Star Wars Galaxies: vacant houses to be crushed by empire

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Apr 23rd 2007 at 9:59PM }

If you've been eking out a virtual existence in Star Wars Galaxies, the 2003 Sony MMORPG which thrives just as much on self-destruction as it does on landspeeders and lightsabers, you may wish to check in on your neglected home away from home. If your account is found to have been inactive from 17 April 2006, any of the houses, factories, player associations or harvesters to your name will be scheduled for digital demolition. If you built it, they will come on June 5th to wreck it.

Unfortunately, the Empire is not interested in doubling their efforts to wipe out the last remaining signs of civilization (read: active players). Instead, they'll split the work with you and dole out points, badges and all manner of in-game items in return. Once the vacant buildings have been reduced to nothing, Sony Online Entertainment will have successfully transformed the world into a barren wasteland with the aid of their own subscribers. Some believe that's what they've been doing since the game launched.

[Via Opposable Thumbs]

Tags: MMO, MMORPG, Sony, Sony Online Entertainment, SonyOnlineEntertainment, Star Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, StarWars, StarWarsGalaxies, World of Warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, WoW

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dr. John A. Vengeance @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:07PM

Poor SWG. It should've been the greatest MMO ever, but instead, it ended up being a huge joke.

Trekkervger @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:09PM

They can have my old house, burn it down for all I care, let the WoW kiddies dance around it as it gets destroyed. They're not going to scare me into resubscribing to that horrible piece of junk they laughingly call New Game "Enhancements."

Slaziman @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:12PM

Well, it's Sony, what did you expect?

Powerlord @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:20PM

Didn't they used to have a system in place that would automatically do this?

I suppose people could just put millions of credits into their houses, but that seems like a rather large waste of money, since, back when I actually played the game, only Guild Halls could have that money taken back out.

Gavin @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:34PM

I bought SWG shortly after launch, and it was like paying to be in a Beta testing event. There was never anyone on when I played and combat took for-fucking-ever. I didn't stick with it, needless to say, but did retry it when the redid the combat systems and whatnot. It still didn't appeal to me much.

Whirlo @ Apr 23rd 2007 10:58PM

I'd feel perfectly fine with it. So long as the space was used for something usefull, like, say, a bypass. You've got to build bypasses.

Steve Shickles @ Apr 23rd 2007 11:00PM

Interesting...

jamie @ Apr 24th 2007 1:12AM

@1, you are completely correct. This game was freakin awesome at launch, then they ran it into the ground. Was for a while, but could've been the best MMORPG ever.

Anonymous @ Apr 24th 2007 1:39AM

This is just a marketing push. They used to do this all the time on a game called Nexus:TK. The game has been going for 7ish years, and they know that most people left (The company that owns it ran it into the ground aswell, and then that company got bought out, and the new company continues to run it further into the muck) so every 6 months or so they have a "Purge" where if you don't pay 10 bucks to re-up your account, they delete it. It's a marketing ploy more than anything, and it's my estimate that they make most of their yearly earnings off of it. It's scummy, but companies will do anything for a dollar (Like make you think it's some sort of hassle to store your character info *a whopping 1mb probably* on their servers)

Cabcru @ Apr 24th 2007 6:34AM

So those endless stretches of abandoned buildings surrounding the cities that used to give you the impression that people were still playing are going to be turned back into endless stretches of dull, featureless landscape, occasionally dotted with the houses of the odd insane SW fanboy?

It's still hard to fathom how you could take one of the most popular film series in the world and screw it up like the did with SWG. It started at 'crap' and went downhill from there.

Todd @ Apr 24th 2007 9:43AM

This game had promise. I still think the developers should have killed the game and rebuilt from the ground up, using World of Warcraft as a model.

Lemming81 @ Apr 24th 2007 10:32AM

Um for the record, the SWG forums have been alive with players complaining for the last year or so that they can't put down new houses or rearrange their cities properly because off all the abandonded structures. That's the reason for the purge. Not a marketting ploy, not to close up the game or any other stupid rumour. It's to satisfy the current playerbase but getting rid of the ones that no longer play.

I haven't played the game in over a year (moved to WoW) and I know that. So maybe do some real reasearch before jumping on the hate-wagon.

Oh and by-the-by: Alot of players *want* those 'featureless landscapes' back. Tatooine is a desert planet remember? Not a fucking suburb.

SWGod @ Apr 24th 2007 11:08AM

SWG is thriving, the game is better than ever. There are so many people playing that the game is getting ready to expand. There is not enough room for new houses and the millions of happy players who play each day can't find a spot to place a house so the developers are allowing us to remove old houses from accounts that are canceled.

Every time I play I have a hard time moving around because there are so many players the server lags.

If you used to play but are coming back and can't find anyone its because they added some features to the game. Most players use a skill that allows us to be invisible. You won't see any players, but we are all there talking in group chat. There are bajillions of invisible players walking around. chatting in private conversations.

Only the newbs play visibly.

Cedhed @ Apr 24th 2007 11:15AM

Basically they have been letting houses sit since the game launced, so there are a lot of abandoned houses dotting the landscape But these still count as citizens if they are in a city. These prevent current living player cities from increasing in size or gaining shuttle ports and the like.

All they're doing is removing a lot (but not nearly enough) of those houses to clear the landscape and let the younger cities have a crack at it.

The next thing they need to do is consolidate their servers, 25 is too many for their current player base. 5 would be more reasonable, and the world would feel much more populated.

The new dev team are actually starting to right some of the wrongs perpetrated by the NGE and things are starting to come back to life. They still have a long way to go. But it is getting better.

Crono @ Apr 24th 2007 2:33PM

"Every time I play I have a hard time moving around because there are so many players the server lags."

No, you have trouble moving around because their server software sucks so if there's more than 3 people in one spot it starts lagging.

WoW used to have this trouble. Apparently Blizzard is better at doing online with their first MMO ever than SOE is with their 3rd or 4th.

Almack64 @ Apr 24th 2007 2:53PM

But Crono if it wasn't for all those invisible people I would know if 3 people were standing in the same spot.

The truth is you are COMPLETELY WRONG and full of it. You have know idea what you are talking about.

The reason why WoW doesn't have trouble any more is because they banned all the invisible player.

Crono @ Apr 24th 2007 4:27PM

Wait wait, let me get this strait:

You're the guy talking about invisible players and I"m the one who's loco?

I know full well what I'm talking about because I own the game. Its servers suck. There's tons of lag, and collision detection is bogus.

Galaxies sucks. Period. There's a reason why WoW is wiping the floor with it and every other MMO on the planet right now.

Cabcru @ Apr 24th 2007 10:11PM

"Tatooine is a desert planet remember? Not a fucking suburb."

And who could we possibly blame for that colossal clusterfuck of short-sighted design? Oh yeah, the devs. Like I said - started shit, went downhill.

Lemming @ Apr 25th 2007 6:33AM

"And who could we possibly blame for that colossal clusterfuck of short-sighted design? Oh yeah, the devs. Like I said - started shit, went downhill."

Specifically, you can blame Raph Koster actually. It was his design philosphy. The three or four dev teams they've had since have been trying to repair the fuck up HE caused. Bare that in mind if you happen to be one of those morons who thinks Raph = MMO God.

Like I said, I left SWG for WoW a few months ago because the game, to me, is a mess. But I don't agree with making up shit like this article clearly is. The housing purge is at player's request only. The devs have been saying no to the request for the last year or two. Now, they've come around.

Coyote @ Apr 27th 2007 11:01AM

I have no idea about any of this and I can still tell that "invisible players" bit was a joke. But if its not then this game is even worse off than I suspected...
And honestly a lot of sub games do this, as well they should, if you don't pay for a year or more then by all means delete the character and all its worldly possessions (the players either dead or found something better to do with their time IRL).

PyscoJuggalo @ Apr 25th 2007 2:37PM

I paly WoW, WoW is WoW and r00l5! WoW is like McDonalds the best food eva, 1 billion served baby! Old SWG sucked, because WoW r00l5! EQ 1 r00l5 because it is a clone of WoW, but EQ is too hard. But the EQ l007 grind is just like WoW's l007 grind and R00l5!

Now that we are past the WoW retardation of MMORPG design. SWG was a great game, but they did not stick with their vision. Instead they moved Koster off of the game and the game went visionless for a year and a half.

During that time the game stagnated and people started leaving. Then they changed visions and lost a hell of a lot of people. Then they changed visions again (the New Gaming Enhancements) and lost the rest of their players.

SOE/LA screwed up SWG, they dropped the ball on an MMORPG that should be one of the top 5 MMORPGs out there.

Scott A. @ May 29th 2007 4:55AM

I play this game, i've been with it since the beginning, i'll admit, sony fucked up big time with NGE and CU and all that. It's actually becoming a better game than it has been in a long time, with beast master in, it actually takes skill to get creatures, the combat is....meh, i'm seeing more elders than ever before right now, and so many people are returning its amazing. SOE could really use something to fix this game up, im not saying its a great game, its far from it, its mediocre at best, but sony is starting to realize what their consumers want, instead of what sony THINKS they want.

Alexander @ May 29th 2007 1:54PM

I played shortly after launch. I enjoyed what the game should have been. Unfortunately, it was--by all means-- a beta version. Full of bugs. School started and I stopped playing until break. The game was still full of bugs. I decided to start again last summer to find that the game had it's soul removed and there were more bugs with the new system--which wasn't very good, just a bad WoW clone. I stopped playing again.

I started again last week hoping that by some miracle the game wouldn't suck. There really are less bugs and some things are smoother. The combat system has been updated. There are still no people and the game lacks the depth of the originally planned class system.

It's good the unused buildings are being removed. There are too many of them. Of course that's because no one is playing. The game is, and will probably always be, a monumental failure.

So sad....