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Raph Koster On Star Wars Galaxies
Thanks to UGO.com for their interview with Raph Koster, creative director of Star Wars Galaxies, discussing the launch period for the much-discussed PC MMORPG. He suggests that: "The launch was a little rockier than we'd like, so we've tried to be really proactive.... We're making a real concerted effort to constantly improve the game", and talks about new features: "Another big thing that's going in is gambling. So we're working up to Sabbac [the game in which Han Solo wins the Millenium Falcon from Lando]... We're gonna be adding slot machines and roulette." Also touched on are the mission diversity complaints: "The missions were never intended to be rich and complex and deep... they're intended to only take a little while, not be incredibly complex. But, of course, players have found them to be a great way of making money."
Star Wars Galaxies is the best MMORPG I have ever played. Period. It is still buggier than I would like, but its depth and innovation astound me.
Aspects I love about the game:
1. The skill-based economy. This eliminates what I hated about EQ: the camping and the farmers. No more reading Harry Potter or Robert Jordan over the weekend while I wait for Something Special to drop.
2. The player houses and PA Halls. The player-vendors whose places of business appear on the planetary map.
3. The HUD. Waypoints. The well-designed and attractive cities, and the efficient/easy-to-use shutte/starship transportation system.
4. The mission terminals, the spendable faction points, the bazaar.
5. The amazing variety of Professions, and the ability to mix-and-match Professions, and even the ability to change my mind and surrender my skills to take up Professions that hadn't seemed attractive initially.
6. The loving attention to detail evident in the way NPC's even fidget convincingly.
7. The slightly Political Incorrectness ot the game: some of those dancers are hot almost to PG-13 standards, and a Slicer will sell you designer narcotics. George didn't succumb to any Disneyfication, which was startling to me, considering that this man was also responsible for Gungans and Ewoks.
8. Creature Handler. They can give creatures they've tamed to their friends, and one day those creatures will (probably) be available as mounts. Cool stuff!
9. Percentage-wise, I've encountered fewer griefers in this game than I have in the other MMORPG's. In other words, fewer losers, despite what one might think based on the lack of imagination in character naming.
Aspects I dislike about the game:
1. The lousy chat system that still stops working periodically.
2. The defective mission system, with missions that mysteriously vanish, and move too frequently.
3. The bazaar isn't as easy to use as it should be.
4. Trading items between players is still prone to malfunction.
Aspects I hate about the game:
Nothing here to list.
Anyway, my congratulations to Raph and his team, who have done a great job despite the impression you might get reading messages from anonymous whiners on the forums.
Thanks, Raph!
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
much better reviews here - http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/05/ 1847238
Raph Koster has been in the gaming industry for a comparatively short time, but his impact has been immeasurable. His work on the team for Ultima Online, as well as his role as lead designer for that game's many updates, has helped to keep its community alive for over 6 years.
Most recently, though, Raph was the Creative Director for one of the most anticipated games of all time. You might've heard of it...Star Wars Galaxies? We sat down to chat with Raph about the success of the game and what kind of updates and additions we should expect to see in the future. No, Twi'lek erotica is not planned...yet.
UGO: So the game's been out for more than a month now. What's been added and what's on the horizon?
Raph Koster: Well, we've just finished our first big monthly update. We're planning on doing those every month. As far as we know, it's the fastest MMO [massively multiplayer online game] ever. We hit 125,000 people in a week. We're considerably higher than that now, but we're not ready to talk about numbers again yet.
UGO: Could you talk a bit about the monthly updates?
RK: The monthly updates have a couple of elements. We are doing a story arc, similar to Asheron's Call, I guess. The prologue for the first episode is called "Cries of Alderaan." They're not one-month story arcs; they're like a single arc that covers multiple months. We introduce episodes each month that players can participate in and effect the outcome. And they affect the outcome, so it isn't just us telling players what's happening. For the first update, what we do, we have what we call a codependence program where players get selected to be representatives for the profession. And they escalate the top five issues that they want to address for their profession or their play style. We listen to that and we make changes in the game based on that.
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RK: We're also, obviously, always keeping an eye on exploits and bug fixes. The first few months of an MMO, lots of that kind of stuff starts surfacing. We've been doing hot fixes to the servers on almost a daily basis, squashing whatever the top exploits or major bugs are. We try to be really responsive. We've got multiple people on the boards every day responding to issues. The launch was a little rockier than we'd like, so we've tried to be really proactive. We gave everybody who logged in on the first day, we extended their free period, that kind of thing. So we've tried to do the right thing by everybody. The patch itself, then, is like a full month of development. We're making a real concerted effort to constantly improve the game.
One of the big elements that's going into this patch is a big upgrade to PvP [player vs. player combat], a global upgrade. Not too many people have gotten this high in level yet, in the factions, but when you have enough faction points and have aquired a high enough faction rank, you can actually build bases and faction headquarters. Until now, you just built them because they were cool. But they now, in the new patch, actually affect global standing for the faction. Whichever faction is in the lead gets XP [experience] bonuses, that kind of thing.
UGO: We've already seen some bases popping up around the game world. Are they all player created or are the developers adding them in?
RK: I don't know! [laughs] There are player created bases. They can be fairly substantial. Near the end of the beta, we put up some screenshots of some of the bases. They're pretty large, they get really huge. The highest end faction bases actually support hospitals, and...uh...they're not really cantinas...you know what I'm talking about? The USO, so it's like a military bar kind of place for the entertainers. Mission terminals, faction mission terminals, crafting stations, that kind of thing. So you can actually make the base into a base of operations. And they're not vunerable 24/7, they're only vulnerable at certain times, so the other side can attempt to capture the base. And it's set