Almost ten years after the cantinas closed and the landspeeders came to a halt, developers finally gave fans some closure on what happened to Star Wars Galaxies, the critically acclaimed MMORPG - published by LucasArts and developed by Sony - that ran from 2003 until 2011.
Creative director Raph Koster and executive producer Richard Vogel recently discussed the demise of the game during The Game Developers Conference. As stated in the opening crawl, "This is the story of the worst game to become a classic, and of the most infamous patch in videogame history."
The game was well-known, and not necessarily for the game itself, but more so for how fans played it. Although some of the most popular characters in the Star Wars franchise are the Jedi, Star Wars Galaxies did not want players to be able to unlock Jedi easily. The game was created in a way where a random series of activities and skills had to be obtained in order to unleash the Force, however, players were not told what. This caused more and more people to play as other characters, including entertainers, medics, traders and spies. It also drove gameplay to be more focused on worldbuilding, crafting and running shops, rather than completing quests. While this may seem like a bad thing, it was actually one of the most beloved things about the game.
However, Koster and Vogel said that those in charge of marketing wanted more of the Force, and they were “...told by marketing, 'You know what, to do a new marketing push we need Jedi in the game. We want Jedi by Christmas.'” A patch was added, which was a holocron - an ancient storage device used by Jedi and Sith - that told players how to unlock their Force powers. The game seemingly went downhill after that, as the fun elements of the game seemed to be leaving. People left and unsubscribed from the game in droves.
Vogel says that when the game was shutting down, they received a huge amount of positive engagement from fans. He stated "They created their own stories living in the Star Wars universe and that was what made it special to them." So, who knows if we will ever get another Star Galaxies game, but since the Force is always with us, one can still hope.