Imagine If the History of SWG was in reverse. NGE - CU - Pre-CU - Forum repost

SonOfAGhost

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Originally posted by Morgath1 on the offical forums:

2003 - release SWG with 9 simple iconic professions and a simplisitic FPS feel and a clunky and inconsistent interface.

It works for a little while, after all there is a lot of interest in anything Starwars.
But numbers of players drop of quickly as people quickly complete their levels then get bored.
Content is limited and there is much complaint about how unstarwarsy it is for cities to be full of jedi,
and about how restrictive and boring the profession and skill system is compared with most MMORPGs

So in 2004 they release a Game and Combat Upgrade.
- they drop jedi as a starter class ( causes some protests ... but definitely improves starwarsyness )
- they increase the number of professions to over 30, radically improve the skill system allowing people to choose their own skills
from several professions to create a truely individual character.
- the improve the interface allowing people to use a simple common radial menu in almost all cases to interact with everything
from furniture to objects to npcs to other players.

These changes are greeted mostly with great excitement in the roleplaying community and numbers swell.

However is is still deemed too easy to become jedi. And it doesnt take long before the numbers of jedi are almost as high as they were with the original.

So in 2005 they change the system ... making the path to become a jedi a secret.
At the same time they remove some of the restrictive CL related things, so that now in most cases the use of weapons
or armor relates to specific skills instead of some arbitrary Combat level like before.

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If it had been like this .. i would have bought the original, liked it at first, but got bored with it quickly because of its FPS nature
and boring profession and skill system. And then every change after that would have excited me and in the end i would have been happy
with a truely awesome game.

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hercules

If history went reverse the game would be dead by now.

Imagine it be like launch now with no jedi at all and an intact story arc!Heck even the perma death thing  eliminating all jedis in the game .

SWG has always had a small minority RG followers and a majority "jedi wanna be".

SofaKing2000

Very interesting concept... not sure how to respond.  I think I would have enjoyed SWG alot if I first started out in it as a FPS game. But I would have gotten bored with it like I did with Diablo 2.

As far as the Jedi thing... this is a very debatable topic. I personally liked it when it was a secret. It was fun to think that every move you make in the game might effect your status of being a jedi. <this was a rumor running around my first guild>. I was having so much fun Being a MCommando/MCH that I really did'nt care about becoming a Jedi.

Sorry to get off topic....

After considering your scenario, I think I would have played SWG for 3 months.... maybe.

Aetius73

Mid 2006- SOE deems players not Star Warsy enough. World populated with NPC's only players charged $15 a month so they can watch the action.

Kazzer

Its very interesting, but i do think the game would be like now, i mean, less peeps, even tho myself would like it, but removing jedi would make alot mad, even tho it would have bin a good idea, i think jedi ruined the game abit, if only NPCs were jedis, jedis would be special, jedi should always have bin special, so if u give the players the opitunity to play as a jedi, and then take it away, would kill the game completetly, they should nerver had made jedi as a playable proffesion at all

Dark_Lord_13

I think SOE's main problems lay in that they made too many drastic changes, that didn't affect the fanbases desires, and they made drastic changes too often to try to appeal to the "in crowd."  I'm like the last poster and think it'd still be dead.

Jedi topic has been beaten to death, so I'm not going to touch it.

GungaDin

Honestly, I don't think I ever would have bought the game if you could start with a Jedi.  The wholoe draw to me was the Rebel vs Imperial Concept.  I thought this would create a nice PVP aspect and frequent ingame battles.  Early on it was like this with battles between Anchorhead and Bestine. Imperial player cities (like the one i was part of) fended off rebel raids nightly.  That all disappeared. I think there are plenty of star wars games that allow you to be a Jedi.  I knew coming in about the timeline so I wasnt expecting Jedi to populate the server. 

But if you started with Jedi and then removed them or made it harder, I think you would have a serious problem on your hands. So going from NGE to Pre-CU wouldnt have worked. The fanbase would just get upset.  I do believe that the numbers would be less at launch though and would die out much faster than starting with PRE-CU.

knightaudit

To beat the dead horse as it were

The decision to let Jedi into the game was a bad move. If the game is set between the movies 4 and 5 then there should only be a maximum of 3.5 Jedi in the game (Darth Vader, the Emporer, Yoda and Luke who was still in training more or less (Hence the .5 rating) Now there may be force sensitves and I do not disagree to that but Remember that Jedi " The jedi are all but extinct"

I had played the original game before the CU and NGE and it was fun and enjoyable but so many wanted Jedi and I think that was the start of the end for the game.

 

Oh well

Those are my thoughts ,,,, not yours

crack_fox

Interesting concept. It does read more like progress in reverse (except the return to turgid turn-based combat). I still would have played at launch, but I'd have quit on account of the Great Space Nerf of October 2004 when all the space content is suddenly and inexplicably removed from the game.