{"id":116,"date":"2003-06-30T20:14:44","date_gmt":"2003-06-30T20:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=116"},"modified":"2003-06-30T20:14:44","modified_gmt":"2003-06-30T20:14:44","slug":"stargazing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Stargazing"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there was ever a fantasy world I would have liked to step right into, lightsaber in hand, Star Wars is it. I want to pilot that X-Wing. I want to face the Hut full of jelly and save that princess with buns in her hair. I want to be the swashbuckling hero. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like I can do any of those things in Star Wars Galaxies<\/a>, a game that launched just last week.<\/p>\n

Galaxies sounded<\/a> like a gamer’s dream. User controlled cities, controllable vehicles like land speeders, and space combat headed the feature list. As the years rolled by, features became future promises<\/a> and even future expansion packs<\/a>. What’s left sounds more like Everquest with Ewoks than the incredible game I hoped to rush home and play.<\/p>\n

I say “hope” because I’ve yet to purchase the game. Another reason has kept me from the retail shelves. The rapidly shrinking feature list should give you a clue. From the initial reports – and the reports of some folks in the beta – the game is buggy. Some things are incomplete. Some things are completely broken. Day one found many gamers waiting for the registration screen<\/a>. Subsequent days have been filled with server downtime.<\/p>\n

For many massively multiplayer role-playing games – Dark Age of Camelot excluded, server instability in their infant days is par for the course. That doesn’t make it right, particularly when Joe consumer is sitting at home $50 lighter. For this game, it almost seemed to be the plan. The game isn’t ready to play. They are, however, more than ready to begin collecting money.<\/p>\n

And somehow, I’m still interested. I won’t spend my hard earned money to beta test their software. However, I hope one of my friends does. I need someone on the inside. Someone to approach me in a year and assure me that my dream of what this game could be is close to becoming reality. Much like the suits at Sony, I need a guinea pig.<\/p>\n

The Star Wars license with a $15 a month fee is the closest thing that the massively multiplayer gaming community will see to a sure thing for a long while. Look ma, I can be a Wookie. They can’t screw it up. They just can’t. That doesn’t mean they won’t give it a college try.<\/p>\n

I would have gladly paid their sum to play the game that I really wanted to play. As it turns out, though, they haven’t finished it. I won’t pay them a cent until they do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there was ever a fantasy world I would have liked to step right into, lightsaber in hand, Star Wars is it. I want to pilot that X-Wing. I want to face the Hut full of jelly and save that princess with buns in her hair. I want to be the swashbuckling hero. Unfortunately, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plan.thewoottons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}