I for one....having played from closed beta till last November.....hold no ill will towards SOE. While I do not like the direction they took, they made a decision and tried something different. While it was a fiasco on how they handled it, and we may never really know who is the person who put their finger on the buitton to go for it, I can't blame them for trying something different. It just didn't work as well as they hoped.
SOE has some great games, EQ1, EQ2, the up and coming Vanguard, planetside which is actually not too bad, they are not totally evil. They just tried something and backfired. All of you holding onto the past are just hurting yourself. Time for the healing to begin..and move on.
They tried something different by making the game as it was. With the vast amount of professions and possibilities, the game was completely different. With the vast worlds and endless possibilities that could amount from the Star Wars universe, what else is there to do different?
When they had something good and just needed to fix the bugs, why change it? To try something else different? How many times is SOE going to try something different? Nerfing is not changing. Making a game where everyone is a Jedi is not different. What is different is making one class so hard to get, it takes a long time to achieve that class. Then making that class so difficult to play, it takes a long time to build up that character. That is different.
So, SOE did do something different. Then they performed their typical ritual and made the game crappy. I am yet to find a game that is anywhere close to Open SWG or JTL SWG. I have played the NGE and the only thing that would keep me around SWG would be the space combat. However, that was not enough for me to stick around...
Just to clarify: my post is less about the NGE and more about the miserable attitudes of its defenders.
Yes the NGE has been out for two years. Yes Sony is not going to change it back. I accept both.
But I'm sick of the trolls coming in with their condescending, holier than thou attitudes.
Yep - I come to this forum to remember the old days. Yep - I come to this forum to vent because I'm still mad. I'm not nearly as mad about the NGE itself as I am about how Sony went about implementing it. Yep - I'm going to enjoy every "Smed was attacked last night by rabid cockroaches that ripped off his...." rumors.
The defenders don't have to come here. They don't have to read our posts. They don't have to comment. I repeat: what do they expect to find on this forum (which begins with the "We hate SOE" thread?) Why don't the trolls just leave us alone? Why do they have to aggravate us? They tell us that they think the game is great - why don't they just go play it and leave us be? I don't troll their "NGE is great" forums. And if it was reversed: if they hated the game and I liked it, I wouldn't go to their boards and start posting "Well you're just not smart enough to enjoy the new game..."
Sidenote: I liked Raid Over Moscow more than I liked the NGE. I could just never beat that robot at the end that you had to hit in the back.
So you hate the game now because you hate the combat targeting system (point and what you want to shoot at and click a left mouse button) and the lack of population on servers in the exact same places you want people to gather at like they did 5 years ago? Ok, got it.
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
You know the game you describe is still the game I play today. Everything in life changes, nothing stays the same for long.
To the OP --- I think a lot of your complaints with what happened to the game is spot on...
However, I took one quote to talk about a pet peeve of mine.
Look - this is the "Veterans Refuge." The very first thread on this forum is the "The official we hate Sony Thread" and it's stickied. For you to come here and bitch and moan about how you're tired of hearing us complain about the NGE is lame. It's like going to a porn site and complaining about the nudity. What do you expect to find here?
I see where you are coming from, but although I play the game now, I loved the pre-cu and like to join in conversations about imperial crackdown etc. If I see a "what I loved post" I do not diss it or criticize. I enjoy reading it, if it reminds me of something worthwhile I post it.
On the other hand, if it is debating the merits of the current game or something recent--- I think every person here has a right to voice their opinion. Threads like GU5 is the end etc. are posted to get feedback and they do.
Here is the one that bugs me the most though, I am not saying YOU do this but others do. Some of the SAME angry vets who say not to post here will pull the following crap.
Some guy will ask for help with his template -- thread like Need Template Help
First post is almost always "the game sucks". That is the kind of thread hijacking that is neither needed nor solicited.
BTW beautiful post Archangel. . . I do wish lightsaber TEF had never been removed.
BTW beautiful post Archangel. . . I do wish lightsaber TEF had never been removed.
He is pretty good huh?
I totally connect with everything Arc says. I'm sure there are more like him out there, but certainly none more articulate.
Indeed, made me very nostalgic. That is the kind of post I think every vet can appreciate.
Again though for every well thought out post I see on these boards, I am dismayed by the snarky remarks made by others to people who are just looking for help in the general forum--- like the current Template Help thread.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
You keep saying it but i don't see the evidence of it. The vets certainly don't agree on everything...some of us want the pre-cu game back, some of us want to sue SOE, some of us want to publicly humiliate them, some of us just like fighting with the retarded fanbois. The fanbois/viral marketers are the people guilty of "groupthink" since they all believe that SOE can do no wrong and the NGE is the best thing since sliced bread.
You know the game you describe is still the game I play today. Everything in life changes, nothing stays the same for long.
How can it be the same game you play today, yet you say nothing stays the same for long?
You need to make up your mind which one it is Gutboy ; )
He does appear to contradict himself doesn't he? On one hand, it's the same game, and on the other we're encouraged to accept change.
Both also sound like classic LEC/SOE marketing-speak. I've read, watched and listened to most of their damage control marketing. You usually get standard copy and paste p.r. spin. Typical examples include things like "veteran players just can't accept change, and there are always a few stubborn people like that."
While that sounds very reasonable (it's crafted to sound reasonable) it grossly misrepresents what's happened in this case. Those of us who are willing to accept reality recognize that people were upset because of tremendous loss and because they felt intentionally misled. This isn't the same as anxiety evoked by the uncertainty of change at all.
To illustrate, I play City of Heroes, and an auction house was announced as an upcoming feature some time ago. This was a big change, and I wondered what it would do to the gaming experience. So, they implemented it, and indeed it has been a big change--a very positive one. I now find myself looking for recipes and salvage to make enhancement sets, and I have a crafting station my office in our supergroup base lol. It's great fun. HUGE change to the game. Am I all bent out of shape because everything always has to stay the same for me? Of course not. Now, IF the CoH promised crafting and instead delivered a totally loot based economy, and at the same time wiped out all of my mastered super-power sets, well of course I'd be upset, justifiably so.
The thing is, NCsoft in this case delivered what they promised and didn't delete anything at all. On top of that, it worked of course. Hundreds of the same veteran players from SWG who take a stand against what the NGE represents all rolled with this huge change very nicely.
So, no, change in itself is not the issue. This marketing ploy doesn't stand up to a reality check.
The other marketing ploy--the game is really the same, and all the changes have just enhanced it--well I think you're either paid to lie for people professionally if you say that, you cope through some form of denial, or you're using hallucinogens. The game is really the same? Incredible. Skill system gone, rpg combat replaced by FPS with lock on option mercifully added. Most professions wiped out...amazing. This is absolutely not the same game that was originally released.
In fact once again, we have the classic contradiction. Much of the marketing of the NGE played up how it was like a brand new game, much more (brace yourselves) "starwarsy and icon." Much faster paced, much more like the movies etc, or so they said. Now we have Gutboy telling us it's the same game. It's surreal.
SOE are tools plain and simple I ditched them at NGE and vowed not to go back then vanguard came and id put too much time in the community to not go with it to SOE so once again my life was in their hands then they raped the ranger class and guess what the Rangers didnt want the changes but SOE pushed them anyway.
SOE are tools plain and simple I ditched them at NGE and vowed not to go back then vanguard came and id put too much time in the community to not go with it to SOE so once again my life was in their hands then they raped the ranger class and guess what the Rangers didnt want the changes but SOE pushed them anyway.
I wont play a SOE game again unless its free.
Wile i do use the free trials to see whats going on with swg.
Ill not even play a free game of theres lol much better free games out there.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
You keep saying it but i don't see the evidence of it. The vets certainly don't agree on everything...some of us want the pre-cu game back, some of us want to sue SOE, some of us want to publicly humiliate them, some of us just like fighting with the retarded fanbois. The fanbois/viral marketers are the people guilty of "groupthink" since they all believe that SOE can do no wrong and the NGE is the best thing since sliced bread.
Very true I for one wont touch an $OE game ever again..
I also played some of the CUNGE I got very tired of the class changes every few months....
We shall fight on the forums, We shall fight on the O-Boards, We shall fight in the blogs and in the live chats, We shall fight in the FanFests; We shall NEVER Surrender!
My favorite part was the actual critique of the game.
If you actually sit down and play the game, it is complete garbage compared to anything else. I hate to say it, but Pre-cu wasn't even that great of a game. The thing that we all love about it is the sandbox feel, the community, and the freedom. The game itself was never that great though. THAT is why SWG wasn't a "huge" success (like WoW). It wasn't the underlying philosophy of the game, but the fact that they literally made it poorly (it had so many bugs and whatnot).
Imagine if SWG was made with its Sandbox philosophy, but was made with actual quality (like most of Blizzard's games).
So you hate the game now because you hate the combat targeting system (point and what you want to shoot at and click a left mouse button) and the lack of population on servers in the exact same places you want people to gather at like they did 5 years ago? Ok, got it.
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
Very nice description of the game, thank you for helping me remember the old game. Very well written.
As I see it, the fundamental question is why we have a thread for disgruntled SWG vets? What purpose does it serve? Are we trying to exact revenge on SOE by encouraging other gamers to drop subs and let the servers depopulate and die? No.... that is not my motivation. My motivation, as a disgruntled vet is to encourage at some players and game developers to consider raising expectations on what is valuable and meaningful in an MMO. My hope is that future companies will take the path of actually listening to the suggestions from the player base. My hope is that developers will make an effort to build dramatic virtual worlds free from pre-defined classes, linear gameplay, and static playzones. It would be wonderful to build a personal story within a game that had meaningful effects on the game environment. SWG and a few other games had that basic potential but lost their way. EVE-Online might have been that game for me if it actually allowed me to have a body that could step out of a spaceship and do normal activities that people do!
Sure, we vets need to let go of the old SWG and move on. But lets move on to something better (or at least different) than the choices we have now. If we let the gaming world forget SOE mistakes, those mistakes will certainly just repeat themselves.
My favorite part was the actual critique of the game.
If you actually sit down and play the game, it is complete garbage compared to anything else. I hate to say it, but Pre-cu wasn't even that great of a game. The thing that we all love about it is the sandbox feel, the community, and the freedom. The game itself was never that great though. THAT is why SWG wasn't a "huge" success (like WoW). It wasn't the underlying philosophy of the game, but the fact that they literally made it poorly (it had so many bugs and whatnot).
Imagine if SWG was made with its Sandbox philosophy, but was made with actual quality (like most of Blizzard's games).
Perfect explaination IMHO
I agree wholeheartedly. Smed always seemed to compare his busted ass sandbox game to a highly polished Wow-type game. What really needed to be removed was the "busted ass" part of the equation, not the sandbox.
Also, SOE always seemed to conceptualize issues in a way that led to radically unnecessary paradigm shifts. Did they have to gut the sandbox to introduce quests? Well in Smed's mind, apparently they did. That's the problem though if you ask me, this was only true "in Smed's mind."
You can certainly have tools for open-ended sand box play and community interaction, and add in some story based quest arcs for those that wish to pursue them. One doesn't need to replace the other.
Smed's assumption that loot and crafting are somehow mutually exclusive, is also out to lunch. Lots of games blend those systems very nicely, and successfully. Yet, once again, in SWG you had the crafting system gutted to make way for loot. Simply put, it never needed to happen.
So you hate the game now because you hate the combat targeting system (point and what you want to shoot at and click a left mouse button) and the lack of population on servers in the exact same places you want people to gather at like they did 5 years ago? Ok, got it.
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
Very nice description of the game, thank you for helping me remember the old game. Very well written.
As I see it, the fundamental question is why we have a thread for disgruntled SWG vets? What purpose does it serve? Are we trying to exact revenge on SOE by encouraging other gamers to drop subs and let the servers depopulate and die? No.... that is not my motivation. My motivation, as a disgruntled vet is to encourage at some players and game developers to consider raising expectations on what is valuable and meaningful in an MMO. My hope is that future companies will take the path of actually listening to the suggestions from the player base. My hope is that developers will make an effort to build dramatic virtual worlds free from pre-defined classes, linear gameplay, and static playzones. It would be wonderful to build a personal story within a game that had meaningful effects on the game environment. SWG and a few other games had that basic potential but lost their way. EVE-Online might have been that game for me if it actually allowed me to have a body that could step out of a spaceship and do normal activities that people do!
Sure, we vets need to let go of the old SWG and move on. But lets move on to something better (or at least different) than the choices we have now. If we let the gaming world forget SOE mistakes, those mistakes will certainly just repeat themselves.
Just to clarify: my post is less about the NGE and more about the miserable attitudes of its defenders. Yes the NGE has been out for two years. Yes Sony is not going to change it back. I accept both. But I'm sick of the trolls coming in with their condescending, holier than thou attitudes. Yep - I come to this forum to remember the old days. Yep - I come to this forum to vent because I'm still mad. I'm not nearly as mad about the NGE itself as I am about how Sony went about implementing it. Yep - I'm going to enjoy every "Smed was attacked last night by rabid cockroaches that ripped off his...." rumors. The defenders don't have to come here. They don't have to read our posts. They don't have to comment. I repeat: what do they expect to find on this forum (which begins with the "We hate SOE" thread?) Why don't the trolls just leave us alone? Why do they have to aggravate us? They tell us that they think the game is great - why don't they just go play it and leave us be? I don't troll their "NGE is great" forums. And if it was reversed: if they hated the game and I liked it, I wouldn't go to their boards and start posting "Well you're just not smart enough to enjoy the new game..." Sidenote: I liked Raid Over Moscow more than I liked the NGE. I could just never beat that robot at the end that you had to hit in the back.
Lol cockroaches. You know the one guy that defends the NGE that I actually understood was Saay. We didn't agree on a lot of things, but at least I knew why he was here. He said straight out he doesn't want to lose his current game due to bad press. I would say most of the time he was respectful too, not always probably, but what the hell, we're all human.
My response to him usually was, well if you don't like the bad press, maybe it would help to go back to SOE and encourage them to follow through on things like promising to fix collision detection or provide server mergers. Both were promised, both are serious issues, and neither were delivered.
If SOE treats people like crap, still, they're still going to get bad word of mouth. If their 5 year celebration is busted, everyone's going to hear about it. Truly SOE is its own worst enemy for bad press if you ask me.
Like I said, I don't agree with Saay's approach--somehow try to get people to stop saying bad things about a bad game--but at least I understand the guy.
What's harder to understand is people that come here to just insult others. One guy said he was posting here because he got a kick out of "poking sad pandas." Honestly, I think that's just malicious and sick.
It's also hard to understand people who post things that are outrageously inaccurate. I mean you'd think someone would know that the game is not the same post-nge as it was pre-nge. Do they make these bizarre claims because that's how they really see things, or are they continuing the tradition of misleading marketing that seems to have plagued this game? I suppose I'll never know for sure.
To the OP, good post. I agree with pretty much every thing you said.
I played SWG from launch to NGE. I've gone back several times to try out the NGE. Not only does the interface suck, but the current community has changed for the worst, in my opinion. The original community was one of the things that stood out the most about this game; it's really what made the game great for me.
Anyway, keep the fire burning brother. People need to be reminded of the past so that SOE's mistakes are not repeated.
Comments
They tried something different by making the game as it was. With the vast amount of professions and possibilities, the game was completely different. With the vast worlds and endless possibilities that could amount from the Star Wars universe, what else is there to do different?
When they had something good and just needed to fix the bugs, why change it? To try something else different? How many times is SOE going to try something different? Nerfing is not changing. Making a game where everyone is a Jedi is not different. What is different is making one class so hard to get, it takes a long time to achieve that class. Then making that class so difficult to play, it takes a long time to build up that character. That is different.
So, SOE did do something different. Then they performed their typical ritual and made the game crappy. I am yet to find a game that is anywhere close to Open SWG or JTL SWG. I have played the NGE and the only thing that would keep me around SWG would be the space combat. However, that was not enough for me to stick around...
My only hope is SWGemu.
Just to clarify: my post is less about the NGE and more about the miserable attitudes of its defenders.
Yes the NGE has been out for two years. Yes Sony is not going to change it back. I accept both.
But I'm sick of the trolls coming in with their condescending, holier than thou attitudes.
Yep - I come to this forum to remember the old days. Yep - I come to this forum to vent because I'm still mad. I'm not nearly as mad about the NGE itself as I am about how Sony went about implementing it. Yep - I'm going to enjoy every "Smed was attacked last night by rabid cockroaches that ripped off his...." rumors.
The defenders don't have to come here. They don't have to read our posts. They don't have to comment. I repeat: what do they expect to find on this forum (which begins with the "We hate SOE" thread?) Why don't the trolls just leave us alone? Why do they have to aggravate us? They tell us that they think the game is great - why don't they just go play it and leave us be? I don't troll their "NGE is great" forums. And if it was reversed: if they hated the game and I liked it, I wouldn't go to their boards and start posting "Well you're just not smart enough to enjoy the new game..."
Sidenote: I liked Raid Over Moscow more than I liked the NGE. I could just never beat that robot at the end that you had to hit in the back.
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
You know the game you describe is still the game I play today. Everything in life changes, nothing stays the same for long.
How can it be the same game you play today, yet you say nothing stays the same for long?
You need to make up your mind which one it is Gutboy ; )
To the OP --- I think a lot of your complaints with what happened to the game is spot on...
However, I took one quote to talk about a pet peeve of mine.
Look - this is the "Veterans Refuge." The very first thread on this forum is the "The official we hate Sony Thread" and it's stickied. For you to come here and bitch and moan about how you're tired of hearing us complain about the NGE is lame. It's like going to a porn site and complaining about the nudity. What do you expect to find here?
I see where you are coming from, but although I play the game now, I loved the pre-cu and like to join in conversations about imperial crackdown etc. If I see a "what I loved post" I do not diss it or criticize. I enjoy reading it, if it reminds me of something worthwhile I post it.
On the other hand, if it is debating the merits of the current game or something recent--- I think every person here has a right to voice their opinion. Threads like GU5 is the end etc. are posted to get feedback and they do.
Here is the one that bugs me the most though, I am not saying YOU do this but others do. Some of the SAME angry vets who say not to post here will pull the following crap.
Some guy will ask for help with his template -- thread like Need Template Help
First post is almost always "the game sucks". That is the kind of thread hijacking that is neither needed nor solicited.
BTW beautiful post Archangel. . . I do wish lightsaber TEF had never been removed.
He is pretty good huh?
I totally connect with everything Arc says. I'm sure there are more like him out there, but certainly none more articulate.
He is pretty good huh?
I totally connect with everything Arc says. I'm sure there are more like him out there, but certainly none more articulate.
Indeed, made me very nostalgic. That is the kind of post I think every vet can appreciate.
Again though for every well thought out post I see on these boards, I am dismayed by the snarky remarks made by others to people who are just looking for help in the general forum--- like the current Template Help thread.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
So I started to walk into the water. I won't lie to you boys...I was terrified. But I pressed on, and as I made my way past the breakers, a strange calm came over me. I don't know if it was divine intervention or the kinship of all living things, but I tell you, Jerry, at that moment ... I was a marine biologist.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
You keep saying it but i don't see the evidence of it. The vets certainly don't agree on everything...some of us want the pre-cu game back, some of us want to sue SOE, some of us want to publicly humiliate them, some of us just like fighting with the retarded fanbois. The fanbois/viral marketers are the people guilty of "groupthink" since they all believe that SOE can do no wrong and the NGE is the best thing since sliced bread.
How can it be the same game you play today, yet you say nothing stays the same for long?
You need to make up your mind which one it is Gutboy ; )
He does appear to contradict himself doesn't he? On one hand, it's the same game, and on the other we're encouraged to accept change.
Both also sound like classic LEC/SOE marketing-speak. I've read, watched and listened to most of their damage control marketing. You usually get standard copy and paste p.r. spin. Typical examples include things like "veteran players just can't accept change, and there are always a few stubborn people like that."
While that sounds very reasonable (it's crafted to sound reasonable) it grossly misrepresents what's happened in this case. Those of us who are willing to accept reality recognize that people were upset because of tremendous loss and because they felt intentionally misled. This isn't the same as anxiety evoked by the uncertainty of change at all.
To illustrate, I play City of Heroes, and an auction house was announced as an upcoming feature some time ago. This was a big change, and I wondered what it would do to the gaming experience. So, they implemented it, and indeed it has been a big change--a very positive one. I now find myself looking for recipes and salvage to make enhancement sets, and I have a crafting station my office in our supergroup base lol. It's great fun. HUGE change to the game. Am I all bent out of shape because everything always has to stay the same for me? Of course not. Now, IF the CoH promised crafting and instead delivered a totally loot based economy, and at the same time wiped out all of my mastered super-power sets, well of course I'd be upset, justifiably so.
The thing is, NCsoft in this case delivered what they promised and didn't delete anything at all. On top of that, it worked of course. Hundreds of the same veteran players from SWG who take a stand against what the NGE represents all rolled with this huge change very nicely.
So, no, change in itself is not the issue. This marketing ploy doesn't stand up to a reality check.
The other marketing ploy--the game is really the same, and all the changes have just enhanced it--well I think you're either paid to lie for people professionally if you say that, you cope through some form of denial, or you're using hallucinogens. The game is really the same? Incredible. Skill system gone, rpg combat replaced by FPS with lock on option mercifully added. Most professions wiped out...amazing. This is absolutely not the same game that was originally released.
In fact once again, we have the classic contradiction. Much of the marketing of the NGE played up how it was like a brand new game, much more (brace yourselves) "starwarsy and icon." Much faster paced, much more like the movies etc, or so they said. Now we have Gutboy telling us it's the same game. It's surreal.
SOE are tools plain and simple I ditched them at NGE and vowed not to go back then vanguard came and id put too much time in the community to not go with it to SOE so once again my life was in their hands then they raped the ranger class and guess what the Rangers didnt want the changes but SOE pushed them anyway.
I wont play a SOE game again unless its free.
Wile i do use the free trials to see whats going on with swg.
Ill not even play a free game of theres lol much better free games out there.
The groupthink around here is ridiculous. March in lockstep, or you are just delusional.
You keep saying it but i don't see the evidence of it. The vets certainly don't agree on everything...some of us want the pre-cu game back, some of us want to sue SOE, some of us want to publicly humiliate them, some of us just like fighting with the retarded fanbois. The fanbois/viral marketers are the people guilty of "groupthink" since they all believe that SOE can do no wrong and the NGE is the best thing since sliced bread.
Very true I for one wont touch an $OE game ever again..
I also played some of the CUNGE I got very tired of the class changes every few months....
go vets!
Perfect explaination IMHO
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
Very nice description of the game, thank you for helping me remember the old game. Very well written.
As I see it, the fundamental question is why we have a thread for disgruntled SWG vets? What purpose does it serve? Are we trying to exact revenge on SOE by encouraging other gamers to drop subs and let the servers depopulate and die? No.... that is not my motivation. My motivation, as a disgruntled vet is to encourage at some players and game developers to consider raising expectations on what is valuable and meaningful in an MMO. My hope is that future companies will take the path of actually listening to the suggestions from the player base. My hope is that developers will make an effort to build dramatic virtual worlds free from pre-defined classes, linear gameplay, and static playzones. It would be wonderful to build a personal story within a game that had meaningful effects on the game environment. SWG and a few other games had that basic potential but lost their way. EVE-Online might have been that game for me if it actually allowed me to have a body that could step out of a spaceship and do normal activities that people do!
Sure, we vets need to let go of the old SWG and move on. But lets move on to something better (or at least different) than the choices we have now. If we let the gaming world forget SOE mistakes, those mistakes will certainly just repeat themselves.
Perfect explaination IMHO
I agree wholeheartedly. Smed always seemed to compare his busted ass sandbox game to a highly polished Wow-type game. What really needed to be removed was the "busted ass" part of the equation, not the sandbox.
Also, SOE always seemed to conceptualize issues in a way that led to radically unnecessary paradigm shifts. Did they have to gut the sandbox to introduce quests? Well in Smed's mind, apparently they did. That's the problem though if you ask me, this was only true "in Smed's mind."
You can certainly have tools for open-ended sand box play and community interaction, and add in some story based quest arcs for those that wish to pursue them. One doesn't need to replace the other.
Smed's assumption that loot and crafting are somehow mutually exclusive, is also out to lunch. Lots of games blend those systems very nicely, and successfully. Yet, once again, in SWG you had the crafting system gutted to make way for loot. Simply put, it never needed to happen.
Honestly Gutboy, I don't think you do get it. If you read my earlier post, you may catch of glimpse of "it", but if you don't, well I'm really okay with that at this point. Sometimes people really don't "get" others' experiences. It seems part of being human I suppose.
There's a post that I think is written much better than mine kicking around these forums, it's a heart-felt story of what it meant to someone to play the original game, and then lose that experience. It's quite poetic actually, Starts out, we were adventurers or something like that. I'll try to find you a clicky. You may get it then, but again you may not. Your receiver might not be set to the same frequency as our transmitter so to speak.
Sorry I couldn't find you a clicky, but I saved a copy of the post to my PC because I found it really captured my own experience. Here it is if you'd care to read it. This is a description of what people experienced and lost. It may help you understand something from a different point of view:
"The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few knew I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times."
Actually that kind of reads like a eulogy to me these days. Once again, many thanks to my StarWars friends for sharing with me the magic of childhood. I hope you can rediscover it and heal.
Very nice description of the game, thank you for helping me remember the old game. Very well written.
As I see it, the fundamental question is why we have a thread for disgruntled SWG vets? What purpose does it serve? Are we trying to exact revenge on SOE by encouraging other gamers to drop subs and let the servers depopulate and die? No.... that is not my motivation. My motivation, as a disgruntled vet is to encourage at some players and game developers to consider raising expectations on what is valuable and meaningful in an MMO. My hope is that future companies will take the path of actually listening to the suggestions from the player base. My hope is that developers will make an effort to build dramatic virtual worlds free from pre-defined classes, linear gameplay, and static playzones. It would be wonderful to build a personal story within a game that had meaningful effects on the game environment. SWG and a few other games had that basic potential but lost their way. EVE-Online might have been that game for me if it actually allowed me to have a body that could step out of a spaceship and do normal activities that people do!
Sure, we vets need to let go of the old SWG and move on. But lets move on to something better (or at least different) than the choices we have now. If we let the gaming world forget SOE mistakes, those mistakes will certainly just repeat themselves.
Well said, noble aspirations
Lol cockroaches. You know the one guy that defends the NGE that I actually understood was Saay. We didn't agree on a lot of things, but at least I knew why he was here. He said straight out he doesn't want to lose his current game due to bad press. I would say most of the time he was respectful too, not always probably, but what the hell, we're all human.
My response to him usually was, well if you don't like the bad press, maybe it would help to go back to SOE and encourage them to follow through on things like promising to fix collision detection or provide server mergers. Both were promised, both are serious issues, and neither were delivered.
If SOE treats people like crap, still, they're still going to get bad word of mouth. If their 5 year celebration is busted, everyone's going to hear about it. Truly SOE is its own worst enemy for bad press if you ask me.
Like I said, I don't agree with Saay's approach--somehow try to get people to stop saying bad things about a bad game--but at least I understand the guy.
What's harder to understand is people that come here to just insult others. One guy said he was posting here because he got a kick out of "poking sad pandas." Honestly, I think that's just malicious and sick.
It's also hard to understand people who post things that are outrageously inaccurate. I mean you'd think someone would know that the game is not the same post-nge as it was pre-nge. Do they make these bizarre claims because that's how they really see things, or are they continuing the tradition of misleading marketing that seems to have plagued this game? I suppose I'll never know for sure.
To the OP, good post. I agree with pretty much every thing you said.
I played SWG from launch to NGE. I've gone back several times to try out the NGE. Not only does the interface suck, but the current community has changed for the worst, in my opinion. The original community was one of the things that stood out the most about this game; it's really what made the game great for me.
Anyway, keep the fire burning brother. People need to be reminded of the past so that SOE's mistakes are not repeated.