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Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches
If you already play the Massively Multiplayer Game Star Wars Galaxies, you're undoubtedly already aware that the Jump to Lightspeed space expansion officially launched today. For the rest of us, there are some details on the developer side regarding the ramp up to release available on the official site. Details on the experience of the new expansion is available at Gamespot and PC.IGN. More ... colourful analysis can be found on Grimwell's boards, and N3rfed has a post discussing the fact that the rest of the world has to wait until November 5th for their space-goodies.
I can understand that publishing all over the world on the same day is a little rough. While it would be nice to just download the software and pay the developers the fee, there are stores to keep happy. There has been so much bad press about this game, and the expansion. I don't understand most of it. The game is pretty decent, and lots of people have fun with it.
If it's about combining the social thing with your gaming, there's gotta be a good MUD out there somewhere. MMORPGS are basically MUDs with chrome and a billing system.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Does it matter with World of Warcraft coming out?
As a hardcore Star Wars fan, I gave this game a year to become fun. I tried many of the different professions, I did their content based stuff. This game is just a boring, grinding treadmill. Just sit there all day killing stuff or using macros to repeat crafting.
The Jedi system was awful and clearly not well thought out. The new ship system is difficult to use without a joystick. This game really feels like EQ in space. The "Star Wars-y" feel isn't there. I was their target audience: a hardcore gamer who also is a Star Wars fan. Yet they failed miserably.
When WoW and EQ2 come out, they'll lose a ton of subscribers. Maybe then they'll finally try to figure out what went wrong, but it will be too late.
The engine certainly looks beautiful. Would it be too much to ask them to take it and make another game in the X-Wing series?
MMO user fees represent the ongoing costs of developing and operating a service, not "being charged to live." It costs a lot more to maintain and operate a MMO than to develop one.
I think if you've been wanting to try out SWG, this is a good time to start. It's somewhat fun, but all the cliches about MMORPG's definitely apply.
..." Oh, really? As in "Dune"? Or in "The Matrix"? Or in "Lord of the Rings"? Or "A New Hope" (the original 1977 "Star Wars" movie)? Or ... make your own list.
How do you want to make a good Star Wars game without cliches??
Basically, I agree with you. But keep in mind that Star Wars games are a direct effect of Star Wars movies. For example, few days ago I saw The Phantom Menace with friends. This was actually the first time I watched Star Wars since I was a kid. And let me tell you, this was a one giant cliche! I mean, underwater cities? A city that covers a whole planet? Where've we seen those before?
Well, they may be cliches, but Lucas stole them fair and square, and served them back with loads of panache, so he's forgiven. On the other hand, there are other cliches that make you moan aloud. For example: "Hey, you guys, don't you mess with me because my mom is the Virgin Mary! (At least that's what she told her folks when she came home pregnant one day.) I guess you know what that makes ME, so everybody drop down and give me 20!" Oh lord... "I think maybe he is the CHOSEN ONE
It will stretch for light years. "He is too old to train to be a Jedi". - Uh, Yoda? You say 6 is too old, but Luke Skywalker will be a doable fixer-upper at 20? When do you recruit novices - ripping them from the breast, like the Psi Corps in "Babylon 5"? Does the Jedi Way require complete denial of normal childhood? An odd message for a kid flick! "Oh no! There's an unstoppable robot army! Of course all we have to do is pull a master switch and they'll all shut off!" This recalls blowing up the shield projector in "Return of the Jedi" (which is achieved entirely thanks to the wookie - neither Luke nor Leia makes any real difference in achieving the Rebel victory. Think about it!).
Or a computer virus shutting down all alien shields in "Independence Day". Or Obi-Wan dialing down the tractor beam. Or the hero in "Logan's Run" shooting one computer console and blowing up a city. And so on. Yeesh! Are villain equipment-designers really that bad in every off-Earth empire? In fairness, this cliche is endemic. Ever notice how, in "Star Trek", Kirk talked five different super-computers into self-destructing? If the universe really is like this, we Earthlings are gonna kick butt when we get out there! A good machine is one that has to be hammered into turning on for you (e.g. Anakin's speed-pod, his space fighter, the Millennium Falcon, C-3PO and so on). If it starts right up, it must be evil. Some might view the pod race as a rip-off copy of the speeder bike scene in "Return of the Jedi".
Actually, I found the charioteer imagery charming. Hey, a swooping chase scene past scary obstacles is always a good thing to throw into a whiz-bang sci-fi flick! Nevertheless, having a 6-year-old slave toss together a better pod than all the galaxy's technicians can create? (Those Tatooine slave schools must have a great curriculum!) Couldn't he have had help from an old but great engineer who retired to Tatooine for his health?
That cliche would have lent plausibility. Big animals try to eat whole spaceships, yum. Where've we seen that before? An apprentice Jedi - watching helplessly as his beloved master is slain in a sword fight by a Sith Lord - screams, "No!" Where've we seen that before? (Incidentally, the angry apprentice succeeds where his calm master failed - just as Luke Skywalker does better angry than when he was composed, in "Return of the Jedi". So much for Yoda's sage advice!) But enough wallowing in small stuff. Let's get down to the Grand Champion cliche of all: "Gee whillikers, R2, the folks out there sure are in a pickle. What's that, girl? Solve the whole plot by diving my tiny ship into the center of a big bad-ass one, and set off a chain reaction to blow it up from the inside while we run awa
Y'see, I've always liked the idea of seperate limited-time servers for MMORPGs. Something in the region of 40 hours/month would suit me, but have characters on the server progress much faster.
:)
Those of you with time to burn can go play the slow servers, those of us trying to work, have a life, and play MMORPGs can play on the fast servers (and 40 hours/month is probably more time than I'd be able to easily free up, anyway).
Unfortunately, the wanting to play continously group apparently hates this idea, and also apparently are where most of the money is. Ah well...
This is the same reason I rarely play multiplayer games (Quake, UT, etc.) over the Internet. Having neither the time or desire to polish my shooting people in the head skills to near-perfection, I'm essentially cannon-fodder to other players. While not quite bad enough to be the worst in a server, I'm frequently in the bottom 2-3.
So I'll be over here with my single player games and LAN parties against my not-obsessively playing friends
No fuck duh! JTL is finally creating some twitch element in the game that was before just hitting the right buttons to perform some moves. However most people made a macro so their toon would do a certain sequence of attacks all the time optomized for their style of play.
JTL is different. It is far more based on your skill as a pilot. Two things limit your capabilties. The type of your hardware, dictating stuff like damage, speed, shield power. You also learn skills needed to things like shift your shields. But turning and keeping behind your enemy is purely based on your skills with a joystick.
Many people have complained that SWG had no twitch. Now people are complaining that JTL is twitch.
If you played any of the old Star Wars games like X-Wing, tie-fighter etc etc then you will find a lot of JTL awfully familiar except you now operate with larger planets in the background. They added some missions that are more complext then "fly to X kill Y fly back to Z" but nothing so far approaching the complexity of X-wing or its sequels.
All in all it ain't bad, just horribly bugged.
Do I recommended it? Absolutly not. If you still haven't been seduced by SWG then JTL won't do it either. I played an imperial in the beta and one of the early missions has you walking on the ground. So far space mission payout is also very low, although my ship was made out of superior looted equipment I think that will soon be adjusted meaning you will have to do ground stuff to get the cash. In the beta it would have been impossible to fly enough missions to pay for a new ship.
Personally I would stay away from the game. SWG can be fun but it is dying. The time when a new player could find a group hunt easily is gone. Wait to see if JTL attracts enough new players to become intresting again. It was fun when the 14-day trial got a load of new players who were not trapped into grinding boxes. The uptake was however very low. Many enjoyed the game itself but found that to many of the other players were to involved in a solo grind.
Fun can be had in SWG but with WoW so close, why should you bother to try to find it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This isn't my quote, but it seemed to sum up the game pretty well:
I don't know, Galaxies always seemed like the mmo for people who wanted to play those two guys in the background in mos eisley while obi wan and luke drove through on their speeder. The two shoveling bantha shit.
From the Shacknews forums
You can look this up on pages 26-27 of Developing Online Games.
Then of course you have bandwith charges, utility bills, server amortorization, rent, and of course the salaries that are paid to customer service and the technical support staff.
This doesn't neccessarily mean they are right of course. Even experts make errors, however given that they are pretty much showing their math and basing it off of practical experience unless you wish to publish your numbers I would have to suspect theirs are more accurate.
>There aren't enough dungeons or cool things to do besides run around and kill stuff and hope for loot.
All MUD-based games are like this. Essentially you are putting yourself in a Skinner box.
Repetition and the lack of "cool loot" is a feature not a bug. With so many players, there will never be rare loot you can get, and if there is someone who has been playing 23 hours a day is hoarding it. Running around and killing stuff is basically the design.
A lot of people complain about these things without realizing this is why these games are so addictive. There are simply more fun online games that dont demand all your time. The skinner-box is profitable for now, but even the implementations are weak. I played SWG for about two months and its like a generic space game with a few token star wars themes applied. The incentive is poor. Worse, they made the best character, the jedi, next to impossible to score. Compare that to all the Jedi fun you can have with Jedi Academy.
I like games that are challenging, take me away, let me be creative, let me horse around, etc. I have real life leveling to do and MUD-playing back in college did affect my grades and social life (or what was left of it). I'm really curious to see if the skinner-box profit model is going to last.