Star Wars Galaxies Closes Up Shop

In a final Producer’s Letter on the Star Wars Galaxies website, Tony Tyson bids players a heartfelt farewell as the game officially closes its doors.  The “other Star Wars” game was never a huge hit and struggled for market share since its release.

The game began development in 2002 at Sony Online Entertainment and was heavily marketed and expected to be a huge hit.  It released in mid-2003 with huge impact and fanfare.  Many players joined the game early on, making it an immediate success.  Players began dropping, however, as the game began to lose its luster and other games came along to compete.

With the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Galaxies was expected to end.  Which it has.

Galaxies was one of the first MMOs to introduce player-created dungeons and a dungeon-building system.  Now ubiquitous for many MMOs (such as EverQuest II), the player-created dungeon was one of many innovations to come out of SWG in the past several years.

It’s a game that will be remembered.