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Star Wars Galaxies Reviewed
Tark writes "Want the inside scoop of what SWG is like? Well, Warthog has written a review for all of you, entitled 'Warrior, Brawler, Hairdresser' with his insights on the game. Sort of. Let's just say you won't find a review anything like this one anywhere else."
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Which sounds like a pretty fair summary of the SWG login process.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is the very same as Everquest, with the same disadvantages (repetitive actions, huge timesinks) it had at launch, the same kind of community handling (*we* decide what is in *our* game and how you should play it) -- only better graphics, and the swords are now laser enhanced. I lasted about 3 hours in the beta before uninstalling it. Those who coped with that in EQ will prolly love it though.
Theme Parks
In beta I've been to several theme parks, and in the release I've been only to Jabbas Palace.
They exist, but their location is not on the map. The reason for this is to make you talk to other players to get you to find them.
I've met with Jabba. Boba Fett is also in the game. Olaa (Jabba's Dancer) is also there. All of Jabba's is very well laid out.
The Emperor's retreat on the other hand is a bit more skectchy. It was cool to meet with a Captain Thrawn and with Darth Vader himself. But all in all, most of the content there was bugged when I went to them in beta.
Jabba's was by far a lot more cooler.
Izzot on Corbantis
Fopack the Guppy in Beta.
...as if a million incoming HTTP requests were suddently silenced.
"That's no moon... it's a slashdotting!"
Laugh at my Lisp and I keeell you.
Funny, I got "Could not connect to remote server." That is as accurate a review of SWG right now as one could write.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
So, you're saying that we should buy the game based on.... how good the cover art is? If we're drunk that day? What, exactly?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So you're saying IT'S A TRAP? :)
http://www.jeffjimmerson.com
I play SW:G, played it for a week, and so far, I really like the game. I play a rifleman armourcrafter, and am part of a 20 person or so guild, so I get a good feel for a lot of the different aspects of the game.
I started on Naboo, on the Chilestra (sp?) server. Hunting with a rifle on Naboo to me feels like African safari hunting in the Star Wars galaxy. With a crew of people, the blaster fire, and the animals - the animals! - it is just incredible. Seeing some massive creature stand from laying down and running at you is just incredible. The blaster fire sounds just so bloody cool - *exactly* the way it sounds in the movies. I like the lair aspect of hunting; animals spawn from a lair, if you shoot the lair, they rush you, if you kill the lair, they don't spawn. That makes sense.
I like the crafting aspect, as well - it is more interactive than the crafting of DAoC and people actually use your items! This was a huge problem with DAoC before spellcrafting came out - loot was better than crafts. Mind you, this is one of the problems with SW:G - no loot. People *have* to use your equipment, because if they don't, they hunt in their clothes. Luckily, SW:G has a workable in-game free market that seems to be good enough for buyers and sellers to meet. And, I get usage experience if people actually use my armour!
Mind you, I am slanted toward crafting, so I like the system that makes my skills in demand. But, for people that like loot, this game will hurt them. I would consider loot important - to me, the loot lottery known as Diablo 2 is still being played mainly because of this reason.
The experience system is new to me, and I really like it. I use rifle, and get rifle experience for using it. When I get enough rifle experience, I can train my rifle to the next level. That makes sense. I like how you can train people, and have other people train you - it beats paying for training, and the experience you get from training you need.
My biggest complaints currently are the number of bugs in the game, especially with the chat and trading. Chat is so buggy that when people join the guild channel, the greeting is "test?". Some things I could perceive as problems are the rarity of money and the lack of dungeons.
About the rarity of money - I never see any. I either find or am given the materials to craft. I never pay for training - except for purchasing the base level skill so I can start a profession - because for the most skills I need, someone will train me for free. I rarely use money for upkeep for buildings (miners) because our guild architect needs the building experience for building new miners. Our guild makes everything we need for the most part - I haven't bought a single item since I started playing. The only service I have purchased is tipping dancers in cantinas.
So far, it is a new game, and due to that, it is all bright and shiny. But, I really like the game, and hope to play it for some time.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
I don't understand, where are the pictures? I was doing a goggle search for "Kirsten Dunst naked" and I get this?
***Character Design***
Amazing, the amount of options you have is insane. You could walk around and never see the same looking person twice. Of course 90% of the people are either wookies or humans though.
***Graphics***
Very good for a MMO. Not the best ever, but for having so many people running around at the same time they are damn good.
***Interface***
It tooks me about 6 hours to get used to the interface. I still find new things every day, and yes I did read the manual. Think Ultima IV's interface only with holding down control and control shift sometimes, and the function keys sometimes, etc.
***Missions***
They are really, REALLY boring. Basically you do delieveries which means run from NPC to NPC... You can also do destroy missions which are equally boring.
***Combat***
Combat is aweful. NPC's can shoot you through mountains and trees. When you fight melee it doesn't even look like you are hitting each other sometimes. Melee fighters almost always lose duels to ranged weapons because melee was nerfed before beta was released. The ranged weapon character can just run circles around the melee'er and shoot him/her/it.
***Player Vs Player***
Aweful, there is no point since faction points are so hard to get. You have no hope of taking over another factions town, let alone planet. You mean nothing in the galactic civil war, and you have to run 20 of those boring delievery missions just to get into it.
***Theme Parks***
I've only seen one, Jabba's palace which was nice but I couldn't even come close to doing the missions with my brawler character.
***Crafting***
Awesome, the crafting system is insanly deep. The economy is totally player driven so the crafters have some real power. Not to mention, with the built in macroing system, crafters can get their materials easily when they are at work, or sleeping
***Content***
Doesn't seem like there is much. If you run into a criminal giving you a mission on Naboo in theed, you will run into a criminal giving you the same mission in Mos Eisley in tattoone. Go to watto's junkyard and you can laugh at how they blocked off anakin's old hut. God forbid you should have a cool chance at seeing what was left in there.
***Goodies/Loot***
There are none, you get everything from the crafters who have formed guilds and gouge prices. They charge insane prices for high level items.
***Classes***
The Classes are ok, but unbalanced. A marksmen has a big advantage over a Melee fighter, and a Artisan (crafter) has a big advantage over a scout. Basically the Artisans and Entertainers have very big advantages since their professions are easly macro-able allowing 24 hr play. Well, 20 hour play since the servers are down 4 hours a day (no, I'm not kidding)
***Immersion***
Other than being in Jabba's Palace and the Cantina in Mos Eisley, SWG is really lacking here. Most of the guys look like they fell out of a midevil game with swords, axes, stone knives and bone armor.
***Downtime***
Your character purposly walks slow, and you have three bars to recover, which makes it take longer to do anything, which means you sick around longer. Thanks Luca$.
***Jedi***
The biggest money making scheme in the game is to make Jedi an Unlockable slot that you can get randomly. They say it's because they wanted to make Jedi "rare" and they didn't want a bunch of them running around because of the time frame they didn't want to break story line. Give me a break, like there were guys running around in bone armor with stone knives everywhere in the star wars galaxy. Yeah, I'm sure you always saw wookies named "50 cent", "Smokebacca", and "Tu-Pac". The Jedi scam is just a money making machine for this game to keep fanboi's interested. Ooh, there is a secret way to unlock them that is different for everyone! Maybe just maybe if you keep playing for that extra month you will unlock that force sensative slot! Imagine the money you will make on EBAY!
There are more mission types, *MUCH* more. Even at the mission terminals you can do delivery mission. Which are basic pick this up here and drop it off there. But they are a good way for non-combat classes to get money. NPC also give out lots of missions with different goals. Some require you to look for certain materials, or craft different items.
Also, must of the economy is player driven, so when the characters start to get up in level and explore more of the world, the economy will get better and more impressive 'loot' will be had.
My karma is in a nose dive
... You would know that on Theed, Queen Amidala's AND Palpatine's homeworld, you would know that Emperor Palpatine keeps a retreat on that planet where he meets with the highest of Imperial advisors. Soooo... It makes sense that Vader and Thrawn would be located at this retreat, being that they are both known as advisors and confidents to the Emperor.
You would also know that there are no levels perse. That a very poorly outfitted long played character could be potentially defeated by a VERY well equipped nearly beginning character in combat. (Which is more realistic and much like real life then any other MMORPG I have played beside Ultima Online.)
Your statement condemning the game as boring paints you as a power leveling kind of person that is disinterested in personal interaction and more interested in just running around slaughtering who and what you can... Which is a valid gameplay style, just not one that SWG was really designed for...
As for Starships. First, those are VERY expensive, which means not a single player will be able to afford one for quite some time. So, why exactly are they needed from the launch? Even with power "leveling" and working together with others to buy a ship could still take more then 6 months of time to gather up enough credits for a ship large enough for the group to all crew.
Plus, they are still working on that aspect of the game, to make sure that it works right. I am all for having access to what works today and then access to ships, when I can afford them... Traveling the starlanes on freighters is no big deal at all, when you are unable to even hope to afford a ship for at least several months.
Find a friend with the game, "Force" yourself to play it for an hour or so, with some assistance from your friend and then reformulate your opinion. Until then, making false negative claims about something you barely even know anything about lays little credence to your claims.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
There are theme parks...Jabbas palace is -6000, -6000. Emperors retreat on Naboo, and dozens of other random NPC's who give out these type of missions ranging from criminal to heroic.
There are plenty of static spawns to be found.
Again on tatooine, there is the jawa-city, tusken raider outpost, krayt dragon graveyard...all of which have those types of creatures spawning there for you to hunt. Heck, you can even get faction points for tuskens and jawas and do missions for them!
The developers are working on the issues of no vehicles, creature mounts, and player cities, which will be released in a decent amount of time. True this game might have benefitted from waiting to get some of these features in first, but investment doesnt last forever and Lucas is the emperor himself. Space expansion is also in the works so you can be that scoundrel.
There is a smuggler profession, though it is severly lacking, you can get the ability to pick locks, and hack terminals to give you more money per mission, as well has hack your weapons and armor to boost its features.
The missions from the terminals do get a bit blase as the article said. Go here kill this, or go here and deliver this. But there are some decent missions in game you get from NPC's(Non player characters) that are a bit more complicated. Some missions require you to escort an NPC and hope they dont get killed. I have also seen multi-part quests back in beta where finishing a mission would spawn part2 of that mission...for instance kill some bandits for a mission and he might drop a disc with the location of some hidden loot. You get to the spot and it spawns some guardians you need to kill before you can claim your finders keepers.
True there are no mages per se...but there are for some lucky people who figure it out, jedis. And who would not want to be a jedi, although their live expectancy is short in this game. Basically you unlock another character slot, and that character is a jedi. But unlike your normal character, they can be permanently killed after 4-5 deaths, meaning you have to start them all over again.
The review also didnt touch on the PVP aspect of the game which is important. You can chose to be Rebel or Imperial. If you are openly factioned, you are fair game to be killed by anyone of the opposite faction. Likewise you are free to blast anyone on the other side as well. In addition, the game also supports PA's(Guilds/clans) who can declare war on each other as well. There are battle fields where you can build and fortify a base, and there are no innocent bystanders. You have to chose a side before entering a battlefield. You can place mines, throw grenades, place gun turrents,and wipe out the other side.
You can also chose to be a covert rebel or imperial, meaning you are kind of like a sympathiser. Normal overt imperials or rebels do not know you are on the opposite side unless you do something to give your self away, in which case you are temporarily attackable by the other side. Add on the fact that you can command squads of stormtroopers, and wear the armor, and its pretty darn cool.
This is not my sig
Imperial Star Destroyers are closing in on the Millenium Falcon. We join our heroes as the hyperdrive has once again failed.
Leia: Well, flyboy?
Han: It's not my fault!
Chewie: Neuuurgl
C-3PO: Sirs! R2 says that there is a malfunction in the alluvial dampers and... oh dear...
Han: Spit it out, goldenrod.
C-3PO: And... the telephone is... unsanitary.
Chewie: Rrroaaargh!
C-3PO: We're doomed!
f4t_c0k69: I SATNIZE FHONE! I MASTR PHONE SANTISER!!!!!!!!
Leia: Uh... hello. OK. Can you, uh, sanitize our phone?
f4t_c0k69: 2 WOMPRAT SKINZ!!! TR4DE 4 2 WOMRAT SKINZ!!!!
Han: What the...? Chewie, do we have any womp rat skins?
Chewie: Nuhhhrr!
f4t_c0k69: U GAYS = TEH LAMERZ!!!! N E 1 WANTTRADE 4 WAMPRAT SKINZ??!!!
Han: Chewie? What's that pus in your ear? Did you use an unsanitized phone? Chewie, old buddy, what's wrong? Speak to me!
Chewie: ASL? ASL? ASL? ASL?
f4t_c0k69: 15/m/NY!!
Chewie: NO WAY, I = 15/m/NY 2!!!
f4t_c0k69: NO WAY!!!!
Chewie: NO WAY!!!!
Han: Right, that's it, I'm aiming for that Star Destroyer.
C-3PO: Sir, the odds of surviving a frontal assault on an Imperial Star Destroyer are...
Han: I'm not planning to survive.
Leia: Um, you do realize we're just sitting in a bar and pretending to be in a spaceship? They haven't been implemented yet.
Han: Who wants to play UT2003?
C-3PO: Yeah, this place blows.
My childhood dreams are about to come true! Oh, how I have waited.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.