I played SWG for about 5 months last year. It had its good and bad points. I thought the atmosphere was amazing, and the game was more open-ended than anything since UO (especially in the way a non-combat guy could be as viable in-game as a combat guy). The bad points - the game was buggy, each patch seemed to take one step forward and one step back, prebuilt cities were empty, buffs killed team play, the HAM system was unbalanced, etc., were all fixable. A lot of people were counting on the Combat Upgrade as a sort of magic bullet that will fix the game and turn it into the type of game it could be. The devs, too, were responding to virtually every negative point about the game with "wait for the combat upgrade".
But now, this? Jeez, I really dont think SOE knows what theyre doing. If all this is true, theyve utterly killed a game that had more potential than any other MMO out there. I was planning on revisiting the game after the combat upgrade... but no. Ill just stick to WOW.
Ahh... I dunno, really. Considering Battlegrounds are Instanced, Bliz might be able to tweak the numbers that way. I really dont know how theyre gonna do, but Im holding onto hope, dammit.
World of Warcraft is doing alright. Ive played SWG, EverQuest, and Ultima Online in the past, and honestly the biggest response people would get from those games is a big TS. Blizzard has been pretty damn generous with giving people extra days when the servers are having problems, and server stability *has* improved. And the amount of content so far delivered is nothing to sneeze at, its a lot more than Ive seen in the other MMOs Ive played in a six month time (SWG has basically been in beta since the game launched ~2 years ago, so I dont really count it, WOW was in much better shape).
I really think Battlegrounds are gonna change the dynamic of the game, and almost give it a Planetside-style capture/control gameplay element. I really cant wait for it to happen.
Ten years ago every other game on consoles was a cruddy platformer starring some animal mascot "with an attitude" that gave you thumbs up or some shit when you didnt move the controller in a certain amount of time.
Twenty years ago every other game was either a cruddy arcade game that was a copy of something better or a fairly lame PC game. Dont get me started on NES games!
"but wait", you say, "I remember MULE. Archon. Yoshi's Island. Legend of Zelda. These are GREAT GAMES!".
Exactly. Everyone always remembers the good stuff, the innovative stuff. But the good/bad ratio is pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And there are innovations, even if theyre small ones, that really do switch the style up. Project Gotham Racing, for example, is one of my favorite racing games ever. Why? Because it added the Kudos system, which awarded you style points based on how clean you drive/chain powerslides/etc. It was unbelievably awesome and made the game super addictive. And you see stuff like that in tons of games. Or look at a game like World of Warcraft, definitely an evolution of the MMO, in that it eliminates the shitty grind and makes it basically a fast-paced action game but with thousands of others.
But yea, I guess PGR is just a racing game, like the hundreds that have come before. But in Yoshi's Island, one of the best games ever by any metric, with unbelievably perfect level design and a groundbreaking art style that really hasnt been imitated... you just hop on platforms. Just like Super Mario Bros.! THE INDUSTRY IS FINISHED!
Slashdot Mirror
I played SWG for about 5 months last year. It had its good and bad points. I thought the atmosphere was amazing, and the game was more open-ended than anything since UO (especially in the way a non-combat guy could be as viable in-game as a combat guy). The bad points - the game was buggy, each patch seemed to take one step forward and one step back, prebuilt cities were empty, buffs killed team play, the HAM system was unbalanced, etc., were all fixable. A lot of people were counting on the Combat Upgrade as a sort of magic bullet that will fix the game and turn it into the type of game it could be. The devs, too, were responding to virtually every negative point about the game with "wait for the combat upgrade". But now, this? Jeez, I really dont think SOE knows what theyre doing. If all this is true, theyve utterly killed a game that had more potential than any other MMO out there. I was planning on revisiting the game after the combat upgrade... but no. Ill just stick to WOW.
Ahh... I dunno, really. Considering Battlegrounds are Instanced, Bliz might be able to tweak the numbers that way. I really dont know how theyre gonna do, but Im holding onto hope, dammit.
World of Warcraft is doing alright. Ive played SWG, EverQuest, and Ultima Online in the past, and honestly the biggest response people would get from those games is a big TS. Blizzard has been pretty damn generous with giving people extra days when the servers are having problems, and server stability *has* improved. And the amount of content so far delivered is nothing to sneeze at, its a lot more than Ive seen in the other MMOs Ive played in a six month time (SWG has basically been in beta since the game launched ~2 years ago, so I dont really count it, WOW was in much better shape). I really think Battlegrounds are gonna change the dynamic of the game, and almost give it a Planetside-style capture/control gameplay element. I really cant wait for it to happen.
Ten years ago every other game on consoles was a cruddy platformer starring some animal mascot "with an attitude" that gave you thumbs up or some shit when you didnt move the controller in a certain amount of time.
Twenty years ago every other game was either a cruddy arcade game that was a copy of something better or a fairly lame PC game. Dont get me started on NES games!
"but wait", you say, "I remember MULE. Archon. Yoshi's Island. Legend of Zelda. These are GREAT GAMES!".
Exactly. Everyone always remembers the good stuff, the innovative stuff. But the good/bad ratio is pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And there are innovations, even if theyre small ones, that really do switch the style up. Project Gotham Racing, for example, is one of my favorite racing games ever. Why? Because it added the Kudos system, which awarded you style points based on how clean you drive/chain powerslides/etc. It was unbelievably awesome and made the game super addictive. And you see stuff like that in tons of games. Or look at a game like World of Warcraft, definitely an evolution of the MMO, in that it eliminates the shitty grind and makes it basically a fast-paced action game but with thousands of others.
But yea, I guess PGR is just a racing game, like the hundreds that have come before. But in Yoshi's Island, one of the best games ever by any metric, with unbelievably perfect level design and a groundbreaking art style that really hasnt been imitated... you just hop on platforms. Just like Super Mario Bros.! THE INDUSTRY IS FINISHED!