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A New Twist On An Old Dog: SWG Pre-CU
isaiahhhhh
Member Posts: 24
Well, it's been five years since SWG initially went live. As a newly forming game it showed great promise and had every indication that it would be one of if not the most widely played game of all MMORPG's. This up hill trend, however, only lasted a short while as SOE very rapidly began attempting to gain more money by altering SWG to look like every other stock MMORPG in existance at the time. In its five years of existance SWG has spawned an over abundant amount of hatefull posts in its honor and a somewhat lesser amount of positive discussions. As a former swg player and game veteran I understand very well how hard the CU and NGE updates hit, however I did have many great times prior to their introduction and know, based on my experience in those times, that many of you out there must have as well. Instead of discussing how angry we are at SOE, or how badly we were cheated, lets talk about some of the good times we've had in game, after all, SWG, despite its faults, was extraordinary.
-Isaiah
Comments
I had a lot of fun in SWG.
Here's the thing - when I start talking about the good old days, I can't help be think that those days truly are gone. I can't even try to rebuild them because the game that made it so fun is gone.
Thus as my fondness of the old times grows so does my anger about what the game is like now.
It's kind of like having an old girlfriend that you really liked and really had fun with being brutally raped and murdered. To talk about her only reminds you of the POS who killed her and how he giggled happily while doing it....and then remembering that said individual got off on a technicality and sold his story Hollywood making millions in the process. You just want to beat the no good SOB's head in with a hammer....
Ok, maybe it's just the fact that I didn't get cheated as badly as most as I never reached any real significant mile stones with my Pre-CU character, however, it might be a bit much to compare SOE altering a game, to the rape and murder of a loved one. That's just me though.
-Isaiah
I played post-CU. I never played Pre-CU. I personally think the game still had a lot going for it even after the CU. I played for a few months and enjoyed it quite a bit. Eventually I got bored with it and moved on though. I may have stayed longer if I could have gotten involved with a guild or city building, but it seemed like a lot of that kind of stuff was already over and done with by the time I arrived. Bugs were also still a pretty big issue, which was baffling to me in a game that was already several years old. Patches seemed to be adding bugs rather than fixing them, which made no sense at all.
I actually quit just a few months before the NGE and after it hit I was like "wow, I got out of there just in time!"
There was nothing good about the NGE. I think it was pretty much hated by everyone who wasn't being paid by SOE to say they liked it. Only a very few people I've encountered have had anything good to say about the NGE and all of them have been totally insane. In fact, if you guys are looking for a laugh head over to the Dark and Light forums here on MMORPG and check on some of the posts made by a guy named Ztyx. Hes a huge fan of Dark and Light who has been trolling the forums for the last week or so trying to convince everyone that Dark and Light was the greatest game of all time. And hes not just a troll either, he really believes the non-sense hes spouting off with. In the middle of one of his profanity laced rants he also stated that he likes the NGE. This guy likes Dark and Light and the NGE. Clearly insane. Hes also a Darkfall fan too.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
If you wait another 6 months to a year, you can play Pre-CU SWG on the emulator. Right now, experience isnt really implemented, but you could always log on and shoot some thing for the heck of it. Basically its a gigantic test constantly ongoing. People log in, make a character, and get instant master classes to fool around a bit. You even get good equipment.
I really dont like it, myself. Makes me too hungry for the real thing.
i played pre CU and post CU and i can honestly say that combat upgrade didnt bring that massive changes, it really wasnt as bad as what people say.
It was more an E-Peen thing that people say i was pre CU
Saying that NGE really was as bad as people say and then some.
I Really enjoyed swg post NGE and i know alot of friends who did aswel. We are just a few of the probably 300k people that no longer play star wars galaxies due to their silly changes without asking the player population first.
300,000 x 15 is a total loss of 4.5 million dollars a month..... owtch
Save a Tree.... Eat a Beaver
SWG's predicament is always a source of interest to me.
Was it the fact that it was changed to a level system that caused the uproar, or merely that it was completely changed from a skill based system to something else?
If SWG hadn't been released when it was, and lets just pretend that Biowares announcement was basically the release of SWG in its present form, could it survive as a new release in todays market when going up against the other level based MMO's?
Lastly, ignoring what DID happen with the change, is there something about SWG formula, in it's present form, that makes it so unappealling as well as one would think? Or is it just that the majority of potential players who WANT to play SWG are the VETs? Is there a market for SWG to tap into? If not, then why does the similar formula work for other games?
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
No one knows yet what BioWare is doing, one thing is clear though and it's an often overlooked fact, SWG only had 18 months head start on WoW and had exactly the same amount of time in development.
Only fair conclusion to draw from those two facts is that Bliz can pull in 11+ million subscribers with an IP based on an RTS but SOE couldn't manage more than 350k with the largest IP in the history of entertainment., SOE fucked up right from the off.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
The problem with SWG was it had all the right mechanics and had sooo much potential but right from launch the game was screwed with bad patch after bad patch. I think the only patch I liked was the cities patch but vehicles made mounts useless which sucked.
No one knows yet what BioWare is doing, one thing is clear though and it's an often overlooked fact, SWG only had 18 months head start on WoW and had exactly the same amount of time in development.
Only fair conclusion to draw from those two facts is that Bliz can pull in 11+ million subscribers with an IP based on an RTS but SOE couldn't manage more than 350k with the largest IP in the history of entertainment., SOE fucked up right from the off.
To be fair though most of them subs are from China and Korea. Theres probably like 4.5 million Western subs which obviously is still alot but Blizzard had millions of Warcraft fans who were going to play it anyways. I mean my friends refused to pay a subscription for a mmorpg when I tried to get them into these types of games. Then WOW came out and they all subscribed to the game because they were Blizzard fans. Then you have the knock on effect of all the Blizzard fans getting their friends into it.
SOE released SWG on a IP that hasn't established a gaming fanbase and after 2 films destroid the IP to many people hating Star Wars. I mean initial sales wern't even that good they struggled to sell 1 million copies very fast.
If SOE focused on fixing the game and releasing content instead of spending 3 years on the CU and NGE and then fixing everything they broke. I think they'd have a much higher fanbase atm. I know my friends are looking for a more complex mmorpg because they are bored of WOW and don't want a WOW clone, they played WAR and didn't like it because it felt esactly the same.
I showed them all the old features of SWG with the profession system and they all loved it and wish te game had that now.
I think you may have a point. SWG wasn't released to a mass market. Had they concentrated on content then things MAY have been different in terms of sub numbers prior to the NGE.
However, iirc, SWG was released just prior to Episode 1. So I suppose those films did have an adverse effect on the possibilty of increased subs.
AOC is the next step in my opinion from WoW. I've got friends who recently moved to it and refuse to go back. AOC has its own sub problems atm though but we wont go into that right now.
So, ignoring ANY bias or emotional attachment to pre-NGE, it begs the question: IF they switched BACK to removing the leveling progression and replaced it with the skill tree system. Would SWG make a comeback or would it merely survive, if at all?
Or is there STILL something missing from SWG?
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
I think you may have a point. SWG wasn't released to a mass market. Had they concentrated on content then things MAY have been different in terms of sub numbers prior to the NGE.
However, iirc, SWG was released just prior to Episode 1. So I suppose those films did have an adverse effect on the possibilty of increased subs.
AOC is the next step in my opinion from WoW. I've got friends who recently moved to it and refuse to go back. AOC has its own sub problems atm though but we wont go into that right now.
So, ignoring ANY bias or emotional attachment to pre-NGE, it begs the question: IF they switched BACK to removing the leveling progression and replaced it with the skill tree system. Would SWG make a comeback or would it merely survive, if at all?
Or is there STILL something missing from SWG?
SWG wont ever be popular because its old, it's too late now and you have to get people at launch if you want the WOW subs. The buggy launch probably put everyone off and from the outset the game was never going to be popular like WOW. However the game could have had a solid 200-400k sub base if they just fixed it and made it better instead of worse. Instead they tried to get new customers in with a a old game and piss off the older sub base to quit.
IF they made pre CU or CU servers then yeah the game would gain subs back but it'll never go back to how it used to be now.
SWG was a flop from day 1. It was built on a very limited budget, Lucas shopped around and chose the people who offered them the game for the less bucks, you get what you pay for.
The game came out, got a few hundred thousand people with the IP and a few months later, before any CU or NGE, people were leaving in droves. The engine was and is crap, the database has been a source of problems since beta.
But SOE/Lucas still broke a golden rule, you can not completly change a MMO after release, especially not. You have 200k subs when you wanted 1 million +, well look at what you did wrong and start working on SWG II. But you cannot rip the heart out of a game (even though the heart had a ton of defects) and expect players to thank you. But I think the market now understands this ....
I can't agree with any of that, LA prove time and time again that they can put any shit out with Star Wars on the box and it sells, they've even done it recently with TFU. Even SWG proves that point, at no stage in it's history has it been anything other than a completely broken mess and yet it still managed to shift 1.5 million boxes. If it's got Star Wars on the box it'll sell, if it's a half decent game it'll sell obscene amounts, none of which really matters in any genre other than mmo's, mmo's are all about subscriptions, people bought the SWG boxes in decent enough numbers, it took less than a month for most to realise it was a terrible game though.
WoW's regional split is almost exactly 50:50 between Asia/Oceana and US/EU. It's got more subscribers in just the US/EU regions than Warcraft 3 managed to sell globally. It's the quality of the game, it's absolutely nothing to do with WoW being a more widely recognised franchise in gaming, because it really isn't.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
I can't agree with any of that, LA prove time and time again that they can put any shit out with Star Wars on the box and it sells, they've even done it recently with TFU. Even SWG proves that point, at no stage in it's history has it been anything other than a completely broken mess and yet it still managed to shift 1.5 million boxes. If it's got Star Wars on the box it'll sell, if it's a half decent game it'll sell obscene amounts, none of which really matters in any genre other than mmo's, mmo's are all about subscriptions, people bought the SWG boxes in decent enough numbers, it took less than a month for most to realise it was a terrible game though.
WoW's regional split is almost exactly 50:50 between Asia/Oceana and US/EU. It's got more subscribers in just the US/EU regions than Warcraft 3 managed to sell globally. It's the quality of the game, it's absolutely nothing to do with WoW being a more widely recognised franchise in gaming, because it really isn't.
Was about to mention to his comment which you quoted...
yeah, SWs is probably one of the larger franchises in the world to be quite frank, and a hell of a lot larger then Warcraft was. You could put SWs on any piece of crap and people will buy it, save it for 20 years, and sell it as an antique worth a thousand dollars and put it on a pedestal... though I'd disagree that LA takes complete advantage of that. While they do do this from time to time I don't think that all of it is really that bad (particularly TFU, I'm surprised at how many people are criticizing this, I thought it was pretty fun even with only 5+ hours of gameplay).
Despite SWG's pre-cu, in my opinion, being one of the most fun MMOs I've played, it was buggy and was a big heaping mess. I would consider it a more mild version of AoC is now. I highly doubt episode 1 - 3, despite not being particularly amazing but ok, had barely any impact on the players. WoW wasn't in the more subs zone because it had more marketting (I'd say it was equal on both sides) or for random excuses such as the movies having any impact. It was simply a better put together game.
I think, at this point, it's time to stop hoping that they switch back to pre-CU. At this point I think they realize that this game is simply on life support in the MMO hospital (suffering a coma with internal bleeding, mind you) until this new MMO from bioware smothers it with a pillow in the trauma center. It's time to move on, really.
Star Wars games don't sell all that well :
I mean Star Wars Battlefront used to be the highest selling Star Wars game when it came out in 2004 and it only sold between 1 and 2 million which showed that all star wars games before hand including SWG hadn't dols that much at all. Then Force unleshed came out and sold over 1.5 million in the first week becoming the best selling star wars game of all time.
SWG just launched at the wrong time where people wern't that interested in mmorpgs and wern't ready to pay a monthly sub yet. However if they launched it after WOW I bet you the game would have sold as many copies as AOC. It didn't help that SWG launched a buggy mess so alot of the people who bought the game quit the game within the first month but thats no different to AOC or how WAR will be.
Star Wars has yet to really break into gaming to become the new Halo, Warcraft or Gears.
They keep putting the name on boxes and offering glimpses of the SW universe, but have yet to give players Star Wars in a game. When they can finally package what Star Wars means to players (based on the films) then they will see unprecedented sales.
I can't agree with any of that, LA prove time and time again that they can put any shit out with Star Wars on the box and it sells, they've even done it recently with TFU. Even SWG proves that point, at no stage in it's history has it been anything other than a completely broken mess and yet it still managed to shift 1.5 million boxes. If it's got Star Wars on the box it'll sell, if it's a half decent game it'll sell obscene amounts, none of which really matters in any genre other than mmo's, mmo's are all about subscriptions, people bought the SWG boxes in decent enough numbers, it took less than a month for most to realise it was a terrible game though.
WoW's regional split is almost exactly 50:50 between Asia/Oceana and US/EU. It's got more subscribers in just the US/EU regions than Warcraft 3 managed to sell globally. It's the quality of the game, it's absolutely nothing to do with WoW being a more widely recognised franchise in gaming, because it really isn't.
Not that I dont agree that SWG was a missed opportunity, SWG then and now is 1000x more complex than WoW in terms of design and implementation.
WoW is a candy coloured chat client - FFS Mila Kunis plays WoW, she was harping on about it on Kimmel the other night. WoW is a mass marketed game aimed squarely at the LCD (as is SWG now), but 1,000,000s of subs doesnt make it a good game any more than millions of albums sold makes Britney Spears a good recording artist.
S
One of my best moments in a mmorpg was were heading to Dathomir with a group of friends. We'd treck out into the wilderness, clueless of direction or danger. At launch the Dathomir'ian night was completely black - you couldnt see more then a few yards away! We felt somewhat safe in our camp (if we were lucky to have a scout with us) while geting ready to head out into the darkness again. We knew there were Rancors all around. We had found out the hard way...
That kind of exploration and immersion has yet to be reached in new games. Its a shame really.
On a sidenote, it didnt take long before the devs listened to the wrong people and made nights on Dathomir all to bright. Immersion ruined. Sigh.
M M O S S I N C E |1998|
P L A Y I N G F A L L E N E A R T H
T I M E I N V E S T E D |uo|swg|wow|
B E T A T E S T E R |rz|gw|hz|tr|hgl|potbs|potc|gw|hz|wish|fe|wow|df|war|
I have the same memories of Dath. Its a joke now as pretty much everything is soloable and "night" is more like early evening. As much as I still play SWG (mainly due to friends still playing), when I read comments like yours I remember a very different game.
S
Thing is, WoW was designed from the ground up to be exactly like that, classes were designed, balanced and rebalanced 2 years before the game even launched, SWG's classes aren't anywhere close to WoW's balance and class structure even when it was in beta. I'd love to know where the "complexity" comes into play in SWG compared to WoW? I mean they ripped WoW's talent point system and couldn't even get that right, there's a lot more *must have* skills in SWG's expertise than there is in WoW's talents and it offers nowhere even close to the diversity that WoW's talents offer. WoW only has 9 classes but most of them have 3 fully viable talent trees to progress down effectively giving it 27 unique classes, by comparrison SWG has 7 combat classes.
If by complexity you mean being able to spend a week decorating a house that no one will ever see, sure I agree with you fully.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Thing is, WoW was designed from the ground up to be exactly like that, classes were designed, balanced and rebalanced 2 years before the game even launched, SWG's classes aren't anywhere close to WoW's balance and class structure even when it was in beta. I'd love to know where the "complexity" comes into play in SWG compared to WoW? I mean they ripped WoW's talent point system and couldn't even get that right, there's a lot more *must have* skills in SWG's expertise than there is in WoW's talents and it offers nowhere even close to the diversity that WoW's talents offer. WoW only has 9 classes but most of them have 3 fully viable talent trees to progress down effectively giving it 27 unique classes, by comparrison SWG has 7 combat classes.
If by complexity you mean being able to spend a week decorating a house that no one will ever see, sure I agree with you fully.
I was talking about the design and implementation of the game, not how it is played. WoW is a cookie cutter jokefest and probably the single biggest reason that we won't see another decent sandbox MMO in the forseeable future.
S
The design and implementation of WoW is exactly what SWG has been attempting to immitate for 3 1/2 years, and failed miserably. WoW works, SWG doesn't, that's the crux of it. And yes we won't see a mass market sandbox for a while because everyone is trying to bottle all the WoW magic ingredients into their own mmo's, as they fail one by one though, hopefully as spectacularly as SWG has, we will eventually see more emphasis on sandbox designs as a means of adding diversity, might take a while but it'll happen, just a shame only indie devs are willing to lead the way right now.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
The design and implementation of WoW is exactly what SWG has been attempting to immitate for 3 1/2 years, and failed miserably. WoW works, SWG doesn't, that's the crux of it. And yes we won't see a mass market sandbox for a while because everyone is trying to bottle all the WoW magic ingredients into their own mmo's, as they fail one by one though, hopefully as spectacularly as SWG has, we will eventually see more emphasis on sandbox designs as a means of adding diversity, might take a while but it'll happen, just a shame only indie devs are willing to lead the way right now.
Yes, I already said that WoW is singlehandedly responsible for the NGE and the lack of any faith in new sandbox games. SWG will be my last MMO I would imagine. When it closes I doubt Ill be playing anything else in that genre (possible exception of KotoRo), but I suspect it will be a WoW clone as well.
S
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
The design and implementation of WoW is exactly what SWG has been attempting to immitate for 3 1/2 years, and failed miserably. WoW works, SWG doesn't, that's the crux of it. And yes we won't see a mass market sandbox for a while because everyone is trying to bottle all the WoW magic ingredients into their own mmo's, as they fail one by one though, hopefully as spectacularly as SWG has, we will eventually see more emphasis on sandbox designs as a means of adding diversity, might take a while but it'll happen, just a shame only indie devs are willing to lead the way right now.
Yes, I already said that WoW is singlehandedly responsible for the NGE and the lack of any faith in new sandbox games. SWG will be my last MMO I would imagine. When it closes I doubt Ill be playing anything else in that genre (possible exception of KotoRo), but I suspect it will be a WoW clone as well.
S
"Yes, I already said that WoW is singlehandedly responsible for the NGE" No it isn't, the developers are the sole ones responsible for being too greedy and not giving a damn about the current players
"SWG will be my last MMO I would imagine. When it closes I doubt Ill be playing anything else in that genre (possible exception of KotoRo)" Funny thing is in another thread you've recently posted in you play a lot of MMOs and would go to them if SWG was shut down, and you've shown an almost pure hatred towards SW:TOR as well..... hmmmmm contradiction here or what..
You've also gone on and on and whined about the "vets" whining.. m8 your full of contradictions and hypocracy.