Star Wars Galaxies' world has a lot more to offer than just starports, mission lairs or dungeons. In hot pursuit of Credits, loots and XP you can easily miss the fact that you are living and moving in a huge world of 2.250 km² (15 km x 15 km x 10) spread over 10 totally diverse planets.

With an esthetic eye (and appropriate hardware...) a genuine explorer will find the beautiful lands outside the towns filled with gorgeous landscapes of different moods. SWG's comfortable screenshot support is filling up my hard drives in record speed.

So, now and here, I want to give a HUGE HUG to the World Creation Team of Lucas Arts! Tremendous work! You gave me a lot of magical moments during the last year.

Nub Shanda, Endor

The mapping idea came up in February 2003 during Beta3 on server BRIA. Since Corellia ought to be the home of my rp char I decided not to leave this planet during the beta, but to explore it thoroughly (looking for bugs). That's why I missed the "Holy Shrub" of Tatooine, but on the other hand Corellia had an attraction of its own: flying fish!

While exploring I noticed that whenever you use the command /who in the chat window often regional names were used to describe the location of nearby players. Those regional names did not show up on the maps, though. So I started to compile a first raw map of Corellia while still hunting for bugs and skilling my scout...

Mospic High Range, Tatooine

After game release I was amazed that those regional names still were nowhere to be found on the maps. So I decided to map the remaining 9 planets (this time on the "inofficial German" server GORATH). The planets were "locked" unless I had made my month long mapping expedition there first. So I "unlocked" one planet after another and each time I entered a new world I felt the "explorer excitement".

Though I planned a month of exploring for each planet housing, rp events, quests and (the lack of) credits kept me busy and prolonged my mapping project....

Now, June 2004, I finally have "unlimited access" to all planets and mastered the skills of Ranger and CH on the way (using maskscent und taming). In case you are wondering now: I'm a casual gamer, roleplayer, IG chronically broke.... and I do despise grinding.

Thaos Mountains, Corellia

My char is a Corellian hillbilly, a runaway who worked his way into the prestigious Faculty of Planetography of the University of Tyrena. These maps ought to be my final "diploma thesis" for the prime university of Corellia (forget Coronet, go Tyrena!).

Since there is no new planet coming our way anytime soon young Vora Dumem has finished his academic life. So in his near future he most probably will be sucked into the quagmire of an escalating galactic civil war.

That means I will be looking for a good ol' Image Designer to do some little "aging" work on my char. Then I'm going to look for a roleplaying PA deeply involved in the GCW.....

Wayward Jungle, Yavin IV

SWG's possibilities are amazing!