Raidenex
07-06-2004, 08:57 PM
For a long time I put off buying an MMORPG, simply because I was waiting and waiting for Final Fantasy XI to finally show up on our shores here in Oz.
Months and months of waiting changed my game style a little - instead of just having a PS2, I acquired an Xbox and a GameCube, and a PC that could finally run games.
And my number one game of all time went from Final Fantasy X to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy is still a terrific series, but it's no longer my staple RPG - and when Fileplanet offered their 14-day free trial of Star Wars Galaxies, I was in.
It's day 3 of my trial now, so I thought i'd regail you of my journeys up until this point - no screenshots yet, because i'm not sure how to take in-game screenshots, but i'll keep you up to date on my comings and goings.
The only bad thing is that Sony isn't giving the players the option to continue after the 14 days - you have to buy a copy of the game, which in turn isn't available in Australia.
Whether I can import it or not, i'm still waiting to find out - but for now, read on for the story of a single Corellian's two week journey on Tatooine.
Day -1 - Preparations
The first adventure was actually being able to download the installation file. When a free MMORPG is being offered, you can imagine how many people are trying to get their hands on a copy - I had to wait in a 40 minute queue until the 1.9 Gig download even started.
Yep. 1.9 Gig. Luckily it was from a local server, so I was getting decent 400Kb/s download speeds - but this was not a download for the feint of heart. Or dial-up users.
The download ended up taking around 2 hours, so I had that time to register with Central Station, and generally poke around finding out tidbits of info about SWG.
Finally, the download finished - but by that time it was midnight, and I had to get up to work the next morning - so I switched my computer off, and went to bed.
Day 0 - Hinderances
As you can imagine, I didn't get much work done the next day - I was busting to get home and play Galaxies.
I got home, booted up my computer, and installed Galaxies! After a little bit of stuffing around with getting the product ID (The installation browswer didn't seem to like linking to Firefox - I had to change my default to IE *shudder*), but after that Galaxies installed quickly!
Another reboot later, I started the Station Launch-pad, logged on to my station ID, and got my first taste of Galaxies - the Log-in screen. Highly Star Wars ish, I was salivating already, and hit the big pretty button marked 'Play' -
And waited for the patches to download. Now, this trial was only released a couple of days ago, but for some reason, it had none of the patches pre-installed. Another two hours (the patch server was in America, so it was a much longer download) later, I was finally able to play...
The launch-pad disappeared. The screen went black.
The screen switched back to my desktop.
The screen changed colour depth and resolution.
The screen went black again.
The screen unceremoniously booted me back to my desktop with a an error message suggesting I check my video drivier. Now, since i've got nVidia's latest drivers, I was slightly worried. So, I checked the SWG FAQ - and right there, in the list of unsupported Video Cards, was my poor RIVA TNT2.
It felt like a kick in the gut - all the planning, all the downloading, for nothing. By then, it was 11pm, and feeling sick of it all, I switched off the computer and went to bed.
Day 1 - Planetfall!
The next afternoon, I was feeling better - I had enough money to buy a new video card if it came to that, but I was still cut at the option. My computer isn't really a games computer - I prefer consoles myself - so having to spend money to get a trial working, no matter what the game, would have irked me.
Luckily, I remembered something. In my computer mess at home, I have a GeForce 4 Ti2100 card. The thing is, the card was in a computer that suffered at the hands of a system-wide power surge - hell, you can see a burn mark on it. I've tried the card in my computer before with moderate success - sometimes it works fine, other times it doesn't work at all. I figured 'what the hell', and chucked it in.
Perfect. The system booted up quickly, and eagerly I started Star Wars Galaxies, clicked Play -
The screen went black.
The screen went back to the desktop.
The screen changed colour depth.
The screen went black again.
And the blue words, so familiar - "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." appeared on my screen.
Success!
As I sat and read the scroll at the start, I was already enthralled. I was a civilian aboard a transport captured by an Imperial Star Destroyer under suspicion of carrying a Rebel Spy.
After the scroll finished, I was sent to the character creation screen - and I was in love. You could literally create any character you want - every aspect of their appearance, from their height and weight, to the shape of their eyes, is at your control. You can make your character completely unique - the one thing that degraded from the experience of KOTOR.
My first try was a Luke Skywalker look-a-like - without even realizing it, i'd created a dead ringer for the Tatooine farmboy. Deciding that being try-hardish probably wasn't the best way to start a new MMORPG, I changed the hair style and made him a bit more heavyset to create -
Lei-Dar Kinn
Novice Scout
Kauri Server
A scout from Corellia who dreamed of seeing the world, and is now captured upon a Star Destroyer.
After finishing my character, I unleashed him on to the world. You start, as I mentioned before, in a Star Destroyer - I won't go into detail about what happens, but it's a basic tutorial of sorts. There are no PCs, and it's mainly just an oppurtunity for you to get used to the controls without looking like an idiot. At the end of the Star Destroyer 'mission', you board an Imperial Shuttle and are dumped on the surface of Tatooine.
That's when I logged off for that night, and that's all for Day 1 - i'll give you more up to the minute details later!
Months and months of waiting changed my game style a little - instead of just having a PS2, I acquired an Xbox and a GameCube, and a PC that could finally run games.
And my number one game of all time went from Final Fantasy X to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy is still a terrific series, but it's no longer my staple RPG - and when Fileplanet offered their 14-day free trial of Star Wars Galaxies, I was in.
It's day 3 of my trial now, so I thought i'd regail you of my journeys up until this point - no screenshots yet, because i'm not sure how to take in-game screenshots, but i'll keep you up to date on my comings and goings.
The only bad thing is that Sony isn't giving the players the option to continue after the 14 days - you have to buy a copy of the game, which in turn isn't available in Australia.
Whether I can import it or not, i'm still waiting to find out - but for now, read on for the story of a single Corellian's two week journey on Tatooine.
Day -1 - Preparations
The first adventure was actually being able to download the installation file. When a free MMORPG is being offered, you can imagine how many people are trying to get their hands on a copy - I had to wait in a 40 minute queue until the 1.9 Gig download even started.
Yep. 1.9 Gig. Luckily it was from a local server, so I was getting decent 400Kb/s download speeds - but this was not a download for the feint of heart. Or dial-up users.
The download ended up taking around 2 hours, so I had that time to register with Central Station, and generally poke around finding out tidbits of info about SWG.
Finally, the download finished - but by that time it was midnight, and I had to get up to work the next morning - so I switched my computer off, and went to bed.
Day 0 - Hinderances
As you can imagine, I didn't get much work done the next day - I was busting to get home and play Galaxies.
I got home, booted up my computer, and installed Galaxies! After a little bit of stuffing around with getting the product ID (The installation browswer didn't seem to like linking to Firefox - I had to change my default to IE *shudder*), but after that Galaxies installed quickly!
Another reboot later, I started the Station Launch-pad, logged on to my station ID, and got my first taste of Galaxies - the Log-in screen. Highly Star Wars ish, I was salivating already, and hit the big pretty button marked 'Play' -
And waited for the patches to download. Now, this trial was only released a couple of days ago, but for some reason, it had none of the patches pre-installed. Another two hours (the patch server was in America, so it was a much longer download) later, I was finally able to play...
The launch-pad disappeared. The screen went black.
The screen switched back to my desktop.
The screen changed colour depth and resolution.
The screen went black again.
The screen unceremoniously booted me back to my desktop with a an error message suggesting I check my video drivier. Now, since i've got nVidia's latest drivers, I was slightly worried. So, I checked the SWG FAQ - and right there, in the list of unsupported Video Cards, was my poor RIVA TNT2.
It felt like a kick in the gut - all the planning, all the downloading, for nothing. By then, it was 11pm, and feeling sick of it all, I switched off the computer and went to bed.
Day 1 - Planetfall!
The next afternoon, I was feeling better - I had enough money to buy a new video card if it came to that, but I was still cut at the option. My computer isn't really a games computer - I prefer consoles myself - so having to spend money to get a trial working, no matter what the game, would have irked me.
Luckily, I remembered something. In my computer mess at home, I have a GeForce 4 Ti2100 card. The thing is, the card was in a computer that suffered at the hands of a system-wide power surge - hell, you can see a burn mark on it. I've tried the card in my computer before with moderate success - sometimes it works fine, other times it doesn't work at all. I figured 'what the hell', and chucked it in.
Perfect. The system booted up quickly, and eagerly I started Star Wars Galaxies, clicked Play -
The screen went black.
The screen went back to the desktop.
The screen changed colour depth.
The screen went black again.
And the blue words, so familiar - "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." appeared on my screen.
Success!
As I sat and read the scroll at the start, I was already enthralled. I was a civilian aboard a transport captured by an Imperial Star Destroyer under suspicion of carrying a Rebel Spy.
After the scroll finished, I was sent to the character creation screen - and I was in love. You could literally create any character you want - every aspect of their appearance, from their height and weight, to the shape of their eyes, is at your control. You can make your character completely unique - the one thing that degraded from the experience of KOTOR.
My first try was a Luke Skywalker look-a-like - without even realizing it, i'd created a dead ringer for the Tatooine farmboy. Deciding that being try-hardish probably wasn't the best way to start a new MMORPG, I changed the hair style and made him a bit more heavyset to create -
Lei-Dar Kinn
Novice Scout
Kauri Server
A scout from Corellia who dreamed of seeing the world, and is now captured upon a Star Destroyer.
After finishing my character, I unleashed him on to the world. You start, as I mentioned before, in a Star Destroyer - I won't go into detail about what happens, but it's a basic tutorial of sorts. There are no PCs, and it's mainly just an oppurtunity for you to get used to the controls without looking like an idiot. At the end of the Star Destroyer 'mission', you board an Imperial Shuttle and are dumped on the surface of Tatooine.
That's when I logged off for that night, and that's all for Day 1 - i'll give you more up to the minute details later!