It's EEEEEVVVIIIIILLLLL!!!!!.

I'm speaking, of course, about Star Wars Galaxies. Erik had gotten into one of the betas and some of the things he could tell me (during development) made me decide that they were going in a direction I wouldn't necessarily like. Placed in between two of the movies, becoming a Jedi would be difficult (although the path would be individual so there wouldn't be website about it) and once you did if you used the Force you were subject to permadeath. Never something I wanted but some people do so I could understand it. Only one character per server and a few others.

So the game came out and I was wondering how many of those questionable decisions had survived. I decided that if one of my buddies would go into it with me I might check it out for a bit. I got in there and discovered they had made some really good decisions. You can get xps and advance (but there aren't any levels) for crafting. If you make a blaster carbine and give/sell it to someone then every time they use it you get XPs. If you're a medic then every time you heal someone you get XPs. So as a scout/artisan I can go up into the hills, find a good spot to mine, set up a camp (to keep the creatures away), sample and get XPs for mining and XPs for wilderness survival (for being in my camp) going up two skill trees at once. Or I can mine in town and in both cases be safe from wandering monsters. Or I can go out and find a nest and hunt creatures, harvesting their corpses for bones, hides and meat and then make traps and other things from the materials. Or I can join the Rebellion or the Empire and engage in the Galactic Civil War (haven't done any of that yet). Lots of choises. Which makes for a good game if the other things are done well. And in this case (so far) they are done very well.

But things are pretty laggy, especially in larger towns. So we'll have to see how well the optomize the servers. For now I'm sucked in (oh, great, another game and I hadn't even finished Knights of the Old Republic yet!).