Originally posted by kay226 Ok, enough is enough dont you think? How long are you guys going to go on and on about how bad these changes were? Seems to me you are actually trying to wage a war against Sony and the Star Wars Galaxies game, relentlessly bad mouthing the game anywhere you can and whenever you can. I understand your frustration caused by the dramatic changes, i would have been frustrated and angry too but hey its been so long the changes have been made and you guys still going on and on about it, maybe its time to let it go and maybe get a life in the process. Give it a rest guys, the game is still great after the changes and no matter how much you ramble its not going to be changed back to the original form. I respect your point of view and i admit you are right to be angry but enough is enough, im sick and tired of seeing this kind of posts everywhere all the time.
As committed gamers, we like to learn lessons of the future. We don't want to see other games suffer the same fate, or other companies make the same pointless mistakes. So this kinda stuff won't really ever die down amongst those who like to discuss what is done right or wrong in games, and hopefully for quite some time companies will consider this debacle to avoid it.
Very well put article. Easily sums up the way I felt about both the CU and the NGE. As quoted in the article, I'm one of the ones who voted with their feet.
i had 2 pre cu accounts, i had my main and jedi alt, and my mdoc/tkm and later mdoc mswords on jedi ambulatory duty. two computers , two accounts, and the greatest, funnest, most exciting game of my life.
pre cu had it all, from pvp to crafting to entertaining, social services, it was amazing. over 30 professions, all dependent on each other for a great social/trade community.
i had my favorite elite weapon makers, smugglers for spice, and armorsmiths.
all 6 feet of my toons have been canceled, when my accounts subs ranout right after the nge was released.
i tried wow for awhile, but now they have problems of their own, such as, where is the war in warcraft?
i no longer play any mmo s, none will ever measure up to the excitement of pr cu, socially, pvp, crafting, or anything, all rolled up into the most iconic game ever.
one thing i can say , i unlocked and grinded a pre cu jedi from unlock to double mastery. for those of you who never accomplished this, you never will know what it was like, to finally come out of hiding, after 6 months of solo grinding, and bh attacks, to finally serve the dark side. ok ok, or light lol.
anything after pre cu, was just the retardation of the original.
sad that there just isnt another game im willing to put time in, and just see everything i accomplished, either erased completely, made for free, or just giving away. hhmmm, imagine that.
I played for 2 years and those stupid bastards went and cheated us with the last upgrade we payed for by slipping the NGE in on it. (Olusion spits on SOE) I'll never do business with them again and many of my friends will not either.
As former and last correspondent of the former carabineer profession I can say, that this sums it very well.
Many many people have warned them times and times again and offered a lot of help to help the game thrive and compete with all other MMORPGs but it looked like the management was to arrogant to listen to it's own customer base.
If there is anybody brave and couragoues enough at SOE/SWG they should try a "classic server" with, to be realistic, the CU game mechanics and let them start from scratch and see how many people would come back even just for that.
They had many of the realy broken classes near to being fixed (squad leaders, the "promised but never arised bio pet stuff", the commando and ranger revamp as well the improved AI for the MOBs) but they just had to kill their own golden egg laying duck.
I would like to take this time and say thank you for someone to fianlly say what all the ex-players have been trying to tell SOE about star wars and there so-called combat upgrade. It is nice to see that we the people actually have a voice and that SOE (sorry to say) is not listeining. If star wars would've been left the way it was pre-combat upgarde I probably would've been still playing the game to this day. I like the game because it was like playing the actually movie. I grew up watching all the original movies as a kid and it was such aa rush to actually see a game made out of the movie. This to me really brought out all new aspects of the movie and the game, but unfortuntetely they did not listeiin to their player base and now they are paying for it. Justice in this case has been served and I am truely sorry that the game itself had to suffer at the hands of people who did NOT know thier job well.. There is a lesson here for SOE " a bird in the hand is better then 2 in the bush "
At first I thought that it was SOE's fault but now I've come to belive that Lucasarts is probably also to blame for this travesty.
For most of us this was more than just a game, for companies it's just a source of income. They never cared about creating a good game. They knew people would flock because it's a SW title.
Still, they had a very nice game engine and the best character generation system (which made your character look and feel so unique).
"argued that the changes were necessary to truly attract a crowd worthy of Star Wars"
Please tell me that this is not what SOE said? This from a company who cheated and lied and treated it's customer base like.. well you know. We had 3 acct's for nearly 3 years.. how much more worthy can you ask your customers to be?
I was playing SWG practically from beta. I suffered through all the bugs, the broken patches, and the horrid customer service while still remaining relatively happy with the game. The combat revamp seriously hurt the game, but still continued to play. NGE was the deathblow. What was SWG is now a iconic POS. Even now I still dream of a well-built SWG world to play. Because so far no other game has kept my interest longer than 6 months, and I'm starting to wonder if I will ever find a game again.
I think the number of replies to this article shows how sore the lovers of this game are even after all this time. It was my first MMO and and I agree with pretty much eveything the editorial quoted by the OP said. WoW should have taught SOE one lesson and that was 'add some quest content, stupid'. It did not. They chucked out the excellent to replace it with the mediocre as that was easier and hey we are fanboys so we'll suck it up right?
I currently play WoW while I await the release of a complex, evolved sci fi mmo. Buy all the pretenders, cancel after a month n cry into my beer n log onto WoW. I emerge to search for clues to release dates for star Trek Online, Stargate Online, Tabula Rasa etc. Then back to Wow.
Only thing that still frustrates me was the number of people who looked to Lucasarts to resolve the evil Sony empire. Erm, its been years. If they ain't done anything it does suggest the decisions made by Sony were with Lucasarts approval.
Would Lepidus mind adding an agree/disagree poll? most of us are posting to show our enthusiastic endorsement but it would have been easier to be able to click agree/disagree with the editorial
Originally posted by kay226 Ok, enough is enough dont you think? How long are you guys going to go on and on about how bad these changes were? Seems to me you are actually trying to wage a war against Sony and the Star Wars Galaxies game, relentlessly bad mouthing the game anywhere you can and whenever you can. I understand your frustration caused by the dramatic changes, i would have been frustrated and angry too but hey its been so long the changes have been made and you guys still going on and on about it, maybe its time to let it go and maybe get a life in the process. Give it a rest guys, the game is still great after the changes and no matter how much you ramble its not going to be changed back to the original form. I respect your point of view and i admit you are right to be angry but enough is enough, im sick and tired of seeing this kind of posts everywhere all the time.
tbh it looks like u should be the one "moving on" in ur browsing and leave us hardcore SWG wubbers alone in our blood and tears.
Thank you so much kevin for writing this. As a very old ex-SWG veteran, I couldn't agree with your points more. I miss my character from time and time, but I will not let SWG take my cash after the NGE letdown. We were cheated and terrorized by their buggy combat system, new rules and the treatmentent of the veterans.
I will send this article out to all my old SWG friends if they haven't already seen it. Thank you very much for writing it.
I agree with the article. SWG did not take care of their existing player base. When I first joined SWG, it did need a little tweaking but not what CU then NGE made of it. In looking for other mmorpgs to play, I have found none so far that live up to the potential of what SWG could have been -- the combination of combat and non-combat roles (not just making things but the entertainment and medical professions that also existed) with non-combat serving a needed function (if player wanted to be healed, equip the best armor, etc. the player had to visit BOTH entertainers and medics), the ability to use skill points to mix and match professional skills, the large amount of choices in creating a character along with the ability to change those choices (eye color, skin color, hair color, sliding scales to adjust the size and angle of many different body parts, hair/lekku/horn styles which increased by visiting Master IDers once one started the game), the ability to create player cities and to use player cities to meet all one's needs esp if one had an active guild/town (join a guild and move into town...buy what I need from the vendors in town, go to town cantina to get ent buff, go to town medical center to get doc buff, use town mission terminal to level up, use trainers in town or guild members to learn skills)...then CU and NGE came along and killed much of this along with nerfing planets and dungeons/caves/etc. to the point that things that were once "feared" became noob training devices. It's sad that SOE gave up that which they once had. I hope another game will one day come along and meet the standards that SWG almost set.
I agree 110%! I still can't figure out what they were thinking with the NGE. The one thing though that I keep saying is HOW CAN YOU SCREW UP A STAR WARS GAME! /shakes fist
I just bought SWG a week ago cause i liked starwars and always brushed it off since i never heard much ads for it till last december. I quit as of today, for really there is horribly small amount of content aswell as some constant aggravating combat bugs.
I started my mmo craze back in the golden days of EQ1 and i can feel what you guys are saying about change and system rehaul for we eq vets had somewhat of same prob of over balancing nerfing then finally the copy wow combat system, thought nothing to the horrific extent of SWG. I quit about few months after ldon just got sick of over nerfing and rehauling of the game every month as well as horribly inflated economy and rampant ebayer, bot probs that emerged in the final days. Went to EQ2 hoping for redemption only to see most of the magic was gone but had that slight ring that kept most vets in and is continued to be drained with every LU sony slowly dumbs down EQ2 aswell. Wish i had come to this little gem that is SWG earlier cause it sounded simply great back in the day.
So in the end guys all of us from other sony games have been hurt bad aswell and all we have is the memories of those perfect games we wasted so much of our life on.
But on a last note there is a guy at lucasarts that doing great with sw franchise, its the fellow who was in charge of BattleFront series and Empire At War im sure if this SWG fiasco was brought to his attention he would do something about it....i forget his name but im sure someone might know who i speak of, might be worth a shot if made great games like those im sure he could save SWG.
Originally posted by kay226 Ok, enough is enough dont you think? How long are you guys going to go on and on about how bad these changes were? Seems to me you are actually trying to wage a war against Sony and the Star Wars Galaxies game, relentlessly bad mouthing the game anywhere you can and whenever you can. I understand your frustration caused by the dramatic changes, i would have been frustrated and angry too but hey its been so long the changes have been made and you guys still going on and on about it, maybe its time to let it go and maybe get a life in the process. Give it a rest guys, the game is still great after the changes and no matter how much you ramble its not going to be changed back to the original form. I respect your point of view and i admit you are right to be angry but enough is enough, im sick and tired of seeing this kind of posts everywhere all the time.
i personally will continue to rant against them until they bring back THE GAME PURCHASED. and i /salute who do the same. despite countless articles in mainstream media and gaming sites, SOE continues with their fraudulent ways. they must be stopped.
the #1 principle of RPG's is that your character develops over time. this is true of online games as well as the original D&D with dice and pen and paper. if your characters skills and possessions are going to be rendered useless and worthless every few months, what point is there in playing?
This article is a very good one! In fact I am tempted to say "This thread deliver"!
Personaly I play WoW everyday, I was close to quiting once, but realised I had nothing better to do. So I sought new enjoyment in the game. I think WoW has brought a lot to the MMORPG industry, both good and bad. It has set new standards, and I believe in the future these standards will appear more frequently. The bad side of it is however as the article explained, teaching the old dog new tricks, and making it fall over and break it's neck. Old MMORPG's like SWG fell into the trap that they felt they needed to imitate WoW to get it's succes. But in the end the old dog just tripped and broke it's own neck. Al gamel companies are after profit, no matter how idealistic they seem to be. Some are smarter and gain it through the trust of their gamers, others try to run ruthless marketing campaign, that can fail and succeed. In SWG case, it failed pretty badly. But I think that the chaos that was left in the trail of WoW the juggernaugt, a new order will rise from. One that will be better and more advanced than ever!
I used to love playing on SWG, it was in fact my very first mmorpg. I liked it so much i got myself 2 accounts to play with. While maybe not the best guy at rpg's i thoroughly enjoyed it, although some factors were annoying. The Combat upgrade was needed, to an extent, to prevent people taking unbeatable templates and thrashing you in combat. They only needed to separate maneouvres to different fighting styles, but no - they revamped the whole thing and killed the game for me. The main thing that madde most veterans leave, i think, was when you could start of as a jedi after all those people worked so damn hard to get it.
As for WoW - i tried a trial off my brother and was very unimpressed - it was too cartoony. I cannot, however, deny its success and popularity but i dont think it has really set any particular standards that other rpg's must follow to be successful. It all boils down to personal taste and preference, its irrelevant what an rpg has done before - if you like the theme you are gonna try it.
I have not found another online rpg to alleviate my needed fix for sci-fi roleplay since SWG, none have really appealed to me. If galaxies returned to "how it was" i would for sure return. I have heard rumours by word of mouth that another SW rpg is in the works, but it may well be just a rumour and load of bs. I will continue to hope it isnt rumour, and pray a new SWG RPG comes out for me to try.
Originally posted by ukpredator I used to love playing on SWG, it was in fact my very first mmorpg. I liked it so much i got myself 2 accounts to play with. While maybe not the best guy at rpg's i thoroughly enjoyed it, although some factors were annoying. The Combat upgrade was needed, to an extent, to prevent people taking unbeatable templates and thrashing you in combat. They only needed to separate maneouvres to different fighting styles, but no - they revamped the whole thing and killed the game for me. The main thing that madde most veterans leave, i think, was when you could start of as a jedi after all those people worked so damn hard to get it. As for WoW - i tried a trial off my brother and was very unimpressed - it was too cartoony. I cannot, however, deny its success and popularity but i dont think it has really set any particular standards that other rpg's must follow to be successful. It all boils down to personal taste and preference, its irrelevant what an rpg has done before - if you like the theme you are gonna try it. I have not found another online rpg to alleviate my needed fix for sci-fi roleplay since SWG, none have really appealed to me. If galaxies returned to "how it was" i would for sure return. I have heard rumours by word of mouth that another SW rpg is in the works, but it may well be just a rumour and load of bs. I will continue to hope it isnt rumour, and pray a new SWG RPG comes out for me to try.
ukpredator ... like you, SWG was my hubby's first mmorpg and thoroughly enjoyed it. To this day he has not found another mmorpg that could match the content it once had. I, too, had an account on SWG and miss the content and diversity it once had. What game today could match? The ground pounding, space combat, various professions to master, the opportunity to advance to Jedi/Sith, the player communities which were forged through friendships and trade ... the list goes on.
The developers and suits made a decission, NOT by player recommendation or opinion, to revamp the entire content of the game, leaving many of us lost and most of us departing our beloved game, friends, and dis-heartened with the vast gaming community of mmorpgs.
Sure, there will always be people who will continue to sign up with the current game-play and enjoy it. However, they will never know what it was truly like to be or see the diversity we once had.
Many of us have tried WoW, but the game-play leaves most of the Veteran SWG players hollow ... WoW cannot replace what we once had and still wish we had.
I am not damning WoW or the current game-play of SWG ... just saying, many of us miss the SWG we had signed up for.
SWG was my first mmo, and frankly, was the best. Its a pity SoE have changed it so much.. I would of thought it was the obvious move to de-evolve the game back to its roots, and go from there. I guess its too far gone to rescue...
I've seen the entire development of the swg game. I played at launch and eventually left because as many have already stated the game was rushed to market, and I tired of the balance issues. I however never completely dismissed the idea of coming back. With the first combat upgrade I saw some steps in the right direction in my opinion, though balance issues still existed, the game at its core was still what I wanted, a true living breathing world. I returned with glee as I started from scratch with my best friend on our quest to jedi, sure the grind is long but it was going to be o so sweet when we finally achieved our goal. Things were going great, sure certain combinations were over-powered and yes the game had bugs in there that had been there since the game launched (still not sure how soe could allow the same bugs to exist for 4 years) but IT WAS FUN. So my friend and I joined a great guild and played most all of our free time. So eight months after my return we were both lvl 80's and over two thirds through the jedi grind. We constantly talked of what jedi skill we were going to pick how we would build our jedi's to complement each other for pvp against the empire players. Then with no notice Sony destroys everything and I mean everything we worked for, the game became a very bad wow clone with low lvl immature players with light sabers everywhere. They destroyed the in game economy by making quest items so much stronger than other stuff that crafters had no reason to craft and worst of all my buddy had an inventories worth of creatures that he had been training that he couldn't even bring out any longer. The worst thing about it is that if you told it how it wass on the message boards your post would be emmitted or worse you couldn't even post, last time I checked this isn't nazi germany and my opinion is just as valid as those such as Kay226 who were in the minority. I was one of those that walked away and the reason is simple yes I had a lvl 90 jedi but so what, so did everyone else, and every jedi was exactly the same no variety no mixing and matching classes....nothing left to do but stand around looking at your glow stick. I will never play another SOE mmo, in my opinion SOE has lost any cred that they had with these changes and I whole heartedly agree with the article, its just to bad that the people that truly lost were the dedicated players such as myself. Now in regards to kay226's post, bad mouthing everyone and anyone who disagrees with your opinion that the game is better now than before, I say to you accept the fact that a majority of former/current swg players are just like me, we paid for one thing and then after many many months of paying SOE's bills we were marginalized so that sony could chase that wow customer base. For you to sit and tell us what we can and can't say is silly, if you truly believe that this steaming pile of cookie cutter characters, poor gameplay, glitches, broken quest and nerfed professions is good by all means waste your money with SOE all you want, but don't tell us what we can and can't say, players such as myself are what built that game and now we have to walk away from it because that game is gone. For me I learned a hard lesson, and will never play another SOE game again( I also quit everquest2 due to SOE's lack of care for its customer base). Best Regards to those in my shoes and I'll you all again when Lucas wises up and pulls the license from SOE. I believe that will happen and we will see a good SWG mmorpg again one day, til then COH has become my cyber home.
SOE just cant admit they've made a huge mistake, and instead are just trying to fix it, (/sarcasm on) WOW, they've really helped boost their player base with this incredible NGE (/sarcasm off)If anything they've lost more players than they've gained, which is not worth it, i just cant believe they ruined the best game ever (at least it was my MOST favorite game of any other game i've ever played) now....it doesnt even compare. This article is 100% true and i dont know why LA/SOE cant just see it and make the necessary changes that we all need to have fun again
November 15, 2005.......the day it all went up in flames
The problem with SWG is that SOE and especially LA could never get the 1 million mark they had wanted. At it's height SWG could only get around 200,000 players, which is very small for such a large venture. Their goal was to attract the general population, not just a few hardcore and they failed by only attracting a few hardcore.
Now with games like WoW, EQ 2 and the many other mmorpgs now out on the market, they are desperate and looking for ways to broaden their appeal. In the end, SOE and LA are not looking to please a few hardcore and if they can't get SWG to appeal to a larger audience, it will eventually be written off as a failure. At best, if they cannot generate the customers they need to keep the game afloat, you will end up with a continuing game with no further develop. LA will not hang on to this albaltross forever.
They never wanted to be like EQ I or UO who have very small hardcore population that barely generates income. Times are changing and with the huge success of WoW, more companies are going to be pushing the hardcore aside and trying even harder to appeal to the mass population. In this day and age for a large corporation, appealing and creating games that appeal only to hardcore players amounts to failure.
The problem with hardcore players is simple, what they want is not what the general population wants in a game. For hardcores it will always be that small company looking to fill a nitch that will produce the game they are looking for. Large corporations that appeal or try to appeal on a mass scale, will never make them truly happy.
Is it wrong to be hardcore? Of course not. Should companies listen to the ideas of the hardcore? Of course they should, but only to a very limited extent. You have to realize at some point that most people are not hardcore and because of that a conflict of ideas is inevitable and any game that has mass appeal will probably not be the game you find ideal.
Comments
Ceraphim
i had 2 pre cu accounts, i had my main and jedi alt, and my mdoc/tkm and later mdoc mswords on jedi ambulatory duty. two computers , two accounts, and the greatest, funnest, most exciting game of my life.
pre cu had it all, from pvp to crafting to entertaining, social services, it was amazing. over 30 professions, all dependent on each other for a great social/trade community.
i had my favorite elite weapon makers, smugglers for spice, and armorsmiths.
all 6 feet of my toons have been canceled, when my accounts subs ranout right after the nge was released.
i tried wow for awhile, but now they have problems of their own, such as, where is the war in warcraft?
i no longer play any mmo s, none will ever measure up to the excitement of pr cu, socially, pvp, crafting, or anything, all rolled up into the most iconic game ever.
one thing i can say , i unlocked and grinded a pre cu jedi from unlock to double mastery. for those of you who never accomplished this, you never will know what it was like, to finally come out of hiding, after 6 months of solo grinding, and bh attacks, to finally serve the dark side. ok ok, or light lol.
anything after pre cu, was just the retardation of the original.
sad that there just isnt another game im willing to put time in, and just see everything i accomplished, either erased completely, made for free, or just giving away. hhmmm, imagine that.
great article, dead on, right on.
I played for 2 years and those stupid bastards went and cheated us with the last upgrade we payed for by slipping the NGE in on it. (
Olusion spits on SOE
) I'll never do business with them again and many of my friends will not either.
Long Live EVE-Online
Olusion
Many many people have warned them times and times again and offered a lot of help to help the game thrive and compete with all other MMORPGs but it looked like the management was to arrogant to listen to it's own customer base.
If there is anybody brave and couragoues enough at SOE/SWG they should try a "classic server" with, to be realistic, the CU game mechanics and let them start from scratch and see how many people would come back even just for that.
They had many of the realy broken classes near to being fixed (squad leaders, the "promised but never arised bio pet stuff", the commando and ranger revamp as well the improved AI for the MOBs) but they just had to kill their own golden egg laying duck.
May it rest in pieces.
Hi,
I would like to take this time and say thank you for someone to fianlly say what all the ex-players have been trying to tell SOE about star wars and there so-called combat upgrade. It is nice to see that we the people actually have a voice and that SOE (sorry to say) is not listeining. If star wars would've been left the way it was pre-combat upgarde I probably would've been still playing the game to this day. I like the game because it was like playing the actually movie. I grew up watching all the original movies as a kid and it was such aa rush to actually see a game made out of the movie. This to me really brought out all new aspects of the movie and the game, but unfortuntetely they did not listeiin to their player base and now they are paying for it. Justice in this case has been served and I am truely sorry that the game itself had to suffer at the hands of people who did NOT know thier job well.. There is a lesson here for SOE " a bird in the hand is better then 2 in the bush "
thanks MMORPG
Sean
For most of us this was more than just a game, for companies it's just a source of income. They never cared about creating a good game. They knew people would flock because it's a SW title.
Still, they had a very nice game engine and the best character generation system (which made your character look and feel so unique).
Pity.
"argued that the changes were necessary to truly attract a crowd worthy of Star Wars"
Please tell me that this is not what SOE said? This from a company who cheated and lied and treated it's customer base like.. well you know. We had 3 acct's for nearly 3 years.. how much more worthy can you ask your customers to be?
I was playing SWG practically from beta. I suffered through all the bugs, the broken patches, and the horrid customer service while still remaining relatively happy with the game. The combat revamp seriously hurt the game, but still continued to play. NGE was the deathblow. What was SWG is now a iconic POS. Even now I still dream of a well-built SWG world to play. Because so far no other game has kept my interest longer than 6 months, and I'm starting to wonder if I will ever find a game again.
I think the number of replies to this article shows how sore the lovers of this game are even after all this time. It was my first MMO and and I agree with pretty much eveything the editorial quoted by the OP said. WoW should have taught SOE one lesson and that was 'add some quest content, stupid'. It did not. They chucked out the excellent to replace it with the mediocre as that was easier and hey we are fanboys so we'll suck it up right?
I currently play WoW while I await the release of a complex, evolved sci fi mmo. Buy all the pretenders, cancel after a month n cry into my beer n log onto WoW. I emerge to search for clues to release dates for star Trek Online, Stargate Online, Tabula Rasa etc. Then back to Wow.
Only thing that still frustrates me was the number of people who looked to Lucasarts to resolve the evil Sony empire. Erm, its been years. If they ain't done anything it does suggest the decisions made by Sony were with Lucasarts approval.
Would Lepidus mind adding an agree/disagree poll? most of us are posting to show our enthusiastic endorsement but it would have been easier to be able to click agree/disagree with the editorial
tbh it looks like u should be the one "moving on" in ur browsing and leave us hardcore SWG wubbers alone in our blood and tears.
*sigh* Wumi
Wumi - SWG - Bloodfin - Cancelled
Wumi - WoW - Eu-Kazzak - Cancelled
Bulldozer - Aion - Eu-Kahrun - Cancelled
Wumi - Rift - EU-Riptalon - Cancelled
Thank you so much kevin for writing this. As a very old ex-SWG veteran, I couldn't agree with your points more. I miss my character from time and time, but I will not let SWG take my cash after the NGE letdown. We were cheated and terrorized by their buggy combat system, new rules and the treatmentent of the veterans.
I will send this article out to all my old SWG friends if they haven't already seen it. Thank you very much for writing it.
a retired twi'lek,
Aserhe Ostaho, Scylla Galaxy
I am:
Aserhe - Twi'lek - Scylla Galaxy (swg) [canceled]
Exar - Dark Elf - Lucan D'lere (eq2) [canceled]
Narlash - Night Elf - Emerald Dream (wow) [Active]
I agree with the article. SWG did not take care of their existing player base. When I first joined SWG, it did need a little tweaking but not what CU then NGE made of it. In looking for other mmorpgs to play, I have found none so far that live up to the potential of what SWG could have been -- the combination of combat and non-combat roles (not just making things but the entertainment and medical professions that also existed) with non-combat serving a needed function (if player wanted to be healed, equip the best armor, etc. the player had to visit BOTH entertainers and medics), the ability to use skill points to mix and match professional skills, the large amount of choices in creating a character along with the ability to change those choices (eye color, skin color, hair color, sliding scales to adjust the size and angle of many different body parts, hair/lekku/horn styles which increased by visiting Master IDers once one started the game), the ability to create player cities and to use player cities to meet all one's needs esp if one had an active guild/town (join a guild and move into town...buy what I need from the vendors in town, go to town cantina to get ent buff, go to town medical center to get doc buff, use town mission terminal to level up, use trainers in town or guild members to learn skills)...then CU and NGE came along and killed much of this along with nerfing planets and dungeons/caves/etc. to the point that things that were once "feared" became noob training devices. It's sad that SOE gave up that which they once had. I hope another game will one day come along and meet the standards that SWG almost set.
I agree 110%! I still can't figure out what they were thinking with the NGE. The one thing though that I keep saying is HOW CAN YOU SCREW UP A STAR WARS GAME! /shakes fist
Fight Me! http://zunarn.mybrute.com
Both my son and I played SWG from the first day after 18 mos we finally left
why ? because it seemed with each change to the game it became less fun
it seemed as tho nerfing skills was coming every month or two and seemed to always
hit what ever skills we had acquired sincce last nerf
over time the community became more and more obnoxious
seems like all the nice and seasoned vets were leaving
and the garbage was coming in
overall I would have to say SOE had the poorest level of customer support
and the lowest level of understanding what the customers wanted
Just imagine you call a Pizza company and order a pepperoni pizza just like the one in thier AD
and when it is delivered to you its a piece of stale toast.
think you would be happy with that?
I just bought SWG a week ago cause i liked starwars and always brushed it off since i never heard much ads for it till last december. I quit as of today, for really there is horribly small amount of content aswell as some constant aggravating combat bugs.
I started my mmo craze back in the golden days of EQ1 and i can feel what you guys are saying about change and system rehaul for we eq vets had somewhat of same prob of over balancing nerfing then finally the copy wow combat system, thought nothing to the horrific extent of SWG. I quit about few months after ldon just got sick of over nerfing and rehauling of the game every month as well as horribly inflated economy and rampant ebayer, bot probs that emerged in the final days. Went to EQ2 hoping for redemption only to see most of the magic was gone but had that slight ring that kept most vets in and is continued to be drained with every LU sony slowly dumbs down EQ2 aswell. Wish i had come to this little gem that is SWG earlier cause it sounded simply great back in the day.
So in the end guys all of us from other sony games have been hurt bad aswell and all we have is the memories of those perfect games we wasted so much of our life on.
But on a last note there is a guy at lucasarts that doing great with sw franchise, its the fellow who was in charge of BattleFront series and Empire At War im sure if this SWG fiasco was brought to his attention he would do something about it....i forget his name but im sure someone might know who i speak of, might be worth a shot if made great games like those im sure he could save SWG.
i personally will continue to rant against them until they bring back THE GAME PURCHASED. and i /salute who do the same. despite countless articles in mainstream media and gaming sites, SOE continues with their fraudulent ways. they must be stopped.
the #1 principle of RPG's is that your character develops over time. this is true of online games as well as the original D&D with dice and pen and paper. if your characters skills and possessions are going to be rendered useless and worthless every few months, what point is there in playing?
SWG ADDICT...clean since the NGE
Personaly I play WoW everyday, I was close to quiting once, but realised I had nothing better to do. So I sought new enjoyment in the game. I think WoW has brought a lot to the MMORPG industry, both good and bad. It has set new standards, and I believe in the future these standards will appear more frequently. The bad side of it is however as the article explained, teaching the old dog new tricks, and making it fall over and break it's neck. Old MMORPG's like SWG fell into the trap that they felt they needed to imitate WoW to get it's succes. But in the end the old dog just tripped and broke it's own neck. Al gamel companies are after profit, no matter how idealistic they seem to be. Some are smarter and gain it through the trust of their gamers, others try to run ruthless marketing campaign, that can fail and succeed. In SWG case, it failed pretty badly. But I think that the chaos that was left in the trail of WoW the juggernaugt, a new order will rise from. One that will be better and more advanced than ever!
Formerly known as Royal Arcanist
I used to love playing on SWG, it was in fact my very first mmorpg. I liked it so much i got myself 2 accounts to play with. While maybe not the best guy at rpg's i thoroughly enjoyed it, although some factors were annoying. The Combat upgrade was needed, to an extent, to prevent people taking unbeatable templates and thrashing you in combat. They only needed to separate maneouvres to different fighting styles, but no - they revamped the whole thing and killed the game for me. The main thing that madde most veterans leave, i think, was when you could start of as a jedi after all those people worked so damn hard to get it.
As for WoW - i tried a trial off my brother and was very unimpressed - it was too cartoony. I cannot, however, deny its success and popularity but i dont think it has really set any particular standards that other rpg's must follow to be successful. It all boils down to personal taste and preference, its irrelevant what an rpg has done before - if you like the theme you are gonna try it.
I have not found another online rpg to alleviate my needed fix for sci-fi roleplay since SWG, none have really appealed to me. If galaxies returned to "how it was" i would for sure return. I have heard rumours by word of mouth that another SW rpg is in the works, but it may well be just a rumour and load of bs. I will continue to hope it isnt rumour, and pray a new SWG RPG comes out for me to try.
ukpredator ... like you, SWG was my hubby's first mmorpg and thoroughly enjoyed it. To this day he has not found another mmorpg that could match the content it once had. I, too, had an account on SWG and miss the content and diversity it once had. What game today could match? The ground pounding, space combat, various professions to master, the opportunity to advance to Jedi/Sith, the player communities which were forged through friendships and trade ... the list goes on.
The developers and suits made a decission, NOT by player recommendation or opinion, to revamp the entire content of the game, leaving many of us lost and most of us departing our beloved game, friends, and dis-heartened with the vast gaming community of mmorpgs.
Sure, there will always be people who will continue to sign up with the current game-play and enjoy it. However, they will never know what it was truly like to be or see the diversity we once had.
Many of us have tried WoW, but the game-play leaves most of the Veteran SWG players hollow ... WoW cannot replace what we once had and still wish we had.
I am not damning WoW or the current game-play of SWG ... just saying, many of us miss the SWG we had signed up for.
SWG was my first mmo, and frankly, was the best. Its a pity SoE have changed it so much.. I would of thought it was the obvious move to de-evolve the game back to its roots, and go from there. I guess its too far gone to rescue...
I've seen the entire development of the swg game. I played at launch and eventually left because as many have already stated the game was rushed to market, and I tired of the balance issues. I however never completely dismissed the idea of coming back. With the first combat upgrade I saw some steps in the right direction in my opinion, though balance issues still existed, the game at its core was still what I wanted, a true living breathing world. I returned with glee as I started from scratch with my best friend on our quest to jedi, sure the grind is long but it was going to be o so sweet when we finally achieved our goal. Things were going great, sure certain combinations were over-powered and yes the game had bugs in there that had been there since the game launched (still not sure how soe could allow the same bugs to exist for 4 years) but IT WAS FUN. So my friend and I joined a great guild and played most all of our free time. So eight months after my return we were both lvl 80's and over two thirds through the jedi grind. We constantly talked of what jedi skill we were going to pick how we would build our jedi's to complement each other for pvp against the empire players. Then with no notice Sony destroys everything and I mean everything we worked for, the game became a very bad wow clone with low lvl immature players with light sabers everywhere. They destroyed the in game economy by making quest items so much stronger than other stuff that crafters had no reason to craft and worst of all my buddy had an inventories worth of creatures that he had been training that he couldn't even bring out any longer. The worst thing about it is that if you told it how it wass on the message boards your post would be emmitted or worse you couldn't even post, last time I checked this isn't nazi germany and my opinion is just as valid as those such as Kay226 who were in the minority. I was one of those that walked away and the reason is simple yes I had a lvl 90 jedi but so what, so did everyone else, and every jedi was exactly the same no variety no mixing and matching classes....nothing left to do but stand around looking at your glow stick. I will never play another SOE mmo, in my opinion SOE has lost any cred that they had with these changes and I whole heartedly agree with the article, its just to bad that the people that truly lost were the dedicated players such as myself. Now in regards to kay226's post, bad mouthing everyone and anyone who disagrees with your opinion that the game is better now than before, I say to you accept the fact that a majority of former/current swg players are just like me, we paid for one thing and then after many many months of paying SOE's bills we were marginalized so that sony could chase that wow customer base. For you to sit and tell us what we can and can't say is silly, if you truly believe that this steaming pile of cookie cutter characters, poor gameplay, glitches, broken quest and nerfed professions is good by all means waste your money with SOE all you want, but don't tell us what we can and can't say, players such as myself are what built that game and now we have to walk away from it because that game is gone. For me I learned a hard lesson, and will never play another SOE game again( I also quit everquest2 due to SOE's lack of care for its customer base). Best Regards to those in my shoes and I'll you all again when Lucas wises up and pulls the license from SOE. I believe that will happen and we will see a good SWG mmorpg again one day, til then COH has become my cyber home.
November 15, 2005.......the day it all went up in flames
Amen brother... Amen.
Loved the game up until NGE. What a waste of money.
Lead with your face and role with the punches.
The problem with SWG is that SOE and especially LA could never get the 1 million mark they had wanted. At it's height SWG could only get around 200,000 players, which is very small for such a large venture. Their goal was to attract the general population, not just a few hardcore and they failed by only attracting a few hardcore.
Now with games like WoW, EQ 2 and the many other mmorpgs now out on the market, they are desperate and looking for ways to broaden their appeal. In the end, SOE and LA are not looking to please a few hardcore and if they can't get SWG to appeal to a larger audience, it will eventually be written off as a failure. At best, if they cannot generate the customers they need to keep the game afloat, you will end up with a continuing game with no further develop. LA will not hang on to this albaltross forever.
They never wanted to be like EQ I or UO who have very small hardcore population that barely generates income. Times are changing and with the huge success of WoW, more companies are going to be pushing the hardcore aside and trying even harder to appeal to the mass population. In this day and age for a large corporation, appealing and creating games that appeal only to hardcore players amounts to failure.
The problem with hardcore players is simple, what they want is not what the general population wants in a game. For hardcores it will always be that small company looking to fill a nitch that will produce the game they are looking for. Large corporations that appeal or try to appeal on a mass scale, will never make them truly happy.
Is it wrong to be hardcore? Of course not. Should companies listen to the ideas of the hardcore? Of course they should, but only to a very limited extent. You have to realize at some point that most people are not hardcore and because of that a conflict of ideas is inevitable and any game that has mass appeal will probably not be the game you find ideal.