Galaxies Growth

This year, the release of Episode III has fueled significant growth for the title and indeed it's the release of the final Star Wars that has prompted the timing on these changes. "It's great to have a movie like Episode III that gets people excited. We tried to time these changes with the release of the DVD," says Smedley. "There will also be a big marketing push that follows as well. The game is just a lot more fun now and I say that as a game player, not just the head of the company."

Early Feedback

Anyone who's invested hundreds of hours into their characters (in some cases thousands of hours) and chosen professions might be understandably riled at the thought that these significant changes that might render that "work" pointless. Indeed, even minor tweaks to MMOG mechanics or character balance is often enough to cause shockwaves through a game's community. Jeff Hickman's rant at the Austin Game Conference focused precisely on these sorts of changes. He probably wasn't aware of what SOE was planning when he gave that speech.

A change of this magnitude, where the underlying mechanics and class balances have been completely scrapped and redone, has never been undertaken on a live MMOG like this.

So how is the fan base reacting?

"It's mixed. It's very positive [feedback] from the people who are actually playing it. And we also have the expected push back from the people who haven't actually logged in to try it," says Smedley. "Once people get in there, it's overwhelmingly positive. It's the "the sky is falling" crowd on the forums that's still going to take some converting. I understand that. These are big changes."

The Future of Star Wars: Galaxies

With more development resources being applied to Galaxies than any other product at SOE,  a new expansion pack and new features are going to be rolled out in the next six to eight months, mostly focusing around the Galactic Civil War. "We have some big events in store and we'll be working on the story line so it actually means something if you're imperial or if you're a rebel," says Smedley.

Smedley says that these changes will keep Star Wars: Galaxies as a going concern. "We wanted to breath new life into the game and make it the Star Wars experience that people always wanted it to be.

"Despite some of the rhetoric coming from the existing player base, we've not noticed any rise in people canceling their subscriptions. It's just a very small, very vocal minority."

Accessibility

"People assume that 'accessibility' means 'dumbing it down' and it means nothing of the sort. 'Accessible' means that it's understandable and intuitive and there's more rewards sooner. We're trying to take the grind out of it and do that in a way that makes you feel like you're a part of the Star Wars universe. There's a quote about the original design of Galaxies that says it was too much like  living the life of Uncle Owen (the moisture farmer) and not enough like the life of Luke or Han Solo. We want to deliver more of the heroic Star Wars experience.

"One of the nice things about the changes we're making is that the platform for the game will be stronger and be giving the game more longevity. We're going to be doing graphical enhancements  and other enhancements. We want to make sure we're building this game to last another five to ten years. For some of the stuff we have planned, we really want to see more people getting involved. We want to really have large scale galactic civil war, and not the small skirmishes we're having today."