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Interview with SWG Producer Grant McDaniel
Robert Cox from SWG.WarCry.com interviews SOE producer Grant McDaniel on the three-year anniversary of Star Wars Galaxies. From the article:
"'There was certainly a concern over how [the NGE] was going to be pursued by the players, but we knew that to make the kind of game that us and LucasArts expected for a Star Wars online game, we needed to make the changes,' said McDaniel. 'And to actually be able to continue to support the game that we've got, we needed to make those type of changes, to make it something that we could really feel good about, that we could really make sure was a high-quality game that provided the action experience that you'd expect from a Star Wars game.'"
"'There was certainly a concern over how [the NGE] was going to be pursued by the players, but we knew that to make the kind of game that us and LucasArts expected for a Star Wars online game, we needed to make the changes,' said McDaniel. 'And to actually be able to continue to support the game that we've got, we needed to make those type of changes, to make it something that we could really feel good about, that we could really make sure was a high-quality game that provided the action experience that you'd expect from a Star Wars game.'"
It's been about eight months now since NGE was pushed live, and SWG is a shadow of its former self. Worse yet, they haven't delivered on any of the NGE promises (such as full collision detection) or restored the galactic civil war, but instead are trying to add WoW-style content (Battle of Restuss). It's all so forced and incomplete.
Sure, some people like aspects of the new combat. But melee was ruined. Then they put in a fix for melee, and it screwed up other things. But the real destruction of SWG by NGE is the end of the player community. The NGE changes have eliminated any need to interact with people: no more wounds or fatigue that need healing by doctors or in cantinas, switching to a loot-drop economy and screwing over crafters. Want to find the most powerful weapons or best armor? It doesn't really matter anymore, it's all based on your combat level and not the gear itself.
There are still many NGE-introduced bugs, eight months later. SWG always has had a reputation for bugs and being unfinished, but prior to NGE there was always a sense that new stuff was being added. NGE bugs are all because of resetting things, so stuff that used to work doesn't. It's like re-introducing problems that used to be gone. Very frustrating for players.
The attempts to turn SWG into a persistent KOTOR or a WoW work-alike they've ruined the game. If you like fighting for an hour or so every night maybe SWG is worthwhile. Or you can just play an FPS that doesn't have a monthly subscription. The stats on mmogchart.com don't show an increase in subscribers, that's for sure.
Flipping through old issues cleaning up and I found something funny. About a year before its release, they had an article about upcoming MMO games. Their summary on SWG, "It'll take a boner of Jar Jar proportions to mess this one up."
You can thank the 'Elder Jedi' for starting the ball rolling on fucking up SWG. If these players, and there were thousands of them, had not spent their entire time hologrinding, then village grinding, in the obsessive pursuit of an alpha class that shouldn't have been in the game to begin with, they might have seen that their were other things to do in the game besides powerlevelling and then complaining that they'd run out of things to do.
The economy was royally screwed, due to Jedi existing completely outside of it; roleplaying was tossed out the window due to the obvious canonical discrepancies of having a bunch of Jedi running around during a time when the movies have said they were extinct, and the community was fractured because people no longer wanted to group with their friends or do anything remotely resembling community unless that was a side-effect of their precious grind to Jedi.
Elder Jedi are not the players that were screwed by the NGE. Star Wars fans, roleplayers, crafters, and social players are the ones who should be pissed off at SOE. People that played Jedi were part of the problem, and it always makes me laugh to hear them belly-ache about how SOE has been unfair to them. That's actually the one good thing about the NGE: it invalidated all the time that these jack-offs spent grinding their uber-toons, and thankfully drove most of them away. I only wish that could have been the case a little sooner, back before the game was beyond saving.
You know, I think one of the best ways to solve the "everyone wants to play a Jedi" problem would be to release a 100% free version of SWG that allows you to play the Star Wars equivalent of Joe Sixpack. Allow the free players very basic access to everything, but you make it so that e.g. if they try to fire a laser pistol their accuracy is absolutely horrible. No skills (except perhaps some very basic crafting-type skills?), no XP, no way for the Joe Sixpack characters to level up or make a significant amount of money (except perhaps by offering quests? PC-generated quests would be interesting, but I'm not sure if it's doable.) However, if they really want to they can serve as mules or scouts--they just shouldn't expect to live very long if they do that. Come to think of it, this would be a great addition to any MMORPG (especially City of Heroes/Villains.) A little atmosphere; a little something to combat the feeling that the world is filled with nothing but heroes/villains/adventurers. Plus free advertising. I think it'd be more than worth the extra load placed on the servers, but I could be wrong...