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Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided Ships
TJPile writes "After months and months of beta testing and years of waiting, the Star Wars version of Ever-crack is now shipping. Order your copy today. There are already plans for an expansion pack in 2004 that will feature more character races, worlds, and even the ability to buy, fly, and fight in your own spaceship. The game will set you back $50, come on 3 CDs, require Internet access, and will cost around $10 a month (service subscription fee). Right now it's Windows only." Yep, I'm hoping to play as the Pit of Saarlac: The Ultimate Camper.
how to release a massmog that underpromised, overdelivered and was reasonably stable at launch.
I mean, cmon. -microsoft- of all game developers has done it right -twice- now with the Asheron's Call series, and hitherto unknown Mythic Entertainment pulled it off with Dark Age of Camelot.
in my unprofessional opinion - this game is not going to strike a fire in the casual gamer market like they hope. any casual gamer will immediately be turned off by having their wookie bounty hunter continually chased all over tatooine by some fscking crab smaller than his head. the casual gamer doesn't want to spend 100 hours getting to the point where he can hunt banthas or dewbacks or sandpeople. they want to do fun stuff now.
not to mention travel. everything was laid out assuming you'd be able to get your own speeder bike or landspeeder, or bum a ride from someone. but now player-vehicles are out until god-knows-when, and the result is that the town to town running makes EQ's seem reasonable.
if star wars was an action game like planetside, that could maybe catch on - if only sony wasn't pricing it out of the realm of reasonability. $12/mo for a FPS?
SWG looks like a market dissappointment in the same vein as Sims Online.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
One thing I never understood about these games is that if it is going to be over $10.00 per month, why would they still charge $50.00 for the software? They will cite server maintenance and bandwidth as the reason for the subscription, but I think we all know they will make a huge profit on the subscription alone. There is no way that cost is just to cover one person's bandwidth needs. Normal games cost that much and they don't have subscriptions, most even offer free services that users can connect to to play online (Blizzard's battlenet, for example). If the software is useless without a subscription.. they should just flood the market with CDs like AOL does or offer to mail you one. I guess the market will pay that much, but I would think that you could make more money in the long run by just giving away the software and charging for the service. That might also draw more people in that wouldn't consider buying this because of the subscription requirement.
>Blizzard will treat its customers far better than Sony does.
Given that Blizzard sues its most devoted customers, what do you think Sony are going to do?
That would be the deciding factor to me.
The fact is, that I'd play a Star Wars game because I want to be in the movies. I don't give a wamprats ass about building up my character, completing quests and so on. I want to be a Jedi, I want to fly spaceships, I want to travel to exotic planets and so on.
The game that defined the Star Wars experience for me was Jedi Knight Dark Forces. Despite being primarily a first person shooter, it had most of those ingredients. I could be a Jedi AND use the force powers. I could travel to exotic locations. It even had a plot with some (albiet weak) character development!
I last played it (completed it) years ago, but I still remember many of the missions, settings and atmosphere. It had a quality sound track, classic Star Wars style, with the tracks tailored to each level. When you were creeping about infiltrating an Imperial base and trying not to get spotted, it was quiet and spooky. When you were trying to escape a Rebel base under attack from legions of stormtroopers, it was fast and frentic.
Even though the gameplay was basically shooting things, the world was epic enough that I felt I was in the movies.
There was only two problems. It was single player, and it was focussed too much on blasting stuff (well, that was the genre).
What I want is not a MMORPG. They bore me. Real life is boring. A poor fake of real life on Tatooine even more so. I want you to sell me a game like Jedi Knight, with a plot, with vast levels and worlds with convincing characters, that I can play with a group of friends. Not a big group. A small one is fine. We can get together online and play it in sessions, like how we all go round to a friends flat on Sunday nights to watch TV.
I want to be able to fly in space, and I'd like a stronger focus on convincing worlds and missions, and less on shooting things (though it should still have fights), ie the balance should be more like in the movies. We should be able to work together or compete as major characters. It should be like going to the movies together, except that we're in the movies together.
It should have a clear beginning, middle and end. When it's over, then you can sell us sequels. Like the films.
That's all I want. It's not all that hard. Jedi Knight wasn't hugely far off, and that was years ago. Why does nobody do this?
how many people who were really enjoying the game do you think there were who took the time to stop playing, go to the public forums and write a glowing review?
You must be kidding, are you saying that someone who likes SWG wouldn't TURN THE GAME OFF at any point and post on a message board after the NDA was lifted. Give us a break, those guys were probably writing their reviews for months. I guess you think all of the beta testers were playing SWG 15 hours a day and not doing any else. Right. Like they wouldn't take 15 minutes out of their day to talk about a game they "love" for a bunch of people online. Have you ever tried getting a gamer to SHUT UP about a game they like when they start talking about it? It's not easy.
Don't forget as well the people who were in the beta test and honestly tried to learn to like SWG, only to finally quit in disgust or boredom. There are probably a great many people out there who had this happen, only they now have a lot of apathy toward the game and don't even care enough to post negatively against it.
Myself, I already commented on how my biggest beef with SWG is the fact that they are trying to sell a game that isn't remotely retail-ready.
I also found it interesting that even near the very end of beta, there were rarely more than a couple hundred players (out of several thousand beta testers) on the server during prime time. Such a highly anticipated game, with the free time running out soon, wouldn't you think the beta testers would be anxious to make good use of the limited free time they had left?
Mmmmm.... Pigeons. Sometimes, they come with notes attached...it's like...a fortune cookie with wings.
Anyone reading here is likely aware of the monthly price, or could find out fairly easily. However, a less well-informed person will likely not know to look for news releases or Web sites. My point was, specifically, that when you go to the LucasArts site to buy the game, they pointedly tell you that you will be told the subscription price only after you install the software. Will the subscription price be printed on the outside of the box? Seems unlikely, given what they stated on the web site. The point is not that they are trying to keep some big secret. It's that their attitude toward their customers is something less than desirable.
:-) But I don't like the way that they handled the issue of subscription price in their store.
LucasArts has made a bunch of good games. My kids even enjoyed Yoda Stories, so you know that I have to like the company.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...