A few people have wondered whats happened to me here at Joe User. I've been working alot lately, and holidays make me crazy. But the truth is I've been sucked back in to one of the most addictive games I've ever played, Star Wars Galaxies.

I started playing it about 16 months ago. MMPORGS were new to me at the time, I'd never played EverCrack, and I was hesitant to get involved in a game requiring so much commitment. But the Star Wars branding pulled me in anyway... Star Wars games are either great or horrible, and I'd heard this one was great.

So I created a character, gave him a Star Wars sounding name and shuttled in to my first planet. Detchi Osvos was born, and I had no idea at the time how attached I would become to this red alien TwiLek. Detchi immediatly became an Imperial Combat Medic, and met alot of new people, ran some great adventures and basically had a good time. But I wanted more for Detchi, so a class change was in order: (I) Detchi, became a Bounty Hunter.

At the time, Bounty Hunter was almost impossible to get. Other classes could be achieved in a few days of acquiring experience, but Bounty Hunter required long, involved missions, tracking down some of the worst scum in the galaxy. It literally took months to master the profession and I found I had a talent at being a Bounty Hunter. People started backing off in the streets, and in player vs. player combat Detchis skill at applying special attacks became reknowned. It seemed Detchi (me) had found his true calling.

And then the Jedi came. The game developers implemented a random system where players could work their way to the level of Jedi Knight by intense work. In all humility, this is where the name of Detchi Osvos became legendary. Instead of pursuing the path of the force, Detchi decided to hunt down Jedi in service of the Emporer. After weeks and months of tracking down other players and killing them, Detchis name literally was whispered in the shadows. If you were a Jedi you feared for your safety, and that of your guildmates. Had one of your friends been bought out by this relentless Bounty Hunter? Were you on his list? (I actually kept the only complete list of all the Jedi on my server, a very difficult task to accomplish as they only give themselves away through mistakes in gameplay or betrayel of your Jedi secret. Being on my list meant you were gauranteed to die). And many times by luck, if you were a Jedi and made a mistake in public to give away your identity, I was somehow around the corner, coming to deliver a message from The Emporer. Only Jedi that had sworn allegiance to Palpatine would live, all others would die.

But eventually, after 10 months of play, it became discouraging. There were things wrong with the game from its release that hadnt been fixed after almost a year. It seemed the developers were more concerned about rolling out game content for a select group of players (Jedi were maybe 1% of the total players) than actually fixing some glaring issues with the game. Broken loot drops, unuseable items and in some cases the content couldnt even be experienced because that portion of the game was broken. Imagine fighting alongside your friends through a new area of the game, fighting some of the hardest bosses youve seen, only to have the reward not emerge once youve won. That got old, so eventually Detchi laid down his blasters, sat down beside a waterfall on Naboo, and watched the sun set, with all intent of never opening his eyes again.

Six months passed. I missed Detchi in occassion, like an old friend that hasnt called in awhile. He was an extension of me, and had taken me on some fun adventures. So perhaps it was fate last week, when I had just read a positive review of Star Wars Galaxies Jump to Lightspeed space expansion, a friend of mine from the game called. An electrical engineer in real life, he was going to be in town for the holidays to visit his family and wanted to know if I wanted to meet for coffee. So that got me thinking more about the game, then I stumbled across a thread in the SWG Forums, asking what had become of Detchi, the legendary Jedi killer. It dawned on me after reading two pages of very nice things, that Star Wars was more than just about broken game content, it was about the community and friends I had made playing.

So I started up my account. Detchi woke up, and has once started exploring the Star Wars galaxy. Except this time things seem to be fixed. The shuttle system works faster now, rewards seem to be working, and alot of new content has been added. And his friends are coming back as well... Id never seen our server so busy. Except this time, Detchi was stopped on the street by a mysterious old man. He must have been crazy, because he looked Detchi in the eye and said "I sense the Force is strong in you Detchi Osvos. It is time for you to pursue another path...".

Fate indeed.