Archive for January, 2007:

If you’ve been following a few of the recent comments, you may have noticed that I’ve been dabbling with the idea of re-installing Star Wars Galaxies…

Well, last night the idea turned into reality, as I tried to get SWGEmu working. After 30 minutes or so of unsuccessful connecting, I decided to see if the original game was still functioning - and more importantly, if my characters where still present. After spending about 6 hours downloading all the updates (it’s amazing what 3 years does), I logged onto Bria to find my Lazlow character still up and running. It appears the game has given me a 21-day trial, as the account expires mid-February.

As I’ve not played in, oooooooh 25+ months, my character was still on the old profession system - I believe I quit the game as I was a Master Doc/Master Swordsman/Master Politician (or there abouts). As soon as I logged in I was presented with many windows asking me to choose my various veteran awards (which I’m still yet to do). I was also asked to re-spec my character - so I chose Jedi, which seems to be the equivalent of Novice Brawler now. As my character was pretty high-up in terms of professions originally, I immediately jumped to Level 70 (of 90), which is apparently starting off as a round 4 Jedi (out of 4). The exact terminology I don’t know, as the game has ruined itself.

Yes, you heard it hear. The previous addict of this game (for a mere 11 months) finally realises, or as the case may be, doesn’t realise what all the fuss was/is about. I mean, when we first started playing, it was fun - a good way to waste the odd evening. But that soon expanded to day as well, engulfing the weekend and Monday to Friday too. I was soon addicted and it took several friends months of persuasion for me to finally use nicotine (or the Star Wars equivalent).

Before you all start shouting and raving (raver!) about how my addiction will return - don’t worry. The game is soooooooo bad now, that it’s laughable in every respect. I’ll give you a few examples. For a start, combat used to involve some form of skill - hence why Jedi was sooooooo hard to obtain, and to succeed in PvP you had to have an element of skill. Now though, it’s pretty much click the left mouse button to attack, click the right to use a secondary attack. At this stage I’ll mention the one and only improvement - combat looks better, but a little OTT. Lasers look like disco lights and the smoke to go with them. I was often engulfed in a ball of what can only be described as slime, whilst attacking some minions.

Secondly, no-one seems to play it. Or if they do, they’re hidden away and keeping themselves to themselves. In the early days, you could roll into Coronet to find your PC running at a reasonable 3FPS (if you were lucky) from all the spamming traders just outside the starport - heck, Adamskii and I could be found trying to flog Heavy Flamers for 80K in the past. Last night I rolled into Coronet only to find 5 characters, 3 of which were NPCs. That’s ridiculous.

Thirdly, the economy has collapsed. Maybe some current players will argue against this, but everything seems to be dealt in millions now! How the f*ck can any new player (n00b) succeed if they’ve got to raise a few million before doing anything. I remember when 100K was the norm, with millionaires being looked up to and admired. Now even a Bantha has a Swedish bank account, full of credits.

Fourthly, the whole game feels sluggish and backwards. The interface is largely the same, but movement has been nerfed in a way which I can only describe as a Paralympics sprinter on speed.

So, don’t worry, I wont be staying long - you see, I have this plan. I have already found one house full of Pre-CU (pre-combat upgrade) items, and I’m pretty sure I have many more dotted around the galaxy. I’m visiting them whilst bored over the weekend, to grab as much as possible to flog on the trade forums. I’ve already had a price check for over 30 million credits on one item, which means I should make a tidy profit selling my credits on eBay. Afterall, those 11 months should be worth something.

Oh, and lastly - one thing that really annoys me is a comment on the trade forum: the clothes and weapons probably aren’t worth much, most people use looted weapons now. What? That explains the lack of spammers at starports and merchants selling their wares.

Prepare for some flaming, along with several updates from me - especially about how my money making scheme is going…

I’ve found computers to be easy to name in the past… for example, my laptop is named after its model number [R50e]; my main PC is named after the project title I used whilst making it [Red19]; my fileserver is self explanatory [Fileserver]; Anneka’s PC is named after the project name I used whilst making it too [Pinky]. At work, I’ve named/numbered them according to location - so in the Community Learning Centre, they’re CLC## [CLC01] onwards.

I have just purchased a room full of PCs along with a second server, for a new training room we’re having built. Naming them could have been plain and boring - Sims## for example (Sims being the name of the building).

But, being the [semi]Geek that I am, I decided to use another method. After a few minutes racking my brain for ideas, I stumbled across this wiki page, detailing the Star Wars galaxy. Sucess! Name them after galaxies/planets/moons in the Star Wars universe. I needed 10 for each client PC, as the fileserver was to remain plain and boring [Fileserver]. Instead of picking 10 of the most famous planets, I opted for Star Wars Galaxies choice of planets:

• Corellia
• Dantooine
• Dathomir
• Endor
• Lok
• Naboo
• Rori
• Talus
• Tatooine
• Yavin4

The more observant/geeky of you will notice that some are in fact, moons. But I was pleased that I didn’t have to manually pick 10. And as it’s from the Star Wars universe - if the number of client PCs ever expands, I can always pick a few more from the huge list.

Keeping on topic - I don’t remember the terrain in Galaxies looking this good.

Anyone remember the genius that is Pee Wee Herman? If not, what happened to your childhood?!?

Pee-wee was a marvellous man, full of fun and laughter…

And apparently he’s wanting to move back into his playhouse! I’ll leave you with this to jog your memory:

I detect a lack of blog updates from myself… so I’ll add another with this snippet of information:

The eagerly anticipated WoW expansion - The Burning Crusade - is currently the second fastest selling game of all time. According to both MCV and bit-tech, Burning Crusade sold 2.4 million copies within the first 24 hours, worldwide. That’s 100,000 less than Championship Manager ‘04 sold on its first day of release, back in 2003.

Interesting stuff. Apparently Blizzard make roughly $100m a month from the subscription fees - I wonder how much SWG made back in the day (if anything).

On a similar topic - Ben is still levelling to achieve the holy grail of 70. A French gamer achieved such a seemingly impossible task within the first 24 hours of the game. Ben’s currently at level 68 - and has calculated that he’ll reach 69 by 1am and level 70 by 8am - when I’ll be heading off for work. I’m just glad that the Beta put me off the game for life…

Ninja-Edit: They’ve even got a myspace inspired social-networking site for WoW players now! What next? WoW rehabilitation centres? WoWAA (WoW Addicts Anonymous)???

A few months back, I thought I’d be sitting here, a rich man, swimming in all the cash I would have made from my brief claim to fame (Custom PC).

But, alas, I’ve only really received the odd comment here and there on forums. However, whilst messing around on Google, I came across this thread on the KustomPC forums and this thread on Multiplay - with the former praising one of my mods.

I also spotted this thread, which appears to have been started by a Percy von Dwarf - who claims he owns slickhouse! Absurd!

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I’m not upset at my lack of fame - I never really expected to become famous. I’ll return to Oblivion for now…