting resource intensive professions in the game but it did not alleviate the feeling that I was like a runner in a race stumbles out of the blocks and are never quite able to make up for the misstep.

I was a part of a small guild, only four or five of us, and we defiantly did not have the resources to pool together to be able to help each of us to grind out professions.  Most of us were casual players, only able devote a couple of hours at a time to this effort, playing during the evenings during the week and on weekends when everyone.  When we were able to play it seemed that many of the popular zones would be full, and being able to quickly collect any of the intended loot became very time consuming and difficult.  Due to these factors, I put opening my slot on the back burner and over the course of the next year I played the game never really progressing beyond my chosen professions, which I really did enjoy playing. Instead I would spend time here and there helping, directly and indirectly, our guild leader and friend Clint work to open his accounts’ slot.  I made the choice not to make opening my own slot right away a priority because I always thought that eventually it would happen, once I had some more help from friends whom I had helped and Star Wars Galaxies is an MMOG (Massively Multi-player Online Game) after all and is supposed to be a persistent world where a player could expect stability for the game itself even if one could not expect everything IN the game itself the stay the same.  The game was not supposed to change fundamentally too much except for the addition of new content and bug fixes.  I figured that I would have plenty of time to devote to my turn once my friends had opened their extra slots.  I had no reason to believe any differently since SOE was also running EverQuest and it had been online for four years at that point.  As I look back now at the last eight years, I was clearly very much wrong.

Shortly after the Christmas gifts were unpacked I remember talking to my friends about how exciting it was to get something in the game free that had in game value to each person playing, because of how difficult and time consuming resource and credit gathering was and how much more difficult and rare it was to have a creature drop a holocron.  To get one for free appeared at the time to be a blessing and these gifts, by all accounts was viewed in a very positive light.  Surely there were those players that did not like it, but I didn’t know anyone personally who felt this way.  Most people like myself were pretty excited with the opportunity to get some help with the ultimate in-game quest; create a Jedi character, and then reach the level of Jedi Master.

When the game first launched there were some clues given to the player-base that indicated what the requirements were on how to open a second character slot for a Jedi class character, and by this time in game the only way known for sure that a player could unlock was to master five secret professions on their primary character.  There were rumors that a character also needed to collect certain point-of-interest badges, although I am not certain that this was ever true even today.  The professions a player needed to master were randomly chosen by the server at the time of character creation, and opening a holocron in-game would give the player a message about the “path” or professions, the character must become a master in to become a Jedi.  A player could not just get five holocrons and open them all up at once.  This had to be done one at a time, once the profession listed in the previous holocron had been mastered, and when players had holocrons you could always find their spares laying on the floor of their in-game house.  And this was seemingly to taunt those players who did not have them.  I always thought it was always fun to find a random house out in the middle of nowhere where the owner had done this and thought that it added to the excitement and mystery of the hunt.

A piece of art was the second item given for Christmas that year.  And this was clearly the least disruptive of the two.  This item was to be used to decorate the characters in-game house.  It had no special ability, did nothing to enhance the game, or do anything interesting or in the game except exist and look nice.  Almost immediately the bazaar terminals, used for in game commerce, became flooded with these and because there were several different designs and some were more popular than others, some people were interested in having one of each design.  This type of gift became a common type of thing the development team would give to the players to mark a special occasion or holiday.  Later on in the game players would receive paintings and hologram statues that were also for decoration.  Players for the most part enjoyed these types of gifts, because they did not change any of the games balance.

Looking back the Holocron gift was the first major disruption to the player-base and server economies in Star Wars Galaxies.  By making these gifts the developers, through lack of foresight or just not caring, caused massive changes to the way people played the game.  I can only guess that they must have been trying reward players for their loyalty in having to deal with so many bugs and to also encourage players to work towards this grand goal, which seemed to be what everyone was talking about.  These gifts were not locked to your character and you could trade them.  So they must have thought that some people would trade or sell theirs to make some money from those players who were already working actively towards this goal. As it turned out what actually happened was that many players whom were previously playing crafter and merchant classes abandoned these and started to profession grind like those players who were already playing combat classes, in the hope that they too would be amongst the first players on a given server to “unlock” a Jedi character.  This was most unfortunate for several reasons.

During the first two years of the games operation any player that wanted to have more than one character on a server would need to create a separate game account and to pay an additional $15 per month subscription fee.  At that time this practice by game developers was viewed as pretty common because most other MMOGs did something similar by restricting the number of characters a player could have on any given server.  This was done for several reasons, one of which was to attempt to keep players dependent on one another to accomplish much of the higher end game content. In hindsight, a lot of the problems caused this limitation along with the games internal focus on the holocron hunt could have been lessened and still allowed for many of player attempts to achieve this goal could have continued.  Had the developers allowed people to have more than one character on a server at the games launch, even just two, this could have helped maintain the delicate in-game economy that was already struggling to maintain itself.  A couple of years later this ability was added to the game that allowed players to be able to have up to two characters on a server per account.  Unless you were fortunate enough to have opened your second character slot prior to this change, these players ended up with three slots.  When World of Warcraft opened in November 2004 this game allowed its players to have up to eight characters on a server, the developers at Blizzard had clearly carefully watched SOE, and others in the MMOG genera, and had learned a lot from seeing some of the mistakes these companies made with their player-bases, and was very careful not to repeat some of the same mistakes.  Of course many people were in fact willing to pay for multiple accounts, but it was just too much for others and many of these players instead chose to change their crafting characters to combat classes and go after the ultimate in-game prize.  This should never have been a choice that the players of Star Wars Galaxies had to make and we were let down by the development team.

Star Wars Galaxies was originally billed as Experience the greatest Star Wars saga ever told - Yours, and for many players that meant that they were able to experience life in the world of Star Wars, where not everyone was interested shooting laser rifles and swinging lightsabers.  Many players initially choose to play farmers, merchants, entertainers and other non-combat oriented classes.  These players used their character to master these professions and they in-turn helped to create and sustain the in-game economy.  Items some of these players would craft were often times consumable items that they would turn around and sell, to other players who would use them up and since items would also decay with use, such as weapons and armor, there would be a constant demand for a lot of these different types of items.  The players in the course of using up weapons and armor and other consumable items would collect other items that they would turn around and sell to crafters that would then be able to make more new items, not all of which were combat oriented, but players would buy.  This practice combined with the diversity of products stabilized each server’s economy and this allowed a player to find and pay for items based on the quality and price, since there were so many good quality crafters.  There were many crafters that took lots of pride in the quality of their items and some even set up web sites, outside of the game to take orders and show off what they could construct.  Once players stopped crafting and started profession grinding, the prices on average items skyrocketed and quickly got out of hand.  When I first began to play I was able to purchase a stock laser carbine for about fifteen-thousand credits and over the next year the prices for this weapon had doubled or even quadrupled.

Players who were already playing combat characters began to see a big increase in competition for certain special items and zones where holocrons and other valuable items that players would collect and sell would drop off certain NPCs for them to collect.  Due to the increased demand for rare drops items, which at one time players used to turn around and sell to merchants, would instead delete these and not bother trying to sell them because of the time it would take.  Because these crafting resources were being wasted and not being made available to the crafters at a reasonable cost prevented this natural economic cycle from taking place.  Coupled with the idea that many of those players who were crafting consumable items were now playing combat characters themselves, and were no longer buying these items, to use caused the demand to go higher even though you had players that had the usable items.  If the resource item was not destroyed, inventory constraints, then these things would end up on the bazaar at highly inflated prices.  This practice had the effect of causing massive inflation with the player-based economies across every server and as the numbers of players choosing characters that were combat support rolls and the increase in heavy in combat focus rose, this only continued to make things worse.

Those players who did have quality crafters often took advantage of the lack of competition and in some cases raised their rates to near gouging levels.  Just like in real life economics where supply and demand are not in balance the game became harder than it had to be and enjoy for a time.  There were players who were still able to keep up with the rising costs for equipment, those were usually players that were a part of the same guild that these crafters were a part of and they would give steep discounts or even give these items away to their guild members, while on the other hand charge outrageous prices for everyone else, to make up for it.  I remember going to a merchant that made what I thought were some of the best pistols.  I had shopped at his place several times previously and had always had very pleasant experiences, but after the economy became out of balance, some of the weapons on his vendor were now priced at a million credits – this being a time when it took a week of playing typically to collect fifty-thousand credits, all the while taking decay damage to my existing weapons and armor.  This crafter was able to get other players to pay these prices, so good for him, but a great many casual players were instantly left being priced out of the ability to do business with him.

Most of early 2004 my friends and I spent making runs to the planet Dantooine in the hopes of gathering holocrons.  In the north eastern part of the map there was a cave were the drop rate on these was supposed to be a bit higher than almost every other place in game.  Naturally this is where everyone was who was working on the same thing we were.  When we would arrive at the cave entrance there would be a gathering of other groups and guilds that would line up and wait for the cave to re-spawn it inhabitants.  Quite often this would lead to some group or individual feeling that they had waited too long or just not respecting the order and this would lead to shouting matches and the inevitable my balls are bigger than yours conflicts.  Some players were very immature and it seemed obvious which ones were children who were used to getting their way in real life.  These players were not respected and usually their names would be passed around amongst groups as players that you did not want to allow to join your group.  Some groups ran into the problem where they allowed a player to join their group whom they did not know well and once the item that the group was looking for would drop that player would quickly grab the item and disband from the group and disappear.  This was fairly common practice by some players in the early days of the holocron hunt.

To Boldly Go Or Not To Go......

Star Trek Online launched on February 2nd, but I have had the opportunity to play since the open beta. My friend, Greg, wanted me to post something about what I thought about my experience so far with the game.

Star Trek Online will let you play as a number of Federation species (Human, Bolian, Trill, etc.) and at sixth level you unlock the ability to play a Klingon character. The game takes place thirty years after the events in the film, Star Trek: Nemesis. A Supernova destroyed the Romulan home world in this time, so they are a scattered people. The Klingons use this as an excuse to attack and take territory in the Romulan Empire and also draw the Federation into a renewed confrontation. As a side note - the Borg have returned and are assimilating parts of the galaxy as well. So what does all this mean? Simply put - war. The Alpha Quadrant is embroiled in conflict and not much else.

I started out by making my character with the Federation side. The character screen offers a robust and pretty decent set of choices to choose from to make a unique-looking character. It lets you choose multiple types of uniforms you can have/colors etc. The character creation screens in Star Trek Online are a lot like those found in many other common massively multi-player online games on the market today. The game does have a slider bar style of choosing the look for your characters that quickly reminded me of the Sims 2. By moving the sliders you can adjust anything from the characters height, weight, forehead, and many other physical features. I would say it probably does a slightly better job than average with the number of options for customization it presents. If you a special species (such as trill) you can even customize your "spots". Although I have not had a chance to try anything beyond Human, Klingon, and Trill, I am sure that the other races have similar options. The character editor also lets you adjust a characters stances. These are meant to reflect a characters overall "style" or "demeanor" as an outward reflection of their possible personality. So you can have a character who every time he or she stands still, hangs their body in a particular style. Out of the other games I have played I would give the character creation on this one 7.5 to 8 stars.

After you create your character - a process that takes about 15-20 minutes, depending on your eye for detail and desire for perfection, STO takes you through a tutorial-type mission that lasts about 30 minutes, if that. This is when you first get a look at the world graphics, sounds, etc. STO does a good job of presenting the Star Trek Universe visually. The colors are vibrant and backgrounds and scenery are really pretty good. When you think back to the panoramic views from Star Trek as characters gazed at those wonderful space scenes from the ships windows, Star Trek Online captured that. An example of this kind of detail is where in one mission you are required to beam two Borg drones into space. In the next room you enter if you look out the window, you see one of the Borg bodies you beamed into space float by the window. I thought that was a great touch as it provides a sense of cool dramatization that helps you feel like each scene was tied together. Another way the graphics helped you to feel like Star Trek is when you were fighting inside a ship, the bridges, corridors, and different ship sections all made you feel like you were on board that particular vessel. The phaser and disruptor blasts were very genuine looking down to the occasional humanoid vaporization's as well. A particular favorite of mine is when they put the name of your ship on the hull where you can see it. This was a nice little thing in my book. The tutorial plays on both ground and space, letting you get a feel for play in both.

Now that we are up to gameplay, this is where my opinions start to differ some to the negative. I have found that the space and ground combat actually becomes repetitive pretty fast. It looks good, plays pretty good, but there isn't much in the way of content. Once you play one space or ground battle, then you’ve played them all, as they are all pretty much exactly alike. The only thing that changes really is the enemy or the objective. I was hoping for more diplomatic missions, exploration, and looking into the human condition - for which Star Trek is known. Don't get me wrong, they do have some missions that are not combat, but it doesn't seem to be the case very often. There is no crafting system and the sandbox feel is really low. In an example of the latter, you can enter your ship’s Bridge…but that’s it - no Engineering, Holodeck, Mess Hall, Quarters, nothing. You can't even sit in the Captain's chair. Maybe I am being too nitpicky, but seriously, who hasn’t wanted to sit in the Captain’s chair?!

That said, Klingon combat feels a bit more like Star Trek. They are a warlike people, so combat and wars suit them as a race. In this respect, STO succeeds. It also offers content in a little bit more varied way as it is PVP. Don't get too excited yet though, while the battles are different as you face live opponents, the mechanics and over all outcomes of each are almost exactly the same. A good example of the repetitive space battle is when you enter combat with a ship, you essentially have a fairly limited options available to you. While the ships are upgradable, essentially you aren't doing anything more fun than flying in a circle around your enemy slamming buttons frantically trying to bypass your enemies shields before yours die. Although you do a get a few more options as you level in the kinds of weapons your ships have, its still the same basic strategy over and over. You enter battle, fly at your opponent, shoot like hell, and you or they die. Rinse, lather, and repeat. Occasionally you will get a mission where you just have to pick up an item and take it to someone or you rescue crew from a ship. Mostly though its combat. Now, a little about ground fighting and its inherent problems. Like in space, when you beam down to a planet, you find your enemy, track to their location, then you and your away team blast them and they blast you. First one who's shields drop usually loses. Rinse, lather, change a planet or to a different enemy, and repeat. I want to stress yet again that I have not played all that long, so maybe it gets more exciting and more like Star Trek later into playing. Basically, there are not a lot of variety of things to do.

Leveling is another thing on which I would like to comment. I do enjoy that STO's difficulty is not so hard that it removes the enjoyment; however it is almost too easy to level. An example of this ease is how quickly really you go up in levels. I have to wonder if as you kill one thing and your level jumps up quite a bit its because they know the combat is so repetitive that leveling is being thrown to you like a bone so that you won't recognize how bored you are. Unfortunately I noticed how bored I was and the bone did little for me. Klingon's pvp combat is a little more challenging because you have the human factor added into the mix. So it is naturally a bit harder than the Federation game just because that human unpredictability keeps your eyes spinning in entertained lustfulness for a few minutes longer than the other before boredom sneaks up and makes the kill. A bit more of a challenge would be good but don't get crazy in this area. The skill sets seem to be appropriate for the Star Trek world but I am not sure about the three starting professions. You may choose from Tactical, Science, or Engineering Officer. Quite frankly, the skill sets are redundant, as you can be either an Engineer or a Tactical Officer and the requirements are the same. Lame.

In conclusion, one of my biggest fears with STO is that it will not have longevity. I am already growing bored with it and it’s not even the first month yet. I hope that it will continue to get better and they work out more things and publish more updates, as I love the Star Trek universe. I rate it overall 5 out of 10 stars. If more playing changes my opinions on this game, I will put them in future updates. Thanks for reading. Erik to Enterprise.....one to beam up. Energize.

Erik Swanson is not affiliated with Cryptic. This article represents his opinions only.

Star Wars Galaxies and the EMU

I have played Star Wars Galaxies for most of the time since this game was released in June 2003.  I recently quit… again, vowing to never give Sony Online another penny of my hard earned money - I know, anyone who knows the history of this game and its tumultuous relationship between its development team and its players has heard that before, but this time I think it is different and this is why, at least for me.

Several years back, after the NGE (New Game Enhancements) took place I heard a rumor of some other "pissed off" fellow SWG players who made some noise about a project called the "SWGEmu" or “Star Wars Galaxies Emulator”, that would restore the game to the state it was before the infamous CU (Combat Upgrade) of May, 2005.  I remember looking into this at the time having heard great things about the project.  I went to the web page and started reading through the forums to glean as much information as I could.  I remember being really excited, but I could not get over how apparently rude the developers were to the very people who were on the forums asking basic questions.  I can understand getting annoyed with people asking the same “dumb” questions over and over and being too lazy to search the forums to find the place where that same question was asked 25 times already and answered it 24 times.  However, this complete contempt for fellow SWG fans really turned me off and I never went back... until this week. 

A good friend of mine always kept himself updated on the project always telling me about the progress being made and on other rumors that he heard about.  Another friend even told me that they were able to actually login and play.  Once again, memories of the forums rang loudly in my mind.  I was waiting for them to release the code for other people to set up servers of their own before I would get excited.  As I am not any kind of expert, on programming, but know enough to be dangerous, I always felt that without intimate knowledge of the base program that it would be difficult for other fans of this game, even those with programming backgrounds to simply step-in and reverse engineer the core game and to actually get it up and running.  I was wrong.

I have, as of tonight I can say that my patience has paid off and I have now been able to experience this for my-self first hand.  I was able to create an account, and after following some simple instructions, login.  I created a character and logged into their hosted server.  And, I have gotta tell you it was a sight for sore eyes.  The first time I tried walking up a hill, the first time the combat queue opened and the icons, with no colors.  It was beautiful and memorable!

After playing around with the settings and turning my graphics up I was able to enjoy the game graphically in a way I was never able to between 2003 and 2005.  With my quad core machine and nVidia 8800 Ultra video card, neither of which existed at the time, I was amazed at how good that game looked.  It took me a few minutes to get used to the movement controls but it didn’t take very long to get the hang of them.  I am really looking forward to playing the SWGEmu and ultimately SWG the way it was meant to be played.  I cant say that I will have a lot of time to dedicate to it but I had such fond memories of this version of the game and now realize how much I missed it.  The best part is that I don't have to give Sony Online a penny.  They got all the money they deserve from me over the last 6 years - and based on the last few days, they won't be getting any more anytime soon.

Just after logging off for the first time, I got an instant message from the friend who helped me get the game set up and his message was short and sweet.  He said, “Who says you can’t go home again.”   I completely agree.

Update on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 1:39PM by Erik

Hi all, I am Erik, (Disa St-Rrou's in SWG) and I wanted to follow with Greg's post in regards to the SWGEmu project. I have been playing this only a few days now but I have to tell you it is just like being back in the game as it was almost 5 years ago. I watched since 2005 and beyond as the NGE (New Game Experience) took over our beloved SWG and cut the heart out of it. Community and the unique style of the sandbox MMO is what made the game what it was, awesome. When the NGE arrived in November of 2005, it scraped all that away. The folks who decided to bring the game back to its former glory and mobilized a massive effort into building the emulation of the pre combat upgrade swg have the heart felt thanks of this gamer. I have played many of the current and past titles of a long list of MMO's and none have what pre-cu swg had to offer. I have had a chance to play the test server that was set up on the SWGEmu site and to create characters. After only a short time playing, I was hooked. I have since leveled up quite a bit in a couple different classes. I have spent many an hour now in the Mos Eisley Cantina, hobnobbing with swg veterans like myself. The most important thing I found was my love and enjoyment for the game again. If you are a star wars fan, I highly recommend checking it out and following the progress as it is a wonderful experience. I looked through the picture gallery that was posted on the site here by Greg also and it brought back many wonderful memories for me. I hope that again we will all have a chance to generate a bunch more memories that can be as equally good as the ones we have already had the pleasure of making. I will wrap up in saying that everyone should get the chance to go home again if they want to, and this homecoming has been super sweet. May the Force be with you all...