Tales from the Restoration Galaxy"A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away..." As part of SWG Restoration’s four-year anniversary celebration, we invited our community of pilots, bounty hunters, smugglers, and explorers to look back on their most unforgettable moments and share the stories that define their time in the Restoration Galaxy. Here are just a few of the tales—each one a testament to the creativity, passion, and resilience of our players—that have helped shape our unique Galaxy.
Four years ago, Star Wars Galaxies Restoration launched to a highly anticipated, albeit chaotic, start. We often forget that the original Combat Upgrade era lasted a mere 200 days –And by the end of 2021, SWG Restoration had surpassed that milestone. Since then, we have been venturing into uncharted territory furthering the game in the spirit of the Combat Upgrade. Ithorians are the superior race confirmed
Whether you’re a Star Wars Galaxies veteran from Live, checking us out from another server, or new to the game altogether — we’re happy you found us. Join us in telling the greatest Star Wars story ever told: yours! HOW TO PLAY Play Now (Link)! No discs needed at all. Just create an account, download the launcher, and install in minutes. Be sure to join the community Discord for the latest game information!
Tales from the Restoration Galaxy"A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away..." As part of SWG Restoration’s four-year anniversary celebration, we invited our community of pilots, bounty hunters, smugglers, and explorers to look back on their most unforgettable moments and share the stories that define their time in the Restoration Galaxy. Here are just a few of the tales—each one a testament to the creativity, passion, and resilience of our players—that have helped shape our unique Galaxy.
Four years ago, Star Wars Galaxies Restoration launched to a highly anticipated, albeit chaotic, start. We often forget that the original Combat Upgrade era lasted a mere 200 days –And by the end of 2021, SWG Restoration had surpassed that milestone. Since then, we have been venturing into uncharted territory furthering the game in the spirit of the Combat Upgrade. Ithorians are the superior race confirmed
Whether you’re a Star Wars Galaxies veteran from Live, checking us out from another server, or new to the game altogether — we’re happy you found us. Join us in telling the greatest Star Wars story ever told: yours! HOW TO PLAY Play Now (Link)! No discs needed at all. Just create an account, download the launcher, and install in minutes. Be sure to join the community Discord for the latest game information!
Restoration Player City Spotlight: Zenco Welcome to the Restoration Player City Spotlight where our Retired Community Programs Senator Nuri sits down to talk with the mayor of one of our awesome player cities giving you, our dear readers, the opportunity to learn more about one of the server's great player cities. In this episode we make our first visit to one of the moons of Corellia with a stop in at Zenco, Talus. Zenco, described as a “City for All” boasts beautiful skylines with a top-notch artisan community. Today we sit down with Mortisian to learn more about one of Talus' hidden gems.
"It'll be enough" Obi-Wan to Luke after selling his X-34 Landspeeder There's something about getting behind the wheel and exploring the vastness of the Star Wars universe, isn't there. At Star Wars Galaxies Restoration, we're thrilled to introduce an entirely new Vehicle Customization System that lets you upgrade your vehicles like never before."The initial premise was simply—what if we did reverse engineering, but for vehicles..." -FuegoDrawing inspiration from the JTL space reverse engineering system, we've expanded vehicle customization to offer a deeper, more engaging experience. This system allows you to extensively modify your ground vehicles, making them true reflections of your character and playstyle.
Restoration Player City Spotlight: Pelgo Slums Welcome to the Restoration Player City Spotlight where our Retired Community Programs Senator Nuri sits down to talk with the mayor of one of our awesome player cities giving you, our dear readers, the opportunity to learn more about one of the server's great player cities. In this episode we enter the shadowy side with a visit to Pelgo Slums, Tatooine. Described as the seedier twin to Mos Pelgo, Pelgo Slums hides in the shadows of the Palace of the Almighty Jabba the Hutt. Today we sit down with Oogie to learn more about one of Tatooine's most notorious player cities.
Restoration Player City Spotlight: Walkabout Creek Welcome to the Restoration Player City Spotlight where our Retired Community Programs Senator Nuri sits down to talk with the mayor of one of our awesome player cities giving you, our dear readers, the opportunity to learn more about one of the server's great player cities. In this episode we return to colorful Dantooine and shine the spotlight on Walkabout Creek. Walkabout Creek is centrally located in the heart of quaint rolling hills, surrounded by small rivers and creeks. While you may be inclined to enjoy a cold beverage when visiting this crafting and innovation hub, you'd best watch out for the local fauna who also enjoy the scenic waterways. Today we sit down with Phoebe, who tells the tale of the lovely haven in the wilds of Dantooine.
Hello there, Restoration!I’m extremely pleased to reintroduce myself today as the new Lead Developer, and bring you up to speed on the exciting changes happening now and in the future.Development TeamFirst, in case you missed it, I've recently completed the transition into the Lead Developer role as Aconite just posted yesterday. I've been a primary contributor to the project for over a year and a half now, and have already been at the helm for the past few major updates to the game, helping drive the project forward with some updates I'm really proud of. I really believe that this server represents the best of what Star Wars Galaxies can be, and I'm humbled to be a part of maintaining that vision. Our team continues to grow, and I am extremely grateful for all of the help and dedication that our staff continues to provide. I am proud of how far we've come and excited about how much more we can do.Halo, one of the founders of Restoration, has also recently returned to the project in a more active role as well. He's currently hard at work on some big combat updates that we're working on together (I'll share more on that below). We are very grateful for the years of effort that went into building the prior iterations of this server and showing how much passion the community can have for this shared vision of a CU inspired server. You can expect to see more of him around.Aconite will continue to be a part of the project in an advisory role and helping with operations and technical consulting, but he's largely retiring to civilian life. I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but truly this server would not exist without all the effort he put into it. He brings years of wisdom drawn from being a core part of the development of so many projects out there, and I don't know if I'll ever match his level of deep expertise on this massive and complex project. Once again I would like to thank him for building the foundation that I'm merely stepping into as we step forward to our next chapter…Project VisionThe Restoration of Star Wars Galaxies is something that the entire team has a shared passion for. As the team grows and changes, and priorities need to shift to adapt to the needs of players, I want to share the big picture vision for the server and my own personal tenets for how I plan to go about making changes in the future.My favorite way of describing the server is "If SOE had never done the NGE, and instead kept building on the CU". Or, even shorter, "Post-CU". On our team, we have people that played in all eras of the game, and so we have love for many different fun features that existed throughout the lifetime of the live game. Our hope is to combine the best of each of them into one game, and improve and expand the things we find the most fun. Through it all though, it is extremely important to preserve the things that make SWG great at all costs:- Living in the Star Wars universe- Best in class Social and Crafting systems- Player driven economy- Endless customization- Profession identity, diversity, and differentiationThrough my time on the development team so far, I've started writing down some core tenets that I try to hold myself to. These are ultimately my own personal values and beliefs for what will help us build the best and most successful version of this game that we can. I am sharing them today because I want you to publicly hold me to these values:Players are here for SWG: As fun as it would be to warp this game into something new, the most important promise we are making to players is that this will continue to be recognizably Star Wars Galaxies at its heart.Fun > Balance > Lore/Flavor > Nostalgia: When it comes to deciding whether or not to preserve a gameplay feature that people might be nostalgic for, or rebuild it into something more fun or balanced, we are going to go the Fun route (as long as we still stay true to #1!)Don’t make players play the way they don’t want to play: The most impressive thing about Star Wars Galaxies is how big of a tent it is for so many different types of people with varying playstyles. From PvE to PvP, from Roleplay to Crafting, we need to make sure that people can play the way they want, not force them into unfun situations (even though it's usually easier that way).Give players tools, not rules: This is a sandbox game, and players will always come up with new and often horrifying ways to play that you never saw coming. Whenever possible, it is best to put tools in the hands of players to make it the game they want (and avoid the parts they don't want), rather than try and strictly enforce rules for how we think it should be played.Roadmap updatesToday we posted an update to the Project Roadmap on the site. This reflects our plans for the remainder of 2024 and beyond, as we get ever closer to completing the "Restoration" phase. There has been a lot of progress this year on that front.As a quick recap, If you haven't checked out any of our recent updates, here are a few recent highlights of things that 2024 brought:Unlock the Village and learn the ways of the Force, while staying hidden from Bounty Hunters… or worse.Play through entirely new content in the Marauder's Theme Park and Celestial DiscoveriesChallenge yourself on Krayt Dragon difficulty mode on the revamps of Champion of Mustafar and Heroic EncountersBecome a proud member of the Idiot's Array, where only the most elite Pilots can play.Fight for control of the Galaxy, or at least the most PvP kills, in our overhauled Galactic Civil War planetary control game.The linked roadmap above includes some new major updates that I would like to share more about here:Heroic Jewelry and Combat EvolutionWith the addition of the final Heroic instances, we are entering the next chapter of combat and bringing a new sweeping set of changes to existing professions. These will include potential advanced profession requirements, ability changes, moving things around, etc. Anything is on the table. Halo and myself will be working on these updates to come out alongside Jewelry and make combat more exciting for ALL professions. Yes, even Ranger.The goals for this update are as follows:Ensuring that every profession has an important place in combat, and forging a strong and unique playstyle identity into each one with new and inspired mechanics and abilities.Reducing the impact of food and items in combat, lowering the barrier to entry and helping each profession's identity shine more.Preserving the slower pace of combat to ensure that strategy and communication are the key factors in determining a victor.Redesigning game warping abilities like Center of Being to ensure that Melee has more variety and paths to viability.Balancing the skill trees to ensure that every tree has something interesting to dabble into or master.Introduce brand new capabilities into the game with the dozens of new Heroic Jewelry sets, which will allow new players to play the professions largely the way they remember them, and then expand into this new era through the endgame content.RestussWe're finally bringing back this iconic PvP warzone, and with the special twist: new, Restuss-specific abilities that are designed around massive group battles that the area is best known for. These "ultimate" abilities will be tied to specific professions and playstyles, and only usable within Restuss itself, allowing it to become its own open world game mode. Commendations will be granted for PvP kills on top of the quests in the area, and used to fuel these abilities alongside all new rewards. We're still designing these new abilities, but we intend them to be abilities that are charged up throughout combat, and built specifically to favor the side with fewer numbers, which will ensure that open world PvP isn't always just decided by sheer numbers. We'll share more about this soon.Jedi KnightJedi is always going to be a class that can't make everyone happy, but we're going to be taking steps to help it fit better into the game and fit into more playstyles. The Force Ranking System is still a ways off, but we are shifting the first part of this system forward to introduce a higher-risk, higher-reward mode of gameplay.Jedi Knight, which will have a different name in-game, will include access to 5th Generation Lightsabers, and more Force bar to help you stay in the fight longer. It will also introduce higher stakes: A longer ghost timer, Breaching charges for all bounties, and the ability for any player to attack you after issuing a Report, if you're visible. This will also open up opportunities to make sure that visibility consequences are also appropriate for those players that wish to remain at Padawan.We will be making these changes extremely carefully. We want to make sure that everyone can feel a sense of progression and viability in this game, not just Jedi Knights or Masters. We will have more to share about our plans for the FRS, and additional ranking systems for non-Jedi, at a later date.Identity CrisisFinally, for my own sanity, I need to come clean about something. On the live game, I went by Zedd. I was a pretty prominent PvPer, and pseudo Smuggler Senator, that got to play with some of the best players and guilds the game had near the last several years of the NGE. I jumped across servers taking me from Bria, to Chilastra, Flurry, and Starsider. Look me up on YouTube, I killed Xaos Kun once. I came to Restoration under the name Zeddco, and after playing with some real life friends for a few months decided to join the team, which slowly but surely that just took over my life. I end up finding it more fun to develop the game than play almost any game, really. But I'm also planning on hopping on more often to get to play alongside you all.I'll still go by ornj here, so all this really means for most of you is that I'm switching back to my original Discord account, but I am also hoping to finally be able to tell my old friends from other servers to come give us a try! If you knew me on live, please come say hi.
BackgroundSurprising no one, adding Jedi to Star Wars Galaxies is a very tough thing to get right.We believe in the original vision of a high risk, high reward class. It adds an extra layer of depth to the game, and it makes Jedi feel special… which it should, because this is Star Wars. However, we also believe that Star Wars Galaxies is still a fun game without Jedi, and we don't want to create a game that excludes or diminishes the role and balance of other professions just because Jedi are in the game. It's also one of our core design tenets to make sure that playing the game lets you feel like you're living in Star Wars… and, as we’ve talked about before, Star Wars in our time period of 3ABY doesn't have a lot of Jedi.As we shared when we originally released Jedi, getting the balance right of Jedi’s role in the server and balancing their gameplay will be an ongoing journey. It's not something that any version of SWG has gotten right. Jedi in the Pre-CU period with the FRS quickly became plagued with overpowered Jedi, where playing almost anything else felt like a waste. The opposite approach, which the NGE took, also had plenty of Jedi running around everywhere, but balanced combat to such a degree that Jedi weren't even all that useful in PvP. It turns out that most people want to play a Jedi, and will do whatever it takes to do so, making it challenging to meet these goals.Jedi by the numbersOn the evening of February 29, the first Jedi was unlocked on Restoration. Since then, at time of writing, 145 have been unlocked. At one per account, that's about 9.6% of our weekly active player base. Many more are in the process of unlocking Jedi as well, with 161 others that have completed Phase 1 of the unlock, a good indicator that they intend to go all the way.By the numbers, the online Jedi population is not as scary as some might think. It hovers around 5-10% most of the time (average of 6.48%):Online Jedi Metrics
Restoration Player City Spotlight: Tortuga Welcome to the Restoration Player City Spotlight where our Community Programs Senator Nuri sits down to talk with the mayor of one of our awesome player cities giving you, our dear readers, the opportunity to learn more about one of the server's great player cities. In this episode we shine the spotlight on Tortuga, Dantooine. Tortuga sits on the western coast of Dantooine just a thermal detonator's throw from one of Dantooine's unique Dantari Villages. Today we sit down with Ralna to learn more about one of Dantooine's most active player cities.