Bars, clubs and noisy taverns are always crucial locations in a story-driven game. They are save points, places where we can sell useless stuff from our inventory, gather information, meet a key character, or just simply get into trouble.

We have selected bars and inns that look the grittiest. Bars that are perhaps most memorable as being dangerous and chaotic. So no Stray Sheep this time (well, it's chaotic in a way though), sorry Catherine. Those types of bars will be the subject of another post.

Outer Heaven (Snatcher)

The Hive (Deus Ex: Human Revolution)

Stage 4 in Sunset Riders

Mos Eisley Cantina (Star Wars Galaxies)

Kickstand (Full Throttle)

The Copper Coronet (Baldur's Gate II)

Lefty's (Leisure Suit Larry)

Pleasure Dome (Rise of the Dragon)

Scumm Bar (The Secret of Monkey Island)

Stage 2 in Street of Rage 3

Point-and-click adventures, Western RPGs or anything in a cyberpunk setting are probably full of shady, dangerous bars. Show them in the comments below with visuals.

sources: FatedBattle's LP, Deus Ex Wiki, PinkKittyRose's LP, TheWiNiZ, WindFamiliar's LP, Toegoff's LP, Larry Omnipedia, cubex66's longplay

A week ago Star Wars Galaxies closed down for good. Today, the MMO published its official "memory book," a whale of a tome at more than 200 megabytes in PDF form, recalling all of the worlds, races and principal events of the MMO's eight-year run.

Remember the Sullustan, the Ithorian, the Wookiee, the Human and, yes, the Bothan ... and the worlds of Corellia, Dantooine, and Kashyyyk. Remember the Jedi, the the smugglers, the traders and the spies. Remember all the members of the eight Galactic Senates. Remember all those who fought in the great Galactic Civil War or lived in the time of its intrigue.

It's a memorial not so much to a game but to its community and if you were ever a part of it. Have one last long look through the pages of its history, with that soundtrack above as your final accompaniment.

The Force will be with you. Always.

A Thank You to the Star Wars Galaxies Community [Star Wars Galaxies]

Not with a bang, but several bangs. Then a whimper. And a succession of people just standing around, awkwardly, wondering what they'd done with the last eight years of their lives.

As you're probably aware, last weekend the plug was pulled on Star Wars Galaxies, the long-running, mildly-popular but ultimately disappointing MMO that had managed to survive since 2003.

The first video is what things looked like outside Mos Eisley, which while normally a hive of scum & villainy, was that night the scene of flesh-pressing, dancing and fireworks. Other videos in the gallery show the death of Luke Skywalker, some rather large battles and a whole lot of sadness.

[via VG247 & Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Tonight is the end of Star Wars Galaxies, once a crown jewel of Sony Online Entertainment's MMO portfolio. There is now less than an hour before the total shutdown of the eight-year-old MMO.

Right now, courtesy of Giant Bomb's live stream broadcast, we're seeing enormous deciduous trees growing in the Tatooine desert, and X-Wing fighters penetrating the Sarlacc Pit in a very suggestive way.

The overall purpose of the game's final night is to settle the question of who is in charge of the galaxy, through a gigantic PvP war. Control of each territory in the game is weighted; whichever faction controls the most territory will, ultimately, be declared the final winner of Star Wars Galaxies.

Giant Bomb's feed is coming in from Tatooine right now, where fireworks already are deploying, like they did at the end of Return of the Jedi. Feel free to remember the game in your own way. Here's mine.

After today, the Galaxy goes dark. For five days, anyway, until you get started in Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Update] We just saw an appearance of the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. With nine minutes remaining, it seems SOE is letting everything go at once. There are enormous Stormtroopers and Lando Calrissians, too.

[Update] The game closed with a flurry of server messages: "Get on board the Falcon, kid," and "Goodbye Star Wars Galaxies." Star Wars Galaxies has now, officially, ended.

The Final Hours of Star Wars Galaxies [Giant Bomb]

Based in the UK, Georgi "Calader" Simeonov works at Splash Damage, meaning he had a hand in the lovely "nothing but blue skies" art design of multiplayer shooter Brink.

So we'll be showing you some of that, but also some of his other stuff on titles like Sony's MMO Star Wars Galaxies, along with something we'll be covering a lot more in the weeks to come: Dungeons & Dragons art.

You'll find many video game artists have also done work at some stage in their careers for a company like Wizards of the Coast, or if not that kind of fantasy slant, then for stuff like Magic: The Gathering.

If you like the Brink stuff, we've run a gallery of some other concept art from the game earlier in the year, which may have fallen flat with players, but at least it looked great!

And if you like Georgi's stuff, you should check out his personal site.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on the "expand" icon on the main image above and select "open in new tab".

With the dawning of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Star Wars: Galaxies, aka "that other old MMO," is headed for extinction. The game is going to wind up with a gigantic PvP throwdown for dominance settling once and for all (sorta) who runs the galaxy, Empire or Rebels. Here's how it will be scored.

It's not winner-take-all, like the U.S. Electoral college. Each region will account for a percentage of the entire in-world territory. Thus, if the Empire triumphs 60 percent to 40 percent in a territory worth 5 percent of the galaxy, they get a net score, for lack of a better term, of 3 percent, the Rebels 2 percent. It's going to be a weighted measure, in other words.

As the game's community relations staff further explains:

"Meanwhile, let's say Region Two is worth 3%, and that in this same period of time three Imperials earn 50 GCW [Galactic Civil War] points in the region and no Rebels show up at all. Region Two would give the Imperials a full 3% in the galaxy score for next to no effort compared to Region One. All regions matter!"

The Galactic Civil War is currently raging; it's not going to be fought in a day, and nothing's been decided yet. The Star Wars: Galaxies team has built in some controls to keep things equitable up until Dec. 15, when the game goes dark. Though the Empire or the Rebellion will be declared the victor then, no one, really, wins in this outcome.

Winning the Galactic Civil War [Star Wars Galaxies]

In the Star Wars universe, nobody ever really wins anything. When good "wins" evil remains, and when evil remains, good goes into hiding to repeat the cycle. That won't be the case when MMO Star Wars Galaxies ends, though. When it ends, it'll end.

With the game being shut down on December 15, the developers have decided to give the apocalyptic event a little meaning. Shortly before the game's end, all points earned in the ongoing Galactic Civil War mode (ie Rebels vs Empire) will be tallied, and the winner will, well, actually win.

The side with the higher score will win the game, and the galaxy, for each server, as well as change the way the game will end and what happens in the final moments. Celebrations will be in order for those who win and, for the losers, let's just say they'll be going out with a bang.

They'll win the game, and there'll be no chance for a rematch, because the game will be gone. Neutral players will also get some kind of event, but being neutral, it'll probably be as bland as they deserve.

To the losers, then, its heads on a pike. And the winners? A celebratory song, using said heads as drums. All that'll be left after that will be to hope George Lucas doesn't come back twenty years later and change/ruin the song.

The Battle Comes To An Explosive End [SWG]

When Sony Online Entertainment said it would shut down Star Wars: Galaxies by the end of the year, many teeth were gnashed and many garments were rent. A lot of people, thinking SOE failed to consider this, postulated about taking the game to a free-to-play model, and voila, the orphanage is saved! If only they wanted to save it, right?

Well, SOE and LucasArts both considered that long ago, smart guys. And while hypotheses are free, putting them into effect costs money. LucasArts said as much in a statement to GamePro, who went asking about the free-to-play chances of the eight-year-old MMO.

"[T]hat model just isn't financially viable," LucasArts told GamePro. "Changing the business model for an experience like Star Wars Galaxies takes a major investment and overhauling of the existing infrastructure of the game. We're unfortunately at a point in our life cycle where a change of this magnitude is just not possible. The harsh reality is that we've reached a point where the game is no longer a sustainable business."

LucasArts' Message to Star Wars Galaxies Fans [GamePro]

Star Wars Galaxies, a game that's probably more notable for how disappointing it was rather than its moderate success, is closing down later this year. For most, it elicits a shrug, but for some fans, it's grounds for a lawsuit.

According to a report on VentureBeat, a band of long-time players is putting together a class-action suit to file against Sony Online Entertainment. It's not, as you'd expect, calling for the game to be left open. It's instead in response to calls they've already made.

Ever since the original announcement, players have been petitioning Sony to leave the game's servers open and turn Galaxies into a free-to-play title, but those doing so on the game's forums have seen their posts locked down because "promoting an online petition causes disruption within the community and does not provide gameplay feedback that our development team can use".

It's that lockdown which has prompted the planned suit.

Sounds rough, but when you sign up for a game and its forums, you sign up to their end-user license agreement, and if Sony's says it can delete stuff that "causes disruption" then it can do what it likes. That being the case, I say the possibility of the class action suit succeeding is approximately 3,720 to 1.

Exclusive: Star Wars Galaxies players intend to file class-action lawsuit against Sony [VentureBeat]

The original MMO set in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars Galaxies, is ending its online existence this December, making way for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Contracts expire and so too must the occasional online community.

Star Wars Galaxies designer Raph Koster, also notable for being lead designer on Ultima Online, offers his take on the game scheduled to "sunset" later this year, a eulogy of sorts, with a dash of post mortem. The former Galaxies designer adds his take on how the game might have been a bigger success, right from the get go.

"Here's what I would have done differently," Koster writes. "I would have made sure the ground and space games were launched all at once. I would have given the game another year to develop and really polish it quite a bit. I think we created one of the most unique and amazing games ever created in the MMO space. It is the sandbox game. Nothing else even comes close to what we did there. I would have really taken our time and polished combat right so we never had to do the [New Game Enhancements, an overhaul of the game in 2005]."

That said, Koster says he was "proud to have worked on it," calling the eight-year-old game "quite profitable," full of influential gameplay mechanics and entertaining for millions. He even addresses the game's much talked about... dancing.

"...Which everyone made fun of," Koster says. "But as far as I am concerned, it may have been the biggest and best contribution, the one that spawned a jillion YouTube videos and may well be the lasting influence the game leaves behind, an imprint on all the games since: a brief moment where you can stop saving the world or killing rats and realize the real scope and potential of the medium."

More at his official site.

SWG is shutting down [Raph Koster's Blog]