Star Wars Galaxies Day Two
Jul 14, 2006 02:00:12
Submitted by Brent on Jul 14, 2006 02:00:12 CST (comments: 2)
Jul 14, 2006 02:00:12
| Yesterday I did the newbie stuff and gained levels 1-6. Today I did levels 6-12 and I'm afraid it wasn't quiet as enjoyable. I got my landspeeder which helped plenty on the various scout and hunt missions. I heard that when the game initially released there were no vehicles and everyone had to run everywhere. I can confirm that it would have been utterly brutal to run to all the locations that I was sent. My noob-speeder isn't exactly a Forumla-1 racer, but it beats walking and is fun to drive. I had a little trouble piloting it down the streets of Mos Eisley, but I was impressed that they let me do so. Today the graphics got turned down. The larger maps that I encountered today seemed to take a bit out of my machine and I was experiencing a number of graphic errors. None of them crashed the machine or impacted play, but they were annoying. For some time my character wasn't showing the default attack animations. I was damaging foes, but standing still. When kneeling, sitting and laying down failed to animate, I knew something was up. Luckily I didn’t have to reboot. When I changed the graphic settings it seemed to fix itself and the remaining 5 hours of my session ran smooth. I'm finding the controls a bit clunky. For those who haven't played Star Wars Galaxies, there are two distinct modes. One where your mouse is free to move around the screen to click on UI elements and one where you're locked in mouselook mode for targeting. Pressing the handy ALT key switches between the two, and it is almost natural for me now, but in tense moments I get all fuggered up and cause myself a ton of problems. I generally like the UI, but its customization seems to be lacking, especially in terms of hot buttons. The default hotbar has several banks of buttons like most MMOs, but I can't find a way to create a new bank that would allow me to show a complete second set of them. This means I have to scroll through button banks with Ctrl + or - which also fuggers me up if I have to do it in battle (rare so far). The mission are of the standard kill 10 rats, bugs, lizards or bandits and I got tired of doing so, but I did get good XPp for my efforts. Equipment rewards for the quests have been noticeably absent and since NPC vendors are scarce and the bazaar on my server is pretty much empty, I'm still using my newbie gear that I was granted by the initial quests. On a side note, I don't seem to NEED better stuff yet, but I'm left wondering: where the heck do I get it when I do need it? I see a ton of crafting stations littered about the cities, but after my foray into crafting in EQ2 I swore it off forever. I'm hoping I won't be forced to break my anti-crafting streak in order to get some new gear. I found the local starbase and acquired a free trainee ship which I promptly named 'Government Cheese'. The ship missions are also something I'll likely stray away from. I was never a fan of Wing Commander or X-Wing style games, and the space battle in SWG (while nicely executed) resembles those frustrating games from my youth. The in-game training for piloting a ship was thorough, but ended up being pointless due to its complexity. "Press and hold Tab-E while double clicking the middle mouse button, then swing your mouse in a wide arc while playing Wipeout on the floor using only the third and fourth toes of your right foot. This will allow you to acquire a missile lock on an opponent." I'm exaggerating only a little here. More importantly, 'Government Cheese' allows me to fly to other planets, which I did. My arrival in a centrally located star system was uneventful. There were very few people present and the mobs were beyond my ability. I guess tomorrow I'll fly back to Tatooine to hunt more lizards. A a jedi in training, my main question is: when do I get some cool force powers and a light saber? |
Submitted by Brent on Jul 14, 2006 02:00:12 CST (comments: 2)
Comments:
'Jedi' by Kathas
Submitted on 2006-07-17 15:56:14 CST
Level 30 for the Lightsabre......
As an NGE/CU Survivor and recent returnee, welcome to Smed Wars: Galaxies ;-)
Seriously, in spite of all the horror and over the top drama, SWG now isn't too bad. It's in no way the game it was at release 3 years ago but if you treat it like SWG v2.0 and forget all that came before, it's still a lot of fun.
'WOO!' by Brent
Submitted on 2006-07-19 00:36:28 CST
Level 30, here I come! Thanks for the info and the commentary. So far, I agree, it is fun.
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