oh look, another thinly veiled attempt at claiming SW:TOR is not an MMO.
I voted for SW:TOR as it is, even though I could claim to be an SWG vet, having had 5 active accounts up until the NGE hit, but why bother?
SWG was fun, but it had its time, it is over.
SW:TOR may not be a sandbox, but so what? it is still an MMO, it is still fun (in my opinion) to play, it is still Star Wars, and lets be honest here, it is definately not as buggy as SWG was.
SwTOR is on a smaller scale in many ways that SWG was (through out its life span). There really is no way to compare these two games. SWG.. yes had more bugs, but also had alot more to offer. SWG's space combat blows the shitstains out of TOR's, there were 30 perfessions in SWG compared to 16 (including AC's) in TOR. The worlds were open not pathed. It was just a very different game.
i could of told u wht woudl win by the title. More fans on mmorpg.com are sandbox fans. That said most of the mmo crowd doesnt actually play sandbox games. Theres a reason eve is the top sandbox out there with only 500k subs
No offense but im not a sandbox fan so i perfer tor. Teh fact is even if u had galaxies in todays world made by soe ud still have the same issues taht plagued the game that forced the nge that forced loyal players to bolt that u hd then
Ud still not have the amount of players lucas or soe wanted and soe wouldnt of had the experince of the nge so it would probably happen again so nothing would of changed just the tech.
No matter how many polls are made, SWG will never come back face it. Its over,CORRECT it never had any legs the first time at launch. WRONG If a Japanese MMORPG, FFXI which was out before it can kick the pants off SWG, there is not much else to say. Yes there is! There are alot of Asians FFXI has 500k subscriptions to this day. While SWG in its highest peak was 300k if that at all. Wrong-I do believe it was closer to 500k
No regular MMO gamer really wanted SWG WRONG, the numbers speak for itself.
SWTOR will have 600k - 1.5 mil subscription base which SWG could only dream of as a MMO.
SWTOR is actually closer to sticking to Star Wars lore and thats a good thing.
oh look, another thinly veiled attempt at claiming SW:TOR is not an MMO.
I voted for SW:TOR as it is, even though I could claim to be an SWG vet, having had 5 active accounts up until the NGE hit, but why bother?
SWG was fun, but it had its time, it is over.
SW:TOR may not be a sandbox, but so what? it is still an MMO, it is still fun (in my opinion) to play, it is still Star Wars, and lets be honest here, it is definately not as buggy as SWG was.
If people want to play SWToR no problem. If people enjoy, then that's great for them.
How does that make it an mmo??
So my only options are either saying SWG pre NGE with engine update, or saying I am picking SWTOR because its "launching now"??????
Where's the "SWG sucked the whole time because it an unfinished piece of crap and I will be playing SWTOR because it is actually a good game" option?
Or even better where is my "this poll is pointless" option...
SWG was like having a second job while SWTOR is all about having fun. SWTOR anyday SWG was a huge waste of my damn time!
Thats because no one wants to use that thing 3 feet above there ass...Whats that called again oh a brain. In SWG there was alot to do other than hurry to cap. You had to rely on others for crafted gear ect. Most of the games WOW-now are mostly rush to end-game and wait for a crappy expansion to do it all over again with-in a few months. SWG community was by far the best to date and it had to be due to the nature of the game. There were BH's hunting Jedi, open world PVP, now MMO's have organized PVP, Battlefields,warzones ect. Those suck! IMO. Its like a glorified ver. of Street Fighter.
Easily a biased question. I'd play any game that had new engine/polish, good bug fixes, and a new direction, but that's assuming the direction it heads towards is one I agree with. It's like asking "do you want this amazing thing here, or that one?" Without knowing what we're talking about, you're inclined to choose the amazing one. If you can specifiy what fixes and direction it would take, I'm sure you'll find that a significantly less amount of people will agree with playing that option.
One thing I've noticed over the past 6 years I've followed this site is most "samdbox officionatos" don't, when the time comes, support their love with their wallets.
I picked SW:ToR because I played a dancer, medic and trooper in SWG - and never had as much fun as I did facing down the Emperor on my Jedi Guardian during closed beta. I'll take a game that gives me a compelling reason to play it, anyday.
On a same but different note, the early days of Shadowbane were more fun than SWG in my opinion.
Currently Playing: GW2 Retired: Shadowbane, DAoC, WoW, FFXI, Eve Online, SWToR
Easily a biased question. I'd play any game that had new engine/polish, good bug fixes, and a new direction, but that's assuming the direction it heads towards is one I agree with. It's like asking "do you want this amazing thing here, or that one?" Without knowing what we're talking about, you're inclined to choose the amazing one. If you can specifiy what fixes and direction it would take, I'm sure you'll find that a significantly less amount of people will agree with playing that option.
I don't agree. It is not hard to imagine a game like SWG with more polish, more bug fixing, graphics update. I think that is a fair comment. Some MMOs have been receiving updates and refreshes. Example, AoC. It is entirely possible to both do that and imagine that. Say LA wanted to do it, SOE would definitely have done something to revive the game, considering what a huge IP it is. More than anything I believe it is Bioware who made it a condition to create SWToR that there wouldn't be competition.
One thing I've noticed over the past 6 years I've followed this site is most "samdbox officionatos" don't, when the time comes, support their love with their wallets.
I picked SW:ToR because I played a dancer, medic and trooper in SWG - and never had as much fun as I did facing down the Emperor on my Jedi Guardian during closed beta. I'll take a game that gives me a compelling reason to play it, anyday.
On a same but different note, the early days of Shadowbane were more fun than SWG in my opinion.
What is there to support if you want an AAA mmo with sandbox features??
Easily a biased question. I'd play any game that had new engine/polish, good bug fixes, and a new direction, but that's assuming the direction it heads towards is one I agree with. It's like asking "do you want this amazing thing here, or that one?" Without knowing what we're talking about, you're inclined to choose the amazing one. If you can specifiy what fixes and direction it would take, I'm sure you'll find that a significantly less amount of people will agree with playing that option.
I don't agree. It is not hard to imagine a game like SWG with more polish, more bug fixing, graphics update. I think that is a fair comment. Some MMOs have been receiving updates and refreshes. Example, AoC. It is entirely possible to both do that and imagine that. Say LA wanted to do it, SOE would definitely have done something to revive the game, considering what a huge IP it is. More than anything I believe it is Bioware who made it a condition to create SWToR that there wouldn't be competition.
The question to ask is what really drove people away from SWG? For me it was not just the bugs or lack of polish. Heck, I even liked playing the game on the lowest graphical settings. For me the problems were due to some core design problems. I would play an 'amazing' SWG 2.0 that fixed those core issues. However, I would think there are plenty of SWG vets who would consider my changes to be heresy. I would not go back to play SWG just because it got a 'new coat of paint' but the same faulty foundations.
I'm a sandbox kind of guy but these type of games are too difficult to develop, maintain and manage. Corporations and investors do not want to risk their money when less risky alternatives exist.
SWG is a classic example.
Mistake One: After the CU 'upgrade' SWG subscriptions started falling. SOE and Lucas Arts panicked.
Mistake Two: NGE.
If two leading suppliers of entertainment like SOE and Lucas Arts could drop the ball then managers around the world will doubt that they can do better.
From the NYTTIME in Dec, 2005:
For Sony and LucasArts, the idea has been to make the game more "Star Wars-like," tying it more explicitly to the films.
"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."
Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.
"We knew we were taking a significant risk with our existing player base, but we felt so strongly that we needed to make these changes for the sake of the game's long-term future that we all held hands, LucasArts and Sony, and went forward," Ms. MacIntyre said.
Well, maybe Nancy is channeling G.L. or maybe she was the key analyst that championed CU and NGE. Whatever, her statement is STILL what senior and middle managers think players want.
Stanley,
San Francisco.
P.S. And let's admit it, are there enough Uncle Owens in the world to sustain a AAA sanbox?
Meridian59 '96-'99/Everquest (Vallon Zek) '99-'03/Shadowbane '03/SWG '04/This and that '05-'10/Eve Online '11/LotR '11-'12
Seriously? Like I need to spend another million hours grinding away leaving the carcasses of grauls over the dantooine landscape and makloks on dathomir?
So I can read the endless whinefest between the Jedi and Bounty Hunters in the forums, each arguing why everyone else should be nerfed?
Or the bots dancing the night away in Mos Eisley.
Or the civil war faction points grind, then the commendations grind, and of course the zergfest of restuss....that was entertaining.
Or see actual urban sprawl on Tatooine....you know that backwater ass end of the universe world that's always been known for crowded urban development .
Or being surrounded by millions of Ben Kenobi or Darth Maul wannabees.
Or having a conversation with an Imperial Jedi Wookie.....yeah.
And so on....
Was it fun? Yeah. Those days are over. Time to turn the page.
Was pure community with SWG, simple as that. Was my first real MMO after Planetside and had so many paths, it had similarities to real-life: Could choose to do whatever you want and you relied on community around you.
SWTOR will be the mirror opposite of this however, but as a game, will be far better.
I have come to the conclusion that you cannot mix the two: Themepark or Sandbox. You either give people things to do or give them tools to make it up themselves. Most people prefer one or the other - Not both. Some want a cerebral challenge, others want visual stimulation.
So which would i prefer? Both. And i dont think there will be a developer within the next decade attempting to combine the two gaming styles. So i would play the two at once.
P.S. And let's admit it, are there enough Uncle Owens in the world to sustain a AAA sanbox?
I think the problem is with the way people see the 'Uncle Owen' stereotype. To me Uncle Owen was not just some mindless worker drone. He was a pioneer trying to tame a wilderness while providing a home for his family.
SWG's problem was that it did not give the Uncle Owens room to grow. They could get together and build a city but after a bit the progression stopped. They were stuck in their chosen roles runnign in place. The only way to try something different was to give up on the character traits you cultivated up to that point.
If you can maintain the Uncle Owen archetype as that of a pioneer and builder then people will play it. If you let it hit a dead end, people will stop playing it.
P.S. And let's admit it, are there enough Uncle Owens in the world to sustain a AAA sanbox?
I think the problem is with the way people see the 'Uncle Owen' stereotype. To me Uncle Owen was not just some mindless worker drone. He was a pioneer trying to tame a wilderness while providing a home for his family.
SWG's problem was that it did not give the Uncle Owens room to grow. They could get together and build a city but after a bit the progression stopped. They were stuck in their chosen roles runnign in place. The only way to try something different was to give up on the character traits you cultivated up to that point.
If you can maintain the Uncle Owen archetype as that of a pioneer and builder then people will play it. If you let it hit a dead end, people will stop playing it.
I don't get it, is Uncle Owen a seperate stereotype from crafters?
I think there are enough crafters and sandboxers to sustain one or two triple A sandboxes, but the problem is, you'd need to make those 1 or 2 games appeal to the whole sandbox population and they argue so much about how a triple A sandbox should be.
Pre-CU SWG all day long. SWTOR is a nice game, but I don't play MMOs for story, VO and companion NPCs. I play them for complexity, unique game systems and a challenge. SWTOR offers very little in those departments imo.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
P.S. And let's admit it, are there enough Uncle Owens in the world to sustain a AAA sanbox?
I think the problem is with the way people see the 'Uncle Owen' stereotype. To me Uncle Owen was not just some mindless worker drone. He was a pioneer trying to tame a wilderness while providing a home for his family.
SWG's problem was that it did not give the Uncle Owens room to grow. They could get together and build a city but after a bit the progression stopped. They were stuck in their chosen roles runnign in place. The only way to try something different was to give up on the character traits you cultivated up to that point.
If you can maintain the Uncle Owen archetype as that of a pioneer and builder then people will play it. If you let it hit a dead end, people will stop playing it.
I don't get it, is Uncle Owen a seperate stereotype from crafters?
I think there are enough crafters and sandboxers to sustain one or two triple A sandboxes, but the problem is, you'd need to make those 1 or 2 games appeal to the whole sandbox population and they argue so much about how a triple A sandbox should be.
As much as fans of the sandbox may argue, I think if they only had one AAA to play, they'd almost all play it. At least, if it had PvP and PvE servers - that dichotomy might be a bit too wide. They don't even have one, though.
Unless you count EVE, which is a niche within a niche that's how many years old, now? Old enough that even if it were AAA when it started, it'd still be too old to still count as AAA.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Comments
SwTOR is on a smaller scale in many ways that SWG was (through out its life span). There really is no way to compare these two games. SWG.. yes had more bugs, but also had alot more to offer. SWG's space combat blows the shitstains out of TOR's, there were 30 perfessions in SWG compared to 16 (including AC's) in TOR. The worlds were open not pathed. It was just a very different game.
i could of told u wht woudl win by the title. More fans on mmorpg.com are sandbox fans. That said most of the mmo crowd doesnt actually play sandbox games. Theres a reason eve is the top sandbox out there with only 500k subs
No offense but im not a sandbox fan so i perfer tor. Teh fact is even if u had galaxies in todays world made by soe ud still have the same issues taht plagued the game that forced the nge that forced loyal players to bolt that u hd then
Ud still not have the amount of players lucas or soe wanted and soe wouldnt of had the experince of the nge so it would probably happen again so nothing would of changed just the tech.
If I could I would play both (if SWG was done right). It's just the whole Sandbox Vs. Themepark thing again
So my only options are either saying SWG pre NGE with engine update, or saying I am picking SWTOR because its "launching now"??????
Where's the "SWG sucked the whole time because it an unfinished piece of crap and I will be playing SWTOR because it is actually a good game" option?
Or even better where is my "this poll is pointless" option...
Thats because no one wants to use that thing 3 feet above there ass...Whats that called again oh a brain. In SWG there was alot to do other than hurry to cap. You had to rely on others for crafted gear ect. Most of the games WOW-now are mostly rush to end-game and wait for a crappy expansion to do it all over again with-in a few months. SWG community was by far the best to date and it had to be due to the nature of the game. There were BH's hunting Jedi, open world PVP, now MMO's have organized PVP, Battlefields,warzones ect. Those suck! IMO. Its like a glorified ver. of Street Fighter.
Easily a biased question. I'd play any game that had new engine/polish, good bug fixes, and a new direction, but that's assuming the direction it heads towards is one I agree with. It's like asking "do you want this amazing thing here, or that one?" Without knowing what we're talking about, you're inclined to choose the amazing one. If you can specifiy what fixes and direction it would take, I'm sure you'll find that a significantly less amount of people will agree with playing that option.
One thing I've noticed over the past 6 years I've followed this site is most "samdbox officionatos" don't, when the time comes, support their love with their wallets.
I picked SW:ToR because I played a dancer, medic and trooper in SWG - and never had as much fun as I did facing down the Emperor on my Jedi Guardian during closed beta. I'll take a game that gives me a compelling reason to play it, anyday.
On a same but different note, the early days of Shadowbane were more fun than SWG in my opinion.
Currently Playing: GW2
Retired: Shadowbane, DAoC, WoW, FFXI, Eve Online, SWToR
The Aphelion MMO Blog - GW2 Initial Impressions
I don't agree. It is not hard to imagine a game like SWG with more polish, more bug fixing, graphics update. I think that is a fair comment. Some MMOs have been receiving updates and refreshes. Example, AoC. It is entirely possible to both do that and imagine that. Say LA wanted to do it, SOE would definitely have done something to revive the game, considering what a huge IP it is. More than anything I believe it is Bioware who made it a condition to create SWToR that there wouldn't be competition.
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
____________________________
What is there to support if you want an AAA mmo with sandbox features??
____________________________
CASUAL CONFESSIONS - Draccan's blog
____________________________
The question to ask is what really drove people away from SWG? For me it was not just the bugs or lack of polish. Heck, I even liked playing the game on the lowest graphical settings. For me the problems were due to some core design problems. I would play an 'amazing' SWG 2.0 that fixed those core issues. However, I would think there are plenty of SWG vets who would consider my changes to be heresy. I would not go back to play SWG just because it got a 'new coat of paint' but the same faulty foundations.
I'm a sandbox kind of guy but these type of games are too difficult to develop, maintain and manage. Corporations and investors do not want to risk their money when less risky alternatives exist.
SWG is a classic example.
Mistake One: After the CU 'upgrade' SWG subscriptions started falling. SOE and Lucas Arts panicked.
Mistake Two: NGE.
If two leading suppliers of entertainment like SOE and Lucas Arts could drop the ball then managers around the world will doubt that they can do better.
From the NYTTIME in Dec, 2005:
For Sony and LucasArts, the idea has been to make the game more "Star Wars-like," tying it more explicitly to the films.
"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."
Ms. MacIntyre said Galaxies had lost "significantly more" than the 3 to 5 percent of players who typically leave any online game every month. She said she expected the game to return to its previous subscriber levels in six months, a process she hoped would be accelerated by the introduction of a new television infomercial hawking Galaxies later this month.
"We knew we were taking a significant risk with our existing player base, but we felt so strongly that we needed to make these changes for the sake of the game's long-term future that we all held hands, LucasArts and Sony, and went forward," Ms. MacIntyre said.
Well, maybe Nancy is channeling G.L. or maybe she was the key analyst that championed CU and NGE. Whatever, her statement is STILL what senior and middle managers think players want.
Stanley,
San Francisco.
P.S. And let's admit it, are there enough Uncle Owens in the world to sustain a AAA sanbox?
Meridian59 '96-'99/Everquest (Vallon Zek) '99-'03/Shadowbane '03/SWG '04/This and that '05-'10/Eve Online '11/LotR '11-'12
Seriously? Like I need to spend another million hours grinding away leaving the carcasses of grauls over the dantooine landscape and makloks on dathomir?
So I can read the endless whinefest between the Jedi and Bounty Hunters in the forums, each arguing why everyone else should be nerfed?
Or the bots dancing the night away in Mos Eisley.
Or the civil war faction points grind, then the commendations grind, and of course the zergfest of restuss....that was entertaining.
Or see actual urban sprawl on Tatooine....you know that backwater ass end of the universe world that's always been known for crowded urban development .
Or being surrounded by millions of Ben Kenobi or Darth Maul wannabees.
Or having a conversation with an Imperial Jedi Wookie.....yeah.
And so on....
Was it fun? Yeah. Those days are over. Time to turn the page.
I leave you with this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS4tuvK4MwQ
"Heart grow stronger, Will becomes firm, the Mind more calm, as our Strength lessens..." Battle of Maldon 991 AD
Was pure community with SWG, simple as that. Was my first real MMO after Planetside and had so many paths, it had similarities to real-life: Could choose to do whatever you want and you relied on community around you.
SWTOR will be the mirror opposite of this however, but as a game, will be far better.
I have come to the conclusion that you cannot mix the two: Themepark or Sandbox. You either give people things to do or give them tools to make it up themselves. Most people prefer one or the other - Not both. Some want a cerebral challenge, others want visual stimulation.
So which would i prefer? Both. And i dont think there will be a developer within the next decade attempting to combine the two gaming styles. So i would play the two at once.
I think the problem is with the way people see the 'Uncle Owen' stereotype. To me Uncle Owen was not just some mindless worker drone. He was a pioneer trying to tame a wilderness while providing a home for his family.
SWG's problem was that it did not give the Uncle Owens room to grow. They could get together and build a city but after a bit the progression stopped. They were stuck in their chosen roles runnign in place. The only way to try something different was to give up on the character traits you cultivated up to that point.
If you can maintain the Uncle Owen archetype as that of a pioneer and builder then people will play it. If you let it hit a dead end, people will stop playing it.
I don't get it, is Uncle Owen a seperate stereotype from crafters?
I think there are enough crafters and sandboxers to sustain one or two triple A sandboxes, but the problem is, you'd need to make those 1 or 2 games appeal to the whole sandbox population and they argue so much about how a triple A sandbox should be.
Pre-CU SWG all day long. SWTOR is a nice game, but I don't play MMOs for story, VO and companion NPCs. I play them for complexity, unique game systems and a challenge. SWTOR offers very little in those departments imo.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
As much as fans of the sandbox may argue, I think if they only had one AAA to play, they'd almost all play it. At least, if it had PvP and PvE servers - that dichotomy might be a bit too wide. They don't even have one, though.
Unless you count EVE, which is a niche within a niche that's how many years old, now? Old enough that even if it were AAA when it started, it'd still be too old to still count as AAA.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Eh, I'm afraid that these days (years) you can't get the funding to make or revive ANY AAA sandbox MMORPG...
If you could, Raph Koster would already make one.
Still, hypothetically, I would jump from ANY current game I would play to revived pre-CU SWG.
NEW IDEAS that can refresh the STALE state of MMORPGs