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What is PRE-CU SWG and how did they screw it up?
chryses
Member UncommonPosts: 1,453
I am officially feeling left out now. I see so many people shouting that pre-cu SWG was the most amazing game EVER especially on this site and in-game channels on EVE, Tabula Rasa etc.
What the hell happened? It just seems the game was destroyed by SOE or Lucas and if it was so screwed up why didn't they roll it back?
Seriously enlighten me!!!
Comments
I don't know about SWG pre-CU being the best game EVER, but it was certainly good. $OE, with the permission of LucasArts, began to trivialize the game in order to appeal to a larger amount of people, instead of the relatively small, tight-knit constituency that had formed (around ~250K), at least when compared to WoW or L2. A lot of people are mad that $OE completely altered the game, dumbed it down, and made it more "Star Warsy" in order to get more customers, a ploy that really didn't work in the long run.
I don't think $OE has made any rollbacks because of a few issues, namely pride and stubborness, but that's just my opinion. They also diverted a lot of developer resources into completely reworking the game, so they probably saw it as a waste of money if they merely returned status quo. Besides, you can still sell a crappy product to the ignorant people and make a few bucks on the side.
oh boy... you opened up Pandora's Box.
i'll give my impressions in a sec : warning, long post but it'll be in an edit
*edit*
ok.. Star Wars Galaxies was a very open, "sandbox" style of game.
There were something crazy like 45 different Professions, each one had 5 skill trees. It was a truly skill based MMO, you'd get experience for using different skills trees and doing different actions.
For example, you'd get Pistol combat xp for using pistols in combat, and could only use it to upgrade your pistol tree and skills.
You could have any combination of professions/skill trees, so it was truly an open, free form system.
This led to a GREAT many problems. Imbalance, some too strong some pointless, after patches they'd have "flavor of the month" builds, etc.
There was no content really. It was completely open, do what you want game play. They had mission terminals for repetitive combat/delivery.
There were a LOT of bugs, so much was promised and it took forever to get into game. Player cities, vehicles, mounts, space ships and combat, etc. All of which took a lot longer to get into game then people wanted, and were full of bugs when they did get added.
The old "fix one bug create 10 more" was SWG through and through.
Still, people included me loved it. You really did get to make your own living in the Star Wars world.
Then came the Jedi and the holocron craze. It was found that you could loot these Holocrons, each would tell you a profession to master. Once you mastered the profession it listed, you'd use another holocron and it'd tell you the next profession you had to master. Once you mastered enough, for some people it was 20-30+ profession, you'd unlock your "Force Sensative" slot and could create a newbie Jedi.
To me, it was the most pointless, ridiculous, and absurd Grind ever. It took no skill to become a Jedi, just patience and a heck of a lot of time. I thought it was complete BULL and quit playing.
Some time after that, they saw their sales and subscription numbers slipping. They created what is known as the "Combat Upgrade" which completely changed everything about combat. I never played during that period, so that I all I know.
Then came the New Game Experience. Games like EQ2 and WoW showed that class based, level based games were popular. With SWG slowly slipping away, SOE and Lucasarts decided to fundamentally change the game.
The removed all of the 45 professions, and the skill system, and replaced them with 9 classes, levels, and experience points. Just like WoW... except without the content.
From what I hear, it was even more of a buggy nightmare, just about all the vets hated it and quit, and it generally "killed" SWG as it was.
Imagine if this came true in Eve. Voila, this is what swg became after nge&co
Wow....that pretty much sums up why I see so many hate mails about SOE and Star Wars. It must have been gutting to see it stripped down like that. It sounds like a game that had an amazing skill system albeit buggy and to see that go to a 9 class system...ouch.
I wonder if companies in the future will have to release clauses stating that they can NOT change certain aspects of the game so players know that they will always have the fundamental game untouched.
I feel for the hardcore fans...
ghee, i laugh at anyone who makes more then a paragraph on this topic. simple facts - SOE wanted a Star wars WoW... so they could possibly make more money. Didn't work they screwed everything up. Would be impossible to roll it back without effort, and soe doesnt have that.
I think it's also worthwhile to mention that you had to know your enemy/mob.
For example a Nightsister Elder might have some resistences that were quite high to certain damage types and therefore you had to visually inspect her and change your weapon to have the most effect.
And you had to be aware of what type of weapon that NS Elder was using against you or you may find yourself taking a dirt nap due to a nasty stun baton.
Also something very important that you didnt see the level on your pvp opponents or the mobs. If you felt after 2 hours of gaming to go for a rancor hunting you could do so. You had to learn by your own what is doable and what not. Also the thing in pvp was that you didnt underestimate someone just because you knew he was 5 level below you - there were no levels just skills. if a hot girl was comming after you in Purple hotpants and a bustier you still had to run for your live if she was a skilled Close Combat char. In my eyes that has also lead ppl to be more polite than today. /shrug
i liked it and i miss it
SWG PRE CU a great promise a passion and a love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjXqi-1aBw
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Maybe it was just me but I found in the early days of SWG, long before Jedi were introduced, there was a real love/hate relationship going on with the opposite faction. It was fun to absolutely loathe your enemy, and that caused a real bond amongst your faction.
I'm sure many of us remember the days of the call going out to defend Anchorhead from the invading Imps, or everyone rushing to help defend a similarly aligned player city. Waiting anxiously for that next shuttle to come to take you closer to the action. 10 mins felt like an eternity under those conditions!
It was a very competitive environment that caused people to pull together to achieve their goals, and thus forging strong friendships in game that lasted beyond the cancel button.
Interdependancy and community was EVERYTHING, therefore it created a real passion for the game.
There was the /consider system, that gave you some idea how difficult the mob was going to be. The only problem was it took into account the mob's damage dealing abilities, but not its damage absorbtion abilities. This skewed the /con system a bit, it also gave CHs a tremendous advantage early on with their meatshields. It was always hilarious to watch some guy duel a CH and concentrate on the critter, not the CH. Fatal mistake, that.One of my favorite things about CH was that I had creatures at my command who, in the wild, would eat me alive in a matter of seconds. Having beasts that /conned red to you was tremendously gratifying. You could change the /con by equipping different weapons, or by grouping...two heads were often better than one. Three were even better than that...
Also, master scouts could see a "challenge level" for creature mobs. Rangers (who were more advanced scouts) could see more detail on creature mobs' capabilities...what special attacks they had, what vulnerablities they had.
As noted earlier, mobs had specific strengths and weaknesses that you took into account when taking them on. Some would have special attacks that you could mitigate with the right gear, some had specific defensive strengths and weaknesses you needed to factor in. Taking on an Imperial swamp trooper with an acid weapon was pointless, as swamp troopers had a 100% acid resist.
As for PvP, pay no attention to the profession tag. That novice tailor who seems to be a pushover might just be a Teras Kasi Master who will pwn your butt in about 10 seconds flat.
Some of my guildies took great pleasure in passing themselves off as novice medics or novice scouts.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
One of my favorite things about CH was that I had creatures at my command who, in the wild, would eat me alive in a matter of seconds. Having beasts that /conned red to you was tremendously gratifying. You could change the /con by equipping different weapons, or by grouping...two heads were often better than one. Three were even better than that...
Also, master scouts could see a "challenge level" for creature mobs. Rangers (who were more advanced scouts) could see more detail on creature mobs' capabilities...what special attacks they had, what vulnerablities they had.
As noted earlier, mobs had specific strengths and weaknesses that you took into account when taking them on. Some would have special attacks that you could mitigate with the right gear, some had specific defensive strengths and weaknesses you needed to factor in. Taking on an Imperial swamp trooper with an acid weapon was pointless, as swamp troopers had a 100% acid resist.
As for PvP, pay no attention to the profession tag. That novice tailor who seems to be a pushover might just be a Teras Kasi Master who will pwn your butt in about 10 seconds flat.
Some of my guildies took great pleasure in passing themselves off as novice medics or novice scouts.
was a lot of fun seeing greafers picking on what looked like a noob or 2, only to have the sabers flash when the jedi had all they could take from the what was then nge target demo players they were after lol....
Part of the hate comes from the fact that most of us were playing and one day our master skilled characters were level 1s....
I personally loged on with no idea of the change and couldn't figure out what was going on so I went to Theed to ask around but when I got there all I saw was "Fuc* SWG/SoE, ect everyone I knew quit, my entire guild with over 100 active players had 3 players left after NGE.
Here, watch this note the final part where it showed the guys emails, we all had that and we lost a lot of friends.
Also if you go to major websites such as tentonhammer and other major MMO sites and read their reviews of NGE SWG you will also get many paged answers on why SWG NGE didn't come out well...
Thread moved.
Thanks Jello, good to see mods doing their jobs Well
/salute
"Don't hold breath about another KOTOR game coming from Bioware" - Chris Preistly
"Bioware is more intrested in pursueing development of it's own Intellectual properties"
- James Henly
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/star-wars-galaxies-2005/667893p1.html
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/07/so_what_happened_to_star_wars.html
http://blog.tp.org/chip/archives/002076.html
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/07/19/community-building/
And......
Some pre-cu Clips
http://starwars.yahoo.com/videos/star-wars-galaxies-pre-cu-video?ue_dpoa=16e1b940ecbf3145b91e283c4b80abc6&ue_dpoat=videos&ue_dpat=videos&ue_dpam=soft&ue_dpln=A+New+Hope
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfGk17aJqlI
And a personal note:
pre-cu SWG was even though many thing where broken/not working/not complete/not implemented, it stil was one of my personal best experainces in a MMORPG as it had anything i could wish for in a mmoRPG.....apart from the broken stuff ect ...afcourse
The rest.....is history, but even so, i don't think that today's generation of gamers would apriciatte pre-cu as ...we all know gamers did not evolve into the patient type of gamers as most these day want it ALL and what it NOW, pre-cu would not give those type of players what they WANT as it was very VERY heavy on the time"sinks". I'm glad i have played it, but most likely even if it all was fixed (pre-cu today) i simply don't have the time for it. Subbed recently to Tabula Rasa and even that game i don't have enough time to play, other then my sunday/monday
Oh did return for about 8 months and did enjoy the game allot ...well that is the crafting part, the combat part i never liked since NGE.......which is funny as some fools on this forum consider me a pro-NGE fanboy of some sort, to me it only proofed that some simply can not read if their conclusion was that of me.
I played pre-Cu.
Pre-CU was much better than post and the NGE however pre-cu had its share of big problems:
1) Class balance was terrible. This hurts in a game with PvP.
2) While the game was a ton of fun to play, and crafting was the best ever, the game got boring quick because there was not much content. There were no quests. There was not a whole lot to do adventuring wise after you explored all the planets and got your skill where you wanted them. They added some kind of mission terminal system like AO but it was not very good. Instead of adding any real content the devs decided to break the game even more with CU.
3) Since they only allowed one character per account you could not even roll up an alt to experience more content, for something fun / different to do.
So to summarize SWG was awesome, and had a level of detail and originality that will be hard to match for years to come but it was mismanaged and driven into the ground.
One of my favorite things about CH was that I had creatures at my command who, in the wild, would eat me alive in a matter of seconds. Having beasts that /conned red to you was tremendously gratifying. You could change the /con by equipping different weapons, or by grouping...two heads were often better than one. Three were even better than that...
Also, master scouts could see a "challenge level" for creature mobs. Rangers (who were more advanced scouts) could see more detail on creature mobs' capabilities...what special attacks they had, what vulnerablities they had.
As noted earlier, mobs had specific strengths and weaknesses that you took into account when taking them on. Some would have special attacks that you could mitigate with the right gear, some had specific defensive strengths and weaknesses you needed to factor in. Taking on an Imperial swamp trooper with an acid weapon was pointless, as swamp troopers had a 100% acid resist.
As for PvP, pay no attention to the profession tag. That novice tailor who seems to be a pushover might just be a Teras Kasi Master who will pwn your butt in about 10 seconds flat.
Some of my guildies took great pleasure in passing themselves off as novice medics or novice scouts.
Dude! You depress us all by talking about the fun times in the old game /cry
To the OP, have a look at this video. It pretty much describes the state of mind for a lot of SWG vets
www.youtube.com/watch
The images shown in the beginning were once filled with players, well you can make out the rest yourself...
Wow....that pretty much sums up why I see so many hate mails about SOE and Star Wars. It must have been gutting to see it stripped down like that. It sounds like a game that had an amazing skill system albeit buggy and to see that go to a 9 class system...ouch.
I wonder if companies in the future will have to release clauses stating that they can NOT change certain aspects of the game so players know that they will always have the fundamental game untouched.
I feel for the hardcore fans...
One more thing to add many players had invested hundreds or thousand of hours and hundreds or thousand of dollars in the game when they changed it with CUNGE which in turn removed all there investment, and were insulted by SOE while they did it ,that sir is a big reason for the hate.
Check out http://www.rlmmo.com go to the starwars galaxies forums and check the stickie titled
A complete history of SOE lies it is very long and all true, a lot of fuel for peed off consumers.
That guy did a beautiful job editing that!
1st I am a Pre-CU Fan and hate the NGE,but as of the last week I went back to the game since my acct. was opened for a trial. What I found on Bloodfin server was a thriving game not at all empty like it was for a short while. I ran into people everywhere and it seems the old gathering areas have all shifted to new areas.If the game did not have that peace of crap interface that makes me want to puke I might reactivate my acct. and play SWG again. It is good to see it growing again and maybe ,just maybe if they revamp the interface and give it the feel of old I might play it again. Notice I said revammp interface not combat system. So in a way since they seem to have added a decent dev team NGE is not as bad a failure as once thought. This is an opinion based on what I have seen in game the last week or so and on Bloodfin server. I cannot speak for the other servers they may all still be dead.
There were no classes. Anyone could learn any skills, although there was a limit to the number of skill tress you could walk down at one time, so you had to drop one to gain another.
There was content, but not in the form of quests (except for the mission termainls, as you said). It just required you to explore and find it yourself. Most people these days don't have the patience to really explore, and judging from the shouts I see in most games, 90% of them can't be bothered to actually READ the quest text when they do have them.
You could have one character per server, not per account. IMHO, that was a good thing. It encouraged people to play with a little more thought and respect, since insulting someone could actually get you a real reputation, rather than just having you send all your stuff to a new alt and be reborn.
One of the features that EVE-Online has that I dearly wish every single MMO on the planet would adopt, is the employment history. It tracks every single guild (corporation) you've ever been in, so people can just look at you and see if you've been guild hopping, or if you really were in BoB like you claimed.
I knew the number 2 (later number 1) architect on Bloodfin, and so I got a good in-depth look at the harvesting and crafting system. If *ANY* game ever makes something that deep again, I will have to play it... even if it's Hello Kitty's Island Adventure.
I miss that game, even though I didn't play as much as I would have liked (horrible laggy ISDN line and bad hardware made it very hard to play).
We are all busy people so I wont waste a lot of your time.........
It was once an amazing living world where you could be anything and do anything. Now its a shitty WOW knockoff.
The End.
Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture.
this topic makes me sad....
...I've gone from game to game looking for some vestige of the feeling that pre-CU swg gave me....
..and found nothing.
1st I am a Pre-CU Fan and hate the NGE,but as of the last week I went back to the game since my acct. was opened for a trial. What I found on Bloodfin server was a thriving game not at all empty like it was for a short while. I ran into people everywhere and it seems the old gathering areas have all shifted to new areas.If the game did not have that peace of crap interface that makes me want to puke I might reactivate my acct. and play SWG again. It is good to see it growing again and maybe ,just maybe if they revamp the interface and give it the feel of old I might play it again. Notice I said revammp interface not combat system. So in a way since they seem to have added a decent dev team NGE is not as bad a failure as once thought. This is an opinion based on what I have seen in game the last week or so and on Bloodfin server. I cannot speak for the other servers they may all still be dead.
Even if there was 17 million players in one server I wouldn't go back since the combat-system and bennyhill animations sucks donkeyballs