Star Wars: The Old Republic is now free to play. And, if you're anything like me and have an affection for Star Wars that goes back to watching the VHS Special Edition releases so often that you wore the tapes out, you'll want to try it. It's a great, well-balanced MMORPG, collecting everything great about Star Wars and Bioware games and the time of the Old Republic into one rad package. It has some issues – I'm noticing a strong outrage at the F2P model EA has set up – but it tickles all the right fancies.
But I don't want to talk about The Old Republic. Instead, I want to look back, almost a decade ago, to Star Wars Galaxies, that strange, confusing, grindy, sandbox, community run oddity that I admit I spent a year and a half playing.