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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.
How long between when SWG was originally launched until now?
I wanna know how long its been for SWG to become everything people EXPECTED out of the game before it was released.
Seriously... how long have people played this 'StarWars' game without the main element?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Due to a genius marketing decision by Activision, the European distributors, players in the Old World don't get to see the expansion until November 5th at the earliest. The latest date predicted is November 19th.
It's almost as if they WANT the players to move onto WoW.
I have never played the original release of SWG. I'm not a big fan of the online RPGs. But I understand why they are so popular. I have a couple of questions about this though.
1) If the expansion allows you to move around in space, what the hell were people doing before this? Was the original game restricted to one planet?
2) If you bought the first, do you have to buy the upgrade? If you don't have the upgrade can you still play?
World of Warcraft is the only one that currently exists (Although unreleased) that I would call good.
Ultima Online *WAS* good, a long, long time ago, in a different era of MMORPG gaming, but, it's long since hit it's internally mandated expiration date.
To clarify that I'm not just saying things were better in the good ol' days, Merridian 59 wasn't all that good.
Everquest never was, and never will be good.
SWG never was, and never will be good.
Ascherons Call 1 was novel and interesting, but "good" is an overstatement.
Shadowbane was and is not good, *unless* you enjoy massive PvP and politics with 14 year olds.
As a beta tester, I can tell you right now, I don't know what the reviewers were smoking when they said this game was so cool. I'm sorry, but the fact that you can use a joystick does not impress me. The fact that it *looks* pretty does not impress me. The fact that I can't do anything of even the slightest importance in space *does* effect me. It makes me not want to enter space with my character, and thus I did not.
For those of you who purchased the Planetside "underground" expansion (you can tell what kind of an effect it had on me based upon the fact that I cannot remember its name) you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. JtL introduces a new area that everyone will enjoy for 48 hours, and then they'll go back to the real economy of the game.
Speaking of which, "2500+ buffs! 3.0 hours! 15k!".
I played the beta and was very impressed.
:)
:)
The times I ran into lag it turned out to be client-side.
the netcode is very impressive. I think the whole design of the SWG enterprise was based around scalability. Early in the beta I was flying towards the tatooine space station and I estimated that I was rendering around 100 spacecraft flying about the station (i have a screenshot, need to corraborate that)- the netcode "view distance" was then scaled down, since this undoubtedly caused processor lag (and the netcode was likely maxxed out), nevertheless I was very impressed by that many clients being rendered in realtime.
The graphics engine is great, it's huge. it's expansive. eventually they will make an FPS with it (planetside seems to use a scaled-down version of this engine). I bought this game for the graphics engine - sometimes I just turn off the lights - turn off the games HUD and zoom in to first-person view, just to suspend my disbelief and pretend that I am actually standing in coronet on corellia.
The sounds are wonderful as well
I'm not a big RPGer, but I've had lots of fun playing this game. Now, I AM a big simmer - so JTL is just wonderful
All in all I think this game is great. Of course, that's an opinion and as we all know, it's pointless to argue tastes.
Alright, to my understanding, the space aspect of SWG is like any other MMPORG but worse - to get better guns/ships/etc you have to gain experience. Ok, there's nothing wrong with that - if there were 1500 models of the Tie Fighter. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of being in a ship was that it took SKILL TO KILL THINGS and not time.
This is the downfall of any MMPORG that attempts a standard system for space flight. I want some schmuck that logs on with godly pilot skills to start killing people with their pretty super ships they spent weeks getting, but of course that'll never happen because then the long-term degenerates that spent 90% of their life getting ShieldXII SuperMart Booster Plus will whine.
The gaming community needs a massively online space spim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent. I want descent or X-wing vs Tie Fighter with 500+ people - the day that happens is the day I become a truly happy gamer.
I've found FFXI to be pretty good. I like the way it handles PvP, as a sport between nations, fought in a certain setting and prearanged. PvP for those that want it, none for those that don't.
I'm probably going to cancel my account soon, the game just doesn't have much to offer me after 3 or 4 months of playing. I made millions upon millions of credits, I've had most of the cool loot, and it just gets boring after awhile. The only thing I haven't done is make it to jedi, and I'm not about to invest 200+ more hours in the game.
I continue to keep my account simply because I have it run macros in the background to generate millions in credits, which on my server sells for approximately 5 dollars a month per million.
I've expanded on this to provide even more services, now I have a hospital with a doctor inside buffing automatically throughout the day, I have another guy using a personal exploit to mine without a mining installation (must be logged in) and a third computer with a trial account killing meatlumps outside coronet for rug pieces and extremeley rare loot (one every four hours or so).
I figure I'm probably making about a hundred a month off of this, of which, 30 goes to pay for my accounts, and another 15 or so goes to pay for electricity. A physically handicapped guy I know has been using this method to get about a thousand to fifteen hundred bucks a month playing MMORPGs. And it's funny too, cause players in the games he participates in call him "ruthless" and hate that he would "take advantage of poor Ebayers" by giving them what he wants.
As you can imagine, he's a hardcore Libertarian now. Used to be a hardcore Democrat.
Amen to this. I tried out the two-week trial they had a few months ago, and it was pretty interesting. Here's basically how it went (I'm not exaggerating, I did exactly what I said I did, no more, no less).
Day 1: Started off, didn't know what to do. Went through the tutorial, then logged off. (took about an hour and a half since I did the tutorial twice with two characters)
Day 2: Got a rifle, shot some stuff. Made a tent. Logged off after about two hours.
Day 3: Shot some more stuff, talked to a friend that had switched to SWG from FFXI. Shot some stuff, used my tent. Watched a Jedi kill a lot of people.
Friend invited me to go hunting, so he sent me some credits, and I flew off to the planet he was on. In the space of half an hour, I had gained 2 levels in most of my oft-used marksman skills, and I had more credits than I could hold (literally; I maxed out at 50k for the free trial).
Day 4: On the way back to tatooine, I bought a wardrobe worth of clothes, got a set of armour, a few different weapons, a speeder-bike, and pretty much everything else I wanted that I could use. Went back to tatooine, shot some stuff. Went to Jabba's Palace. Took forever to get there. Shot some stuff.
Day 6: Went back home from Jabba's Palace. Took forever. Shot some stuff.
Got a quest from Imperials to clean out sand people from an outpost. Got my ass kicked. Logged off and never logged back on.
A few things to note from my experience:
1) My first MMOG was Final Fantasy XI, which has had two years of development and polish. The controls are tight and responsive, the worlds lush and inviting, and everything seems real. SWG feels like playing a game, but more importantly, the game has a sluggish interface, responds slowly, and lacks anything to make it stand out. Worlds are generally flat and uninviting.
2) There is not much to SWG. I like the way it does things, with huge massive worlds that you can traverse without zoning, skill-based advancement instead of level-based, player cities, and so on, but when it all comes down to it, there's no compelling gameplay. I played it for a week, then realized I just don't care.
In SWG, I can run around and kill things, but there's no motivation for me to do so. In FFXI, I want to gain levels, so I can do the Missions and advance the storyline, and then go and explore the higher-level areas. In SWG, I have no interest in exploration because the terrain is pretty much consistantly boring (but the water is nice).
3) After I was done the 14-day trial, I had to go out and buy the boxed version, even though the only reason I'd want it is for the CD Key. There was no option provided to pay $10-20 less and just upgrade my trial key to a full-version key. And it's not like it was because I'd need the full version for content, I'd installed from a friend's full-version CDs.
Basically they were telling me to go out and buy a boxed version just to open it up and read the CD key off the case, instead of just selling me one online (or letting me just pay the monthly fee from that point on).
SWG is like a reference implentation for different skills and ways of making a game. It has excellent features, but no content, while FFXI has a lot of content and the features are great-but-not-excellent, but implemented well.
SWG might be great if you don't like any of the other MMOGs, you have lots of friends who play it, and you like SW a lot, but if not, it's a waste of time after the first week.
--Dan
but don't Star Wars spaceships supposedly go beyond the speed of light,
Yes, but to go faster than a speed, you first much reach that speed.
They use "lightspeed" as a key threshold velocity, rather like the speed of sound. Some planes can travel at mach 3, but breaking the sound barrier is still a somewhat notable milestone in each flight (different areodynamics afterward, etc).
Back when there were supersonic passenger jets, I suppose the crew gave an announcement when you hit "soundspeed", just like Han does for "lightspeed".