Star Wars Galaxies

The Star Wars MMO its players never forgave for the New Game Enhancements

Shut down
19902026

Star Wars Galaxies was the Star Wars massively multiplayer game from Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts, released on 26 June 2003 as a sandbox of player cities, professions and a hard-won Jedi path. It sold a million copies by 2005, then lost much of its community after the November 2005 "New Game Enhancements" remade it as a simpler class-based game. With The Old Republic arriving, its servers were shut down on 15 December 2011. Fan emulators keep the pre-2005 game alive.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2003
  2. 26 June 2003 Launch
    An Empire Divided launches

    A sandbox with 32 professions, player cities and hidden Jedi.

  3. 2004
  4. 27 October 2004 Version
    Jump to Lightspeed

    Space combat arrives in the first expansion.

  5. 2005
  6. 24 August 2005 Peak
    A million copies sold

    The high-water mark, months before the overhaul.

  7. 15 November 2005 Version
    The New Game Enhancements

    Nine classes replace 32 professions; the community splits and shrinks.

  8. 2009
  9. 15 October 2009 Decline
    Twelve servers close

    The population is consolidated.

  10. 2011
  11. 24 June 2011 Shutdown announced
    SOE and LucasArts announce the end

    Closing on 15 December, five days before The Old Republic.

  12. 15 December 2011 Shutdown
    The servers go dark

    After a final night of galaxy-wide battles.

The site through time

Browse starwarsgalaxies.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Sony Online Entertainment (published by LucasArts) 2003–2011 Founded Developed and operated by SOE under licence; published by LucasArts

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts announced on 24 June 2011 that Star Wars Galaxies would close on 15 December 2011, five days before BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic launched and as SOE's licence neared its end. The subscriber base had never recovered from the 2005 "New Game Enhancements" overhaul, which simplified the game to chase World of Warcraft and drove away much of the community it had.

Our analysis: Galaxies launched as a sandbox with player cities, an economy run by crafters and a Jedi you had to earn over months, and it was loved by a smaller audience than Star Wars deserved. The 2005 overhaul that made it a class-based action game to compete with World of Warcraft is the textbook case of alienating the players you have in pursuit of the ones you want. When LucasArts had a new MMO from BioWare, the old one was switched off, and its emulator community has kept it running longer than SOE did.

History [edit]

A galaxy to live in

Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided launched on 26 June 2003, developed by Sony Online Entertainment with Raph Koster, of Ultima Online, as creative director. It was a sandbox before the word was common: 32 professions to mix and match, an economy where nearly every item was made by player crafters, player-built cities, houses you could decorate, entertainers who healed by dancing in cantinas, and a Jedi that could only be unlocked through a long, hidden process, because in the era between the trilogies Jedi were meant to be rare. Expansions added space combat (Jump to Lightspeed, 2004) and Kashyyyk. It sold a million copies by August 2005 and held a few hundred thousand subscribers.

The NGE

It was not World of Warcraft, which launched in November 2004 and rewrote what an MMO audience looked like. In April 2005 SOE shipped a "Combat Upgrade" that unsettled players, and on 15 November 2005, days after selling an expansion, it launched the New Game Enhancements: 32 professions collapsed into nine classes, combat made twitchier, and Jedi available from character creation. Long-time players felt the game they had paid for had been replaced overnight, and many left; the NGE became, and remains, the standard example in game design of what not to do to a live community. SOE spent years afterwards restoring some of what it had removed.

Shutdown

Galaxies ran on with a smaller, loyal population, closing twelve of its servers in 2009. On 24 June 2011 SOE and LucasArts announced the game would close on 15 December 2011, with sales ending in September; BioWare and EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic launched on 20 December, and SOE's Star Wars licence was ending. The final night was marked by server-wide battles and gatherings before the last shards went dark.

Emulated

Within days of the NGE fans had begun reverse-engineering the pre-2005 game, and the SWGEmu project and its successors have run "pre-CU" servers ever since, at times with more concurrent players than the official game had at its end. It is one of the clearest cases of a community preserving a game its owners abandoned.

The domain today

starwarsgalaxies.com no longer belongs to the game; SOE became Daybreak Game Company in 2015 and the address lapsed. The community lives at the emulator projects.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Star Wars Galaxies: release date announced IGN 17 June 2003
  2. Star Wars Galaxies sales top a million units GamesIndustry.biz 24 August 2005 [archived]
  3. For online Star Wars game, it's revenge of the fans The New York Times 10 December 2005 [archived]
  4. Star Wars Galaxies online game to close BBC News 27 June 2011
  5. Star Wars Galaxies is dead, but these people are keeping it alive Kotaku 14 September 2016 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).