Star Wars Galaxies Is Over

There's always something a little melancholy about a game world being shut off for the last time, but this goes doubly for the ill-fated Star Wars Galaxies, which ran its last Kessel run yesterday. The MMO, which was first launched to much fanfare in 2003, was shut down as SOE's contract with LucasArts expired, and to make way for EA's The Old Republic, which is now imminent. Galaxies was always a troubled beast, of course, being controversially simplified and reduced in scope by 2005's "New Game Enhancements", an attempt to expand the appeal of the MMO which left it a shadow of its former self. I will always remember it most fondly for my time working on PC Gamer, where the guy who sat at the desk behind me became a ruthless and enormously wealthy architect, and also for having playable Ithorians, least commercial of all the alien races.

Rest in peace, brave Galaxies.