Star Wars Galaxies Jump to Lightspeed Reviewed

UGO is running a feature on Star Wars Galaxies, a week after the launch of Jump to Lightspeed. They have reviews of the expansion both from a veteran player and from a new player to the game. From the Vet: "Jump to Lightspeed is a dream come true for many loyal SWG players that have been itching for a new reason to dust off that old flight stick or buy a new one." From the Newb: "As time went on, the bloom started to come off the rose, for a number of reasons." If you've been considering getting your dogfight on, give them a look.

Comments

Ewoks

[AtariAmarok]

As long as you can shoot Ewoks like in "Star Wars: Battlefront", I'm in for this one! Wonder if they will have those shrapnel-shooting Corellian elite blasters that easily turn Gungan ears to tatters.

Re:Ewoks

[CtrlPhreak]

I played the game for quite a while, and ewoks still kicked my ass. Now jawas on the other hand...

Re:Ewoks

[Drawkcab]

You could travel to Endor and shoot Ewoks since the game was released. They're pretty tough. You can also hunt Gungans on Naboo. They're not the lowest level prey and some are tougher than others, but most are easy enough. Despite this, the combat is repetitive and mostly skillless. The space combat is supposed to be a bit more interactive, but I'm not planning on bothering with it.

Sounds like a good game...

[dfj225]

From what I've read, JTL sounds like a good game and it may be enough to convince me to finally buy SWG and this expansion. Also, there is a review on Gamespot as well: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starwarsgalaxiesjum ptolightspeed/review.html

best quote

[stoolpigeon]

from the newbie review - "Does the air force require its pilots to buy their own F-18s?"

I guess that's because from independance day on every fighter jet in every film is an F-18 no matter what branch of the military is involved.

Re:best quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Well what's weird about the US armed forces is that there's no hard distinction on craft. The Air Force has planes, but then the Army has planes too... Then you have the aforementioned Navy Hornets/Super Hornets (and all kinds of other Navy aircraft).

The Army also has boats.. the whole thing is a mess, if you really think about it. Personally, I think they either need to consolidate into one armed force, or learn to work together a little better, so you don't get idiotic crap like the Navy wasting all kinds of money on the Osprey program.

Re:best quote

[stoolpigeon]

It doesn't make a lot of sense from the outside-- and of course like anything that large there is room for improvement-- but it's not as bad as you think. The JSF will save money by doing some standardizing in the aircraft arena.

They are consolidated into one armed force-- the United States Department of Defense- with its various branches.

The Osprey program may still work out. I wouldn't completely write it off yet.

Re:best quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your information. The Navy has more pilots and planes than the Airforce. You know those big carriers that the navy has...the ones that carry airplanes? It's all navy related.

State of SWG

[Valarauk]

SWG has been floundering since their release. Many players felt they were paying for beta accounts. Then EVE Online came into the picture and started absorbing their playerbase. It'll be interesting to find out if this new expansion is enough to pull SWG out of the gutter.

Re:State of SWG

[glowimperial]

I actually abandoned SWG while in the JTL beta to go play Eve Online. JTL is not, nor will it be the savior of SWG. Players are still leaving servers in droves.

Re:State of SWG

[space_jake]

EVE Online was cool I played it from release until September of last year. It got dull quickly like every MMORPG, the grind exists in every game I believe. From what I know of EVE and have seen from JTL its(EVE's) combat is not that interactive where JTL is a flight sim. I'd get JTL if it were a standalone product without all of the grind to get there. Its hard to be a casual player with these games.

The newbie review was a little dumb.

[lazyl]

He went into the game with the intent to try and play only the space sim stuff and stay away from as much of the rest of the game as possible. That's silly.

You can't play only half a game and then base a review on it. He considered it bad that he had to stop flying around and actually do some land quests to earn enough money to buy better ships. It would be neat if a newbie could earn all his cash in space, but not being able to shouldn't be as big a detractor as he implies.

The point of JTL was to add space combat to the game; it's not a completely new game that you can play instead of the old one, which is the way he was reviewing it. There may be a lot of people in his exact shoes (who want a pure space sim), and for them this review is useful, but it shouldn't be labeled as a standard review.

Re:The newbie review was a little dumb.

[wambaugh]

His review was definitely useful for me since, as you said, I was in the same shoes. I also agree with him that if a game is supposed to be open-ended, then you should be able to do what you want within the scope of the game. In other words, if x-wing pilots in Star Wars spent the years leading up to attacking the Death Star wandering Tatooine killing Tuscan Raiders to save up for an R2 unit, then that's how it should be. Since my impression was that pilots mostly piloted, then a player should not be forced to do many land-based quests. At least no more so than a player playing a land-based profession should be forced to fly a starfighter.

Having not played SWG, I found the reviewer's angle intriguing becase there has been a great dearth of space combat sims and even if JTL is more primitive than what was available five years ago (in terms of functionality), anything is better than nothing.

What I am surprised by is that it doesn't sound like there's much multiplayer combat (if any?). Perhaps the reviewer didn't get involved in any, but I certainly hope that JTL's space combat is multiplayer.

Re:The newbie review was a little dumb.

[mediagoddess]

JTL does have multiplay space combat,but its such a ass backwards system where tie fighter equped players can be on the Rebel forces and vis versa that it make for some interesteing gameplay. But Im with you guys if I dont want to be doing land based missions, then its the fault of the developers to force me to to make money. I also agree with his problems with the Rebel and Imperial forces.... a much better idea might have to make it a glory thing and to have the better ships be given to you as you rise up the ranks

Re:The newbie review was a little dumb.

[Golias]

if x-wing pilots in Star Wars spent the years leading up to attacking the Death Star wandering Tatooine killing Tuscan Raiders to save up for an R2 unit

Tuscan Raiders? Oh come on! Every nerd worth his salt knows that if you want to train to be an X-Wing pilot on Tatooine, there's only one way to go: You gotta bulls-eye womp rats with your T-16.

Happy Casual Player

[pagebt]

I've been playing SWG since launch day, and I was also invited into the JTL beta. This is the first MMORPG that I've ever played, and I'm still having a ton of fun. I'm a casual player which means that I've just started to make some deep scratches in the amount of content availible in the game. Power gamers seem to get tired of the game after a while, but I'm sure that these are the same people who will move on to WOW or EQII when they get the chance, but for me I'm happy to vacation in the Star Wars Universe for a couple of hours a night, two or three time a week.

Re:Happy Casual Player

[merigold77]

I would like to see a review from a player who is a newbie to flight sims, but an experienced SWG player or at least an experienced MMORPG player. Their "newbie" review was someone who was already good at flight sims... There was little idea how difficult it would be as a game to someone who'd played a lot of rpg's but little of the realtime flying around stuff (I watched people play wing commander, but never played it myself, etc) whether it's worth getting JTL and what are the high and low points from that perspective.

A word of warning to those thinking of buying

[SmallFurryCreature]

Both reviews talk about it but don't really seem to have spotted it. SWG has become poisoned. It has become poisoned with something that is lethal to any team game. Solo'ers.

SWG has a skill system where you use XP to buy boxes wich give you new skills. XP can easily be gained doing stuff related to the skills, kill for combat skills, craft for crafting skills. However each skill box also costs skill points of wich you only have a very limited amount. You can spend them as you wish, unlearn a skill and you get the points back.

The job of marksman cost 15 points to get novice in. Then you have 4 trees, carabine, pistol and rifle and a generic ranged combat. Now don't think that if you master the tree of pistol you are a capable shooter. You are crap. Totally and utterly. You need however novice marksman, the pistol tree and then go into the advanced profession of pistoleer. If you want to be any use in combat you better have an advanced combat job. Worse certain jobs like smuggler require you to have multiple novice jobs. These eat up skill points.

This leads to a problem. It is due to two bad design points. All jobs cost exactly the same amount of skill points despite the fact that a ranger is far less needed then say a melee. Second is that you need to be high level in any job to be of any use. Scout at low level does allow you to harvest wich is usefull but very costly in Skill points. Novice Medic is also theoretically usefull as long as you don't make your own medicine BUT because nobody wants to waste the points AND then have to pay for the pleasure of healing others EVERYONE uses docs to buff their stats to the point they don't need healing.

It basically means that people are in very narrow defined jobs with an awfull lot of people going for pure combat. I myself am guilty of this. Sure I could use scout to harvest and sell those resources to crafters BUT I can get more money being a pure combat class to buy the inflated prices becauuse the crafters can't get enough resources.

You starting to see the poison? Basically Sony has made the game have to few players harvest.

Another part of the poison is the lack of new or casual players. Basically the player base has matured and everyone is in the role they want. This leads to a problem. Absolutly no-one needs or wants to do low level stuff anymore. Recently a creature started dropping a very high quality resource needed for docs. The offered prices were insane. The take up non-existent. Why? The creature is extremely low level meaning no xp and little meat per kill and zero challenge. New players could have made their fortune but there weren't any around.

The simple problem is this. There is a mission type, killing humans on dantooine, wich pays so much so easily that money is no object. Far easier to grind missions solo buffed with some cheap armour then gather resources to increase supply and therefore drive prices down.

SWG also had another element. The hidden job of Jedi. Recently the path to gaining jedi has changed but the change has created more story but has increased the poison. Before each character had a hidden list of jobs you needed to master. Master them and you could create a new character on the same server that was a jedi.

This saw a lot of people grinding jobs they were not intrested in player BUT at least people were constantly shifting jobs and there was some movement. Even the most dedicacted holo/jedi grinder would be a doctor a medic a ranger etc for a while.

Now this is gone. Now you need to just get all the badges (for exploring) and then get an awfull lot of combat xp. An insane amount. A truly giganticlly insane amount of XP. Each combat type has its own XP pool wich is capped. What is the best way to grind jedi? Get two master combat jobs. First get one combat type maxed out on XP then the other, this will also fillout your generic combat xp, convert it to jedi xp and repeat.

Now all kinds of missions give XP BUT certain missions just make better sense. Your weapons and

Re:A word of warning to those thinking of buying

[Fbelch]

I've got a good suggestion based on the information based above.

Try out World Of Warcraft, I myself just uninstalled and removed my account from SWG because of JTL. Why? The same reasons above, and more.

- Promises not being kept (Smuggler Revamp)
- Crazy amount of XP needed to proceed
- Messed up economy where ships / houses / anything important will cost you your life savings.
- The horrible grind.

Anyways, World Of Warcraft has solved a lot of these issues. The gameplay is 100X what I've seen in SWG. The graphics are phenomenal, and your not stuck in 1 or 2 professions.

Here's the choices.

1) 9 Character Races (Tauren, Human, Dark Elf, Etc)
2) 9 Main Base Classes (Hunter, Rogue, Warrior, Etc)
3) 8 Primary Professions (Mining, Engineering, Tailor, Etc )
- You can choose two of these.
4) 3 Secondary Professions (Fishing, Cooking, First Aid)
- These are optional, but you can take them all.

The possibilities are endless.

For Example:
I have a Tauren Hunter that has Engineering and Mining as his professions. I also took Fishing, First Aid and Cooking for my Secondary Professions. These Secondary profession are free and don't hurt you at all ;)

Anyways, There is currently a open beta trial that blizzard and fileplanet have released.

WoW
Fileplanet

Check it out.

Re:A word of warning to those thinking of buying

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sad but when an MMO goes solo its death can't be far away."

Asheron's Call 1 caters to the solo player, yet after 5 years of being online, it has a dedicated player base.

JTL is like atching paint dry

[glowimperial]

I was in the early phases of the JTL Beta. After a few weeks of testing I found it so buggy, and more importantly, so boring and badly implemented, that I stopped testing. So did a lot of other testers. They had to send out bulk E-mails to testers, begging us to come back, because their test population, especially veteran testers like me, had dwindled so much.

The gameplay of JTL is so mind numbingly bad that it is a major turn off. I used to lead a 120+ member guild in SWG until I started testing JTL. The total suckiness of JTL has decimated server population, and veteran players are leaving in droves for EQ2 and WoW. Luckily, I am moving over to WoW (Beta is great, game is real polished) with some mates from my SWG server.

Re:JTL is like atching paint dry

[Comrade64]

I'll echo this. I did this about the same way. I know beta is beta, but they had such a buggy system that I couldn't believe they postponed the other improvements they were promising since release just to get this expansion out. I guess $$$ moves the world, but they lost my $$$. It was a fun game for the most part until about March of this year.

Re:JTL is like atching paint dry

[fleck_99_99]

I felt the same way in Beta. I was saying "shy of a miracle, JtL will suck."

I was pleasantly surprised. JtL does not suck.

A couple of questions for those who have played it

[Taulin]

I was really into SQG for about 4 months and had a ton of fun. I quite on a temp basis waiting for this expansion. However, these questions have yet to be answered by anyone, and I think they are important.

1) Can you fly your own ship from planet to planet and forget the reliance on other forms of transportation? I should be able to at least travel to nearby planets, especially if I have a cargo class ship.

2) Can I fly from shuttle port, or from location to location on the same planet? If I have my own ship, I should be able to travel around REALLy fast, and for free since I have a ship.

3) Am I only limited to just flying up into the immediate space and fighting? What else is there to do besides fighting? Can I board another ship? Walk around in ships?

Re:A couple of questions for those who have played

[bagel2ooo]

1. I have a medium-sized Hutt ship. I can travel between planets as it has hyperspace. I think most ships that aren't your starter (newb) ship have hyperspace capability. When you are in your ship hit the H key to toggle the Hyperspace window.

2. You can go from the starport to space. Fly back into the space station and go to a different starport on the planet. You may not travel "overland" in your ship so to say.

3. The veteran SoroSuub ship (Lando's Lady Luck style) is a multi-player ship. There is a rumor of guilds being able to buy capital ships later on. From what I can tell 'space' for each planet is about the same size as the planet but has the x,y,z coords instead of just the 2. Supposedly you can dock with other ships, I haven't been able to pull this off, I may not be a high enough level yet.

Re:A couple of questions for those who have played

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Can you fly your own ship from planet to planet and forget the reliance on other forms of transportation? I should be able to at least travel to nearby planets, especially if I have a cargo class ship.

yes, in any kind of ship except for the ship that you first start off with. that ship lacks a hyperdrive.

2) Can I fly from shuttle port, or from location to location on the same planet? If I have my own ship, I should be able to travel around REALLy fast, and for free since I have a ship.

you can only land in starports.

3) Am I only limited to just flying up into the immediate space and fighting? What else is there to do besides fighting? Can I board another ship? Walk around in ships?

there are ten huge space sectors, including the kessel system (which is a PvP free for all sector with a lot of other really hard PvE ships to fight), and the "deep space" sector which is a imperial vs rebel battlefield with star destroyers and stuff.

also, there are a number of multiplayer ships. some ships are two seaters, which means one person flies while the other person operates a turret (really fun, and pretty awesome for PvP and PvE). other ships can hold as many as eight people (like the yt1300 for instance). in those larger ships:

1) the people can get out of their seats and walk around
2) the ships can be decorated like you would decorate your house
3) there are two turrets that can be operated by two different people
4) if the ship is damaged midflight, you can get out and run around and repair the damaged components, or switch out badly damaged or destroyed components with new ones
5) you can get someone to be your co-pilot, so they could use their droid programs or special reactor skills to assist you
6) people in the ship can look out of the windows and see the battle raging around them in real time
7) or, people in the ship can relax, dance, play music, duel, or just chat like normal while the pilot flies around

Well...

[lasmith05]

Going off the reviews on gamespot and some others I finally decided to give the game a try. I think Star Wars Galaxies (the rpg) is ok. I just started so my character is pretty weak but I think the game is setup well. The map is kind of strange, (took me a while to find the spaceport and pilot recruiter, mostly because on the map it said he was in a place he was not. Weird) The space flight part is just ok. I am a vetran of X-wing, Tie Fighter, XvTF and so I guess I'm too used to the nice controls. I don't particular like the mouse control at all. It would've been nice to have the same controls from the old games. In fact I was kind of hoping that it would be XvTF except you are in a MMorpg with lots of other real pilots. But I guess i'll take this month to see if I get over it.