A short trip back to Naboo

Many ex-players of Star Wars Galaxies received e-mails inviting them to 10 free days back into the game, and so did I. The procedure is very painless, you simply reinstall, log in with your old username and password, patch, and play. No need to provide credit card details or anything. Of course SOE is hoping that at the end of these 10 free days you will resubscribe to their "improved" SWG, and in that case you will get another 10 free days added to the subscription period you paid for.

I hadn't played SWG since November of last year. But my avatar was still there, and playing him now might save him from being wiped in the announced character wipe. What wasn't there any more was my characters house. The annoying thing was that I had an in-game e-mail telling me that the house collapsed only 3 weeks ago, as I had put a lot of maintenance money into it. There go all of my collected rare armorcrafting resources.

And that lead me to think that SWG is one of the games where coming back to is difficult, if not impossible. A lot of the activities in SWG serve to build up something which isn't permanent, something you will lose if you have been gone for some time. Your friends are mostly gone, your customers have long forgotten you, your house crumbled, the resource collection which was far too big to store in your backback has disappeared. You aren't re-starting from total zero, but it isn't far off.

Over at Grimwell we often discuss a classification of MMORPGs into "games" and "worlds". And SWG is a typical example of a MMORPG which is very much a "world", but not so much a "game". Unfortunately getting back into a game is much easier than getting back into a world. A typical game heavy MMORPG like City of Heroes I could restart at any time with no problems, and not have lost much in comparison to the day I stopped. And I might well do that, for the City of Villains expansion. But as much as I think that the Jump to Lightspeed expansion is important for SWG, it will not lure me back into this world, because I simply don't want to start over building a house, collecting resources, and finding customers.

The important difference is that the "world" games often have a "grind to fun" concept. You repeatedly do an activity which is not fun, but you do it for the reward, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The "game" games concentrate on offering you immediate fun. That is easier to get back to, but less ideal for holding your long-term interest, as there is not so much of a final goal to strive towards.

I wonder if a game that does both is possible. World of Warcraft is certainly in the insta-fun category, giving you lots of options already in the low levels. But I haven't played it long enough to find out whether it also has "world" aspects, long-term development, a real reason for a mid-level player to want to reach the higher levels, instead of making a new character.

What I do know is that SWG still isn't much of a game, however wonderful you may find the world. The promised combat revamp has been postponed into 2005, so I don't really feel like hunting mobs under the old boring combat system. Most of my SWG time I spend searching for rare resources, but that is a project that takes months before it results in a high-quality composite armor. So in my 10 days I will probably just do a short sentimental journey, and then put the box back into the cupboard to collect more dust.
- posted by Tobold @ 1:16 PM Permanent Link