While the most obvious advantage younger gamers have over older gamers is finer hand-eye-coordination because, let’s face it, the older you get the slower you get… But perhaps the most valuable advantage that the young have is that they have yet to form emotional attachments to specific games that can cause depressions and long periods of daydreaming about days past.
I am serious about that last one — the older I get the more frustrating the realization of just how fleeting the memories and the experiences we have in video games really are. Which is sad because it is not uncommon at all to encounter a game in which the player willingly invests a significant measure of emotional attachment.
I am speaking specifically about the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies.
Here was a game that we played for years – seven years for me – that we originally were drawn to thanks to childhood memories of the movies and the way that they somehow helped to shape our childhood world. Seriously.
When the end came it came not from a lack of customer-base — there were still plenty of players who wanted Galaxies to continue despite the mucking about that the developers did that nearly ruined the game and certainly ruined the combat system in the game!
No, it was closed out of concern that allowing it to remain in business would somehow have an impact on the new Star Wars themed MMO – little did the folks at Sony and LucasArts realize that the hard feelings that Galaxies saw at their hands ended up causing a large chunk of the core supporters of the games to simply walk away, never to return to the franchise because they felt personally betrayed. And they were, really.
There are mornings when I wake up and I feel eager to log in to Galaxies, check out my home on Naboo and its small museum-like display of the many treasures and souvenirs collected over seven years of game play… Only to remember that I cannot do that. That world no longer exists.
Star Wars Galaxies EMU
Call it an act of rebellion. Call it a gesture of respect. Consider it something that serious fans did because they CAN — but at some point following the closure of a game and social environment that was well-loved by so large a group of Star Wars fans that some sort of gesture was inevitable.
At some point a group of code-slingers got together and decided that they would resurrect that world – Star Wars Galaxies – by developing core server support that was sufficient to permit the legitimate owners of licensed copies of the game (I own a dozen myself thanks to special releases, expansions, and the like) that permits them to run the program and enter – and PLAY – the game as if nothing had changed.
Well of course something had changed – for one thing that world that you spend so many years on and all of the different objects that you collected is still gone – but at least there is the possibility for you to add at least the flavor of those experiences back into your virtual life.
For most players what this means is that they will dust off the disc, re-install it to their game box, and then log in and play on a server someone else has created and hosts for that purpose.
Call it once bitten, twice shy if you like, but the experience of losing my Galaxies world once at the hands of the creator was enough to make me vow never to invest that sort of emotion into a game again unless I control it.
So instead of playing on someone else’s server, I will delay this gratification of a return to the world of SWG until I can afford to put together a dedicated SWGEMU server of my own. A robust high-end custom-built system in other words, that will sit on my home network in the network room here at Four Pines Farm and pump out Star Wars Galaxies all day, every day, and no delays!
I will make that server available to my mates but that is as far as it goes. Well, not quite. You see the admin who controls the server can also craft and deploy missions on that server, so I can see me spending the time and effort that it will take to grow familiar enough with coding that beast to create custom missions and objects and… Yeah, I can see that happening.
Some day soon… In a Galaxy not so far away… On the green and verdant planet of Naboo… The Server RECNEF will arise. Oh yes… Of that there can be no doubt!
So how was your week?
recnef's Gaming Blog 