May: a month which has inexplicably become a big thing for Star Wars fans over the past few years. In the world of Star Wars Galaxies, rogue servers started the month off with a bang, but pretty much fizzled out afterwards. Most servers hosted some kind of May the Fourth celebration, but there wasn’t much to speak of in terms of new content.
SWG: Legends (Custom NGE rogue server)
Released on the very first day of the month, Legends players finally got to check out the Ranching and Farming update, having waited an entire, er, two weeks since it was announced. Yep, this was a spectacularly quick turnaround from reveal to release.
Obviously, this update isn’t going to have the broadest appeal (and the patch notes had little to offer beyond the addition of the new systems), but if you’re the sort of person who suspected they may have liked a proper farming system in Star Wars Galaxies, then you certainly won’t be disappointed by what the Legends team have delivered.
Galaxies‘ crafting is still recognised as being one of the most robust crafting systems not just in the MMORPG genre, but in the entire medium. It’s not really something you can dabble with on the side if you want to do anything more than scratch the surface, and Legends has followed in those footsteps by creating a new system which can quite comfortably be your full-time job in the game if you want it to be.
There are a whole lot of layers to this thing and the community have been having a ball trying to figure out how to grow all the new plants and tame all the wild creatures. A month has passed since the update was released and there is clearly still a long way to go in getting everything pinned down. There’s at least one community spreadsheet in the works now though, so that’ll give you a good idea of how serious things are.
It’s really nothing short of mind-blowing how this thing has been developed by a volunteer team, and it isn’t even as though this is the only thing that’s been in the pipeline, because we already know that the Star Viper update is hitting servers pretty soon. There are, of course, a lot of logistical differences to weigh up, but the fact that Legends are delivering this much content to every kind of player while so many commercial MMOs have been underdelivering recently is really something.
SWG Infinity (SWGEmu based server)
This server had slipped out of my regular checks, but they’ve been doing some solid work recently. At the tail end of April a new update brought in an original Big Game Hunting system, and they’ve also added a Mandalorian themed quest earlier in the year. Infinity has been running since 2017, so if you’re looking for a pre-CU server which has a few years of original content under its belt then now might be a good time to have a look at this one.
ProjectSWG (Custom NGE emulator)
With the leaked source code giving rise to so many NGE era servers, it’s no surprise that the team at ProjectSWG have turned all their attention to creating a CU emulator instead. They’ve drummed up a roadmap of how they will be implementing the major features, and have announced that a public test server will be opened “very soon”.
SWG Restoration III (Custom CU rogue server)
There’s no two ways about it, SWG is a terribly optimized game. It began development two decades ago and you still can’t really run it at maxed out settings even on the most powerful gaming computer. It’s therefore reassuring that the team at Restoration have taken the time to improve things on this front before the server launches in its 1.0 state.
Boasting over 140,000 lines of changed code in their latest update, players should find their play experience a little more stable. This, they claim, will also pave the way for future upgrades “including 64-bit support, DirectX upgrades, a 4K user interface, and more”.
SWG: Beyond (Custom NGE rogue server)
‘Dailies’—repeatable content that can be completed for rewards once every 24 hours—have become standard issue in modern MMOs. It’s a reliable source of endgame content that keeps players checking in each day. It’s easy to be cynical about this kind of hamster wheel content, but there’s also something quite nice about being able to log onto a game after a long day of work, knowing that you can just jump straight into doing something without having to dedicate much thought to it.
Now at least one SWG rogue server has its own version of dailies, with Beyond having launched its own Daily Missions System. There are over 20 quests available, so there’s something for every kind of player to get stuck into if they want to earn some extra credits. There are also additional rewards for completing multiple dailies.