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Pile On Star Wars Galaxies?
Thanks to GameSpy for their new feature called Star Wars Galaxies: Pile On!, where-in a multitude of GameSpy employees, and not just editors, either praise or trash their personal experiences playing Lucasarts' PC MMORPG. As the intro says, "We pretty much agree that Galaxies was the most ambitious MMORPG since Ultima Online. What we can't agree on was if it was released too soon, whether it's the second coming, or a big empty planet of bugs and tedium." The game doesn't seem to be getting any less controversial as time goes on, does it?
I think the 'crontroversy' has died down a lot. The very simple fact of the matter is that every day the servers are growing with more and more players, and after two weeks of play I have yet to see a single person complain about it 'sucking'... IN GAME. But forums? Weblogs? Sure, those people are often pissy. That's why they're not playing with the rest of us, who seem to be enjoying it immensely. The real question about SWG is how it will hold up over time, and right now that ball is in the air, heading for nothin-but-net -- and we're just waiting to see if it rolls off their fingers at the last minute before a score.
Does it really matter if it sucks?
Fans are fans, and don't need anybody to tell them the game is great, because most of them will assume that it is great regardless of their actual experience. Maybe just being Starwars is enough for some peope in the same way that it was good enough to use that wiffle bat as a lightsaber when you were playing "Starwars" as a kid; Its not a lightsaber but its close enough.
In a way, I envy people that like the game, they are having a great time will those of us who think we have more complex tastes have to find other ways to entertain ourselves.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Is it just me, or from watching the movies did it seem like a rocket launcher just wouldn't fit?
not to pick nits or anything, but in episode two right at the beginning a rocket launcher is used to destroy a ship...
It's going to be six months and at least $30 for the expansion packs before you get to fly a ship in SWG. Screw that. $80 bucks ? EVE-Online is $40 at www.ebgame.com and you can fly a ship now (the strategy guide is based on beta 5 btw).
I've been playing EVE-Online since beta. And so far, it's more Star Wars than anything else. I fly around in a ship, hunt pirates and sell their goodies. PvP is always possible, but moderated in-game by NPC cops, who will whack someone with battleships. No action out of the ship, but you do trading and such at stations. The storyline hasn't kicked in just yet, so no comparison there. It's like Star Wars out on the Rim, away from the Empire/Republic where space is full of freelancers.
Besides Star Wars, EVE is reminiscent of Elite and Escape Velocity.
Oh, server uptime is good. Usually 3000-3500 people are logged in 7-10om PST and over 6000 on weekends. It's got bugs, they mostly get fixed. Some segments need to be rewritten completely (agent missions) and will be.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Yes, because 4 years is a rushed game, right?
This game has been in development for a long time, and had a 1 year beta period. It shipped with a few bugs, but so does every other game.
They could have 'polished' the game for another 2 years, but would be digging themselves further in the red each month they did so. It makes sense that they released what they had, which was playable and fun.
Polishing after launch serves the purpose of allowing the development team to grow (because they're making money now).
the thing is that everyone that hadn't played one before grabbed the game and expected to be Luke Skywalker or someone of equal importance or power. with a couple thousand players per server, that just can't be. you can't be a bad-ass. you're a person within the Star Wars mythos. you may end up as a pretty powerful person, but you're not going to foil the Empire or crush the Rebels.
as far as people bitching about missions all being more or less the same, I invite them to look at any other persistent world RPG. every mission is the same. there is very little variance in them. take object X to person Y. go to person Z and kill them.
what makes SWG fun in my eyes is that it's pretty well balanced between play styles, unless you're using a macro to do stuff while you're AFK (ie artisans using macros to mine ore while they're asleep or at work) if you don't exploit, all professions progress at about the same rate. you also are pretty much unrestricted in the number of classes and specialization that you can do.
if you want a character that is proficient in many of the basic tasks; a jack of all trades-type, you're more than able to. and if you want to excel in a specific type of trade, you can do that, too. if you decide that you screwed up, you can drop the skill/class and backtrack.
it's a fun game and allows for a good deal of adventure, simply by virtue of its customizability. it's open-ended enough that you can work to become an underling of a major character if you really want to. you may never have an impact on the "real" Star Wars story, but with SWG you can live in that setting and carve out your own story, which is basically what people are really looking for in persistent world RPGs.
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