It worked, quite well I might add, which I bet surprised quite a few people. I was a master musician from pretty much server opening on gorath. My family and I started up a band to begin with, and had loads of fun. As they left for various reasons I found myself among a lot of friends, many of which I still talk to 3-4 years after I quit (just after CU). I have played 3-4 MMOs since, (L2, EQ2, WoW, Eve) and none of them have produced the atmosphere that SWG's cantinas provided. it isnt even close. I left SWG due to AFKers basically. They were always there for sure, but the hologrind made it 300x worse. Atleast the AFKers prior to the hologrind wanted to be there (their goal was to be a master musician/dancer) where the hologrinders had no thoughts about even really trying the profession and often were quite rude and disruptive (either their macros were horrible spammers or when they were at the keyboard they were rude/disruptive). I could go on and on, as I was a regular board warrior against AFK non-play, but that was a long time in the past and I am over it.
Nothing will beat old Pre-CU cantina fun. It was pure fun and enjoyment of others, no other goal but to make a pleasent atmosphere. Everytime I log into WoW (the game I am playing now) I cant help but to remember SWG as the core of my raiding guild are people I met in SWG about 5 years ago if not a little more.
edit- about the forced downtime. it was often beneficial to those that had to spend time there. It was time to learn about things, find where the best vendors were - or hunting spots, find out where the other faction is going to be later on. Its not like people came in sat down and watched their bars become colored again. Well, maybe some did - those that did wasted their time as if you asked the entertainers, they generally knew more about the world than those out fighting in it.
Uhm... the hologrind ended around May 2004, when the new jedi system came, with the vilage. The CU happened in May 2005. After they had left, the cantinas were pretty much back to normal. Coronet had some 40-50 ents at all times...
Uhm... the hologrind ended around May 2004, when the new jedi system came, with the vilage. The CU happened in May 2005. After they had left, the cantinas were pretty much back to normal. Coronet had some 40-50 ents at all times... Linna
Really? I remember the cantinas being pretty empty/dead after the hologrind was over, compared to before it started. I recall before less than half the ents were afkers, while after they were the majority. I guess this is all anecdotal, and there's really no way to prove it either way, but that was what I recall, my subjective experience.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
Actually, entertainers are very useful and quite needed in the current system. Entertainers can provide you with a custom buff for whatever you need. Say your a medic and your going to go after something with an energy attack, you go an entertainer,and ask for a buff in your energy resistance, then get say increase in healing and strength, now go kick ass with that. say your a jedi, your going after something with a kinetic attack, you go to an entertainer and watch and get a kinetic protection, strength, and chance to heal damage in combat, then, go kick ass with that. say your a jedi about to go pvp, you can get increase in movement speed to go along with your forcerun, along with strength and mabye a chance to heal damage automatically in combat. go kick ass and beat those imps down. entertainers provide you with a rich custom buff system that you use for whatever occasion you need it for, so, entertainers are certainly NOT useless in current swg.
So we have to plan everything we want to do from one moment to the next around an entertainer now? LOL. To think people believed we were too reliant on buffs in the pre-NGE days. I swear this current system puts those days to shame. You pretty much need a buff now just to take a leak. Quite lame.
As a side note, I am glad that entertainers have some usefulness in the new game but creating a system that is over reliant on buffs kind of runs counter to a lot of things people complained about in the old days of the game.
no, you dont have to use an entertainer buff to do everything, you can still solo mobs your level probbally without any buffs at all, but if your looking to take out something mabye a few levels higher than you or an elite mob, you would probbally want to buff up.
but, i will be honest with you, there ARE too many buffs in the game now. I really hate it also when the devs add new ones in seeing as we can have 2 full rows of buffs now /sigh...
Uhm... the hologrind ended around May 2004, when the new jedi system came, with the vilage. The CU happened in May 2005. After they had left, the cantinas were pretty much back to normal. Coronet had some 40-50 ents at all times... Linna
Really? I remember the cantinas being pretty empty/dead after the hologrind was over, compared to before it started. I recall before less than half the ents were afkers, while after they were the majority. I guess this is all anecdotal, and there's really no way to prove it either way, but that was what I recall, my subjective experience.
Well, there IS a server difference. I played on Bloodfin, which was a very well-populated server. We usually had 2 1/2 groups (20 people per) in Coronet each day. Empty cantinas is what happened when they CU hit... Coronet deserted, Theed only a handful, most remaining ents in Dantooine Mining. The 8-man groups, the removal of BF and the introduction of levels pretty much killed it.
Entertainers worked. They were great. Where SWG went wrong was making people choose to be an entertainer with their only character slot; placing entertainers in direct competition with combat and crafting.
This is something I also agree with in what was limiting with Entertainers; in that Entertainers could not compete directly against Combatants or Crafting. How many viable PvP Entertainer Templates, or even characters were there? (Though I knew of players who would PvP being an Entertainer, they would rarely get into direct combat; often hanging out at a rally point or base camp for buffs or healing) Not uncommon to read or see about characters who are rock stars and know also how to fight or are assassins; but can't be such a character in SWG.
A possible solution instead of allowing for an extra slot per server (which I'm not saying is a bad idea, since that would require very little rework) would be more of reworking the character system, to allow for specialized templates that would not consume skills for combat or crafter. For example, such templates are considered as Background Professions, which add in a role-playing capability (which Entertainers was mostly geared as).
When I'm not being a Big-Game Hunter with my T-21, you can find me mixing drinks for the ladies at the Green Dewback. I can sure make a screamer of a Nova Chaser.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
I had an entertainer alt and found it to be fun, it was a nice change from solo hunting I did and I recomended jedi to make thier alt a social toon so they wouldn't get jedi burnout.
Don't believe people when they say AFKers were poison to the game. On my server it was a common practice to deal with entertainers who were at the keyboard before you turned to a buff bot. This was done because you wouldn't want to wait for the buff bot to run though her cycle.
Since you couldn't heal it, the blue bar was the weakest link in the game. So boosting it as much as you could was important. All buffs in SWG were a double edge sword - they made buffers really important but were game breakers if no one was around. Buff Bots filled that gap.
Money wise: I AFK macro'd every night when I went to work and came home with around 1/2 million to 1 million credits per night. While AFK I had my character ask the players in group chat to send me a bank tip so i could see how much they loved me. I would thank each and every one of them by mail or by tell If they were still on when I got home. You had to work it like that so they would remember you next time. If I was ATK I could make a lot more.
When the CU came out I had my character stand where she normally did with a sad face breaking down crying every few minutes as a protest for a few days - then made her a smuggler, and still later a squad leader. What good were entertainers where there was no black rot or combat buffs?
Here is a funny memory from those days: My macro invited my main to group before she accepted an invite. One time I walked into the cantina and saw some people getting ready to invite her. I asked if I could join thier group (so that when she invited me I would already be grouped and we would all get buffed at the same time - i thought it was nice of me) They told me to F off and wait my turn. Well, when the time came, up popped my invite and they were left to wait for the next cycle.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Uhm... the hologrind ended around May 2004, when the new jedi system came, with the vilage. The CU happened in May 2005. After they had left, the cantinas were pretty much back to normal. Coronet had some 40-50 ents at all times... Linna
Bloodfin was an exceptional server then. On Gorath the cantinas were filled during, and after the hologrind, by AFKers. Whether it be for buffbot purposes or afk grinding you might be able to find one or two active entertainers in a cantina, and often theyd leave cause people would just use the overabundant AFK people because it was too hard to wade through the AFKers.
There were groupings you could find now and then, but that was the exception not the rule.
It was so sad that AFKers just became so accepted by the community, eventhough they were a hindrance to so many players. Not just Entertainers, but spammers at starports, people AFK camping loot caves (much later) or the meatlump spawns on the edge of the town earlier during the hologrind.
Originally posted by Wickersham Don't believe people when they say AFKers were poison to the game. On my server it was a common practice to deal with entertainers who were at the keyboard before you turned to a buff bot. This was done because you wouldn't want to wait for the buff bot to run though her cycle. Since you couldn't heal it, the blue bar was the weakest link in the game. So boosting it as much as you could was important. All buffs in SWG were a double edge sword - they made buffers really important but were game breakers if no one was around. Buff Bots filled that gap.
This is the mentality that isnt right. It may look right when you look at it without actually thinking about what you are saying.
AFKers were a poison to the game. It wasnt just entertainer afkers in the game that made them a poison. As I stated above, there were combat AFKers camping spawns those that wanted to play there couldnt cause some person had an AFK lootbot there. There were so many spambots at the starports they actually lagged lesser computers. There were AFK combat grinders taking spawns just outside of town from those that actually wanted to play the game.
As for entertainer AFKers, they took up space, spammed the chatspace with directions on how to use them. Sure I could ignore them, but people who just come in often dont have them on ignore so all they see is spammed directions on how to activate the buffbots. They then actually have to wade through those that were afk to maybe find an ATK entertainer. Some made the effort, most did not. Heck, look at where most AFKgrinders set up shop at the beginning of the hologrind craze. Right at the entrance to the cantina. Most people actually listened to those at the door, not making the extra effort to walk 10 more yards.
As for the we dont have buffs and they are needed defense. Its bull, utter complete bull. You only thought and had conditioned yourselves to 'need' them. The game survived prior to buffs. Everything, except deathwatch and corvette was made to be doable without doctor/ent buffs. It was a lot harder, sure, but it was doable. If you were PvPing and couldnt find somebody to buff you, most likely your opponent couldnt either. If they did, then they had an advantage over you they worked to get and deserved it. Needing buffs was most definately a perception not a reality.
AFK most definately was a large plague upon the late Pre-CU era. There were jokes about the game going around about SWG:the only game you dont have to play to win! AFKers disrupted every part of the game, period.
The entertainers have to have been the most underappreciated and neglected professions in Pre-CU, CU, and NGE. What did you think of the concept? Did it work for you, either playing the classes or observing the classes in action? What did you think the problems were? How would you have fixed them?
The new buff system is very much in demand. Usually it is not that hard to find an entertainer, and they are doing it because they enjoy the profession and what it can do. They have fixed the buffbot problem and made entertainer buffs valuable.
It's not perfect, but I think entertainers are in better shape now than they were pre-CU.
no way. My alt was Master Dancer, Master CH with a little pistoleer in the pre-CU nothing the NGE has to offer can compare. Yes I tried the new BM and the entertainer combat skills, I didnt like them.
I honestly never found AFKers to be a huge problem. The leveling process for entertainers was so damn boring who could blame them for being afk? The people that would afk buff only made it more convenient for me. Regardless of whether or not I needed buffs I wanted them as did everyone else. Why would you gimp yourself by not being buffed? It would be like using a crappy weapon when you have a great one in your inventory. It just doesnt make any sense.
You can not fault the players for using a game mechanic that was intentionally placed in the game. I found macros to be very useful for a number of things and I took full advantage of them whenever I could. If the game had been developed differently macors would not have been useful or would not have even been in the game at all. Since they were there though I was all for using them and I never had the feeling that they hurt the game in anyway. I just wanted a buff I did not need the person to be at the keyboard to push the buttons. What difference would it have made either way? The end result would have been the same. I got buffed they got paid.
I think buffing was the wrong route for ents back in the early days, and the wrong route now. It turns a class that was supposed to be an interesting diversion into a time consuming nuciance just to get in and out of the cantina with what you need. It makes entertainment about who is the better buffer, rather than about who is really entertaining to watch.
Things seemed to have gotten better after the CU, because you didn't have any convoluted buffing procedure. You just sat down and watched or listened.
Once BF went away though, there was no real need to be entertaining anymore. All ents were at that point were just doctors that took longer.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I must not of been playing the same game as you - I couldn't even put my armor on without a buff. | w!11 s4y 7h47 47 7h3 t|m3 7h|5 G4M3 w45 0u7 | w45 411 480u7 83|ng 1337!!!!11!!!!!!11!! n00b! - so maybe we saw the game differently?
Armor that was too heavy to put on was too heavy period. The vastly overpowered buffs that made such things actually practical destroyed pre-CU's weapon/armor balance. And destroyed variety as well: when encumbrance can be ignored and resists uber alles, Composite became the predominant gear.
Was entertainer class needed as a pure class that could stand on its own?
Probably not but did it make the game much deeper and allowed an important social aspect to flourish?
Yep!
Right, Pre-Cu you had the macro entertainers but you always had a few interesting people just there to chat while dancing and playing music. I always found that it made the cities more alive and fun to go. There was a reason to go at a cantina.
Our guild metropolis was always full of entertainer and after a few weeks, it attracted some random out of the guild players. Eventually, it created a marked and made things much more fun. It all started with those dedicated entertainers that kept on inviting people to come.
Our guild metropolis was always full of entertainer and after a few weeks, it attracted some random out of the guild players. Eventually, it created a marked and made things much more fun. It all started with those dedicated entertainers that kept on inviting people to come.
And place a couple of merchant tents nearby and your crafters were doing great buisness as well.
I never had the chance to do it but I wanted to setup a "buff night" in our player city at a discounted price in order to bring more people into the city thereby giving the crafters an opportunity to increase sales.
I bet it would have been a lot of fun if the CU/NGE hadn't gotten in the way. :P
AFKers did not destroy the game. As a player who took 30 professions to unlock my jedi (then waited for the village to attain that same jedi) I did primarily AFK my way through dancer/musician, and paid the regular entertainers in cash and clothing items as appreciation gifts during the week it took me.
Then later when it was time to turn my crafting account into a buffbot for "field deployment" I paid once again, and made him readily available on Dath and Endor, buffing Bounty Hunters as well as errant Jedi and grinders alike. When 0 0 Endor grinding became the path for many younger Jedi to finish the horrific grind you can bet he was there, doling out buffs, rezzing and dancing his hump off.
What made SWG unique was it allowed to different playstyles. For instance not only did the tailor I had on retainer for Jedi outfits have her own storefront business but she also had an active RP game with the various Jedi who used her services, making sure that each of us had somewhat of a unique look, "accidentally" scheduling concurrent appointments to make bitter rivals run into each other in her shop, and the such.
Likewise, AFK buffbots and active entertainers served different purposes. The first was seen as necessary to combat characters, while the second filled both roles as buffers and RP output. Travelling, buying, chatting, RPing, all these were necessary parts of a balanced game.
As one of the original "city in a box" archetects my secondary account was better known than my primary combat then later jedi character. Unique people with different playstyles where what made the game playable despite the bugs. And that's the problem with what happened to the game, the loss of functioning community on each server. It's probably why EVE players like myself hold onto that frustrating game, because playing a MMO is only fun if you can do something other than slay the dragon of 1-3 unique loots every four days.
but if they where ATK ents then they where fantastic i still remember Selandria on eclipse with fond memories id go into coronet cantina for a buff and spend hrs just talking.
The entertainer profession acted like a animated chatroom for a lot of people and it helped promot community personally i fell there should be something like them in every game.
Comments
Uhm... the hologrind ended around May 2004, when the new jedi system came, with the vilage. The CU happened in May 2005. After they had left, the cantinas were pretty much back to normal. Coronet had some 40-50 ents at all times...
Linna
Really? I remember the cantinas being pretty empty/dead after the hologrind was over, compared to before it started. I recall before less than half the ents were afkers, while after they were the majority. I guess this is all anecdotal, and there's really no way to prove it either way, but that was what I recall, my subjective experience.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
So we have to plan everything we want to do from one moment to the next around an entertainer now? LOL. To think people believed we were too reliant on buffs in the pre-NGE days. I swear this current system puts those days to shame. You pretty much need a buff now just to take a leak. Quite lame.
As a side note, I am glad that entertainers have some usefulness in the new game but creating a system that is over reliant on buffs kind of runs counter to a lot of things people complained about in the old days of the game.
no, you dont have to use an entertainer buff to do everything, you can still solo mobs your level probbally without any buffs at all, but if your looking to take out something mabye a few levels higher than you or an elite mob, you would probbally want to buff up.
but, i will be honest with you, there ARE too many buffs in the game now. I really hate it also when the devs add new ones in seeing as we can have 2 full rows of buffs now /sigh...
Really? I remember the cantinas being pretty empty/dead after the hologrind was over, compared to before it started. I recall before less than half the ents were afkers, while after they were the majority. I guess this is all anecdotal, and there's really no way to prove it either way, but that was what I recall, my subjective experience.
Well, there IS a server difference. I played on Bloodfin, which was a very well-populated server. We usually had 2 1/2 groups (20 people per) in Coronet each day. Empty cantinas is what happened when they CU hit... Coronet deserted, Theed only a handful, most remaining ents in Dantooine Mining. The 8-man groups, the removal of BF and the introduction of levels pretty much killed it.Linna
A possible solution instead of allowing for an extra slot per server (which I'm not saying is a bad idea, since that would require very little rework) would be more of reworking the character system, to allow for specialized templates that would not consume skills for combat or crafter. For example, such templates are considered as Background Professions, which add in a role-playing capability (which Entertainers was mostly geared as).
When I'm not being a Big-Game Hunter with my T-21, you can find me mixing drinks for the ladies at the Green Dewback. I can sure make a screamer of a Nova Chaser.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
I had an entertainer alt and found it to be fun, it was a nice change from solo hunting I did and I recomended jedi to make thier alt a social toon so they wouldn't get jedi burnout.
Don't believe people when they say AFKers were poison to the game. On my server it was a common practice to deal with entertainers who were at the keyboard before you turned to a buff bot. This was done because you wouldn't want to wait for the buff bot to run though her cycle.
Since you couldn't heal it, the blue bar was the weakest link in the game. So boosting it as much as you could was important. All buffs in SWG were a double edge sword - they made buffers really important but were game breakers if no one was around. Buff Bots filled that gap.
Money wise: I AFK macro'd every night when I went to work and came home with around 1/2 million to 1 million credits per night. While AFK I had my character ask the players in group chat to send me a bank tip so i could see how much they loved me. I would thank each and every one of them by mail or by tell If they were still on when I got home. You had to work it like that so they would remember you next time. If I was ATK I could make a lot more.
When the CU came out I had my character stand where she normally did with a sad face breaking down crying every few minutes as a protest for a few days - then made her a smuggler, and still later a squad leader. What good were entertainers where there was no black rot or combat buffs?
Here is a funny memory from those days: My macro invited my main to group before she accepted an invite. One time I walked into the cantina and saw some people getting ready to invite her. I asked if I could join thier group (so that when she invited me I would already be grouped and we would all get buffed at the same time - i thought it was nice of me) They told me to F off and wait my turn. Well, when the time came, up popped my invite and they were left to wait for the next cycle.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
There were groupings you could find now and then, but that was the exception not the rule.
It was so sad that AFKers just became so accepted by the community, eventhough they were a hindrance to so many players. Not just Entertainers, but spammers at starports, people AFK camping loot caves (much later) or the meatlump spawns on the edge of the town earlier during the hologrind.
AFKers were a poison to the game. It wasnt just entertainer afkers in the game that made them a poison. As I stated above, there were combat AFKers camping spawns those that wanted to play there couldnt cause some person had an AFK lootbot there. There were so many spambots at the starports they actually lagged lesser computers. There were AFK combat grinders taking spawns just outside of town from those that actually wanted to play the game.
As for entertainer AFKers, they took up space, spammed the chatspace with directions on how to use them. Sure I could ignore them, but people who just come in often dont have them on ignore so all they see is spammed directions on how to activate the buffbots. They then actually have to wade through those that were afk to maybe find an ATK entertainer. Some made the effort, most did not. Heck, look at where most AFKgrinders set up shop at the beginning of the hologrind craze. Right at the entrance to the cantina. Most people actually listened to those at the door, not making the extra effort to walk 10 more yards.
As for the we dont have buffs and they are needed defense. Its bull, utter complete bull. You only thought and had conditioned yourselves to 'need' them. The game survived prior to buffs. Everything, except deathwatch and corvette was made to be doable without doctor/ent buffs. It was a lot harder, sure, but it was doable. If you were PvPing and couldnt find somebody to buff you, most likely your opponent couldnt either. If they did, then they had an advantage over you they worked to get and deserved it. Needing buffs was most definately a perception not a reality.
AFK most definately was a large plague upon the late Pre-CU era. There were jokes about the game going around about SWG:the only game you dont have to play to win! AFKers disrupted every part of the game, period.
It's not perfect, but I think entertainers are in better shape now than they were pre-CU.
no way. My alt was Master Dancer, Master CH with a little pistoleer in the pre-CU nothing the NGE has to offer can compare. Yes I tried the new BM and the entertainer combat skills, I didnt like them.
I honestly never found AFKers to be a huge problem. The leveling process for entertainers was so damn boring who could blame them for being afk? The people that would afk buff only made it more convenient for me. Regardless of whether or not I needed buffs I wanted them as did everyone else. Why would you gimp yourself by not being buffed? It would be like using a crappy weapon when you have a great one in your inventory. It just doesnt make any sense.
You can not fault the players for using a game mechanic that was intentionally placed in the game. I found macros to be very useful for a number of things and I took full advantage of them whenever I could. If the game had been developed differently macors would not have been useful or would not have even been in the game at all. Since they were there though I was all for using them and I never had the feeling that they hurt the game in anyway. I just wanted a buff I did not need the person to be at the keyboard to push the buttons. What difference would it have made either way? The end result would have been the same. I got buffed they got paid.
I think buffing was the wrong route for ents back in the early days, and the wrong route now. It turns a class that was supposed to be an interesting diversion into a time consuming nuciance just to get in and out of the cantina with what you need. It makes entertainment about who is the better buffer, rather than about who is really entertaining to watch.
Things seemed to have gotten better after the CU, because you didn't have any convoluted buffing procedure. You just sat down and watched or listened.
Once BF went away though, there was no real need to be entertaining anymore. All ents were at that point were just doctors that took longer.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I must not of been playing the same game as you - I couldn't even put my armor on without a buff.
| w!11 s4y 7h47 47 7h3 t|m3 7h|5 G4M3 w45 0u7 | w45 411 480u7 83|ng 1337!!!!11!!!!!!11!! n00b! - so maybe we saw the game differently?
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Armor that was too heavy to put on was too heavy period. The vastly overpowered buffs that made such things actually practical destroyed pre-CU's weapon/armor balance. And destroyed variety as well: when encumbrance can be ignored and resists uber alles, Composite became the predominant gear.
Was entertainer class needed as a pure class that could stand on its own?
Probably not but did it make the game much deeper and allowed an important social aspect to flourish?
Yep!
Right, Pre-Cu you had the macro entertainers but you always had a few interesting people just there to chat while dancing and playing music. I always found that it made the cities more alive and fun to go. There was a reason to go at a cantina.
Our guild metropolis was always full of entertainer and after a few weeks, it attracted some random out of the guild players. Eventually, it created a marked and made things much more fun. It all started with those dedicated entertainers that kept on inviting people to come.
And place a couple of merchant tents nearby and your crafters were doing great buisness as well.
I never had the chance to do it but I wanted to setup a "buff night" in our player city at a discounted price in order to bring more people into the city thereby giving the crafters an opportunity to increase sales.
I bet it would have been a lot of fun if the CU/NGE hadn't gotten in the way. :P
AFKers did not destroy the game. As a player who took 30 professions to unlock my jedi (then waited for the village to attain that same jedi) I did primarily AFK my way through dancer/musician, and paid the regular entertainers in cash and clothing items as appreciation gifts during the week it took me.
Then later when it was time to turn my crafting account into a buffbot for "field deployment" I paid once again, and made him readily available on Dath and Endor, buffing Bounty Hunters as well as errant Jedi and grinders alike. When 0 0 Endor grinding became the path for many younger Jedi to finish the horrific grind you can bet he was there, doling out buffs, rezzing and dancing his hump off.
What made SWG unique was it allowed to different playstyles. For instance not only did the tailor I had on retainer for Jedi outfits have her own storefront business but she also had an active RP game with the various Jedi who used her services, making sure that each of us had somewhat of a unique look, "accidentally" scheduling concurrent appointments to make bitter rivals run into each other in her shop, and the such.
Likewise, AFK buffbots and active entertainers served different purposes. The first was seen as necessary to combat characters, while the second filled both roles as buffers and RP output. Travelling, buying, chatting, RPing, all these were necessary parts of a balanced game.
As one of the original "city in a box" archetects my secondary account was better known than my primary combat then later jedi character. Unique people with different playstyles where what made the game playable despite the bugs. And that's the problem with what happened to the game, the loss of functioning community on each server. It's probably why EVE players like myself hold onto that frustrating game, because playing a MMO is only fun if you can do something other than slay the dragon of 1-3 unique loots every four days.
afk entertainers where the killer.
but if they where ATK ents then they where fantastic i still remember Selandria on eclipse with fond memories id go into coronet cantina for a buff and spend hrs just talking.
The entertainer profession acted like a animated chatroom for a lot of people and it helped promot community personally i fell there should be something like them in every game.
And without them we wouldnt have had