SOE slaps Vets in the face

After years of game play, endless bugs, and continuing abhorently horrible customer service. SOE has slapped its hardcore player base across the face with the NGE. The SWG game no longer exisits. They dumbed it down, changed the profession system, changed the combat system, changed the crafting system
and slapped a few pics of well know starwars characters into the game and said, and I quote, "Try it, youll like it" This was all done with no discussion or interaction with the public player base, as well as only a week or so after they released an expansion for sale. based on the old system. The game is dead, this is a perversion of the mmorpg into a half arsed FPS.

What absolute nerve. The swg community was some of the most patient and vocal players I have ever seen in an mmorpg. Putting up with repeatable bugs and broken aspects of the game for months and months. Rules and mechanics being changed mid stream with no warning. Constantly telling the dev team what they were looking for, to just be ignored. Forced into buying "expansions", that most companies would just consider a free publish. And watching new players consistently get better perks than it would even be possble for a vet to acquire.

So why did so many stay after the first few months starting in the summer of '03. Because there was incredible potential with this game. Upon release it had 32 template based professions , which you could mix and match for a seemingly endless possibility of templates. It allowed for true diversity. Combat had a HAM bar, but each bar had sub stats which could be attacked. Giving players 9 different health pools to attack, which allowed for some serious strategy. A TEF system which caused the feel of the galactic civil war to hit home. The best crafting system I have ever seen in a game. And Jedi!! Jedi was a complete mystery, it was a known possibility to acquire, but no one knew what needed to be done to unlock this mysterious powerful and rare profession. It was fun, it was hopeful and it was complex.

The problems were simple, there were bugs, and lots of them. And their needed to be a better balance of power in combat classes. The players spoke up, the bugs remained, and new items and content were rolled out before the old ones were fixed. There was also a promise of a combat balance coming soon in months to come. However, in the meantime they nerfed many professions in a patchwork guessing game of trying to balance before then...it did more haarm than good. Imagine having worked for months at acquiring a profession to log in one day to find that it had been reduced to half the power and specials it had before, this is what SOE had done to many professions

This is where SWG took its first turn for the worse. They let out of the bag that acquiring a jedi was related to holocrons and professions, that each character had x amount of pre determined professions needed to unlock their jedi. Thus, hologrinding, the entire game went hard at work trying to master all 32 of their professions to guarantee the unlock of their jedi. The economy turned ugly, people werent playing they were grinding. No one was actually playing a profession, they were finishing it dropping it and picking up another. This process would take aminimum of 3-4 solid months of hardcore grinding, every day.

They then took a carebear approach and removed the TEF system from the GCW. Which simply means that a player could choose to not be affected by it by going on leave, or combatant. A combatant rebel could abuse imperial NPCs right in front of imperialplayers, and the imperial players could not jump in to help, there was no reprucussion of the actions, and vice versa rebels to imperials. This took away any immersive feel of the GCW.

Then they finally release their newly named "combat upgrade". And OMG!! this was so far off what was being discussed and what players wanted. Players wanted combat classes a little more balanced, armor resists brought down to a reasonable level, and Decay over time weapons not as lethal as before. What they rolled out was huge changes to the crafting professions, which changed resources needed schematics , the entire system. This destroyed all of the hardwork veteran crafters had invested for months. They revamped the ui, added cartoony effects, and many other things the player base did not want. The community cried in horror. Their feedback was simply ignored. No changes made. It was a big hit to the player base and a huge amount quit. But SOE has always seen its customers as a renewable resource and hasnt put much stock into their paying customers opinions or feedback.

Next SOE announced the village, a new way to become jedi. If you spent months hologrindding and didnt unlock your jedi....well i guess you wasted months of your time, becaus thats not how you do it anymore. Now you need to unlock access to the village where you will have to invest ridiculous amounts of time in grinding xp to unlock your jedi. Once thats unlocked, you really need to grind again, we are talking maybe 4-6 months of staright grinding to have a powerful jedi. Once again, people were upset, but SOE didnt listyen, they were to busy doing press releases filled with lies about their game and their customers reactions. But as time marched on players ground like heck to get their jedi, and soon enough the servers were filled with them. So now the game was unbalanced again, if you were not a jedi, it was very difficult to be successful in pvp , because most pvp incidents had jedi in them.

Then the NGE hits. If you were close to finishing the months of grinding the village quests ,well once again, oh well you wasted your time, we changed the rules again. The NGE has taken 32 template professions and dumbed it down to 9 class based professions. No more choices, no more diversity.Oh and if you worked hard and had one of the other 23 professions over the last 2 years, oh well the heck with you, start over. The combat system went from a a variety of specials and defenses and 9 line ham bar to a couple of speacials and 1 ham bar to attack, goodbye tactics. If you were close to earning your jedi through months and months of grinding, oh well, you wasted your time aain. Jedi is a starting profession now. I f you were already a jedi before and had really busted your hump to get it in the old system , tough cookies, you are now the same as a starting player, and the jedi prof is probably the weakst i game now. If you had businesses built on your crafting template, well you might not be able to make those items anymore, crafting profs are also a cookie cutter class based system, and dumbed down more. It also doesnt allow items to decay any more, so no repeat business, maught as well close shop. Combat is now a slow lagged out fps instead of a thought driven battle. Click that mouse, no need to think. This game is destroyed.

Long term Vets , who were evn willing to sticjk through all the other misery, have had enough. Accounts are closing quickly. SWGs community board is on fire with player flames. And the long time player base that was the glue of this game and community are leaving.

The game is destined for console sales, which will be a flash in the pan, it will not last in the console market. It is not a real mmorpg anymore , and its a pretty poor FPS. Jack of all Trades, master of none will not work in the console market place. Servers will merge and close, and if I was a betting man, I would say SWG will be done by next year this time.

There is the ugly truth of SOE, its mismanagement, poor bugged fill game strewn with truly atrocious customer service.

Do yourslef a favor and check out another MMORPG, this one is filled with heartache and frustration.

Mor bugs ignored and the game marched on. Next they nerf