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Deep Thoughts On The SWG Revamp
The always thoughtful Terra Nova has a look at the recent Star Wars Galaxies revamp from a group with a long view on the role of Massive games. From the article: "Unfortunately, the live management team seems to have ignored another long-standing criticism of SWG by many observers: that their design and implementation process is a disastrous mess. Never more so than with the NGE: whatever it is conceptually, in practice, it's roughly on par with an alpha build of a MMOG. Or did they ignore it? It's just possible that SWG's latest flaming car wreck resulted from deliberately driving over a cliff. I'm normally deeply suspicious of conspiracy theories. In the case of SWG's NGE, though, there are really only two possibilities: that there is a deeper agenda or that the live management team is well beyond cluelessly self-destructive, out in some outer void of fecklessness. "
I downloaded the 10-day trial for this game. I found it to be quite a bit of fun, except for the fact that the tutorial wouldn't realize I had done what it asked, until I quit the game and went back in. I walked up to the medical droid, and nothing happened. I entered the Falcon, and nothing happened. I destroyed all the TIE fighters, and nothing happened. All of these things were instructions from the tutorial. How can we be expected to pay a subscription fee for such a broken game?
I don't expect it to be as "fresh and exciting" as day one. I just mean to say that with World of Warcraft it doesn't take very long (by MMO standards) to hit level cap. You can blast through the early game in a few months. I didn't even start playing until about 5 months after launch and I got to level 60 in about 4 months. Keep in mind I also wasn't rushing the game, my character had cooking and fishing maxed out as well as the normal skill set.
When you hit the high end game rewards become very hard to come by. Maybe there is too little grind in the early part and too much in the high end.
After 60 it goes like this:
Run the lvl 55+ dungeons to get your "set" of items. You will be looking at an average of an 8 percent drop rate for your items per run. If the item does drop you will need to roll on it with everyone else in the group who is the same class. So you can look at doing those dungeons quite a few times (at 1 to 3 hours each run). And each item is an incremental improvement over the gear you are likely to have by lvl 60 anyway.
Run Molten Core, Black Wing Lair and Zul Gurrab. These require an organized group of 20 or 40 players. Once again when that mad loot drops you will need to roll. Or you may just need to run the raids withough any gain at first in order to get "dragon kill points" before you can get any items. Being in a large guild is somewhat of a prerequisite, with all the joy that usually brings (player drama, military organization, must be available to raid at specific times get dropped from the guild etc).
If that's not your cup of tea other options include:
PVP - you can try to get honor through PVP to earn special items. If you want to get to the top ranks be prepared to spend a lot of time in game. PVP is not always active, so you may spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for a game to open up. And if you are PVPing in the level 60 bracket, be prepared to face a core team of organized players with epic gear. Better go back to doing the MC runs if you want to be competetive.
Crafting - the highest end of the various crafting skills can make some great items. You will need to earn faction with NPC groups before you can learn to make them. How do you get that faction? By running certain quests over and over again generally. And once you learn how to make the item, getting the materials to make them can take an tremendous amount of time.
As to time to move on? Yeah, pretty soon it will be. Most of the reason you keep playing is friends and guild mates in the game. Not so much the mechanics of the game itself. I recently had a handful of real life friends pick up the game, so I'm having fun playing with them for now.
To Blizzard's credit they have been adding a lot of new content over the past 6 months. I just hope we see more stuff that casual players can have a good time running. Not everyone has the time for the high end 40 man raids.
It will be interesting to see how the next round of MMOs (D&D Online, Conan, Middle Earth etc.) respond to the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft.
Sometimes my arms bend back.