Editorial: Is the Beast Master class new to the Star Wars Galaxies Online game or just a return to a discarded class?
By Michael Lafferty

SWG reintroduces the pet class and the whole thing smacks of "bad faith" with those who once played the creature handler profession

Once upon a time, in a cyber galaxy far, far away, there was a class that was known as the creature handler. It was, in terms of the massively multiplayer online game market, a true pet class. Creature handlers spent hours of their time taming pets, leveling up their proficiency so that they could graduate to tame some of the top pet classes in the game (what game? – will get there in a moment) to use in combat.

The pets would engage the enemy, deal out a lot of damage and essentially save their masters from death. On the plus side, the class could “solo” a little more easily because of their pets. On the downside, it was a class deemed overpowered and was subjected to repeated beatings with the nerf bat.

Star Wars Galaxies was, admittedly, a game trying to find itself. On one hand, it was trying to create an atmosphere of player-versus-player in the rebellion/empire conflict. But the game didn’t require players to join that side of the game. And while the CH class with the Rebellion could tame top-flight wild animals, it required a vast number of hours to get to the point where that was possible. On the other side, relatively young Empire players, who pursued the conflict, could get an STS with 1/8 (or less) of the time expenditure and that machine could one-shot some of the top pets.

Sound fair? In this case, “fair” is truly a neighborhood far, far away.

It should be noted that the CH class was not the only profession that was constantly whacked with the infamous nerf bat.

As one former player pointed out: “… beating classes into submission, one after another, then massively increasing the power of new classes in a forlorn hope to create some form of balance after the game was released was a catastrophic decision on the part of the developers. It stole the joy and freedom, and enjoyment, from the game and drove many of its devoted fans away, bitter and angry at being turned from conquering heroes into pathetic lackeys.”

But back to the CH class and the reason for this editorial rant …

Yes, I was a CH, and yes, I devoted hours of my life in working alone in the wild, taming baby after baby to increase my skills. I was there when they assigned points to animal classes and then gave players a limit on the point value, which basically meant that you could only have one really good pet out at a time, rather than run with two. It is with fondness that I remember running the plains of Naboo, in the company of a couple of Corellian panthers, or simply sitting on a small hill, the cats watching over me, as I breathed in a sunset on a distant world.

Star Wars Galaxies was still undergoing a lot of changes, and eventually came that one that just didn’t nerf the CH class again – it eliminated it. It was bad enough when they (the developers) decided that pets could die, but to take away such faithful companions (sure, it’s only a game) was heartbreaking on several levels. With the removal of the CH class, an artisan class – the bio-engineer – was also no longer needed.

Well, guess what? Both are coming back, in a manner, and the decision to introduce the “Beast Master” skill is akin to a total breach of faith with the community and the players/characters whom were nerfed out of existence.

On Friday, April 20, on the official SWG site (http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/content.vm?id=66936&resource=features), this news note went up:

“Beast Master Expertise is an exciting new feature coming to Star Wars Galaxies in Chapter 6. These are new creature-centric abilities available to all players, regardless of profession or level, through a third expertise tree.

“Choosing these new expertise abilities will open up brand new game play features that include several phases of creature crafting and several mini-games. Initially, players will have to spend an expertise point on the "Incubation" skill which will give them the ability to set up an Incubator unit in their home or player structure to create creatures.

“After the Incubator unit has been crafted, players can head out into the wild, find a creature, and extract a sample of its DNA core.  Once a player has this DNA core material and loads it into their Incubator, they can begin the process of creating their unique pet.  By fiddling with the incubator's settings over the course of three sessions, players can customize the color, skills, damage abilities, defensive abilities and the skill attributes of the creature.  Once the final session is complete, players can trade, sell or hatch the egg.”

“Exciting …?”  “New …?” This is a compilation of discarded classes (creature handler and bio-engineer)  that now is being given to everyone, and it is a marketing tool to try to gain back players, or entice new ones to try the game. Yes, I am crying “foul!” on this one. The months of work that went into becoming a master creature handler was wiped out when the class was removed from the game. But to bring back a variation of it like this is a slap in the face.

Part of what makes an MMO work is the faith between the publisher/development team and the end user. They want to offer a game that is enticing and draws the player in to spend a lot of time, and a small stipend every month, to play it. On the player side, we take it on faith that the publisher/dev will not make ill-conceived changes, but will work to better the game as it ages.

This is not the case with SWG. And this latest move leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

SWG has made some hard decisions in the near past. Making the game less of a class-based role-playing outing and turning it into a shooter-based game, with bad targeting mechanics, was another step in the wrong direction. But at least the game still had solid space elements. The recent announcement that unused houses would be removed was a good move – urban sprawl, of abandoned buildings, was way out of control. But the Beast Master “introduction” in the upcoming add-on smacks of a dev team seemingly scrambling for ideas to sustain the game.

Those of us that qualify as hardcore MMO players (and there are millions of us) spend quite a number of hours online each week improving our characters in fellowship with friends from across the nation and around the world. When a vehicle for that fellowship (the MMO itself) starts to disappoint, we move on; and when enough do that, the MMO usually goes dark – a.k.a. closes down.

(It should be noted that even when I was running about “solo” with my pets, I was still connected to my friends and clan through chat. Once you have a circle of friends, or are part of a clan, no one truly ventures alone in an MMO.)

SWG did, at one time, hold my attention. I fly through the space above its planets, and wandered its worlds, adventuring and harvesting and even just sightseeing. I searched out the familiar characters from the movies, to be disappointed in the way they appeared and the brevity of their scripted dialogue. By now, I should be used to the disappointments from the game. This latest Beast Master move, apparently, shows otherwise.