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[Harry]

Beautiful screens chara - and the one with the Jedi were... fun. So everybody is trying to kill them, uh? And in a couple of the screenshots there is a speeder... do you already have one?

Thanks for posting these great screens!

[Chara]

Yea, kinda funny how I got it... I just was asking people how I can get a speeder and this random guy just came up to me and gave me a spare one he had. Well, I suppose that isnt funny at all but... yea. But because of that guy I had a speeder on my second day of playing.

And here is a screenshot I just took of me just hunting for a bit. Those animals are prett huge as you can see in the screenshot and you can tell from the size by just the way they hit the ground when they fall. The sound just makes the kill more satisfying. Oh and the reason I was hunting was because I was stranded on corellia... some doc cheated me out of my money and I didnt have enough travel money to get back to naboo. So I just killed random things until my friend came on and was able to give me credits.

I would take some screenshots of Corellia because its so beautiful but for some reason SWG wants to act dumb so I'll hold it off till later.

[Harry]

Haha you were lucky... and you are also lucky to have a friend that's giving you some extra credits! How much does a speeder cost in the game usually? Did you see other vehicles in the game?

Oh, and surely those things are huge! Don't forget to take some pics of the ewoks if you make it to Endor... I love those furry man eating little bears!

By the way, how does the game run on your PC?

[Spank-A-Thon]

Just to answer a couple of Harry's questions - I tend to pay around 20,000 credits for a speeder bike. The economy is a bit screwy on SWG due to various things so Luke's exclamation that 17,000 could almost buy your own starship is not to taken seriously.

At the moment there are 4 player vehicles in the game: The Speeder Bike, Swoop bike, the Land Speeder which Luke had, and the AV-21; another land speeder variant.

However, when Jump To Lightspeed is launched later this year there will be 17 space ships initially. As a reward for being a "veteran player", I already have deed to a ship (the same as the Lady Luck that Lando flies in the Expanded Universe).

As for ewoks, I'll see what I can do - and those creatures that Chara's showing are nothing - wait til you see a Kimologia!!

Incidentally, Chara - if you use SHIFT-CTRL-H you can turn off the HUD to give better pics.

- S

[Harry]

Spank - thanks for all the info! 20,000 credits for a speeder bike... of course it's not easy to understand what that can mean in terms of game time. For example, in Final Fantasy XI, at first it takes a while to make some good money. I imagine it must be difficult for the developers to imagine what the final price of an item will be, if all the items are sold by other players. Hmm and I don't remember what vehicle the AC-21 is... I'll take a look on the website.

Can vehicles be destroyed? I mean, can you lose a vehicle you have bought? I read about the Lady Luck deed for veteran players (got the news in the e-mail, I guess) - I'm really curious to see what players can do on a multi passengers spaceship. For example, let's say you are in the middle of a battle aboard a YT-1300... the owner of the ship is piloting, his friend is co-piloting (?), but what are the other players doing? I guess we must wait for the beta to start to know more details?

Oh and please... bring me some ewok pic!!!

[Chara]

Well, I got my speederbike for free, as I explained in the topic I made, someone gave it to me.

Spank, how much does a Swoopbike cost? Since I have rich friends, I have about 50k in credits (they gave me more than just travel money there...). I would have more but since the trial only has a max of 50k, that is how much I have. But if its over 50k I can most likely get it still.

And thanks for the HUD tip. I will take more screens later without the HUD there but here are some I took last night:

I actually explored thorugh Corellia a bit and I managed to find the hidden Rebel base. Look, its C3PO and R2-D2! Hre is me having a meeting with Wedge in his office.

I'll take more pics of Corellia since its just a beatuiful planet.

Oh, and here is just a random pic of my friend taking on a few rancors by himself. Man, he is crazy. He did leave out alive, though.

[Bogart]

Wow, all this looks amazing. I've read that a new Jedi system will be launched this month... what's this stuff about? Also... what's your favorite job so far?

[Chara]

Yea, the new Jedi system is supposed to keep down the Jedi population. I guess it is kinda crazy since I've seen about 3 jedi in the past week. A lot considering that around this time the jedi are supposed ot be near extinct. From what I read the new system doesnt automatically make you a Jedi if you are force sensitive. If you open the force sensitive slot, you have to undergo jedi trials in order to become one. These jedi trials are supposed to be extremely difficult. It makes sense and makes me wonder why they didnt do it earlier. But for now its mostly up to bounty hunters to keep down the jedi population, which is kinda dumb since Jedi can be revived by nearby medics no problem. But its just whenever they die, they lose A LOT of experience points, like 15k.

Now here are some pics of the crazyness that can come up if you choose to become a Rebel or join the Empire. Here is the start of our raid on an Imperial base.

As you can see that AT-ST did quick business on someone (the guy with the head with the x's in it, of course...), and it took me out soon after I took that screen. I thought I could finish it off since its health was extremely low but it got too many shots on me.

Now, I was cloned at a nearby facility and I tried to hurry back as quick as possible. Well, turns out they got a few shots on my speederbike and the thing exploded as I was riding it back, as you can see here. So I had to do the 2km track back to the nearest shuttleport.

This is on lok, where just about every creature is hostile so it wasnt exacctly a walk in the park getting back with me having heavy wounds and all. I was happy that I started out as a scout so I can run at max speed for further distances.

[Harry]

So, what happened to you space travellers? I really like this thread, how are things going in your games?

[Spank-A-Thon]

Originally Posted by Harry

So, what happened to you space travellers? I really like this thread, how are things going in your games?

Ahhh, sorry Harry. Been somewhat busy of late in real life. A little update however.

I have now switched servers with my character, previously I was on Flurry which is US based so I've now switched to Chimaera (Euro based). The positives are that events happen during Euro hours so I don't miss as much stuff, my ping is now super low (down to ~60 rather than the 200-300 I got from Flurry) and there is a healthy Role Playing Community on Chimaera.

As a consequence I had to start my character from fresh and decided I'd try being a musician for a change.

Here's Ymo playing with a small band in Mos Eisley cantina.

Because I've restarted my character, I lack the combat skills to hunt anything interesting yet, so instead to illustrate the graphics engine of SWG, here is Four Faces of Ymo. Heh heh - a couple of these are really funny.

By the way Harry, thank you for the prompt!

- S

[Harry]

No problem Spank, I really love this thread.

A wookie playing in Mos Eisley's cantina! I hope to have a chance to see you there in the future.

The pictures with the faces of Ymobacca are amazing! The first and the third one are really funny ... on what system are you playing the game Spank? I didn't know SW: Galaxies featured such detailed facial expressions!

By the way, do you know of people playing the game on dial-up connections? I know of many playing Final Fantaxy XI on dial-up and the game works just fine (leaving aside long download times for updates), and Galaxies should support dial-up as well.

Also, when it's night time in Europe... let's say 2 a.m., is there a decent number of people playing on the server?

[Spank-A-Thon]

Originally Posted by Harry

No problem Spank, I really love this thread.

A wookie playing in Mos Eisley's cantina! I hope to have a chance to see you there in the future.

The pictures with the faces of Ymobacca are amazing! The first and the third one are really funny ... on what system are you playing the game Spank? I didn't know SW: Galaxies featured such detailed facial expressions!

My system is a P4 2.4Ghz, 1.5Gb RAM and a GeForce 4Ti 4600. However, I should point out that I do not have all the graphics options turned to full or even on (for example my Flora draw distance is set to half, I have no shadows [simple or volumetric] as well as other options).

To really get the most (visually) out of SWG, I fear I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and get me a Radeon X800XT...

Originally Posted by Harry

By the way, do you know of people playing the game on dial-up connections? I know of many playing Final Fantaxy XI on dial-up and the game works just fine (leaving aside long download times for updates), and Galaxies should support dial-up as well.

Also, when it's night time in Europe... let's say 2 a.m., is there a decent number of people playing on the server?

I don't know anyone playing on dial-up but I believe it's not too bad, although combat can get somewhat laggy on dial-up.

As for night-time, the European server reboots at 3am (I think) but there are still people playing til that time. Obviously peak time is early evening. However, 2am GMT is when the US servers can be really busy!!!

Speaking of busy, I joined a Guild the other day (I'm now a proud member of Rogue Squadron) and on Friday (7:00pm GMT) there will be a massive Imperials vs Rebel PvP battle on Lok. Pex, who is the SWG Developers Event Manager, will be there to spawn AT-ATs amonst other things to add to the flavour! I can't wait!

Back on Flurry this type of content would happen during my sleep hours which is why I moved to a Euro server. I'll defo get some shots of this battle for you to view.

- S

[Harry]

I can't wait to see the screenshots. It must have been a mighty battle!

[Spank-A-Thon]

Originally Posted by Harry

I can't wait to see the screenshots. It must have been a mighty battle!

500 Rebels and 500 Imperials turned up for this great battle. Excitement was high.

At the Rebel camp, the soldiers were making their preparations; the time was coming nearer. With a cry of "Long Live The Rebellion" the order came through from High Command.

Advance to the battlefield and engage the enemy. My squadron's orders were clear - we were to engage and eliminate any Dark Jedi on the battlefield. We would suffer considerable losses but we were to perform an essential task.

500 Rebels mounted their speederbikes, swoops and landspeeders and prepared to move out....

All of a sudden, a great calamity struck! Worse than an AT-AT, worse than a Star Destroyer and worse than the Death Star itself....

Yup, the server crashed...

Sony Online Entertainment did not expect there to be such interest in PvP battles and as such the infrastructure cannot support such an amount of players in one place at the same time. Needless to say the forums were awash with complaints, anger, sadness and fury - all directed at SOE.

A sad day unfortunately yet one that is endemic of the current situation with SWG. It pains me to say it is losing players like rats deserting a sinking ships. The Dev team seem to be losing the plot, alienating the customer base and making bad decsions and not learning from their mistakes.

Now it appears we cannot even have a true Galactic Civil War like that in the movies....

Still, I'm still having fun despite the frustrations so it's not all bad!

- S

[Chara]

^lol... classic. It sucks that we cant have massive wars. Oh well, maybe sony will take note of this.

I had to pull out of the Star Wars universe. Simple because I really dont have the time anymore. Also, like an idiot, I surrendered some skills that I shouldnt've and my character is pretty much back at square one. =/

Also the fact that I dont have a job at the moment, I had to pull the plug on my subscription. If I ever do get back into the game I might just join your server, spank, since the current one I have my character on is really filled with a bunch of immature people that really take the fun out of pvping.

Or I migh just join a server that is closer to me since on sunrunner, the lag was crazy. When I fought it would take my character a long time to respond, like he was stoned or something.

[Harry]

Hmmmm bad news I hear! It's evident the system wasn't developed for such big events... also considering that many people are playing on dial-up lag can become a nightmare when too many characters are in an area.

[Bogart]

I can't afford to play this game right now, but I wanted to know if someone can explain a bit more how "factions" work in the game. For example, how do I become a rebel? When I enter a town, will troopers attack me if I'm a rebel? And do Bounty Hunters hunt just rebels or also imperials?

[Spank-A-Thon]

Originally Posted by Bogart

I can't afford to play this game right now, but I wanted to know if someone can explain a bit more how "factions" work in the game. For example, how do I become a rebel? When I enter a town, will troopers attack me if I'm a rebel? And do Bounty Hunters hunt just rebels or also imperials?

At the moment there are three factions: Neutral, Imperial and Alliance. If you do nothing, you will be alway neutral and therefore not open to attack from other players unless you're either a) a Jedi, or b) duelling someone.

Once you sign up to the Empire or Alliance you choose whether you wish to be Covert or Overt. When Overt you are basically saying "I'm with the Empire/Alliance" and thus you are open to attack at anytime from anything (players or NPCs). If you decide to be Covert then you cannot be attacked by other players unless you obtain a TEF. Once you have declared and become Oovert, it takes death or 1 hour to switch back to Covert.

A TEF (Temporary Enemy Flag) is something that makes a Covert Player attackable by enemy Overt players for a short period of time (5 minute timer). You gain a TEF by performing certain actions such as killing NPC solidiers, healing or trading with Overt players and so on. You can also get scanned and be given a TEF.

If you're a Jedi and you do things to make yourself known, eventually you will find yourself on the BH Mission terminals, in which case other players can come hunt you down. So if you run through a packed Spaceport swinging your saber about, you can bet you will have some BH's on your ass pretty quick. Stick to the quiet life like Ben Kenobi or Yoda, and you shouldn't have many problems.

As a Rebel, I tend to avoid Imperially controlled cities (like Bestine) so I don't get scanned - but at the end of the day, I choose to be Rebel and 9 times out of 10 the actions I choose will lead to a TEF so I can't moan if I get ganked by a squad of Overt Imps.

Umm, can't think of any more at the moment.

- S