SW Galaxies gets major revamp

By George Kotsiofides Published 4 November, 2005

Cue 'tremor in the Force' gag.

LucasArts producer Julio Torres has announced a massive and major revamp to its MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies - just two days after the official release of its third expansion, Trials of Obi-Wan.

Rather than the 30-odd professions the game started with, SWG will now feature a rather more bijou selection of nine ‘iconic’ professions – Force Wielder, Commando, Officer, Bounty Hunter, Entertainer, Medic, Smuggler, Spy and Trader.

Players will not be able to change their profession once it is chosen, which inevitably will lead to the death of the hybrid character templates that helped make SWG a unique experience for many.

The revamp, which was previously unannounced but goes live in just over two weeks, aims to simplify proceedings and retain new players put off by the complexity of the current skill system. It also aims to make combat a lot faster and ‘Star Wars’ like, with a new ‘twitch’ based system being implemented.

Levelling up is also claimed to be faster with XP gained through defeating enemies and completing quests.

The new system has been developed, apparently, thanks to player feedback and focus groups though sifting through the hundreds of shocked and stunned posts on the SWG forums would lead you to believe the players have been taken completely by surprise.

Most are worried about their professions being ‘deleted’. Additionally, Jedi characters are crying that new players can start off as light saber wielders from day one, while Bounty Hunters can now only hunt NPCs.

Others offer a cynical view over the timing of the announcement, claiming that most veteran players would not have bought the TOW expansion if they’d know this change was coming.

It’s certainly a bold move by LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment. Only time will tell if it saves the game or finally kills it.

Picture of George.

About George Kotsiofides

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Comments (7) Latest comment 6 years ago

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  • MrAtheist #1 6 years ago

    Bold move, if this doesnt work then its turn the lights out time.

    Sucks for the hardcore playerbase who toughed out all the crap and broken promises from the devs. Unless the coding of the game was outsourced to a bunch of magic pixies, it means the SWG dev team have spent the last year coding this instead of, like, fixing the actual game people were paying $15 a month for. :)

  • Macross #2 6 years ago

    Well from the point of view of someone who left SWG about a year and a half ago, I reckon that they are being cheap ass money grubbing bastards as far as business strategy goes...

    BUT

    What I've read of these changes so far sounds pretty interesting, I might be tempted to give it a try again for a month or to, I miss flying my TIE fighter too, somthing that my brief stint in WoW never really catered to.

  • RandolphScott #3 6 years ago

    What the hell does "bijou" mean?

  • ecureuil #4 6 years ago

    I heard that Donald Faison plays SWG..

  • TheDifficult3rdAlbum #5 6 years ago

    bijou - smaller, more refined - A bit like how my crap one bedroom square box overpriced flat in London was described by the estate agent as typifying "bijou living".

  • AOFanboi #6 6 years ago

    SW:G didn't start out with "professions" as much as "skill packets". You could mix and match freely as long as you had enough skill points and gained enough experience.

    The "professions" came in with the relatively recent Combat Upgrade.

    This change will be very interesting, though Neocron already mixed sci-fi + twitch MMORPG combat without too much success outside of its native Germany.

  • vane101 #7 6 years ago


    The article was fine but the final sentence is a nonsense. The game is nowhere near dead so how can it be finally killed off? Sounds like the rubbish talk from the game's critics.
    Edited by 1 at 10/11/05 @ 13:03