I decided to no longer play Star Wars Galaxies about a month ago. The game is devoid of content, and while the graphics are stunning, there isn’t enough game play depth to warrant a serious commitment. I’m taking a wait and see attitude with this game, so I expect that I’ll give it another try early next year.

I do, however, like to read the Galaxies message boards on occasion, because it reminds me of many of the reasons that I left the game. A couple of days ago, the publisher of Galaxies, Sony Online Entertainment, decided to lock the public message boards and require that users be actual paying subscribers to Galaxies to read the boards.



I know I shouldn’t be shocked, but I can’t help but being confused. I had a programmer friend in the Marine Corps, “Weems,” who was not known for his people skills. He would often remark that he liked to build user interfaces that would hurt the user. He was kidding of course but that always gave me a good chuckle. You’d appreciate it more only after you’ve sat through numerous meetings with users who can barely operate a computer, yet expect the programmer to magically make up for their deficiencies by making requests that NASA couldn’t fulfill. I digress.

I think Weems works for Sony Online Entertainment. I’ve spoken to him, just the other day, and while he says he has his own business, I beginning to think he’s lying to me. Sony is just really mad at their customers; they want to hurt them and their families. I can’t see any other reason behind their actions, besides blind idiocy.

Clearly the move was to ensure that new customers would be completely clueless about the poor game design. If you want proof, go look at the home page for the game, and try to find a glowing review on the front page, that often appear after the press lauds a well deserving piece of software. Well, you’re not going to find any, because there aren’t any good reviews. What’s dismaying is the gaming press is notorious for being “bought off” with advertising dollars which Sony has certainly spent. Even the most liberal of gaming reviewers knew that a sub-average review was a stretch.

My subscription to the game is not yet over, so I can still access the message boards. And closing the message boards has definitely not stopped the players from screaming about all of the problems. What is most troubling for me though is that I’d like to come back to the game at some point, because I’m a Star Wars fan and an MMORPG fan. So, now I have to go out of my way to find out if the bugs and game design have been fixed because I won’t be able to access Sony’s message boards. It seems to me to be double-edged sword.

I should have known better. This is the same company behind the highly successful, and highly boring, EverQuest. They fooled me twice, shame on me.

Diet update: As of this morning, I’ve lost 7 lbs. I’m assuming that some of this, maybe the majority is water weight, but I’m very encouraged. My energy level is the highest it has been in years, although I’m sure it will become even higher as the weight disappears.