Star Wars Galaxies question

[Sundown]

Lots complain about aspects of the game, then again its always same people complaining about everything anyhow, give it a try youy just may love or hate it : )

Having tried several MMORPG's, and actually wanting to like SWG the most, having dedicated the most time, energy, and money to it... I can safely say that it's the most horrid game of its genre that I have ever played. Well the most horrid one that's made by a well funded company with a decent license, anyway.

I've played AO, CoH, WoW, FFXI, and Guild Wars... and although I have certain issues with each of those games, they are all infinitely better designed and implemented than SWG. The two things that SWG does far and above better than all those games are character customization and the number of player moods and emotes. Other than that, I can't really recommend the game over any others in terms of gameplay. There may be habitual whiners for whom complaining is a lifestyle, but SWG doesn't receive criticism from them alone. It rightfully deserves most of the flack it gets, IMO.

What era are we supposed to be in?

I'm convinced that the Devs no longer care. They're more interested in adding PT stuff because it's "cool", tying in with the hype over the new movies, and rationalizing away everything that feels wrong to anyone who remotely cares about Star Wars immersion... than they are in actually visually presenting something that feels like the OT.

-Al

Edited June 20, 2005 by Sundown

[Hikuro]

Saturday, friend of mine pops on.

Lysis - Yo!

Hikuro - What's up?

Lysis - Hey since you like SW's, you ever played SWG?

Hikuro - Ummm, oh SWG, no...I heard mixed reviews and always revamping the game.

Lysis - Yeah, but this latest update is fantastic! You can be a Jedi without going thru all the crap! Which sucks for me cause I did go thru all the crap.

Hikuro - Oh....guess that's pretty cool.

Lysis - You should join up!

Hikuro - Yeah but I gotta pay. And I'm already paying 13 for FFXI...and hardly play.

Lysis - Yeah, and its basically 15 for SWG....but its cool! And we can play together!

Hikuro -.......I'll get it Monday.....

Lysis - Just go to the SWG site and download it! 10 day trail!

Hikuro - Rather have 30 day...cause 10 ain't gonna persuade me enough.

So Monday, keepin my promise, went to Fry's cause its the closest, found the starterkit for 19.99 went home, about the second disk it starts acting up saying "Wrong Vol. in drive need SWG_SK_1" so I thought maybe I just need to put disc 1 back in. Nope, everything went to hell.

Went back to Fry's spent an hour over there, find out Discs 2 and 4 got distortion so they wont work. So I went thru 5 or 6 boxes finally found 2 and 4 that looked okay.

I go home, pop in and reinstall, same damn message appears. But this time I got SWG icon on my desktop and on my start program.

So I start her up, loads, I register, signed in, and now I'm doing a 16 hour update and I'm on freaking DSL 0_o

So him and I are thinkin its filling in the missing data and updating into the latest version.

I contacted SOE, but I wont hear anything for a while........bbbbbllllllooows if I knew this was gonna happen I'd said forget it.

[Chewie]

Saturday, friend of mine pops on.

Lysis - Yo!

Hikuro - What's up?

Lysis - Hey since you like SW's, you ever played SWG?

Hikuro - Ummm, oh SWG, no...I heard mixed reviews and always revamping the game.

Lysis - Yeah, but this latest update is fantastic! You can be a Jedi without going thru all the crap! Which sucks for me cause I did go thru all the crap.

Hikuro - Oh....guess that's pretty cool.

Lysis - You should join up!

Hikuro - Yeah but I gotta pay. And I'm already paying 13 for FFXI...and hardly play.

Lysis - Yeah, and its basically 15 for SWG....but its cool! And we can play together!

Hikuro -.......I'll get it Monday.....

Lysis - Just go to the SWG site and download it! 10 day trail!

Hikuro - Rather have 30 day...cause 10 ain't gonna persuade me enough.

So Monday, keepin my promise, went to Fry's cause its the closest, found the starterkit for 19.99 went home, about the second disk it starts acting up saying "Wrong Vol. in drive need SWG_SK_1" so I thought maybe I just need to put disc 1 back in.  Nope, everything went to hell.

Went back to Fry's spent an hour over there, find out Discs 2 and 4 got distortion so they wont work.  So I went thru 5 or 6 boxes finally found 2 and 4 that looked okay.

I go home, pop in and reinstall, same damn message appears.  But this time I got SWG icon on my desktop and on my start program.

So I start her up, loads, I register, signed in, and now I'm doing a 16 hour update and I'm on freaking DSL 0_o

So him and I are thinkin its filling in the missing data and updating into the latest version.

I contacted SOE, but I wont hear anything for a while........bbbbbllllllooows if I knew this was gonna happen I'd said forget it.

356938[/snapback]

Yeah. All fine and dandy to be a Jedi right out of the box. 2+ years of the game being how it was. Promises and more promises. Update after update. nerf after nerf then they rip out the entire chat/movement/combat system and put something new in in order for it to be easily playable on the next gen consoles. OH YEAH.

Oh and don't waste your money. All the servers are being shut down in Mid february.

[Hikuro]

So if the servers are all being shut down in mid february wha does that mean for everyone else? That doesn't seem to make alot of sense except the game is no longer playable.

[Zor Primus]

As much as I think it would be a good thing for SWG to fade away into the night, mid-Feb is too soon. Completly failed games like Earth and Beyond was able to at least give their players a few months heads up on a closing. Then again look at what happend to MXO.

[Hikuro]

I've been reading their news boards, I don't see anythign about them closing down...

[Hikuro]

I ended up deleting it and killing my account and unsubscribing. Apparently I meet all requirements to play but one, for some reason I don't have enough ram, I KNOW my computer had the bare minimum.....and yet it says I have 384.......and I'm not gonna buy a gig worth of ram cause its too expensive at this time.

But man was the game glitchy when I was playing it, couldn't even get thru the first quest.

[SpacePirateNeko]

star wars galaxies is dead

[Chewie]

I've been reading their news boards, I don't see anythign about them closing down...

357061[/snapback]

It isn't one of their announcements.

It's a leak.

Bet a lot of you didn't know over half of the SoE SWG staff (uncluding devs and forums administrators.) quit/fired because they wanted nothing to do with the NGE.

As far as the "general public" will be concerned SWG is the best MMO ever because of the propaganda SoELA is throwing forth into the world.. As fas as we who know, it's dead.

30k+ cancellations in less than a month...

You figure it out.

[vlenhoff]

I ended up deleting it and killing my account and unsubscribing.  Apparently I meet all requirements to play but one, for some reason I don't have enough ram, I KNOW my computer had the bare minimum.....and yet it says I have 384.......and I'm not gonna buy a gig worth of ram cause its too expensive at this time.

But man was the game glitchy when I was playing it, couldn't even get thru the first quest.

357443[/snapback]

My roomate played this game for months, but then they (SW)changed things in the game that made him hate it. Apparently this changes would made the game more appealing to jounger audiences. He now plays Wolrds Of Warcraft.

..and about buying RAM for your computer: RAM is really cheap this days.

[Hikuro]

Well from what I did get to play, I liked the combat, thought it was some of the best combat I'd played in some time, it felt more free.

My friend loves it too, he was excited after going thru all the trouble in becoming a Jedi that SOE gave him and others a "Blue Elder crystal" which he really likes.

But he's really bumed he can't play the game with me, he said he was gonna make me a padawan lol.

[Ghadrack]

I played for about 6 months when the game was first released, it was fun for a while, but the game play didn't grab me, plus for the first year or two it was out, there was no "space" in Star Wars, it is star wars themed Everquest with no Loot, XP grinding for skill ups alone gets boring, the quest system was very, very repetetive, the crafting system was entertaining for a while, but the implementation of the harvesting machines wasn't practical, it essentially made you a slave to the game, feeding fuel to machines on the clock every day or they would break down and you were out of luck, it wasnt' fun it was work.

Anyhow, I gave up before the first major game system revamp that changed combat and essentially pulled the rug out from under the players that had invested an ungodly amount of time developing their characters.

I never saw space combat in th game but I heard it was implemented. One of my buddies stuck it out while the rest of us quit, he was playing a couple crafting characters with several merchant shops running and he accumulated just shy of a billion credits before he sold them and quit the game.

Now I have been seeing commercials on television that really look like a plea of desperation to get people to try the game, unfortunately, the graphics are dated, and the commercials jsut don't look very polished compared to what is being shown on XBox 360 commercials, or hell Battlefront 2 fo the consoles looks more impressive graphically.

If the plan is to salvage the game, they are going to have a serious uphill battle on their hands. Star Wars is a property that could be highly profitable as an online MMORPG universe but it needs to be implemented masterfully. I think they should scrap that game, engine and everything about it, and go back to the drawing board.

[HudsonD]

Hi there, I've been lurking here for a while, and my last post is more than 2 years ago, but I just noticed this thread and thought I could contribute.

I've played SWG on/off for nearly 2 years now, and I got a taste of most "eras" of the game like the pre-hologrind days, the post-patch 9, the CU, and now the NGE (most SWG vets will know what it all means).

Let me tell you that I can NOT recommand SWG now to anyone with any kind of common sense. The game objectively sucks now. It's more bugged than it used to be (and that's saying something !), and it lost pretty much everything that made it good (the community, the interdependance, the depth, the choices, the persistence...).

If you want some good SW games, try KOTOR or BF2.

If you want a game with good combat, try WoW or Guild Wars.

If you want some depth try EVE online.

Just DON'T try SWG.

As for the rumors of SWG closing, anyone who played the game with his eyes open could see the game was slowly dieing, especially since after the CU. I don't think the NGE would have been implemented unless things were indeed desesperate, but the damage caused as well as the incompentence and cynism shown by SOE have been absolutely incredible.

SOE might pull the plug fairly soon, I don't know, but I hope so. The game surviving after such a trick wouldn't be healthy for the whole MMORPG scene, it would show to everyone that you can screw your players, say so, and still keep them hooked. Not a very good trend to start, if you ask me...

Edited January 6, 2006 by HudsonD

[Southpaw Samurai]

Sadly, there was a lot of potential for SW Galaxies. Unlike most MMORPGs, it actually was designed with a true community in mind. Non-combat trades were generally speaking very functional and profitable when they supported the combat-based people. You could actually have people 'living' in one or two cities and creating something of an atmosphere for the game.

For a while, that actually worked and was actually fun for those of us who were entertainers/weaponsmiths/what-have-you. We didn't play the heroes, but we gave quite a bit of 'Star Warsiness' to the game and provided conversation and entertainment (as in 'real' entertainment, not just stat-wise) to those dropping into towns. But as the game became more and more popular, it drew in the 'Evercrack' crowd (which doesn't include every Everquest player, mind you) who just wanted to grind out the most powerful characters they could get. They didn't want to talk, didn't want to be 'be' in a Star Wars universe at all (there's role-playing and then there's just playing in an environment...they didn't even do the latter...their universe was just their characters, their stats, and what they're about to kill). If they stayed as the combat classes, it wouldn't have been bad, but they also wanted to powergame the support classes too (because a power-gamed high end support class could probably bring in more money per day than any fighter). So the major cities suddenly had their cantinas full of entertainer 'bots. 'Live' entertainers really couldn't function in those cities (too noisy to ply their trade or talk and no one would be willing to tip them when someone's character is just standing there automatically doing their thing just to boost up their stats. Grinders gave their skills away for free (because all they cared about was the end result of more points for their skills) and in general it became hard for the average joe who didn't want to spend all day playing or using a 'bot to succeed or even just interact with people. Everything was 'wham-bam' with people running in and out of towns just to get healed up or buy something new.

The developers also shifted over to emphasizing the combat classes more and more and between those two developments, the game lost a lot of the people who gave the universe a personality. Those of you who run and gun through the game might not have noticed those people before, but their departure is part of the reason every city except for a few major ones are ghost towns and half the people in those 'crowded' cities aren't really playing.

[Mechwarrior]

Well, crap!

Go back a couple pages in this thread, and you will see i was in support of this game. I loved the game, I was obsessed! But damn, since the last NGE Patch in November, I became horrified, depressed and pissed. The game was totally dumbed down into a third person shooter, with crappy interface and horrible gameplay. But thats just me bithcing I guess, I worked hard for what I had, time invested and in one patch, all thrown out the window, and i was Noobified. Both my characters (Jedi and Bounty Hunter) were instantly neutered.

Ok, 'nuff of that.

Honestly the game is simplified so bad now, that it holds no interest for a player like me. I used to enjoy the how complicated it was before. I enjoyed the complexity of it, played for 19 months and still never knew half the gameplay of other professions. Now, I know this sort of game scared people away, not everyone understood it, which was fine by me, the interaction i had with other players was a mature enviroment. I hardly recall ever meeting players younger then 18. Most were adults, some not even Star Wars fans, and the gameplay simply was awesome. However, Sony had a bright idea to change the game by making it simple. It's new target audience is now specifically children now. To bad for us adults who enjoyed it, most of us quit. My server died in the process, most everyone i knew left. I gave up on a rollback and quit last month myself.

The good news now? I have lots of time on my hands now, time to finish some of those models I guess!

Edited January 6, 2006 by Mechwarrior