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Star Wars Galaxies NDA Lifted
Thanks to several readers for pointing out that, according to a post on the official Star Wars Galaxies messageboards, the NDA has been lifted, so Beta testers are free to talk about their experiences playing this PC MMORPG, which ships on June 26th. Naturally, the official messageboards are filling up with many and varied viewpoints, and sites such as SWG Warcry, SWG Vault, and many other fan sites are posting a multitude of screenshots and opinions of this much anticipated title.
june 26
I've been beta for about a month
The game isn't finished but that doesn't stop it being fun. It's not a shoddy product but it doesn't shine like the first day I played EQ (admittedly in June 1999 which was about 3 months after launch).
The AI can be dumb with NPCs standing there clapping as you pummel their friends.
Here's me killing a very red MOB by getting it stuck behind a small rock
Having seen the changes from the last few (no doubt panic stricken) weeks I'm pretty confident this game will matrure into something pretty good. I don't think it raises the benchmark that much. Some of the grind has been removed but not all of it. Best thing is that you are not stuck with your initial choices (important on a one character per server game). You can surrender skills and try new ones and adjust your base stats.
And you you look for it there is certainly plenty of action with groups of up to twenty
Many people will like it on it's own merit but I'm sure for many people it will be a welcome stop-over on the way to EQ2.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
nah, there are two forms of "death"
Incapacitated - this is generally what happens to you, MOB takes you down and you fall over until your hits/action.mind points recover (typically about 60 secs but I've had 128 & 4)
Sometimes a MOB will come in and give you a death blow and it's back to town.
Even then you can insure your belongings so that you wake up in town with everything you've insured and the stuff you collected since insuring yourself will be on your corpse with your money.
There is a galactic bank (but you have to return to your bank's planet to get to your items [you can move banks]. Cash transactions are available at all banks.
As for the underpants - the reliance on fancy armor has been removed. You start with some clothes but I took them off for fun.
I look much like this atm. although last night I found a new hat but I don't have any good screenies of it.
I'm not very powerful atm. because we had to start again this week because Sony wiped the server ready for the start! [without warning just "Oh. we've wiped the servers, could you start again please". Nuff ppl were getting mardy in the forums but thats the life of a tester]
As well as that most of the MOBS are random spawn so if you come back tomorrow chances are they will be gone.
hehe twice now I've been trying to do a good post and different family members want my taxi services !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It's "do something over and over for XP" /sample /sleep 500 /stand /sleep 500 /sample /sleep 500 /stand /sleep 500
& yes, you can macro your way to the top
etc.
The client kicks you out after about 30 mins afk (although I've never timed it but I have been kicked)
You can buy machines to do the harvesting for you but it can be a bit of a grind fest making 500 pointless items for the XP and then destroying them.
After 10,000 or so XP you have to go to a trainer or PCs can train each other in all but Master & Novice and for this the PC gets 20ish Apprentice Points (APs). For some disciplines you need 600 or so APs to become a master.
I'm sure you'll see the skill tree on the fan boards soon, it's not that complicated.
You are given 250 skill points to spend at the start of the game & each discipline takes 64 skill points to Master all 4 branches. There are about 20 disciplines. You can surrender a skill at any time and recover your skill points so if you're fed up of something you can switch.
They've done a great job at trying to appeal to all types of MMORPG players from chatters to fighters. I think the game is a success already despite the minor flaws I've seen.
I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.
I think I will be moving from tester to player.
I played EQ for 3+ years, I'm pretty sure SWG will grow enough to accommodate long term players.
The game is more fun and dying isn't such a pain.
Navigation is easy and so is finding your group. (open you datapad, click "create waypoint" and everyone in the group can see it on their maps)
Advancing seems steady and you can group with players of all abilities and still participate (you need to do at least 5% of the damage to a MOB to get any XP)
They've tried to take the pain out of the game and I think, on the most part, they've suceeded.
Is $15 too steep? We'll see.
At launch Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided will offer four subscription plan options: Month-to-month - $14.99;
three months - $14.00 per month;
six months - $13.00 per month;
and 12 months - $12.00 per month.
I really hope that when EQ2 comes out they'll say "$20 a month for SWG & EQ & EQ2"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
My biggest concern was that this would be a bad product with some familiar names and logos on it. After playing beta for a month I was happy to see this this is just as good as any other "Lucas Arts" product, with rich detail that makes you feel like you are playing in the Star Wars universe. Yes, there are bugs. Yes, there is missing content one week before release. No, there has never been a product that was flawless at release. Yes, I have already pre-ordered it.
I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.
Of course the era's are different but EQ was definitely no anywhere near as lacking in content and other such things at its release as SWG will be. In other words EQ was basically finished at launch, SWG is no where near so.
The game will undoubtedly succeed to some degree simply due to the fact it is Star Wars but there is still a lot missing and a lot left to do development wise (How about at least fixing the character sync problems that currently require a server reset to clean up before launching guys????)
In my estimation SWG is a good 6 to 12 months of development from being something a seasoned EQ player would find to be an acceptable game (I know, I know, we've been mindlessly soaking up unfinished expansions since Velious came out). I've spent a decent bit of time with Beta 3 and I am not so sure that this launch won't end up making the Anarchy Online launch look good. ^..^!
My recommendation is do not buy it at launch, wait 3 months or so and see what the buzz is saying about it then. Or maybe even wait to the first expansion hits and check the various boards to see what the buzz about the game is then.
The game has tremendous potential, but in its current state is a far cry from ready. Content is lacking, there are still some pretty serious bugs. 90% of the resources required to craft objects have not even been introduced to the game yet. Lag is an issue as is rubberbanding (most people reporting 2-5 FPS in the cities). Problems with being able to shoot through solid rock...
I canceled my pre-order, however that does not mean that I wont play the game... eventually. It just needs time to mature and I refuse to pay to continue to be a beta tester.
If anyone wants a one stop place to go and read various reviews and comments about the beta test. Head over to IGN's Star Wars Vault. This place is loaded with reviews, screenshots...and so forth.
I played this in beta a couple of weeks ago for one night. Frustrated, I put it away. Essentially, I logged in and spent an hour running around. No vehicles were available, and all the obvious quest boxes gave quests which were too hard to complete within a reasonable amount of time. Any time my character was close to destroying something, for example, I would have to run to avoid defenders. Then the health would shoot back up, and I'd be stuck with low health and a fresh, alerted enemy.
NPCs were inside of each other, text wasn't entereted (as you said). I figured that this was why the console versions had been cancelled (while the Xbox one could maybe be patched, the many gigs of patch data would not be something you could cram on; don't even think about a PS2 one). I also figured that the game would not be ready for an August launch.
Then I read it was launching on the 26th.
Kids, this game is so not ready for prime time, it's not funny. Do not get Star Wars Galaxies. It doesn't crash like Anarachy Online did at first, but it sure sucks the same. Spend your money on something better, like Daikatana -- or Anachronox, a good budget title you can buy 4 times over for the price of Galaxies.
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