I’ve been writing about Star Wars Galaxies since its release, but never in a regular blog format (although I’ve written about it several times on Black Gate). Still, I figured if I’m motivated to do so, and have my own site, why not.
“I felt the rain for the first time on Rori, and sometimes I think I can still hear it, see its oily presence on my skin, and taste it in the air I breathe.” Jericho Knox
I was ‘born’ on Rori, of all places, but not this third time around. The EMU wouldn’t allow it, so I generated on Corellia. Not a bad place to spawn, and from the first moment back I was both reminded why I loved this game and why I left it. Good or bad, yin and yang, it is what it is. Nonetheless, I took what credits I had, jumped a transport, and headed to Rori through the junction stop at the Theed starport. I had to see my ‘home’ again, that was on the ‘first things first’ bucket list.
It’s what you do when you try to reclaim a life. Along the way I tried reactivating my old memory synapses. I played with the menu options, brought up screens I’d long forgotten, got my POV working, etc. It was a bit like trying to walk again. I’d completely missed the CU, but on my second ‘life’ I’d played the NGE, so that overlaid what I was trying to do a bit, but eventually I found my ‘legs’.
Speaking of NGE, the fuckers that made it blew up Restuss, my home town, so you can imagine my delight when it was still there upon my arrival on Rori. I remember walking around the destroyed version in 08’ with extreme melancholy. I also remember spawning here on June 26th 2003, and the place was hopping with folks. Not so much on this trip, but there were some poor bastards, half-naked, being used as mining ‘bots’ around and a dude on a speeder bike flew past a couple of times. More folks than were here on my last visit, certainly, but still reminiscent of those doldrums years around 2005 (or my late stage NGE experience in 2008 before the Tarquinas closure in 2009).
So my feeling now? Infantile in my avatar, daunted on the grind to master weaponsmith, happy to get a chance to play again, uncertain if I’m playing to play or playing to create a endorphin buzz from dredging up the memories I once had.