What is going on in Galaxies? Well, there are two main news-items of note. Firstly, the expansion – Rage of the Wookiees. I was able to see a preview of the expansion in the LucasArts booth and the Galaxies Fan Breakfast – and overall, it looks intriguing. And I am aware that that is neither a positive or negative word. Intriguing represents my feelings the best. The planet itself apparently has no one main map, and instead uses zones on the planet, so the planetary map shows only the zone you are in. I suspect that this could have some interesting avenues available in terms of later expansion on the planet itself – but the stark difference in this planet with the current planets in the game seems to leave me skeptical.

In all the areas I was shown all the action was on the ground – the developers say that there are areas where the trees make the ground impassable – but I haven’t seen them, and personally, I’m skeptical about the time the development team would have been able to dedicate to making interesting, expansive tree cities. This, according to the EU is an exceedingly impressive and extensive aspect of Kashyyyk – although yes, I can accept that some action in the upcoming movie and of the game can take place on the ground.

One exciting item they will have in the expansion, and hopefully will be coming more into game – will be instanced dungeons. I’m not sure how many they will have, but the one they showed us at the breakfast was a space station heavily protected – meaning you’ll need a strong space force to get inside – and then the station itself is well protected on the inside – from the descriptions the developers gave, this would be comparable with the Death Watch Bunker, which, being a Bunker junky, I am very much looking forward to.

It seems to me that the biggest thing this expansion is meant to provide is content. They are adding content on both the ground, and in space. They want to give players a new planet to chart and explore, new, repeatable missions they can take to get materials in the form of the mining missions, and of course as many quests as they can pump out to keep players interested. The rewards of some of the quests? Your sought after cybernetic limbs. But, one of the rewards they mentioned from the instanced space station – a holographic death star you can drop in your house. I’ll reserve any sarcastic or cynical comment until I have all the facts, but this doesn’t look very good to me.

What’s the other newsworthy item in Galaxies? The Combat Upgrade. Oh yes, by the time this article is published some servers will be down already getting upgraded. Three days ago in Indianapolis however, they talked about the Upgrade going to live a few days before May 5th, the Digital Download for the expansion. But Monday they already had a CU schedule published.

Like it or not, the CU is coming, and for better or worse, it’s changing key aspects of the game. Firstly, the HAM system got a big revamp – you now only take damage to one pool, Health. Your Action and Mind are now pools for special abilities, and will not incapacitate you if they fall to zero – and Health will not decrease from using special attacks. The most immediate implications of this change, of course, are twofold – firstly, Mind is no longer the dominating factor in PvP, which I’m sure opponents of the game as it stands now will rejoice in. The second is that professions have lost a certain amount of individuality. Carabineers and Pikemen no longer have action attacks, Riflemen and Swordsmen no longer have Mind Attacks – all attacks now hit your opponents Health pool.

To the disappointment of many players, they are adding a level system. Opponents higher level than you will hit you for exponentially more damage in PvE now, to the point where much higher level creatures will be instant death to an unprepared player. Some weapons will be having a level requirement to them – you can’t use them until you’re a certain level. Creatures much lower than you will grant virtually no experience. Grouping with high level characters will grant you their damage mitigations meaning you can go out with your level 80 friends and not get instantly killed by a creature a dozen levels higher than you. Considering that armor certifications, and more accurately reduction in armor hindrances, are now given in combat professions – this will be a needed feature for pure crafters traveling in the wild.

Armor and buffs, if you are familiar with how they worked in Galaxies, have changed dramatically – armor no longer works directly with percentages, but with a four digit number some clever players have been able to translate into numbers players can understand – in a nutshell, perfect armor is approximately 60-62% reduction. Armor will slow movement and firing rate. Buffs are reduced to a percentage of your health, around 20% is the number most often through around – but as your combat level increases you gain health, up to around 3000.

The user interface was changed around significantly, all the icons were made into full-color with new images. In a move towards massive amounts of particle effects they removed state icons and instead made it so states are displayed by particle effects around a character – circling “dizzy” effects for dizzy, a face that looks similar to the warcry animation for intimidated, and so on. Guns have new effects when firing, and some weapons – the heavy weapons especially, have been given new visuals.

And finally, what we thought most of what the CU was going to entail – they fixed the specials in the professions and (hopefully) balanced them. They’ve removed the combat queue and added cool-down and warm-up timers on action groups – meaning basically that you cannot execute the same action again and again once a second in most cases. You can queue a single action after the default action which you are able to choose. Groups will be limited to 8 players on the ground.

Specials will able to be executed with most weapons of that class – ranged or melee, and weapon certifications have been moved around extensively – more certifications given in elite professions, and even Master Boxes, and significantly fewer in starting professions. Commando, for example, will be able to use Underhand Shot from Smuggler with a flamethrower, and will have the effect of Underhand Shot with the AoE and Fire effect of a Flamethrower. Allowing professions to create specialized hybrid templates varying gameplay, but also possible that people will be able to find a very powerful template that will dominate for a period of time.

All in all – the entire aspect of combat is changing and a very vocal proportion of the forums is not pleased with it, myself among them. SOE asserts that the exit-game polls for the CU show very different opinions, but will not release statistics for competitive reasons.

There are a number of inconsistencies I find in the design of the CU, and ultimately, I find it highly disappointing. It’s supposed to encourage grouping – but they reduce group sizes – especially with Instanced Dungeons. They want to make the game more accessible to newer players by making a single-hitpoint system, but make armor much more complex when trying to figure out exactly how much it protects you. They want to make it harder to impossible to solo very difficult creatures or opponents like Krayt Dragons and Nightsisters, but how easy will it be with a “full” group when higher level opponents hit us for insane amounts of damage? They want to make PvP fairer by removing DoTs and Dizzy/Knockdown, but reduce the damage reduction to the point where battles can be over in a trio of blows.

Ultimately, my biggest problem with the CU is that for as long as it was promised, it was assumed and hinted at that it would entail reducing armor, and buffs, possibly weapons, and fixing the special attacks to balance the professions and make the lesser used ones more viable. The CU that is coming encompasses so much more than that, that it is changing the entire game. I did not choose the CU; I did not buy the CU. I chose and bought Galaxies as it is, and changing it so much is their prerogative – but I did not ask for it. Changing the entire game may very well bring people to the game who did not like it before – but I assure you, it is alienating a number of people who enjoy it now.