Star Wars Galaxies: Episode III Rage of the Wookiees

"A wookie safari, cool while it lasts..."

To coincide with the release of Episode III, Rage of the Wookies was a rather interesting and new way to play Galaxies. Adding in a new planet along with several high-end quests, there is plenty to do and plenty of new adventures to be had. This expansion also introduced the beginning of the changes that would come to be known as the NGE. While the actual changes did not come with this particular expansion, the foreshadowing was here to what the game is now today.

Furballs...

Rage of the Wookies did not add new professions, but it did give players the opportunity to play on the Wookie home-world of Kashyyyk. This large and expansive landscape is home to multiple instances {a fairly new concept to Galaxies} that allows the player and a party a complete instance almost to themselves. Although there are plenty of quests and plenty of rewards to find and earn, once the quests are completed, this planet becomes like the others in which all you need to do is farm items for sale or for decoration.

The enemy intelligence isn't that much of a problem, though the radius in which the creature aggro you is in some cases exceptionally unfair. Until late in the game, some of the more common quests are unable to be finished without an accomplished group or a couple of Jedi. Speaking of which, by this point in Galaxies, Jedi were everywhere and it was almost impossible not to run into a few anywhere on Kashyyyk. If you're able to come through and finish up in the thirty or so quests that pepper the planet in under a month, then consider yourself rather lucky.

One more portion of Rage of the Wookies is that it capitalizes on the first expansion, Jump To Lightspeed. For a good portion of the quests, you must have decent piloting skills and a very good ship to be able to stand up to most of the space quests. Something that was rather unfair to a portion of the player base is that they had no desire to work with space, so some of the more impressive content on Kashyyyk was non-accessible. Once again, if you knew someone and could get a group, then you could get things done.

Most of the quest rewards in Rage of the Wookies is decoration, though there are some new additions to the space portion. A smattering of ships, one of which is a boss drop and the others as quest rewards, await those who are willing to go through the motions to get them. For certain professions, there are quite a few new weapons awaiting and at the time, the rewards really did fit the crap you had to go through to get them. Some quests require a choice and others are merely straight-forward kill and return fare that we're all used to by this point.

Someone mow the yard...

You'll notice the minute you get off the ship that the game takes place on a world full of green trees and forest paths. Several of the environments that you enter into are well designed and look rather beautiful with the right graphics settings. Once again, you have to be careful of how far up you set them as it drops the frame-rate down to zero. The locations that you travel through have different themes and it's nice to see lighting changes as you move through them. Enemy designs look rather impressive and you'll meet several familiar characters along your journey.

One of the problems that I found with the visuals though is that there are some severe cases of tearing and occasionally you'll get stuck in the background. On other occasions, the doors will not open or you'll fall through the ground and get stuck in a void. While you might think that this is technical, it's actually a case of polygons and the like not synching the way that they are supposed and creating "holes" in the landscape around you. Some of the special effects also do not appear as though they were completed enough and you'll notice that you're getting hit though you're visually well out of range.

The silence around...

I couldn't hear much during my trek through the deep forests of Kashyyyk. While I was hoping for some serious music or at least something that approached the same level of the opera that I hear on Lok, I got nothing more than the standard battle music. Space isn't much better in this respect and the main instance of the Blackscale Compound has little or no music that's noticeable at all. The sound effects are the same as they have been in the past, which is a little disappointing as well as it shows that they put more content, but less atmosphere in.

Rage on...

Rage of the Wookies is the first real expansion to give more than just missions off a terminal. Some of the more unfair parts of the game come with having to play Jump To Lightspeed to be effective in space for some of the missions. Enemy aggro is disgusting at times, bringing half the enemies at you with break-neck speed and sending you off to the cloner. The problems with the visuals and the lack of audio atmosphere is also disturbing, but some of this can be put off by the sheer amount of quests.

Unfortunately, I found that once I collected my rewards and finished up the quests, got my badges and collected my ships, I only returned to Kashyyyk once in a great while to help someone with a quest or two. I give SOE credit for the effort, but give them nothing when you consider the sheer possibilities of this planet left to a couple of dozen quests and nothing more. Useful if you're leveling and if you want the rewards, but after that, it's back to the original worlds Galaxies worked with in the beginning.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/06