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http://www.starwarsgalaxies.com/

When they did the Jump to Lightspeed addon, they pretty much did a XvT with better graphics, massive netplay and persistence.

You may think this list is silly, but certain other MMO makers haven't grasped them.

Sony Online Entertainment, in particular, tends to piss off its userbase on a regular basis. They even totally changed (read: trashed) one of their properties with about two weeks notice a few years ago.

This will be the first one for PS3

Lucas told SWG that Mon Cal females didn't have breasts (not being mamals afterall). There was an on going fight about if they should or shouldn't on the SWG boards, wouldn't want to be there now.

Jump To Lightspeed (the expansion to SWG) is also entering a public beta and should ship sometime soon.

I know a few gals who like MMORPGs like City of Heroes and Star Wars: Galaxies.

This new expansion is going to drive economic inflation to new heights, as the people with several hundred million will pay it for a starship or components and the crafters know this. Therefore, said crafters won't be selling to the people who haven't bought money or been in the game since Beta and have an established income. I think the space expansion will lead to more people entering the game, but less people actually sticking with it. This rule will generally apply untill there are enough starship products and services in the market to force the prices down to more human levels.

For those of you that are not in the game but are considering it, your average mission payout for a solo mission is about 1200 or so credits. If a starship costs you half a million, it's going to take a LOT of mission running to get there, either that or grouping on the "adventure planets". The payouts are better with missions on these planets, but unless your Guild/Player Association is out there with you, you'll likely have a group of complete fools that will get you killed more often then they will make you money.

On and upward note, Sony has removed the necessity for having a membership to read the SWG forums. If you're interested in getting in and not burning-out before you get your X-wing, I'd be patient and poke around over here [until things settle to a dull roar following release.

Given Sony's history of buggy releases and expansions, being patient but informed may prove to be a much more agreeable path.

If I had this I could grind my way to being a jedi in just a few days without sleep. When will this be publicly available?

I played it for about 2 weeks before I became completly bored with it. I kept thinking to myself.. what is the point? I level up so I can get better weapons so I can kill bigger animals so I can level up so I can.. etc.

This is what we call in the MMO industry, treadmilling. It's working hard to get nowhere.

Some games make it obvious and unrewarding, but many have managed to disguise the treadmill with entertaining content (and these games go on to become successful). It can all depend on the game you're playing. I've not personaly tried FFXI, but I've played a few other MMO games (E&B, AO, SWG).

I spent about 6 months on Earth & Beyond. It was a very fun game, very social, and the treadmill was not too bad in the first 2/3 of the game. The only real problem I had with it was that it had a short feature list (ie no automatic selling), and I was interested in trying something more sophisticated.

I spent about 2 weeks on Anarchy Online. I got tired of doing the missions, and it seemed like there was nothing else to do, since PvP was not a realistic option until I had finished treadmilling. There was also little to no crafting ability, and very few people were open to socialize with a "newbie". =(

I spent about 4 months on SWG. I got in on the beta testing, and had a blast exploring all the new stuff and chatting with people who were game enhusiasts more than they were 'l33t d3wds'.

Once the game was released, it was still a fairly fun atmosphere, but it slowly degenerated into 'l33t d3wds' and people became less socialable. Also, by this time I had seen most of the content that was available to the game, and new content was very slow to come.

I think the problem with SWG was that they were all tied up with bugfixes that they had no time to add significant content in the first few months of release.

Finally, I found Second Life. =P I can't really expect that I will ever get bored here, since 95% of the content is made by the people who play it. It's not really even a game so much as a large simulation world. This is the closest thing we have right now to a metaverse.

I had heard of SL back when it was in beta, but what finally hooked me to try it was when I heard that it let everyone write scripts to put into the objects they build.

When I finally did the free trial, I realized the world looked a whole lot better than the website depicted it, and that it is a lot more flexible and friendly than I thought was possible in an online environment (minimum age of 18 could have something to do with this).

I think I've realized the problem with most online games is that the developers can't keep things fresh enough for all the users. This is why I think online environments that give the players the tools to create ALL of the content will become more popular as people get bored of the levelling treadmills.

I guess SL is a lot like slashdot. The developers give us bits of things to get us started, but we create and enjoy most of the content. I think this is the best way to go, and will definitely keep things interesting (and very addictive) for a long time to come.

Anyway on the topic of game addiction in South Korea, I think it has a lot to do with:

Availablilty of Technology + Social Acceptability to Enjoy that Technology

In the United states, we have a good amount of the former, but not much of the latter.

In the US, most people use technology only a tool. We have no more interest in it than to get the job done, so they can go home and watch friends or hang out at the bar. We don't need to upgrade because their current computer runs Word 97 just fine and that's all we need. Also, we don't have many "gam

yeah, but this isn't because it's a great game, it's a great port. I'm quite sure that the slashdot reporters* will gladly report on a great windows game in the near future. As to wether there will be Linux port of it, don't hold your breath too long.

*hehe he called them reporters

Already forgetting are you, Mr. Taco?

heehee
Thankfully I never got into evercrack. I think I'm going to quit my job when Star Wars Galaxies comes out, though.

http://www.starwarsgalaxies.com

Mark

Not to be picky or anything, because the game does look great, but... hey! nice gouraud shaded sand back there!

Lucas Art's gaming division has matured a little too much for my taste. I'm all for exotic planets and stuff, but do you really want to encounter aliens with 4 breasts and a dick?

There is a FAQ that covers some (but not all) of those questions. Perhaps the message boards could help you with the rest.