Star Wars Galaxies - No Crushbone Factor?

Tark writes "Over at Warcry.com, there's a new column from Warthog discussing his post-launch impressions of the PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, a month after official release date." This opinion piece is from the writer whose entertaining review we featured just after game launch, and it's interesting to see how his opinions have changed over time - he still says SWG lacks the "Crushbone Factor", referencing a particular area of Everquest which "..had quests... unique monsters... cool, level appropriate loot drops... [and] personality."

Comments

Best Quote of the Article...

[LordYUK]

"Shortly after posting this article, I realized something that had somehow gotten past me about the last update by SOE, just two days ago. SOE in their wisdom decided that they needed to slow down the respawn rate of some static spawns, because people were "camping" them. Camping is, apparently, a bad thing. (Does it matter that most players want lots of spawn points to camp? One must wonder...).

I went to one of the very few locations with some content today (the Tusken Fortress), and hunted for a while. The tuskens located there spawn much, much more slowly now. There is less to hunt, basically. It was frustrating.

That's right, folks. SOE took a game with little content and, by reducing the spawn rate of static spawns, actually reduced the amount of content, hunting, and other things to do.

Pure genius."

oh god... I was in Beta 3... (actually, I was BANNED from beta 3 near the end because I was a little miffed when medics got the shaft, and suggested that if marksmen had to go through the same crap to shoot as medics were forced to in order to heal, people would tell SoE to shove the game up their ass... or perhaps it was Holocrons (Raph Kosters) post about "how they had decided to drop vehicles at launch in order to focus on 'content'" and my subsequent posting of a WoW screenshot showing players on horses... who can say?)

Regardless, the games "content" has been 0 since the day I got the beta, and it seems like it hasnt gotten any better. Sad really, THIS is that SW MMORPG we get. There wont be another one 6 months from now (like, AC and EQ are both fantasy MMORPGs, so there IS "choice")...

oh well, WoW will be out in a year or so...

Content is expensive

[Psychochild]

The problem is that content is expensive. The hand-crafted feel of EQ's zones (and the game I work on, Meridian 59) take a long time to create. It takes specialized people with a good eye to create those cool level, to write up the quests, to create the cool items that drop off the monsters.

SWG had to go toward randomly-generated content in the world because they simply could not generate all the needed content by hand. Especially with more modern players expecting a wealth of new content at launch and on a regular basis. New games have to compete with EQ's content, which has been added to over the years.

In the end, content is expensive. Generating some of the content randomly helps create more content that doesn't feel repetitive, but it loses a bit of soul in the process.

My view on things,

Another person looking for Everquest Clone #7889

[Crockerboy]

Dead? Hardly. Warthog's main beef is that it isn't everquest. And he's an idiot. Many, many of us do not want everquest. We do not want ph4t l3wt drops off mobs. We don't want to camp Crushbone for weeks till we can ding so we can go camp crocs in Oasis until we ding again. Everquest was designed as a game, SWG was designed as a world. I'm sick and tired of seeing all the little pellet chasers that Everquest brought to the genre trying to turn every game into the next everquest. The fact I can log in, play at my leisure and log out whenever I feel like it and not feel guilty about "only putting 6 hours in today" is great. I can play one or two hours a day and still make progress with some of my online friends. SWG was made for people who have outside lives and are more socially adapt than a paperclip. I like it that way...Don't turn it into another Everquest pandering to the catasses who play 70 hours a week.

You want Everquest? Go play Everquest and stop trying to turn every other game into a Everquest clone.

Various responses

[jafuser]

From the article:

For example, after the last patch I cannot follow anyone or anything. Whenever I try to use the follow command, I run in a straight line into infinity.

I had this problem once back in beta. Toggling my "Chase Cam" fixed it. I think it's the numericpad decimal point key which toggles this.

You see, if I can't get close to the monster, I can't hit it.

The problem with being in-range to attack as a brawler is quite valid. Range for attacking purposes is calculated to the center of the beast you are attacking. Some of these beasts are HUGE, and you can be literally standing beneath them visually and still get "out of range".

I also heard from one player that the beasts attack from the space where their head is located, but since they can only receive damage at their 3D object center, it gets kind of difficult to battle in any sensibible way.

Although several servers have been down for maintenance, all of this is, really, just birth pains

The worst problem with these unannounced 6-8 hour "emergency maintenance" sessions is that some people can't get to their harvesters during their gaming window that day, which can result in some seriously nasty losses, which the CSRs are very unlikely to rectify.

But harvesters are a very very sore point all their own in this game. Harvesters are horribly implemented and have irrational costs considering their hit-and-miss usefulness.

If I were SOE, I have a whole friggin' brigade of programmers designing dungeons and zones with lots and lots of "Crushbone Factor" in each and every one.

I wonder how much the Franchise Approval process is slowing them down. This could be a significant liability if it is not streamlined.