DING DING DING!! We have a winner. That really is the main reason SWGs early community was better than modern ones. Though I disagree it was a completely great community. Dickheads of Mortis Consortium? I'm looking right at you.
Its no different than the early online community days of BBss and Newsgroups where like minded people got together to share ideas just for the fun of it, before the taint of ego driven, net tardtality became the social norm.
I agree here. You had a small community of mostly like minded individuals. There were plenty of jackasses though. Bria had its share thats for sure.
Arhgg Bria were noobs B-fin ftw... I so miss the days of the Bria vs Bloodfin forum shootouts.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
the communauty of fallen earth is nice too and a lot of players coming from swg. I can't expect same community on SWTOR, for sure we'll have one of the worst community online, comin from wow and fast food mmos. and i agree with kappadonna. Internet is now total garbage.
Originally posted by Distopia Originally posted by Foomerang
Originally posted by Tardcore
Originally posted by Quirhid Because it was small?
DING DING DING!! We have a winner. That really is the main reason SWGs early community was better than modern ones. Though I disagree it was a completely great community. Dickheads of Mortis Consortium? I'm looking right at you. Its no different than the early online community days of BBss and Newsgroups where like minded people got together to share ideas just for the fun of it, before the taint of ego driven, net tardtality became the social norm.
I agree here. You had a small community of mostly like minded individuals. There were plenty of jackasses though. Bria had its share thats for sure.
Arhgg Bria were noobs B-fin ftw... I so miss the days of the Bria vs Bloodfin forum shootouts. haha yeah. I spent my first 6 months on Bria. Rerolled onto Kettemoor and never looked back.
I think it had to do with the crafting/shop system.
You were depended on other players and they were depending on you as well.
The one thing that creates a good community is player interactions, the more the better. If you can play the game for years without even talking to other players it will affect the community.
Of course, griefing do affect the community as well so exactly how you create a game that will get a great community is rather complicated, I think a lot of Wows problems is comming from the need & greed mechanics.
I'd like to add that SWG in the begining had a slightly more intellectual leaning... or as Nancy McIntyre quoted what was said in many, very many topics on the forums made by some players and perhaps many ex-players "Far too much reading".
It was a sandbox complete with a player crafing driven economy, so if you wanted to be 'successful' you were dependant on other players to help get you where you wanted to go. That level of interdependace was a massive barrier of entry for the console kiddies who just wanted to get in a 'pwn'. Which was good for the community, as the people who tended to gravitate towards SWG at that time (in my circles at least) were more mature Star Wars fans, and not necessarily hardcore gamers.
For a time, SWG was Shangri-f'ing-la for us SW fans.
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
You had to depend on the community to survive. The sheer magnitude of how true that was is impossible to capture in a single post. You had crafted weapons, armor, buff items, social items, housing, pets, mounts, collections, and later space ships, space parts of all kinds - all of these things were only accesible by working with other players. You did not get epic dropped loot or run instanced dungeons repeatedly to get good drops. You got your stuff from people.
It's a hard concept to grasp today. But that's how it was. And the more friends you made, the more power you had. Someone who had a ton of contacts and friends could wield more "power" than anyone by pulling in some favors or contracts, and getting anything accomplished/crafted. Being a jackass and rude to people was a quick way to be shunned by the community, which actually had consequences for your character. Not because you'd be attacked on sight or become some kind of flagged enemy of the state, but because no one would want to do you any favors or work with you to accomplish or craft something.
Short version: It was players who created almost every item and buff in the game. If you were not friendly to players, you had a harder time getting anything. The tool that Sony gave to the players was the ability to build everything.
Also, and I think this was a big part of creating the community, you got ONE character slot per server.
When you take that together with the absolute need to rely on your fellow players for gear, training, buffs, heals etc it encouraged people to behave socially and responsibly to each other.
I remember on my server, Eclipse, people had reputations based on how they behaved and those certainly got around to other players. So in the end I think people behaved better to each other, because it was a game where you really had to "pay it forward" to progress, and if you were an ass you'd soon find people unwilling to help you.
I'd like to add that SWG in the begining had a slightly more intellectual leaning... or as Nancy McIntyre quoted what was said in many, very many topics on the forums made by some players and perhaps many ex-players "Far too much reading". It was a sandbox complete with a player crafing driven economy, so if you wanted to be 'successful' you were dependant on other players to help get you where you wanted to go. That level of interdependace was a massive barrier of entry for the console kiddies who just wanted to get in a 'pwn'. Which was good for the community, as the people who tended to gravitate towards SWG at that time (in my circles at least) were more mature Star Wars fans, and not necessarily hardcore gamers. For a time, SWG was Shangri-f'ing-la for us SW fans.
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Can't resist the chance to post the full cringe inducing quote.
You had to depend on the community to survive. The sheer magnitude of how true that was is impossible to capture in a single post. You had crafted weapons, armor, buff items, social items, housing, pets, mounts, collections, and later space ships, space parts of all kinds - all of these things were only accesible by working with other players. You did not get epic dropped loot or run instanced dungeons repeatedly to get good drops. You got your stuff from people.
It's a hard concept to grasp today. But that's how it was. And the more friends you made, the more power you had. Someone who had a ton of contacts and friends could wield more "power" than anyone by pulling in some favors or contracts, and getting anything accomplished/crafted. Being a jackass and rude to people was a quick way to be shunned by the community, which actually had consequences for your character. Not because you'd be attacked on sight or become some kind of flagged enemy of the state, but because no one would want to do you any favors or work with you to accomplish or craft something.
Short version: It was players who created almost every item and buff in the game. If you were not friendly to players, you had a harder time getting anything. The tool that Sony gave to the players was the ability to build everything.
totally agree:)
This captures a large part of it. In addition, there were non-combat professions to attract just about any personality, and that these professions also relied on player coopperation like crafting did.
The whole game was coorperative from simple crafting to combat. Hunting/leveling groups were commonplace (and also where one would meet many new friends), and the simple decision SOE made to give an XP boost to groups was brilliant. This was a game where some of the planets *required* grouping for survival. In the early days, no one went to Dathomir and walked around by themselves unless they wanted to be killed repeatedly minutes after leaving one of the Outposts. In fact, a fun 'quest' on Dathomir was to take a group and just try to surive without wiping while you ran from one side of the planet to the other (Outpost to Outpost). The mobs were so bad ass, they would chain-pull and wipe groups of people regularly. No one was an all powerful hero and more importantly, few people cared to be a solo hero.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I'd like to add that SWG in the begining had a slightly more intellectual leaning... or as Nancy McIntyre quoted what was said in many, very many topics on the forums made by some players and perhaps many ex-players "Far too much reading".
It was a sandbox complete with a player crafing driven economy, so if you wanted to be 'successful' you were dependant on other players to help get you where you wanted to go. That level of interdependace was a massive barrier of entry for the console kiddies who just wanted to get in a 'pwn'. Which was good for the community, as the people who tended to gravitate towards SWG at that time (in my circles at least) were more mature Star Wars fans, and not necessarily hardcore gamers.
For a time, SWG was Shangri-f'ing-la for us SW fans.
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Can't resist the chance to post the full cringe inducing quote.
It's quotes like this that simply prove the management presiding over SWG had no friggin' idea what was going on in their own game. All they saw was a client program, a database, and a bank account where subscription money went. All that "wondering around" as she put it, was exactly why this game was so brilliant. It's called a virtual world.
It's not hard to see how they so easily dismissed their hardcore player base. They didn't play their own game, and had no idea what made it special to those who did. Even though there was never a chance in hell of them seeing WoW subscription numbers, they could have still had a very successful niche game, just like CCP has with EVE. It could have made them a nice grip of money.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
SWG had a better community before the time it had "social tools" like storyteller stuff. That is because back before then the mmorpg audience was different and in general mmos were built around a more world simulation model which drove community interaction.
An older, more rpg centric community in a sandbox mmorpg will have a "better" community than most modern themepark games, regardless of what artificial social tools you try to add to them.
I agree here. You had a small community of mostly like minded individuals. There were plenty of jackasses though. Bria had its share thats for sure.
Arhgg Bria were noobs B-fin ftw... I so miss the days of the Bria vs Bloodfin forum shootouts.
haha yeah. I spent my first 6 months on Bria. Rerolled onto Kettemoor and never looked back.
The best was whenever a wanderhome player spoke up anywhere. "wanderhome noob, wanderhome.." God I miss those days in SWG.. We loved to hate each other.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Hi, I've been told that SWG had really nice community because "developers provided players with the tools to shape the community". So what were those 'tools'?
It's give and take. and don't be fooled. there's a lot of rose colored glasses going on here. SWG had it's flaws as well. For every utopian player built city...and blah blah no anonomyous LFG feature.. there were botted doc buffs, mass group mission taking to farm rancors for 250k credits. to mod stacking... totally dead NPC towns... to any number of other min max type behaviors and out and out standard issue pric mmo behaviors(griefing, kiting npcs, spawn farming/killing, spam in global chats, bots etc etc).
that being said. there were obvious good points to that game. First was the star wars world. Which was a great jumping off point... familiar world, lore etc etc. Along with that... a fairly wide variety of player races. It was very easy to get into the universe when you could be a rodian or mon calimari or wookiee or twilek or whatever (swtor is making a horrible mistake copping out on this front) along with the races... came a very expanive macro system to facilitate chatting/emotes. Matched that against the very expansive social classes. like dancer, musician... image designer. ...matched with the incredibly nuanced crafting system... where you could custom build, custom name, and custom sell almost any item in the game. Put that with a very open world. with one of the best player housing, world building dynamics ever... and harvesting dynamics. Was a game with enormous potential.
and maybe there is the slight argument to be made for it being earlier in mmorpgs evolution... different markey/demographics. i'd really caution against the "more mature" cause that's a joke. but... there possibly was still a slight slant towards RPG geeks and not hardcore gamer folks with ADD.
I have characters in SWG that i loved playing. and in that game. i never downed a 20 ft tall massive raid boss(i guess tha's not true... kryat dragons were huge..and the acklay thing). never had a glowing purple item rank 262. never hit a "max level" never even had a jedi. and had a flame thrower..gernade tossing commando as well as a master dancer/clothes maker toon. and had a blast in a game where there was nearly zero questing that was worth a damn.
The great shame of SWG was it was a horrible "game" in the sense of it being fun to play for play's sake. the questing dynamic was god aweful. and outside of the player community...or player driven events. the game was a dead lifeless nothing.
which is another prime reason the community was so strong. there was litterally nothing else. every quest was 1 or 2 models. of the exact same process. ...you think. go collect 10 sticks or kill 5 bears a la WoW type quests are repetitive... try ...run to point X (no real rhyme or reason where that point is) kill mound. ...run back to quest terminal
if they had just had a tiny bit better questing... or nudge you along to help people go do something, that wasn't utterly mindless(ie some theme park-ish elements). SWG would have dominated the mmo market... and WoW might have been the sad hindsight commentary people think back on fondly but sadly.
Hi, I've been told that SWG had really nice community because "developers provided players with the tools to shape the community". So what were those 'tools'?
It's give and take. and don't be fooled. there's a lot of rose colored glasses going on here. SWG had it's flaws as well. For every utopian player built city...and blah blah no anonomyous LFG feature.. there were botted doc buffs, mass group mission taking to farm rancors for 250k credits. to mod stacking... totally dead NPC towns... to any number of other min max type behaviors and out and out standard issue pric mmo behaviors(griefing, kiting npcs, spawn farming/killing, spam in global chats, bots etc etc).
As rose colored as my glasses may be, I always acknowledge the game's flaws. To be honest though, they didn't change the way the larger community felt about the game much until the CU. None of those things you mentioned ever made me want to quit the game. They were gripes that we all adjusted to because we were having so much fun otherwise.
Also, leveling in the game was never a focus. Some times, depending on how the game was changed, you could level fast, and sometimes you could level REALLY fast. Even when it was slow back then, a combat power gamer could max a character out in a matter of a couple days. I liked that aspect of it, because you were relatively free to explore all the professions and build combinations without blowing years worth of grinding time. Since the gameplay wasn't focused on leveling through quest areas toward end-game, it didn't really matter that much.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
It was a pve sandbox with optional pvp, plenty of non-combat gameplay, deep crafting with localized markets, dedicated socialy oriented professions, player cities with open world housing, single character servers, and outside of the jedi grind a distinct lack of treadmills. People got attached to their characters and had plenty of time to socialize and form friendships.
A lot of it had to do with only having one character per server per account and unique names. Less anonymity makes people less lilely to act like asses. It was one of the major things that the original SWG devs learned from UO. The massive amount of greifing going on in UO was the main reason for the single character per server limit in SWG.
I'd like to add that SWG in the begining had a slightly more intellectual leaning... or as Nancy McIntyre quoted what was said in many, very many topics on the forums made by some players and perhaps many ex-players "Far too much reading".
It was a sandbox complete with a player crafing driven economy, so if you wanted to be 'successful' you were dependant on other players to help get you where you wanted to go. That level of interdependace was a massive barrier of entry for the console kiddies who just wanted to get in a 'pwn'. Which was good for the community, as the people who tended to gravitate towards SWG at that time (in my circles at least) were more mature Star Wars fans, and not necessarily hardcore gamers.
For a time, SWG was Shangri-f'ing-la for us SW fans.
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Can't resist the chance to post the full cringe inducing quote.
The thing is we already could have seen it coming due to the many topics people made about it, McIntyre just stated what we all already knew from the forums, the complaints simply outnumberd us who wanted fixes and more polish to the game. But it's a shame people only remember what SOE said instead of actually remembering the common complaints we already read from forum posters.
A lot of it had to do with only having one character per server per account and unique names. Less anonymity makes people less lilely to act like asses.
That was a *huge* part of it. You really were stuck with your avatar. Well, short of making an alt account and passing all your credits and gear to that account while you deleted your main... Although I'm not positve you could even delete your character. I know I made toons on other servers just to check stuff out before I committed on my main.
With most new MMO's you're stuck with the "class" you pick from the moment you first log in. This is the reason games like LotRO give you 9 character slots, because if you hate the class, are bored of the class, you have to roll a new toon to try something new.
SWG if you weren't happy with your PROFESSION, you just started over as a new one, with the same avatar, same name, all the same items, and equipment you had before you changed. You only had one character per server, so this was a must. Most starting professions could be leveled in a couple days at most, advanced ones in a week, unless you were really hardcore and could do it faster.
It was freedom. Plain and Simple.
As most people have also stated interdependance meant community building. Player malls, cantina's, guildhalls, player houses and cities.... Pretty much anything you wanted in game could be made by yourself, or another player.
Even if it wasn't Star Wars I really wish someone would copy the original SWG systems.
The developers didn't as much give us the tools, we took the tools we had and made something more of it.
Much more.
Intrepid had the best player events and content in any game ever.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I'd like to add that SWG in the begining had a slightly more intellectual leaning... or as Nancy McIntyre quoted what was said in many, very many topics on the forums made by some players and perhaps many ex-players "Far too much reading".
It was a sandbox complete with a player crafing driven economy, so if you wanted to be 'successful' you were dependant on other players to help get you where you wanted to go. That level of interdependace was a massive barrier of entry for the console kiddies who just wanted to get in a 'pwn'. Which was good for the community, as the people who tended to gravitate towards SWG at that time (in my circles at least) were more mature Star Wars fans, and not necessarily hardcore gamers.
For a time, SWG was Shangri-f'ing-la for us SW fans.
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Can't resist the chance to post the full cringe inducing quote.
The thing is we already could have seen it coming due to the many topics people made about it, McIntyre just stated what we all already knew from the forums, the complaints simply outnumberd us who wanted fixes and more polish to the game. But it's a shame people only remember what SOE said instead of actually remembering the common complaints we already read from forum posters.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I never set foot in the forums until Nov 15th 2005 (when EVERYBODY stepped into the Oforums). So I myself was unaware of any complaints of too much reading (which is ironic).
Interestingly, they have always attributed the changes to feedback outside of the forums, since they have maintained that the forums make up only around 20% of the player base.
I honestly believe it was simply timing. Right place, right time.
SWG was released before email was typical, before texting, at the dawn of high speed internet connections, before XBOX Live or other online services...people created a "community" because they acted like they would have in real life. I think it's really that simple...it was simply a different time.
simple answer really, you had to rely on the community to survive
This is true. In actuallity I would argue that the player cities, when introduced took away from the community.
Some things about the community pre-holo cubes.
You had to rely on other players. No question to it.. you could not effectively solo here. You needed supplies, armor, food, weapons etc... the good stuff came from players.
Cantinas were required. The players were pushed to gather in key locations to recharge stats. This is where the game lost alot when player cities were introduced. When your character walked into a cantina, it was full of life, full of interesting conversations and good times. There were guilds created before the game even launched just for the entertainment portion. Some really great people there.
The crafting... not for the light of heart. It took time, lots of time. And the learning curve in some aspects was incredibly steep compared to other games.
Classes at the time were in no way cookie cutter. You could dabble in quite a bit, and still be viable pve/pvp. This later changed greatly, and classes were forced to specialize.
It wasnt a rush to end game. Sure for some, but not for the majority from what I experienced. People were happy with the diversity, with the challenge. Kind of like playing a game such as Dark Souls, vs Gears of War. Both are fun, but Dark Souls requires quite a bit more from you.. creating an in game feel of depth.
Jedis/Sith were the exception, not the norm. On the flip side, there was no way anyone was going to take out a Jedi 1 v 1, not even 10 v 1. Unless the Jedi grew wreckless.. then the death was permanent.
All of these things played into drawing a pretty unique and fun community. The majority I had come accross were mature, helpful and fun to be around.
I've seen the same dynamics in a few other games as well pre-swg. JumpGate, Klingon Academy to name two.
And no, it was never ideal.. you still had some people you may wish their ISP dropped, but they were far fewer then those of today.
Comments
Arhgg Bria were noobs B-fin ftw... I so miss the days of the Bria vs Bloodfin forum shootouts.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
the communauty of fallen earth is nice too and a lot of players coming from swg. I can't expect same community on SWTOR, for sure we'll have one of the worst community online, comin from wow and fast food mmos. and i agree with kappadonna. Internet is now total garbage.
DING DING DING!! We have a winner. That really is the main reason SWGs early community was better than modern ones. Though I disagree it was a completely great community. Dickheads of Mortis Consortium? I'm looking right at you.
Its no different than the early online community days of BBss and Newsgroups where like minded people got together to share ideas just for the fun of it, before the taint of ego driven, net tardtality became the social norm.
I agree here. You had a small community of mostly like minded individuals. There were plenty of jackasses though. Bria had its share thats for sure.
Arhgg Bria were noobs B-fin ftw... I so miss the days of the Bria vs Bloodfin forum shootouts.
haha yeah. I spent my first 6 months on Bria. Rerolled onto Kettemoor and never looked back.
I think it had to do with the crafting/shop system.
You were depended on other players and they were depending on you as well.
The one thing that creates a good community is player interactions, the more the better. If you can play the game for years without even talking to other players it will affect the community.
Of course, griefing do affect the community as well so exactly how you create a game that will get a great community is rather complicated, I think a lot of Wows problems is comming from the need & greed mechanics.
quality of players have droped off
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
totally agree:)
Also, and I think this was a big part of creating the community, you got ONE character slot per server.
When you take that together with the absolute need to rely on your fellow players for gear, training, buffs, heals etc it encouraged people to behave socially and responsibly to each other.
I remember on my server, Eclipse, people had reputations based on how they behaved and those certainly got around to other players. So in the end I think people behaved better to each other, because it was a game where you really had to "pay it forward" to progress, and if you were an ass you'd soon find people unwilling to help you.
i really think mmos need to try and go back tot he swg pre cu game design just try to release it in better shape
The rest I agree with just needed to fix the little highlighted red part.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Can't resist the chance to post the full cringe inducing quote.This captures a large part of it. In addition, there were non-combat professions to attract just about any personality, and that these professions also relied on player coopperation like crafting did.
The whole game was coorperative from simple crafting to combat. Hunting/leveling groups were commonplace (and also where one would meet many new friends), and the simple decision SOE made to give an XP boost to groups was brilliant. This was a game where some of the planets *required* grouping for survival. In the early days, no one went to Dathomir and walked around by themselves unless they wanted to be killed repeatedly minutes after leaving one of the Outposts. In fact, a fun 'quest' on Dathomir was to take a group and just try to surive without wiping while you ran from one side of the planet to the other (Outpost to Outpost). The mobs were so bad ass, they would chain-pull and wipe groups of people regularly. No one was an all powerful hero and more importantly, few people cared to be a solo hero.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
It's quotes like this that simply prove the management presiding over SWG had no friggin' idea what was going on in their own game. All they saw was a client program, a database, and a bank account where subscription money went. All that "wondering around" as she put it, was exactly why this game was so brilliant. It's called a virtual world.
It's not hard to see how they so easily dismissed their hardcore player base. They didn't play their own game, and had no idea what made it special to those who did. Even though there was never a chance in hell of them seeing WoW subscription numbers, they could have still had a very successful niche game, just like CCP has with EVE. It could have made them a nice grip of money.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
this
The best was whenever a wanderhome player spoke up anywhere. "wanderhome noob, wanderhome.." God I miss those days in SWG.. We loved to hate each other.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It's give and take. and don't be fooled. there's a lot of rose colored glasses going on here. SWG had it's flaws as well. For every utopian player built city...and blah blah no anonomyous LFG feature.. there were botted doc buffs, mass group mission taking to farm rancors for 250k credits. to mod stacking... totally dead NPC towns... to any number of other min max type behaviors and out and out standard issue pric mmo behaviors(griefing, kiting npcs, spawn farming/killing, spam in global chats, bots etc etc).
that being said. there were obvious good points to that game. First was the star wars world. Which was a great jumping off point... familiar world, lore etc etc. Along with that... a fairly wide variety of player races. It was very easy to get into the universe when you could be a rodian or mon calimari or wookiee or twilek or whatever (swtor is making a horrible mistake copping out on this front) along with the races... came a very expanive macro system to facilitate chatting/emotes. Matched that against the very expansive social classes. like dancer, musician... image designer. ...matched with the incredibly nuanced crafting system... where you could custom build, custom name, and custom sell almost any item in the game. Put that with a very open world. with one of the best player housing, world building dynamics ever... and harvesting dynamics. Was a game with enormous potential.
and maybe there is the slight argument to be made for it being earlier in mmorpgs evolution... different markey/demographics. i'd really caution against the "more mature" cause that's a joke. but... there possibly was still a slight slant towards RPG geeks and not hardcore gamer folks with ADD.
I have characters in SWG that i loved playing. and in that game. i never downed a 20 ft tall massive raid boss(i guess tha's not true... kryat dragons were huge..and the acklay thing). never had a glowing purple item rank 262. never hit a "max level" never even had a jedi. and had a flame thrower..gernade tossing commando as well as a master dancer/clothes maker toon. and had a blast in a game where there was nearly zero questing that was worth a damn.
The great shame of SWG was it was a horrible "game" in the sense of it being fun to play for play's sake. the questing dynamic was god aweful. and outside of the player community...or player driven events. the game was a dead lifeless nothing.
which is another prime reason the community was so strong. there was litterally nothing else. every quest was 1 or 2 models. of the exact same process. ...you think. go collect 10 sticks or kill 5 bears a la WoW type quests are repetitive... try ...run to point X (no real rhyme or reason where that point is) kill mound. ...run back to quest terminal
if they had just had a tiny bit better questing... or nudge you along to help people go do something, that wasn't utterly mindless(ie some theme park-ish elements). SWG would have dominated the mmo market... and WoW might have been the sad hindsight commentary people think back on fondly but sadly.
As rose colored as my glasses may be, I always acknowledge the game's flaws. To be honest though, they didn't change the way the larger community felt about the game much until the CU. None of those things you mentioned ever made me want to quit the game. They were gripes that we all adjusted to because we were having so much fun otherwise.
Also, leveling in the game was never a focus. Some times, depending on how the game was changed, you could level fast, and sometimes you could level REALLY fast. Even when it was slow back then, a combat power gamer could max a character out in a matter of a couple days. I liked that aspect of it, because you were relatively free to explore all the professions and build combinations without blowing years worth of grinding time. Since the gameplay wasn't focused on leveling through quest areas toward end-game, it didn't really matter that much.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
It was a pve sandbox with optional pvp, plenty of non-combat gameplay, deep crafting with localized markets, dedicated socialy oriented professions, player cities with open world housing, single character servers, and outside of the jedi grind a distinct lack of treadmills. People got attached to their characters and had plenty of time to socialize and form friendships.
A lot of it had to do with only having one character per server per account and unique names. Less anonymity makes people less lilely to act like asses. It was one of the major things that the original SWG devs learned from UO. The massive amount of greifing going on in UO was the main reason for the single character per server limit in SWG.
The thing is we already could have seen it coming due to the many topics people made about it, McIntyre just stated what we all already knew from the forums, the complaints simply outnumberd us who wanted fixes and more polish to the game. But it's a shame people only remember what SOE said instead of actually remembering the common complaints we already read from forum posters.
That was a *huge* part of it. You really were stuck with your avatar. Well, short of making an alt account and passing all your credits and gear to that account while you deleted your main... Although I'm not positve you could even delete your character. I know I made toons on other servers just to check stuff out before I committed on my main.
With most new MMO's you're stuck with the "class" you pick from the moment you first log in. This is the reason games like LotRO give you 9 character slots, because if you hate the class, are bored of the class, you have to roll a new toon to try something new.
SWG if you weren't happy with your PROFESSION, you just started over as a new one, with the same avatar, same name, all the same items, and equipment you had before you changed. You only had one character per server, so this was a must. Most starting professions could be leveled in a couple days at most, advanced ones in a week, unless you were really hardcore and could do it faster.
It was freedom. Plain and Simple.
As most people have also stated interdependance meant community building. Player malls, cantina's, guildhalls, player houses and cities.... Pretty much anything you wanted in game could be made by yourself, or another player.
Even if it wasn't Star Wars I really wish someone would copy the original SWG systems.
Maybe a zombie apocalypse setting.....
The developers didn't as much give us the tools, we took the tools we had and made something more of it.
Much more.
Intrepid had the best player events and content in any game ever.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I never set foot in the forums until Nov 15th 2005 (when EVERYBODY stepped into the Oforums). So I myself was unaware of any complaints of too much reading (which is ironic).
Interestingly, they have always attributed the changes to feedback outside of the forums, since they have maintained that the forums make up only around 20% of the player base.
... I sense a derailing in the thread...
I honestly believe it was simply timing. Right place, right time.
SWG was released before email was typical, before texting, at the dawn of high speed internet connections, before XBOX Live or other online services...people created a "community" because they acted like they would have in real life. I think it's really that simple...it was simply a different time.
This is true. In actuallity I would argue that the player cities, when introduced took away from the community.
Some things about the community pre-holo cubes.
You had to rely on other players. No question to it.. you could not effectively solo here. You needed supplies, armor, food, weapons etc... the good stuff came from players.
Cantinas were required. The players were pushed to gather in key locations to recharge stats. This is where the game lost alot when player cities were introduced. When your character walked into a cantina, it was full of life, full of interesting conversations and good times. There were guilds created before the game even launched just for the entertainment portion. Some really great people there.
The crafting... not for the light of heart. It took time, lots of time. And the learning curve in some aspects was incredibly steep compared to other games.
Classes at the time were in no way cookie cutter. You could dabble in quite a bit, and still be viable pve/pvp. This later changed greatly, and classes were forced to specialize.
It wasnt a rush to end game. Sure for some, but not for the majority from what I experienced. People were happy with the diversity, with the challenge. Kind of like playing a game such as Dark Souls, vs Gears of War. Both are fun, but Dark Souls requires quite a bit more from you.. creating an in game feel of depth.
Jedis/Sith were the exception, not the norm. On the flip side, there was no way anyone was going to take out a Jedi 1 v 1, not even 10 v 1. Unless the Jedi grew wreckless.. then the death was permanent.
All of these things played into drawing a pretty unique and fun community. The majority I had come accross were mature, helpful and fun to be around.
I've seen the same dynamics in a few other games as well pre-swg. JumpGate, Klingon Academy to name two.
And no, it was never ideal.. you still had some people you may wish their ISP dropped, but they were far fewer then those of today.