The “ Jedi problem” stirred up problems, both when players were struggling to figure out how to unlock this secret class and after when players had to grind their tails off to use the force. To make matters worse, the rise of World of Warcraft and its multi-million subscriber count gave the suits a serious case of Blizzard envy.Ĭontroversy seemed to dog Star Wars Galaxies as a fact of life. Even with the rough ride, SWG rose to around 300,000 subscribers early on, a highly respectable number for the time, but not quite what both SOE and LucasArts had anticipated with the Star Wars label. “Like, you couldn’t log in.”Īs a half-finished game, Star Wars Galaxies struggled to fulfill its destiny by patching in content, fixing bugs, and expanding to include space combat. “When the game launched, it didn’t actually work,” Raph Koster later wrote. Even so, players developed a real fondness for what was there. As visionary and creative a product as Star Wars Galaxies was (just ask any veteran to tell you what he or she loved about the game), both players and developers alike wouldn’t argue with any accusations that the title was rushed out the door too soon, buggy beyond belief, and starving for content. To discuss the NGE, one needs to understand the context of the situation, and for pioneering players, the halcyon days of the early SWG era were sometimes anything but. Well, it happened a long time ago in a studio far, far away…

So how did this disaster occur and what was so bad about it? It’s been 10 years since the NGE damaged a game’s reputation, embittered players for life, and made the mainstream notice that not all was sunshine and daisies in MMOs. It became one of the most infamous moments in MMO history - and perhaps one of the most misunderstood.įor all that the MMO community references Star Wars Galaxies’ New Game Enhancements (NGE) as a synonym for devs breaking a game with a horrible patch, expansion, or business decision, the actual details of the referenced events have become blurred through time, retellings, and a sort of weird mythology.

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