Welcome to another chapter of MMOries of a Gamer. This week it’s Star Wars Galaxies turn and I’ll tell you a story that happened to me  while exploring a planet accompanied by a friend. Read on after the break.

It was summer 2003 when SWG launched. By that time I was playing Shadowbane, as I told you last week in MMOries of a Gamer: Shadowbane, but I couldn’t resist to try the new SOE game. Considering I was a huge EQ fan and played for years, my curiosity for this new MMO of the same company was great. In addition, I’ve always loved Star Wars, that’s why I bought my copy immediately after releasing.

A friend of mine, Rashiel, was such an enthusiast player and a Star Wars fan too,  so he got the game quickly. We both started our SWG days, exploring and learning about many things. I remember, by then, SWG was a bit empty of content, having basically everyone doing the same things: exploring and trading.

After some time playing, speeders came with a free expansion and that was way crazy. Firstly, a bug made appear an extra speeder every time you displayed yours. The extra speeder couldn’t be used but just stay there forever. After a few hours when the patch released and the servers were up, the major cities were overwhelmed by dozens of abandoned speeders, messing with the performance of the game and even making the servers crash. That’s why Rashiel and me decided to go away from the laggy cities and went to explore with our brand new speeders.

Firstly we  explored Tatooine,  paying a visit to Jabba, the tentacled monster Sarlacc and many other places. But that wasn’t enough for Rashiel…

-”Why don’t we go and chase a Kimogila?”- He said- “Now we have speeders and are fast! It won’t take us!”

So there we went like crazy pilots directly to Lok planet, chasing a Kimogila.

If I remember correctly, we were exploring and looking for one for hours, till we thought we wouldn’t find it and started to get bored. Then, Rashiel decided to launch his speeder down the mountain where we stood, overlooking a huge plain area with short bushes all around. We rushed down the mountain at full speed, shouting, bouncing and laughing when the horror appeared in the form of an unearthly scream:

-”Briiiiaaaaarrrrgg!”

Yes, we crossed a Kimogila right at the foot of the mountain. I quickly started to flee but, Rashiel was laughing so hard he couldn’t see what he was doing, so the Kimogila started to hit him and the speeder. I tried to get the aggro off him doing fast crosses between the Kimogila and Rashiel and then something weird happened, the Kimogila got stuck and we both ended up under the huge monster’s belly. The monster kept turning around screaming loudly and we were laughing and nervous at the same time. The bug saved our lives and after a few moments the Kimogila position reset, leaving us free of any threat.

Those kind of things can only happen in MMOs, that’s in part why I love them so much.

Have you played Star Wars Galaxies? Have you got any story you would like to tell us? This is the right place, go ahead and post your stories or comments about SWG.

See you all next week  on MMOries of Gamer: Everquest 2.