The game features the planets:
- YavinIV
- Endor
- Dathomir
- Talus
- Rori
- Corellia
- Tatooine
- Lok
- Tatooine
- Kashyyyk
- Dantooine
Four of the planets are adventure zones (ranging from low-end to high-end PvE (player vs environment)), the rest are build zones - starter planets upon which player cities can be founded.
In the game there are 39 distinct professions, including diverse things such as Droid Engineers, Jedi Healers, Teras Kasai Artists (a form of hand to hand combat), Shipwrights, Chefs, Dancers, Politicians etc, etc. Each character has so many skills points (250 at present) to mix and match between the professions - you could have a chef/smuggler that makes illegal cakes for instance, or a dancing bounty hunter, or even a Jazz musician saber specialist.
With the Combat Upgrade at the beginning of the year, there was the introduction of a level system. This level system is not like you might find in any other game though. In most games you choose a profession and then advance through it's levels until you 'complete' your character. Once there you have to create a new one to continue to progress. In SWG your level merely determines how much of your template is devoted to combat. For instance spend all of your points in combat skills and you will be likely lvl80 (the max lvl), spend it all in crafting or entertainer skills and you will be lvl1 (the min lvl).
This does a lot of new players heads in as they can't figure out what you are meant to achieve - I mean how does one 'complete' the game.
And there lies the attraction and uniqueness of SWG. You set your own goals and targets. You might want to found a city, run a guild, become an amazing pvp'r. Lead people down into the feared Death Watch Bunker and craft a jetpack - explore the wilderness, or just become a reknowned image designer and run a boutique near Theed.
With such an open ended game it is hard to reach a point where you have finished. Once you've mastered a profession and seen all it has to offer you can always switch over to another one, dropping your current one partially or completely. Then of course there are the mixing and matching possiblities. I have for instance mastered teras kasai profession over six times due to different playstyles and ideas - every time I've used it, it's felt different.
The PvP in the game is again another attraction. Anyone, and I mean anyone can declare themselves special forces after aligning with the rebels or the imperials. Once this is done they can attack and kill anyone of the opposite faction who is also special forces. Bases are built and destroyed on the build planets and the faction with the most bases claims dominance.. for the time being. NPC troops of that faction will then patrol the starports and shoot the enemy on sight.
Another route is the path of the Jedi. There were few Jedi at first due to the unknown method of obtaining them, but eventually they started to trickle in. The first Jedi were a rare sight - they only had to show their powers once and any player of the opposite faction could kill them on sight. Once a Jedi died three times they were dead. Forever. Of course the benefits were huge - a single jedi could take on twenty other players easily (once the profession was mastered) and one jedi could turn the tide of a whole battle, decimating the opposition.
Of course as more players tried to become Jedi and more players managed to the path to jedi was eventually formalised to a long grind and a series of interesting quests and perma-death removed. A Jedi is now equivilant to about 1.5 to 2 normal professions in strength, though as they are generally wielded by a very experienced player, the skills can be deadly in their hands.
The end game for Jedi is (or was) the Force Ranking System. In this, fully templated Jedi Knights compete with others of their faction for the place of Dark or Light Jedi Master - there can only be one for each side. This got disabled with the combat upgrade as people had been exploiting a design flaw to get ranks. This is currently still disabled.
On the flip side of the coin is the bounty hunter, these ruthless killers (players
) Using droids they track the player Jedi that yield their powers too freely in public (just about all of them) and attempt to punish them (read kill) for it. If the BH wins, they gain a large cash reward and the Jedi looses a large quantity of experience.Just before christmas we had the JTL (Jump to Lightspeed) expansion - this added space sectors and ships to every planet. A long series of quests can be completed (all in a mmorpg environment). Various shipwrights construct ships for players which can be customized with everything from a new paint job to a souped up engine. Again there's pvp in space and in the next publish (about a week away), the multiplayer crewed ships will be having a toughness upgrade which should boost more play.
Next we had the Rage of the Wookiesexpansion. this featured a new planet, the wookie homeworld kashyyyk, many new quests and asteroid mining.
We are now awaiting (october 25th for subscribers and november 11th for the boxed edition) the next expansion, Trials of Obi Wan. This introduces another planet (the lava planet in episode III), lots of new quests, new jedi saber styles and it is rumoured the new force ranking system (though not as part of the expansion).
Also around this time there will be a revamp of the ranger profession, turning them into a stealthy insertion profession with camoflage, traps, motion sensors and other nice little abilities.
At the last fan fest we had an exciting sneak preview of the capital ships that are under development. These huge ships (think star destroyers and corvettes) are almost the size of a small moon and will potentially be guild/player controlled
I'll try and keep this thread updated with new additions to the game.
