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Star Wars Galaxies - 300,000 Subscribers, No Jedi... Yet
Thanks to IGN PC for their interview with the creators of PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, in which it's announced the title has "surpassed 300K registered accounts", despite what they describe as "some teething problems at the initial launch", and is still "...the fastest growing MMO ever - in the Western world at least." They say they're now trying to "get players away from mission terminals and directed towards more in-depth content", with new quests being designed and implemented in-game, and as for the question of becoming a Jedi, they confirm: "We've yet to see any Jedi in the game, though there are some players that are close to unlocking that Force-sensitive slot", and hint that "ancient historical artifacts known as Jedi holocrons" are part of the path to becoming a SWG Jedi.
World of Warcraft
Final Fantasy XI
Horizons
Everquest 2
Therefore, they could expect to see a their user base peak by early 2004. Its my belief that a lot of people who switched to Star Wars Galaxies were from other online games, and considering that SWG could not be considered a breakthrough game, its safe to assume that the those people will move on to other games.
:-)
Now, since I am done with my feeble attempt at Karma Whoring, I am going back to find those damn jedi holocrons....
Actually the game has almost no content to speak of. (realtive to other MMOG games) In fact, the devlopers ADMITTED as much on their message boards. (unfortunately you have to be a sucker like me and fork out the money first) They even admitted that they lacked DEVELOPER CONTENT TOOLS. No wonder they closed their boards. Apparently the idea WAS for "player content", but the SWG team thought that that meant they invent a broken PVP system and a barely working crafting system and the players would invent the rest. But seriously, there are almost NO player content creation tools. You can buld your own shop/house/base, but that is it. An extra set of standardised polygons in the pretty wasteland that are the SWG planets. They have no idea about player content. You know why??? Because they openly admitted that only 2 of their developers had ever played MUDs and even then not too any great extent. Any idiot with a clipboard and pocket protector would have reliased that market research meant investigating the numerous, innovative methods being used in this founding technology. I have come to the conclusion that they are just thick and were hoping for a quick buck from the SW universe. Anyways, there is your answer on that one.
You may be right... certainly Verant has pulled similar tricks in the past with EQ. The biggest I can recall is Fiery Avenger, which was supposed to be the ultimate weapon for Paladins (when it finally came out it was pretty darn good, but was quickly eclipsed by stuff in expansions). The quest to get it was allegedly in the game from the start, but nobody could find it. They eventually completely revamped the quest and it became doable... and all indicators are that it simply didn't exist prior to that.
Similar situations have abounded later on in EQ... IIRC, one of the big end zones in Luclin wasn't even accessible until a month or so prior to Planes of Power being released.
Kicked the crack over a year and a half ago, so I'm hardly up to date on the latest crap that Verant is pulling.
Most of the missions are working, but you get no real reward for completing them. Also, the boards were public all through the dev stage and beta and then were closed when the game went live. There was no insidious change to prevent people from posting negative.