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The SWG emulators is a project that is taken on by 2 different groups who are both making their own version and it’s currently in it’s alpha stages.

Their aim is to remake the old and best liked version of the MMORPG game Star Wars Galaxies : the pre-cu.

They’re using the SWG CD’s so they’re almost rebuilding it from scratch, which is why it has already taken them more then 2 years.

Star Wars Galaxies in a nutshell.

Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) was released by SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) on June 26th 2003 in the USA, November 7 2003 in Europe and a special version for Japan came out in December 23th 2004.

SWG had a total of 21 US servers, 3 European servers and 2 Japanese servers. The US and European servers were accessible for both the US and European playerbase so you could pick any of those 24 servers.

SWG underwent 2 major overhauls : the Combat Upgrade (CU) on April 27th 2005 and the New Game Enhancements (NGE) on November 15th 2005. They both caused a uproar in the player base and a lot of people quit the game, including me.
You can find all the changes the CU made here and NGE ones here.
The Japanese servers were incidently shut down in November 2005 because of it’s lack of players.

Star Wars Galaxies started of as a sandbox Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) with starter, advanced professions and elite professions.
The starter professions (you could just pick these without any skills needed) : Artisan Brawler, Entertainer, Marksman, Medic and Scout.
The advanced professions (you needed the right starter profession to get these)) : Architect, Armorsmith, Carbineer, Chef, Creature Handler, Dancer, Doctor, Droid Engineer, Fencer, Image Designer, Merchant, Musician, Pikeman, Pistoleer, Politician, Ranger, Rifleman, Shipwright (this was added with the Jump to Lightspeed expansion), Swordsman, Tailor, Teras Kasi Artist, Weaponsmith.
The elite professions (you needed (part of) 2 of the right starter professions) : Bio-Engineer, Bounty Hunter, Combat Medic, Commando, Smuggler and Squad Leader.
And when you followed certain guidelines and worked really hard you could become a Jedi.

Crafting was a major part of the game since the best and best looking items (weapons, armors and clothing), besides a few rare exceptions, were always crafted. It was also a complex but very satisfying way of making new items.

You couldn’t master everything simultaneously because you only had 250 skill points to spend. And even with the right “template” (the professions you choose) you could only have a maximum of 3 advanced professions at once. Most people had 2 (these could be 1 advanced and 1 elite, 2 advanced, multiple starter ones and 1 elite or advanced etc.).
You can play with a template builder here to get a better idea of what I mean.

Due to the major changes of the NGE, there are only 9 professions left and you can’t “mix and match” them anymore. They are all starter professions and you have to pay a lot of money to change your profession. The current professions are : Bounty Hunter, Commando, Entertainer, Jedi, Medic, Officer, Smuggler, Spy and Trader.
The Trader can specialize in the following : Domestics, Engineering, Munitions or Structures.

The following species are available : Human, Twi’lek, Zabrak, Wookiee, Trandoshan, Rodian, Mon Calamari, Bothan, Sullustan and Ithorian.
The Ithorians were added with the first expansion (Jump to Lightspeed).

The following planets are featured : Tatooine, Naboo, Corellia, Talus, Rori, Dantooine, Lok, Yavin IV, the forest moon of Endor, Dathomir, Kashyyyk and Mustafar.
Kashyyyk was added with the second expansion (Rage of the Wookies) and Mustafar was added with the third expansion (Trials of Obi-Wan).
Ships, space and space combat were added with the first expansion (Jump to Lightspeed).

And the game features good character customization, factions (Imperial, Rebel and Neutral), guilds, player housing, player cities, vehicles, pets and mounts.

Click here for the official Star Wars Galaxies website

Not only the game but also the game rating has changed a lot over the years and it went from a 7.5 out of 10 at it’s release to a current rating of 6.5.
In 2004 it was recognized as the online game of the year.

Here are all the ratings :
Release in 2003 : 7.5/10
Jump to Lightspeed expansion in 2004 : 8/10
Rage of the Wookiees expansion in 2005 : 7/10
Trials of Obi-Wan expansion in 2005 : 6/10
2009 rating : 6.5/10

The player base has dropped even more then the rating.
SOE has never released any official numbers but before the CU about 200.000 people were playing and in early 2006 it was rumored that only around 10.000 people were still playing.
I have no idea what the current numbers are but a lot of us have transferred to different servers because the others got deserted…

Pre-cu, SWG emu?

The time after the game came out but before the Combat Upgrade (CU) took place is commonly referred to as the pre-cu.
This period is between June 26th 2003 and April 27th 2005.

The end of the pre-cu period was the favorite one for most of the older players (myself and family and friends included), and after so many people quit due to the CU and NGE, a couple of those players put their heads together and decided to remake SWG to the game everybody loved. A SWG that isn’t a “World of Warcraft” clone with a Star Wars skin and is back to it’s good old sandbox self where you don’t need quests to level up or follow a story line whether you like it or not. And most importantly : a game which attracts great people and with whom you can create your own story, hang out with in the SWG world and just have fun.

The idea of making a SWG emulator has been taken over by others too and there are currently 2 known groups : SWGemu and SWG:ANH.

You’re probably wondering by now about what a emulator in general is.
There is a great article on Wikipedia about it so I’ll put down a small part of it here.
Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program or electronic device to imitate another program or device. Many printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. By emulating an HP printer, a printer can work with any software written for a real HP printer. Emulation “tricks” the running software into believing that a device is really some other device.

A hardware emulator is an emulator which takes the form of a hardware device. Examples includes the DOS-compatible card installed in some old-world Macintoshes like Centris 610 or Performa 630 that allowed them to run PC programs and FPGA-based hardware emulators.Source

In the game world it often means, like in this case, that a older version of a game is being/has been rebuilt to make it available to players again.

2 teams, 2 different emu’s.

There are currently 2 known teams, as I already mentioned above, namely : SWG:ANH andSWGEmu.

It’s a real shame that they’re working in a different way or I’m sure that the emu would have been done by now since they’ve been working on it for about 3 years.
They are both working in C++ but they worked in such different ways that merging it now is impossible.
But I know that we can’t really complain since everybody who is working on it is doing it for free and in their spare time.

SWGEmu has a live test server that can be used for playing and I frequently play on it. The server of SWG:ANH is still in closed testing but it will go “live” (accessible for regular players) sooner or later.
You can find information about their updates here
Visit their websites to find out how you can play on the test servers.

All the emulators will be able to be used by other servers and the one I’m going to play on isTrue Galaxies.

Is it legal?

It is perfectly legal to play a older version of a game as long as:
- that version is not being hosted by the official developer,
- when every player owns the official game,
- the servers doesn’t ask for a fee.

So if you own the game or don’t have the game yet but buy a new or used version of it, it’s perfectly legal and free.
The servers do ask for donations of course since hosting a server is at least $250 a month.

Click here to buy SWG cheap on eBay.

Click here to buy SWG cheap on Amazon.

SWG and me.

I started playing SWG on July 3th of 2004, became a Jedi after months of hard work just before the CU hit, took a 3 month break at the beginning of the CU and quit in August 2006 due to the NGE.

I still remember how confusing my first months of playing was, I guess that I could have read the manual but, where is the challenge in that? But the community was great so I had loads of people trying to help me. In my first few weeks I picked up all the basic professions (you have to pay for every profession and skillbox) and just wandered around a little. I did some missions, killed stuff, tried out harvesting, went by the rebel base to become a member of the rebel alliance and did some dancing in the Most Eisley cantina. And one evening I was chatting to a guy whose battle fatigue I was healing. We got along great and he invited me to his guild. His name happened to be Page Ova by the way.
So he showed me his guild city “Zion Hills” on Dantooine and I became a member of the guild. From that day things speeded up quite a bit.
I learned about grindgroups and buffs and my leveling speeded up a lot. After a while I decided to become a Master Commando and Teras Kasi Master and added my leftover skillpoints to Medic so I could heal myself. I really loved that template. Shooting of a flamethrower is really satisfactory and Teras Kasi has some really nice moves.

Around that time they changed the Jedi system and introduced the village. So the grindfest began…
At first I didn’t really grind and just did the missions but when I was almost done with unlocking my Force Sensitive slots, we heard rumors of the CU. So I started grinding 7 hours a day. My template happened to be great for getting lots of XP so I was done in 5 weeks. I became a Jedi Padawan less then a week before the CU hit.
The CU made a lot of changes and I absolutely hated it at first so I canceled my account and tried out games like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. I didn’t really like those games and after 3 months my guildies managed to talk me back into playing SWG again.
So I came back, learned the new system, ground out my Jedi and my new unlocked character. Everybody who got Jedi in the pre-cu and CU got 1 extra character. I even took over my brothers account when he quit and made a entertainer.
By the time I was finally really starting to enjoy the game again, we got hit my the NGE. If it wasn’t for my friends I would have quit straight away. But then the community took a change for the worst. The dumbing down of the game brought in loads of 12+ kids and not the good kind. Nope, they were the whiny, begging and sexual harassment kind. And SOE didn’t do anything about it…
I already hated the game by that time and I wasn’t the only one since more and more friends left. The downfall of the community was the last drop for me and I canceled my account.
Because my husband, mother- and brother-in-law were still playing and had 6 accounts together I sometimes logged onto one of their accounts to help them with missions. I started playing again in September 2009 because some of my rl fiends started playing it. I rarely log in but if you’re wit a good group it’s a ok game. I can’t wait for the emu though.
The complexity of the game kept most of the younger people out. Which is why SOE decided to dumb it down and that caused the downfall of a great and unique game.

The thought of having to grind may be a turn off but there were loads of other things to do. I’ve spent weeks just hanging around and chatting with total strangers, helping out newbies and friends, shopping and doing quests to collect nice things for my houses.

The game still holds a lot of good memories for me and I still chat with some of my ingame friends on regular basis. I’m also a huge Star Wars fan.

My ex-husband and I will be running his old guild Freon on the True Galaxies server once it goes live and you can find our guild website here.
This is the forum signature I made especially for the emulator :

You may notice that it shows 2 characters, this is because we’ll be allowed to have 2 characters from the start on True Galaxies so I’ll remake my main and my entertainer.

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