Releasing too early? That is something still done to this day.
JTL was a great expansion that breathed more life into the game, and it's one of the best expansions in my life.... the worst expansion ever I will talk about here (I am looking at you DAOC).
What made SWG was not the fact that you had storm troopers and rebels. It was the 20+ skill trees you could invest in,, but only so many you could invest in. It made for a number of great class combinations. Even jedi could remain as Gunslingers to hide who they were... because let's face it... Jedi were DEAD! for the most part. Not having thousands of them running around.
NGE was a last ditch cash grab. I was disappointing because they could not even get it right when they did it. The game had it's own player driven economy which was amazing, combined with the in world housing.
One thing that was great, for the most part, were the themeparks and story driven quests that happened towards the end. I mean, how great were those?! Too bad it wasn't done like 3 years sooner.
People were mad when the CU came to be. Then they were just done after NGE.
You had a MMO that was fundamentally changed 4 times during it's lifespan. 4 facelifts. That is too much to ask of any gamer of any experience.
RIP SWG.
Sidenote: I never understood why people where so against the CU. The combat system before the CU was simply a mess. You could do NOTHING without standing in line for a doctor buff. Pre-CU was just a mess.
JTL was epic! The quest stories at the end where indeed cool.
Sigh...
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I think the 'average gamer' is a myth, the range of market and interests is just too enormous.
I would say, still, that the majority of people playing minecraft are there to consume someone else's creations rather than make their own. No? I'm completely a bystander on that one, though. My kids love it, I don't get it.
Originally posted by TalonsinAdmittedly, the NGE killed the game but it was dying way before that. The first symptom was when people learned how to unlock a jedi. Once that happened, over half the server population started grinding professions which killed the economy as the AH was flooded with crap as people ground out each profession as fast as possible. It was all downhill from there. People got bored of grinding and left, people could not afford the high price of holocrons to tell them what to grind so they left. Guilds stopped doing things together as everyone was out grinding professions. Your favorite weaponsmith closed shop to grind doctor and your favorite doctor disappeared to grind scout. Then they changed the whole Jedi thing, then they revamped combat and then they put the final nail in with the NGE. If they had simply never had jedi and focused on the war part, the game would have held on to many more people and might have actually grow instead of the steady decline after the jedi unlocks.
This is exactly what happened. Nge was the killing blow, but publish nine did the majority of the damage. Nge just put an end to the misery.
Couldn't say it any better myself. This is actually when I stopped playing too. Instead of fixing Smuggler & Pistoleer, so I could live MY Star Wars story, I was told to go grind Doctor instead. No. Thanks.
Indeed. I found the implementation of the Jedi unlock outrageous. It was my first ever RageQuit, because the idea to become something as noble as a Jedi by grinding professions and killing tens of thousands of mobs felt like a travesty to the idea of becoming a Jedi. I never understood why they didn't use the opporunity to make a series of quests, a story. Like you are a kid, you are found, raised by a Master... something along these lines.
The whole "Jedi unlock" concept was utterly flawed. I guess in those early days, the developers didn't appreciate the chaos caused by having a supposedly "alpha class" in a game.
The vast majority of players would want to play the OP class, it's just natural. And SWG had set itself up to have this iconic (I choke on that word) class that would be the most powerful, but would also face the potential of permadeath to balance it's power. That design could never work in a mass-appeal game.
The problem was that players didn't want to risk losing their hard-earned reward via permadeath. So the concept unraveled completely. Instead of being legendary, mysterious characters that were only rarely glimpsed in the game, the jedi wanted to be able to show-off and have lightsaber duels while waiting for the shuttle at the starport...
Yeah I never understood that design decision. It ultimately killed the game. All the other changes were just reactionary. Take an open world sandbox mmorpg, have more non combat classes than combat, create a deep crafting and resource system, social class system, all with interdependencies on each other..... ... Then add a god mode class that is more powerful than every other combat class, is insanely hard to hit let alone damage, and is completely self sufficient save for maybe food buffs. But don't worry, we'll award you a secondary slot so your free alt can cook for you. It completely negated almost every aspect of the game. They should have never done publish 9. No holocrons. Keep permadeath.
Couldn't say it any better myself. This is actually when I stopped playing too.
Instead of fixing Smuggler & Pistoleer, so I could live MY Star Wars story, I was told to go grind Doctor instead. No. Thanks.
Indeed. I found the implementation of the Jedi unlock outrageous. It was my first ever RageQuit, because the idea to become something as noble as a Jedi by grinding professions and killing tens of thousands of mobs felt like a travesty to the idea of becoming a Jedi. I never understood why they didn't use the opporunity to make a series of quests, a story. Like you are a kid, you are found, raised by a Master... something along these lines.
I always thought it'd be cool if the devs hand-picked a few people per server, real stand outs that did amazing things, either in game or in the community at large, and then in-game dev controlled GM Jedi Master(s) "guided" these players down a path that led them to unlock their Force sensitivity.
If the player survived and became a Jedi, they could even become a Master themselves eventually and, with a little guidance from the Force (dev GM) find an apprentice to guide along the path as well.
I'm sure I would have never been picked, I'm not a fan of permadeath anyway, the pressure would be too great!
It'd be so cool just to know such a thing existed in the game.
I think at the high point there were like, a dozen servers? Wouldn't be too hard to find one stand-out player per server to get the ball rolling.
The idea of permadeath for Jedi and the Bounty Hunter system actually working is just brilliant. Too bad the execution was so piss poor.
Like, in order for a Jedi to grow and learn they had to practice of course, but anyone who saw them using the Force would add to / create a bounty on the Jedi. Any Imperial aligned player could openly attack a "revealed" Jedi - and Master Bounty Hunters could take on the assignment to find and kill the Jedi.
If they failed, the bounty was "off" for them, and a new one couldn't be placed on the Jedi for some time.
Be cool if the Jedi had to work with Smugglers to "slice" their ID to create fake names and such.
Always a risk as a Smuggler could sell the Jedi out to the Imperials or a Bounty Hunter.
Maybe to become a full Jedi Knight you had to do something truly epic that put you at great risk of being exposed and thus hunted.
Even as an "alpha class" - with permadeath and a very necessary element of stealth, with only 1-2 Jedi per server to the likely dozens of Master Bounty Hunters (was a really hard profession to Master) and hundred of Imperial aligned players...
Be totally justified to have such power.
And the risk for abusing that power would be great...
Any negative actions could start you spiraling towards the Dark Side. To go down the Dark path, you had to be a little more brazen with your use of the Force, which would make you an easier target for Bounty Hunters and the Empire.
But if you survived long enough, and grew powerful enough, a dev GM controlled Darth Vader would hunt you down - and try and kill you.
If you put up a good fight and showed your power, the GM Vader could let you live and take you on as an apprentice - in secret.
The Empire would still be after you, as were Bounty Hunters, but through Vader you could grow your powers...
Also any Jedi who gave up / failed their trials could go back to being kind of "normal" with maybe just a hint of their power with the Force.
Another player Jedi who achieved Master could be guided to such a "failed" student and give them an opportunity to try again by being their apprentice.
Anyway... just thinking out loud. SO much they could have done...
I think that was what kept a lot of us (at least me and my friends) playing swg for so long. We saw so much potential with this game. We wanted the devs to finish what they started. We daydreamed about what these broken classes could become.
I think that was what kept a lot of us (at least me and my friends) playing swg for so long. We saw so much potential with this game. We wanted the devs to finish what they started. We daydreamed about what these broken classes could become.
I see the same thing w/ Destiny - which kind of scares me and excites me at the same time - and many people just don't get that.
Yeah, the game certainly has its faults, but that doesn't mean it's not amazing - and part of that is looking to the future of the game.
SWG was a failure of live game management.
The bones were all there, the framework and ideas were solid - they just needed to get what they had working right and expand on it.
Yeah, they probably wouldn't have ever gotten a million subs, but 250-400k is a plenty stable enough population to fund continued development.
It briefly topped on 400k subs, before settling at 200-250k??
Oh dear....
Nice to finally know the truth. And the obvious truth is that the game were NEVER as popular as the pre-NGE vets on these forums wants us to believe. I've seen some of them claiming it had close to 2 million subs
1. I fell that it is always great to have huge ambitions for your game and even expect those ambitions to be met, however, in a world and time that 500k was the most anyone had seen, maybe expecting twice that was a little over reaching.
2. I believe that LA and SOE went with the NGE with the purpose of attracting a younger crowd and that SOE made a game for the grown ups. It was complex and fluid and fun to play and as far as I can see, there is no justification for the NGE. To me it was a slap in the face of the player base, telling us that SOE doesn't care about it's 250k loyal lifers, but it cared more about expanding it's subscriptions temporarily so that 12 year old could play a jedi for a month then stop playing the game.
3. If SOW would have left things alone at pre-CU, and slowly polished the game and made it what it was supposed to be at launch the player base would have grown every month. This game was beautiful and I had already recruited 6 people to the game before the CU and following NGE came about. That would have continued to happen with every player, because we loved the game.
4. I think it would have been a bigger failure than it was after the NGE it was too cookie cutter for the Star Wars universe. Thats the thing about Star Wars. It is not supposed to be easy, there are not supposed to be 100k Jedi jumping around or 200k bounty hunters. It is a game universe of war and crime and intrigue and you just can't do that with the NGE
Signed,
Lanei Omolia
Bria Server
Master Pistoleer, TKM, Master Smuggler (with points in Force Sensitivity)
I think that was what kept a lot of us (at least me and my friends) playing swg for so long. We saw so much potential with this game. We wanted the devs to finish what they started. We daydreamed about what these broken classes could become.
I see the same thing w/ Destiny - which kind of scares me and excites me at the same time - and many people just don't get that.
Yeah, the game certainly has its faults, but that doesn't mean it's not amazing - and part of that is looking to the future of the game.
SWG was a failure of live game management.
The bones were all there, the framework and ideas were solid - they just needed to get what they had working right and expand on it.
Yeah, they probably wouldn't have ever gotten a million subs, but 250-400k is a plenty stable enough population to fund continued development.
Totally agree. I think it's one of those things where you see someone next to you doing so well and you can't understand why you aren't doing as well as them. Like in a boat race, some guy beside you has holes in his boat and is going really fast, so you punch holes in your boat, only to realize the reason he's actually going fast is because of a power motor. Whoops! Better row quickly.
Also in defense of the NGE: MMOs try new things all the time to gain a bigger audience, sometimes they work, sometimes they fail utterly. There's no way the devs could've known which way the NGE would turn out. And the fact that they had to resort to such an overhaul means the numbers probably weren't that great pre-NGE either.
In defense of the Rage against SOE and the NGE, most companies would have the decency to back-pedal and remove the changes once they realized that they had just blown the airlocks and jettisoned all their customers into space.
What really enraged me, and to a point still does, is that they refused to change things back. It was blatantly apparent 24 hours after they brought the new system up that they had made a terrible decision.
I suppose they thought that if they weathered the storm of apoplectic fans, they would soon be swimming in millions of subs and mentions on popular TV shows.
That's exactly what it was about. The powers-that-be who pushed out NGE were completely clear-eyed about blowing their customers out the airlock. NGE was tested over the summer between CU and NGE; a SWG player tried to get into the program and was rejected because he was "too old". LA expected to lose many or most of their current customers but anticipated replacing them with a pile of younger players looking for a more "iconic" experience.
It briefly topped on 400k subs, before settling at 200-250k??
Oh dear....
Nice to finally know the truth. And the obvious truth is that the game were NEVER as popular as the pre-NGE vets on these forums wants us to believe. I've seen some of them claiming it had close to 2 million subs
Funny because from most I know from SWG and most comments from SWG "vets" it has mostly been peaked at 200/250k.
You might have read some random person who didn't play the game who might have said 2 million subs or perhaps slightly confused because the game did sell around 1.5 mil. boxes.
On topic all I can say there hasn't been a game that has given me such a great experiance regardless all of it's issue's. Still no MMORPG has even come close to what SWG offered. Some try but they put the "forced" this and that on certain feature's.
Sidenote: I never understood why people where so against the CU. The combat system before the CU was simply a mess. You could do NOTHING without standing in line for a doctor buff. Pre-CU was just a mess.
JTL was epic! The quest stories at the end where indeed cool.
Sigh...
I blamed the overpowered doc buffs as the root of the situation, and the resulting overpowered weapons and armors that could only be wielded by players hopped to the gills on OP doc buffs... In late 2004 we heard a lot about plans to revamp combat (some I liked, others not so much). Then in mid-January 2005 something big changed. The devs clammed up for 6 weeks, and then we finally saw the CU that we actually got. It only superficially resembled the previous Combat Revamp plans, and imposed a level system that broke much more than it fixed.
The problem with the CU that is ignored, is that is so dumbed down the combat it made weaponsmiths useless. As a weaponsmith, I enjoyed the random nature of some of the crafting and then slicing. What was not mentioned much outside the weaponsmith forums was that all weapons did the same amount damage over X amount of time. Example: carbine damage was x damage per shot, then y number of shots per minute. A vibro-knuckle damage was x per swing then y swings per minute. Then when the math was done, z damage for both weapons ended up the same in about 1 minute. Can't remember the real numbers as it has been years ago. But this caused me to quit just before the NGE hit. Armorsmiths didn't have it any better.
Roses are red Violets are blue The reviewer has a mishapen head Which means his opinion is skewed ...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
This game was a buggy mess , but still the best game i ever played! The NGE was a slap in the face to the intelligence of gamers... SWG was not for todays feed me now, level me now, make it easy crowd...(console player types) but the social aspect of the game has never been duplicated , NOT EVEN CLOSE.. Was this the best game ever made? NO Was this the best game experience in a game i have ever had? YES...
Am i a bitter vet? Nah im over it but i will always remember the fun i had in SWG and hope something will bring us back to that same game experience... HOPE is strong in this one...
SWG and EQ were the only 2 MMOs that I couldn't wait to get home after work and play. I still play several MMOs and have a few lifetime accounts but never feel the need to log in and talk to guildies every day. What I liked about SWG was the fact that I didn't have to go out killing and questing all the time. I could take my dancer in the cantina and talk to folks or go out in the middle of nowhere, build a camp and hunt for resources to use in crafting. That's what I find missing in MMOs these days, the opportunity to just sit back and do something besides questing and killing. I still jump into SWG from time to time., just for the memories.
It briefly topped on 400k subs, before settling at 200-250k??
Oh dear....
Nice to finally know the truth. And the obvious truth is that the game were NEVER as popular as the pre-NGE vets on these forums wants us to believe. I've seen some of them claiming it had close to 2 million subs
I'm sorry mate but 250k subs back then was a huge success, don't forget that this was before WoW opened up the genre to the tens of millions. Most MMO's at that time counted 150k+ subs as excellent and only a very few ( EQ ) had more.
SWG and EQ were the only 2 MMOs that I couldn't wait to get home after work and play. I still play several MMOs and have a few lifetime accounts but never feel the need to log in and talk to guildies every day. What I liked about SWG was the fact that I didn't have to go out killing and questing all the time. I could take my dancer in the cantina and talk to folks or go out in the middle of nowhere, build a camp and hunt for resources to use in crafting. That's what I find missing in MMOs these days, the opportunity to just sit back and do something besides questing and killing. I still jump into SWG from time to time., just for the memories.
SWG and EQ were the only 2 MMOs that I couldn't wait to get home after work and play. I still play several MMOs and have a few lifetime accounts but never feel the need to log in and talk to guildies every day. What I liked about SWG was the fact that I didn't have to go out killing and questing all the time. I could take my dancer in the cantina and talk to folks or go out in the middle of nowhere, build a camp and hunt for resources to use in crafting. That's what I find missing in MMOs these days, the opportunity to just sit back and do something besides questing and killing. I still jump into SWG from time to time., just for the memories.
MorBlade
Formally of Lowca
I didn't start to play SWG until the NGE, but EQ2 is the game I felt that way about. I played the game 6 years and only left when Smedly treated the players like dirt. I actually went back a few months ago because I missed it so badly and nothing else compares. I'm still looking for my new MMO home after years. I've almost given up finding it.
Also in defense of the NGE: MMOs try new things all the time to gain a bigger audience, sometimes they work, sometimes they fail utterly. There's no way the devs could've known which way the NGE would turn out. And the fact that they had to resort to such an overhaul means the numbers probably weren't that great pre-NGE either.
In defense of the Rage against SOE and the NGE, most companies would have the decency to back-pedal and remove the changes once they realized that they had just blown the airlocks and jettisoned all their customers into space.
What really enraged me, and to a point still does, is that they refused to change things back. It was blatantly apparent 24 hours after they brought the new system up that they had made a terrible decision.
I suppose they thought that if they weathered the storm of apoplectic fans, they would soon be swimming in millions of subs and mentions on popular TV shows.
Even more stupidly, from a business perspective, is that maintaining a couple of "limited support" pre-NGE servers would have cost them almost nothing and gone a long way to reducing the anger of some fans. Hell, they could have charged $50 to server transfer people to those and made a ton more money, on top of collecting many more $15/mo sub fees from all those that canceled.
But Smed is a tone deaf moron when it comes to his (former) customers, and his handling of SWG was only one of many decisions over the years that drove SOE into the ground.
The only surprise is that it took SOE so long to go under and get sold off to VCs.
Also in defense of the NGE: MMOs try new things all the time to gain a bigger audience, sometimes they work, sometimes they fail utterly. There's no way the devs could've known which way the NGE would turn out. And the fact that they had to resort to such an overhaul means the numbers probably weren't that great pre-NGE either.
In defense of the Rage against SOE and the NGE, most companies would have the decency to back-pedal and remove the changes once they realized that they had just blown the airlocks and jettisoned all their customers into space.
What really enraged me, and to a point still does, is that they refused to change things back. It was blatantly apparent 24 hours after they brought the new system up that they had made a terrible decision.
I suppose they thought that if they weathered the storm of apoplectic fans, they would soon be swimming in millions of subs and mentions on popular TV shows.
Even more stupidly, from a business perspective, is that maintaining a couple of "limited support" pre-NGE servers would have cost them almost nothing and gone a long way to reducing the anger of some fans. Hell, they could have charged $50 to server transfer people to those and made a ton more money, on top of collecting many more $15/mo sub fees from all those that canceled.
But Smed is a tone deaf moron when it comes to his (former) customers, and his handling of SWG was only one of many decisions over the years that drove SOE into the ground.
The only surprise is that it took SOE so long to go under and get sold off to VCs.
It's not as easy as splitting it off like that, though. I mean if you're just building in rule sets, it's pretty easy. When it's fundamental changes then you're talking about managing two completely separate code bases. So, no, it's not a matter of throwing up an extra couple servers. That is unless they simply branched it, dropped a copy of the pre-NGE build to the server, never to be updated again. Problem is there were issues that needed to be fixed in that, too.
Also in defense of the NGE: MMOs try new things all the time to gain a bigger audience, sometimes they work, sometimes they fail utterly. There's no way the devs could've known which way the NGE would turn out. And the fact that they had to resort to such an overhaul means the numbers probably weren't that great pre-NGE either.
In defense of the Rage against SOE and the NGE, most companies would have the decency to back-pedal and remove the changes once they realized that they had just blown the airlocks and jettisoned all their customers into space.
What really enraged me, and to a point still does, is that they refused to change things back. It was blatantly apparent 24 hours after they brought the new system up that they had made a terrible decision.
I suppose they thought that if they weathered the storm of apoplectic fans, they would soon be swimming in millions of subs and mentions on popular TV shows.
Even more stupidly, from a business perspective, is that maintaining a couple of "limited support" pre-NGE servers would have cost them almost nothing and gone a long way to reducing the anger of some fans. Hell, they could have charged $50 to server transfer people to those and made a ton more money, on top of collecting many more $15/mo sub fees from all those that canceled.
But Smed is a tone deaf moron when it comes to his (former) customers, and his handling of SWG was only one of many decisions over the years that drove SOE into the ground.
The only surprise is that it took SOE so long to go under and get sold off to VCs.
It's not as easy as splitting it off like that, though. I mean if you're just building in rule sets, it's pretty easy. When it's fundamental changes then you're talking about managing two completely separate code bases. So, no, it's not a matter of throwing up an extra couple servers. That is unless they simply branched it, dropped a copy of the pre-NGE build to the server, never to be updated again. Problem is there were issues that needed to be fixed in that, too.
I think the real problem was that if they had split off the servers and kept a couple of 'legacy' servers running, is that they would have been the only ones with a population, it would have been a too obvious indication of failure on SOE's part, and that could not be allowed to happen, considering the 'Ego's' involved
Also in defense of the NGE: MMOs try new things all the time to gain a bigger audience, sometimes they work, sometimes they fail utterly. There's no way the devs could've known which way the NGE would turn out. And the fact that they had to resort to such an overhaul means the numbers probably weren't that great pre-NGE either.
In defense of the Rage against SOE and the NGE, most companies would have the decency to back-pedal and remove the changes once they realized that they had just blown the airlocks and jettisoned all their customers into space.
What really enraged me, and to a point still does, is that they refused to change things back. It was blatantly apparent 24 hours after they brought the new system up that they had made a terrible decision.
I suppose they thought that if they weathered the storm of apoplectic fans, they would soon be swimming in millions of subs and mentions on popular TV shows.
Even more stupidly, from a business perspective, is that maintaining a couple of "limited support" pre-NGE servers would have cost them almost nothing and gone a long way to reducing the anger of some fans. Hell, they could have charged $50 to server transfer people to those and made a ton more money, on top of collecting many more $15/mo sub fees from all those that canceled.
But Smed is a tone deaf moron when it comes to his (former) customers, and his handling of SWG was only one of many decisions over the years that drove SOE into the ground.
The only surprise is that it took SOE so long to go under and get sold off to VCs.
It's not as easy as splitting it off like that, though. I mean if you're just building in rule sets, it's pretty easy. When it's fundamental changes then you're talking about managing two completely separate code bases. So, no, it's not a matter of throwing up an extra couple servers. That is unless they simply branched it, dropped a copy of the pre-NGE build to the server, never to be updated again. Problem is there were issues that needed to be fixed in that, too.
I think the real problem was that if they had split off the servers and kept a couple of 'legacy' servers running, is that they would have been the only ones with a population, it would have been a too obvious indication of failure on SOE's part, and that could not be allowed to happen, considering the 'Ego's' involved
Egos? Whaaaaaaaaa? Lol. For that matter, if the egos weren't involved, maybe they could have been happy with lower subscription numbers and focused on making the game they created awesome, instead of going after the "big fish". SWG might have been the first permanent resident of the "WoW Killer" graveyard. No?
Well for me SWG was my 1st MMO. There were many aspects of the game I enjoyed. I can not speculate how popular the game would have been had they not done the CU or the NGE, or if the game had been post NGE when it launched. I do believe that the game had so very inovative mechanics. The crafting system is imo the best one I have seen in any MMO. I like the pvp system in so much as I could pvp when I wanted or if I didn't want to pvp I could simply change my status and not. I liked the fact that for pvp or pve you required only 1 set of gear which worked for both. I liked the player housing and being able to make player cities. I also feel that towards the end with adding the planetary conquest system and the atmospheric flight were great. I enjoyed actually having to fight to take control of or keep control of a planet. A further query for me would be how popular might the game have been (with alot of the inovations they added) if SOE had not done such a bad job with the game early on and alienated so much of it's player base?
500k would have been possible and this type of game would have had a long term playerbase.
NGE from start would never have surpassed it as SOE never had the Fanbase and Brand Loyality that Blizzard build up b4 the release of WoW - WoW would allways be that success bcs its Blizzard Online and was released at the best possible moment ever in history.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
Comments
Sidenote: I never understood why people where so against the CU. The combat system before the CU was simply a mess. You could do NOTHING without standing in line for a doctor buff. Pre-CU was just a mess.
JTL was epic! The quest stories at the end where indeed cool.
Sigh...
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Hard to explain Minecraft, ain't it?
I think the 'average gamer' is a myth, the range of market and interests is just too enormous.
I would say, still, that the majority of people playing minecraft are there to consume someone else's creations rather than make their own. No? I'm completely a bystander on that one, though. My kids love it, I don't get it.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Take an open world sandbox mmorpg, have more non combat classes than combat, create a deep crafting and resource system, social class system, all with interdependencies on each other.....
... Then add a god mode class that is more powerful than every other combat class, is insanely hard to hit let alone damage, and is completely self sufficient save for maybe food buffs. But don't worry, we'll award you a secondary slot so your free alt can cook for you.
It completely negated almost every aspect of the game. They should have never done publish 9. No holocrons. Keep permadeath.
I always thought it'd be cool if the devs hand-picked a few people per server, real stand outs that did amazing things, either in game or in the community at large, and then in-game dev controlled GM Jedi Master(s) "guided" these players down a path that led them to unlock their Force sensitivity.
If the player survived and became a Jedi, they could even become a Master themselves eventually and, with a little guidance from the Force (dev GM) find an apprentice to guide along the path as well.
I'm sure I would have never been picked, I'm not a fan of permadeath anyway, the pressure would be too great!
It'd be so cool just to know such a thing existed in the game.
I think at the high point there were like, a dozen servers? Wouldn't be too hard to find one stand-out player per server to get the ball rolling.
The idea of permadeath for Jedi and the Bounty Hunter system actually working is just brilliant. Too bad the execution was so piss poor.
Like, in order for a Jedi to grow and learn they had to practice of course, but anyone who saw them using the Force would add to / create a bounty on the Jedi. Any Imperial aligned player could openly attack a "revealed" Jedi - and Master Bounty Hunters could take on the assignment to find and kill the Jedi.
If they failed, the bounty was "off" for them, and a new one couldn't be placed on the Jedi for some time.
Be cool if the Jedi had to work with Smugglers to "slice" their ID to create fake names and such.
Always a risk as a Smuggler could sell the Jedi out to the Imperials or a Bounty Hunter.
Maybe to become a full Jedi Knight you had to do something truly epic that put you at great risk of being exposed and thus hunted.
Even as an "alpha class" - with permadeath and a very necessary element of stealth, with only 1-2 Jedi per server to the likely dozens of Master Bounty Hunters (was a really hard profession to Master) and hundred of Imperial aligned players...
Be totally justified to have such power.
And the risk for abusing that power would be great...
Any negative actions could start you spiraling towards the Dark Side. To go down the Dark path, you had to be a little more brazen with your use of the Force, which would make you an easier target for Bounty Hunters and the Empire.
But if you survived long enough, and grew powerful enough, a dev GM controlled Darth Vader would hunt you down - and try and kill you.
If you put up a good fight and showed your power, the GM Vader could let you live and take you on as an apprentice - in secret.
The Empire would still be after you, as were Bounty Hunters, but through Vader you could grow your powers...
Also any Jedi who gave up / failed their trials could go back to being kind of "normal" with maybe just a hint of their power with the Force.
Another player Jedi who achieved Master could be guided to such a "failed" student and give them an opportunity to try again by being their apprentice.
Anyway... just thinking out loud. SO much they could have done...
@badspock
I think that was what kept a lot of us (at least me and my friends) playing swg for so long. We saw so much potential with this game. We wanted the devs to finish what they started. We daydreamed about what these broken classes could become.
I see the same thing w/ Destiny - which kind of scares me and excites me at the same time - and many people just don't get that.
Yeah, the game certainly has its faults, but that doesn't mean it's not amazing - and part of that is looking to the future of the game.
SWG was a failure of live game management.
The bones were all there, the framework and ideas were solid - they just needed to get what they had working right and expand on it.
Yeah, they probably wouldn't have ever gotten a million subs, but 250-400k is a plenty stable enough population to fund continued development.
It briefly topped on 400k subs, before settling at 200-250k??
Oh dear....
Nice to finally know the truth. And the obvious truth is that the game were NEVER as popular as the pre-NGE vets on these forums wants us to believe. I've seen some of them claiming it had close to 2 million subs
Totally agree. I think it's one of those things where you see someone next to you doing so well and you can't understand why you aren't doing as well as them. Like in a boat race, some guy beside you has holes in his boat and is going really fast, so you punch holes in your boat, only to realize the reason he's actually going fast is because of a power motor. Whoops! Better row quickly.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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That's exactly what it was about. The powers-that-be who pushed out NGE were completely clear-eyed about blowing their customers out the airlock. NGE was tested over the summer between CU and NGE; a SWG player tried to get into the program and was rejected because he was "too old". LA expected to lose many or most of their current customers but anticipated replacing them with a pile of younger players looking for a more "iconic" experience.
Funny because from most I know from SWG and most comments from SWG "vets" it has mostly been peaked at 200/250k.
You might have read some random person who didn't play the game who might have said 2 million subs or perhaps slightly confused because the game did sell around 1.5 mil. boxes.
On topic all I can say there hasn't been a game that has given me such a great experiance regardless all of it's issue's. Still no MMORPG has even come close to what SWG offered. Some try but they put the "forced" this and that on certain feature's.
I blamed the overpowered doc buffs as the root of the situation, and the resulting overpowered weapons and armors that could only be wielded by players hopped to the gills on OP doc buffs... In late 2004 we heard a lot about plans to revamp combat (some I liked, others not so much). Then in mid-January 2005 something big changed. The devs clammed up for 6 weeks, and then we finally saw the CU that we actually got. It only superficially resembled the previous Combat Revamp plans, and imposed a level system that broke much more than it fixed.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
This game was a buggy mess , but still the best game i ever played! The NGE was a slap in the face to the intelligence of gamers... SWG was not for todays feed me now, level me now, make it easy crowd...(console player types) but the social aspect of the game has never been duplicated , NOT EVEN CLOSE.. Was this the best game ever made? NO Was this the best game experience in a game i have ever had? YES...
Am i a bitter vet? Nah im over it but i will always remember the fun i had in SWG and hope something will bring us back to that same game experience... HOPE is strong in this one...
Acebets
Bounty Hunter
Valcyn
SWG and EQ were the only 2 MMOs that I couldn't wait to get home after work and play. I still play several MMOs and have a few lifetime accounts but never feel the need to log in and talk to guildies every day. What I liked about SWG was the fact that I didn't have to go out killing and questing all the time. I could take my dancer in the cantina and talk to folks or go out in the middle of nowhere, build a camp and hunt for resources to use in crafting. That's what I find missing in MMOs these days, the opportunity to just sit back and do something besides questing and killing. I still jump into SWG from time to time., just for the memories.
MorBlade
Formally of Lowca
I'm sorry mate but 250k subs back then was a huge success, don't forget that this was before WoW opened up the genre to the tens of millions. Most MMO's at that time counted 150k+ subs as excellent and only a very few ( EQ ) had more.
SWG and EQ were the only 2 MMOs that I couldn't wait to get home after work and play. I still play several MMOs and have a few lifetime accounts but never feel the need to log in and talk to guildies every day. What I liked about SWG was the fact that I didn't have to go out killing and questing all the time. I could take my dancer in the cantina and talk to folks or go out in the middle of nowhere, build a camp and hunt for resources to use in crafting. That's what I find missing in MMOs these days, the opportunity to just sit back and do something besides questing and killing. I still jump into SWG from time to time., just for the memories.
MorBlade
Formally of Lowca
I didn't start to play SWG until the NGE, but EQ2 is the game I felt that way about. I played the game 6 years and only left when Smedly treated the players like dirt. I actually went back a few months ago because I missed it so badly and nothing else compares. I'm still looking for my new MMO home after years. I've almost given up finding it.
Even more stupidly, from a business perspective, is that maintaining a couple of "limited support" pre-NGE servers would have cost them almost nothing and gone a long way to reducing the anger of some fans. Hell, they could have charged $50 to server transfer people to those and made a ton more money, on top of collecting many more $15/mo sub fees from all those that canceled.
But Smed is a tone deaf moron when it comes to his (former) customers, and his handling of SWG was only one of many decisions over the years that drove SOE into the ground.
The only surprise is that it took SOE so long to go under and get sold off to VCs.
It's not as easy as splitting it off like that, though. I mean if you're just building in rule sets, it's pretty easy. When it's fundamental changes then you're talking about managing two completely separate code bases. So, no, it's not a matter of throwing up an extra couple servers. That is unless they simply branched it, dropped a copy of the pre-NGE build to the server, never to be updated again. Problem is there were issues that needed to be fixed in that, too.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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I think the real problem was that if they had split off the servers and kept a couple of 'legacy' servers running, is that they would have been the only ones with a population, it would have been a too obvious indication of failure on SOE's part, and that could not be allowed to happen, considering the 'Ego's' involved
Egos? Whaaaaaaaaa? Lol. For that matter, if the egos weren't involved, maybe they could have been happy with lower subscription numbers and focused on making the game they created awesome, instead of going after the "big fish". SWG might have been the first permanent resident of the "WoW Killer" graveyard. No?
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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500k would have been possible and this type of game would have had a long term playerbase.
NGE from start would never have surpassed it as SOE never had the Fanbase and Brand Loyality that Blizzard build up b4 the release of WoW - WoW would allways be that success bcs its Blizzard Online and was released at the best possible moment ever in history.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
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