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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. "
Gamers get pissed when things never change, but riot when they do.
Or
people get pissed when things never change, but riot when they do.
Take your pick.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
SWG's development team is composed largely of individuals who worked on Ultima Online at OSI years ago. It is they who created the horrendous messes that were UO patching and, these days, SWG patching. The similarities are striking when one looks at the two games. Both UO and SWG have had duping issues, both have had problems with player structures and guilds, both shift the hot spots for experience, money, etc. every single patch.
These guys have some great ideas, they really do. They have a problem with implementation that needs to be solved if they are to ever create a game that stays fun without having to be completely overhauled every 2 years when subs fall through the floor.
As I have said here before, I believe NGE is the release of SWG 2. Instead of dividing their player base into 2 games they have to support, they are forcing you to play the new one. They saw what happened to EQ2 at AC2, both of which were assumed to be the successors, and neither of which ever exceeded the original in popularity. This time around, they thought they'd just overwrite the old game so that it's impossible for you to stay.
SOE's biggest problem is that they make very boring, tedious games that are no fun to actually play, but give the player a sense of advancement and accomplishment. When EQ players think about moving to EQ 2, they see their max level character and all they've been through to get him where he is. Doing all that again wouldn't be fun, it would be work.
So this is their new idea. It's just no surprise that it was an utter disregard for the players from the company who teleported a peaceful (and very reasonable) protest into space. Way to go, SOE.
Not meant to be a troll, but ...
Seriously, why is anyone still playing SWG?
Go out and try a new MMO. Stop running around in the same body, pounding the same keys, fretting because of the same stupid game management that launched the game in a beta state. Free yourself.
It's not that damn hard to get started again in a new game, and you know what... you'll have more fun being a newbie and seeing a fresh new world as a level 1 than you have as an uber jedi running around the same damn planets collecting more crap to put in a building that few people have ever seen.
This whole NGE situation just cracks me up cause I had a jedi in the pre-combat upgrade days. I played since launch and eventually reached the jedi status that was still rare then. It was fun for a bit but the game was old, tired and consistently buggy. I thought SWG was dying a year ago so I sold my jedi, but now I see it is truly dead. When SWG first came out myself and some RL friends had great times just exploring the worlds, trying out different professions, and eventually creating cities and milita's (milita's lasted...oh about a week). I was a Master Creature Handler with 3 rancors under my control at one point, that was sweet! But of course like everything in SWG it got nerfed. That is really the story of SWG, they nerf every cool idea down to nothing and now the people who for some reason stuck around are screwed. Thank you Ebay!!