Star Wars Galaxies Celebrates First Anniversary

Thanks to Sony Online for its official page celebrating the first anniversary of PC MMO Star Wars Galaxies, as they examine a timeline of the first year, from day one, June 26th, 2003 ("the most exciting and stress-inducing day of most of our careers"), through November 4th, 2003 ("The first Jedi appears in game"), through April 21st, 2004 ("We officially announce [space-based add-on] Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed!") In relation to this, the first veteran reward for the game is announced, "the deed for the multi-passenger ship model SoroSuub Personal Luxury Yacht 3000 the day Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed launches" - it's explained: "This starship model has been popularized in Star Wars fiction by Lando Calrissian's personal vessel, the Lady Luck." Finally, there's also a retrospective visual catalog of the original SW:G Beta test posted on the official site.

Comments

SWG Disappointing

[jxa00]

I can't help feeling they blew their chance with this. I know it has gotten progressively better over the year since the launch, but I feel this more than any other MMPORG had the potential to break that 1,000,000 subscriber barrier. (If any of them ever will) Or in other words gain that mass acceptance.

Maybe the expansion will cause a spike in the player numbers but I from what I have read it will be adding in features that probably should have been in the game originally.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[will.murnane]

All mmorpgs are going to be disappointing until everyone has broadband. There is just too big a discrepancy between dialup and broadband for all of us with slow connections to play. When I get dsl (crosses fingers) I don't plan to play online-only games, but I'd be more inclined to think about it. If I have to wait 30 extra seconds to have a mediocre gaming experience for online versus having a great time single-player or over LAN, it's local every time.

The other downside of MMORPGs is the $10 or so monthly fee. I just can't see over $100 a year for a game I can't even win. It may be engrossing, but it isn't as engrossing as the 2 or 3 single player games I could buy with the same $120. Actually, if you wait for them to hit the bargain bin, you could get 6 or 10 games. The replay value there outweighs for me the replay value of a single online game. Anyway, when you get a yearning for something completely different, it's there. YMMV.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Idealius]

Agreed. SWG was my first MMORPG and I played it for less than 10 hours before I was forced out of it due to a low content game.

I probably spent more time creating new characters with the character creation system than in actual game. (It was superb especially for the time).

On the other hand my second try with a MMORPG; Final Fantasy XI for PC hooked me, line and sinker. It has a mediocre character creation system at best.

What lesson does this teach us?

DON'T MAKE THE BEST PART OF THE GAME THE FIRST 10 MINUTES WITH LITTLE TO NO REWARDS TO LOOK FORWARD TO LATER.

Getting to the point where you stand out in a crowd is the goal at first in any institution as with real life or MMO. You try to rationalize it as part of your personality by saying "I'm going to be the class clown", or "I'm going to be the first dual-wielding White Mage" but it really just boils down to the relationship between you and the hope that the role you naturally fit in with a social environment will somehow make you unique. Explains why celebrities are usually so depressed.."I'm going to be the coolest male Action hero", or "I'm going to be the skinniest sexy pop singer ever", etc. Some people do it for "God", others do it for themselves.

We're so damn predictable it's silly.

Anyway, huge tanget. For a second I thought this post was about the movie the Breakfast Club.

My point is that the reason why SWG was ultimately a failure is because people want to either 1. Relax or 2. be glued to the monitor and on the edge of their seats. With little to validate much of a reward and still maintaining high action sequences with tense atmosphere SWG provided neither.

Kinda sounds like work instead of a game, huh?

Re:SWG Disappointing

[jazman_777]

I know it has gotten progressively better over the year since the launch...

And how do we on /. know this? Because the complaint articles about how bad SWG is stopped coming. If they're not complaining, it must be all OK.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Babbster]

All it means when people on Slashdot (all over, but especially the games section) aren't complaining about one thing is that they're busy complaining about something else. The most recent common target seems to have been the next iteration of Xbox which apparently completely sucks despite the fact that nobody outside the House That Evil Built in Redmond (and selected co-conspirators like ATI) knows anything concrete about it.

Of course, that doesn't stop the first post right off the top in this topic from being someone who declares SWG disappointing and has already decided that the not-yet-released expansion is only adding what should have been in the original game (I don't even know what that means unless it said on the original game boxes that there was space dogfighting, etc.) and thus may fail at attracting new subscribers.

Indicative of the miserable attitude generally present on Slashdot - the first post should have been something like "Shout out to all the one-year-old Wookies in the house!" or something equally festive. Instead, it's a whine with no cheese but some odd logic.

PS - SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE ONE-YEAR-OLD WOOKIES IN THE HOUSE! :)

Re:SWG Disappointing

[BlueNexus]

I was a beta tester for SWG. I was one of the many that pre-ordered, and took the day off to start playing on Day 1. After only 2 months of playing, it was very apparent that the game wasn't going to have enough content added to justify the monthly fee. While the expansion will dramatically improve the game, the parent post is right, too little, too late. In beta, they actually announced that this was planned 6 months after the release. I might have stuck around if they would have kept that deadline.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Idealius]

Have you ever played the game? If so, why didn't you mention this -- your disposition may have been useful to the readers. If not, how the hell would you claim to know what you're talking about when you haven't ever experienced SWG firsthand?

Re:SWG Disappointing

[sqrt(2)]

They also charge you to buy the game IN THE STORE! As if they weren't bending you over with the monthly subscription fee, they make you pay for a game that you can even use without shelling out MORE money.

Either you pay for it at the store, and have no subscription, or you give the game away for free (use bittorrent or p2p to help with bandwidth) and charge a subscription, but not both. That's what's keeping from picking up any of the MMORPGs.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[RonXX]

I've played Everquest for the past 5 years and still play only because of the frienships I've made so far, and the fact i can make $400+ in one week from playing a game. After playing EQ for this long its obvious that you should never, ever, under any circumstance trust Sony to run a game correctly and expect good customer server as well as balance in the game. I personally think that the only people that are still playing SWG are the ones who had never played an MMORPG pryer to SWG.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm a newbie, but how exactly does one MAKE money off an MMORPG?

Re:SWG Disappointing

[will_die]

It all rotates around e-bay(or similar sites).
In almost all games you can make a small amount by selling whatever is the in-game currency.
For EQ most of the good game items drop off of a specific monster(aka mob aka mobile object use google) or monster type and other characters need thoses items to progress. So you just go around getting thoses needed items and instead of trading in game for items you need you sell them on ebay.
The last real way of making real world money is to level new characters up and selling them.
All of this works because some people have more real world money then time and thoses people want powerful characters.
Sony and others do have wording that it is forbidden to sell in game stuff but that is mainly to protect themselves, after all they don't want to be sued because someone just spent $500 on item and that item was never given to them or for some reason thier is a server crash and they loose the item they just purchased.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Phil the Canuck]

You played for ten hours and quit because you didn't find content? Someone has a bit of a short attention span.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Phil the Canuck]

You're actually quite wrong on that. One of SWG's biggest initial problems was that it attracted a non-MMORPG crowd. The boards were full of complaints about the RPG combat for months. Now that those voices have faded out a bit, the experienced MMORPG crowd is getting down to the business of loving the game.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Idealius]

Obviously that was my emphasis on how & why it plain sucked.

Other games kept my attention span just fine.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[YomikoReadman]

Actually, he's right. Everything in the expansion was originally slated to have been in the game at launch, but wound up being pulled out when LucasArts pressed SoE to push the game out as fast as possible.

On a side note, I have played the game, where it seems you have not, and I wholeheartedly agree that it was quite possibly the biggest letdown I've ever experienced. The game has had class balance issues since launch, many of which are still a problem. There are several classes which are still completely non functioning, and PvP is a complete joke. You can become a Jedi, but the only real viable way in which to do this is to grind out all 6 base jobs, as well as every other job which stems from them, totaling 32 jobs.

In short, this isn't a case of what you call the "miserable attitude generally present on Slashdot", it's the plain truth. SWG was a horrible game, and one year after launch, it still is a horrible, broken game.

So, before you get up on your soapbox and start decrying those who have paid $50 for the game, $15 a month in fees for a piece of crap like this, go pay all that yourself and be horribly let down like the rest of us.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine this problem is a result of the game publishing companies. The publishers front the money for development and they expect to be paid back, and the sooner the better.

I'd really rather that the publisher make money on retail sales rather than take a cut of the monthly subscription fee and drive that price up.

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Austerity Empowers]

But the original poster was correct. SWG *WAS* very much dissapointing and this expansion *IS* only adding content that was originally slated for the initial launch. I was not even on beta but I received regular emails about features for SWG that seemed to DIMINISH every month until launch.

More to the point, I played SWG, it was boring, there was no content and the thrust of the game seemed to be a levelling treadmill that was even MORE dull than EverQuest (if that's possible).

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Lightwarrior]

> SHOUT OUT TO ALL THE ONE-YEAR-OLD WOOKIES IN THE HOUSE!

For hardcore SW fans like myself, SWG represents a failure by SOE to include vital parts of the Star Wars universe, or indeed release a true SW MMOG.

I quoted the Wookie comment specifically because, for the time in which SWG takes place, the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk is blockaded by the Imperials. Wookies are a slave race, and the few Wookies who have escaped live in fear of being recaptured.

They don't wander about freely in Imperial cities, and there certainly isn't the hordes of them that you see in SWG. Why were they included? Because SOE had a poll, and they were the second most popular race.

There's also the whole failure of SOE to stick to the fundamentals of the Empire. The Empire is xenophobic - no aliens allowed (except in a few exceedingly rare cases). But SOE made it so that anyone of any race could join the Imperial Army.

They also removed the evil, oppresive edge the Empire had - so that there's no real reason for conflict. And that's a good thing, because the "PVP" they included is a joke at best.

SWG isn't so much a SW-themed MMOG as it a watered down pale immitation. That is why they fail.

-lw

Re:SWG Disappointing

[scaaven]

I don't like when people start quoting how "such and such happened in star wars book #38 page 450." imho i think the only knowledge we should have of the star wars universe should come from the movies themselves. Extra content and whatever is fine if it's liscensed by Lucas, but i don't like how frank p. writer decides such and such happens on X planet at a certain time. unless the books and everything are official happenings in the SW universe, i'll shut up now. that aside, i played swg the first month of release and promptly quit because of lack of content/ end game scenarios. This past month i picked it up again and was suprised how much better it became. sure the jedi aren't "all but extinct" in swg, but i don't see this game as a literal extension of the happenings in SW. i see it more as a game where you can play the characters you want to play. but i guess people have different opinions on the continuity the game should include. you can't please everyone! *rambling off. *flame on

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn this anti-Imperial sentiment from you nay-sayers!

Just because the propogandist Lucas edited his documentary to cut out all that's good about the Empire, you take it as a balanced picture! Where's the critical analysis?

A bunch of terrorists devoted to some high-born cult leader try to take down the state with no concept of how to replace it, and everyone sides with them. What would GW Bush say?

[MMORPGS require players to roleplay. Lack of content is slowly fixed. SWG is not the world of the films any more than the Expanded Universe. You can have fun by interacting with other players instead of powerlevelling / powergaming. Why play a game set during the trilogy if you want to be a Jedi? It's a persistent world and community, not a tightly-plotted adventure game.]

Re:SWG Disappointing

[Lightwarrior]

> unless the books and everything are official happenings in the SW universe, i'll shut up now.

There are three SW licenses.
The "canon", which is reserved strictly for the movies.

Expanded Universe (or EU) is where almost all of the books and games takes place - all this stuff goes through and must be approved by Lucas / LucasArts. Check out the Star Wars Databank.

Finally, there's "Infinite Galaxies", which is what SWG and a select few other things fall under. Non-canon, non-EU, things that are IG don't actually occur in the SW timeline.

This is what frustrates myself and others about SWG. Since it isn't part of the Expanded Universe (as all other SW games are), they haven't stuck to the wealth of stories from the movies, books, and games - so, unlike playing through KotOR or Dark Forces, it doesn't have the same "feel" of a Star Wars game.

To us, it's just a generic MMOG with a SW skin. Which is frustrating to those of us who actually wanted a SW MMOG.

-lw

hmmm

[u-238]

I remember it like yesterday. After years, literal years of hype, when the game finally released to the 1,000's of people who had already preordered the game, their credit card registration webpage woulden't work. The entire community, many of whom literally had the date makred off on their calanders (my time in the forums lends credence to my statements), were left to sit, wonder, and wait. It wasn't until hours later that day that it did work, and when it had, many of the game servers didn't work.

This bumpy start acts as a painfully accurate analogy to the overall zeitgeist (oh god I love that word) of the game, the game's gameplay, the developers struggling and meger attempts to suffice their loyal, rampant and huge fan base; and almost every aspect of the Star Wars Galaxies experience.

It's gotten this far, and, well, cheers for that.

All I have to say ;bout Star Wars

[zulux]

I Bent My Wookie
-Love Ralph

Been playing the last week...

[Drakin]

On the free 14 day trial.

It's actually fun, if you've got people to play with. It's defiantly a social game.

Solo, it's just a grind. Can be fun, sometimes isn't.

Re:Been playing the last week...

[Dreetje]

It's actually fun, if you've got people to play with. It's defiantly a social game.

As are most MMORPGS (massive MULTIPLAYER online roleplaying game). The interaction between people is what makes online games interesting, rather then playing a singleplayer game where you mostly see the same old constantly. Therefor a singleplayer game concentrates on game aspects, deep storylines and choices for a player to keep the gaming experience a fun one over time.

However with MMOG's it's common to create something where the social part is a vital part of the game. This is grouping, player vs player killing, running your own business (it's just not fun when there's noone to buy your stuff) etc.

To get back on topic, it's quite an achievement to create a game that lasts this long online. The past few months have shown that the MMOG market is getting satiated (sp?) and already some big titles have stopped development.

This only shows it's tough to get a good community as well as a finished game. If your game is a hype before it even started then you can be sure to get a decent group of players. More interestingly I am looking forward to the next 4 years, and we'll see how many of the new MMOG's will survive. Everquest and Ultima Online have proven themselves, how about these new games?

PS: This only about graphical games, if you look at the mudding society there have been games that are at their 15 year anniversary and are still running. However alot less players there, so less interestingly I suppose.

Re:Been playing the last week...

[will_die]

The past few months have shown that the MMOG market is getting satiated (sp?) and already some big titles have stopped development. Not sure if staturation is really the problem, you can look at final fantasty,city of heroes, sims online, and even SWG and see they did bring alot of new people into the game.
The real problem and evidence in sims online, SWG, horizons, AC2, shadowbane and others recent releases is that you cannot release a buggy game with little or no content and expect to compete.
If the game is not better in functions and have decent new content people will go back to thier old games(daoc,eq,AC1)(Ac1 just added a new server) and wait for a next game. Also it is not like people are requiring a new game to compete with a game that has been out 4-5 years with new content added all that time, just new games that are comparable to thoses old games when they were released. With all those above games they have just not delivered, they figured they could compete on just graphics and an empty playground.
It is like if Doom 3 is released and while having better graphic game play wise it is equal to doom 1.

Star Wars - Finally ???

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

I waited a long time for this.

Played Anarchy Online the Day it came out - buggiest release I've ever sat through - because it was the closest thing at the time.

Everquest and Ultima were cancelled for this, the accounts sold and items given to friends.

I am currently playing FFXI.

Jump to lightspeed looks cool, but it should have been in the release. They may have celebrated the 1- Year, but anything fan-based this large could suck something awful and still pull that off (hmmmm....)

Another game to add to the Shelf of "Coulda beens..."

Simply, took too long, had too many game faults, and downright wasn't fun. I was actually the next-to-last out of the 4 of us that signed up to cancel my account. I can't pay cash everymonth for a graphic chat room that isn't fun and entertaining.

Mebbe next time, in a galaxy far far away... Ixaor my friend, we shall meet again......

SWG just another average MMORPG now

[servognome]

I was lucky enough to be in beta 2 & 3. The thing I remembered most was a couple weeks before launch somebody named "Swiggy" managed to crash the server for 3 days. It was amazing that when the launch date was announced, pretty much everybody in beta said, It's not ready, entire classes were broken, others overpowered. Even post launch some servers had significant downtime and bugs like all of somebody's stuff disappearing, dupe bugs, and my favorite all the buildings on one planet relocated to the middle of the planet map overnight.
I took 2 weeks off from work to play, it was very fun, even fighting all the annoying bugs, then I ran out of content about 3 months in. SWG has a great crafting and world system, there just isn't enough to really do. I just sat there with 30 million credits, nothing to spend it on, and nothing really to do except just make more credits that I couldn't spend. It was the first MMORPG that I felt like I beat the game.
It's sad, the game really had potential, I log in from time to time (my friend kept my account alive) and they've added alot of stuff, but I'm too psyched about EQ2 to rejoin SWG.

Re:SWG just another average MMORPG now

[EddieBurkett]

Do you think that maybe if you hadn't spent your (presumed) vacation time playing the game, that you wouldn't have blown through the minimal amount of content so quickly? Sony should have anticipated people needing more stuff to do, but if you were looking for a lasting experience, you shouldn't have consumed it all so quickly.

Then again, from an economic standpoint, you were paying the same $14.99/mo. regardless (with the first month included in the initial purchase), so it makes sense to blow through the game. But no one buys these games because it makes economic sense.

I've been playing the game for about six weeks now. I had read here about the problems the game had at release, and followed the introduction of the jedi and whatnot. It sounded like the game was starting to get interesting, and when they dropped the price of the box to $29.99, I figured I might as well sign up for my first MMORPG. (Although I had played the Sim Online before, but not on my own machine.)

Yes, the game is all about the social aspect, and now it seems like there is plenty of stuff to do. (I've spent all six weeks on Tattooine and I still haven't checked it all out.) I think there have been maybe two days where I played for more than six hours each day. Usually, I'm able to log about three hours a night. I've been sucked into a guild and they make a surprisingly half decent attempt at organizing events. (Its wierd though being about a decade older than the guild leader, but whatever...)

Its interesting to read the message boards and see everyone complain about how all the classes are broken and whatnot. It seems everyone has a different idea of what each class should be like, and none of those ideas correspond to what the developers have implemented. The usual batch of powergamers, in the form of cheap fotm pvp'ers, and holo-grinders working to become jedi, are ever-present, and do detract from the game. Everyone seems to romanticize what it was like pre-grind, before people found out they had to master lots of classes to become a jedi. Back then, apparently, you had people playing each profession because they were actually interested in it, instead of needing it as a means to an end. But that's all going to change starting today with the new publish, anyway.

So maybe the game isn't perfect, and maybe its not for everyone. I'm enjoying it for now. We'll see how much longer I keep paying for it. Probably at least until we get those wookiee mohawks...

Re:SWG just another average MMORPG now

[bakawally]

I had a similiar problem with running out of content. It was fun for 6 months or so because there was still enough stuff for me to do to keep myself occupied. But when myself and 3 other people killed the hardest thing in the game (a Dark Jedi Master) things went downhill. It wasn't just that the mob should have taken 20+ people to kill. It was that, what else is there to do really?

Re:SWG just another average MMORPG now

[servognome]

Its interesting to read the message boards and see everyone complain about how all the classes are broken and whatnot. It seems everyone has a different idea of what each class should be like, and none of those ideas correspond to what the developers have implemented
Yes that kind of stuff happens all the time. But there is no excuse to have at launch, literally broken classes. Commando and Bounty Hunter couldn't be completed on some servers until several months after launch no matter what because a particular rare resource didn't show up. Not to mention skills that didn't work at all.
SWG now is completed, lots of content, most things working right, and in the end its another average MMORPG with a good community.

14-days free trial is still on...

[antdude]

I recently played the free 14-days trial (still available). I was impressed and see how it can be addicting even though the game was choppy on my aging Athlon XP 2200+ machine with an ATI Radeon 9800 AIW (128 MB) video card. I have to say that a lot of has changed according to the timeline (quite funny too).

I hope City of Heros will be doing the same when it reaches its one year anniversary. I will have to check this game out after I upgrade my system and when I have more free time in a few months.

Re:14-days free trial is still on...

[slaker]

For what it's worth, CoH just launched its first content patch yesterday, two months after the game came out. For the most part, the game has been pretty smooth sailing, with only a couple of serious bugs worth noting (some story arcs that can't be finished by some characters, problems with Task forces that have been resolved, and the occasional persistence of Vahz disease, which has also been fixed).

We miss capes, of course, and there's a certain component that whines constantly about PVP (CoH doesn't have it, huzzah!), but based ony my understanding of existing MMOs, it's been one of the really great places to be since the day it came out.

Do you hear that?

[cicatrix1]

It's the sound of raging indifference.

Yeah, SWG is doing great. lol.

Unbe-FRICKIN'-lievable!

[Zhirem]

If you have never played the game, you may want to do so. There is, in fact, a lot of things to do in it for someone who has never experienced it. My word of caution to you would be: don't expect too much. The fun curve will level out and start to decline quite early on in your experience (YMMV of course).

What kills me about the one-year anniversary is the fact that: The Annum-Vets get a reward! Hoo-ray! And what is this nice thank you from the kind folks at SOE?

You get: a deed to a ship for when the expansion Jump to Lightspeed comes out. Translation: SOE is providing a carrot at the end of a string for you. Keep playing this (allegedly fun) game, and wait for the expansion to come out. But wait, there are a few stipulations to experiencing this 'gift'.

Keep paying the monthly fee until we feel that the expansion is buggy enough for release. AND you of course must purchase the expansion to actually REALIZE the gift...

What a marketing coup! The sheer genious of it!

Come on you fanbois and fangrlz: keep coughing up the change, banking on the fact that the expansion might actually bring FUN to the game... Just don't hold your breath.

The other interesting note from the timeline is that they at one point had 275k active subscribers. The article mentions that 'well-over 400k players have tried the game'. (translation: 400k people have played it, but that doesn't mean that they are still playing or even that they stuck around very long...). If SOE had better numbers they would state them.

Bottom line: Some folks will really like this game. It is also likely that their love-affair will be short-lived once the realization hits that the game just frankly is not very fun, and is a whole lot like work.

SOE will not be getting any more of my money. I too played AO for months from launch and unFuncom will not be seeing a red cent of mine either. Ever. Don't care how cool AO is now in comparision to where it was, and additionally don't care how cool SWG was/is/will be. SOE has lost many customers who feel either similar or exactly like I do.

The first poster had it right, this game had what was likely the greatest potential of any MMORPG to date. That potential has been squandered, and I have no faith that the people in charge or the devs can resurrect it.

- Zhirem

SWG? Who cares?

[code-e255]

I played Star Wars Galaxies a bit over half a year ago and I quit after my 30 free days were over. It was bloody unstable - the client crashed every couple of hours or so (without giving me any error message), and on a several occasions the server I played on crashed, resulting in about half an hour of playtime being lost each time. A few weeks ago I briefly played SWG again (with that 14 day free trial) and my client still randomly crashed a few times (and before you accuse me of having a screwed up system: it hasn't got any dodgy hardware or software, and everything's patched / up-to-date).

Those few technical problems aside, I still don't think SWG is a very good game. There just isn't enough to do in the game. It's nice that players aren't forced to spend a year (or more) leveling up like in EverQuest, but as a result things get dull (at least they did for me) after a couple of weeks / months, depending on how much you play. Back then, the only thing one could strive for was becoming a Jedi, which involved grinding through countless different professions (screw that!), who sucked anyway.

I don't think a MMOG in which players don't build up something (e.g. their skill at playing their avatar better than other players could, their avatar's powers, their avatar's equipment) - over a long period of time - can be fun. In SWG, it takes a couple of weeks to get good at playing your character (and playing a character well doesn't really take much skill and experience) and equipping your avatar with, more or less, everything he could want. What happens after that? You can hunt stuff, which gets boring after a while, or you can mess around with tradeskills (I didn't bother - it didn't really seem rewarding enough since money was way too easy to get in SWG, and there wasn't much one could do with it). Are there finally some quests which are worth doing?

In my opinion, the different professions aren't very interesting and unique, and many of the skills are utterly useless. The RPG-system in SWG is overloaded with pointless skills. At least that's the impression I've gained.

Now... the expansion. From what I've heard, the main thing the SWG expansion will add is space-travel and combat, making it not just a MMORPG but also a MMO Space Sim. How many SWG players want or care for such a feature? I don't really care as I don't play the game anymore, but if I did then I'd be bloody furious. If I want to fly around in space and shoot shit up, I'll play Freelancer, or EVE (or whatever that MMOSS is called)!

SOE completely blew it with SWG, in my opinion. But I don't really care now, as World of WarCraft isn't all too far away from being done, and I believe Blizzard has far more skill at - and a superiour understanding of - making great games than SOE does. All the previews of WoW I've read stated that the game (which is currently still in beta-phase) is already the best MMORPG on the market. Too bad I've still got to wait a couple of weeks until the European beta finally starts.

Well I am now in it for two months

[SmallFurryCreature]

I can see the addiction but sadly I am a person who doesn't get addicted for long. I played it a lot, to much in fact and now I just can't be bothered anymore.

Is the game that bad? Well I played a couple of these type of games and frankly I think the entire concept has a problem.

A MMO game is about doing things together yet the game design seems to fight this every step of the way.

One of the simplest social things to do is to do missions in a group. Small snag. Doing missions just isn't that much actually fun, you do them to gather experience points/money/resources. But XP is badly distributed. Bounty hunters need to get XP with their guns but when they use them they suck the XP away from all the other group members. High lvl chars can kill so fast that a new player may not even get a hit in.

Normal resources like meat are evenly distruted but rarer drops are not. Wich means that some people really get nasty when someone else gets the drop they wanted. I seen hunts where the was more argueing then hunting.

Money is a problem too as new players need a large group to minimize the risk of them getting all the creatures after them and ideally they want 1 or 2 high lvl to take the heat. But the money will be very poor. I done it a couple of times where I was just tanking the creatures allowing newbie players to attack safely and it can be fun. But often is not. Since I have more money then I can spend (or indeed want to spend) I just help new players for fun, with the 14day trial a lot of fun players joined (and were turned off by the 14th yr old holo grinders))

And here is the simplest reasons MMO games are not the run away success people predicted.

An awfull lot of people on the net are assholes. While there is no need to thank a medic everytime he heals you saying nothing all or constantly "HEAL ME NOW" is getting annoying. When you then get a newbie who has been carried by others the whole hunt, has gotten resurrected by the doctor several times and gotten several free buffs and then gets rancor bile (an ingredient used by medics) and then wants big money from them you feel that perhaps there are some people you just don't want to play with.

Same with spam. The chat is like IRC so you got whole herds of spammers repeating the same message 10 times quickly so that others see it. Because else their message isn't seen between all the spam. Duh.

Those who played MMO games know easily one anti-social person can ruin a good session. And the sad reality is that SWG has a lot of them. For those who never played a MMO game imagine the net without spamfilters/popup-blockers/slashdot-moderation/etc . please continue reading after you stopped screaming.

SWG and other games can be fun, when you play them as social games, sadly SWG developers seem to have designed the entire game to the CS kiddies. The hologrind (in order to become a jedi you had to complete X proffesions meaning you had hords of players just doing a proffesion because they wanted to be a jedi not because they wanted to be say a medic) killed most of the choose a role you want to play. The PvP ensures that players with work can never be openly rebel or imp because there will always be some 14yr old using every exploit available to prove he is leet.

But the most important fault is that SWG isn't star wars. It is like those old doom mods. SWG is EQ bugged with a Star Wars skin.

If MMO games are to succeed I think a drastic rethink is needed. Who ever is going to make the next one is going to have to figure out why The Sims is one of the best selling games every and why The Sims Online died.

And this requires one very simple question to be asked I think. How many people who play the sims play it in "freestyle" mode( meaning with the money cheat) vs the "game" mode (earn every dollar you spend through work). I think that a lot more used the money cheat to give them the capital they wanted and then played their family.

I think that a huge amount of the potent

Space - the saving grace?

[LondonLawyer]

Depending on how it's done, seems to me that the space expansion could save the game.

Need a reason to keep grinding for credits? Maybe you'll get to buy a ship.

Need a way to get powergamers and PvPers out of the standard SWG RPG world and away from the casual players? Sell them an extra layer and let them shoot it out in space.

Nobody's forcing you to get the expansion pack. If you enjoy farming, there's nothing to stop you staying in the role and never leaving your home town. What you will hopefully see though is the emergence of a richer RPG world as the space jockeys kick back for downtime and a chat in your local cantina. That's spot on for SWG.

Spaceships and space combat should have been in this from the start - they are central to the Star Wars Universe and they are what the fans expect. Sticking them in a year after launch isn't wrong, just late.

weird...

[buddy53711]

Its interesting to note that everyone decrying the game is doing so because of the lack of enjoyment playing the game. I actually had fun during the two months that I was playing it. Sure, some of the skilltrees were a bit of a pain in the butt to raise (anything crafting mostly...or entertainment for that matter), but it was really enjoyable IF you had someone you knew well to play with. The big killer of that game, in my opinion at least, was the absolutely, drop-dead, kick-you-in-the-jimmy, ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away customer service that SOE provides. Spend 3 full RL days trapped in the basement of your house and see what I mean. Have a bug make inventory disappear and wait for a month to finally have someone EMAIL YOU (heaven forbid there is any actual contact between CS and players) and tell you quite literally "I am sorry, there is nothing I can do for you. Enjoy the game!" This isn't the first and therefore isn't the only game that they use this scheme on either. While SW:G was fun to play, I will admit it did have more potential than was tapped. The problems I encountered though were the people running the game, pure and simple. A simple proof that SOE has changed their ways and I would consider buying another game by them. Until then...well...never again.

Re:weird...

[BlightThePower]

Yes, same here. My character basically stopped gaining experience for anything other than combat. I wasn't even close to topping out or reaching a cap or whatever. I waited a week. Nothing from CS. I struggled in vein to get help from CS. Gave them the week before my subscription ran out to get back to me. They didn't. The end.

I understand people are busy. But I was paying a subscription precisely for customer service throughout the life of the game...

Thought SWG was meant to be in step?

[LondonLawyer]

Interesting...

I must admit I got caught up in the pre-game hype and agree that the devs seemed to miss the point of the Star Wars universe (haven't played the game but even before release you could see which way the wind was blowing from the forums - and lo and behold, non-gamers were then locked out of them). My understanding though was that SWG had a definite placing in the timeline and was part of the Expanded Universe. I also thought they had said they were working closely with Lucas and nothing would be added or changed without his specific say-so.

Has their approach changed then? If so, when?

Hoping that the space expansion will bring some excitement. Otherwise SWG just sounds like a buggy and boring game (which is why I haven't gone near it).

Luke thought farming was dull too. SOE should go figure what that means for the Star Wars fan base they are trying to sell to.