If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
So you think SWG has more potentional than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I didnt say that it had more potential. One of the big reasons SWG is being shut down is so TOR doesnt split the SW fans. Once LA realizes that TOR isnt the money maker they think it is they will allow SWG to keep going because by that point it will have no effect on TORs mediocre numbers.
Interesting split in the playerbase, 5 people paying for SWG and several million likely to pay for TOR. i'm no fan of TOR but nothing so far has pointed to it getting 'mediocre' numbers.
SWG has been clinging on for a while now, TOR may have heralded the end but the root cause of SWG's death has little to do with the new mmo.
I would say that TOR was the whole cause, as if TOR was not in production, LA would have put more attention to SWG, and fixed it up. but instead they just ignored it and focussd on TOR.
It needed more that 'fixing up' it needed a complete rework from the ground up and some kind of focus on it's identity and who it was trying to appeal to. Scapegoating TOR and LA is a nice get out and all but the fact of the matter is the game was not good enough and has not been for years.
Ask yourself who exactly is the game meant to appeal to?
Does it have the combat mechanics in place to appeal to the pvp crowd? The simple answer is no, it has a shocking pvp system and the game is generally not in the least focused on pvp. So that is that rather large demographic out of the window.
Does it have the high quality pve and quality high level encounters needed to appeal to the ardent pve'r/raiders out there? No, it has heroics lulz. Other titles on the market offer far, far superior pvp. So again that is that massive demographic out of the window.
Which leaves what exactly? Twitch spacers, crafters, sandbox fanatics and the Star Wars fans. So let's look at them shall we..
Twitch spacers would be attracted to the game, but two things occur, up until recently space was the one aspect SOE hadn't totally fucked up because it was the one aspect they left alone. Which doesn't exactly scream competent developer at you now does it. Secondly just what percentage of the mmo playerbase puts twitch space as their central play style and raison d' etre, not a very large one i'd wager.
Crafters. Yep the crafting in SWG is fantastic, but then the economy is broken and is impossible to fix because there are no mechanics in place to drive the economy (player looting, territory control, decay etc etc). This means that it is primed to appeal to people only interested in crafting who don't give a toss about the economical side of the game. A small minority of players one would hesitate to suggest.
Sandbox. Well it's not is it really, it's a lame bastardization of a sandbox which has tried to become a themepark with little to no success. Sandbox fans looking for open skill systems, dynamic, world shaping territory controls and significant world pvp mechanics are not going to be enthralled by the game are they. People can dump houses everywhere and um, well yeah actually that's about as good as it gets. Lots of empty ghost towns lagging up the system.
Fans of the IP. Not getting into the fact that the GCW aspect of the IP means pretty much fuck all in the game coupled with the fact that you have pink ewoks, fairy wings and hot pants all over the place. Relying on the IP alone was always going to put the game in jeopardy as soon as another mmo with the same IP came out.
The sad fact is the game is not good enough and does not appeal to any particular player (or at least not a large enough niche demographic of players) and that has been the case for a long time now. To fix that requires essentially making it a completely different game, which doesn't speak volumes for the thing really.
ALL SWG problems is down to LA just ignoring it.
The atmospheric flight, instant coding to the datapad for transferring vehicles, removal of TCG No-Trade, return of smuggler buffs, Smuggler and Medic profession update in one update etc etc I don't think SOE has worked so hard acros SWGs entire life. SOE have probably done more to SWG in the last few months, than they have in the last few years!
This has also been done on the mininal dev crew it has. If they had more devs, a whole lot more could have been done to SWG, without a doubt, except Bioware came along, and gave LA what they wanted.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
This forum continues to spew mis-information, it's amazing. lol SoE did NOT want SWG closed down, you can blame your beloved LA for that. SoE's SWG license is up in 2012 and LA wanted too much money to renue the license. So unless SoE renues the license passed 2012 (highly doubtful) it will not be going F2P ever.
It needed more that 'fixing up' it needed a complete rework from the ground up and some kind of focus on it's identity and who it was trying to appeal to. Scapegoating TOR and LA is a nice get out and all but the fact of the matter is the game was not good enough and has not been for years.
Ask yourself who exactly is the game meant to appeal to?
Does it have the combat mechanics in place to appeal to the pvp crowd? The simple answer is no, it has a shocking pvp system and the game is generally not in the least focused on pvp. So that is that rather large demographic out of the window.
Does it have the high quality pve and quality high level encounters needed to appeal to the ardent pve'r/raiders out there? No, it has heroics lulz. Other titles on the market offer far, far superior pvp. So again that is that massive demographic out of the window.
Which leaves what exactly? Twitch spacers, crafters, sandbox fanatics and the Star Wars fans. So let's look at them shall we..
Twitch spacers would be attracted to the game, but two things occur, up until recently space was the one aspect SOE hadn't totally fucked up because it was the one aspect they left alone. Which doesn't exactly scream competent developer at you now does it. Secondly just what percentage of the mmo playerbase puts twitch space as their central play style and raison d' etre, not a very large one i'd wager.
Crafters. Yep the crafting in SWG is fantastic, but then the economy is broken and is impossible to fix because there are no mechanics in place to drive the economy (player looting, territory control, decay etc etc). This means that it is primed to appeal to people only interested in crafting who don't give a toss about the economical side of the game. A small minority of players one would hesitate to suggest.
Sandbox. Well it's not is it really, it's a lame bastardization of a sandbox which has tried to become a themepark with little to no success. Sandbox fans looking for open skill systems, dynamic, world shaping territory controls and significant world pvp mechanics are not going to be enthralled by the game are they. People can dump houses everywhere and um, well yeah actually that's about as good as it gets. Lots of empty ghost towns lagging up the system.
Fans of the IP. Not getting into the fact that the GCW aspect of the IP means pretty much fuck all in the game coupled with the fact that you have pink ewoks, fairy wings and hot pants all over the place. Relying on the IP alone was always going to put the game in jeopardy as soon as another mmo with the same IP came out.
The sad fact is the game is not good enough and does not appeal to any particular player (or at least not a large enough niche demographic of players) and that has been the case for a long time now. To fix that requires essentially making it a completely different game, which doesn't speak volumes for the thing really.
ALL SWG problems is down to LA just ignoring it.
The atmospheric flight, instant coding to the datapad for transferring vehicles, removal of TCG No-Trade, return of smuggler buffs, Smuggler and Medic profession update in one update etc etc I don't think SOE has worked so hard acros SWGs entire life. SOE have probably done more to SWG in the last few months, than they have in the last few years!
This has also been done on the mininal dev crew it has. If they had more devs, a whole lot more could have been done to SWG, without a doubt, except Bioware came along, and gave LA what they wanted.
So you didn't address any of the points I raised and instead just said "it's all LA's fault" for all intents and purposes...
The removal of TCG no trade and adding yet more buffs is not going to get in droves of players when the core aspects of the game appeal to little to none of the mmo playerbase.
You think removing no trade from cash shop items is going to suddenly make pvpers or pve raiders think "whoah that's the game for me!!!"?
The game is flawed at the core concept level, updating professions isn't going to do anything except appease the pathetically small playerbase (for a game with such an IP).
I would have thought that with the game being reduced to pretty much just three active servers and soon to be shut down that people would have woken up and smelled the coffee as to just how deep the games problems are. But nope, people still seem to be living in la la land.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
This forum continues to spew mis-information, it's amazing. lol SoE did NOT want SWG closed down, you can blame your beloved LA for that. SoE's SWG license is up in 2012 and LA wanted too much money to renue the license. So unless SoE renues the license passed 2012 (highly doubtful) it will not be going F2P ever.
I think his rather obvious point was, based on his supposition that TOR will c&b, LA will then go back and reduce licence fees to soe as they have all the TOR box sales that they were after.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
No, they didnt 'decide' now to add athmospheric flight. During last fanfaire one of the devs showed they were already checking if they could make it work. This was shortly after the announcement of SWG shutdown. The dev said that he was already testing this.
Nevertheless, any addition now sucks. Each addition will make you think about the coming shutdown.
I also dont see SWG going f2p anymore. Decision isnt in SOE's hands anymore.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
Keep on wishing there bud, ain't never gonna happen in this lifetime.
So you think SWG has more potential than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I think if the two games came out now, with equal graphics, SWG (pre NGE) would absolutely kill SWTOR.
This
I think if Lucas Arts or SOE were smart, they would take SWG down for awhile, redo the graphics, readd the pre-nge game, get rid of the loot is better than crafted items mentality, and do a huge promotion/advertizement the SWG 2.0 would be a success. SWG in its prime did have a good sized player base, and with the newer players coming in after i think it would do well. I would re-sub in a heartbeat.
Remember now SWG has one of the best crafting systems ever, has one of the best housing system ever (minus the ghost houses all over they would have to change that), has one of the best pve set ups ( animals would fight each other, havent seen that in other mo's that i have played), has a decent space combat set up, multiple planets, thousands upon thousands of items, collectable, vet rewards, etc that you can display. TO me SWG was one of the best mmo's out. Lucas Arts killed it with the nge/cu trying to attract the younger crowd (i guess).
Yeah i think SWG would crush TOR if released today along side it polished up. TOR even as much as they are polishing it, still doesnt have half the features SWG did.
If they can somehow manage to get the SW out of the game, then maybe it relaunches. Otherwise this game is dead forever.
It does seem like a cruel joke that they would bring something as cool as flying around and killing each other on the planets after this game is scheduled for demolition. Touche SOE.
Once SWTOR crashes and burns to mediocrity this game will get the green light to go f2p.
We all know the only reason SoE is shutting this down is so LA can soak up every bit of the SW fans into TOR. Once TOR proves itself to be nothing but a normal mmo and not a massive 11+ million sub juggernaught LA will loosen its grip and you will get SWG back
Keep on wishing there bud, ain't never gonna happen in this lifetime.
I have heard this a dozen times about games released in the past 5-10 years. And a dozen games have failed.
As much as i hope it doesnt happen to TOR, since i need my Star Wars mmo of one title or another. But it is possible. But they are bring a lot to the table and its bioware. But EA sucks so....................
of course SWG won't go f2p..it's not SOE's call to shut it down. It's Lucas Arts NOT renewing the license that is FORCING them too.
That isn't accurate, in fact it is completely wrong.
Smedley has already stated that even if LA had allowed them to renew the license, SOE would have declined the offer. SOE no longer considers SWG to be a worthwhile endeavour.
Bottom Line: Even though LA is pulling the license, SOE doesn't want a chance to renew it.
So you think SWG has more potential than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I think if the two games came out now, with equal graphics, SWG (pre NGE) would absolutely kill SWTOR.
This
I think if Lucas Arts or SOE were smart, they would take SWG down for awhile, redo the graphics, readd the pre-nge game, get rid of the loot is better than crafted items mentality, and do a huge promotion/advertizement the SWG 2.0 would be a success. SWG in its prime did have a good sized player base, and with the newer players coming in after i think it would do well. I would re-sub in a heartbeat.
Remember now SWG has one of the best crafting systems ever, has one of the best housing system ever (minus the ghost houses all over they would have to change that), has one of the best pve set ups ( animals would fight each other, havent seen that in other mo's that i have played), has a decent space combat set up, multiple planets, thousands upon thousands of items, collectable, vet rewards, etc that you can display. TO me SWG was one of the best mmo's out. Lucas Arts killed it with the nge/cu trying to attract the younger crowd (i guess).
Yeah i think SWG would crush TOR if released today along side it polished up. TOR even as much as they are polishing it, still doesnt have half the features SWG did.
SWG's graphics are/were the least of its problems. The complete lack of direction and the inability to appeal to the key mmo playerbase demographics are the glaring issues that people somehow seem to be missing.
They could use the new CryEngine3 and it wouldn't solve the gameplay and identity issues the game has. You can polish a turd and all that.
Back when SWG had a decent sized population it was for all intents an purposes a completely different game to what it is now. Nothing short of a massive overhaul from the ground up and a sea change in the direction of the game could ever really stop the rot.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I do wonder if there is a possibility they could re-brand the game and relaunch it? If LucasArts doesn't own any part of the game other than the branding, whose to say they don't redo the artwork, rebrand it under a new sci-fi setting and relaunch as a f2p title?
So you think SWG has more potential than swtor? lol. If swtor cant get 11 million subs, how in the hell would SWG?
I think if the two games came out now, with equal graphics, SWG (pre NGE) would absolutely kill SWTOR.
This
I think if Lucas Arts or SOE were smart, they would take SWG down for awhile, redo the graphics, readd the pre-nge game, get rid of the loot is better than crafted items mentality, and do a huge promotion/advertizement the SWG 2.0 would be a success. SWG in its prime did have a good sized player base, and with the newer players coming in after i think it would do well. I would re-sub in a heartbeat.
Remember now SWG has one of the best crafting systems ever, has one of the best housing system ever (minus the ghost houses all over they would have to change that), has one of the best pve set ups ( animals would fight each other, havent seen that in other mo's that i have played), has a decent space combat set up, multiple planets, thousands upon thousands of items, collectable, vet rewards, etc that you can display. TO me SWG was one of the best mmo's out. Lucas Arts killed it with the nge/cu trying to attract the younger crowd (i guess).
Yeah i think SWG would crush TOR if released today along side it polished up. TOR even as much as they are polishing it, still doesnt have half the features SWG did.
SWG's graphics are/were the least of its problems. The complete lack of direction and the inability to appeal to the key mmo playerbase demographics are the glaring issues that people somehow seem to be missing.
They could use the new CryEngine3 and it wouldn't solve the gameplay and identity issues the game has. You can polish a turd and all that.
Back when SWG had a decent sized population it was for all intents an purposes a completely different game to what it is now. Nothing short of a massive overhaul from the ground up and a sea change in the direction of the game could ever really stop the rot.
Spot on and the truth is the original SWG had a huge impact on me as my first ever mmorpg but once I tried themepark mmo's I realized that was my preference to sandbox style gameplay offered by SWG.
But even given that once the NGE came it astounded me when I realized how little direction this game had thinking about it this way allows me to think there could be something to the whole "blame LA" movement because it is quite obvious SOE did just that and never figured out excactly what this game was going to be.
It should be pretty obvious why they are going to add atmospheric flight. It really has nothing to do with SWG... they are testing a mechanic.
Which you will most likely see this implementation in Planetside 2. (in other words they took the basic system of the "in production" PS2 and wanted to test it.. as opposed to it was written for SWG a few months before shut down).
Sony has a habit of having new features show up in existing MMO's that are actually part of in production games.
PS already has flight, better than that shown for SWG and I doubt they'll be using that engine. Not sure that's the reason as said earlier, prior to the closure announcment they had been working on that mechanic and even though it may not be polished what's the loss in releasing it at this stage.
----- The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Originally posted by superniceguy I would say that TOR was the whole cause, as if TOR was not in production, LA would have put more attention to SWG, and fixed it up. but instead they just ignored it and focussd on TOR.
Originally posted by superniceguy ALL SWG problems is down to LA just ignoring it. The atmospheric flight, instant coding to the datapad for transferring vehicles, removal of TCG No-Trade, return of smuggler buffs, Smuggler and Medic profession update in one update etc etc I don't think SOE has worked so hard acros SWGs entire life. SOE have probably done more to SWG in the last few months, than they have in the last few years! This has also been done on the mininal dev crew it has. If they had more devs, a whole lot more could have been done to SWG, without a doubt, except Bioware came along, and gave LA what they wanted.
Who do you think the developer was? Lucas Arts? No. It was SOE.
SOE holds ALL responsibility for the current state of the game. SOE ignored it. SOE let it die. SOE failed to invest in it. SOE is the ONLY company responsible.
My oldest still plays and will continue until they pull the plug on him! LOL!
The word they're getting is the remaining dev's have pretty much only now figured out the space coding (which makes sense since the word was the dev's wouldn't touch the space portion "back in the day" - after the original crew got the boot). So now that's the games ending why not go crazy and toss it in?
As said you can do ship vs ship PVP but won't be able to shoot up anything on the ground, so no Tie Bomber support when you attack that fort.
Down side is "remember when it took darn near a half an hour to walk out Mos E. spaceport door and over to the quest NPC on the other side of the courtyard because the lag was so bad?" what with all the vehicles, spambots, animals and players?
You just know players are going to buzz the main hangout place causing all kinds of lag. Only thing that may save them will be the low numbers of players now a days.
One reason: development experimentation, now that the game is coming to an end it's a free for all for these devs to do some more learning (half of them are fresh from college in the past year or so).
Originally posted by Kost Originally posted by jmayor of course SWG won't go f2p..it's not SOE's call to shut it down. It's Lucas Arts NOT renewing the license that is FORCING them too.
That isn't accurate, in fact it is completely wrong. Smedley has already stated that even if LA had allowed them to renew the license, SOE would have declined the offer. SOE no longer considers SWG to be a worthwhile endeavour. Bottom Line: Even though LA is pulling the license, SOE doesn't want a chance to renew it. Funny guy Smedley is, back in 2005 he said "The CU is here to stay" then "We are proud to announce the NGE... (blahblahblah goes on about explaining how the NGE is a good thing)" to "We apologize for releasing the NGE too early on you" to "We are not shutting down SWG" to "SWG is no longer worth having on the Station pass as our doesn't generate enough revenue therefor we are shutting SWG down on Dec 15, 2011"
I would say that TOR was the whole cause, as if TOR was not in production, LA would have put more attention to SWG, and fixed it up. but instead they just ignored it and focussd on TOR.
Originally posted by superniceguy
ALL SWG problems is down to LA just ignoring it.
The atmospheric flight, instant coding to the datapad for transferring vehicles, removal of TCG No-Trade, return of smuggler buffs, Smuggler and Medic profession update in one update etc etc I don't think SOE has worked so hard acros SWGs entire life. SOE have probably done more to SWG in the last few months, than they have in the last few years!
This has also been done on the mininal dev crew it has. If they had more devs, a whole lot more could have been done to SWG, without a doubt, except Bioware came along, and gave LA what they wanted.
Who do you think the developer was? Lucas Arts? No. It was SOE.
SOE holds ALL responsibility for the current state of the game. SOE ignored it. SOE let it die. SOE failed to invest in it. SOE is the ONLY company responsible.
Do you know why the NGE happened? I'll give you a hint, not because of SoE.
Originally posted by mrw0lf
I think his rather obvious point was, based on his supposition that TOR will c&b, LA will then go back and reduce licence fees to soe as they have all the TOR box sales that they were after.
It doesn't work that way. LA wants a premium for the use of their SW license.
I would say that TOR was the whole cause, as if TOR was not in production, LA would have put more attention to SWG, and fixed it up. but instead they just ignored it and focussd on TOR.
Originally posted by superniceguy
ALL SWG problems is down to LA just ignoring it.
The atmospheric flight, instant coding to the datapad for transferring vehicles, removal of TCG No-Trade, return of smuggler buffs, Smuggler and Medic profession update in one update etc etc I don't think SOE has worked so hard acros SWGs entire life. SOE have probably done more to SWG in the last few months, than they have in the last few years!
This has also been done on the mininal dev crew it has. If they had more devs, a whole lot more could have been done to SWG, without a doubt, except Bioware came along, and gave LA what they wanted.
Who do you think the developer was? Lucas Arts? No. It was SOE.
SOE holds ALL responsibility for the current state of the game. SOE ignored it. SOE let it die. SOE failed to invest in it. SOE is the ONLY company responsible.
Do you know why the NGE happened? I'll give you a hint, not because of SoE.
Originally posted by mrw0lf
I think his rather obvious point was, based on his supposition that TOR will c&b, LA will then go back and reduce licence fees to soe as they have all the TOR box sales that they were after.
It doesn't work that way. LA wants a premium for the use of their SW license.
SOE has taken flak for various problems in the game's past -- do you think the company will take a reputation hit for this decision, and are you prepared for that?
There's really nothing we can do about it. We've taken some hard-knocks for SWG in years past with the NGE. We've apologized for it. It was a mistake, and not one we're going to make as a company ever again.
Notice he's speaking as the head of SOE and not LA.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
the NGE did not happen because of TOR, TOR wasn't even known to anyone but LA/Bioware until May 2006, even then The NGE happened in Nov 2005 and Bioware started up the project in Dec 2005 (actually earlier as they originally planned it to be KOTOR 3).
The NGE happened because they wanted to WoWify it to draw in more and younger players, which obviously didn't work.
the NGE did not happen because of TOR, TOR wasn't even known to anyone but LA/Bioware until May 2006, even then The NGE happened in Nov 2005 and Bioware started up the project in Dec 2005 (actually earlier as they originally planned it to be KOTOR 3).
The NGE happened because they wanted to WoWify it to draw in more and younger players, which obviously didn't work.
Pretty much. Why would anyone in a live game care about TOR anyway.. People wanted to reproduce the success of WoW.. why emulate a product in early devleopment before anyone even knew what design choices would be made.
Tho I'm sure people knew about the project. Gordon Walton was the lead on SWG while the CU was in testing. He promised it would be done right and not go live until ready. It became pretty clear the CU wasn't going to be done the way he said and one day Gordon was just.. *poof* gone (while the CU was still in testing).
Of course he's left BioWare now but that was where he went. He was one of two guys hired to setup the Austin studio and he was doing all this before the NGE... so I'm pretty sure people that were close friends with Gordon were well aware of the upcoming project.
I just don't see TOR having anything to do with the NGE. In fact if anything another Star Wars MMO would be greater incentive to have a different game.. especially for Lucas Arts. People like different things... best of everything for LA was to be paid license fees while different Star Wars MMO's lured in different types of customers...
of course SWG won't go f2p..it's not SOE's call to shut it down. It's Lucas Arts NOT renewing the license that is FORCING them too.
That isn't accurate, in fact it is completely wrong.
Smedley has already stated that even if LA had allowed them to renew the license, SOE would have declined the offer. SOE no longer considers SWG to be a worthwhile endeavour.
Bottom Line: Even though LA is pulling the license, SOE doesn't want a chance to renew it.
Funny guy Smedley is, back in 2005 he said "The CU is here to stay" then "We are proud to announce the NGE... (blahblahblah goes on about explaining how the NGE is a good thing)" to "We apologize for releasing the NGE too early on you" to "We are not shutting down SWG" to "SWG is no longer worth having on the Station pass as our doesn't generate enough revenue therefor we are shutting SWG down on Dec 15, 2011"
They need to update his pic, this ones 10-15 years old he looks more like Uncle Fester now.
That they add this now is *cencored*!!!, should have been added years ago!
SWG - imagine the original game with atmospheric flight! Would have been unbeatable!
I hope they either strip it for Star Wars references and make their own EQ in Space or that they make a new Sandbox game based upon the original SWG (with that kind of flight).
Comments
Thanking Bioware for that.
This forum continues to spew mis-information, it's amazing. lol SoE did NOT want SWG closed down, you can blame your beloved LA for that. SoE's SWG license is up in 2012 and LA wanted too much money to renue the license. So unless SoE renues the license passed 2012 (highly doubtful) it will not be going F2P ever.
So you didn't address any of the points I raised and instead just said "it's all LA's fault" for all intents and purposes...
The removal of TCG no trade and adding yet more buffs is not going to get in droves of players when the core aspects of the game appeal to little to none of the mmo playerbase.
You think removing no trade from cash shop items is going to suddenly make pvpers or pve raiders think "whoah that's the game for me!!!"?
The game is flawed at the core concept level, updating professions isn't going to do anything except appease the pathetically small playerbase (for a game with such an IP).
I would have thought that with the game being reduced to pretty much just three active servers and soon to be shut down that people would have woken up and smelled the coffee as to just how deep the games problems are. But nope, people still seem to be living in la la land.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I think his rather obvious point was, based on his supposition that TOR will c&b, LA will then go back and reduce licence fees to soe as they have all the TOR box sales that they were after.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
No, they didnt 'decide' now to add athmospheric flight. During last fanfaire one of the devs showed they were already checking if they could make it work. This was shortly after the announcement of SWG shutdown. The dev said that he was already testing this.
Nevertheless, any addition now sucks. Each addition will make you think about the coming shutdown.
I also dont see SWG going f2p anymore. Decision isnt in SOE's hands anymore.
of course SWG won't go f2p..it's not SOE's call to shut it down. It's Lucas Arts NOT renewing the license that is FORCING them too.
c'mon they still have Vanguard going...they wouldn't shut down SWG if they didn't have too.
and because of the license ordeal SWG NEVER had a chance to go F2P
Keep on wishing there bud, ain't never gonna happen in this lifetime.
This
I think if Lucas Arts or SOE were smart, they would take SWG down for awhile, redo the graphics, readd the pre-nge game, get rid of the loot is better than crafted items mentality, and do a huge promotion/advertizement the SWG 2.0 would be a success. SWG in its prime did have a good sized player base, and with the newer players coming in after i think it would do well. I would re-sub in a heartbeat.
Remember now SWG has one of the best crafting systems ever, has one of the best housing system ever (minus the ghost houses all over they would have to change that), has one of the best pve set ups ( animals would fight each other, havent seen that in other mo's that i have played), has a decent space combat set up, multiple planets, thousands upon thousands of items, collectable, vet rewards, etc that you can display. TO me SWG was one of the best mmo's out. Lucas Arts killed it with the nge/cu trying to attract the younger crowd (i guess).
Yeah i think SWG would crush TOR if released today along side it polished up. TOR even as much as they are polishing it, still doesnt have half the features SWG did.
I have heard this a dozen times about games released in the past 5-10 years. And a dozen games have failed.
As much as i hope it doesnt happen to TOR, since i need my Star Wars mmo of one title or another. But it is possible. But they are bring a lot to the table and its bioware. But EA sucks so....................
That isn't accurate, in fact it is completely wrong.
Smedley has already stated that even if LA had allowed them to renew the license, SOE would have declined the offer. SOE no longer considers SWG to be a worthwhile endeavour.
Bottom Line: Even though LA is pulling the license, SOE doesn't want a chance to renew it.
SWG's graphics are/were the least of its problems. The complete lack of direction and the inability to appeal to the key mmo playerbase demographics are the glaring issues that people somehow seem to be missing.
They could use the new CryEngine3 and it wouldn't solve the gameplay and identity issues the game has. You can polish a turd and all that.
Back when SWG had a decent sized population it was for all intents an purposes a completely different game to what it is now. Nothing short of a massive overhaul from the ground up and a sea change in the direction of the game could ever really stop the rot.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I do wonder if there is a possibility they could re-brand the game and relaunch it? If LucasArts doesn't own any part of the game other than the branding, whose to say they don't redo the artwork, rebrand it under a new sci-fi setting and relaunch as a f2p title?
Spot on and the truth is the original SWG had a huge impact on me as my first ever mmorpg but once I tried themepark mmo's I realized that was my preference to sandbox style gameplay offered by SWG.
But even given that once the NGE came it astounded me when I realized how little direction this game had thinking about it this way allows me to think there could be something to the whole "blame LA" movement because it is quite obvious SOE did just that and never figured out excactly what this game was going to be.
In response to the OP...
It should be pretty obvious why they are going to add atmospheric flight. It really has nothing to do with SWG... they are testing a mechanic.
Which you will most likely see this implementation in Planetside 2. (in other words they took the basic system of the "in production" PS2 and wanted to test it.. as opposed to it was written for SWG a few months before shut down).
Sony has a habit of having new features show up in existing MMO's that are actually part of in production games.
PS already has flight, better than that shown for SWG and I doubt they'll be using that engine. Not sure that's the reason as said earlier, prior to the closure announcment they had been working on that mechanic and even though it may not be polished what's the loss in releasing it at this stage.
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
SOE holds ALL responsibility for the current state of the game. SOE ignored it. SOE let it die. SOE failed to invest in it. SOE is the ONLY company responsible.
My oldest still plays and will continue until they pull the plug on him! LOL!
The word they're getting is the remaining dev's have pretty much only now figured out the space coding (which makes sense since the word was the dev's wouldn't touch the space portion "back in the day" - after the original crew got the boot). So now that's the games ending why not go crazy and toss it in?
As said you can do ship vs ship PVP but won't be able to shoot up anything on the ground, so no Tie Bomber support when you attack that fort.
Down side is "remember when it took darn near a half an hour to walk out Mos E. spaceport door and over to the quest NPC on the other side of the courtyard because the lag was so bad?" what with all the vehicles, spambots, animals and players?
You just know players are going to buzz the main hangout place causing all kinds of lag. Only thing that may save them will be the low numbers of players now a days.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
One reason: development experimentation, now that the game is coming to an end it's a free for all for these devs to do some more learning (half of them are fresh from college in the past year or so).
Smedley has already stated that even if LA had allowed them to renew the license, SOE would have declined the offer. SOE no longer considers SWG to be a worthwhile endeavour.
Bottom Line: Even though LA is pulling the license, SOE doesn't want a chance to renew it.
Funny guy Smedley is, back in 2005 he said "The CU is here to stay" then "We are proud to announce the NGE... (blahblahblah goes on about explaining how the NGE is a good thing)" to "We apologize for releasing the NGE too early on you" to "We are not shutting down SWG" to "SWG is no longer worth having on the Station pass as our doesn't generate enough revenue therefor we are shutting SWG down on Dec 15, 2011"
Do you know why the NGE happened? I'll give you a hint, not because of SoE.
It doesn't work that way. LA wants a premium for the use of their SW license.
Cool story bro.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/24/exclusive-smedley-on-the-sunsetting-of-star-wars-galaxies/
SOE has taken flak for various problems in the game's past -- do you think the company will take a reputation hit for this decision, and are you prepared for that?
There's really nothing we can do about it. We've taken some hard-knocks for SWG in years past with the NGE. We've apologized for it. It was a mistake, and not one we're going to make as a company ever again.
Notice he's speaking as the head of SOE and not LA.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
the NGE did not happen because of TOR, TOR wasn't even known to anyone but LA/Bioware until May 2006, even then The NGE happened in Nov 2005 and Bioware started up the project in Dec 2005 (actually earlier as they originally planned it to be KOTOR 3).
The NGE happened because they wanted to WoWify it to draw in more and younger players, which obviously didn't work.
Pretty much. Why would anyone in a live game care about TOR anyway.. People wanted to reproduce the success of WoW.. why emulate a product in early devleopment before anyone even knew what design choices would be made.
Tho I'm sure people knew about the project. Gordon Walton was the lead on SWG while the CU was in testing. He promised it would be done right and not go live until ready. It became pretty clear the CU wasn't going to be done the way he said and one day Gordon was just.. *poof* gone (while the CU was still in testing).
Of course he's left BioWare now but that was where he went. He was one of two guys hired to setup the Austin studio and he was doing all this before the NGE... so I'm pretty sure people that were close friends with Gordon were well aware of the upcoming project.
I just don't see TOR having anything to do with the NGE. In fact if anything another Star Wars MMO would be greater incentive to have a different game.. especially for Lucas Arts. People like different things... best of everything for LA was to be paid license fees while different Star Wars MMO's lured in different types of customers...
They need to update his pic, this ones 10-15 years old he looks more like Uncle Fester now.
Atmospheric flight is amazing!
That they add this now is *cencored*!!!, should have been added years ago!
SWG - imagine the original game with atmospheric flight! Would have been unbeatable!
I hope they either strip it for Star Wars references and make their own EQ in Space or that they make a new Sandbox game based upon the original SWG (with that kind of flight).