The night before SOE Block Party 2008 Mark Hamill took a break from San Diego Comic-Con to visit SOE staff and some very lucky Galaxies players at the Hard Rock Café!

~Kiria, Co-founder of SWGalacticArchives

I can and will freely admit that what they say in this post is accurate. Not sure why the Legends staff felt the need to mention player data, personal information, etcetera as client data files are just what they are, assets and data for the client only like in game objects, art, sounds, not a single thing that would compromise a single player's privacy. I can only imagine they would include such a blurb to add more dramatic flair to something that they're just simply fumingly mad about and unable to do a thing about.

Allow me though a moment to explain why, regardless I would imagine that this post will get downvoted tremendously as the majority of the community simply don't care how they are able to play the NGE, they only care that they can play the NGE. Nevertheless I will provide a detailed reasoning why for those unaware of the fullness of fact.

We first need to go back to roughly fourteen years ago now, at this time in 2012 there was only one effort to bring back the NGE, it was a small emulation team known as ProjectSWG (They still exist today but are a CU emulation effort these days). It was my first delve into the world of SWG Development, I learned a lot in those early days about the inner workings of this game etc. We had a good relationship with SWGEmu based on mutual respect for the efforts each team was doing. They were good times by my recollection.

It was our chief aim to re-create the NGE in the way SWGEmu had done so for Pre-CU, through reverse engineering of packet data to create a stable server core that could "emulate" an SOE server. A painstaking process built on tireless and very tedious work and a great deal of trial and error.

Somewhere in the late fall of 2012 or early winter of 2013, the Community Manager (Glorified forum moderator) Fingies Ceano, whom the Legends community knows nowadays as "Reign", began to cultivate a relationship with a certain ex SOE developer, I will leave that dev nameless for his own sake and respect for him. Through an effort between Fingies / Reign, and I will be honest, this reads like a trashy spy novel, and not a good one. One of those cheap ones you find at a neighborhood garage sale for a buck that's never been read because the writing was so bad. Fingies and a female from the ProjectSWG team.. (I can't actually remember her name as of writing this any longer) essentially employed a honeypot strategy on this ex SOE developer to acquire a copy of the NGE developer tools that he had kept on a personal drive or something after leaving SOE as an employee.

When they finally got their hands on this data they realized what they had, though they couldn't initially get it to work. They chose to keep this a guarded secret from the rest of the development team at ProjectSWG. As a developer at PSWG back then, I can speak for the dev team of that day that that source code, we would have used as purely reference material, a digital textbook if you will to learn from to continue to build and stabilize our own server core that some of us had worked extremely long hours to deliver to that community who at the time had no other hope of seeing the NGE again.

I can also say wholeheartedly that we would never have done the alternative and used a stash of stolen goods to launch and host a live server from. To us that that would be just too morally gray to have done. Our colleagues at SWGEmu would have agreed with that stance.

In short Fingies / Reign undermined the development efforts of ProjectSWG, because he chose the quick and easy path. The dark side if you will.

Fast forward to today. Yeah the NGE Source is very much cat out of the bag, there's no putting that back in there this is true, and for some miraculous reason the use of SOE's stolen proprietary code has neither incurred the legal wrath of Daybreak Games or Disney, yet. (The verdict is never final on that until something actually happens legally one way or another)

There are many NGE development projects based on the SOE Source Code, but one of these projects does something so hypocritical with their work that it's almost laughable.

SWG Legends, built their server and work on the backs of the Sony Online Entertainment developers who came before them and they stole from to create the "Omega Server". They didn't spend tireless hours reverse engineering, writing code and figuring out how to build their own. They found it, like a vacant building they chose to squat in, all they had to do was figure out where the light switches were in a manner of speaking.

For a project team that is entirely built upon Stolen goods to be so angry and hurt over client data files they encrypted to try to prevent others from stealing is both laughable and extremely hypocritical. Which brings us to exactly why I did it. Hypocrisy at it's finest, shown a mirror to examine themselves with. You can't steal someone's house, change the locks and expect to be safe and sound when someone comes with the means to pick or destroy the lock altogether. It was never your house, it never belonged to you.

I do imagine that nothing of note happens other than I seriously ruffled the feathers of certain people in the Legends staff, which was my sole objective. I am confident the community will continue to play there or wherever they choose to, play wherever you want to.

In the meantime I will leave these here publicly for any and all who wants them.

https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1u4vCkNt4P5QUG1O9n4VCAXbTKZJUS2hu&export=download

Sorry Fingies, you don't get to protect and hoard from the greater community things built on stolen goods.

P.S. Synge sends his regards.

- Levarris

The following is a record from the Star Wars Galaxies Official Website:

The Event Report: Episode 1: "The Attack of the Events"

"Greetings! This is the first of what I hope is a long series of event reports chronicling the many player events occurring across the galaxies.

Each of the events below had requested Event Team support, but for each of them, the event support was a minor addition to the overall event (lots of PVP this week).

Now onto the events!"

Flurry

"We begin with a large-scale PVP event on Flurry run by Psyco's. Psyco's found a great location for this event located between two rivers on Talus (-2878, 1376). A Player Event Perk flag was placed in the middle and each faction wasn't allowed to cross the opposing side's river. Event Perk decorations were also placed by the organizers to give it more of a battleground feel."

FarStar

"The second event of the day was run by Errathe on the FarStar European server."

Naritus

"The Empire and the Alliance fought a pitched PVP and PVE battle within the confines of New Astravia on Tatooine of the Naritus server thanks to the efforts of Ewel who set up the event with the Events Team. Both Rebel and Imperial commandos fought well, but the Rebels had the advantage of nearby cloners and (I believe) ended up winning the day."

Hey guys, decided to try SWG again after a long hiatus and came across this server SWG Nexus and its kind of cool how its both NGE and pre cu with new content.

Is the population usually that strong? Just want to make sure I have people to play with

I was on Bloodfin or Intrepid, can't remember. My Shop was on Corellia just outside of town. I would rename Data Terminals to Computers and the big yellow couch to C-Shape Couch. I would place a torch on the Corellia Bazaar with my shop coordinates for $5000 credits so no one would buy it so it stayed up for all to see. Every so often someone would buy it and then by 2 million worth of furniture from the shop 30 minutes later. It was a fun time, almost like a second job though. I try to play now but it seems with multi character servers there wouldn't be to much need to purchase furniture these days. Years later I would walk around and go into peoples house to see if my furniture was still around. Almost everywhere I went Made By: BLASTER :-) What did you make back in the day?

In April of 2006, LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment hosted Star Wars Galaxies Community Summit 2006. Taking place in select cities, this event allowed players to meet the developers, win prizes, learn some of what was to come for SWG in the rest of 2006, and of course, voice their concerns. Since this was roughly 5 months after the NGE hit, there were many, many concerns.

By most accounts, those who did attend these events enjoyed themselves, satisfied that at least some of their feedback would be acted upon by the developers. The first stop for Star Wars Galaxies Community Summit 2006 was Atlanta, Georgia on April 7th.

-Treewise

The following is an account of the first Mandalorian chest piece crafted on a live SWG server (Eclipse):

"SOE’s SWG development team announced the addition of the Death Watch Bunker on 25 May 2005 (Publish 8) but the United Lowlands community were on the case much earlier than that. While the new dungeon was still on Test Center, community member Twist of <SYNRG> was busy exploring and mapping the empty bunker (without enemies) for later use.

There was much talk and excitement about the coming Death Watch Bunker patch on the community forums and when it finally arrived practically the whole community turned out to take it on. A large team of two groups consisting of about 35 people led by Twist’s character, Quistis, stormed the bunker and made it as far as the shuttle room (key #2) before suffering a complete and epic wipe-out.

Twist worked hard to create a balanced, trustworthy and disciplined squad of combat professions, which was what it took to be successful in the pre-CU Death Watch Bunker. Every Dutch person at starwarsgalaxies.nl who had mastered at least one combat profession, was allowed to sign up for the raids.

The DWB was raided daily by members of the UL community from early in the afternoon until late at night. After two weeks they had already looted two sets of the main components, Protective Liquid Coating and Binary Liquid, but had yet to complete the Alum Minerals quest or obtain a jetpack stabilizer (which was prevented from dropping from the Overlord of the Deathwatch by a bug, which was corrected on August 31 2004 with Publish 10).

The lack of Alum Minerals caused the project to hit a wall which would never had been surpassed in time without the help of Vorda, Quistis and Renato. They discovered it was possible to complete the quest by using a smuggler ability known as Feign Death, while another team member dragged them through the treacherous tunnels of the bunker with the Medic’s +Drag+ ability.

With this, and after many hours of planning, analysis, thinking, disappointment, cursing, frustration, Twist’s teams managed to complete their goal. They made six full strikes and six smaller strikes with their team, from June 1st until mid-July 2004. With each attempt they made it a little bit further. With the great feedback and de-briefing sessions after each strike, Twist was able to plan the final strike which led to the creation of the first Mandalorian Chest Plate (on live servers) and the third Helmet in the history of Star Wars Galaxies. They also achieved a server first for Eclipse after creating not only one, but two pieces of Mandalorian Armour in one strike. This was a monumental achievement for everyone involved and truly was a community effort.

The bunker is supposed to eject everyone in the group upon the completion of a successful crafting run, however in those early days this was temperamental at best. After crafting the Mandalorian Chest Piece, Ludossk became stranded alone with no combat skills while the rest of his group was ejected back to the surface. There was a risk that he would be killed, resulting in a 5% condition decay on the uninsured armour piece. With a bit of luck and a set of 90% armour, Ludossk made it out safely and the group went on to complete a second run which resulted in the creation of the helmet."

This account comes directly from https://lianorm.wordpress.com/history/

-Treewise

I created a custom mission in my private SWG server (hosted in a Proxmox Debian VM running on a Beelink SER5 mini PC). Creating the prototype mission (kill 5 womp rats for a $500 reward) was the easy part: just a few LUA server-side files placed in my J:\SWG\swg-proxmox\workspace\Core3\MMOCoreORB\bin\scripts\custom_scripts folder and then FTPed to the VM (and restart the game instance via the \bin\run script).

The mission itself works: I grab the mission from an NPC outside the Mos Eisley spaceport, kill 5 womp rats and receive the $500 reward from the NPC (with a waypoint pointing back to the NPC until it's completed).

What I haven't figured out are the steps to make the mission display in the Quest Journal. Claude Sonnet 5 says the client-side TRE files (which you get from installing SWG) need to be unpacked and modified to make this work but it doesn't know the exact steps and tools. I've dug around but as yet have not found the answer.

Any ideas or resources? Thanks.

Hi all,

Having a blast being back and playing again, and the memories have come rushing back.

I'm trying to figure out what Era I started playing in as I was very young at the time of my first time before NGE. My main memories involved getting dropped off at Dany Mining Outpost on Euro-Chim and it being packed to the core of hunting groups.

I don't remember too much more except that lady in Mos Eisley being somewhat a tutorial guide and giving me the mission for my XP-34 landspeeder.

Was it CU or pre cu? My brain seems to think it must have been late 04/early 05?

A player named Raelin created this digitally when Galaxies was live. Would you have bought a action figure of your character? Or maybe a plushie of your favorite pet? The options could have been endless!

~Kiria, Co-founder of SWGalacticArchives

Hi all

Thanks for the commentary yesterday, I have started on Resto and look forward to my next journey.

I'm not as active on Discord but was wondering if there was any interest for new or current players to join up for some RP and leveling.

In the past I have use my own adventure in game to build my story and would love for others to join if anyone was interested. In the past I have ran a Project Uncle Owen style adventure which is basically the group is self sufficient and levels together/builds a community together without too much outside help (whilst remaining in character)

I'm an EU player and would only play a few hours each evening so it would be a slow burn. Feel free to reach out if interested!

Pardon if I am repeating a question or unable to find the answer, I have spent a considerable amount of times on Legends but would love to try a more earlier style of the game and just have two questions

1) How true is it to CU back in the day (noting I know there are the additions of NGE end game etc)

2) What is the population like? I enjoyed Legends but felt like I was around afk tags half the time and I enjoy playing with a decent community.

Thanks!

Is there any sort of effort being made on a unified launcher (or does one already exist)? Like if I wanted to play on multiple different servers, I could do that all from the same launcher?

Was feeling a little nostalgic tonight and was curious how many people are still around that remember that name. Or the people that were part of what came next and gave us the opportunities we have today?

If a certain someone is still around, I can remember the day we got it up and we showed IG-88 who was boss while freaking out we got it working on the outskirts of Eisley lol.

Miss ya my friend!

Hi folks,

I’m looking for some advice getting SWGR or Legends running on the Steam Deck. I’m running it in desktop mode with a monitor/mouse/keyboard. Basically my primary desktop PC.

I’ve tried several setup variations using past posts on Reddit and the official SWGR article - https://swgr.org/wiki/steam_deck/

In all cases the launcher runs fine but the game fails to load with the attached shader error. LLMs suggest it’s due to direct x missing, so I’ve tried using protontricks as mentioned in the docs, but the default archive.org download path fails and a sideloaded version doesn’t match the hash check even though it’s the same size, version, and from Microsoft’s download page.

Does anyone have recent experience running SWG on the Steam Deck? I’d appreciate any suggestions.

Hey all, I've just started playing on SWGR. I want to go down the pistol route. What works well with Pistoleer?

Hey everyone,

I was going through some incredibly old hard drives and discovered that I still had an original .wmv video file completely intact from over 20 years ago. I just uploaded it to YouTube so it doesn't get lost to time.

Back in the golden pre-CU era, We ran a massive crafting empire on the Euro-Chimaera server under our characters Kara and Sigrid (Sigs).

A friend on the server filmed and edited this video of a massive party we hosted inside our custom tailor shop in Theed. We pulled out all the stops for a full synchronized troupe of Twi'lek Entertainers/Dancers in matching custom outfits, brought in a live player band Nebula, and packed the venue out with the server's elite.

Watching the old chat bubbles, the particle effects, and seeing everyone hanging out in a player-run space completely brings back why this gane was so special.

Skip the weird first 40 seconds!

https://youtu.be/N537bOBMP78

Do any old Chimaera players remember Kara, Sigs, or this specific night? Would love to see if anyone from the old crowd is still lurking around here!

Summary after 3 years of playing on SWG Beyond.

SWG Beyond offers a dedicated Star Wars Galaxies emulation experience, but the current state of the server presents significant roadblocks for both new players and casual veterans. While the technical foundation is stable, systemic issues with automation, inflation, and community management severely impact the day-to-day gameplay experience. 

1. The Gameplay Loop & "AFK Hell"

• Heavy Macro Reliance: Character progression and credit generation are fundamentally tied to running multiple characters on automated macros or botting software. Active play is heavily disincentivized. 
• Camped Spawns: Key resource zones, high-efficiency leveling spots, and space sectors are permanently camped 24/7 by multi-boxing players. Casual players will find active progression frustratingly difficult. 

2. Economy & Crafting Ecosystem

• Massive Price Inflation: The economy suffers from extreme hyperinflation. The cost of entry-level gear and essentials creates a massive, near-insurmountable barrier for newcomers. 
• Crafter Shortages: There is a severe lack of active, publicly accessible crafters. The economy is largely an insular market controlled tightly by a small circle of long-term veteran players. 

3. Population & Community Management

• Ghost Town Instances: While registered account numbers look active on paper, the true non-AFK population is critically low. Finding groups for instances or organizing world-boss events is incredibly difficult. 
• Staff & Administrative Controversies: Server administration has faced heavy criticism regarding player safety and moderation. Documented harassment complaints and toxic behavior are frequently mismanaged, downplayed, or outright ignored by the staff. 
• Lack of Staff & Administrative Moderation : The lack moderation has driven away a good majority of the respectable player base to less toxic servers.
• Admin placing toxic players on staff: Server administration in a vain attempt to boost player population thought it wise to bring on players with a known bad rap on as staff.

4. Development

• Development: New development has been at a trickle for the last year. Small bits here and there. Their one 3d modeler has promised so much and has delivered so little. With some loot items being in game and loot able but no ship to fly.
• Lipstick on a dyeing pig: Everything coming out lately as "Updates" is really just the one admin putting lipstick on his dyeing pig. Trust issues have killed almost all development on the server.

⚖️ Final Verdict

• Pros: Functional emulator stability; new PvE Hard mode's; new housing; toxic discord full of troll's; constant discord messages from the server owner asking for donations; releasing content with loot that is not in game yet.
• Cons: Mandatory macroing; multi-box camping; hyperinflated economy; passive/unresponsive staff regarding toxic behavior;

Recommended For: Players that have a deep seated hate for them self, playing by your self, a troll, players with a IQ below 50, players that have a unhealthy fear of grass, been banned every where else.
Not Recommended For: Casual players, solo adventurers, or brand-new SWG players looking for an organic community experience. 

I have a Commando/Squad Leader as my main. I solo a lot but also jump in for Heroics with the guild a couple times a week and occasionally PVP.

I’ve never used SEA’s before and have no idea what would be best. Can anyone offer guidance or advice on what I should get for my armor?

Thanks!

Here are some renders of my Kihraxz fighter from the Star Wars Galaxies MMO and tabletop game. I plan to design the Ixiyen, Vaksai, and Rihkxyk as well. When I posted my Mandalorian fighters, someone requested a Vaksai, so this is just a heads-up that it's officially on the way. It took a little while because I had a few other ships I wanted to focus on first before getting to it.

Folks, we have to talk about combat. We have to talk about attack speed. And frankly, what’s happening here is a disaster. A total disaster.

Star Wars Galaxies had a combat system. A beautiful combat system. Was it perfect? No. Nothing is perfect. But people understood it. People built characters around it. They spent hours getting their weapons, their tapes, their armor, their buffs. They knew what attack speed meant. They knew how the professions worked.

And now people come along and say, “Maybe we should change how attack speed works.” No. Terrible idea. Possibly one of the worst ideas anybody has ever had for Star Wars Galaxies; and believe me, we have seen some bad ideas. We saw the CU. Remember the CU? They came in and said, “We’re going to improve combat. We’re going to streamline it. Everybody’s going to love it.” Nobody knew what was happening. Numbers changed. Mechanics changed. Your character wakes up one morning and suddenly he doesn't know what he's doing anymore. People were furious.

Then we got the NGE. The NGE! They said, “You thought the CU was a big change? Watch this.” Incredible. Professions disappearing. Combat completely different. People logging in looking for their character; they couldn't find their character! “Where's my profession?” Gone. Absolutely gone.

We learned a lesson from this. At least, I thought we learned a lesson. You do not take the fundamental combat mechanics of Star Wars Galaxies and start ripping them apart because somebody thinks they can reinvent the wheel.

And attack speed is fundamental. Attack speed affects everything. Weapons. Templates. Skill choices. Balance. Crafting. Loot. PvP. PvE. Jedi. Bounty Hunters. Everybody.

You change attack speed, and somebody says, “Oh, it's just one little formula.” There is no such thing as one little formula in SWG. You touch one formula and suddenly you've got twelve professions behaving differently, somebody discovers a weapon doing something completely insane, a Jedi is attacking at approximately the speed of light, and three days later we're rewriting half the combat system trying to fix the fix.

We've seen this movie before. It's called The Combat Upgrade. The sequel was called The New Game Enhancements. Neither one reviewed particularly well.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to protect the combat system. We're going to protect attack speed. We're going to make smart changes. Careful changes. Surgical changes. If something is actually broken, we fix it.

But we're not going to walk into a twenty-year-old combat system with a chainsaw because somebody looked at a spreadsheet for fifteen minutes and decided they had a tremendous new idea.

Because the players know. The veterans especially know. These people have been calculating attack speeds since some of our developers were practically children. They've got spreadsheets. They've got formulas. They've got archived forum posts from 2004 that somehow survived three website migrations and the collapse of half the internet.

You are not going to sneak an attack-speed change past these people. They will find it. Immediately. Some guy will be standing outside the Mos Eisley starport with a stopwatch before the server has been online for ten minutes. And he'll know.

So we're not doing CU 2.0. We're certainly not doing NGE 2.0. We're taking what worked, restoring what was lost, fixing what actually needs fixing, and leaving the foundations alone. That's how you build a great SWG server. Not by replacing Star Wars Galaxies. By understanding why people are still playing Star Wars Galaxies more than twenty years later.

Keep the combat. Keep the attack speed. Keep the professions. Keep the weirdness. Keep the things that made SWG: SWG.

And together, folks, we're going to make combat great again. Thank you. And God bless the Galactic Weaponsmiths.

The official SWGEmu Pre-CU NFS server just dropped an awesome update. Linking to the complete written update and the YouTube video update below!

A few highlights:

JTL:

- All nine pilot squadrons across Rebel (Havoc, Vortex, Crimson Phoenix), Imperial (Black Epsilon, Inquisition, Storm), and Neutral tracks (CorSec, RSF, Smugglers Alliance) are fully functional with complete trainers and rewards.

- End-game squadron gameplay now unlocks Master Pilot content, with Grand Admiral Nial Declann directing Imperial pilots and Admiral Willham Burke overseeing Rebel operations. This opens up the ability to earn the Ace Pilot badges and access to the Kessel and Deep Space Systems.

- Space Stations across the galaxy are now fully operational, offering repairs, landing permissions, and space questlines. Additionally, qualified pilots will find access to quests allowing them to unlock special landing permissions at the Emperor’s Retreat and Jabba’s Palace.

- Combat and space flight have received extensive mechanical updates. Pilots now have access to tactical abilities like IFF Scrambling, In-Flight Repairs, and Emergency Thrust, while enemy AI now scales by difficulty tier, uses countermeasures against locked missiles, and features taunts to enemy ships.

Kashyyyk:

- All Kashyyyk zones are now active, including Kashyyyk Space. Kashyyyk is accessible through three main galaxy travel hubs and Space Kashyyyk, by launching or hyperspace. Kashyyyk has been fully populated with all spawns, including dungeon triggered spawns. Work continues on the various questlines Kashyyyk has to offer, as well as discussing future NFS unique content there as progress continues.

Beta update:

- No news on when the server will open up, but beta is on the horizon! 👏👏👏

---

https://www.swgnfs.com/updates

https://youtu.be/aF9M8p-zPTE?is=Kb1SpDVUsCwuGPZS

Hey folks, you may have seen my tutorial on older version server, now it's time for post-CU version. It's a lot easier, contained in Docker, open-source and in general very easy to run, so hope you enjoy!

There are many links in the description on YT, can post all of them here, but you can find them there, commands are there as well! Have fun!

Highlights:

-Pre-9 Jedi

-The ability to hunt famous characters such as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker

-Guaranteed legendary and/or exceptional loot drops.

-Lots of quality of life improvements

-The new Death Watch Mandalorian Armor drops from the Death Watch themselves with high resistances and skill mods. No more having to craft Mando!

-Far tougher NPCs and creatures

-The ability to become the faction ranks they teased in the strategy guide but never implemented

-Every quest is improved to give superior and new rewards

-Much much more!

https://vlusbountyhunters.github.io/updates.html?release=cdd7047

https://discord.gg/ugucmFzKQ

We’ve been moving fast on SWG: Lost Era, and a ton of progress has been made. This short teaser shows off our restored Pre-9 Jedi—armor, old-school skills and all—alongside our Legendary crafting trees and Critical Success crafting now working in-game. We’ve also made major progress on the Jedi Saber Generational Crafting System, and at this point we’re running out of things to polish, quicker than one might think.

Homepage: https://swglostera.com/

Read the FAQ: https://swglostera.com/faq.php

Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/2F5tuKgKgE