My subsription ends end of may. Only one of my friends left. Check out Amazon's latest comments alot of upset people. Like a bad dream really. This game is an eqII replica. This med guy CEO of SOE comes on to say stick it out it will get better. Don't BS me. Anyways dust in the wind friend dust in the wind.
Well it seems CSR's and DEV's have been posting everywhere. Notice those that give the CU an outstanding round of applause. Try and tell the masses of people posting negative things that these positive posters are not staff of Lucas and SOE. BE REAL. they try this to offset the negative response to a flawed system. I play on bloodfin and being a jedi is harsh. As it is you have to grind out 100's of thousand points of XPto get a skill. A creature that cons even to you is only worth 200 points and 800 points during this 4x's xp week. OH WOW that will help NOT! Sabers now doing only 135 damage at best? I have a nice krayt pearl in mine and it tuned nicely and that all the damage I am doing. Run out of force after 2 encounters and taking up to 15 minutes to regen it all. Nope they borked the game, they know it and little help or support has come from devs or customer service. Why can't Jedi get the 20k per kill like other professions or are we to remain the step children of this game after working so hard to unlock that profession
Originally posted by Erillion Thats because the ESC button is now the old /peace command. Just not well communicated to the player base (just like setting auto-attack with STRG + click on chosen basic attack). Have fun Erillion
I usually have to hit ESC atleast 3 times now to clear my target, which as a medic is how I target myself (somtimes) because I cannot always heal myself if I am targetting on an NPC. It gets pretty miserable trying to target manage trying to use their new system
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I think they should do the same as i see in other games ... if you have an enemy targetted and press the bacta shot heal button, it should heal you instead .. without the need to Switch target to oneself.
And if I have a group member targetted it should auto-attack any enemy HE has targetted while I keep healing him.
It does, usually. But if you have a corpse targetted it can fail. You can also get hung on a target and have to multiple click another persons health bar to get onto them properly. I miss heal left and right at the moment and I die alot because I can't get myself healed because my button bar "hangs" on one thing that it can't do for some reason and won't move onto the next thing, being my heal.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Originally posted by Elnator Agreed,They need to tweak the XP gain from inspiration buffs so that entertainers can make up the difference. But overall the Entertainers and Doctors out there did NOT get "screwed" as badly as the vocal folk would have you believe. My best friend plays a Doctor and says it's tons more fun now. He doesn't have to spend millions on components for buffs unless he's feeling really masochistic because he can do just about anything without them. Stims are still a hot commodity as they allow anyone to use them. And CM's (and even normal medics) now have a very useful role in PVE and PVP combat that doesn't include Mind-bombing everyone with AOE's.
your friend may have liked the changes to doctor, but the majority of doctors do/did not. what they did to doctor was nearly as shameful as it was to Armorsmith, removing all crafting to BE, changing most of the medical resource requirements to insane amounts, rendering alot of high quality doc resources useless by changing schematic requirements to differing resources, eliminating the "medicine-based" healing in favor of Fantasy-style "magic" healing, then allowing medics to be nearly as powerful as the doctor themselves in their heals..... stims heal better than the doctor can heal, with the only penalty being the time waiting on its reuse.
the new buffs are barely worth getting in the new system, so why bother? CM is a better option in combat than doc is, hence why you are seeing most docs respec away from the useless profession that it is now.
dont sit there and tell me that doctor didnt get the screw-over by the CU because that is an out and out lie. doctor is now the cleric's of SWG in their Fantasy-style CU, and frankly i find that very degrading to what SWG used to be. SWG is just a copied version of other mmorphs now with Star Wars skins.
enjoy it is all i can say, they wont get any more cash from this customer. if i had wanted fantasy gaming, i would have bought WoW or EQ or whatever.
Originally posted by Erillion My estimate is that about 20 % have quit or are in the process of quitting the game. Those figures include the people that pressed the cancellation button but still have prepayed for 1-3 months. But keep in mind that a large percentage of these cancellations consist of buff bot secondary accounts ... something which you dont need anymore in the new system. Have fun Erillion
Hey, Erillion? I was 100% live. From novice entertainer to Master ID. I was also a single and very dedicated account. But you're right about one thing. I am no longer needed in SWG. And you, along with a small number of other little CU fanbois have reinforced the message from SoE that people who do NOT prefer to join the happy-fun-group-hunt grind don't matter anymore. I find it hard to believe that you are or have ever played a pure crafter by your stated opinions. It really boggles the mind.
I think it's ironinc that the same people who celebrate the conception that the CU is clearing out unwelcome leet kids who only detract from play are sounding an awful lot like those kids you think you're getting rid of -- rather than the quiet 30+ crowd that stood up, screamed bloody murder and actually left... and has been vocally mourning the loss of what WE found to be an amazing game experience -- to cater to a bunch of snide, constantly whining leet kids...
Go figure.
I would have had a lot more respect for you if you didn't think it was neccessary to brand all of we SWG exiles as the very thing your posts make you resemble. Personally, I don't care if you like the CU or hate it. If you like it, more power to you. YOU still have a game. But watch your mouth about those of us who have been ripped off by SoE because we aren't their new target demographic -- which is the under 18 console crowd.
Originally posted by azhrarn Originally posted by Erillion My estimate is that about 20 % have quit or are in the process of quitting the game. Those figures include the people that pressed the cancellation button but still have prepayed for 1-3 months. But keep in mind that a large percentage of these cancellations consist of buff bot secondary accounts ... something which you dont need anymore in the new system. Have fun Erillion Hey, Erillion? I was 100% live. From novice entertainer to Master ID. I was also a single and very dedicated account. But you're right about one thing. I am no longer needed in SWG. And you, along with a small number of other little CU fanbois have reinforced the message from SoE that people who do NOT prefer to join the happy-fun-group-hunt grind don't matter anymore. I find it hard to believe that you are or have ever played a pure crafter by your stated opinions. It really boggles the mind. I think it's ironinc that the same people who celebrate the conception that the CU is clearing out unwelcome leet kids who only detract from play are sounding an awful lot like those kids you think you're getting rid of -- rather than the quiet 30+ crowd that stood up, screamed bloody murder and actually left... and has been vocally mourning the loss of what WE found to be an amazing game experience -- to cater to a bunch of snide, constantly whining leet kids... Go figure. I would have had a lot more respect for you if you didn't think it was neccessary to brand all of we SWG exiles as the very thing your posts make you resemble. Personally, I don't care if you like the CU or hate it. If you like it, more power to you. YOU still have a game. But watch your mouth about those of us who have been ripped off by SoE because we aren't their new target demographic -- which is the under 18 console crowd.
Great post Azhrarn
I too was a 100% ATK Master Dancer... was at the keyboard from novice to master, pretty much. Had to take some bathroom and food breaks ya know
But, people like Erillion or whatever, and other fanbois will come in here and use the same old line... "you are just mad cause you are no longer l33t". I'm trying to think what was so l33t about being a master dancer/master creature handler????? Even my TKM/Master Doctor wasn't l33t. I didn't have any uber weapons, I didn't have the best of the best armor.... and I even got my doctor experience out in combat, grouping with my small group of regular friends, go figure.
Anyway, I don't want to detract from your great post. I think the fanbois and girls really need to wake up and realize that a lot of the negativity towards the CU has nothing to do with losing l33t status. It's about releasing crappy, buggy content that we are expected to pay to beta test in live... and then making a lot of the most rewarding professions useless (crafters, entertainers, doctors, creature handler)
I was a hard core swg player. Not some l33t kiddie as some moron stated, swg whad the magic ability to branch out certian players, the dancers, and crafters... and medics. This was done away with and made swg in an eq2 clone, attack of the clones..
I think most of the cu supporters are newbs who never really experienced the game or are there by soe, just to make their screw up uplook good, I mean in the forums.. all of sudden we had new posters from cu day one posting how great this piece of crap was.
Thanks, Esclavo. That might be the first nice thing someone has said to me in a forum in the last week following any post I've made trying to express how I feel over being for all intents and purposes robbed of my favorite game. Kinda makes me feel a little less angry and depressed.
I would have had a lot more respect for you if you didn't think it was neccessary to brand all of we SWG exiles as the very thing your posts make you resemble. Personally, I don't care if you like the CU or hate it. If you like it, more power to you. YOU still have a game. But watch your mouth about those of us who have been ripped off by SoE because we aren't their new target demographic -- which is the under 18 console crowd.
Would you care to show me the posts here on this forum where I say that those who left are only the LEET trash talkers and God-mode solo players and under 18 kiddies etc. ? Where I brand the "SWG exiles" in ANY way ? Make sure these are really MY posts and not someone elses.
Have fun searching ..... that might take some time.
I left right after they changed it to Star Wars: Jedi's Galaxy. People are always saying it must be Lucas arts screwing it up, but have you played any other Lucas arts games? Most of them are awesome! As for blaming SOE, I did that when I left, but turns out, the only fault they have is keeping the dev staff they have. Been playing EQII for a few months now, and while I am leaving that (It's just not my cup of tea) it has no where near the aggrevation that SWG does. It's time people started blaming the idiots that deserve it, and stop looking to scapegoat Lucas arts and SOE.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. --Aristotle
OK, time for a response directly to the original subject of the thread. I did some checking, first the why, then how, then the what I've seen.
When seeing what's below bear in mind I hadn't cancelled until the MMORPG and IGN propaganda pieces appeared. Until then, while I knew the CU was a huge step back, I still had hope that LA would take the game away from SOE, give it to someone that cared and things could be salvaged. As more and more people indicated in-game, in-forums and on the petition that they would be leaving I had some concern as to whether the game would survive until then without server consolidations. On cancelling there was still time left on my account and morbid curiosity made me finish my checking. Spurred on by some SOE cheerleaders in forums asserting they were actually seeing more people in-game than previously, which certainly wasn't matching what anyone I know was seeing.
As the CU went live mid-week and a couple servers had issues I figure the real impact wouldn't be seen until at least past the first weekend after it came out. Let's face it, except the single propaganda email from SOE many casual players wouldn't have known anything about it as they don't read forums often if at all. So starting Monday until today I did a quick jump planet to planet doing player searches to see how many there were compared to previously. These were done between 10 PM and midnight EST (no it didn't take 2 hours, just not the same time every night ), early enough most East coast people would be still on, late enough most West coasters would be on too.
Benchmark: A week or two prior to the CU's appearance on TC I accidentally did a blank player search on Yavin. Well after the exodous to WoW so numbers were already well below peak. Yet, at 11:15 AM on a Tuesday (I work shifts) I still received the truncated search result of 100. I never did a test to see how many were online at peak hours pre-CU (didn't realize it would be useful at the time). However, given how empty (for the time) the server seemed in my travels that gaming session and how many more there obviously were at other times, I think it would be conservative to estimate peak time population for the server to be over 5000.
Results: I've never heard any but those with the most rose-coloured glasses suggest population is up. Even most of the SOE cheerleaders will concede that large numbers have left. I think anyone that's logged on has at least suspected that most have left, though also suspecting not all the 75-80% dis-approving the CU did so because hey, some people just like Star Wars too much. Now here's the shocker: Weekday nights (Mon-Thur) total server population never exceeded 250 Weekend nights (Fri-Sun) total server population never exceeded 700 I did a final check at 2 places before posting this, Correllia had 43 people on the entire planet (33 in Coronet) and to go back to my benchmark I logged out on Yavin and my departure left a total of 3 people on the entire planet .
Way to go SOE, even Jar Jar Binks didn't drive away such a high percentage of Star Wars fans This game is officially dead, it has exceeded the tipping point, so many have left that even those that like the CU are leaving because all their friends are gone and what's the point of an MMO if you have to group to survive but there's nobody left to group with?
Erillion, every counterpost you make praising the CU to an upset SWG exile is SOAKED in contempt and communicates to the reader that you feel that we are somehow inferior for having a playstyle that the CU is hostile to. Your comment that most of what left from the entertainment professions was the lowest common denominator -- buffbots -- was verging on openly insulting and inciting.
It is plain that you have no respect whatsoever for a person who did the sensible thing in a scenario where they had a choice of staying, paying and enduring a system that was completely hostile to their style of play and gaming needs, brought to them by a company that has serious honesty and communications problems and a long history of not carrying out their promises. Perhaps you feel it would be preferable that people in such a position continue to feed the proverbial dog that bites them, and continue to offer their hand for that dog to gnaw on -- but that is just stupid.
I'm a lot of things, but stupid is NOT one of them.
If you really didn't mean to come across in this manner, you might want to take a long, hard re-read on what you've posted and try to even slightly place yourself in the place of the people reading. I'm not exactly sure who is worse -- you or the kiddies like fawd who take less words and make it more blatant. Either way, there is no excuse for slapping people around just because they're down and loathe something that you love without cutting on YOU for liking it.
I'll admit I'm no diplomat when I'm upset. But I do TRY to take people's feelings into consideration and am not the type to crucify them or treat them with contempt simply because they don't agree with me or dislike something I adore. But if I percieve myself to be insulted, slighted or slapped without very good justification, I will turn around and give as good as I got -- often better.
Because you seem to be genuinely interested in helping those who survived the CU, I haven't verbally hauled off and given you the real riot act. People in the CU, if my experience of it is ANY indication, need all the help they can get, and I don't want to stand in the way of that happening. But I'm not going to accept your flip, condescending tone towards those of us who have left who either were or were becoming solid pillars of the community on our servers before the CU came along and blew us out of the game.
Now i dont care whether u like the CU or u don't, the bottom line is you would have to be the most ignorant person alive to not see how many people the CU BURNT!! i mean the list could go on for days!! this game was STOLEN from thousands, me included!! months on top of months of hard work..ERASED, millions upon millions of credits invested in , loot, food, armor, weapons, USELESS!!!
AND THATS JUST SCRATCHIN THE SURFACE, we wont bother you with the boring details of professions, DESTROYED!!
i mean c'mon, this is not how to treat people who played with a passion unrivaled, who spent hours/days/weeks/months/YEARS, in a 2nd world thehy called their own......who BUILT this game from the ground up, FURNISHED entire worlds with houses, factories, shops, CITIES!! made it a living breathing economy(for us AND soe)
soe didnt ignore us, they pissed on us, they'll never get a cent from me
SonofaGhost ..... interesting method, but keep in mind that you only count those that have made their character searchable in the options section. And from experience I know that at least half of the people I know have disabled the search option (we did a poll once about that, while we were fighting in a guild war).
Did you check the planet Kashyyyk ? A great percentage of people online are checking out the planet of the Wookiees right now, so other planets will have significantly lower populations at the moment.
Also if you did this check in the month before CU, a large percentage of people have been playing on Test Center to evaluate the Combat Revamp, which may also influence numbers on live servers.
Originally posted by azhrarn I hope we understand one another now.
Obviously not, but that cant be helped. You misunderstand one or more of my posts and I can do nothing about it. My remark about buffbots in one of the previous posts was not speculative, but was counting on experience. Cancelled DOCTOR buffbots are far more common than entertainer buffbots, because one or two 24-7 entertainer buffbots can in essence serve the population of an entire server. You wont find any post where I say "entertainer = buffbot"..... some of the finest people I know in game are entertainers, my guild leader amongst them.
If you read contempt or insults into my postings ..... /shrug .... so be it ... thats your interpretation. If you feel slapped around , I can do nothing about it. If you think I have no respect for the people who left, you cant be farer from the truth. I have many friends who left and I am still in contact with them.
Erillion, every counterpost you make praising the CU to an upset SWG exile is SOAKED in contempt and communicates to the reader that you feel that we are somehow inferior for having a playstyle that the CU is hostile to. Your comment that most of what left from the entertainment professions was the lowest common denominator -- buffbots -- was verging on openly insulting and inciting.
Azharn, wont post the rest but couldnt agree with you more. To bad the one person that actually needs to "get it" wont. fanbois go figure...shrug
The CU certainly did have a negative effect for a lot of existing players, but many people quit last year when the news broke in August that the CU would be delayed. People quit during the Holocraze. People quit with the low turnover in July '03 release. SOE is used to people leaving the game.
Not to sound like a SOE corporate schill, but what they've done is invested into a different vision for the future of the game at the expense of pissing off present players. Players who had grown a little too used to "I'm going to shoot steroids and go out into the field alone and hunt beasts for 6 STRAIGHT hours!" I mean, those are the main contingent of people who are leaving.
The old system was terrible. 9 HAM bars... NINE!??! All nine of which get wounds, and if any one of them hits 0, you're dead? You people LIKED that? Composite armor where you had to "State Migrate" just to barely wear everything but your bracers.
Anyway, complaints about the old system aside, yes, there are lots of people leaving, but I'm also seeing relatively high player activity still, and I'm on Bria - probably THE server where players in the old system thrived.
I do think this game could afford to do a server merge at some point, if just to keep populations high and spread out. But, we're hardly to a point where no one can function in the game. I found plenty of weapons and armor, I found people to heal my wounds, and I found people to group up with. And I know I wasn't the only one.
Mr_Man ... Bria was known as the powergamer server .. both in crafting and combat. With some crazy legendary weapons and people having farms of 500 harvesters.
How is Bria post-CU ? How many of the elite PvP people just fainted cleanly away after they saw their UBER toys cut down to more sensible damage caps ? The server seemed to me to be a bit too "competitive" (aka Bria usually found and reported exploits first :-) On the other hand PvP under the new rules is seeing a major comeback ... on Bria too I guess.
Originally posted by Erillion And concerning crafters ... I consider myself primarily a crafter (shipwright + artisan) .. and I still have combat level 60, which allows me free reign on every planet, but I have to be careful when solo on the pure adventure planets like Dathomir. Not to mention that i can use just about ANY weapon that is not specifically tied to a Master Combat Profession title. So unless you take NO fighting skills whatsoever you can pack quite a punch and use 90 % of all weapons. Have fun Erillion
Primary crafters haven't mastered an elite combat profession to the tune of Combat Level 60, Erillion. You're a combat-heavy hybrid crafter. Stop blowing smoke up the skirts of people who want to be REAL crafters.
I am a master in my crafting profession. I have vendors to sell my items. I craft all the precursor items I need myself. I harvest my own resources. I run factories.
PRIMARY crafters invest their skillpoints into crafting trees. They don't HAVE the points to get to CL 60, because they've gone towards mastering artisan and the elite crafting trees that inspire them most.
Under the current system, elite combat masteries take even MORE skillpoints than they did under the old system, making them even less available to the real crafter. The best a level 60 combat character can hope for as far as crafting goes is hybrid at best.
Don't pound your chest and roar how crafty you are if you've mastered ANY elite combat profession, and don't try to kid anyone that the life of a real crafter in New SWG is easy and fun using yourself as an example. It's a sham.
You're just a combat bunny that dabbles in crafting.
Comments
I usually have to hit ESC atleast 3 times now to clear my target, which as a medic is how I target myself (somtimes) because I cannot always heal myself if I am targetting on an NPC. It gets pretty miserable trying to target manage trying to use their new system
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I think they should do the same as i see in other games ... if you have an enemy targetted and press the bacta shot heal button, it should heal you instead .. without the need to Switch target to oneself.
And if I have a group member targetted it should auto-attack any enemy HE has targetted while I keep healing him.
Have fun
Erillion
It does, usually. But if you have a corpse targetted it can fail. You can also get hung on a target and have to multiple click another persons health bar to get onto them properly. I miss heal left and right at the moment and I die alot because I can't get myself healed because my button bar "hangs" on one thing that it can't do for some reason and won't move onto the next thing, being my heal.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
your friend may have liked the changes to doctor, but the majority of doctors do/did not. what they did to doctor was nearly as shameful as it was to Armorsmith, removing all crafting to BE, changing most of the medical resource requirements to insane amounts, rendering alot of high quality doc resources useless by changing schematic requirements to differing resources, eliminating the "medicine-based" healing in favor of Fantasy-style "magic" healing, then allowing medics to be nearly as powerful as the doctor themselves in their heals..... stims heal better than the doctor can heal, with the only penalty being the time waiting on its reuse.
the new buffs are barely worth getting in the new system, so why bother? CM is a better option in combat than doc is, hence why you are seeing most docs respec away from the useless profession that it is now.
dont sit there and tell me that doctor didnt get the screw-over by the CU because that is an out and out lie. doctor is now the cleric's of SWG in their Fantasy-style CU, and frankly i find that very degrading to what SWG used to be. SWG is just a copied version of other mmorphs now with Star Wars skins.
enjoy it is all i can say, they wont get any more cash from this customer. if i had wanted fantasy gaming, i would have bought WoW or EQ or whatever.
Hey, Erillion? I was 100% live. From novice entertainer to Master ID. I was also a single and very dedicated account. But you're right about one thing. I am no longer needed in SWG. And you, along with a small number of other little CU fanbois have reinforced the message from SoE that people who do NOT prefer to join the happy-fun-group-hunt grind don't matter anymore. I find it hard to believe that you are or have ever played a pure crafter by your stated opinions. It really boggles the mind.
I think it's ironinc that the same people who celebrate the conception that the CU is clearing out unwelcome leet kids who only detract from play are sounding an awful lot like those kids you think you're getting rid of -- rather than the quiet 30+ crowd that stood up, screamed bloody murder and actually left... and has been vocally mourning the loss of what WE found to be an amazing game experience -- to cater to a bunch of snide, constantly whining leet kids...
Go figure.
I would have had a lot more respect for you if you didn't think it was neccessary to brand all of we SWG exiles as the very thing your posts make you resemble. Personally, I don't care if you like the CU or hate it. If you like it, more power to you. YOU still have a game. But watch your mouth about those of us who have been ripped off by SoE because we aren't their new target demographic -- which is the under 18 console crowd.
_______________________
Kote lo'shebs'ul narit
Great post Azhrarn
I too was a 100% ATK Master Dancer... was at the keyboard from novice to master, pretty much. Had to take some bathroom and food breaks ya know
But, people like Erillion or whatever, and other fanbois will come in here and use the same old line... "you are just mad cause you are no longer l33t". I'm trying to think what was so l33t about being a master dancer/master creature handler????? Even my TKM/Master Doctor wasn't l33t. I didn't have any uber weapons, I didn't have the best of the best armor.... and I even got my doctor experience out in combat, grouping with my small group of regular friends, go figure.
Anyway, I don't want to detract from your great post. I think the fanbois and girls really need to wake up and realize that a lot of the negativity towards the CU has nothing to do with losing l33t status. It's about releasing crappy, buggy content that we are expected to pay to beta test in live... and then making a lot of the most rewarding professions useless (crafters, entertainers, doctors, creature handler)
I was a hard core swg player. Not some l33t kiddie as some moron stated, swg whad the magic ability to branch out certian players, the dancers, and crafters... and medics. This was done away with and made swg in an eq2 clone, attack of the clones..
I think most of the cu supporters are newbs who never really experienced the game or are there by soe, just to make their screw up uplook good, I mean in the forums.. all of sudden we had new posters from cu day one posting how great this piece of crap was.
killed 6 accounts.... and screw you soe.
_______________________
Kote lo'shebs'ul narit
Would you care to show me the posts here on this forum where I say that those who left are only the LEET trash talkers and God-mode solo players and under 18 kiddies etc. ? Where I brand the "SWG exiles" in ANY way ? Make sure these are really MY posts and not someone elses.
Have fun searching ..... that might take some time.
Have fun
Erillion
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
--Aristotle
OK, time for a response directly to the original subject of the thread. I did some checking, first the why, then how, then the what I've seen.
When seeing what's below bear in mind I hadn't cancelled until the MMORPG and IGN propaganda pieces appeared. Until then, while I knew the CU was a huge step back, I still had hope that LA would take the game away from SOE, give it to someone that cared and things could be salvaged. As more and more people indicated in-game, in-forums and on the petition that they would be leaving I had some concern as to whether the game would survive until then without server consolidations. On cancelling there was still time left on my account and morbid curiosity made me finish my checking. Spurred on by some SOE cheerleaders in forums asserting they were actually seeing more people in-game than previously, which certainly wasn't matching what anyone I know was seeing.
As the CU went live mid-week and a couple servers had issues I figure the real impact wouldn't be seen until at least past the first weekend after it came out. Let's face it, except the single propaganda email from SOE many casual players wouldn't have known anything about it as they don't read forums often if at all. So starting Monday until today I did a quick jump planet to planet doing player searches to see how many there were compared to previously. These were done between 10 PM and midnight EST (no it didn't take 2 hours, just not the same time every night
), early enough most East coast people would be still on, late enough most West coasters would be on too.
Benchmark: A week or two prior to the CU's appearance on TC I accidentally did a blank player search on Yavin. Well after the exodous to WoW so numbers were already well below peak. Yet, at 11:15 AM on a Tuesday (I work shifts) I still received the truncated search result of 100. I never did a test to see how many were online at peak hours pre-CU (didn't realize it would be useful at the time). However, given how empty (for the time) the server seemed in my travels that gaming session and how many more there obviously were at other times, I think it would be conservative to estimate peak time population for the server to be over 5000.
Results: I've never heard any but those with the most rose-coloured glasses suggest population is up. Even most of the SOE cheerleaders will concede that large numbers have left. I think anyone that's logged on has at least suspected that most have left, though also suspecting not all the 75-80% dis-approving the CU did so because hey, some people just like Star Wars too much. Now here's the shocker:
Weekday nights (Mon-Thur) total server population never exceeded 250
Weekend nights (Fri-Sun) total server population never exceeded 700
I did a final check at 2 places before posting this, Correllia had 43 people on the entire planet (33 in Coronet) and to go back to my benchmark I logged out on Yavin and my departure left a total of 3 people on the entire planet .
Way to go SOE, even Jar Jar Binks didn't drive away such a high percentage of Star Wars fans
This game is officially dead, it has exceeded the tipping point, so many have left that even those that like the CU are leaving because all their friends are gone and what's the point of an MMO if you have to group to survive but there's nobody left to group with? 
Erillion, every counterpost you make praising the CU to an upset SWG exile is SOAKED in contempt and communicates to the reader that you feel that we are somehow inferior for having a playstyle that the CU is hostile to. Your comment that most of what left from the entertainment professions was the lowest common denominator -- buffbots -- was verging on openly insulting and inciting.
It is plain that you have no respect whatsoever for a person who did the sensible thing in a scenario where they had a choice of staying, paying and enduring a system that was completely hostile to their style of play and gaming needs, brought to them by a company that has serious honesty and communications problems and a long history of not carrying out their promises. Perhaps you feel it would be preferable that people in such a position continue to feed the proverbial dog that bites them, and continue to offer their hand for that dog to gnaw on -- but that is just stupid.
I'm a lot of things, but stupid is NOT one of them.
If you really didn't mean to come across in this manner, you might want to take a long, hard re-read on what you've posted and try to even slightly place yourself in the place of the people reading. I'm not exactly sure who is worse -- you or the kiddies like fawd who take less words and make it more blatant. Either way, there is no excuse for slapping people around just because they're down and loathe something that you love without cutting on YOU for liking it.
I'll admit I'm no diplomat when I'm upset. But I do TRY to take people's feelings into consideration and am not the type to crucify them or treat them with contempt simply because they don't agree with me or dislike something I adore. But if I percieve myself to be insulted, slighted or slapped without very good justification, I will turn around and give as good as I got -- often better.
Because you seem to be genuinely interested in helping those who survived the CU, I haven't verbally hauled off and given you the real riot act. People in the CU, if my experience of it is ANY indication, need all the help they can get, and I don't want to stand in the way of that happening. But I'm not going to accept your flip, condescending tone towards those of us who have left who either were or were becoming solid pillars of the community on our servers before the CU came along and blew us out of the game.
I hope we understand one another now.
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Now i dont care whether u like the CU or u don't, the bottom line is you would have to be the most ignorant person alive to not see how many people the CU BURNT!! i mean the list could go on for days!! this game was STOLEN from thousands, me included!! months on top of months of hard work..ERASED, millions upon millions of credits invested in , loot, food, armor, weapons, USELESS!!!
AND THATS JUST SCRATCHIN THE SURFACE, we wont bother you with the boring details of professions, DESTROYED!!
i mean c'mon, this is not how to treat people who played with a passion unrivaled, who spent hours/days/weeks/months/YEARS, in a 2nd world thehy called their own......who BUILT this game from the ground up, FURNISHED entire worlds with houses, factories, shops, CITIES!! made it a living breathing economy(for us AND soe)
soe didnt ignore us, they pissed on us, they'll never get a cent from me
SonofaGhost ..... interesting method, but keep in mind that you only count those that have made their character searchable in the options section. And from experience I know that at least half of the people I know have disabled the search option (we did a poll once about that, while we were fighting in a guild war).
Did you check the planet Kashyyyk ? A great percentage of people online are checking out the planet of the Wookiees right now, so other planets will have significantly lower populations at the moment.
Also if you did this check in the month before CU, a large percentage of people have been playing on Test Center to evaluate the Combat Revamp, which may also influence numbers on live servers.
Have fun
Erillion
Obviously not, but that cant be helped. You misunderstand one or more of my posts and I can do nothing about it. My remark about buffbots in one of the previous posts was not speculative, but was counting on experience. Cancelled DOCTOR buffbots are far more common than entertainer buffbots, because one or two 24-7 entertainer buffbots can in essence serve the population of an entire server. You wont find any post where I say "entertainer = buffbot"..... some of the finest people I know in game are entertainers, my guild leader amongst them.
If you read contempt or insults into my postings ..... /shrug .... so be it ... thats your interpretation. If you feel slapped around , I can do nothing about it. If you think I have no respect for the people who left, you cant be farer from the truth. I have many friends who left and I am still in contact with them.
Have fun (whereever you go from here)
Erillion
Erillion, every counterpost you make praising the CU to an upset SWG exile is SOAKED in contempt and communicates to the reader that you feel that we are somehow inferior for having a playstyle that the CU is hostile to. Your comment that most of what left from the entertainment professions was the lowest common denominator -- buffbots -- was verging on openly insulting and inciting.
Azharn, wont post the rest but couldnt agree with you more. To bad the one person that actually needs to "get it" wont. fanbois go figure...shrug
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
The CU certainly did have a negative effect for a lot of existing players, but many people quit last year when the news broke in August that the CU would be delayed. People quit during the Holocraze. People quit with the low turnover in July '03 release. SOE is used to people leaving the game.
Not to sound like a SOE corporate schill, but what they've done is invested into a different vision for the future of the game at the expense of pissing off present players. Players who had grown a little too used to "I'm going to shoot steroids and go out into the field alone and hunt beasts for 6 STRAIGHT hours!" I mean, those are the main contingent of people who are leaving.
The old system was terrible. 9 HAM bars... NINE!??! All nine of which get wounds, and if any one of them hits 0, you're dead? You people LIKED that? Composite armor where you had to "State Migrate" just to barely wear everything but your bracers.
Anyway, complaints about the old system aside, yes, there are lots of people leaving, but I'm also seeing relatively high player activity still, and I'm on Bria - probably THE server where players in the old system thrived.
I do think this game could afford to do a server merge at some point, if just to keep populations high and spread out. But, we're hardly to a point where no one can function in the game. I found plenty of weapons and armor, I found people to heal my wounds, and I found people to group up with. And I know I wasn't the only one.
I've been preaching server consolidation for a long time. I believe it would be difficult, but worth the effort.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
Mr_Man ... Bria was known as the powergamer server .. both in crafting and combat. With some crazy legendary weapons and people having farms of 500 harvesters.
How is Bria post-CU ? How many of the elite PvP people just fainted cleanly away after they saw their UBER toys cut down to more sensible damage caps ? The server seemed to me to be a bit too "competitive" (aka Bria usually found and reported exploits first :-) On the other hand PvP under the new rules is seeing a major comeback ... on Bria too I guess.
Have fun
Erillion
Primary crafters haven't mastered an elite combat profession to the tune of Combat Level 60, Erillion. You're a combat-heavy hybrid crafter. Stop blowing smoke up the skirts of people who want to be REAL crafters.
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Pray tell ... what is a REAL crafter ?
I am a master in my crafting profession. I have vendors to sell my items. I craft all the precursor items I need myself. I harvest my own resources. I run factories.
Can a REAL crafter do more than that ?
Have fun
Erillion
PRIMARY crafters invest their skillpoints into crafting trees. They don't HAVE the points to get to CL 60, because they've gone towards mastering artisan and the elite crafting trees that inspire them most.
Under the current system, elite combat masteries take even MORE skillpoints than they did under the old system, making them even less available to the real crafter. The best a level 60 combat character can hope for as far as crafting goes is hybrid at best.
Don't pound your chest and roar how crafty you are if you've mastered ANY elite combat profession, and don't try to kid anyone that the life of a real crafter in New SWG is easy and fun using yourself as an example. It's a sham.
You're just a combat bunny that dabbles in crafting.
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