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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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...

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.

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