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Star Wars Galaxies Only to Allow One Character Per Account
frotty writes "The developers of Star Wars Galaxies recently announced that the game would only allow a single character per purchased account on any server. This has outraged some, and relieved others." Click on the link to see the reasoning behind this move.
Don't worry, Chris' game company won't do that!
Right? I mean, he's not posting stories about outrage in the MMORPG world in order to bolster his own efforts?
I'm not going to link to the site, as they don't need even more free slashdot press, but people should know that Chris started his own "revolutionary" multiplayer game company recently.
They'll have a super duper game out soon.
It will be much better than Star Wars, which is outraging its users, right? I'm glad Chris is still a slashdot editor, so he can bring this to our attention.
Conflict of interest? Don't worry, I'm sure the slashdot community will mod this down sufficiently. (Especially now that I've assumed they will.)
I bet we'll see some great MMORPG polls up soon too...
In trying to present reasons why the popular desires for multiple characters per server aren't warrented, the one that is probably most popular was completely glossed over.
"I want to try something new without having to leave my friends."
Later on in the thread someone posted a statistic from a poll on the site, stating that nearly 50% of people were going to choose their server based on their friends. This is how most people tend to play these games, with friends. So now if you want to try a wookie instead of a human, gotta give the big adios to your buddies.
There are some situations where a limitation on characters per server is a good thing. Dark Age of Camelot, for example, limits your choice of the three realms to play in to one realm per server for most servers. They do this to discourage 'spy' characters. But within that choice of a single realm you can make 8 characters. Feel free to try out that new spec, or different class, and still be able to have fun with your friends.
I had no real opinion on this game before. But I'm the type that likes to try my "alt of the week". If I can't try it out with my friends, no way I'm getting the game. Pretty effective way to discourage community if you ask me.
One of the reasons they cite for limiting accounts to one player each is server storage space. Here's an idea: if a player wants to, allow him to download his character and store it on his own computer -- then he can create a new character and play it until he decides he wants his old one back or discovers that his MMORPG addiction is destroying his social life ( ;) ). If he chooses to go back to his original character, let him upload it and play from where he left off.
There are two main ways a user can cheat in a system like this:
1. He can download, modify, and upload his character file to get extra items or status, and
2. He can download his character, do something risky but with a large possible reward online, and re-upload his character file if he isn't successful and ends up losing something.
Both of those problems could be solved by associating a unique ID and last-downloaded date with every character in a user's account. Character files containing the above data would be made available for download, and only the unique ID and date would remain on the server taking up very little space after download. Since the data would be encrypted using a fast, proven symmetric cypher and the server would be the only entity in posession of the key, the user would be unable to determine the internal format of the character file or modify data to gain in-game status.
Don't confuse this with DRM -- this is actually capable of working. Digital Restriction Mechanisms will always fail because in order for them to make content available to the user, the user's computer must be in possession of enough information at one time or another to obtain a decrypted copy of the "protected" content. This is not a requirement for the character-saving system, as the user never needs to have access to the character data stored in the file. Every character file could contain a copy of the goatse pic and no one would ever know.
This system prevents users from uploading stored characters to erase mistakes by including a last downloaded date and a unique ID in the character file. If the last downloaded date in the character file is older than the last downloaded date stored on the server for that character's unique ID, or if a user tries to upload an earlier copy of their active character, the server would reject the upload.
Of course, that's only a technical solution to the problem. It doesn't stop the rich from buying more than one account and getting around every single restriction imposed by single player accounts, but I have a feeling that the service providers kinda like it that way. Maybe EQ or Blizzard (Diablo II) will implement something like this and save themselves some storage space?
...And I've experienced the frustration of realizing that the class, stats, whatever that I chose, though perfectly acceptable, were entirely incompatable with my style of playing in the game. When I go into an MUD or an MMORPG, I generally build a very standard character and spend a day or two just exploring and figuring out how this, that, or the other just plain conflicts with my playing style. Yes, sometimes I can guess decently well, but in general, I need to fine-tune certain things to meet my needs. Since none of us have any idea how different skills, battling, etc. will be from the other games we've played, we don't KNOW how to tune our characters. I'd LIKE a test character to run around for a few days...it'll save me a lot of frustration and potential hardware accessory damage when I toss my keyboard or gamepad across the room after cursing myself for picking Rodian as my species when it's so damned clear that for my playtype I should have picked Trandoshan (or Wookie or Human or whatever).
I understand the issues they're trying to counter. I understand the REAL issue which is the fact LucasArts knows they can milk the Star Wars franchise/MMORPG combination for quite a lot of Money with a capital M.
They know that's the case, we know that's the case. There are no secrets here. So why the hell are they still lying to us? If they were outwardly honest and said "We're choosing to do this because it will allow us to charge for each individual who uses the service." I honestly don't think that their audience is going to be less receptive to it. Everyone will consider it and decide whether it's worth it to them or not. But there ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE if you want a Star Wars-themed MMORPG. Period. The mass market that is interested in a STAR WARS game is a captive audience...they'll jump through the hoops to have the service no matter what. The people looking for a good online RPG will either sign on immediately or they'll sit back and see if it's all its cracked up to be. If it IS as good as they make it out to be, than the skeptics (like me) will join because it will provide something they can't get elsewhere and we'll put up with the limitations. I honestly don't see why they have to feed us a line of crap about how this is all to prevent multiplaying and then insult our intelligence with that sarcastic "Ah, Virginia, I wish it wasn't so" comment. We're not stupid...we understand trade-offs. But we also understand that they have more to gain here than we do.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Independance? Allowing 2 characters per galaxies wouldn't allow you to live on your own without any interaction with others. Now I agree that 4 or more characters per galaxy could become a problem, but allowing 2, I see no problem with that. And 2 characters is a million times better that SCS.
Griefing, well I'm not quite sure of all the forms of griefing, but I sure it can be summerized at "pissing people off". SCS will not stop this, I will(well not myself, I don't harress others, I respect others and the feelings) just go to another server and piss people of there to get my griefing "fix".
Allowing 2 characters per server would allow for much griefing. If a character is reported, then the GM/Dev/Guide should track done the users account, and warn every character on that account about the griefing, then if it happens again with any other new or exsisting character on that account, ban them...seems simple to me..
If you are worried about spying and whatnot, then just have MCS-Single-Faction-Servers...All toons have to be Rebel, or Imp, or neutral. You cannot have combinations.
I believe SCS was just a simple way of getting this game out earlier because they are running out of time to impliment any of these logical systems.
Well, I guess the First Step is admitting you have a problem.... Which Step is it where you open a bar where people can get as drunk as they want but have to stick with the same drink all night every night? Is that Step Pi, or Step Square Root of Two, or what?
Actually, you can have 8 characters in total (per account) if you have them on different servers. Each character has been said (based on amount of skill points available) to be able to master up to three sepparate 'routes'. You can also, at any time, unlearn one route and start practicing on another one. This mean that you can have 24 routes practiced/mastered (I guess time is a factor here) at any one time, and if you want, change any of those to other ones at any other time. You just won't be able to pass items between your various characters.
Maybe I should have RTFA a bit closer, but I couldnt tell...
Can you delete the one character to play a new one on that server?
Maybe an option for these outraged people is to explore their first character as much as possible, then delete it, and explore new avenues.(sp?)
Or I guess selling your game along with the high level character and buying a new game and starting over is always an option to...
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Remember that this is all being kept in a COMMERCIAL database, the kind with licensing fees and really good performance. TCO isn't just the hard disk storage space. Think administration, think redundancy (as in mirroring), think backup, think load balancing, add in bandwidth costs for balancing, mirroring, etc. and shit adds up.
I work for a storage technology company. These are real details that do cost cash. BTW this is the short list of expenses.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Anyone interested in knowing how much it takes to maintain Terabytes of database storage:
Hardware
- Storage
- CPUs
- NIC cards
- Cables
- Electricity ($$$)
Licensing (Commercial)
- OS
- Database
- Admin seats
- User seats
- Storage Admin Software
- Admin seats
Administration
- Salary
- QA at 60k/yr
- Admin at 75k/yr
- Manager at 80k/yr
These are all very ball-park, but you can see that there is a lot more than $1/GB involved here.
Sure you can buy a hard drive for about $1/GB for personal use but you don't count all the man hours involved in maintenance or you don't have enugh activity to need maintenance or any of the other tasks involved with serious database activity.
I hope this starts you thinking about all the effort that goes into keeping a very active DB going.
There's more, much more to say about this but I'm done for now.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I know that in Warcraft III, Blizzard has a ton of data to store when it comes to team games. What they did was set a 30-day inactivity limit, at which point the record for that team is erased. To me, this seems a bit more fair than "you can only have one team" (character in this case).
I'm curious if this idea is feasible for them, because it would make more people happy I bet... Or maybe set an inactivity limit for additional characters to 30 days, and let the person keep their selected primary character indefinitely. Then if they go away for a bit, they don't lose everything.
But the fact that he's complaining about how much data each customized face takes up makes it sound like they didn't plan this thing out very well. They could have sacrificed a bit of customizability in exchange for smaller data sets.
Anyway, enough ranting... That's just my opinion.
...oOOo..'(_)'..oOOo...
I dont think so. This is the only condoned Star Wars MMORPG. People will play it regardless of this rule.
Also, most people like to pick a character and play it for what it is. The more powerful it grows, the more they will want to stick with it. Players who are discouraged by this rule have likely been spoiled by the benefits of twinking. It seems that this idea will make for a richer gaming experience where people take the world more seriously. Your choosing not to play based on Sony not allowing lots of character switching is probably the exact result they were aiming for.
For a person who's beta tested and played AC2, Daoc, EQ and AO, this decision rackles most people.
It's seen as an obvious money grap decision to appease the masses of casual players. AC2 still has 3 base professions, with 6 specializations. It STILL gives you the option to play more then one character per server.
DAOC came out and decided to restrict your play to only 4 characters per regular server (the hardcore PvP and test servers were allowed more), they have since changed this rule since the competition offers more.
If this game honestly wants the staying power, and appease the masses who actually play, not just the Star Wars fanbois, they'll allow more then the SCS.
"New Concept" indead. Star Wars: Galaxies, Episode 4, A New Hype.
I know there's a lot of hard-core MMORPG players here that won't be playing SWG because of this MCS vs. SCS thing (Acronym overload!). I, for one, will be playing because of Sony's decision.
One reason I've stayed away from MMORPGs in the past is because of all the chatter about "muling", "twinking", and fscked economies. I want to play an online RPG that feels like an RPG, not some twisted inventory management competition. I mean, can you imagine trying to sell multiple characters to a D&D group?
I think Sony is trying to create a MMORPG for the common man, or at least the common gamer. Flame all you want, but I think it's grand.
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