MMOG Fortunes Rise And Fall

Posted by Zonk on Monday October 31, 2005 @04:18AM from the you-win-some-you-lose-some dept.

ringbarer writes "The disappointingly mismanaged MMO Star Wars Galaxies has hit another low. The Japanese translation of the game has barely managed to reach its first Birthday, and now it's been canceled. A Rough translation is available, but the original untranslated news can be found here." I'm not entirely sure, but it seems as though players who've paid beyond the end of December will have their accounts transferred to a US/EU server if they're so inclined. Otherwise they'll have their money refunded. Apparently money isn't something SOE is smarting for, at the AGC this past week President John Smedley announced that they'll be releasing what is essentially a free MMOG, with no monthly fee. Speaking of free, the always excellent Puzzle Pirates is essentially doing the same thing. They're also doing some crackerjack Halloween Events tonight, if you're interested in some swashing and some buckling. Dark Age of Camelot's events for today's holiday sound pretty neat too.

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Is SWG really faltering? by kherr · 2005-10-31 04:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

SWG has had its ups and downs (many would say mostly downs), but the servers I play on seem to be growing in population. There has not been any server consolidation, so it's not a situation of coalescing populations. The third expansion, The Trials of Obi-Wan, is about to go live (it has already for pre-orders) and seems to have learned from some of the WoW successes. The new planet, Mustafar (the lava planet), is geared for higher-end characters with harder, longer quests. There are a number of instance dungeons involved in the quests, eliminating the original problem of waiting for a previous party to finish.

It's unfortunate that SWG Japan is not going well, but the game itself seems to be overcoming a lot of the chaos caused by the combat upgrade a while back. In fact, a lot of the loudest complainers are now running around bragging about how they can solo the toughest mobs. Those of us who prefer a more cerebral combat system long for the old one, but we have adjusted. Change is guaranteed in an MMOG, I think.