Dominus Nihil

[Ryoji]

I love aji!







moox2

[Aji]

It's been 6 years since I've played Star Wars: Galaxies.  I'm glad I typed this short history of the beginning so I could jog my memory years down the road. Otherwise I would have forgotten names and important details.  What I'm thankful for is the fact that this is still up.

I've always enjoyed the original trilogies.  I recall seeing A New Hope, then just called Star Wars at the Coronet Theater with my dad in San Francisco.  My love for Star Wars grew from there. Oh how I wish I hadn't buried my Star Wars toys or blown them up.

Eventually I discovered computer gaming. My friends had a Commodore 64 and Apple IIe.  I ended up with an Atari 2600.  I had one Star Wars game for the Atari.  It was pretty one dimensional as you can imagine. You'd fly around in a Snow Speeder and try to take out At-At's during the battle of Hoth. I'm not sure there was an ending to that game.  But with a little imagination I was able to make up for the lack of graphics and content on those games.  That would serve me well later on with games like SWG.

In the early nineties I got addicted to a game called Star Wars: X-Wing.  What a game that was.  I already loved flight simulators but a flight sim in space AND based in the Star Wars universe? I was hooked.  It had a lot of action, good graphics and a great interactive midi music track. I'd get goosebumps when either a Star Destroyer or rebel reinforcements would arrive.  I got so good at that game that I could one shot tie fighters with my quad-linked laser cannons on my X-Wing. It was like popping popcorn.

In a couple years, after I left California for school in Minnesota, a programmer released a mission editor for X-Wing.  I have to say that and the internet made this game last a lot longer than it should have.  Now people could make their own missions and tell their own stories.  Player associations were formed and congealed into one big entity called Rebel Squadrons.  We had squadrons and pilots and a story arc the council had come up with.  Members would play the mission their squadron commander would email to them and play the mission. The pilots would then take a screen shot of the after action briefing screen and email their report back.  Best we could do without any MMO out yet.

Here's more info on that:  http://wiki.rebelsquadrons.org/index.php/RebelSkum



I remember how much I anticipated the release of this game.  When I first heard about it back in 2001 I just couldn't wait for it to come out.

I had read a lot about SWG. About the different classes and the paths to master them. I knew I wanted to be a Master Bounty Hunter. I thought a lot about how I would go about hunting other players or even Jedi.

It was bugged to hell but there was something about it that kept me going. The first day of the live servers opening up I could only create a character.  I randomly selected Bria. And the next day launched the game with great anticipation.

My character landed in Doaba Guerfel. I don't really know the other cities on Corellia anymore but for some reason I remember this one. Even how it was spelled. I spent a good two weeks there trying to level up my scout and marksman class. I don't think I realized how to get off the planet really.

In my mind I can still remember the lay out of that city and the land around it. It was located high up above the golden poppy fields of Corellia and north of a long windy river to the south.  The sheer mountains made travel to and from time consuming. But you could zig-zag up in an almost diagonal direction to help speed things up.  Thus I was introduced to the "interesting" physics of SWG.  

The city was surrounded by red blips on my radar screen. Upon closer examination they were a mix of evil bad assed rabbits and NPC thugs. I recall while I was leveling up my scouting profession I finally completed my first suit of armor.  As I donned this ungainly and un-Star Warsy like suit of armor called Skull Armor, I was immediately killed by a Dark Jedi.

I eventually ran into some regulars in and around the city.  I've mostly forgotten their names but I saw them all later in various guilds on both sides of the so called galactic civil war.  There was a base to the south of Doaba Guerfel where NPC's spawned and dropped seemingly good loot. But I went there mostly to level up my marksman skills. It was there I ran into Zazo and his brother. 

The early days of SWG and the state of my computer made it difficult to play. I used a modem and the highest connection I got was maybe 33.6kbps. That was pretty bad considering all the patches that came out early on. But I would set aside a lot of time to play and to coordinate times to meet up with others to maximize our time.

More to come....
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Aji

[Olicc]

5 *s

Makes me think of my first days with SWG. Good times...
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[Xzaver]

i could rant forever, but i wont
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[Aji]

I recall that my expectations were rather lofty.  Before SWG came out I assumed we'd have some form of transportation.  I thought that we'd actually be able to explore space with ships. You know, star wars and all.  Instead for the longest time it was about melee, min maxers, pets and lots of running around.  I wanted that X-Wing style mmo to be SWG.

But I tried to make the most of it for a long long time.  I recall trying to put together a suit of armor that looked as close to a pilots suit as possible.  I picked up enough Creature Handler skills so that I could tame and have a dog only found on Yavin IV.  For that I had to bring along Olicc for protection and we trekked from one side of the moon to the other looking for it.  The dog would be my sidekick on my bounty hunter ship of death, whenever the developers released that patch. 

I stuck with the bounty hunter class through thick and thin. It was broken at first, then over powered with it's knock down- dizzy combo ability. And then nerfed. When I left the bounty hunter class it was a far cry from it's inception.  But the complexity of the class and of the game kept me coming back for more. 

We'd often hunt without buffs early on.  We'd have hunt groups for resources to help the crafters in the guild.  And we'd find exploits. Which we typically would use for a short time until guilt set in. But that was the buggy nature of the game then.

And then there was the infamous holo-grind.  I and others in the guild had eventually fallen to the seduction of obtaining a Jedi.  I fought it for so long because I felt it would kill the spirit of the guild. Then I realized that it was just a natural progression. Who was I to quell that or not join it myself?  We made deals with various imperial guilds to farm for holocrons.  Both sides were in a race.  The holocrons were nonbinding on pick up. So we would gather them and give them to people who volunteered to "grind" professions to mastery that the holocrons told them to.  Once you mastered something like 3 professions or classes you were given a force sensitive character. This was the end all be all for quite some time.  I had the dubious distinction of being the first to unlock a force sensitive character after mastering just 5 professions total.  While poor Caqoshor took something like 30.  And I did it right in front of the poor guy...

I really enjoyed being a bounty hunter and finally obtained my assault ship thanks to Rathnak and Ventuviper and headed to the stars when Jump To Lightspeed was released. It was well polished and it was what I hoped for when SWG came out.  But sadly, it was too late.

I had enough of SWG at that point.
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Aji

[Aji]

Once I left SWG, I spent a good deal of time playing the "cartoony" fantasy game called World of Warcraft.  It was simple and fun and polished. I played a Warlock which was broken upon release. It was a good 6 months before it was fixed but by then I learned to get by as I always had.  Eventually I rejoined DN from my solo adventures and for the most part the spirit was there.  But people were arguing a lot more and it just pushed me onto solo pvp endeavors.  Eventually everyone went their separate ways for their own reasons. 

I stopped playing WoW and gave Eve a try. It seemed as if I had completely missed the boat by not being in that game upon launch.  

I eventually found SWG Emu and loaded the software up for one last look.  I applaud the efforts, but the people are not there. I found myself searching for the people and the times that were no longer there.

Over the span of all this I worked in information technology. I was a systems administrator and I could always check in on the guild and help people out.  I started to finally pull away from gaming in 2006 when my dad died from a long illness.  I think for the most part MMO's and SWG in general allowed me to escape from reality. Sometimes I took the game too seriously and then I was smacked in the face with reality.

I eventually got a divorce. No, not because of my gaming habits.  I retreated further from gaming.  I met someone who showed me that there's so much this life has to offer. To get out and do things. See the world.  It doesn't hurt that she's most utterly hot!

 In MMO's you can do anything you set your mind to and meet plenty of friendly people that want to help. That's what I founded Dominus Nihil on.

I'm a police officer now.  I work in San Francisco in the Tenderloin District.  A wretched hive of scum and villany.  I regularly catch parollees, drug dealers, and a various assortment of malcontents.  

I eventually became a sort of Bounty Hunter.  Something I enjoy in a game I was able to find in real life. Slowly mastering my profession to gain that force sensitive character.

Keep in touch...
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