Star Wars Galaxies - Fastest Selling MMOG Ever

Thanks to several readers for pointing to a LucasArts press release announcing Star Wars Galaxies has attracted more than 125,000 users in its first week, an all-time MMORPG sales record, and something LucasArts call "..the single most successful introduction of an MMO to date." This PC MMORPG is thus far proving extremely popular, despite teething troubles, and the press release also mentions the development team "..is working on a variety of new features, such as player-owned ground vehicles and player cities, along with substantial new content to be added on a regular basis throughout the coming months."

Comments

Wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

who knew there were so many people living in their parent's basements ... this can't be good for the economy!!

So they sell it fast. Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point is to keep the players in game so you can feed off them like some cheap crack dealer.

Give it 6 months then look at the figures. A lot of friends who left the MMORPG I play in have since come back to the game (Neocron), so the taste of the game is going to appeal more to SW Fanbois and EQ junkies. :)

Re:So they sell it fast. Big deal

[Pengo]

Hmm... i have left DAoC to play it. I find that it's better suited for those with lifes. It's the first MMORPG I have played that a casual gamer can enjoy. I protested the game first when my friend talked me into getting it just for the reason it was full of fanboi's.

I think that the people screaming that it stinks the loudest are the people trying to convince those that are leaving their current games. That's at least been my experience.

Re:So they sell it fast. Big deal

[analog_line]

I play DAoC, and there are a hell of a lot of people who I WISH would leave and go play Galaxies instead.

The unfortunate thing is that too few of them actually are. Else it'd be a much more civil atmosphere to actually play the game as opposed to getting lectured for not supporting your realm, or not falling in line behind some self-styled gestapo.

Re:So they sell it fast. Big deal

[JavaLord]

It's the first MMORPG I have played that a casual gamer can enjoy. Yes, If you mean by casual gamer someone who plays 12 hours a day instead of 16. c'mon just to get into the story line of the game + pvp (the galatic civil war) you have to do 20 delevery missions. Don't even get me into how hard it is to get to point A to point B or to get experence.

And if this was surprising....

[analog_line]

...you obviously don't live on the same planet as I do.

Not only that, it's likely to take a lot from Everquest, as so far as I've seen, it's designed to be the single most addictive thing on the planet next to crack and refined sugar. Everything seems to be designed to make it harder than ever to put the thing down for a few hours and go to sleep, never mind holding down a job.

Staying WELL away from this bugger. I am SO not interested.

Re:And if this was surprising....

[saden1]

I have addiction phobia so count me out. I don't smoke, drink, or gamble because of my fear of getting addicted. now you can add games to my not-to-do-list. I am already addicted to prOn as it is but I am working to resolve it.

"Job"? What is thing you call a "job"?

[perfessor multigeek]

Ahh, I'm just waiting for the VR universes to provide easier ways to make real money.
When I can design a new piece of gear for, say, EverQuest XX, the 2011 edition, upload it, sell the rights through in-game links to ebay, and then distribute the money I make between "pieces of gold" and RL folding money.
Well, at that point I'm puttin' on my goggles, pluggin' in the feeding tube, and never ever coming back out.

Sure I'll be spherical and I'll smell bad, but online nobody will know or care.

Rustin

Fast selling...but can they maintain it?

[deanj]

You'd have to be living under a rock not to have heard about this game in the first place. It's been a long time since they starting hyping it, and it's finally out. It should be no surprise that a franchise like that would make a lot of money initially.

I've been playing since Beta 3. Initially, I was most worried about the graphics performance of the game, seeing how bad it was near the end of Beta 3. I was pretty happy to see they seem to have cleared most of that up.

I've been playing for a week now (off and on...mostly off, since I have a real life), and initially I was pretty happy with it.

But right now, I'm sitting here wondering... "Well, what next"? I'm not sure how they're going to maintain people's interest in this game. I've made my way to the first tier of exp in the game, (one of initial professions you have to start with), and now I'm on my second tier.

Unlike Everquest, in which it was pretty clear what getting more experienced in something would get you, it's not all that clear in SWG.

They've always said that this was a game where you could "live Star Wars". Well, I can tell ya, it must be pretty damn boring most of the time down on Tatooine....

Re:Fast selling...but can they maintain it?

[deanj]

Computer gaming world, and damn near any gaming magazine since at least last year, if not before.

Plus the last two E3s.

Re:Fast selling...but can they maintain it?

[Winterblink]

I agree, totally. The industry's not stupid, they've clued in a long time ago that we'll shell out money up front for a broken product. That, and in the case of MMORPGS, we'll continue to shell out money for a broken product. I can understand patches to fix things like balance issues and bugs, but what they did with SWG is appalling. It's half the game it should be; I mean come on, it's STAR WARS for pete's sake, where's my space ships? The starship combat? Coming in an expansion pack they say, when it should have been there in the first place. Let my voice of dissent against his crap be heard, with my wallet (or the lack thereof).

And the sheep return in thier flock...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter how crappy this game is or what the bugs and shortcomings are. Media has proven once again that the idle minded player will flock to their beloved franchise name like a bull to a red flag without thinking.

I really wish people would take a critical view of the content before shuffling over to a store and handing over their money because "Duh... it's Star Wars! Dats da best!"

Please stop these boring SWG advertisements

[samsarajr]

Please stop these boring SWG advertisements - we've heard enough already and the game it pretty boring. Account will run out by the end of this month thank god...

Re:People are buying it at that price?

[Winterblink]

Actually that 130 dollar edition is the "collector's edition" if you can believe it. Possibly the lamest concept to hit gaming. Usually they include a map, a t-shirt, that kind of thing. No idea what's in the SWG though.

Re:People are buying it at that price?

[Shazow]

Yes, the collector's edition is about $130 CDN, but the regular one is just over $50. (Which is what I bought.) It includes a relatively-thick manual, a little booklet, three-cd case (with cds, of course) and a couple of advertisements to Earthlink and such.

I'm happy with it. Plus it has that new-game smell which puts me beyond the joy of extacy.

- shazow

Yeah, it would be nice if it actually worked.

[JavaLord]

I post this now, because the servers are down on Star wars Galaxies. I blocked off a section of my time (ie this whole weekend) to play but the servers have been down as much as up. What you aren't hearing is that they pull down the servers for 4 hours a day every day for maintaince. On top of if something goes wrong (ie today.) They've had about 7 hours of DOWNTIME for my server today and when I try to go into my character select screen, my almost uber guy is standing there NAKED with none of his items and his HAIR is gone. It looks like he was the victim of a prison rape. Needless to say, I don't think they will be getting my money when the free month is up. It's nice that they have a built in macroing system though. It's almost like building an aimbot into a first person shooter.

Re:Yeah, it would be nice if it actually worked.

[Babbster]

If you're quitting because of downtime in the first month of play and not because you dislike the actual gameplay then you're being foolish. These kinds of games are always going to experience downtime at first because it seems that it's impossible to project what's going to happen in the game once 125,000 accounts are created and played, and because these games are invariably overhyped early and thus bug-fixing delays get progressively more unacceptable so that they have to get the game out the door, flawed or not.

Note that I'm not justifying the idea of releasing a buggy game (I think it's a bad thing), rather I'm acknowledging reality.

Me, I'm not going to play for at least a couple of months because there's no sense in me buying the game now only to put it aside when Knights of The Old Republic hits in another week-plus. This has the added benefit of letting me get into the game once most of the major issues have been ironed out and maybe, just maybe, when they've got player-owned vehicles available. :)

Re:Yeah, it would be nice if it actually worked.

[@madeus]

If you're quitting because of downtime in the first month of play and not because you dislike the actual gameplay then you're being foolish.

If you think it's going get beter soon you've no idea about how SOE do business - PlanetSide (another SOE game, that's been running for longer) has constant down time issues, they STILL reboot the servers daily and take them down during peak times and they still have lots of problems when they are running.

Doors frequently don't open in the game, you can get stuck in the game until they servers are rebooted, you can shoot through some objects (like trees), people can shoot and kill you even when they are facing the *opposite* direction (which makes using stealth suits to sneak up on someone a joke), the killer client side hit detection means you can - for example - get run over and killed by a vehicle (like a tank), even if it seems to you that you were 10-20 feet away from where you are standing - all issues that have been knowen about for a month, but not fixed.

A couple of months won't be long enough for them to even nearly sort it out, trust me (or read the the SOE Station.com forums). It might be sufficently useable to be considered ready for release in 6 months, but not in 8 weeks.

I say people are right not to go beyond the first month if it narks them, the bugs in SOE games such as SWG and PS can be really annoying, and the issues are NOT going to go away anytime soon - the developers don't even know what's going on with there games.

For example, the developers of PS recently said they didn't know sticking doors were an issue, despite the numerous bug reports submitted by players (including myself) and forum topics dedicated to the subject.

The games are not ready for release by a long shot (and many of the issues are not specifically to do with it being massive multiplayer, simply that the game has had too short a development cycle).

Re:People are buying it at that price?

[X-Navy]

The collectors edition allows (among other things) the owner's characters to wear some special in-game sunglasses.

IMO they are really stupid looking, but to each his own...