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Star Wars Galaxies Emulator Test Server Hits Alpha
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CoffeeHedake continues "This all comes after much very bad press for SOE, after completely changing the game mechanics of Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. The game has had a rocky history, with nerfs and bugs abounding, but the latest 'NGE' or New Game Enhancement patches have led to the detrimental decline in player population. SWGEMU was formed with the hopes of allowing players to 'roll back' their experiences to a Pre-'Combat Upgrade' state of the game, months before the ill-fated NGE was implemented."
"The SWGEMU will allow private, emulated game servers to be run by anyone with the hardware and bandwidth to support the load, possibly allowing customized environments, and game mechanics, as well as a 'dungeon master' control of the server, possibly even over a LAN."
"News has spread, even throughout the Sony Online Entertainment forums of SWGEMU's latest success. No word from Sony, as of yet."
To be honest, a big fat SO WHAT.... truth is, SOE screwed the game over so hardcore that even die-hard star wars fans have already moved on. It's splendid that they're creating an emulator, kudos, BUT I seriously doubt they'll see the fan support required to grow further than a curiosity to gamers.
Those of you weeping over this, try http://www.eve-online.com/ Sure it's nothing like SWG, but it's a MMORPG that actually seems to give a damn about it's userbase and isn't catering to the largest $$ segment of the population.... Not that I'm bitter or anything! (Rest In Peace SWG.... Rest in Peace).
They'll get hired? Either the EQ Emulator people or the guy who cracked the EQ encryption was hired by SOE. I don't remember which.
"Execute Order 66. Wipe them out. All of them."
Then again, considering how the SWG game has (de)volved over the past couple of years, maybe "Do Not Want" is the appropriate snarky one-liner to use here.
Sony could do the gaming world a lot of good if they laid the smackdown on the NGE (sucky thing in current release) and permitted the pre-CU (the "live beta" that got released for the first couple of years) codebase to be emulated. They've gone on record as saying they'll never revert to pre-CU gameplay, so why not put the pre-CU game engine to good use? With decent scripting, you could make a pretty good game out of that. The reason SWG sucked donkey cock wasn't really the fault of the engine, it was that SOE never grasped (and still doesn't understand) that Star Wars is a story, not a skin for an FPS.
The people got hired, the project got mothballed.
One years salary is cheaper than a lawsuit, and does not set a precident the same way losing a lawsuit might.
I am curious if the developers have done anything to avoid suffering the same fate as bnetd, which the courts found to have violated the DMCA and the EULA. Blizzard's main complaint appears to have been that bnetd did not verify CD keys. Does the same issue exist here?
The only defence I got for my taste is that it was a unique game, the above poster could have simply moved to WoW and found the game he wanted. Or even Everquest 2.
As for the grind accusation, well that is partially true. If you wanted to be a jedi pre-nge you had an ungodly grind ahead of you.
For the longest time in SWG the way to unlock jedi was to master a number of random and unknown proffession to master. This lead to a lot of people grinding to jobs they didn't want. For instance you character might require you to master chef and commando and doctor. Not exactly a logical combination.
This unlock method did give the game something unique though. It had lots of experienced players in the end game giving up their high levels in job X and starting over in Y. This made for a very dynamic game with more people in mid level then you will find in other MMO's.
But they changed this and unlocking Jedi became a pure XP grind. You had to convert your various XP points into jedi XP points at a bad exchange rate. This meant a couple of things. First nobody grinding for jedi bothered with learning new jobs. Because of various game mechanics people just grinded the easiest proffesion to master and then grinded XP like mad. They needed a truly unholy amount of XP too. Far more in fact then you needed before to grind different proffesions. And while before you got to experience different types of playing you now had to grind XP in one job.
So before to unlock jedi you played a scout, then became a dancer and then went on to craft weapons for lets say two months. To unlock Jedi after the village was added you just grinded XP in a combat class for six months. Whoo!
Ah! but you don't need to grind a Jedi at all do you? Well no, and before the village if you avoided the jedi/holo grind you could have a really fun game playing the mixed job you wanted and if you wanted a change, well there were plenty of holo grinders around to make sure that the game was very welcome of job changers.
SWG was far more a sandbox game and the holo grind that a lot of people choose helped in that aspect by supplying the game with a load of mid level players. Imagine a WoW or EQ where 50% of the players are NOT at the top level. This would mean that you no longer need to race for the top. That it is the mid level game that is most important.
Sadly SOE never managed the game well, all the "special" stuff was very high level indeed. It ain't just SOE fault, I don't really know of any MMO that adds extra mid level content.
But the NGE changed all this. It is now far more like an EQ or WoW game in that you choose a proffesion and then just ride it to the top and sit there running the same high level content until a new expansion comes out wich adds a few levels.
Offcourse some people prefer it but they are not "right" they just got different tastes. My beef with them is that they already got plenty of games for them. Why did SWG have to become another run off the mill MMO like all the others.
Imagine if I said that America Football would be better if you couldn't touch the balls with your hands, except the goalie, and the goals should be smaller and the balls should be round. Would you not say to me, go play soccer?
SOE turned SWG into a WoW wannabe probably because they wanted the WoW subcriber numbers. That is understandable except that it didn't work and never could work. First of WoW is already WoW and trying to out WoWing WoW is as likely as say out Coca-Colaing Coca-Cola. There is a market for clones but if you really want to stand a chance you usually are better of making a product that is unique or at least offers a safe heaven for people who do not enti
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The CU and NGE versions bled that potential away. When SOE decided back in 2004 to scrap the core game rather than to fix bugs and inconsitencies and add content to it, they destroyed SWG's growth, and laid waste to the best MMO engine ever produced.
/target Smedley /rude /db
In Pre-CU SWG, you could NEVER SPEND A MINUTE in combat and still be just as vital a part of the game community as a Jedi Master. It had a combat system and UI that was awesome, you spent time on strategy, not toolbar watching and button mashing. It had no levels, only skills.
The CU took the heart out but left the body mostly intact. It was a boring and slow combat engine and nerfed player power to the point of requiring a group to do mundane things like level grinding. Non combat roles got marginalized at that time as anti decay kits and uber loot rewards from the expansions replaced crafted items.
The NGE then destroyed the body, taking away the skill system completely and reducing 32 mix and match professions to 9 static ones. Jedi ceased to be a long term game aspiration and became selectable on startup. There ceased to be anything at all to work towards.
Throught ALL of this we have been screaming for classic servers, which would make the pre-Cu vets like me very happy. No, says SOE, play THIS or else.
Well, even John Smedley admitted on the SWG forums that SWG players have been voting with their feet and that subscriber numbers have been falling since the NGE. Their response has been to shove half assed versions of stuff taken away since NGE back into the game slowly but surely. Rumor has it after the latest combat revision (yes, they are STILL changing the combat system every 6 months) that subscriber levels dropped even more, and consequently, the lead developer recently posted about bringing back turn based combat with a target lock (like all other MMO's use).
So now we have the pre-Cu emulator. The time has come for SOE to either give us our game back, or else, we will take it out of their hands. The Emu project is about to go open source, and no matter what they do with lawyers, just like DeCSS they won't be able to stop it once that code is out there.
Corporatism != Free Market