... Jedi

Yes, I said Jedi. The single most controversial thing in Star Wars Galaxies. Idolized by fanboys as gods and blamed by players for every bad thing that ever happened to the game, including hurricanes in the mexican gulf and the loss of the noobie melon.

The veteran players saw the game without jedi, with the first jedi, then lived through the hologrind, when dedicated role- and powergamers who wanted the power err... roleplaying challenge of a jedi were rapidly going through such in-character professions as chef, musician, image designer, architect and droid engineer (hey! Anakin was a droid engineer! It’s in character!) in order to unlock jedi, in the process wrecking the game for entertainers and crafters alike. It’s not surprising that this created a lot of resentment towards every jedi.

Then we saw the village come, and suck away most of the players who wanted to play a jedi but didn’t want to hologrind, or had joined too late for that, or wanted their original character to be a jedi. Once they unlocked, they were sucked even further away to actually grind up their jedi skills – alone, since any PC or NPC seeing a saber got a jedi on the bounty hunter terminals. The CU, and the respecs it allowed sped up unlocking, since many jedi found out that one could trade in cheap lower tier skill boxes for expensive higher tier boxes every 12 hours. So, after about 2 years, jedi were, to quote a signature from the SOE boards, “as common as Starbucks Cafes, and about as cool”.

And then came the NGE, and jedi were suddenly a class like every other class (with the difference of having a history of grievances and troubles, and the unique “feature” of having one half of the players hating the other half in the Elder/Respec wars.)

It’s not as if the NGE was not the logical progression of the jedi profession in game – anyone with half a brain could have seen that jedi, who started out as “gods” – a game designer was cited as a jedi master being able to take on 20 other professions – but kept in check by permadeath grew more and more “normal” with each patch, first losing permadeath and power, then losing visibility and more power (“1.5 the power of a non-jedi character!”) as more and more players unlocked jedi.

So, one would have thought that once jedi was just another profession to pick in the game, the whole “only powergamers play jedi” “roleplayers should be the only one to play jedi, they know how to” and “jedi shouldn’t even be in game, they unbalance it” would die out.

Should, but did not, for see – roleplayers covetted jedi for a big part, and resented them at the same time. For many, the ideal jedi system was simple: They would be the only jedi on the server, maybe allowing a friend to be their padawan. Anything else would ruin canon and immersion.

So, naturally, having everyone, even the unwashed masses who did not study canon at the holy G’s feet, being able to put on a robe and use a saber was impossible to endure for those roleplayers. It was kind of hard for those who defined their characters as unique special snowflakes by the simple virtue of being force sensitives to cope with the fact that everyone else was force sensitive too.

However, permadeath was gone, even the skill loss through bounty hunting was gone, so how could one make sure those evil jedi did not ruin the immersion of all the other, canon-bible following roleplayers with their hybrid bothan/wookiee mandalorian characters wearing saber proof armor donated by Boba Fett and being genetically enhanced as well as sporting cybernetic parts that made them a six-billion-credit man?

Peer pressure, that was the answer. Also known as mobbing. Jedi would not be allowed to play like everyone else with a potentionally deadly secret (meaning, flaunt it whenever they choose to), they would have to effectively vanish so as not to hurt the immersion (and fragile ego) of those players who wanted to keep the illusion that they themselves were the only jedi in game worth interating with. Almost everyone was allowed to go crazy with canon (usually called “original concept” and “roleplayed well”), but jedi? No, sir! Kill’em all, sir! Don’t care how good they roleplay!

Where criminals could “quietly” discuss their latest heist, kidnapping or planned murder, where smugglers could openly boast of a run through Kessel, where characters wanted for an assassination attempt on the Queen of Naboo could remain safe by wearing a fake mustache, where people could wear rebel armor “with the insignia filed off” and no one bat an eye, wearing a robe became something to trigger hostility on a scale to rival the jedi forums themselves, and flashing a saber turned hardcore rebels and gutterpunk criminals into upstanding citizens willing to enforce order 66 with emoted headshots.

Of course, it was just an in character reaction – after all, no good roleplayer would ever act on ooc motives, no sir! It was just good roleplaying to plot against the Empire in the corner wearing “I hate Palp” T-Shirts, yet consider the couple in the other corner discussing the force untolerable.

OOC Consent, the holy grail for every player town unwilling to be facing invaders, and for every criminal unwilling to go to jail, was either ignored or explained away as “jedi players have to face their ic consequences”, despite dozens of examples of how much worse stuff than being FS was revealed, acted out, and then glossed over so people could still hang out in the main cantina. Jedi players had no right to require consent.

And why? To protect canon and the immersion of people – often people playing with so many mods and “unique original concepts” that they would have made George himself ask the next bystander if he happened upon the Firefly or Farscape universe. To keep people from realising that they were about as unique as a drop of water in an ocean.

And, of course, to keep jedi special, and powerful. For, as long as one made sure every other jedi was mobbed into hiding, one could demand greater (emote) powers in compensation for being hunted. Of course, getting more powers for playing like you wanted to play – feeling special and hunted, hiding yet known to every friend, and protected by ooc consent yourself, since no one ever could find out you were a FS or reveal it – looks a bit unfair to outsiders, but who cares about them?

Because, as we all know by now, there’s only one true way to play a jedi for everyone but a select few, and that’s not to play a jedi. At least that is what they want us to think.