That nice Mr Sony celebrated the 5th anniversary of Star Wars Galaxies by sending an e-mail saying my Star Wars Galaxies account had been reactivated for July, which I thought was particularly decent of him as it was only ever a free trial account. During the trial I’d done a few quests, tried my hand at dancing for a while as a Mon Calamari named after a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, but spent most time flying around space shooting down TIE fighters. Still no word through about the Jumpgate: Evolution beta, so I thought I’d pop back into SWG to see if I remembered how to fly a Y-wing. I did. I also remembered Y-wings are lumping great assault fighters that handle like bricks, which is a bit of a problem as a rebel pilot. The next available fighter is the good old X-Wing, but I was approximately sixty eight billion XP away from qualifying for it. Alternatively I could go back to the previous ship, the Z95 Hyphen-wing, a lovely nippy little thing, the only drawback being it’s so small that you can only mount very lightweight components (and if you need to stick some shopping in the boot or pick the kids up from Jedi Academy, forget it). The ideal solution would be a “High Mass Variant” Z95, still agile but capable of mounting heavier components, but a quick browse of Intergalactic eBay only turned up a couple of people selling them for way more money than I had.

What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality? I’ll tell you what turns a man neutral in Star Wars Galaxies, the Mark 2 Dunelizard. The heavy version of it packs the same punch as a Y-wing Longprobe with the manoeuvrability of a Z95, for less than 1/10th the price of a Z95 HMV. Bargain! Course you can’t fly them as a rebel pilot, so I toddled off to the nearest Rebel officer and told him I was resigning my commission as I’d been slightly mistaken when I joined up in saying my whole life had been dedicated to fighting the Imperial scum and faithfully declaring to fight for the Rebel cause forever, and what I really meant was I’d only be sticking around until I found the neutrals got much snazzier ships. Then it was off to a neutral recruiter, and back into space to shoot a bunch of pirates.

While battling the titular waves of demented avengers, marching cheerfully out of obscurity into the path of my laser cannons, some of them would engage in a bit of banter, the typical sort of NPC thing, “Hah, lucky shot!” and that sort of thing. The effect was slightly undermined, though, by the fact that the early ships were typically blown apart in just a few salvoes, so their threats rang a bit hollow when, by the time the little vidscreen popped up with the smug pirate taunting away, their actual ship had been reduced to dust, the dust to atoms, and the atoms to nothing, MUAHAHAHAHAHA!