To answer the subject; I thought it was a great game once.
That "once" was Pre-CU. SWG was not my first MMO, but it was one of the first and offered a different experience then I had had previously. The community was very welcoming and, despite being more complex then some other games, there was no shortage of people willing to help.
There were certainly those moments when it could be boring. Grinding camping, on the way to Master Ranger, sort of stands out as one of those moments. Those moments came and went though and I was left with a net positive experience for the time I spent.
The turning point in the game, for me, came in the form of the CU. A number of my friends left the game at that time at it started to become more of a solo game for me. I spent a few days trying to adjust and see who was left when the dust settled. The game had turned into a balloon that the air had been let out of for me.
The game, for me, was not exactly what I expected, but that doesn't mean it came up short. It was just different then what I had played before. And now, the tougher question; would you do it all over again? Honestly, I am not sure. Some say "better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all" and I can agree with that to a great extent. I think I would go back and play Pre-CU again, however, I would make more of an effort to keep in touch with those friends I made while playing the game. While I would inevitably still lose the game I enjoy, the social aspects seemed to be where this game really blossomed and maybe you don't need graphics for that.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
I adored Pre-CU because of what I assumed it would become. It was my first MMOG, and at the time the
development team claimed to be serious about a Star Wars simulator. It had elements that I consider
amazing - even today as a more jaded consumer. But as a simulator of Lucas's OT universe it was never
anything remotely near complete.
It had serious flaws - not just bugs but serious, inconceivable shortcomings for the title it was
billed to be: un-smugglers, anemic GCW, melee primacy, beasts over droids, too many art cues that
signaled Masters of the Universe instead of Star Wars Universe - we can all make the list of flaws so
I won't continue. Today, I know that some of the things that were 'wrong' were on purpose - Raph's ‘potemkin village’ NPC cities were imported from UO for example. Today I can admit that Galaxies would never have lived up to our hopes and expectations for it, even if they had stuck with and refined the original incarnation.
In hindsight yes - I still would have played it. But I would have approached it completely differently than I did as the youngling who had his MMOG cherry popped by Star Wars Galaxies.
well, regardless of the flaws, no one can deny that it is still going 'OK' for a 5 yr old MMORPG. . . 20k-40k players (no one really knows) isnt bad for a MMO that has been run like this.
I just have to scratch my head when I read statements like this one.
why? there is an active community of people playing and enjoying a game that continues to get updates and new content while generating revenue.
I guess it is all in how you define 'success' or 'good'. . .
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
The concepts put forth by the game were great. The community and interdependance were great. There were even aspects of the game mechanics that were great. The people were great. The crafting and social aspects like dancer/entertainer were great.
The delivery of the game was aweful. So was the management and the treatment of the players. Everything that mattered about the game as far as a company goes was rotten to the core. It really is the shining example of "what not to do" when making an MMO.
For a buggy unfinished mismanaged game it was the closer to great than many games have been in the last 5 years.
Sadly we are running out of game designers who grew up with gaming and roleplaying as a hobby and instead grew up with collectable card games as a hobby.
What did we really do in SWG? You had jobs…. You would hunt critters, kill players, make stuff for people to do their jobs, go on pointless journeys to places that didn't really fit into the timeline (themeparks) and had awful stories, chat, or emote over and over repetitious dances or songs that got on everyone’s nerves. To be honest is any MMO really fun for any length of time? What’s missing from current MMOs that make then not fun? A bit of SWG, and an actual storyline that matters?
A friend of mine played SWG and that's exactly what he felt it was. A job.
He said one day he realized that he already had a job. and so he quit.
It depends what you wanted. The vast variety of things that SWG allowed you to do with an intuitive, flexible interface was astonishing.
True, there was always an element of grinding - though that could be circumenvented if you were clever or shared knowledge and tips with other players.
Yes, some people did do grinding jobs. Me, I tried to be imaginative. I bought all the 'Blue Thread' that ever appeared on my server's bazaar - and then fed it back into the market slowly at ten times the price. That wasn't exploiting or cheating; it was abritrage and I made about twenty million in the days when that was a lot of credits).
No, It was never a great game. It had potential to be the BEST MMO in exsistance however here is my story of SWG.
Week 1 (Launch)-Very pretty game, and I go do 100 senseless missions go here kill nest repeat.
Week 2 - Pissed off because I lost all my gear due to some bug... quit for 1 week.
Week 4 -Come back... Wow tons of Creature handlers... download macro program to get to master CH and Bio Engineer. Realize this game is completly unbalanced and quit.
Week 30 - Come back... due to my friend that has sat on his computer playing SWG since launch and shows me Jedi class. Very Cool... until I realize he had to master 27 professions to get it. Play a bit and realize nothing has changed... but I still have my gear so ill keep playing.
Week 31 - Find crafting to be fun and start making tons of money. Open my own shop and interaction with players is rather fun.
Week 32 - A Duping Bug is found and devistates the economy. I quit this time for real.
Week Whatever... JTL is released. Friend still playing his jedi... I tell him to get a life im not coming back....
A year or so later... I speak to friend and he is ranting and raving about blowing up SoE studios... I'm laughing at this point... but then I realize he is serious... I talk him down. He this explains NGE was released. I try it and was rather upset that I spend the past 20 hours downloading such garbage... no wonder he wanted to blow up SoE.
That was my experience... However I did make up the part of blowing up SoE for dramatic effect. Gotta hollywood it up for the boards ya know.
In the End... SWG had such a great feel and I could of been really wrapped up into it, but due to lack of testing and poor programming it has become one of the biggest failures in MMO history. (My definition of failure: having 20k subs when you could of had millions of subs.)
I think one of the best attributes SWG had in pre-CU was it's unbuffed combat. It's really unfortunate that that gets forgotten about as the HAM system which incoporated both weapon and armor encumbrance was spectacular IMO. Added on top of that was armor piercing, range mods and posture mods.
And to compliment the combat system were such amazing benefits like terrain negotiation, and skills like creature taming.
Knowing what I know now and knowing its ultimate fate - I'd have still bought it. I would because SWG PreCU was the vehicle that brought me so many memories, moments and friends. It brought me a community of like minded players who make that period in my online life - the best that I have ever had. Before or since. Yes, it was buggy. Yes, it had flaws but it brought with it intangibles and opportunities that no other mmo has ever done. Its not that NGE destroyed just the game. It destroyed the community along with it - forever breaking it.
My thoughts exactly.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
I've played SWG from early on thru CU and a few months into NGE. I had a few different chars on different servers. some crafters some combatants. I do not remember preCU experience as bug ridden. in fact nothin' comes to mind that was borken to the point it was game breakin' or really annoyin'.. I guess me got lucky or it was my playstyle(casual) and while I was aware there were bugs and probs I hardly ever experienced 'em myself and never did they get in the way so much as to make me frustrated or quit.
yes preCU was best version of SWG. after JTL it was complete. we finally got all the major features in place promised to us before the release...
IMO no other MMO comes close to preCU SWG even today after 3 years!
SWG launched as an incomplete buggy mess of a game. We were promised it was going to be fininshed and that lots and lots of content was going to be added, including regular story arcs. The first story arc "The Cries of Alderaan" was ended in the middle, when it was decided that development needed to be refocused on making Jedi easier to achieve and the professions needed to be nerfed on a regular basis. Most of the bugs were ignored, and many are still in the game to this day. Most of what was unfinished at launch was never finished, but the dev team continued to promise that they were working on it.
When ignoring most of the game's problems didn't make them go away, SOE chose to revamp the game in the hopes of hiding the problems (that is the only rational reason I can come up with for makeing a struggling game worse, not once, but twice).
Was SWG ever really that great? It would depend on your personal definition of 'great'. SWG was the best of the UO type classless, directionless, sandboxish MMOs. Considering many of the folks who made SWG were the same folks who made UO, it isn't too surprising that SWG was an improvement over UO. Unfortunately, they did the same things they did with UO to SWG by ignoring bugs and other major issues in favor of focusing on nerfing skills and screwing with the game mechanics.
Compared to much of what has been released since SWG, SWG was never really that great. It had the potential to be great, but that potential was wasted, in favor of revamps, nerfs, and making Jedi more accessible. Potential is very rarely met, and it never seems to happen when SOE is involved. In fact, the folks at SOE seem to go out of their way to crush any potential found in their games.
Since the NGE, I have played WoW, CoH, EQ2, and Ryzom.
Pre-CU SWG was by far the best of those. There may be some other game out there that's better than them, but I haven't played it yet.
SWG was lacking things that those games have (CoH and WoW have quality, WoW and EQ2 have content), but SWG was still far, far better, even when it was at its worst.
If I could I would mix the world, crafting, skill and economy of SWG with the Character Creation, interface and combat system of CoH (with some of the best elements of SWG and WoW added), and have the amount of content and quality assurance that WoW has.
There are a lot of games that have to potential to be great if certain things are added or changed. By that I mean they are not great now, but could be someday.
SWG was a great game, but the bugs, flaws and mismanagement of the game iteself made it extremely difficult to enjoy the great game.
The reason the game never became truly great was due to SOE never really trying to fix the game. Expansions, combat revamps and other things always took the live team off of what needed to be done.
PreCU is the only game where I could spend my entire playsession just sitting in the starport, and never feel like I was wasting my time.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
well, regardless of the flaws, no one can deny that it is still going 'OK' for a 5 yr old MMORPG. . . 20k-40k players (no one really knows) isnt bad for a MMO that has been run like this. After the free transfer, teh top servers will probably double in size, 1000-1200 players, and the other destination servers will have 500- 600 players. That will help the 'feel' quite a bit.
That probably shows brand loyalty more than anything else.
No, it wasn't a great game. There was no Star and no Wars. There was great potential and there were great things about it, but as a whole, it totally missed the mark.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
No, it wasn't a great game. There was no Star and no Wars. There was great potential and there were great things about it, but as a whole, it totally missed the mark.
I remember constant war, I remember talking smack with Imperials in Corellian cantinas, roleplaying was fun in the early days. I remember battles between Bestine and Anchorhead that lasted hours -- when AT-STs were a thing to be feared.
I remember being nervous when my buddy and I took rebel destroy missions because we knew there were a bunch of Imps nearby, and if they caught us while we were teffed we were dead meat.
The Game was by no means ready when they launched it. It was fun but I guess many things was cut out for release. The first thing that caught my mind when I started my character was that I felt so "dropped down in this gigantic world with no idea what to do". So a quest line like the main quest line in the NGE would have been quite nice the first time you played the game through.
It was the community I loved and who made the experience great!, the game was quite ok but not the best I have played. The devs had great potential in the game to make it something special and you could feel it in the community. The first half year the mood amongst the players was high and the galaxy was filled with excitement for the game in the furture.
The sandbox style of the game really was great for us a little more into roleplaying. To have a shop ingame for some of us was no job, it was pure joy. Sure you had to spend much time on it, but in the end it was worth it. But I can see how hunting critters for 3 hours could seems like a job for some. And how it was a opportunity to socialize and roleplay for others. In the long run they should added directed content to the "pre-cu" too, it would have been great. So people could choose "sandbox content/directed content".
well enough of my crazy ramblings
Now Playing: LotRO:MoM Waiting for: Earthrise, The Warhammer 40k mmo Collecting dust on my shelf: Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, SWG, EQ2, D&D Online, Vanguard:SoH, Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, AoC, WAR
PreCU is the only game where I could spend my entire playsession just sitting in the starport, and never feel like I was wasting my time.
Exactly!
I never got that feeling from any other game.
I must agree with you on this. There were times when I could sit and chat with a guild mate for 2 hours straight a saturday night(prime time) and dont feel any stress over it. The only other game I have felt so relaxed in, was UO(my first mmorpg). Swg was also the game which opened my eyes for exploration. Taking a hour long hike out in the scenery of "X planet" just to check out some views, with a friend, was no problem for my nervs.Calm, happy and having fun.
I havent found that relaxed playstyle in any of the later mmorpgs. Ok maybe a little in LotRO, but no where near swg.
Now Playing: LotRO:MoM Waiting for: Earthrise, The Warhammer 40k mmo Collecting dust on my shelf: Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, SWG, EQ2, D&D Online, Vanguard:SoH, Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, AoC, WAR
Something I have to say about the SWG Community back in the day: It was very "Newbie Friendly."
Veteran players would regularly go out of their way to help out newbies who were trying to learn the game. And Vets, let's be honest, Pre-CU had a steep learning curve compared to most MMOs even today Vets would help them out by guiding them and training them with lessons of how to play and assisting a little bit in combat.
I still recall when I started out by my lonsome in Doerba Goefel, Correlia, that I was getting my noob Novice Marksman a** handed to me by some low level critters. A passing by vet on a swoop came by and saved me, gave me some quick pointers, and told me how to get rid of the wounds & fatigue (roughly 1/3 HAM wounds, maybe 300 or more fatigue).
One thing though that the Community didn't like: It was willing to help out and train new players, but we HATED beggars
Another point to bring out was groups and "campsites." Every now and then, especially on long Hunting Group sessions and what not, you had to set up a camp to recover (their characters as well as the players). A funny thing with Pre-CU SWG was that players would sit in these campsites far longe than we should have. We spent alot of time chatting it up when we could be wasting things out there. Usually someone would remember we were supposed to be hunting, looting, and gathering things, then we'd resume it. One of the SWG Devs at a Fan Fest was surprised by player comments about this during a Q&A board. He replied something along the lines of:
"You guys sat around a campfire... and you had fun?"
Why yes. Yes we did, and we enjoyed it before going out killing things again.
It just showed how out of touch SOE was with their own players. And it never got any better.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Comments
To answer the subject; I thought it was a great game once.
That "once" was Pre-CU. SWG was not my first MMO, but it was one of the first and offered a different experience then I had had previously. The community was very welcoming and, despite being more complex then some other games, there was no shortage of people willing to help.
There were certainly those moments when it could be boring. Grinding camping, on the way to Master Ranger, sort of stands out as one of those moments. Those moments came and went though and I was left with a net positive experience for the time I spent.
The turning point in the game, for me, came in the form of the CU. A number of my friends left the game at that time at it started to become more of a solo game for me. I spent a few days trying to adjust and see who was left when the dust settled. The game had turned into a balloon that the air had been let out of for me.
The game, for me, was not exactly what I expected, but that doesn't mean it came up short. It was just different then what I had played before. And now, the tougher question; would you do it all over again? Honestly, I am not sure. Some say "better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all" and I can agree with that to a great extent. I think I would go back and play Pre-CU again, however, I would make more of an effort to keep in touch with those friends I made while playing the game. While I would inevitably still lose the game I enjoy, the social aspects seemed to be where this game really blossomed and maybe you don't need graphics for that.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
I adored Pre-CU because of what I assumed it would become. It was my first MMOG, and at the time the
development team claimed to be serious about a Star Wars simulator. It had elements that I consider
amazing - even today as a more jaded consumer. But as a simulator of Lucas's OT universe it was never
anything remotely near complete.
It had serious flaws - not just bugs but serious, inconceivable shortcomings for the title it was
billed to be: un-smugglers, anemic GCW, melee primacy, beasts over droids, too many art cues that
signaled Masters of the Universe instead of Star Wars Universe - we can all make the list of flaws so
I won't continue. Today, I know that some of the things that were 'wrong' were on purpose - Raph's ‘potemkin village’ NPC cities were imported from UO for example. Today I can admit that Galaxies would never have lived up to our hopes and expectations for it, even if they had stuck with and refined the original incarnation.
In hindsight yes - I still would have played it. But I would have approached it completely differently than I did as the youngling who had his MMOG cherry popped by Star Wars Galaxies.
SWG Team Mtg.
I just have to scratch my head when I read statements like this one.
why? there is an active community of people playing and enjoying a game that continues to get updates and new content while generating revenue.
I guess it is all in how you define 'success' or 'good'. . .
The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com and its management.
The concepts put forth by the game were great. The community and interdependance were great. There were even aspects of the game mechanics that were great. The people were great. The crafting and social aspects like dancer/entertainer were great.
The delivery of the game was aweful. So was the management and the treatment of the players. Everything that mattered about the game as far as a company goes was rotten to the core. It really is the shining example of "what not to do" when making an MMO.
For a buggy unfinished mismanaged game it was the closer to great than many games have been in the last 5 years.
Sadly we are running out of game designers who grew up with gaming and roleplaying as a hobby and instead grew up with collectable card games as a hobby.
A friend of mine played SWG and that's exactly what he felt it was. A job.
He said one day he realized that he already had a job. and so he quit.
It depends what you wanted. The vast variety of things that SWG allowed you to do with an intuitive, flexible interface was astonishing.
True, there was always an element of grinding - though that could be circumenvented if you were clever or shared knowledge and tips with other players.
Yes, some people did do grinding jobs. Me, I tried to be imaginative. I bought all the 'Blue Thread' that ever appeared on my server's bazaar - and then fed it back into the market slowly at ten times the price. That wasn't exploiting or cheating; it was abritrage and I made about twenty million in the days when that was a lot of credits).
No, It was never a great game. It had potential to be the BEST MMO in exsistance however here is my story of SWG.
Week 1 (Launch)-Very pretty game, and I go do 100 senseless missions go here kill nest repeat.
Week 2 - Pissed off because I lost all my gear due to some bug... quit for 1 week.
Week 4 -Come back... Wow tons of Creature handlers... download macro program to get to master CH and Bio Engineer. Realize this game is completly unbalanced and quit.
Week 30 - Come back... due to my friend that has sat on his computer playing SWG since launch and shows me Jedi class. Very Cool... until I realize he had to master 27 professions to get it. Play a bit and realize nothing has changed... but I still have my gear so ill keep playing.
Week 31 - Find crafting to be fun and start making tons of money. Open my own shop and interaction with players is rather fun.
Week 32 - A Duping Bug is found and devistates the economy. I quit this time for real.
Week Whatever... JTL is released. Friend still playing his jedi... I tell him to get a life im not coming back....
A year or so later... I speak to friend and he is ranting and raving about blowing up SoE studios... I'm laughing at this point... but then I realize he is serious... I talk him down. He this explains NGE was released. I try it and was rather upset that I spend the past 20 hours downloading such garbage... no wonder he wanted to blow up SoE.
That was my experience... However I did make up the part of blowing up SoE for dramatic effect. Gotta hollywood it up for the boards ya know.
In the End... SWG had such a great feel and I could of been really wrapped up into it, but due to lack of testing and poor programming it has become one of the biggest failures in MMO history. (My definition of failure: having 20k subs when you could of had millions of subs.)
I think one of the best attributes SWG had in pre-CU was it's unbuffed combat. It's really unfortunate that that gets forgotten about as the HAM system which incoporated both weapon and armor encumbrance was spectacular IMO. Added on top of that was armor piercing, range mods and posture mods.
And to compliment the combat system were such amazing benefits like terrain negotiation, and skills like creature taming.
My thoughts exactly.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Heya TookyG... do you RPOL? Just ran across the same moniker and thought I would ask.
I must be in minority here when I say this:
I've played SWG from early on thru CU and a few months into NGE. I had a few different chars on different servers. some crafters some combatants. I do not remember preCU experience as bug ridden. in fact nothin' comes to mind that was borken to the point it was game breakin' or really annoyin'.. I guess me got lucky or it was my playstyle(casual) and while I was aware there were bugs and probs I hardly ever experienced 'em myself and never did they get in the way so much as to make me frustrated or quit.
yes preCU was best version of SWG. after JTL it was complete. we finally got all the major features in place promised to us before the release...
IMO no other MMO comes close to preCU SWG even today after 3 years!
SWG launched as an incomplete buggy mess of a game. We were promised it was going to be fininshed and that lots and lots of content was going to be added, including regular story arcs. The first story arc "The Cries of Alderaan" was ended in the middle, when it was decided that development needed to be refocused on making Jedi easier to achieve and the professions needed to be nerfed on a regular basis. Most of the bugs were ignored, and many are still in the game to this day. Most of what was unfinished at launch was never finished, but the dev team continued to promise that they were working on it.
When ignoring most of the game's problems didn't make them go away, SOE chose to revamp the game in the hopes of hiding the problems (that is the only rational reason I can come up with for makeing a struggling game worse, not once, but twice).
Was SWG ever really that great? It would depend on your personal definition of 'great'. SWG was the best of the UO type classless, directionless, sandboxish MMOs. Considering many of the folks who made SWG were the same folks who made UO, it isn't too surprising that SWG was an improvement over UO. Unfortunately, they did the same things they did with UO to SWG by ignoring bugs and other major issues in favor of focusing on nerfing skills and screwing with the game mechanics.
Compared to much of what has been released since SWG, SWG was never really that great. It had the potential to be great, but that potential was wasted, in favor of revamps, nerfs, and making Jedi more accessible. Potential is very rarely met, and it never seems to happen when SOE is involved. In fact, the folks at SOE seem to go out of their way to crush any potential found in their games.
Yeah OP before SOE went crazy and runied it .. it was a blast.
Since the NGE, I have played WoW, CoH, EQ2, and Ryzom.
Pre-CU SWG was by far the best of those. There may be some other game out there that's better than them, but I haven't played it yet.
SWG was lacking things that those games have (CoH and WoW have quality, WoW and EQ2 have content), but SWG was still far, far better, even when it was at its worst.
If I could I would mix the world, crafting, skill and economy of SWG with the Character Creation, interface and combat system of CoH (with some of the best elements of SWG and WoW added), and have the amount of content and quality assurance that WoW has.
That would be the best game ever.
fishermage.blogspot.com
There are a lot of games that have to potential to be great if certain things are added or changed. By that I mean they are not great now, but could be someday.
SWG was a great game, but the bugs, flaws and mismanagement of the game iteself made it extremely difficult to enjoy the great game.
The reason the game never became truly great was due to SOE never really trying to fix the game. Expansions, combat revamps and other things always took the live team off of what needed to be done.
PreCU is the only game where I could spend my entire playsession just sitting in the starport, and never feel like I was wasting my time.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
That probably shows brand loyalty more than anything else.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Exactly!
I never got that feeling from any other game.
It wasnt a great game..... It was a great community
No, it wasn't a great game. There was no Star and no Wars. There was great potential and there were great things about it, but as a whole, it totally missed the mark.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
I remember constant war, I remember talking smack with Imperials in Corellian cantinas, roleplaying was fun in the early days. I remember battles between Bestine and Anchorhead that lasted hours -- when AT-STs were a thing to be feared.
I remember being nervous when my buddy and I took rebel destroy missions because we knew there were a bunch of Imps nearby, and if they caught us while we were teffed we were dead meat.
I remember the war very well.
Not sure what you mean by "there was no star."
fishermage.blogspot.com
I understand what you say OP.
My thoughts:
The Game was by no means ready when they launched it. It was fun but I guess many things was cut out for release. The first thing that caught my mind when I started my character was that I felt so "dropped down in this gigantic world with no idea what to do". So a quest line like the main quest line in the NGE would have been quite nice the first time you played the game through.
It was the community I loved and who made the experience great!, the game was quite ok but not the best I have played. The devs had great potential in the game to make it something special and you could feel it in the community. The first half year the mood amongst the players was high and the galaxy was filled with excitement for the game in the furture.
The sandbox style of the game really was great for us a little more into roleplaying. To have a shop ingame for some of us was no job, it was pure joy. Sure you had to spend much time on it, but in the end it was worth it. But I can see how hunting critters for 3 hours could seems like a job for some. And how it was a opportunity to socialize and roleplay for others. In the long run they should added directed content to the "pre-cu" too, it would have been great. So people could choose "sandbox content/directed content".
well enough of my crazy ramblings
Now Playing: LotRO:MoM Waiting for: Earthrise, The Warhammer 40k mmo
Collecting dust on my shelf: Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, SWG, EQ2, D&D Online, Vanguard:SoH, Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, AoC, WAR
Exactly!
I never got that feeling from any other game.
I must agree with you on this. There were times when I could sit and chat with a guild mate for 2 hours straight a saturday night(prime time) and dont feel any stress over it. The only other game I have felt so relaxed in, was UO(my first mmorpg). Swg was also the game which opened my eyes for exploration. Taking a hour long hike out in the scenery of "X planet" just to check out some views, with a friend, was no problem for my nervs.Calm, happy and having fun.
I havent found that relaxed playstyle in any of the later mmorpgs. Ok maybe a little in LotRO, but no where near swg.
Now Playing: LotRO:MoM Waiting for: Earthrise, The Warhammer 40k mmo
Collecting dust on my shelf: Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, Lineage II, SWG, EQ2, D&D Online, Vanguard:SoH, Tabula Rasa, PoTBS, AoC, WAR
There's a good chance any TookyG you find is me. So, yes, that's me.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Something I have to say about the SWG Community back in the day: It was very "Newbie Friendly."
Veteran players would regularly go out of their way to help out newbies who were trying to learn the game. And Vets, let's be honest, Pre-CU had a steep learning curve compared to most MMOs even today
Vets would help them out by guiding them and training them with lessons of how to play and assisting a little bit in combat.
I still recall when I started out by my lonsome in Doerba Goefel, Correlia, that I was getting my noob Novice Marksman a** handed to me by some low level critters. A passing by vet on a swoop came by and saved me, gave me some quick pointers, and told me how to get rid of the wounds & fatigue (roughly 1/3 HAM wounds, maybe 300 or more fatigue).
One thing though that the Community didn't like: It was willing to help out and train new players, but we HATED beggars
Another point to bring out was groups and "campsites." Every now and then, especially on long Hunting Group sessions and what not, you had to set up a camp to recover (their characters as well as the players). A funny thing with Pre-CU SWG was that players would sit in these campsites far longe than we should have. We spent alot of time chatting it up when we could be wasting things out there. Usually someone would remember we were supposed to be hunting, looting, and gathering things, then we'd resume it. One of the SWG Devs at a Fan Fest was surprised by player comments about this during a Q&A board. He replied something along the lines of:
"You guys sat around a campfire... and you had fun?"
Why yes. Yes we did, and we enjoyed it before going out killing things again.
It just showed how out of touch SOE was with their own players. And it never got any better.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I'd say its alot like JFK ...
Good ideas and things coming in the future , then died before any of it could happen.
But people still love both for the exact same reason ... remembered more for what it could have been rather than what it was.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.