Reviewed by: Ebow
Developer: SOE
Publisher: SOE

Apologies for eating while I write this, there's a humble pie to be eaten and I better eat it while it's still warm.

My original review of SWG can be found here, and was a glorious mix of fanboy/new player naivety.

My subsequent rant about why I left the game can be found here, and now, looking back on it having returned to the game and played from a different point of view, was entirely wrong, though right for me at the time.

So, why have I gone back and why can't I drag myself away?

The main reason for returning is the game now has vehicles, and player mounts. The vehicles include speeder bikes and land speeders, and a lot of the pets within the game are now mountable, including the Tauntaun-clone Cu Pa. As a player these additions are a Very Good Thing, as running around doing missions is a thing of the past.

My new character joined the game on a Saturday. Having located a vehicle vendor in a Player City by Bestine on Tatooine and seen that I needed 10000 creds to buy a landspeeder, I started doing destroy missions, picking up a couple in the same direction at a go. By Monday I had enough for a landspeeder. By mid-week I had enough cash for a speeder bike, and by the following weekend I had one o them nice Swoop bikes that Anakin used in Attack of the Clones on his way to expressing his love for the Tusken Raiders.

This immediately made the game more of a game and less of a chore. No longer do you spend hours looking at the (admittedly pretty) terrain as you jog thousands of metres to blow something up.

Another revelation has been locating where the majority of players are, and what they're doing there. Previously I'd spent all my time on Naboo or Tatooine, where a few people were (Tat much more than Naboo). A trip to Coronet on Corellia and OMFG frame rate down to 3 FPS, mainly due to the hundreds of players outside the starport.

Team play had been found.

"Looking for a naff hunt" was what most people were saying, which understandably made me a) giggle, and b) wonder why people were looking for a hunt that wasn't very good. A few minutes watching what's going on (watching what people are doing is massively underrated as a method of learning, IMHO) and I figure out the "naffs" people are talking about are in fact Sharnaffs, a large beastie indigenous to Corellia, and an XP and cash payment mission dream. I join one of the hunting groups and within an hour have made 25K. Woohoo!!!

Having found an easy and enjoyable way to make money and play with other people, choices needed to be made about which professions to follow. PReviously on Naboo I'd gone with Scout and Artisan, the latter being the dung collectors that certain Alfies here had been so kind to mention. Given that I was making a large amount of weapon and combat XP on the naff hunts, I decided to stick with Marksman as a first profession, getting pistol, carbine and rifle skills. Many more naff hunts followed (and a few extreme Rancor hunts on the dark planet Dathomir), and the skill tree soon filled up.

Wanting to make some money while not playing, I took a deep breath and looked at the Artisan profession again. I had enough cash from the hunts to buy harvesters to start with (instead of grinding to make my own as I did before), and with these I've set up a number of wind farms (to collect power for resource harvesters), and resource harvesters (to collect minerals etc). With these minerals I'm able to craft items, normally while waiting for hunt group members to find missions, or on the way to missions, and have got a long way through the Artisan profession, as well as making cash selling my stuff (and selling Wind power).

The hunt missions normally needed one thing more than anything else: a medic. Wanting to assist my fellow player I started working through the Medic profession, which absolutely has to be the easiest to get to Master. Hunts give you a lot of XP if you just heal people, and you can heal entertainers in cantinas for more XP. I already had a load of resources and good crafting tools so was able to work through the "make medical items" tree of the Medic profession, which was the slowest to work through.

Where has all this work left me? As a happy SWG player. The profession choices have given me a lot to do in the game each and every time I play, and I've met a lot of cool people along the way. The hunts have been great fun, and a good source of XP, cash and contacts. Spending more time talking to people in cantinas, outside starports and while waiting for shuttles has given the game an almost IRC level of humour for me, as well as enabled me to pick up some great hints and tips from more experienced players. Moving quickly through professions has meant I've thought nothing about selling my 10K land speeder to a guy who'd been in the game for just 5 minutes for only 200 credits - hey, he needs it more than me, he asked, and it's what makes the game what it is.

There are still a few buggy niggles with the game. XP levels often get stuck, so while you are increasing them they don't appear to be going up. Logging off and on resolves this, but it would be nice to be fixed. The markets at Coronet are slower than a very slow thing, and this is very annoying - often it's quicker to go to Naboo, buy things at Coronet, then go back to Coronet and pick them up. And I haven't quite figured out why my harvesters sometimes dump all their resources if I forget to pick them up (though there's probably a forum post somewhere explaining why this happens).

The official forums have been a great source of knowledge, as well as articles on the SWG fan sites - these are out-of-game resources I didn't use last time, and using them now has definitely made the game more fun.

The story arc in game has moved on, and currently we're up to the Droid Invasion. Although I haven't witnessed any of the scripted events, the official forums have tales of Droidekas appearing in Coronet and just blasting the crap out of everyone, forcing those present to work together to wipe them out, all of them. This kind of event gives a huge dollop of Star Wars flavour, and I look forward to more of them. A recent patch has added a starship based mission (the Corellian Corvette mission, instanced as well, meaning each group that does it is the only group doing it when they arrive on the ship - no chance of finding someone else stealing your objectives, and another worthy addition, with more promised) that I'm going to have a go at as soon as I can set aside a number of hours. Still haven't seen a Jedi for myself, and not really too bothered that I haven't. People talk about them while waiting for starships between planets, and this has been a good example of how Jedi are perceived in some of the films - mysterious figures that people have heard about but not seen.

Roleplaying in the game has been discussed on a number of occassions, with entire Player Cities geared up to pure role playing, with created roleplay missions acted out by everyone. This is an aspect of the game that I didn't come across previously, but is appealing and something I'll be looking at once I've got Novice Commando and can use my flamethrower ;)

In summary, giving the game a second chance has allowed me the space and time to see the game for how the devs intended it, and full credit to them for the ongoing work. They have a huge creation on their hands, and hundreds of thousands of players wanting more more more. With the Space Expansion due later this year, things can only get better.

Presentation	9
Amazing. Excellent view distance and graphic options keeps the game running smoothly in all environments. The vehicles and mounts look great.
Gameplay	9
There may be a distinct lack of Jedi, but you know you CAN play Star Wars without waving colored swords around and going vwoom vwoom. Understanding what to do and where to do it can greatly improve your enjoyment of the game.
Value	9
The 16 bucks a month subscription fee is nothing when you think the game is constantly growing.
Benchmark	0
Still not played any other MMORPGs, and probably won't until they pry SWG out of my cold RSI inflicted hands...
Score	9
The vehicles and mounts have made the game almost perfect. Expect a 10 in this box when the space expansion arrives. Hopefully...