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Someone Explain
inmysights
Member UncommonPosts: 450
Could someone please explain in detail what happened to SWG. I have been reading about it forever and I think it is time I get some explanation please. So if someone could do me the honors and give me some good insight I would appreciate it!
Thank you
Thank you
I am so good, I backstabbed your face!
Comments
SWG released tooo early
Ruined it with Jedi patches
CU came along and ruined it some more
NGE came along and changed it into a different game.
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Don't click here...no2
To help you better understand the changes, I think my playing time will speak volumes:
Pre-CU: I don't think I left the computer.
CU: 6-10 hours a day (only because I had a baby!)
NGE- 30 minutes max.
NGE present- cancelled
In all seriousness.
The game launched too early, but showed great promise by being very huge and having features that suited all playstyles. It was a unique game that allowed you to be your own character, creating your own story, in a living thriving player run Star Wars world. A world that at the time of launch was in line with the Star Wars story and continuity.
Then they got rid of the original dev team, including Raph Koster. And they instead of fixing the premature release and the stuff that wasnt done, started down the path of "Jedi". Over night, the game turned from "live in Star Wars" to "grind warz online", and if you look at the graphs, that month Jedi came out, the game had it's first huge loss of players.
Then, the devs spent the rest of the time all the way up to the Combat Upgrade catering to jedi, while everyone else were kinda forgotten. You could see that, by seeing what other professions got in the patches, by namely noticing how badly planned the non jedi stuff was... It really put the balance of the game way out of whack.
All issues up to the CU (for over a year) was answered by the devs by a "it will be fixed by the Combat Revamp/wait for the combat Revamp". A few months before the CU they showed us the plans for it, and they were good. They worked with the community on how to build the Combat Revamp, and all the way up till the wookiee expansion was announced, they were on target.
With the wookiee expansion, they changed the date for the CR(Combat Revamp), and they ditched all plans for the CR(that had been planned for over a year), and created the CU in less than 2 months. The CU they launched on us with the wookiee expansion, was nothing near what they had planned and showed us and worked with us to make.
The CU was WAY outside of what the game was about even. They had introduced LEVELS in the game, something that the game wasnt made for, and soon after, they found out the hard way that the CU wasnt planned...and Levels didn't fit.
They found out people couldnt team, they were forced to revamp the weapons and existing professions to allow a player that had mastered one skill to actually get a weapon in another skill that would have the power needed for him to even kill monsters his level with it. You can imagine how bad it wa, when you needed 1 million XP, and the only weapon you were allowed to use of the skill you tried to master, only was strong enough to kill grays lvl 1-10 and give 10xp.
So we told them, that the CU was a bad idea, they had a second even huger exodus of players(Jedi was the first). The devs responce was: "The CU is here to stay!".
It got so bad that Smed himself came to the forums with his famous CU speech..Ofcourse, all promises made in that speech was broken or never initiated.
6 months later, the Mustafar Expansion was to arrive, and after they had sold us that crappy laggy, buggy expansion, they dropped the NGE on us. From being a world, it became a game with a combat system that was broken, unplanned and unfun. Not to even mention that we went from being 32 skills and professions we could build our characters out of, we now became 9 CLASSES, in a game that wasnt made for classes.
The NGE showed its weaknesses early, as they had their 3'rd exodus, when they lost so many players that even bria, the biggest server was EMTPY. Some of the weaknesses was:
-No need for ANY other people.
-No choices with classes.
-No class did anything unique, or was a "help" to a team.
-Animations that were fluid and gorgeous was removed for a "poke poke poke swing" benny hill thing.
-Player economy turned into Loot economy, so no one needed the non combatants any longer
-Social playstyles like Entertainer got gutted even more(The CU had gutted them, so did the AFK issue), and there was no game nor a need for them. Heck, the Ents and Crafters don't even have quests or a legacy.
-AI not made for the NGE combat, and ended up running through walls and in circles around players desperately trying to hit an AI that hit you 100%. And not only that, the AI was also on speed...
Aftermath:
The devs have said over and over that the "NGE is here to stay", but every day, we see them retreat, by adding things from the PRE-CU game, that was NEVER in the NGE plans to begin with, so that they won't be out of a job...But they are losing.
They are losing because the NGE as a game, is worthless, like a Diablo clone you find in the bargain bin, and because the few devs remaining(Did I tell you that they had to move devs to other games?) have so little skills with coding and developing, that even adding back things that worked in the past, is a chore. They seem to be unable to add anything to the NGE that is inuitive and easy to wrok with. It's like a turtle fucking another turtle in a barrel of Corn syrup....Not a pleasant experience, and before you're even there, you're all exhausted from the strain of working against the system to do it.
Aftermath 2:
So how do they regain the 200.000+++ customers they lost? How do they up their subscription base from 10.000-50.000(not including station access) they have now, so they can afford the 10 million $ licence fee from LEC?
Well, they have 3 livable choices and 1 suicidal one:
1: Revert to Pre-CU game, focus on fixing what was wrong with the PRe-CU and adding what the never had time to add before launch. Over time, this would be the most viable, as the Pre-CU game was also the most prominent game, with most options for all playstyles of MMO players.
2: Open a few classic servers, and put a skeleton team on them(Too bad the NGE has a skeleton team too). Thi is also viable, but the problem is that the classic servers would be more popular than the live NGE servers...It would bruise a few Ego's and be proof that the NGE was a total fuck up.
3: Develope a SWG 2, based on Pre-CU, keep the NGE floating with red numbers till SWG2 can be launched, kill the NGE.
1 Suicidal: Keep the NGE and the current dev team, and keep on developing the NGE. They are losing players by the day, and free trials and free comebacks for veteran players aint helping. Servers are....empty.
Looking back on it, I think the game was probably in it's best shape in the Publish 11-12 era, from Pub 13 on they were removing or dumbing down something.
When I started playing SWG, Bloodfin was always a "light" server and it had people everywhere. You couldn't go to any starport any time that I played and not see people. Only a trickle at the less used ones, TONS in Cnet, DantMo, Mos Eisley, Theed, and Dath Science.
Ah, the good old days, grinding 10K piket missions between DantMo and Galaxy city... Heading off to Dathomir to grind in Rancor Valley.... You always saw people. You met someone new every day... The time I ended up unintentionally in a guild war vs the largest Imp guild on the server and running for my life with my Dancer/Doctor, who was rescued by a Jedi who nuked the whole gank squad chasing her and healed her blackbars...
/cry.
Before the Jedi blunder, and the devs stampeeding on Star Wars story, continuity, lore and background(they pretty much stomped on everything but the textures), you even had alot of people in Mos Taike...A city way out in the boonies, with no shuttle, only a cloner...
You had to be suicidal to go there before you mastered anything, or had transport....Yet, Mos Taike was filled with novice everything.
I am so good, I backstabbed your face!
now that!!!! is SWG pre-Cu
wars vs 300 other pleyers (NGE you barely have 30 ppl in one place)
faction loyalty was strong (NGE = 2 characters = 1 faction each yay you belong to both)
you had a HAM bar WITH BATTLE FATIGUE! so no one was imune to everything (exept the buffs) (NGE: action = skills and health = HP)
BATTLE FATIGUE THAT WAS NOT BROKEN!!!!( who knows what hapened to that)
HARVESTING! IT WAS NOT BROKEN (NGE they put it back friday i think)
HARVESTING WITH DROIDS WAS NOT BROKEN (NGE they havent put it back)