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Movie Based MMO Updates
Neo writes "The handover of The Matrix Online to SOE has finally begun with users given 45 days to convert their accounts over to SOE's Station system." Star Wars Galaxies, TMO's sister game, has been having its own troubles. A recent patch had to be removed from the live game because of overwhelming, crushing player protest. Another "Star" MMOG has new help this week, with none other than Michael Okuda signing on to work on the Star Trek Online Massive game. From the article: " A technical designer and all-around Star Trek guru, Okuda has worked as a technical consultant to the writers of The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine television series, as well as seven Star Trek films. He will primarily design the game's interface, along with serving as a more general Star Trek universe consultant."
No. I say anyone who continues to play that game and is surprised by the way its managed is a fool. Its futile. If you're happy with that level of service, fine, but if not, exactly how many times are you going to let the crocodile bite you before you stop putting your hand in its cage?
This nonsense has been going on since Beta. Over a year after the release some characters still didn't have skills that actually worked; I had a Carbineer toon, half his attacks did SFA because the code was never implemented. The trade system was nerfed, first there was combat rebalance than combat overhaul (or something, I can't remember the names they used to spin the facts and then lie about spinning and so on; by changing the name they could could work on varying the delivery dates for the fixes). Then, game fixes were basically suspended whilst the Dev team were moved to write Jump to Lightspeed because SOE wanted another wad of money out of everyone before they were prepared to give them what they'd paid for in the first place (content started sparse in SWG and has never improved).
The list just goes on and on and on. Take a look at the linked thread, the CSR is being batted about so much at one point she cracks and starts insulting the customers. You will see later on she has to take it all back, its not a short-term bug after all, its official policy. Nobody bothered to tell the CSR with the most community exposure what the hell was going on. Not that they even tested the code on the test server as per their stated process. Not that the whole fuck-up wasn't blantantly evidently going to happen when they tried to tweak the nature of the game to match their RoTS (SWIII) TV adverts. As everyone noted at the time, it was sure to bugger up game balance and indeed thats precisely what happened, hence the kneejerk correction. And now the kneejerk correction to the kneejerk correction.
Once or twice would suck I guess. I understand developers and even PHBs are only human. But on SWG these sort of events are a monthly occurence. Lucasarts is apparently very concerned about this as well and I don't blame them.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
hehe, as long as they don't let Berman and Braga near it, Star Trek Online should be good stuff. I read some of the articles about its basic design on one of the fansites and with Okuda designing the interface, it will be much like the real thing. I just hope they take the time to make it work well, rather than rushing it out the door if it's taking longer than expected.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
Anyone have any ideas what a Star Trek MMOG could be like? The series is mostly based on story and plot lines. This contradicts what MMOGs are mostly, which is the treadmills. Sure they all have small quests, and background stories, but nothing epic like a single player RPG has to offer. I am still interested in how it turns out since the Star Trek universe is pretty expansive.
Star Wars Galaxies is dead, unfortunately. It was broken a long time ago. It's really a shame because the game has so much potential, but the developers have tinkered with the gameplay to such a degree, very little makes sense any more. There are entire classes of characters who now seem to have no usefulness due to changes within the system; there are stats on file with characters and devices in the world which either don't function any more, or keep changing their name, purpose, requirements, etc., that nothing makes sense any more. There are botched missions which are impossible to solve, and have been for months or years; Other missions end in the middle and toss you into an entirely different glass-eating class that is separate from your dicipline and makes no sense; there are NPCs that exist solely to trigger cleanup and salvage of legacy game flags that stand out like a Dairy Queen on the Death Star.
It's really sad to see this game go down the tubes, and you can tell SOE is desperately trying to keep it from sinking, but it seems everything they do just makes things worse. They should just put it out of its misery.
If you ask me, the whole station pass scheme is designed to not lose subscribers due to a crappy game that's part of their arsenal -- this way they can give you some other distraction in case their efforts fail, and they can claim X thousand subscribers even though very few may actually play a particular MMORPG.
Took vacation and bought World Of Warcraft the day it came out, and I've never looked back.
Classes are mostly balanced and varied, crafting does not gimp your combat abilities and vice-versa, and leveling fits very nicely with interesting quest lines.
Crafting was fun in SWG, at least as a Doctor. Analyzing material stats, balancing all the different variables, judging resource quality. I even did some web dev to make it easier for myself and other doctors (http://swg.dailybuzz.net/). But getting to be a top tier crafter SUCKED big time. Literally sitting there pushing a button every few seconds to make a macro repeatedly craft throw-away items to earn XP just so I could make desirable medicines? There were two parts to SWG - grinding or being a master crafter. Once you attained master, it got kind of fun. Until then, you were completely useless.
In WoW, you do sometimes have to make things repeatedly, but they're not useless. There's always someone who'll accept or buy a leather armor kit to enhance their items. Any item that's hard for you to make is valued by others at your level, so you get a worthwhile price for your wares. And any lower stuff that you do need to grind doesn't cost much or take much time and lower levels kiss your feet when you donate it to them. By the time you've made 20-30 of one item, it no longer gives experience, and by then you can train up newer and better items to craft. Compare that to making literally thousands upon thousands of the same damn Advanced Biological Effect Controller so you can get to be a better medicine crafter and healer in SWG.
Gathering materials in SWG meant buying harvesting machines, locating a good resource spot once in a blue moon, and paying to leave the machine there for a week. Gathering materials in SWG is directly linked to gameplay - appropriately leveled enemies drop materials that a player would need to craft items that would help those at around his level. Or randomly spawned herbs and minerals would appear in areas where appropriately leveled players could utilize them, and they'd be in the area questing or killing anyhow.
Just can't get over how much more *fun* WoW is compared to SWG. Blizzard really got it right.
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