Meet Your Destiny!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away a young Jedi filmmaker named George Lucas made three films that changed the way everyone viewed cinema. Decades later, a group of bold Rebel programmers for a company called Verant Interactive created an online game that changed the way everyone played games and reinvented the online gaming industry.

Finally, about four years ago somebody at LucasArts Entertainment had enough sense to combine the fun and excitement of the original "Star Wars" films with the fully-immersive and highly addictive experience of Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) like Verant Interactive's EverQuest - a game so addictive it has been called "EverCrack" - and the wildly popular World of Warcraft into what is quite possibly one of the most awesome MMORPGs devised by the hands of men. Star Wars Galaxies is, by far, the most enjoyable, most entertaining and most addictive online game I have ever had the pleasure of playing and I have not been able to put the darn thing down since the first day I created my character.

If only it could be a little more perfect...


Before the Dark Times, Before the Empire...

Back in March 2000 LucasArts - the maker of such awesome games as the Jedi Knight and Monkey Island series - announced a partnership with EverQuest creator Verant Interactive and Sony Online Entertainment to create the world's first online Star Wars experience. What would later become Star Wars Galaxies (or SWG) would be developed by Verant with assistance from the gang at the Skywalker Ranch, supported by Sony's staff and distributed under the LucasArts brand. Showing traditional LucasArts bravado, in May 2001 the game's first expansion, which would be called Jump To Lightspeed and would add on the ability to pilot ships and fight in space, was announced before the game even moved into Beta testing. After three years of development, two canceled ports for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 and several pushed-back release dates the core game - Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided - was released on 26 June 2003.

Since then the game has received mixed reviews and has been the recipient of much, much controversy, especially surrounding total revision of the combat system with the so-called "Combat Upgrade" of April 2005 and the greatly despised New Game Enhancements of November 2005, which essentially reduced the game's 34 professions to the nine "iconic" ones currently seen in-game and dramatically restructured the in-game concept of Jedi. Several players left the game for good, though lately there has been a turnaround.

A New Hope for SWG

Recently things have been looking up for SWG. Aside from the numerous players still in the game - almost all of them die-hard fans of Star Wars or the Science Fiction genre itself - some of the newer upgrades have brought back a little of the old SWG Many of the old professions are being reintroduced (the "animal trainer" was recently revamped and added into the last game patch as the new "Beastmaster" career, for example) and the current nine primary professions are still being tweaked (the Entertainer system was tweaked with the patch before last and there are still rumors that the developers are planning on revising the Smuggler profession so you can actually smuggle things). The Storyteller profession - an occupation that has no progression scale at all but instead allows the player to schedule his or her own in-game events, basically making the player into a voluntary Event moderator - has been added to bring a new level of involvement from the player community. With the Celebration IV event - the 30-year anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope - bringing back more veteran players and with several new additions and enhancements to gameplay planned, it appears that SWG may be headed for a revival of popularity.

Concept

If you haven't figured that out yet, you've not only been living in a cave with Mr. bin Laden for a while, you've also been ignoring the above text of this article. For shame, for shaaaaaaaaame!

The basic idea was to create an MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe just one year after the destruction of the Death Star featured in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Join the Rebels! Join the Imperials! Screw 'em both and be a pirate! Your fate, Light or Dark, is in your hands!

And my, what a well-executed concept this was!

Story

The one major problem any RPG has is the storyline. How do we make a really cool story that at least appears to have a beginning and an end, yet is open enough to allow the players to create their own story elements? Even worse, when the story is set in such a well-established universe like the Star Wars franchise - whose history stretches from hundreds of thousands of years before Episode IV to about 150 years after Episode VI - how do you make certain that all the disparate elements of your story fit into known continuity? Star Wars Galaxies handles this fairly well... with a few minor issues.

Overall the story works: you are a random spacer whose actions either help the Rebel Alliance, the Galactic Empire or yourself, if you choose to be a freelance pirate or smuggler. The major issue at hand was what sort of stories could the player get into that won't affect the overall plot of the films yet seem epic enough to want to play? Enter the Legacy plotline.

The Legacy quest - not to confuse it with the novel and comic book series of the same moniker - is the primary gaggle of quests that you, the Player, must complete. By the time you are finished you should be around LeveL 35-45 in the game and the missions take you from Outer Rim worlds such as Tatooine (your starting point) and Naboo to the Core World of Corellia (Han Solo's homeworld) in planet-based "chapters". While the stories involved in Legacy are grand in scale, they are comprised primarily of gofer missions - "Go get XXX from XXX for me"; "Go kill XXX because he/she/they are interfering with my plans"; "Go deliver this thing to XXX and I'll give you a droid part"; et cetera ad infinitum - involving secondary characters like Watto the junk dealer, Captain Typho of Naboo and everyone's favorite intergalactic gangster Jabba the Hutt or characters from the Expanded Universe that you may never have heard of at all unless you're a rabid fan of the comics or novels such as Lady Valarian (Jabba's rival on Tatooine), Corran Horn (Force-sensitive Corellian who later works with Luke as a Jedi) and Captain Thrawn (known to fans as Grand Admiral Thrawn of the wildly popular Thrawn Trilogy of novels). While these missions may not seem like they're doing much to the Player, they are small steps in a larger mission that will eventually have the Player meeting wannabe Jedi Luke Skywalker on Yavin IV, Rebel leader Leia Organa at the bombed-out Rebel base on Dantooine or even death incarnate himself Darth Vader at the Emperor's secret retreat on Naboo (not to mention practically getting rescued by Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO during the tutorial mission). Plus, the story doesn't interfere too much with established continuity; in fact, it nestles right into it neatly. Solo is where he should be before Episode V - namely, trying to find odd jobs in order to raise enough cash to pay off his bounty. Skywalker is flitting about planets in his Rebel pilot uniform, looking like he just finished blowing up the Death Star the day before. Princess Leia is busy re-organizing the Rebels at the base on Dantooine (the abandoned one whose location she gave up in Episode IV). Chewbacca can either be found in the private back room of a bar at Mos Eisely or on his home planet Kashyyk. The Emperor is somewhat out of place at his secret hideaway on Naboo, but that's something created for the Players and it is within the realm of possibility. Vader is all over the galactic map threatening players with his menace. Everyone is right where they should be and events are unfolding as they would, continuity is preserved! The stories themselves are fun (or funny) and engaging, and if you finish off Legacy there are plenty of new missions with the Rage of the Wookies and Trials of Obi-Wan expansions to keep you busy until you graduate college or until the new Clone Wars series comes out, whichever comes first. If you get tired of Legacy and want some change, there are probably thousands of side-quests and mini-stories to keep you entertained. You could also join a Guild, set up shop as a Trader, work as an Entertainer at a cantina...

...And I haven't even gotten to the space missions yet!!

Of course, there are some elements that stand out as a little too out of place. For example:

* What's with all the freaking JEDI running amok?!? "Sorry! Looks like you have a Jedi infestation there, pal. I think it's time to call in the Sith Exterminators, they'll have that cleaned up for you by Thursday." Seriously, there are way too many Jedi in the game! Dude, I'm a Jedi and I'm sayin' that! At first Sony had the system set to allow for only very few Jedi, but players didn't like how hard it was to become a Jedi and threatened to leave the game. Sony fixed that by making Jedi a starting player class, the system got swamped with literally hundreds of Jedi and many longtime players actually did leave the game! You just can't please everyone...

Speaking as a Jedi, I have little problem with the Jedi class system. I never played the game before the infamous and dreaded NGE was implemented so I really have little basis for comparison. However, I find little real fault with the Jedi system as is. If you've read the Expanded Universe novels or comics, then you already know the galaxy is practically crawling with Jedi-in-exile anyway (Corran Horn, Quinlan Vos, Ferris Olan, et cetera ad nauseum). Vader wasn't as complete with Order 66 as he thought he was and several Jedi slipped through, training others in the forbidden ways of the Force while struggling to survive. Since the majority of the planets you explore in the game are on the Outer Rim it is a problem that, to some extent, can be ignored with relative ease. However, the charade of normalcy becomes hard to maintain when you step out of the spaceport at Mos Eisely and see twenty freaking Jedi going at it with scores of Imperials and wannabe-Sith! "Gee, and I thought nothing ever happened on Tatooine..."

* Aren't the Clone Wars OVER?? Yes, they are, but you'll probably notice other high-level players wandering about in Clone Trooper armor, traveling planets in Clone War era vehicles or fighting Imperials with personal battle droids. While this may seem off at first, if you stop and think about it the whole thing makes a lot of sense.

World War II ended in 1947 but there's still a ton of old military hardware hanging around that has made it into civilian hands thanks to local military surplus shops. I have an old Japanese grenade and a US Navy-issue anti-aircraft bullet that my grandfather brought back with him sitting atop one of my bookshelves. Die-hard enthusiasts have collected old broken down tanks and airplanes. My friend Ryu has several World War II uniform parts lying about his room as well as a 1986 German infantry uniform. Thanks to eBay this stuff is readily accessible. If we in the real world can get our hands on so much discarded military hardware, how easy do you think it would be for citizens of the Star Wars galaxy to grab themselves some Clone Trooper armor?

* HK-47? Isn't he DEAD?? If you haven't heard about it yet, the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion allows the Player to run missions on the lava-world of Mustafar. Depending on where you go and what you do, you can either work for the blue glowy Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi or for everyone's favorite murder-droid HK-47 from the Xbox game Knights of the Old Republic. For some players this is simply too much, but those players probably haven't read the novels.

Going by the books, Obi-Wan did appear as a Force ghost to other people than Luke. Since he feels he failed his former Padawan - Anakin Skywalker - at Mustafar, it is plausible that his restless spirit would be hanging around there seeking some form of redemption (since Luke's too busy looking for artifacts on Yavin IV to be a good boy and go check out Dagobah like Obi-Wan told him to). As for HK-47, it isn't unheard of for relics of ages long past to be found still active in Luke's era. HK-47 is only about 4,000 years old, and while that's old for a droid the game's creators did program a plausible reason for him to be there. Besides, the planet Corellia itself - as well as nearby Centerpoint Station and the entire Corellian system - is an artificial construct that is at least 30,000 years old! With a space station that old in existence, who are we to gripe about a 4,000 year old droid? This is Fantasy/Science Fiction we're talking about, right?

Game Setting

Of course, we can write whatever we want and slap a Star Wars logo on it - that's what the writer of that Triclops crap did, anyway - but that doesn't make it a Star Wars story. If your Millennium Falcon doesn't look junky enough to frighten your passengers on first glance, it simply isn't Star Wars at all. This game element is where the programmers of Star Wars Galaxies truly deliver.

The first planet that you, the Player, actually get to play on (after the Tutorial that you probably skipped over) is Tatooine, and my is Tatooine ever gorgeous! I've lived in the West Texas desert all my life, so I have this peculiar adoration for deserts. Naturally, Tatooine is my favorite planet in the Star Wars universe. Star Wars games that can't get Tatooine right are the sort of games I only play once and never touch again. (It's a freaking desert! Sand dunes everywhere! How hard is that, huh??) That was my big issue with Star Wars Galaxies when I played: "Will they get Tatooine right?"

They did indeed! I stepped out of the spaceport at Mos Eisely - my favorite "wretched hive of scum and villainy" - and I no longer feel the keyboard at my fingertips or see the familiar surroundings of my house in my peripheral vision. Instead I feel a holstered blaster at my fingertips, I hear the crunch-crunch of tiny rocks and grains of sand beneath my boots and see Tatooine's twin suns setting off in the distance. It actually feels like I've stepped out onto the planet Tatooine! To make things better, the first thing Han Solo - the famous pirate who rescues the Player in the Tutorial level (that you really should've played) - does for you before he leaves is help you find the parts to assemble your own speeder. Even better, it's the same style of speeder that Luke had in Episode IV!!

I didn't even complete any of my missions that first day of gameplay. I didn't check the in-game map. I didn't ask for directions. I didn't worry about where the nearest towns were. I did what I do in real life when I want to learn the streets of an unfamiliar part of town: I pick a direction, hopped in my vehicle and got lost until I found my own way about. I spent most of my time that first day in the back end of the desert exploring different areas, bumping around the mountains in my speeder, cruising across the sand dunes, stopping to chat with some not-so-friendly Jawas (little punks started shooting at me!), found the great Krayt Dragon skeleton that C-3PO saw in Episode IV and even got attacked by Sand People at the ruins of Fort Tusken! That was my idea of a really fun night! After that day, driving my car to and from work felt a little less like driving a car and a little more like cruising around the desert in a speeder. That's the kind of immersion I want from an MMORPG!

Of course, that kind of immersion can backfire. I was playing a female character at the time - if I'm going to be staring at some character's computer-generated butt all night, I want it to be a butt I wouldn't mind staring at for hours - and I found myself fending off unwanted advances from male Sith wannabes on the European server I was on. Suffice to say, that character got deleted and I moved to a different server to avoid any more unpleasantness. However, the fact remains: the game is so immersive you begin to feel like you're in the Star Wars universe! You head for the spaceport to get to Naboo and you are instantly greeted by the ticket-taker, a silver 3PO-model protocol droid. Your transport looks like a Corellian ship, much like the old Tantive IV from Episode IV. Stormtroopers are everywhere, and if you drop by Naboo they'll even subject you to random searches! (Sadly, there are many Gungans there as well, but it's okay. They're easy to kill. :D) Head by Jabba the Hutt's place - which looks just like it did before it got destroyed in Episode VI - and all the regulars are there, including Bib Fortuna, Boba Fett and even the rancor monster! Ship design, weapon design, clothing, houses, even the food... it all looks like Star Wars. George Lucas should be proud of this game!

Gameplay

Does the gameplay stack up, though? To compare what the gameplay in this game is like to other MMORPGs I also played the superheroic City of Heroes and the wildly popular World of Warcraft.

City of Heroes had remarkably smooth, flawless, easy-to-understand gameplay. The glitches - if any - were minimal and the game was easy for any new player to jump in, grab a cape and go save the day. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, is good but a bit unwieldy to brand new players who have never even heard the term "MMORPG" before, let alone played one. In relation to those two, Star Wars Galaxies sits somewhere in the middle. All the action is point-and-click. Movement is based on the arrow keys. There are menus everywhere for everything. Instead of right-clicking everything in sight, you can use the "~" key. That's about all you need to understand to get playing. Just explore the menus, flip through your game manual (or rip it apart and make a lovely origami pirate hat out of it, whichever you prefer) and have fun. Granted, if you're totally new to MMORPGs you can get lost with some of the finer points, but when I began playing I was an MMO-noob. The only MMORPG I'd played before this was City of Heroes and it was almost cake icing easy. I played WoW after I played Star Wars Galaxies and... I don't know, maybe I got spoiled on all the Star Wars-y goodness, but I just couldn't get into WoW that much. I know others - like all of my freaking co-workers - are obsessed with WoW, but I just can't get into it the way I've gotten into Galaxies. Galaxies is simple, yet for the discerning Player there's a lot more going on than initial appearances show and much more to do than one would think, and it's all easy as nerf herding to get into thanks to the interface. Point-and-click, point-and-click. It's the wave of the future, baby!

City of Heroes had some dramatically sloooooooooow load times when I played it. I didn't mind; I could go cook some spaghetti while I was waiting. WoW, on the other hand, impressed me with its total lack of load times. You load your character into the server and that's it. That's the last load time you'll ever need to see in the game. Star Wars Galaxies does have load times - you're going in between planets, for the Maker's sake, of course you're going to have load times - but they were, at first play, nowhere near as long as City of Heroes.

Then I got to Naboo...

When playing through the Legacy quest, the first chapter of missions are all on Tatooine. You have no load times going in between cities because it's all on the same map, just like on WoW. Compare this to the load times in City of Heroes, which you encounter just going from one part of the same freaking city to another. In fact, the only time loading you'll encounter going from one city to another in Star Wars Galaxies is if you use the mass transit system. However, the only reason you'd do that is if you're pressed for time; you do have your own speeder, after all, so save your credits and bust out your swoop bike. That being the case, the only other times you'll see the Loading screen is when you're going out into space or you're hopping about from planet to planet. When I first played Star Wars Galaxies - after getting off Tatooine for the first time, that is (though why anyone would want to leave Tatooine I don't know) - there could be some fairly long loading times. Fortunately, by the time you read these words the gang at Sony Online will have already gone through a few more patches. In between the time I first began writing this article and the words I'm typing now two patches were released that sped up the loading times exponentially. I now no longer have enough time to make my spaghetti in between planets. :( I do, however, have more time for murdering random Gungans on Naboo, and that's always a plus. Even so, you will encounter the occasional long load time on Galaxies. Sorry! Just suffer through it and thank the Force that it's nowhere near as bad as some of the loading times on City of Heroes.

Occasionally there will be a glitch or a bad hang-up. Often, these bad hang-ups impair gameplay and the lag causes your client to crash. Usually it's an issue with your graphics card drivers. I just reinstalled mine after a nasty Trojan attack, and the game still won't quite read my card right, but that happens. The other glitches in the game are either the results of new patches or old glitches hidden by the usual round of "spaghetti code" used to get the game out on time manifesting themselves as a new patch added to the spaghetti code. The guys at Sony Online are still working on those. Have I seen anything like it on WoW or City of Heroes? Only occasionally have I seen it on City of Heroes, and never at all have I seen it on WoW. However, Galaxies is still way younger than WoW and all the bugs and kinks are still being worked out. All I can say is "give it time".

Again, as of the writing of this paragraph a lot of the glitches and bugs I first noticed have been dealt with. There may be a few more left, but I haven't noticed them yet. ("Gee, I'm sorry, I was too busy being eaten by a rancor to notice your pathetic lag. I'll try to help you with your sad problem when I'm done with mine.") With future patches I am certain that many of the game's little glitches will be dealt with.

Speaking of patches...

Updating

The guys at Sony Online know that Star Wars Galaxies is their own personal WoW, their big money-maker. Because of that they are constantly updating and patching it. They regularly take down the servers - usually on Tuesday or Thursday mornings, something like that - for maintenance and are releasing more updates for the game than would normally be humanly possible. These updates were fairly clunky at first, but now they are so minuscule and streamlined that downloading them takes zero time whatsoever. New patch? Wait five minutes and you're in the game. It's that fast now. There are rarely any super-huge patches anymore that take all night to download, unless you're just now playing. If you just bought your copy of Star Wars Galaxies and are playing for the first time ever, expect the game to be updating itself all night. Sadly, this is to be expected of most MMORPGs. All I can say is "sucks to be you". Why don't you leave your computer on, let it update itself all day/night and go do that shopping you told your wife you would do for her, huh? I'm certain that by the time you get back and get a good eight hours' rest the updating will be done. After that, you'll never have to suffer through another all-night update session again.

At least, I haven't...

And because there are small communities of modders and other individuals fanatical about Galaxies, you may find the occasional site - like the True Galaxies site - that has most of those updates and patches for you to download. Grab 'em there, toss 'em in your Galaxies program folder and forget the all-night updating. You can get in the game the same night you bought or downloaded it. That's what I did, anyway. Thanks to True Galaxies I was online in Tatooine the first night I got the game. However, this is a cheat, and it's one I don't recommend 100%.

Are the updates that necessary? You'd better believe it! Before the NGE came out there were hundreds of different player occupations in the game. Then NGE reduced it to the nine "iconic" classes plus a few side occupations for the die-hard players. However, the recent updates - in an effort to draw in pre-NGE players who left the game - have added the Beast Trainer and Storyteller abilities back into the game, and the brand new player-maintained "Galactic Senate" - an in-game ruling body of players all voted in by fellow players, with a senator from each of the nine iconic classes and from the Rebels, Imperials and pirates - that takes the place of the old Politician system. This effort to draw in the old players appears to have worked; I've noticed quite a few of the old pre-NGE players resurfacing in the game, so things appear to be on the up-and-up for Star Wars Galaxies and all it took were a few updates here and there.

Player Involvement

City of Heores largely restricted player involvement to Guilds (or "Supergroups", which every MMORPG has) and the newly-created system for crafting items and upgrades. World of Warcraft took their Guilds to extreme levels. You can be a trader, you can make stuff, you can play with a guild or separate, you can play on dedicated Roleplaying (RP) or Player-Versus-Player (PVP) servers... it's a mess! So, how does Star Wars Galaxies compete?

Think of City of Heroes as a lone TIE fighter, zooming through space shooting down the competition as best as it can. Got that image in mind? Good! Now see World of Warcraft as the Millennium Falcon with Luke and Han at the weapons, gunning down the TIE fighter with ease.

Now see Galaxies as the Death Star. That is how much player involvement you can have in Star Wars Galaxies.

Most of the planets in the game are inhabitable by players. This means that you can own your own house in the game. Yes, I can actually live my dream of living on Tatooine! I can have a moisture vaporator! I can ride around on a rancor (should I be fortunate enough to find one)! I can even set up a small farm and be a moisture farmer like Uncle Owen! You can't do that on World of Warcraft! The only problem with this is that you have to pay occasional taxes to the Galactic Empire, and if you don't use your account for a few months you could lose your house. So pay your stinking taxes, you hippie Rebel scum!

You can own a house. Is that it? Nope, it gets better! Wanna set up your own city? That's right! Players can group together and set up their own cities in the game, and if you get enough players living there (regularly paying taxes like good little Imperial citizens) then you can get things that the game-generated cities like Mos Eisely on Tatooine and Coronet on Corellia have: cloning facilities, parking garages for player vehicles, spaceports, bank and mission terminals, et cetera. Players can set regular elections for Mayor, leader of the town's/city's defenses and any other positions the town's leadership wants to create. In short, whatever you expect to find in a game-generated city can eventually be found in a player-made city.

Players can marry or divorce. They can join Guilds like in any other MMORPG known to humankind. Some of these Guilds can get very in-depth and have graduation ceremonies for Jedi Padawans or specific roles for Guild members (such as the Armor Crafter or Ship Crafter for each Guild) Players can even build and own their own spaceships - not just small fighters but huge Millennium Falcon or Star Destroyer sized craft - which can take the place of player houses (and no taxes!).

As for PVP and RP, there are no dedicated servers because every server can be PVP or RP depending on what the players want. When players join either the Imperials or the Rebels they have the option of joining standard ground forces or Special Forces. Standard ground forces usually play against NPCs; if you want to truly experience what it means to be a Rebel and fight against every Imperial NPC you see on Tatooine in a grand Roleplaying free-for-all then this is the option for you. However, expect to spend a lot of time in hospitals and cloning facilities; many of the NPCs are Level 30 or greater (the level cap is 90), so if your character is Level 7 you might want to reconsider. Joining Special Forces means that you're going up against NPCs and other players. If you're in a city filled with other players of the same level this is cool. If not, prepare to get sniped from behind by Level 90 players, you stupid n00b. (This actually happened to me once when I started my first Imperial character. I had no idea what Special Forces were because I kind of didn't bother to read the manual at first... I freely admit to my n00bage.)

Now there are three more ways to be involved: the new Beast Trainer system lets the Player create and train their own alien animals; the new Storyteller system, which allows the Player to buy and set-up their own story elements and create their own in-game stories; and the new player-operated Galactic Senate, which - at last check - was still accepting nominees for elections.

Unique Extras

City of Heroes offers little in the way of uniqueness; it's all point-and-click superhero fighting, with only the new Invention crafting system in place to offer anything different beside button-mashing, skull-cracking boredom. World of Warcraft has underwater fighting, which - while cool and brings in the critical concept of drowning - is not too different from ground combat. (It's too bad we don't have that in Galaxies. I would love to kill every Gungan in the underwater city of Ota Gunga, might make going to Naboo for missions worth something.) So, what does Galaxies offer to differentiate it from the other MMOs out there?

Two words: Space. Combat.

That's right, space combat. You can get your own ship, head out into the stars and blast TIE fighters, X-Wings and pirate ships to your little heart's content. Want to hunt bigger prey? Grab a Millennium Falcon (if you have the credits, the parts and the pilot certification for it) or a Star Destroyer, mount some weapons to the gun turrets, grab some friends and have a blast taking out pirate raiders, mercenary gunships and freight haulers. There are even two specific areas - the Maw and Deep Space - that are relegated for PVP dogfighting, so you can drag your friends into the nifty Imp-on-Reb Star Wars-y goodness. You don't need to pay money to go from planet to planet; get your own ship and be your own transit! (Disclaimer: This requires either the free credits to buy parts and blueprints for your ship or the will to join the Rebels, Imperials or pirate smugglers. Want a bigger ship? You will have to train for it.) Plus, if you feel like setting things on Autopilot and just gunning down whomever, you can always have your R2 unit (yes, you can get droids) handle it.

Leave all those other MMORPGs in the dust. Take up your lightsaber and join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and so- er, together we can have loads of fun hangin' with the wookies, blasting Imperials and gunning down X-Wings in our tricked-out TIEs on Star Wars Galaxies!


(Notation: If this helped you any, you may contact me in-game. My character name is "Tigan" and I play on the Radiant server. Feel free to drop a line sometime. Have fun, my young Padawans!)