Reclaiming the Wilderness

Reclaiming the Wilderness​

A long time ago, the galaxy felt truly vast. Unexplored. Dangerous. Inconvenient. All in ways that made the worlds of Star Wars Galaxies feel grand and even mysterious. Traveling took time, Shuttles became places of congregation, and venturing from civilization meant preparing for whatever you might find when you got there.

Star Wars Galaxies still has those same enormous worlds, but somewhere along the way we lost some of the reasons to live in them. As the game evolved, many of the systems that encouraged players to be in the wilderness were simplified, consolidated, or removed. The open world increasingly became the space between destinations, and that space became something to optimize out of the experience -rather than a meaningful part of it.

Restoration wants to begin reclaiming some of that identity. Scout and Ranger sit at the center of that work, but the goal is larger than rebuilding old professions. We want to restore an Outdoors playstyle built around many aspects of the game that have been lost with time: exploration, preparation, wildlife, fieldcraft, camps, taming, mounts, harvesting.. and the simple idea that the world beyond the cities should be special.

The Wild Open World​

One of the things that has always separated Star Wars Galaxies from most MMOs is how much of the game exists outside cities and curated content. The planets were enormous and intentionally open, with wilderness separating cities, settlements, mission targets, resources, and points of interest.

That openness created inconveniences that would gradually disappear. Before Jump to Lightspeed and Instant Travel Vehicles, players waited together for shuttles and crossed planets on foot or by mount. Reaching a remote destination could take time, and the journey itself was part of the gameplay.

Not every inconvenience from early Star Wars Galaxies deserves to return, and making something take longer does not automatically make it better. But what mattered was that distance, preparation, and knowledge had meaning. Leaving civilization felt different because the game acknowledged that you had gone somewhere else.

The play styles of Scout and Ranger were built around the wilderness and the journey. And over time, those areas of the game took a back seat to modern conveniences and instanced content. Those professions represented a different relationship with the world, centered around understanding creatures, harvesting resources, hiding from danger, establishing camps, tracking prey, and surviving away from established settlements.

As Star Wars Galaxies evolved, those identities were hit particularly hard. Scout and Ranger disappeared as distinct professions during the NGE, while parts of their functionality were removed or scattered elsewhere. Taming became little more than a button press, crafting disappeared from Scout, vehicles largely replaced creature mounts, instant travel reduced the journey to a loading screen, and camps became more about convenience than living in the wilderness.

Together, these changes altered how players interacted with the open world.

Restoring an Outdoors Identity​

With the Expanding Horizons update, Restoration re-introduced the Ranger profession, but new combat abilities didn’t recreate their original identity. The missing piece was still the Outdoors aspect. We have spent significant time considering player feedback about what it actually means to be a Scout or Ranger and that has guided much of our recent work. Rather than asking what abilities Scout or Ranger need to become stronger, we have been asking what reasons a player should have to behave like a Scout or Ranger in the first place.

For Scout, that means bringing back more of the practical identity that once defined the profession. Camps, trapping, harvesting, and preparation should make Scouts feel more self-sufficient and useful when leaving civilization behind. We aren’t recreating every mechanic exactly as it existed, but restoring the idea that a Scout has tools and knowledge to survive outside of cities in the wild.

Ranger takes that same idea further and leans more into crafting and trapping. We have been building around the broader concept of fieldcraft: understanding what is around you, gathering information, preparing an area, establishing a useful camp of operations, and adding tricks to make encounters more interesting.

Camps, Fieldcraft, and Preparation​

Camps are a good example of the direction we are taking.

A camp should not exist simply because players want a place to shuttle to. We want camps to matter because the group has decided that a particular place in the world is a base of operations used for whatever activities they are embarking upon. A place to prepare, gather information, support an expedition, and make the wilderness around it more useful.

That same philosophy extends to Ranger fieldcraft. Tracking, camouflage, traps, and other wilderness tools are being revisited with an emphasis on preparation and interaction with the world itself. We want Rangers to have ways to read the environment, prepare for danger, and influence what happens before an encounter begins.

Creatures and companions​

Rebuilding the Outdoors also means reconsidering the creatures that populate it.

Wildlife should be more than enemies to kill for resources, and Creature Handler should involve more interaction with creatures than finding a baby animal and pressing Tame. We want taming to encourage observation, behavior, preparation, and discovery.

Players should have reasons to pay attention to the creatures around them. Some specimens may be more interesting than others. Knowledge of wildlife can help build bonds with creatures. Finding a rare creature should feel like a discovery rather than another random chance.

That relationship continues with creature mounts.

Mounts are one of the most recognizable parts of Star Wars, but for a long time they have struggled to compete with vehicles as anything more than a cosmetic choice. We want them to have their own identity again, built around training, familiarity, utility, and the time a player spends with a particular creature.

Vehicles won’t become obsolete, but we want Mounts to have a purpose and a role to play. Choosing a mount and building a relationship with that creature should have a meaningful impact on their usefulness. We want to give players a reason to care about the creature they have raised and traveled with.

Outdoors Prestige​

The more we worked on these systems, the clearer it became that Outdoors gameplay extends beyond Scout and Ranger. Creature Handlers, Bio-Engineers, fishermen, resource hunters, harvesters, and other characters all participate in activities tied to the natural world.

That led us to Outdoors Prestige, a progression path built around a playstyle rather than a single profession.

The intent is simple: if a player chooses to spend much of their time interacting with the wilderness, that should be recognized as a meaningful form of progression. Harvesting, fishing, camping, taming, creature knowledge, gathering, and other outdoor activities all contribute to that identity.

Progression in Star Wars Galaxies can be defined by a myriad of play styles. One player may measure their accomplishments through difficult instances or the Galactic Civil War, while others through crafting, running a business, training creatures, or gathering rare resources. We will continue to expand the Prestige system to reward players for playing how they want to play.

The Space Between​

There is enormous opportunity in the wilderness of Star Wars Galaxies. We are interested in more emergent forms of outdoor content: hunts that ask players to search rather than fast travel to a destination, open-world dungeons that give groups a reason to journey, large encounters that belong to a place rather than an instance timer, and systems that reward players for understanding terrain, creatures, resources, and the world around them.

Much of Restoration’s PvE development over the last several years has focused on structured group content. Mustafar, Heroics, Echo Base, and others coming soon have created a much stronger collection of repeatable adventures than Restoration had when it began. Longer term, however, we want to shift more of our attention back toward the worlds themselves.

The wilderness was part of what made Star Wars Galaxies special. It gave Scout and Ranger a reason to exist and created enough distance between destinations for unexpected things to happen along the way. While we can’t roll back the clock entirely, what we can do is preserve the design principles that made those experiences possible and build new systems around them.

The wilderness should not simply be the space between destinations. It is one of the game’s greatest strengths, and we want to make better use of it. We think it’s time to head back outside.

May the Force be with you,

Fuego and the SWG Restoration Development Team