I’m a daily player of Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, and I like to provide occasional articles here about it, but recently there just hasn’t been anything to write about.
In October there was the General Skywalker event, but it required incredibly high investment and was immensely difficult – all for a five star unlock! – so it was undoubtedly content geared either toward extremely end-game players or whales (those who spend a lot on the game). There was then much excitement about the release of The Rise of Skywalker in December… but you wouldn’t have really known it by the game. We got four marquee characters (meaning they are free for all players up to three stars, but anything beyond that requires a lot of money or a long wait), which was awesome, as General Hux, Sith Trooper, and a new Poe Dameron and a new Finn were released. But that was all, as four marquee characters represented the hype for the final film of the Skywalker saga. Months after the film’s release, when a lot of people had moved on to looking at what’s next for Star Wars and enjoying The Clone Wars, the game then released Rey and Kylo Ren from the film.
That’s a very curious time to wait… except for the fact that the requirements to unlock these characters were INSANE, by far the most DIFFICULT in the game, and POINTLESS. The characters and units needed don’t make any thematic sense (in the case of the new capital ships, the Raddus and the Finalizer) or aren’t needed for the actual event (in the case of the characters needed). That represented an evolution in event requirements for this game, and not for the better. Way back when, the big events were LEGENDARY events, which required you to farm five characters from a specific faction (like, say, Jedi to unlock Yoda or Empire to unlock Palaptine). Early on in the game, getting the characters starred up was what mattered, but starting with the Thrawn legendary event, those events shifted to not only having the characters starred up but geared up as well. That led to some incredibly frustrating legendary events, like Chewbacca and C-3PO, but nonetheless the requirements were still faction-based. The game evolved into not just legendary events (there was actually a time where they stopped doing them altogether) but JOURNEY ones, and these require you to both farm and gear specific characters. Like with the legendary events, this began by needing the characters starred up (like the ones needed for Commander Luke Skywalker or Jedi Training Rey) but morphed into needing them at incredibly high gear and mod levels too (like with the two Revans, Malak, and General Skywalker). While this led to more difficult requirements and a lot of frustration (the Malak event in particular), the requirements made perfect sense, because they were thematically relevant. For example, the Commander Luke Skywalker event (still the gold standard for events in this game, one that hasn’t been reached since) required you to re-live A New Hope, which was really cool.
But now we’ve gotten to the point with these GALACTIC LEGEND events we’ve reached a point where it has evolved to the worst of all worlds: it involves a record number of characters needed, a record level of gear and resources needed to invest, and requirements that either don’t make sense thematically or aren’t even needed for the event, and once you reach those requirements you can’t immediately unlock the character but then are allowed to begin farming raid tickets to gradually unlock the character on multiple attempts. All of this adds up to make it inherently less fun. Besides, the events for Rey and Kylo were TOTALLY geared toward end-game players or those willing to spend a ton of money, so it was also among the most exclusive events ever in this game.
More recently, we got three characters from The Mandalorian in marquee events, Greef Karga, Cara Dune, and the Mandalorian himself, and the release of these characters was really good: it was accessible for all players, featured great character models, and great kit designs. This was really cool and exciting, but it revealed another problem: there’s nothing to do in the game. Well, at least with three star characters. And while I care far more about the collection nature of the game than I do the events, nonetheless right now we can’t do either of them with these new Mandalorian characters. So it’s a really good and encouraging development, but one that right now isn’t making a big difference.
So then we come to the fortieth anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back. For the fortieth anniversary of A New Hope we got the R2-D2 legendary event (on Star Wars Day) and then the Commander Luke Skywalker announcement and forthcoming event, and so maybe we’re still going to get something for Empire, but… both Star Wars Day and the anniversary of Empire came and went without, well, anything. Oh, wait, I forgot that we had a Galactic Chase event with insanely low drop rates for a Rebel Y-Wing. Because I don’t know about you, but when I think of content from The Empire Strikes Back, I think of a Rebel Y-Wing! Because Rebels clearly won in Empire and Y-Wings were so prominent, right? LOL. To be completely honest, I have ZERO clue what the thinking was behind releasing that ship now.
But that’s fitting, because I really have zero clue as to what direction this game is headed. On an encouraging note, it sounds like this game isn’t on the verge of death (though you’d be forgiven if you thought that, based on recent months) and that they have plans moving forward, but we’re still waiting to see what they are. And it’s important that they get things figured out soon, because the last several months have been a disaster without much of anything to do except for those willing to spend money.
This game isn’t pay-to-play, but the reality is that over the last several months the game hasn’t had much of anything to play unless you do.
Star Wars Thoughts 