Working As Intended: Deep-diving Star Wars Galaxies’ endgame crafting

When I leaped back into Star Wars Galaxies via the SWG Legends rogue server mid-2018, I didn’t really truly think I’d stay all that long, since the earlier, more classic SWG Emu hadn’t held my attention consistently. But I was wrong. Legends has since become my MMO home as its original version once was, and I am playing just as much as I was back before it was shut down all those years ago. In fact, I’m pretty much playing the same types of characters too: The vast majority of my game time is spent as a pure crafter and trader, most of all on my Chef. (Fun fact: I am not a great cook in real life.) It might sound odd to folks who grew up as murderhobos in MMOs, but I seldom pull my Smuggler out to fight unless I need to hunt creature lairs for resources (after all, SWG’s combat isn’t really the best, and if I just wanted combat, I’d play something else!).

What SWG does offer that makes an emu worth playing over most of the other more legit options out on the market is a substantial emphasis on crafting and economy gameplay, the late-game version of which is surely opaque to anyone who’s never done it or even dipped a toe in the game. Since so many people have asked about this and so few people seem to be covering it from this angle, I thought it’d be fun to dig in with a video to demo how it all works, from harvesters and factories to experimentation and surveying to vendors and even SWG Aide and my own personal spreadsheet.

A few caveats: I’m literally doing a walkthrough of econ gameplay here; it’s not exciting or flashy. It is a super-long video. This is a video with piles of spreadsheets, tools, math, and talking. No mobs were harmed in the making of this video, although I did get a migraine trying to mask out all of the PID! This one is for the folks who really want the details and might want to come back to specific segments later. Feel free to skip around – or skip it entirely if it’s just not for you, no hard feelings. But even if you never play SWG, it might be worth it to see how in-depth MMORPG crafting can go – and why crafters are expecting so much out of the next generation of sandboxes.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
03:11 SWG Aide and the resource system
11:31 Spreadsheets in space
14:58 Shop tour, mail, and inventory
18:49 Houses and factory downloads
22:29 Player vendors
26:15 The bazaar
31:37 Buffs, crafting, and experimentation
43:14 Factory uploads
48:02 Survey droids and submitting resources
60:09 Surveying and harvesting
69:27 Multicrafting, specialization, and newbies
75:49 Outtro

Happy to answer any questions anyone has, though once the comments are archived, you’ll have to send us an email!

The MMORPG genre might be “working as intended,” but it can be so much more. Join Massively Overpowered Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce in her Working As Intended column for editorials about and meanderings through MMO design, ancient history, and wishful thinking. Armchair not included.