Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Trials of the Jedi

I play Star Wars Galaxies, the Star Wars MMORPG. I'm not hardcore or anything, but I do play at least a few hours a month. At first the idea of paying a monthly fee to play a game seemed somewhat silly, but now it seems like a pretty good deal. It costs about fifteen bucks a month to play, but you get to play as much as you want. Fifteen dollars is a little less than the cost of two feature movie tickets here, so if you play at least four hours a month then you're getting a better deal than at the theatre.

To become a Jedi you have to master eight random professions. The identities of these professions are kept hidden, so you just have to guess. There are a total of thirty-three, so you have to complete just under a quarter of them. Each profession varies, but the average one can be completed in about forty-eight to sixty hours of game play. I've been in SWG for a year now, and I've completed fifteen, or just under half, and I am still not a Jedi. This doesn't really bother me, as I don't mind taking it slow. Unfortunately, there is a problem on the horizon.

SOE, the company that owns SWG, is going to change the way people become Jedi because the current system of grinding professions is dumb. I support the change in theory, but I know that the new system will be even more difficult than the old one. If I want a Jedi any time soon, I know I'll have to step up the grinding and get really lucky, neither of which seems very likely.

1 comment:

LeperColony said...

Unfortunately, I'd have to agree. SWG is really no better than UO in any way except for graphics. Without the Star Wars name, this game would have already folded. In a triumph of enthusiasm over experience I'm going to stick it out at least through the space expansion, in the futile hope that it gets a lot better.