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Terminally Online
This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. Like our own Lincoln Carpenter, who’s been enjoying a version of the galaxy far, far away from a long time ago.
After completing the initial tutorial on a private server for Star Wars Galaxies—the Star Wars-themed MMO that launched in 2003, was updated until 2005, and was shuttered in 2011—I was dumped out of a shuttle in Mos Eisley and into a warzone. Squads of rebel and imperial players were exchanging blaster fire and lobbing thermal detonators. When I asked the passing combatants why Tatooine was worth fighting over, a man in stormtrooper armor said I was lucky I wasn’t PvP-flagged.
Despite the early-2000s assets and stiff animations, it was the most dynamic that an MMO had felt for me in years. But in the week I’ve spent revisiting Star Wars Galaxies, I’ve seen very little other excitement. I’ve killed no impressive enemies. I’ve done barely any quests. It’s an MMO that’s content to let me log in and do little of note whatsoever—and that’s exactly what I’ve been missing.
In comparison, whenever the WoW itch gets strong enough for me to reup my subscription, I end up doing nothing but doing. Logging into WoW in 2026 means enduring a bombardment of refreshed weekly prompts and directives urging me to get on my flying mount and accelerate at breakneck speed towards whatever prescribed activity with prerequisite player count will provide my next predictable gear score increase.
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A more civilized age
WoW has become a relentlessly efficient machine, ensuring players waste the least possible time while being propelled through seasonal ranks and escalating difficulty tiers. In terms of providing their users with those quantifiable successes, it’s hard to argue that the MMOs of today aren’t better designed than their older iterations. And yet, it’s the moments when I step off the treadmill where they still feel the most magical.
When I can still find joy in WoW, it’s not through the weekly content blitz. It’s when I take the scenic route through an old leveling zone, and wonder what quest that dwarf running in the distance is doing. It’s when I earn a grateful emote from a player of the opposite faction who can’t otherwise thank me for helping them with a dicey fight. It’s during the pinnacle of incidental MMO encounters: Receiving a sorely needed heal from a passing player who could’ve just as easily left me to die.
It’s in those moments where it feels like the MMO rediscovers itself—where it recaptures the ways that multiplayer in a shared, persistent world can be a source of wonder, and not just a rote feature of the form. It’s that wonder that motivated Star Wars Galaxies in 2003, and it’s what its private server maintainers have worked to keep in suspended animation ever since.
Outer Rim living
My hours in Galaxies have been aimless ones. I’ve been casually puttering across the Tatooine wastelands, learning how to survey for minerals and water, how to harvest womp rat corpses for bones and how to use them to flavor what must be the world’s worst tea—slowly gaining an understanding of its skill systems and crafting mechanics, but having no real idea whether I’m accomplishing anything another player would consider worthwhile.
I haven’t used my blaster on anything more threatening than a nameless smuggler, and I’m not sure where I’d get a better shooting iron even if I wanted one. I could be answering the call to adventure as one of the galaxy’s heroes, but the game’s been content to let me ignore it.
And I’ve been content to go on ignoring. Because all that time I’m wasting out in the sands is time I’ve spent watching a bounty hunter tear by on a speeder bike and wondering what grim business he’s on, or exchanging greetings with a Zabrak who’s working on his carbine marksmanship. The hour I spent surveying eahiate iron deposits was one that led me through a sprawling, player-made city out in the dunes, its vacant tents and droid stalls and derelict cruisers parked in hand-built plazas proof that other players once shared that same space.
When I drift back through Mos Eisley, its scant environmental details and featureless wall textures feel vibrant, because the aliens, smugglers, and imperial agents I’ll bump elbows with want nothing more than the pleasure of lingering there together.
Star Wars Galaxies has been dead for years—but it’s a dead game that still remembers how to feel like a living world better than the market-leading MMOs that survived it.
