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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.
...but you are not a Jedi yet...
I must admit, knowing the issues that the game had, I am sort of surprised that they are not, for lack of a better term, whoring out the 'You can be a Jedi!' or 'You can be a Sith!' aspect of the game just to sell copies. It adds some integrity to their vision of the Star Wars universe. Kudos.
Kinda hard to tell on SWG's official community how the real player reactions are given the fact that they closed the official forums off to the public. Before anyone takes this propaganda as a clear indicator they should run out to buy the game it's probably a good idea to take a gander at some fan-run forums for some real opinions on the good and bad of the game.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Yeah, but if the carrot wasn't there, why even bother trying? A universe with no Jedi wouldn't be Star Wars...
all 3 of my roomemates play it and I have to say.. I think I would rather have them be crack heads. All lives they once had are now brushed aside for this game, and as for school work lets just say they are on the 8 year bachelors plan at the moment.
I dont know if its just me or do most people (students) who play this game have priority issures.
Obviously MMORPGS rely on monthly fees as a stream of revenue so I wonder what sort of staying power this game will have? What will the user base be like in a year from now, when the novelty has worn off for a lot of players?
I also find it interesting that Blizzard recently axed 400,000 battle.net accounts for cheating
If Battle.net charged a MMORPG-type $10 monthly fees like SWG, then they would be throwing away $4 million a month in revenue (I realize that the user base for Blizzard games would not be nearly as large with monthly fees). But if a widespread exploit took hold of SWG and started ruining the game for others, would they have the guts to close thousands of accounts and throw away potentially millions of dollars a month to combat it?
Put on the brakes there tiger.
If even one player succeeds in becoming jedi, out of 300,000 players, it will mean there are 100,000,000 times as many Jedi as is realistic.
No amount of Jedi is actually realistic partner. You do know that Star Wars is just some movies for kids and not actual history right? Yes its true. Also, there are no wizards or half-elfs either. With this new information I encourage you to do outside (yes, its alright, don't believe the FUD about the outside) and go fishing. Perhaps you will even catch a bullcarp.
ummm, wow. How did this get modded up...this guy scares me. Anyone who applies real world math to Star Wars in reference to a game based on Star Wars gets my vote for Over-the-Edge dork of the year. Your math, on top of being dorky, is also stupid. Just because some ratio exists from what ever orifice you pulled it out of, doesn't mean that one Jedi could not be in the first 300k. It's like assuming that once you hit a population of 10 trillion, then bam, that's when a Jedi appears...stupid. On top of that, you could even make bs arguments and say that certain worlds aren't implemented and those worlds have trillions of people with no Jedis and the game only implements places where Jeids appear. I don't know why I am arguing a point with you though....the true response to your post would be (and I am paraphrasing Triumph and his thoughts on Star Wars freaks): no one cares. It's a game based of a movie. They are not real...that's the nice thing about fantasy. People like you ruin games and make them in to something boring....if we had games the way you describe, there would be 1 Jedi, maybe 50 people who could fight well, and everyone else would go to a job 40 hours a week and have to run away from all conflict or die horribly.
Many SWG players have two or more accounts in the game, now - I, for, example have a combat character and a crafting character. Of course, I paid for the game twice, but that is my perogative.
That, and many many people have left the game for other things - they still have the year's worth of dues paid, but their accounts are inactive.
So, I would estimate that the actual subscriber count is closer to 250,000, and the Active subscriber count is more like 100,000.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
> Lots of people go to school for 7 years!
> Yeah, they're called *doctors*.
DecafJedi
my weblog: apropos of something
Does anyone else agree that this game should have been based in the time period and gameplay that Kotor has? instead of this old trilogy wannabe? there are no ships and no jedis, is this really star wars ? I bet they are working on some kind of jedi system (and some vehicles I hope) this game has no chance of surviving long without them.
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
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.
..yes indeed you must go around collecting cubes to gain that inner strength needed to be a jedi..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Rather than get ourselves into a big Mathematical conundrum, let's go with the easiest option.:
Jedi haven't been implemented in the game yet.
You know, somewhere out there, there is a guy who has done nothing at all since the game came out but play galaxies. And his goal the whole time was to be a Jedi. I'd be willing to bet money that the programmers got through with the glowing sword, tried to figure out whatever other powers the jedi should have, found them dificult/unbalancing/what have you, and left them out, to be coded another day.
There aren't any jedi yet, because you Can't be a jedi yet.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I guess collecting cubes are better than contracting some blood disease like the Mitochlorians or whatever that crap was in EP 1. They'd have players running around the game just trying to get STD's so they can become a Jedi.
Heh, I think I just created the MMO version of Leisure Suit Larry.
Adventure? HA! Excitement? Heh! A jedi craves not these things.
The character, "MastahOfDaP00n", has been logged in an average of 21 hours a day, according to server log figures provided to us by Verant.
The player behind the character, Timmy Gravis, was interviewed by GameSpy earlier today, shortly after accomplishing his feat. However, GameSpy was unable to use the interview in an article, as - according to them - it consisted of nothing more than incoherent babbling and the occasional semi-understandable phrase such as "pwned j00 all! I a/\/\ j00r fathah!!!!111 Wh00da MaN? Say it, 'y0da man!!' Say it p30nz!"
Verant representatives could not be reached for further comment.
(karma whoring from the future)
There is little content in the game. There are repetitive missions which get real boring after first month. The game looks good but plays poorly. The official boards where at first open to all, then as the majority of the post became very negative they restricted them to game owners only. While they boast of 300,000 subscriptions the active game population has greatly decreased. I paid for 3 month in advance along with many others and on October 27th when our subscriptions expire, I would like to know the subscription total. Of course they may have a canceled but not dead subscription status to keep us in the count for many months.
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.