CBS News Fields SWG Hatemail

Back in December of last year, the CBS News site did a feature printing some of the frustrated and confused emails sent by Star Wars Galaxies players. These individuals were all upset by the 'NGE', or New Game Enhancements, patched into the game by publisher Sony Online Entertainment. Evidently the feature was so popular they've gone back into the well, printing up a whole new batch of SWG-related frustrations. When CBS and the Washington Post are covering something like this, it tells me two things. First, MMOGs are definitely mainstream now. Second, Sony made a mistake. Warcry has some information that may reveal how big a mistake. They claim that a packet sniffer built into the SWG client made population numbers for the servers available to players. On a Friday night, at peak time, post-NGE Galaxies is apparently only drawing 10,400 players across all galaxy servers. This is basically 'some guy on a website' talk, so take this with a big grain of salt. It's sobering news, though, if true.

Comments

Why didn't sony create two seperate worlds?

[Vellmont]

I just don't understand why Sony didn't create a seperate world for people who wanted this "simplified SWG" or whatever you want to call it. Just have a frontend that connects you to a different server that has the patched version if that's the world you want to play in. Is it simply that Sony didn't want to maintain two branches?

Re:Why didn't sony create two seperate worlds?

[SB5]

Actually many players have stated they were willing to play the old version of the game with no more development support. They liked that version of the game that much. But even I know that although it would have kept players on and playing, they would have moaned to fix it. Sony Online just decided to quit trying to fix both versions of the game before this new version they put out which is a complete 180 degrees from the game before.

And to be completely honest the game has been in a form of beta since release, and the newest version of the game the NGE(New Game Enhancement) as it is called. The game has had many bugs, some that resurface in patches later on. Probably for the first 1-2 years they did the feature creep. The Development staff seemed to be concerned with getting as much into the game as possible. They made many mistakes and made professions extremely unbalanced. They never seemed to have any guide, or leadership or plan on what they wanted and how they were going to do it.

The crafting system in game has yet to be beat. Although with the NGE that has been made useless. Before all the best items were made by crafters, now in game is pretty much a loot based economy.

I don't know anything about code bases and the like but I can understand why it would be difficult and probably require 2x as many people to keep both versions of the game active. Essentially, it would be like trying to maintain Dr. Mario, and Tetris, both similar games, but with Star Wars Galaxies, you have two different UIs, two different loot systems, two different crafting systems, two very different crafting systems, and two very different leveling/combat abilities/profession systems.

"Sony made a mistake."

[Errandboy of Doom]

The mistakes happened long before the NGE. They were numerous. In fact, every design decision I can recall was tardy and poorly executed. That's why I left with most of the other players long ago.

Sounds like the NGE was a desparate gasp from a company that realized it was trying to support an unsustainable (read: crappy) product. Sounds like the NGE itself is evidence something has been systemically wrong for a long time.

Since the game has been so bad for so long, I'm not sure I can trust any reactions from those still playing. For all I know, maybe the NGE was a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, we'll never know, because it's too little too late for all of us who care about either a rewarding game experience or a minimally competent dev team.

Re:Of course...

[SB5]

The funny thing about the huge list of fixes/changes, many of them are just broke features that were broke when they pushed the NGE out the door.

I hate to say Sony and Lucasarts are to blame together on this one. Either Sony because they didn't want to lose their license to the game or Lucasarts for not taking the massive uproar that this has caused into account.

I do agree, there was no warning, and there should have been. And pushing something out things to soon has haunted the development process of Star Wars Galaxies since the day it was released.

I do like many of the systems that were in the game, especially before the Combat Upgrade earlier this year, they had a really nice combat system I thought, and a fun profession system. Plenty of systems needed work and more testing though then they actually received.

Re:10,000 players is still quite a few

[SB5]

The thing is they said they had a development staff of 70, and that SWG has always had the largest development staff of any Sony Online game(my guess is the problem lies there, they run a dev staff based on the way smaller dev teams run). Even a development staff of 5 would probably not be able to pay for servers, bandwidth, food, and places to live with 150k a month.

There are a few ratios that are standard in the industry, the 1/4 and 1/5 models are basically during primetime in game, 1/4 to 1/5 of the playerbase is going to be playing the game. So with a 10k figure that means roughly 40k-60k people are subscribing roughly, the extra 10k is just leeway. There is another ratio that is pretty standard, basically in non-primetime, depending on how far away from primetime it is, you should see roughly 1/10 of the playerbase.

At one time it was pretty much guessed that SWG had about 200k-300k subscriptions, its hard to tell because SOE has never released any numbers. Now those numbers are much much less. You could say that the amount of space in game has grown, and it has, but the amount of times you run into people has drastically decreased. Before you could probably be literally out in the middle of nowhere and expect to run into someone, or be at a dungeon or heavily camped spawn and expect to run into many people. This simply isn't the case anymore.

In MMORPG's 10k players across 26 servers is pathetic. You could get 10k players across 26 MUDs. Which although are multiplayer are not massively multiplayer.

Re:10,000 players is still quite a few

[SB5]

I agree the most recent Star Wars games haven't been very good, but I know many people remember X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter, and TIE Fighter, and X-Wing Alliance. You mention those games and their mouths drop, thinking about playing those again.

Lucasarts in recent times have seem to go from making good games to churning out money makers in my opinion. And by money makers I mean slapping Star Wars to every game they put out. I swear they are making so many Star Wars games based on the theory the more they produce the more money it will bring in and are just banking on the Star Wars name and hoping they get major hits every now and again.

Full Throttle was a pretty good game. Its sad to see Lucasarts go from putting out pretty fun games to just churning out Star Wars title after Star Wars title.

Re:No, 10,000 players is just PEANUTS

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Just to put it in perspective, I play a MMORPG (sigh) that has about 1300 players. Total. It's quite alive, though there is only one server. I don't think the developers are strapped for cash either. The GMs are volunteers from the among the players I think... in return for GMing, they get snarky name signs. So it is certainly possible to run a MMORPG with 10000 players.

A tale in the desert in case anyone wants to check it out. Free clients, free trial period, $14 (I think) a month thereafter, linux, mac and windows supported. The graphics stink, but the community is delightful, and the crafting system(s) are something else. No violence, though.If you do decide to try it out, give me a chat if I'm online... I'm Cappu, expert cook, blacksmith and other stuff as time permits :)

I am sooo glad I didn't choose SWG

[Anonymous Coward]

About this time last year, I was considering trying, for the 1st time ever, an online game. I was 5 in '77 and am a Star Wars diehard. I seriously considered trying out SWG. But, WoW had so much good press that I went with it instead. I really feel like I dodged a bullet on that one.

Sadly, I quit WoW 2 weeks ago because of real life time constraints, but I enjoyed playing it immensely.

And, no, you can't have my stuff. I vendored the BoPs and gave the gold to a buddy. ;)

Re:ever try Eve?

[AlexMax2742]

EVE essentially boils down to being a Trade Wars type game. If that floats your boat, great. If not, there are numerous problems with the game.

EVE had an 'automatic skill gainer'. Similar to how macroing in UO worked, except you didn't actually have to DO anything to gain the skill, it kind of gained by itself. The only problem is that unlike old UO, you can't have a max level charactor within a week...you know...in order to have fun. In EVE, if you know EXACTLY what you're doing, you can be flying a combat-ready ship within a day. It's the shittiest combat-ready ship, though, don't expect to be able to PvP unless you - again - know exactly what you're doing and pick and choose your targets. You're essentially stuck doing small time jobs until you can get into Battlecruisers, which can take MONTHS, assuming you know EXACTLY what you're doing. And trust me, the small time jobs suck. The PvE is absolutely terrible and tacked on, and even if you somehow get into a player run corperation at this point, you're pretty much stuck doing menial work.

There is also NOTHING else to do other than 'make money, make more money, repeat'. Exploration is nonexistant, there are very very few unique places to visit in EVE, almost all of the places look very similar to one another, and all of the interesting points are mapped out on your radar. Imagine plaing an MMORPG that was just an endless expanse of similar-looking-grasslands and you essentially had the entire continent mapped out with every single interesting point with a shiny red star over it, and every single point that WASN'T that red star was precisely flat, with no hills, trees, or ANYTHING. There is no place to simply idle and chit chat with other players...well, actually there is, but since you can't actually see anyone else while you're in a spaceport, it's essentially IRC. Not that anyone wants to talk to you, they're all too busy doing other things.

You're better off playing any numerous web-based trade wars based game. The only thing you're missing out on is PvP, which consists of you being ambushed and not being able to do anything about it, or you chasing after someone and not being able to kill them.because they've got 2 years on you and already have a dozen safespots made in the system and a lightining quick ship. Oh, the EVE fanboys will tell you about huge fleet battles. Those NEVER happen where you happen to be. And if you do somehow get in a huge corperation and participate with one, it consists of you being 30km away from all of the primary targets the squad leader calls, and you're stuck sitting there running between dead ships because you're still trying to fumble around with the interface and you're too far away from them all anyway. And then you get podded out of fucking nowhere. Yay, fun.

I gave this game multiple tries, as I had a bunch of friends who play the game. No more.