The Three Versions (And A Theory)

Mackerni · August 2007

There are three versions of Star Wars Galaxies, right? The original Star Wars Galaxies, with almost-impossible to get Jedi - the CU SWG, with the old man, and the NGE SWG - which you can roll a Jedi.

The original Star Wars Galaxies was released on June 26th, 2003. It contains publishes 0 (June 29th 2003) to publish 14 (last updated March 24th, 2005). The original Star Wars Galaxies lasted 671 days. On average it took about 44.73 days for the average publish during this time because it has 15 publishes.

The Combat Upgrade Star Wars Galaxies was released on April 27, 2005. It contains publishes 15 to publish 24 (October 19th, 2005). The Combat Upgrade Star Wars Galaxies lasted only 202 days. On average it took about 20.2 days for the average publish during this time because it has 10 publishes.

The New Game Enhancements Star Wars Galaxies was released on November 15, 2005. But it is pretty safe to say that it wasn't complete when released. It currently contains publishes 25 to publish 34 (which will be updated on August 9th, tomorrow). The New Game Enhancements has lasted 631 days so far. On average it took about 63.1 days for the average publish during this time because it has 10 publishes so far.

671 days + 202 days + 631 days = 1504 days Star Wars Galaxies has been live.

The last publish was released May 22nd, 2007. That's 1393 days from publish 0 to publish 34.

It has been 78 days since the last publish. Publish 35 is in the works.

I have been thinking the experience of playing Star Wars Galaxies the first time I played it and the last time I played it. The first time I played it, it was buggy and not much content was in the game. The last time I played it, it was buggy and not much content was in the game. The Combat Upgrade was delayed until a reasonable date for release and had 10 publishes. The original game and the New Game Enhancements wasn't. Both were delievered pre-maturely and lacked content until publishes that would come later in the game.

What is the point of this argument? Well, it might sound absurd, but there are more similarities of the original game and New Game Enhancements than there are of the Combat Upgrade. Origins will probably make it to the next publish. It seems to me now that most of the content they were planning on for the New Game Enhancements have already been set in place - just like game's last two versions.

And what does Sony Online Entertainment do to Star Wars Galaxies when they are all out of ideas for the current version of the game? They revamp the game!

But does that mean I believe they will revamp the game again? No.

In the beginning of the New Game Enhancements the developers have always cited that Creature Handler is played the least out of every profession but now they have Beast Master implimented into the game. They are not going to be making too many more publishes for the New Game Enhancements exclusively because everything they've imagined it to be as pretty much been settled into place.

The next publish will come in the next 20-25 days from now. Let's just say it will be 20 days. This will be publish 35. Twenty days from now is August 28, 2007. So 11 publishes since November 15th, 2005. 651 days for 11 publishes or 59.18 days per publish. Let's say they make fifteen publishes for the NGE. That would be from publish 25 to publish 39. If 11 publishes were made that would mean 4 more are left. 59.18 days multiplied by 4 is 236.72 days. This would be around April 2nd, 2008 for the last publish of the New Game Enhancements.

The time taken to go from publish 14 to publish 15 was 48 days. The time taken to go from publish 24 to 25 was 27 days. The average is about 37.5 days or so. So it would take 37.5 days from the last NGE update, publish 39 released about April 2nd, 2008, for the next big thing to come about. April 2nd, 2008 + 38 days = May 10th, 2008 or so.

So what will happen on May 10th, 2008?

I believe that Sony Online Entertainment will realize at the end of publish 39 that NGE is a pretty full game - and that updates are un-necessary after that. They will release a new version of Star Wars Galaxies: Complete filled with all three versions of the game - the original, Combat Upgrade, and New Game Enhancements. Each server will convert into one of the three versions and veterns will be able to move their old characters unto the server of their choosing. Since there is three European servers, one will have the original game, one will have the Combat Upgrade, and one will have the NGE on it. A new server will be made to equalize the difference of the division of three. Every account will be able to have one character on each version.

After Publish 40 SOE will either stop publishes to the game or will publish new material available to each version of the game equally (sort of like NCSoft did with City of Heroes/Villains).

Do you believe this theory? Does it make sense to you? Discuss and debate it here. And discuss and debate whether or not you would plan on returning if this did occur. If it did, which versions would you play?

I, personally, would play on all three. I have hung-ups about all three. I love the original, don't remind me, but I disliked how I had to wear composite armor to be good and how unbalanced the game was getting. The Combat Upgrade smoothed things out a bit, but I didn't like the new level design of the game. The New Game Enhancements has the, in my opinion, more enjoyable FPS feel to it, but lacked any real depth or anything that made SWG, SWG itself.

I would regularly play on the original version, probably dabble a bit on the CU and NGE, but it would make the game nice and varied. If I got bored with one version I could just plop in a different one.

Pretty cool idea, eh?

P.S. - SoE is talking about subscriptions - now think about this. 300K were drawn into the original game, about 200K for the CU, and 50K for the NGE: if you add them up it would mean over 500K subscribers for SoE! Do you think they would really waste all that for pride? That could be an extra 7.5 million a month alone!

Death1942 · August 2007

considering i dont give a crap about PvP, the old star wars galaxies and CU was fine

Baxslash · August 2007

First and foremost, the timing to which you place the village and the old man is incorrect. Your stating the Village was added in 05, when in fact it was added shortly after the game was fully released off of Beta, reason I know this is because I was training a character to Jedi in 05 when the CU was implemented, and village and old man was removed from the game in May of 05, not added.

As to the splitting of servers to accomadete the veterans, the CU style players and the New Enhancement game style, not a chance, as the Devs and GMs stated in one of thier forums posts, We can never go back, that game os the old is gone, and the new version took its place.

Sorry to say, the Old Star Wars has been wiped clean from thier databases, and, is only a haunting memory to the SOE brass who failed to realize what they had done.

Mackerni · August 2007

Originally posted by Baxslash

First and foremost, the timing to which you place the village and the old man is incorrect. Your stating the Village was added in 05, when in fact it was added shortly after the game was fully released off of Beta, reason I know this is because I was training a character to Jedi in 05 when the CU was implemented, and village and old man was removed from the game in May of 05, not added.
As to the splitting of servers to accomadete the veterans, the CU style players and the New Enhancement game style, not a chance, as the Devs and GMs stated in one of thier forums posts, We can never go back, that game os the old is gone, and the new version took its place.
Sorry to say, the Old Star Wars has been wiped clean from thier databases, and, is only a haunting memory to the SOE brass who failed to realize what they had done.

First of all, to accomidate the players SOE would have the original servers have the original path to Jedi in place, whereas the CU would have the Old Man because it would make sense to those players in that time period.

Second of all, I think SOE is bullshiting us when they are saying they don't have the code anymore. I think they are bluffing so they don't get complaint and complaint about how they should reinstall the original game on their servers. No, they still have the original code. They are just waiting to re-release a final product...

Let the future decide who is right here, okay?

SioBabble · August 2007

There are three versions, but you've not hit the targets exactly right.

The Village system replacing the old hologrind system isn't congruent with the major combat system changes. The Jedi eras are rendered differently, but do share the CU as a benchmark, and the NGE as a benchmark. The Jedi also have the publish 9 divide to figure in. That's when the Village was introduced, which made obtaining a Jedi a very different thing than it was before. Prior to pub 9 you mastered professions and once you had mastered the right number of them (which was changed by the devs in a moving the goalposts fashion covertly) you unlocked a "force sensitive" toon that could train Jedi skills. Pub 9 changed this concept by making existing toons become "force sensitive" and they had to trade off existing skills for Jedi skills, which created bizarre things like Jedi with BH abilities (to include the ablity to see themselves on the BH terminals!), Jedi with smuggler skills (feign death being a handy thing to have when facing a BH), Jedi with rancors following them around, Jedi tossing poison bombs, etc, as toons were hybrids until they had accumulated enough Jedi XP to be full template.

As for your theory, it's flawed, in that the CU and NGE have more in common with each other than Classic does with NGE, no matter how many things are brought back from prior to the NGE. The overt level system is that very central common thing that radically transformed SWG as a game. It created the entire "you must master two elite combat professions to get level 80" which was as close as the devs could get to imposing a straightjacketing class system. The NGE finished the job on this. The CU at least had the fiction of the old skill based system there.

What the level system did was make SWG more of a game and less of a virtual world, because the levels came with the usual level cheats on the server side; if you try to attack something too far above you in level, you're going to die a certain death because the mob got an artificial combat damage multiplier to make sure you died. You received your combat level based on the skill point investment you had in combat skills. Elite crafting or entertainment skills did not count for this. Only combat skills did.

This feature made it next to impossible for (automatically) level 1 crafters and entertainers, who received no combat levels as they advanced in their skills to operate in the world outside of cities, be the cities NPC or Player. They might have mastered elite skill trees, but if they were not combat skills, they did not count at all, even if they granted some combat benefits (dancers, in particular, got some combat skill mods as part of their skillsets).

This also made the shedding of "normie" skills for Jedi skills problematic from a combat level point of view. You've got a set number of skill points. Lower level Jedi skill boxes cost more in skill points than lower level elite skill boxes. So the instant you dropped one of your two elite combat master boxes, you fell in level. For a while as I worked my now force sensitive and Jedi padawan toon up the Jedi skills, he dropped other skills to free up skill points to buy the Jedi skills once he had the XP to purchase them. For a while, he dropped from level 80 to level 74. This changed what he could take on solo and how much XP he got for killing higher level mobs in groups. A level 80 toon in a group would get say 1800 XP for killing a fambaa; a level 74 toon would get 1300 for the same beast. Mind you, the raw Jedi XP was numerically less than pistol or combat or polearms (or whatever) XP would be for the same mob, and Jedi skill boxes were far more expensive to purchase than pistoleer or commando or BH XP.

Mind you, differentiated XP was still going strong in the CU era. With the NGE era, XP was made generic, very much like it is in WoW. XP is XP, whether you used a rifle or a one handed sword to get it. Not like before the NGE where you had to grind specific weapons XP for specific skills. Bounty Hunter, for example, required four different types of XP for each of its four skill branches. You had to work pistols, work carbines, work combat, and (ugh!) work investigations to get the XP you needed to climb up the trees and then eventually earn the master box.

With a new toon in the preNGE area, you did not "roll" a BH or a TKA, either. You started out with six different starting professions, and you had to make choices based on skill points spent on skill boxes as to what your toon could do. If your aim was to be a TKM, you'd need to start out as a brawler, hit your way up through unarmed (pre CU) or unarmed and two handed swords (CU) to qualify to train the TK novice box.

OK, I've droned on enough about the intracacies of the skill system and I've barely scratched the surface of it. Needless to say, the NGE era is dramatically simpler than preCU or CU in terms of what a toon can do.

I'm not sure I buy your grand theory of May 10 2008 being the end of the line for SWG, because frankly I don't think that the management at SOE has your ablity to detect patterns. I don't think they're capable of the level of thought you've put into your post. These guys have been bumbling and stumbling ever since Koster was unceremoniously kicked upstairs and out of the way, and any central vision of SWG was lost.

Jorkin · August 2007

Also I would say your figures are flawed.

The 200k playing CU would have come from the 300K playing Pre CU. I doubt the CU bought in any new players to the game and if asked I would bet 99% of those people would rather have Pre CU back.

Maggotscream · August 2007

Actually there are 4 versions if you include prepub9 Jedi unlocking system.

Hologrind > PreCU Village > CU Village > NGE

SioBabble · August 2007

Originally posted by Baxslash

First and foremost, the timing to which you place the village and the old man is incorrect. Your stating the Village was added in 05, when in fact it was added shortly after the game was fully released off of Beta, reason I know this is because I was training a character to Jedi in 05 when the CU was implemented, and village and old man was removed from the game in May of 05, not added.
As to the splitting of servers to accomadete the veterans, the CU style players and the New Enhancement game style, not a chance, as the Devs and GMs stated in one of thier forums posts, We can never go back, that game os the old is gone, and the new version took its place.
Sorry to say, the Old Star Wars has been wiped clean from thier databases, and, is only a haunting memory to the SOE brass who failed to realize what they had done.

The Village system came into play in August of '04. Up until that time the profession grind was how you unlocked, and you unlocked a force sensitive slot that could train in Jedi skills, which were aquired through XP. Your toon started out with 250 skill points invested in Jedi, then trained up boxes based soley on XP gained, with a little light side/dark side decision making on the way for specific skills.

The Village system radically transformed Jedi; now new Jedi came with "normie" skillsets that they gradually surrendered to get back skill points with which to obtain Jedi skills. You unlock your Jedi toon, which could very well be a TKM/Doctor witha few pistol skills, and that toon would, as it slowly obtained Jedi XP, drop some of those skills to free up skill points to obtain Jedi skill boxes, which had no inherent dark side/light side differentiation to them.

At the same time you unlocked your second character slot on that same galaxy, which you could use in any way you wanted; you could even grind it up to unlocking again, but no additional character came along. I chose to make mine a MCH/MBH with some medic and the artisan surveying skill line; he was going to be the level 80 surveyor for the guild. He was going to take over the main's long tradition of being an MCH. Gotta love the critters!

The Village system operated in the classic era and the CU era. The Village system was replaced by ready-to-wear Jedi with the NGE. One of the fun early NGE bugs was the old man was STILL around, and he wandered up to my dressed in arbiter robes and in the blue glowy mode elder Jedi and asked him if he ever felt a connection to the Force.

I think they could bring the old game back, but not with any established characters. You'd have to start out with brand new toons on essentially brand new servers.

SioBabble · August 2007

Originally posted by Maggotscream

Actually there are 4 versions if you include prepub9 Jedi unlocking system.
Hologrind > PreCU Village > CU Village > NGE

Yeah, those are the four Jedi eras.

My Jedi was a CU Village type, although he was a "mystery" unlock in hologrind times.

Those who were pre Village unlocks definitely had the most difficult road to journey upon, what with saberTEFs and no terrain negotiation and all the bugginess of alpha testing the SWG Jedi system...

Unknown · August 2007

The original original SWG didn't have Jedi btw and I thought it was perfect without them. I want that or give us jedi with perma death that would be fine too. Gotta make the game interesting somehow I suppose.

redriver · August 2007

Originally posted by namelessbob

The original original SWG didn't have Jedi btw and I thought it was perfect without them. I want that or give us jedi with perma death that would be fine too. Gotta make the game interesting somehow I suppose.

QFE

also regardin' the CU. its release was delayed because they revamped the orginal CU which was much better than what we got( thx to release of W0W).