Soon after I joined Star Wars Galaxies, I enlisted myself in the Beta program for Jump to Lightspeed. Being a fresh recruit into the Galaxies fold, I envisioned this expansion as being the game’s saving grace. How could SOE/Lucasarts make a better Star Wars MMORPG experience? Easy. Add in the spacecraft and dogfighting that made the movies so fun to watch and you’ve got yourself an instant hit. And for a good portion of the beta, I almost believed it. But after signing off the day before the expansion’s official release last week, it hit me: Jump to Lightspeed is just a clever distraction.

If you create a new character, you begin the game by choosing a faction – Rebel, Imperial or the Freelance guild – and thereby choosing your starting location. You also recieve an email from each faction with a waypoint to the location of a pilot recruiter. In less than 10 minutes, your novice pilot can have a starter ship and be flying through space. Using an existing character, I can only assume that you get the email from each faction when you sign on after installing the expansion.

At this point I already had a gripe about the game. The ground based game never assumed allegiance with a faction, as any character can remain neutral for their entire career. You have free reign of what missions you complete, being able to live the life of a true mercenary. However, as a pilot you must join some organization; your ability to get missions depends on it. Even as a freelancer, you must choose to ally yourself with one of the many smuggling outfits, or independent organizations like Corellia’s CorSec.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the method of getting into space is a bit disjointed. When you’re issued your starter ship, you are effectively given a deed, which is the same way vehicles and mounts are dealt with in the land based game. To “launch” into space, you have to visit the appropriate terminal in any starport, select your ship and be on your way. After a loading screen, of course – it’s not like you see a short cut scene of your ship taking flight.

You can enter hyperspace from any given location by picking a planet on your galaxy map. A bit too clean for those who want the feel of navigating a course through hyperspace, though I’m just happy this functionality was included. For Star Wars purists, this won’t make a lot of sense for light fighters and similar craft, as they typically aren’t outfitted with hyperdrives. But for the sake of convenience I guess this feature was necessary to keep players happy. The Waypoint system, something I’ve grown to love about Galaxies, is perfectly adapted for space travel. The space waypoint system allows you to create your own star maps to commonly traveled areas, even setting your ship to auto-pilot to these points. This is especially handy for people that don’t want to stare numbly at the blackness of space on the way to the next mission. You can also skip launching into space altogether, and fly directly to another planet. High level players with fat bank accounts may not really notice this, but beginners who are tired of paying exorbitant return-trip fees to visit another part of the galaxy will appreciate the help.

Combat in space is of the standard twitch variety. I would recommend investment in a joypad, as the controls are almost unusable with a mouse and keyboard. Anyone that’s familiar with X-Wing Alliance will be completely comfortable with the controls and default keyboard shortcuts. Though the very act of having to switch from Joystick to Mouse and back during play in each setting reinforces the disparate nature of this expansion. There were a number of bugs in the Beta related to targeting enemies: sometimes I would target friendly craft or space stations thousands of kilometers away, while taking a severe beating from three fighters right outside my viewport.

This is where I had the biggest problem with the game, and not because it wasn’t fun. I had a great time fending off the Black Sun from a Corellian frieghter with some wing mates. For a MMORPG, though, there needs to be more, well, RPG. There is a skill tree for every type of pilot (Imperial, Rebel, Privateer/Freelance), but most of these skills are related to the type of ship you will be authorized to pilot. Your ability to let loose your laser cannons or dodge the fire from an Imperial gunship rests solely on your skills with a joystick. Even Jedi, who supposedly have inhuman reflexes, receive no bonus while piloting a fighter. I found experience to be extremely slow, but like the land based game there is no shortage of swarms of enemies to kill in orbit around a given planet. It seemed a bit strange that the airways around Tatooine were so busy, but people have to earn their experience somehow, right?

Given that this is supposed to emulate a traditional space sim, the collision detection felt incomplete. There were times during combat where I would get damaged for ramming another ship, but my trajectory or speed wouldn’t change – after taking the damage I would fly right through them. At other times, I could fly right through a larger cruiser or another fighter without taking damage at all. It’s possible this may have been fixed for the final release, but I’m assuming the physics modelling involved would take more than just a day’s work.

If your ship’s shields get destroyed and your hull starts taking damage, it’s time to start making evasive maneuvers. When you do receive the killing blow, you’ll have the option to eject, but I found this made no difference at all. In fact, I ended up severely wounded and in need of serious medical attention before I could even pilot my ship again.

Once your ship is destroyed or incapacitated you are automatically relocated to the nearest space station. I would strongly advise repairing while still in space. I remember I was destroyed in my starter ship, found a space station and landed planetside immediately to collect myself and repair my massive body injuries from ejecting into deep space. Because starter ships are not modifiable, I was unable to get access to my ship’s parts to repair them. As a result I was stuck on the planet without an operational ship, and had to join another faction. Later on I found a Master Shipwright who gave me a schematic for a brand new upgradable fighter, but you can’t always rely on these acts of kindness. You can only purchase and upgrade components for your ship when you’re planetside. You cannot upgrade your ship or add components at space stations, or get out of your ship and wander around. As an aside, a space station setting complete with cantina in orbit around a planet would have been a nice addition as a pilot stopover.

Shipwrights will be essential in this expansion, as they will be the ones fabricating new parts and new hulls for purchase on the Bazaar terminals. Only high level Artisans will have access to this profession – taking Novice Shipwright requires Engineering IV. Presumably high level Artisans will have a number of materials harvesters under their control, because ship parts, and especially hulls, will require a lot of material. The Beta gave everyone unlimited access to materials and professions, so I was able to try my hand at building my own ship. One thing I noticed about the crafting interface is that a material’s attributes are a lot more usable for those that like to get the best possible performance out of a crafted item. The idea of completely customizing my ship with paint kits and souped up parts made me appreciate the level of detail that went into this part of the game. But as any Artisan will tell you, crafting items take time, and eventually turn into a real life job. I remember talking to someone when I first joined Galaxies who made their primary function supplying speeders and swoops on Tatooine. They didn’t sound bitter or anything, but any way you slice it, it’s a thankless job and not exactly how I’d want to spend my gaming time.

One of the biggest problems the fan community has with Galaxies is that the base game remains broken, while the developers push out game publishes introducing a more defined structure to deal with Jedi characters, and devoting valuable time to the release of Jump to Lightspeed. I have to admit I was disappointed with The Jedi Trials, as the only visible addition to the game was the “/detect” command, which gauges your attunement to the Force. Depending on this level of connection, you might get a visit from a Mysterious Man™ who will begin your journey into the ways of the Jedi. In the end the only thing this update really changed was the way the system handled the Jedi skills and the way Jedi behave in combat. I originally thought The Jedi Trials was intended to attract new players. Instead, it’s putting a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in front of them, where being a Jedi is long term goal. How are new players to know what Classes to choose in the beginning of the game? Even though in the end they’re fairly interchangeable, there is still the theoretical waste of experience and time spent in the grind to unlock your affinity for the Force.

Shortly after the release of Jump to Lightspeed, the much anticipated Combat Revamp was officially announced as being in development and slated for release in the near future. This couldn’t have been timed any better, because while the players are distracted work will resume on this long promised game publish. This is all beside the point, though, and says more about my current feelings towards the game as a whole. I have hinted on more than one occasion to those that I play with about cancelling my subscription; I think all it will take is something better to come along to give me the final push.

A Star Wars fan could complain that any MMORPG based on Star Wars without space flight is some kind of crime. Though flying my Z-95 Headhunter fending off Imperial TIE fighters or doing a patrol in my Scyk fighter was fun for a while, it just didn’t feel right. Even the obvious interface update while in space left nothing connecting it to the original game. I think Jump to Lightspeed would have been better served as a separate game. It wouldn’t be the first space-based MMORPG, as the recently shut down Earth and Beyond tried to get people to live the life of a pilot. I can see how the promise of Star Wars space battles is attractive – I bought into it with the best of them – but I can’t see any lasting appeal in spite of the reasonable price tag. Until the Galactic Civil War is completely implemented to cover both land and space-based battles, there is no Force compelling me to get this expansion.

you’ll never see a finer ship in your life