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Elvis, Kurt Cobain and SWG.
LoverNoFighter
Member Posts: 294
There's a void. It's been there since SWG ( pre cu ) was shut down in favour for the less talented SWTOR.
Tried Vanguard ( at launch ) and a couple of months.
Guild Wars 2 ( at launch ) maxed 1 toon.
SWTOR ( at launch ) maxed 1 toon and played for 1 year.
None of the games felt like an addiction or immersive to me. I never spent my days at work aching to get home and log in to play. I never felt like I "missed out" on something when I was prevented from playing. I never felt like a part of a community in the world in the game.
In SWG I felt all of those things. Wondering if there will ever be a MMO that captures me like SWG did. I keep hoping but for every lanuch of a new MMO, my hopes diminish bit by bit.
Is SWG the MMO that didn't get the credit and recognition it deserved until it died?
Just like Elvis and Kurt Cobain.
Comments
So for many players Wow is....like being addicted to a drug?
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Smedley recently said SOEs next undisclosed project will make SWG fans very very happy.
Excitement^10
There needs to be a solid sandbox replacement but SWG at launch was a bunch of broken promises and a very bland, experience. If anything someone needs to launch a game like SWG with all of the features it had pre shutdown. Vanilla SWG was something that most gamers that played it quit.....
Not sure where you get your facts from, but I can assure you, there was no mass exodus from SWG until the NGE hit. I know this because I played the game from BETA though server shut down.
You are close in some regards, there were bugs and a lot of balancing that needed to happen, but none of the servers I played on were anywhere close to being dead until the NGE hit.
I would advise you that with the rapid fan base that SWG had/has not to try and sell your made up ideas as facts. It will not fly. If anything the game was forced into failure by the screaming crying masses over how hard it was to become a Jedi. However I digress.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I actually checked my cursor because I thought I had accidently highlighted the text.
I never played SWG but all I ever hear from friends was how good it was, much missed.
Also, for all those who ignorantly throw around the "1 million" number, it does not mean that 700k people tried it and quit before the NGE.
At one point, SOE came out and said that "SWG sold over 1 million units" but that included the sale of the JTL expansion.
And that also includes people buying multiple accts. (And JTL was needed for each alt acct as well.)
So the "1 million bought it and 700k quit" stuff before the NGE happened is simply bad math.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/star-wars-galaxies-sales-top-a-million-units
It was a game that some people adored most had left by 2005 hence the combat upgrade and all the other changes.
I am not making any argument, aside from that 1 million units sold =/= 1 million people.
Fewer people than that played the game up to the point of that announcement, but there was a far larger retention rate than you erroneously presume.
It also should be noted, that SWG was considered a conventional financial success up to the time of the NGE, it had paid for its reported $35 million or so development budget several times over by then. In the MMO business, that is a winner.
Ironically, this "success" was a key factor in allowing the NGE to happen: SWG had already paid for itself and the development of other SOE games, so if they took a big risk in doing a total revamp at that point,and it failed, who cares? They had already been paid well for the game. That is the corporate mentality behind a decision like that, limited downside.
how about this. Anyway I am looking forward to the "new SWG" Smedley hinted on
I am 1000% certain that any uptick in 'recognition" that Cobain got when he died is because he killed himself. People already liked the music before he died. SWG was tried by many and played by not as many. The devs absolutely killed it with the major changes but there was a reason the amount of people who played swg played swg and it wasn't because people didn't know about it, it was because the large group of gamers in this genre don't play those games. It had a healthy niche and its devs killed that niche off.
As another said, SWG is remembered for the bad decisions rather then what it brought to the table.
One of my favorite stories that illustrates how awesome SWG was: There was this guy who lived in the player city I ran. He had an "in character" romance with another girl in the same city. In a non-scripted way, the relationship didn't turn out well and they broke up in a rather explosive way.
But here's the thing... the guy went into her player-owned house (before she took away his admin rights) and redecorated it to look like he trashed the place in a fit of anger! Turned-over tables, flipped bookcases, lamps on the floor... etc., etc.
She had no idea until she went home to see the carnage. She wasn't even that mad since it was so funny. I think they even got back together after that.
SWG let you do what you wanted. From the slicing system on mission terminals, nourishment, personal fitness, spices (drugs are bad, mmm-kay?), dancing and music to the full player-driven economy, rich crafting and of course... space... the "good" of SWG was far greater than the "bad" of SWG, in my opinion.
There wasn't an Exodus from SWG, ever. not en masse anyways. There was a steady decline in subs however. Since introducing the Hologrind then the village, there were many who really disliked how you had to unlock becoming a jedi. Then the NGE took the rest of the -less than die hard fans- leaving only those too stubborn to quit or those who enjoyed WoW in a SWG type bubble.
Let's not forget those who did unlock Jedi and how their ego's swelled during the Hologrind era, I didn't think the human ego could hit those highs, I was very wrong. I know I left once for about six months when the Jedi were running rampant and you couldn't do anything without having to deal with them or the ones that were constantly hunting them. The term "I am your god." was thrown around a few times on my server by a few jedi, it was WoW attitudes x100.
Oh, and Kurt Cobain was a dumbass
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
And in that short statement lies 99% of all that is wrong with the MMO genre today.
I remember you from the Chim boards back in the day....
You know what the point of that statement is? Community.
SWG had it like no other game had it before or since...
Of course it had it's problems, probably many more than it should have...but it also had the most complete and well rounded sandbox experience of all time. From raiding player cities and DWB runs, to crafting, decorating and PvP...to even mayoral elections and RP/events, gambling, discos and weddings lol.
The game had something for everyone and everyone was someone, we were not the generic "hero" like SWTOR forces us to be, we had our own identities. There was Cardinal, the BEST armorsmith on the server bar none, Vaclav the awesome BH with a bad attitude and mad skills to match. There was Ba-Wan the server douchebag that ended up being excluded from just about every commerce centre and PA in the galaxy for robbing countless guild banks.
The point I am making is we were not force fed a by the numbers story or endless cycles of soulless dailies. WE were the story and our personalities were the ink and colour on the page. Our deeds and mis-deeds, our triumphs, our losses and moments of catastrophic failure WERE the tension and the drama. Our forum wars were the historical record and for good or bad, right or wrong our community shaped the experience.
We did all of these things....because the game let us. No MMORPG before or since has had the sheer scope and depth that SWG had. It's a real shame.
I wonder if in circa 10 years time, games like GW2, SWTOR and ESO will have made such an impression on their fan base that groups of those players devote years of their free time to make EMU versions of those games, for no profit and pure love?
I think we all know the answer to that
You are absolutely right OP, SWG did not get the credit it deserved until after it died. For all it's faults and foibles it was sandbox, it was Star Wars...it was utterly superb.
Driz
This is why some of the swg fanboys want you to remember the positives of sgw and not mention the negatives (or facts). I wish they were honest enough to admit the game was bleeding subs long before the changes and to not blame it on any other factor.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
There was a bleeding of subs starting at the 30 day mark. Saying anything else is a lie.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
And there is a bleeding of subs around 1-3 months after the release of EVERY MMORPG. Is that the only point you have to make?
Of course we all acknowledge the proplems the game had, we all acknowledge there was a decline in subs following the CU and sure, there was a huge drop off literally one day after NGE hit.
I played from pre pub 10 and I can assure you the server population was extremely healthy right up until the CU hit. That is when I saw one large dip in subs. You know why? Because over night years worth of game time was ruined, server best legendary weapons worth hundreds of millsions of credits were reduced to having stats no better than starter weapons.
Entire professions and peoples in-game livlihoods were deleted over night...
The scope of the changes were so huge that people just exploded in anger and just gave up there and then....
One point that people also conveniently forget is that SWG had what? 250k...300k subs at its peak? People call that a failure. At this time in MMORPG history, EQ WAS the WoW of its day, EQ was THE behemoth in the industry....it maxed at 500k subs. Times were different then. You cannot legitimately compare SWG to modern numbers in terms of performance.
Viewed against its peers and in the context of its place in history, SWG was a success commercially and with its fans.
Driz