Originally posted by Fenrir767 And SWG was an overall failure in the eyes of SOE and Lucas Arts and the 700k+ players that quit by mid 2005.There needs to be a solid sandbox replacement but SWG at launch was a bunch of broken promises and a very bland, experience. If anything someone needs to launch a game like SWG with all of the features it had pre shutdown. Vanilla SWG was something that most gamers that played it quit.....
Not sure where you get your facts from, but I can assure you, there was no mass exodus from SWG until the NGE hit. I know this because I played the game from BETA though server shut down.
You are close in some regards, there were bugs and a lot of balancing that needed to happen, but none of the servers I played on were anywhere close to being dead until the NGE hit.
I would advise you that with the rapid fan base that SWG had/has not to try and sell your made up ideas as facts. It will not fly. If anything the game was forced into failure by the screaming crying masses over how hard it was to become a Jedi. However I digress.
There was a bleeding of subs starting at the 30 day mark. Saying anything else is a lie.
According to MMOCharts.com, you are wrong.
Their Data shows that SWG actually increased subs for the first 6 months. (A lot of that was probably people buying alt accts,once they saw the value in having one, but still.)
And since SOE never released their official sub numbers, that is all there is to go on.
There's a void. It's been there since SWG ( pre cu ) was shut down in favour for the less talented SWTOR.
Tried Vanguard ( at launch ) and a couple of months.
Guild Wars 2 ( at launch ) maxed 1 toon.
SWTOR ( at launch ) maxed 1 toon and played for 1 year.
None of the games felt like an addiction or immersive to me. I never spent my days at work aching to get home and log in to play. I never felt like I "missed out" on something when I was prevented from playing. I never felt like a part of a community in the world in the game.
In SWG I felt all of those things. Wondering if there will ever be a MMO that captures me like SWG did. I keep hoping but for every lanuch of a new MMO, my hopes diminish bit by bit.
Is SWG the MMO that didn't get the credit and recognition it deserved until it died?
Just like Elvis and Kurt Cobain.
Kurt cobain got plenty of recognition, he pretty much changed the music industry and he hated himself for it. The same could be said for elvis.
The only reason i thought and still think swg was an amazing game is because it was my first mmo and all the experiences i had with that game were all firsts. Playing swg today just makes me wonder what i saw in this god awful game.
Originally posted by khellus SWG did not make you feel this way the people you played with did. SWG was a mess to any outsider looking in. To be honest with you, even pre-cu/NGE. Will those same people come together to game again, maybe, but not likely and definitely not in the same conditions. Will there be a SW sand-boxy game ? Not for at least 10 years since EA holds the rights to all SW games for the next decade and also owns SWToR.
I totally agree. It was the players that made swg galaxies great. The game on it's own merits was not that great. The game was designed for players to be more social and that in my opinion is why it is probably the purest MMORPG to date. The features of the game were not great but it did give you a sense of living in a world opposed to just playing a game.
Originally posted by khellus SWG did not make you feel this way the people you played with did. SWG was a mess to any outsider looking in. To be honest with you, even pre-cu/NGE. Will those same people come together to game again, maybe, but not likely and definitely not in the same conditions. Will there be a SW sand-boxy game ? Not for at least 10 years since EA holds the rights to all SW games for the next decade and also owns SWToR.
I totally agree. It was the players that made swg galaxies great. The game on it's own merits was not that great. The game was designed for players to be more social and that in my opinion is why it is probably the purest MMORPG to date. The features of the game were not great but it did give you a sense of living in a world opposed to just playing a game.
community, crafting, ressource gathering, economy system and i also liked the armor and weapon system with green, red and blue bars. the game wasnt about min maxing. but i played it only the first 6 months. too many people of my guild left. there was too much lag and multi pvp was a lag show.
someone has to take the best out of SWG and make it better. but for me, it should be star wars again. SWG 2.0 new engine, new graphics, some improvements to make more class diversions.
Kurt Cobain and Elvis didn't get the recognition they deserved in their lifetime? Really? One was the lead singer of one of the most beloved bands in the world and the other was venerated as a god.
That aside, SWG: I think developers took more of a chance back then because MMOs were just a nichey thing for 'nerds' like EQ and Ultima etc. so they didn't have as many clueless executives tampering with the product and interesting, innovative things happened. Since the staggering success of World of Warcraft, for the first time companies realised just how much money there was to make and so the current situation arrived where developers won't take the chances they used to as it can mean the difference between making little profit or losing money by tailoring their game for a niche audience (like SWG) or making generic mush targeting as broad a paying audience possible and potentially making a billion dollars. You can see their predicament. I think this worked for the last decade or so but I think the time is now fast approaching (or arrived) that this approach has diminishing returns. I hope this means a return to letting bright and talented dreamers alone to create truly innovative things again though I'm too cynical to think that is likely.
Originally posted by khellus SWG did not make you feel this way the people you played with did. SWG was a mess to any outsider looking in. To be honest with you, even pre-cu/NGE. Will those same people come together to game again, maybe, but not likely and definitely not in the same conditions. Will there be a SW sand-boxy game ? Not for at least 10 years since EA holds the rights to all SW games for the next decade and also owns SWToR.
I totally agree. It was the players that made swg galaxies great. The game on it's own merits was not that great. The game was designed for players to be more social and that in my opinion is why it is probably the purest MMORPG to date. The features of the game were not great but it did give you a sense of living in a world opposed to just playing a game.
Right on target - social aspects of gaming have been wiped out in favor of solo friendly play and I-Win buttons. At this very moment I'm mining Inert Gas on Tatooine and loving EVERY second of it
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
SWG is one of those games that draws mixed emotions from me. I loved the freedom to live in the Star Wars universe as well as getting to visit and interact with all the places that were seen in the original trilogy. However, some mechanics were just down right questionable, such as the hologrind which just about single handedly killed the game for me. Also some of the bugs early on were nearly game-breaking. I was one of the first commandos on my server and remember the materials needed to craft commando specific weapons were not set to spawn. Two weeks later, when the devs turned on that particular resource to spawn, the weapons were bugged and only did 1 point of damage (no exaggeration). My heavy acid launcher was literally a spit ball shooter. A very shameful display on SOE's part.
As far as Kurt Cobain, people were well aware of his trend setting (almost genius) well before he died.
SWG will always be my all time favorite MMO. I too have yet to experience another MMO that rivals SWG. I can remember falling asleep at the computer or watching the sun come up while playing.
Best thing i ever wrote. Because the game was special to me. This post is several years old.
The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase. Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in a camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few new I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures. You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times. -Robbhood
Smedley recently said SOEs next undisclosed project will make SWG fans very very happy.
Excitement^10
Yeah and if I had £10 for everything that has come out of Smedleys mouth over the years that turned out to be false I would likely have enough to make the MMO of my dreams. In the queue of believability that guy got stuck holding the door open for everyone else, including the old Iraqi information minister.
Best thing i ever wrote. Because the game was special to me. This post is several years old.
The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase. Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in a camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few new I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures. You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times. -Robbhood
I still think back to logging on for the first time after SoE's hatchet job to see my poor MCH/BE with nothing but a respec token, and that turned out to be bugged. When used 30 levels vanished. The response from the GM was 'sorry can't do anything, you will just have to level up again'. My response to him was 'sorry just can't seem to get my credit card to pay for this crap'. And that was that, a great time in a great game came to a final end.
Comments
According to MMOCharts.com, you are wrong.
Their Data shows that SWG actually increased subs for the first 6 months. (A lot of that was probably people buying alt accts,once they saw the value in having one, but still.)
And since SOE never released their official sub numbers, that is all there is to go on.
Kurt cobain got plenty of recognition, he pretty much changed the music industry and he hated himself for it. The same could be said for elvis.
I totally agree. It was the players that made swg galaxies great. The game on it's own merits was not that great. The game was designed for players to be more social and that in my opinion is why it is probably the purest MMORPG to date. The features of the game were not great but it did give you a sense of living in a world opposed to just playing a game.
community, crafting, ressource gathering, economy system and i also liked the armor and weapon system with green, red and blue bars. the game wasnt about min maxing. but i played it only the first 6 months. too many people of my guild left. there was too much lag and multi pvp was a lag show.
someone has to take the best out of SWG and make it better. but for me, it should be star wars again. SWG 2.0 new engine, new graphics, some improvements to make more class diversions.
Kurt Cobain and Elvis didn't get the recognition they deserved in their lifetime? Really? One was the lead singer of one of the most beloved bands in the world and the other was venerated as a god.
That aside, SWG: I think developers took more of a chance back then because MMOs were just a nichey thing for 'nerds' like EQ and Ultima etc. so they didn't have as many clueless executives tampering with the product and interesting, innovative things happened. Since the staggering success of World of Warcraft, for the first time companies realised just how much money there was to make and so the current situation arrived where developers won't take the chances they used to as it can mean the difference between making little profit or losing money by tailoring their game for a niche audience (like SWG) or making generic mush targeting as broad a paying audience possible and potentially making a billion dollars. You can see their predicament. I think this worked for the last decade or so but I think the time is now fast approaching (or arrived) that this approach has diminishing returns. I hope this means a return to letting bright and talented dreamers alone to create truly innovative things again though I'm too cynical to think that is likely.
Right on target - social aspects of gaming have been wiped out in favor of solo friendly play and I-Win buttons. At this very moment I'm mining Inert Gas on Tatooine and loving EVERY second of it
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
SWG is one of those games that draws mixed emotions from me. I loved the freedom to live in the Star Wars universe as well as getting to visit and interact with all the places that were seen in the original trilogy. However, some mechanics were just down right questionable, such as the hologrind which just about single handedly killed the game for me. Also some of the bugs early on were nearly game-breaking. I was one of the first commandos on my server and remember the materials needed to craft commando specific weapons were not set to spawn. Two weeks later, when the devs turned on that particular resource to spawn, the weapons were bugged and only did 1 point of damage (no exaggeration). My heavy acid launcher was literally a spit ball shooter. A very shameful display on SOE's part.
As far as Kurt Cobain, people were well aware of his trend setting (almost genius) well before he died.
<----- as in this guy
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
I enjoyed SWG until NGE and then I moved on. They spoiled this game trying to simplify it..
Best thing i ever wrote. Because the game was special to me. This post is several years old.
The game was just out of beta and 40 of my guild started playing. I was one of my group’s “Planet Side” testers/players, having beta tested it. We are 200 strong spread out now over 8-10 different games.
I would tune in the SWG channel on TS and listen, it was amazing to here the accounts of things across the galaxy as seen through the eyes of noobs. Everyone was a noob. I had to be a part of this.
I got the game and away I went. There were people everywhere. Cantinas were jammed, star ports as well. People running across Dath, no speeders yet. Fighting rancors and nightsisters. Squills and Tuskin Raiders were things to avoid on our home planet. The Corellian plains and the swamps of Talus, filled with big cats and their babies was a great place for the CH, but a dangerous one as well.
The crafting was amazing as well, folks dedicated themselves to mining, harvesting or buying the best resources, looting or buying skill tapes, and the items they made were top shelf. We knew who they were and we haggled for the best price. Weapons, armor, BE clothing, foods, drinks, etc…
The fighting classes would hire out to protect crafters as they tended their harvesters, or just paid us to bring home the best meat or bone, when ever it would be located that month at various places across the galaxy.
The player cites became sophisticated and well thought out. We would hunt in groups to fund the treasury. Recruit top crafters to place their vendors so traffic in town would increase.
Entertainers formed troupes that would travel around and perform at events for hire. Towns would have celebrations, music, fireworks, dancing. The socialization was at its peak.
Bases became focal points for the GCW, defending and attacking, when one went “hot” hundreds of players would be on hand. Theed was a kill zone as was the Bestine-Anchorhead corridor.
Jedi were rare and as the game progressed, more found their way to the Force. But through perma-death, saber TEF and eventually visibility and the BH, showing off with a LS was a bad thing. Removing the BH gank squad made us Jedi more brazen and may have been the first sign of the down hill slide. Jedi should have remained in the shadows.
I remember traveling across many planets and stopping off in a camps on a regular basis. Players just out and about were never hard to stumble across. The Master Ranger camp was a sight to see. If they had a dancer, it was a chance to heal up a bit and move on. Before leaving you could often barter for a new pet or some food or drink. Few new I was a Jedi, it was much safer that way. Regular clothes, carrying a rifle or carbine, with my LS in the tool bar just in case I was not as careful as I thought I was.
Back to a big city, get your speeder, armor and weapon repaired. It was always nice to find a smuggler and get those new items sliced. Stop by the local cantina and enjoy some music and get a mind buff, hit a star port and have a doctor buff you up. Then back out to the open spaces, never far from action.
Player run night clubs sprang up, rented juke boxes, exotic dancers, beauty pageants and just a place to hang out, waiting for the next assault on the enemy or hunting party. At one pageant, with about two hundred in attendance, a beautiful young Jedi was competing, when a BH attacked, the fight spilled out into the street and raged on for 20 minutes before she managed to escape. I cannot imagine a more “Star Warsy” scene then a fight breaking out in a Star Wars bar.
You didn’t have to run around to find PvP, it would always find you if you were not alert. NPC’s could unmask you as well, and many times you would have to fight your way out of town. For a Jedi, that meant visibility for sure. Time to be extra careful. But if laying low was your thing for the moment, there were 100 places to go and things to do. Tend to your factors, restock, shop, socialize, hunt, the Vette, Theme Parks, The Warren, Black Sun Bunker, etc… The server forums served as After Action Reports that made the slow times at work more enjoyable.
New players would seek help, and many did help. Taking them under their wing, showing them the ropes, forging bonds, weaken by the tears of this dying game, and friend’s lists evaporated as gamers left for greener pastures.
You really carved out your own existence, the greatest Star Wars saga ever told, yours… and if you ran the course and wanted a change, you could start over, 31 more times if it suited you.
Many of us have moved on, others stay and pray that the greatness of this game will return. Still others, like me, pay for a month here and there just to check in and see for ourselves.
For me, there is a soothing, surreal feeling when I hear the opening music. I stand above my home on Tatooine, in Storm’s End, a town we forged from the sands in a place called The Valley of the Wind. I watch the twin suns set over the mountains and remember what the game was like. It truly breaks my heart to think of the friends lost and the good times we had, gone forever, like the sands in a storm. I wait a bit longer, check my empty friend’s list and log off.
Yes, we were adventurers, explorers and soldiers, and it was the best of times. -Robbhood
Yeah and if I had £10 for everything that has come out of Smedleys mouth over the years that turned out to be false I would likely have enough to make the MMO of my dreams. In the queue of believability that guy got stuck holding the door open for everyone else, including the old Iraqi information minister.
I still think back to logging on for the first time after SoE's hatchet job to see my poor MCH/BE with nothing but a respec token, and that turned out to be bugged. When used 30 levels vanished. The response from the GM was 'sorry can't do anything, you will just have to level up again'. My response to him was 'sorry just can't seem to get my credit card to pay for this crap'. And that was that, a great time in a great game came to a final end.