Originally posted by hercules nope .It had loads of issues still and was filled with moaning from day 1.SWG/LA has spent years trying to joggle between the RPers and the jedi wannabies . Then after a while it seems they decided to bite the bullet and lose the RPers in favour of jedi wannabies(guess they figured the RPers were less so they went for the more $$). But then for some strange reason they decided to mess with the jedi community .Not like the current nge will attract any RPers anyhow. It was not out in the open then and SWG relied heavily on the star wars name and had a good turnover of players to compensate for the high cancellation.Many left and many came . Now many left and few joined .
QFE
And to expound a little, some of the issues were lack of content, lack of purpose, lack of promised features, lack of stability, with no lack of lag near the cities.
It was a basic grindfest of killing various small furry animals gathered with a pick to get mastered in your chosen profession(s) and then basically nothing to do from there. Not very "Star Warsy", as they used to say.
The content system they actually did have didnt sit well with many because it was just hit 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with enough credits for the desired animal you wanted to kill, have that nest randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that nest, kill all animals, kill nest, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
There were no "dungeons" to crawl. There was no GCW. The buildings were 95% useless. They had a few holes in the ground that they considered "mini-dungeons", but even that term was a sight exageration.
They did have a couple theme parks, but even they were broken.
You could max out your character in less than 3 weeks. And then the only thing to do was start grinding Faction points which were literally useless. And again, this was a system of 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with enough credits for the Troopers/Rebelsl you wanted to kill, have that camp randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that camp, kill all Troopers/Rebels, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
And this lead to exactly what Hercules mentioned, a very poor retention, but since it had the SW monicker, it had plenty of fresh blood to maintain its numbers.
Yes. In my opinion, the original SWG was a unique, enjoyable mmorpg, despite its flaws. It may have been released with bugs and with incomplete content, but that never stopped me and my guild from enjoying everything that the game had to offer.
It had so many features that I had been asking for in prior mmorpgs, and many were done very well, although some weren't. I will remember the first year and a half of SWG as being among the greatest experiences I've had while playing mmorpgs. Too bad that SOE ruined in in their attempts to improve it, or really in their attempt to make it more like WoW, or perhaps in their attempt to make it portable to the PS3? Whatever the case may be, the original was great. Now it's just another mmorpg.
Originally posted by Speedhaak So, tell me was SWG really the 'Hero' it is remembered as?
Well, partly yes, but mainly no.
The social aspect of gaming is what keeps me playing and when released I loved the idea of playing a musician and it was great fun. Lots of players back then rolled entertainers and had a blast doing something in a mmorpg which wasn't crafting or mindless killing for the first time ever. We developed a huge social structure that had never been seen before in a western mmorpg.
Unfortunately SWG at release was limited on content, had terrible bug issues, hopeless balance choices and class changes and several professions were bugged and useless from day 1 and stayed crippled till the day they removed them.
Smugglers never were able to actually smuggle anything, afaik they still can't!
Bio-engineer was a great idea tainted by useless development, bugged from day 1 it was nerfed, bumped, nerfed, bumped, broken, semi-fixed, broken again...any SWG player will know this was the same for a lot of the "lesser" professions.
The developers devoted too much time and effort to professions like Jedi and ignored other broken professions for months on end, every patch would be either BH or Jedi improvements and nothing about the broken professions...Muisician recieved no changes for the first year, then they nerfed it to hell for no reason
When a game listens too much to the wants of the vocal minority on a forum, it's doomed.
Well Obraic I am glad you still enjoy the game. While I agree there are still many things still left in the game, it is extremely far from the game I enjoyed. It used to be a MMORPG, it is now little more than a trumped up FPS.
The ability to make your character like noone else is what distinguishes a MMORPG from a FPS and you can't do that anymore in SWG, those choices are made by SOE now. Every bounty hunter is just like every other bounty hunter.
I also played a creature handler and got to experience the fixes put in for my profession for one week. Talk about a comedy of errors, they put in a patch, an expansion pack and NGE all in two weeks time. They ended up losing alot of money on that expansion pack because of all the refunds.
The trade system in SWG pre NGE was incredible. When they removed item degradation, they took away most of the business from the crafters.
Hence for the nostalgia for most of us that used to play the game. I had a six month substcription and had 5 months of NGE playtime. I did not even bother logging on the last 4 months, it was so bad.
Originally posted by Vyel Originally posted by hercules nope .It had loads of issues still and was filled with moaning from day 1.SWG/LA has spent years trying to joggle between the RPers and the jedi wannabies . Then after a while it seems they decided to bite the bullet and lose the RPers in favour of jedi wannabies(guess they figured the RPers were less so they went for the more $$). But then for some strange reason they decided to mess with the jedi community .Not like the current nge will attract any RPers anyhow. It was not out in the open then and SWG relied heavily on the star wars name and had a good turnover of players to compensate for the high cancellation.Many left and many came . Now many left and few joined .
QFE
And to expound a little, some of the issues were lack of content, lack of purpose, lack of promised features, lack of stability, with no lack of lag near the cities.
It was a basic grindfest of killing various small furry animals gathered with a pick to get mastered in your chosen profession(s) and then basically nothing to do from there. Not very "Star Warsy", as they used to say.
The content system they actually did have didnt sit well with many because it was just hit 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with enough credits for the desired animal you wanted to kill, have that nest randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that nest, kill all animals, kill nest, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
There were no "dungeons" to crawl. There was no GCW. The buildings were 95% useless. They had a few holes in the ground that they considered "mini-dungeons", but even that term was a sight exageration.
They did have a couple theme parks, but even they were broken.
You could max out your character in less than 3 weeks. And then the only thing to do was start grinding Faction points which were literally useless. And again, this was a system of 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with enough credits for the Troopers/Rebelsl you wanted to kill, have that camp randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that camp, kill all Troopers/Rebels, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
And this lead to exactly what Hercules mentioned, a very poor retention, but since it had the SW monicker, it had plenty of fresh blood to maintain its numbers.
I never played SWG, but the word of mouth I heard agreed with a alot of this post. Mostly I heard it was boring grind ,but that is had some nice stuff.
I enjoyed it so much. The lost of intrest for me was the constant extreme changes of the game. Why work/play to obtain something for it to be all lost.
Darkone, how was the GCW unplayable? At the time back then, it was just pure PvP, that was the GCW. If your referring to bases and planet caping, well that was never fully put in, i know in the CU they added it, but it had no significance.
From what I remember, the bases and automated systems, the capping and stuff was very bugging with exploits out the wazoo. Plus huge amount of LOS issues (Being poisoned by medic in the basement of a building with you being unable to target him was one that irked me).
There were some class balancing issues too which is par for the course, but when it all added it up it was an exercise in fustration.
When was the CU added? Not sure if I was around at that point..
Bottom line for me though...SWG wasn't perfect but like others are saying, it was very unique and probably the most ambtious MMO game that was launched. It wasn't complete and they suffered for it at the hands of stock holders who wanted something more trendy. I guess that's why there's the NGE.
Though I'm playing again now, I still miss the flexibility of the old system, the economy and the classes that complemented each other. (what to entertainers do today in game?). When you look at other MMO games out there now, theres not much that can match the depth of SWG (land stuff space stuff craft stuff oh my).
SWG had potential not found in any of the other MMOs. SWG could only be compared to the king of MMOs Ultima Online.
It had several balancing problems but it gave you the ability to experiment with various combinations of the game until you could create your own Role playing character.
The extreme level of customization of your character could make you spend weeks and weeks until you found what you really wanted to be and then you could just throw everything away and start all over again.
A pre CU SWG Player was related to all of the other professions of the game, for instance you could never go to battle with an empty stomach (chef) or unbuffed (Doctor) or without having clothing attachments installed from a tailor.
This was a paradise for the swg players but on the other hand, a nightmare for the support of the program. Every change in the game required extreme ammount of attention since the slightest careless change would break the current balance of the Game and of course since software companies want to stop evolution of their products because it costs a lot of money, SOE decided to inherit a more arcade model from the other MMos.
I don't think we will ever see an SWG like MMo coming around again.Current MMos use logic and engines created for more arcade online games and not for virtual worlds like SWG.
Nah, it really wasn't that good in the first place.
It was regarded by many as a mild success. Meaning it did well enough from the Star Wars theme alone, but not because of anything else. It was good enough to keep running, but not good enough to be popular.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Yeah SWG wasnt anything special. Mind you, back in the day there werent that many choices. I remember choosing between SWG and FFXI.. It always had problems, was never complete.. they would start things and never finish them. Only until they dramatically change the game do people all of a sudden love the pre-cu version. It was crap by gaming standards from the get-go.
Ill tell ya this they dident kno what they had intill it was gone. I loved that game for what it was ill be it it was buggy but there was no game like it out there. SWG made it so that your toon could be anything and change at any time. There were no levels or anythign like that. SWG was completly unique compared to any other mmo out there and thats the reason i liked it so much.
The birth of SWG was a beautiful thing, sure there were problems, but the gameplay back then can not be compared to any MMO out there, it was truely unique. When it hit the shelves at launch day players partied up to kill the wildlife in massive attacks of cunning strategy, and a victory that actaully felt like a victory. To this day, I would go back to SWG if they made a classic server that just ported the first build over. It was truely the greatest thing ever, but then SOE had to go and ruin another MMO of there's by "Enhancing" it. Sure we thought you know, good maybe more quests, some new cool items to collect, a new job, all that would have been fine. But no, we (the veterns) of SWG had to face the fear of the publish each and every day hoping it would not wreak this great game any more. I tell ya, I have never seen a MMO change so damn much, I mean 4 combat upgrades!!!!!! Compelety changing the way the game was played!!!! Never under any circumstances should the gameplay be changed from its original form, granted an upgrade or fixes is inline though. SOE screwed up by doing this and thus a great game died. But it was still there playable but loved, well once again SOE continued to F**K with it's subscribers by completely changing the way professions were built and not mention destroying tons in the process, this is what really did it. Now it's just SOE killing the game slowly as they fork in the money. SOE is dead to me, no game under this company will ever get my respect, no matter how good. Cause in the end i'll know they will just F**K me over once again. So to answer your question, it was great, just don't but your money into it today, unless you like burning your money on useless bullsh*t, cause that's what you would be doing.
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
It was my first mmorpg you where droped in the game and you could choose your class if you didn't like it you could drop it and take other class instead of making a new char. i liked it why - lots of planets to go places to see - housing ; varius houses en you could decorate then use them as a shop - having own shop - builing city's - guilds - artisan was great. you had to look for your rescorses for ex. not every metal is the same one day its good the other it sucked - you could mine your metals, herbs, energy - having factory so you can make large quanteties of something - mounts - Pvp - the medical center where doctors heal you and have a chat - the cantina where the dancers talked to you. (i was a dancer an got lots of tips) (after a while everyone was macroin it for jedi)
well sort said it was more then just grinding up a level an play pvp. I tryd lots of professions not all. then came patch after patch to break th whole thing. It was fun becouse you could to lot of things besides making money by killing or selling.
lived near the waterfall theed, naboo had a shop in coronet, corellia an houses in mos enta, tatooine for storage
Lots of people didnt know what they had til it was gone. Even i, someone who still thinks SWG is/was the best MMO, i bitched and moaned about a lot of stuff, everyone did, but they kept playing, me it was mostly PvP and the guild/community.
A lot of people in this thread make these arguements that could be made about almost every MMO. Im guessing the majority who played it, bitched and moaned about stuff, but really enjoyed it when it came down to it.
One of the greatest moments was then they said they were going to release the CU. In Coronet, Correlia starport, hours and minutes before they brought down all the servers to patch them with the CU, everyone, hundreds of hundreds of people were shouting stuff like, "Its the end of the world!! Who wants some punch"
Comments
And to expound a little, some of the issues were lack of
They did have a couple theme parks, but even they were broken.content, lack of purpose, lack of promised features, lack of stability, with no
lack of lag near the cities.
It was a basic grindfest of killing various small furry animals gathered with a
pick to get mastered in your chosen profession(s) and then basically nothing to
do from there. Not very "Star Warsy", as they used to say.
The content system they actually did have didnt sit well with many because it
was just hit 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with
enough credits for the desired animal you wanted to kill, have that nest
randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that nest, kill all animals, kill
nest, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
There were no "dungeons" to crawl. There was no GCW. The buildings were
95% useless. They had a few holes in the ground that they considered "mini-dungeons", but even that term was a sight exageration.
You could max out your character in less than 3 weeks. And then the only thing to do was start grinding Faction points which were literally useless. And again, this was a system of 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with
enough credits for the Troopers/Rebelsl you wanted to kill, have that camp
randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that camp, kill all Troopers/Rebels, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
And this lead to exactly what Hercules mentioned, a very poor retention, but since it had the SW monicker, it had plenty of fresh blood to maintain its numbers.
Yes. In my opinion, the original SWG was a unique, enjoyable mmorpg, despite its flaws. It may have been released with bugs and with incomplete content, but that never stopped me and my guild from enjoying everything that the game had to offer.
It had so many features that I had been asking for in prior mmorpgs, and many were done very well, although some weren't. I will remember the first year and a half of SWG as being among the greatest experiences I've had while playing mmorpgs. Too bad that SOE ruined in in their attempts to improve it, or really in their attempt to make it more like WoW, or perhaps in their attempt to make it portable to the PS3? Whatever the case may be, the original was great. Now it's just another mmorpg.
Well, partly yes, but mainly no.
The social aspect of gaming is what keeps me playing and when released I loved the idea of playing a musician and it was great fun. Lots of players back then rolled entertainers and had a blast doing something in a mmorpg which wasn't crafting or mindless killing for the first time ever. We developed a huge social structure that had never been seen before in a western mmorpg.
Unfortunately SWG at release was limited on content, had terrible bug issues, hopeless balance choices and class changes and several professions were bugged and useless from day 1 and stayed crippled till the day they removed them.
Smugglers never were able to actually smuggle anything, afaik they still can't!
Bio-engineer was a great idea tainted by useless development, bugged from day 1 it was nerfed, bumped, nerfed, bumped, broken, semi-fixed, broken again...any SWG player will know this was the same for a lot of the "lesser" professions.
The developers devoted too much time and effort to professions like Jedi and ignored other broken professions for months on end, every patch would be either BH or Jedi improvements and nothing about the broken professions...Muisician recieved no changes for the first year, then they nerfed it to hell for no reason
When a game listens too much to the wants of the vocal minority on a forum, it's doomed.
Basically the game was mis-managed from day-1.
Well Obraic I am glad you still enjoy the game. While I agree there are still many things still left in the game, it is extremely far from the game I enjoyed. It used to be a MMORPG, it is now little more than a trumped up FPS.
The ability to make your character like noone else is what distinguishes a MMORPG from a FPS and you can't do that anymore in SWG, those choices are made by SOE now. Every bounty hunter is just like every other bounty hunter.
I also played a creature handler and got to experience the fixes put in for my profession for one week. Talk about a comedy of errors, they put in a patch, an expansion pack and NGE all in two weeks time. They ended up losing alot of money on that expansion pack because of all the refunds.
The trade system in SWG pre NGE was incredible. When they removed item degradation, they took away most of the business from the crafters.
Hence for the nostalgia for most of us that used to play the game. I had a six month substcription and had 5 months of NGE playtime. I did not even bother logging on the last 4 months, it was so bad.
And to expound a little, some of the issues were lack of
They did have a couple theme parks, but even they were broken.content, lack of purpose, lack of promised features, lack of stability, with no
lack of lag near the cities.
It was a basic grindfest of killing various small furry animals gathered with a
pick to get mastered in your chosen profession(s) and then basically nothing to
do from there. Not very "Star Warsy", as they used to say.
The content system they actually did have didnt sit well with many because it
was just hit 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with
enough credits for the desired animal you wanted to kill, have that nest
randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that nest, kill all animals, kill
nest, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
There were no "dungeons" to crawl. There was no GCW. The buildings were
95% useless. They had a few holes in the ground that they considered "mini-dungeons", but even that term was a sight exageration.
You could max out your character in less than 3 weeks. And then the only thing to do was start grinding Faction points which were literally useless. And again, this was a system of 'decline, decline, decline' until you came across a mission with
enough credits for the Troopers/Rebelsl you wanted to kill, have that camp
randomly spawn out in the wilderness, run to that camp, kill all Troopers/Rebels, run back to mission terminal, rinse, repeat.
And this lead to exactly what Hercules mentioned, a very poor retention, but since it had the SW monicker, it had plenty of fresh blood to maintain its numbers.
I never played SWG, but the word of mouth I heard agreed with a alot of this post. Mostly I heard it was boring grind ,but that is had some nice stuff.
--Baclimon--
www.starfleetguild.com
There were some class balancing issues too which is par for the course, but when it all added it up it was an exercise in fustration.
When was the CU added? Not sure if I was around at that point..
Bottom line for me though...SWG wasn't perfect but like others are saying, it was very unique and probably the most ambtious MMO game that was launched. It wasn't complete and they suffered for it at the hands of stock holders who wanted something more trendy. I guess that's why there's the NGE.
Though I'm playing again now, I still miss the flexibility of the old system, the economy and the classes that complemented each other. (what to entertainers do today in game?). When you look at other MMO games out there now, theres not much that can match the depth of SWG (land stuff space stuff craft stuff oh my).
D
SWG had potential not found in any of the other MMOs. SWG could only be compared to the king of MMOs Ultima Online.
It had several balancing problems but it gave you the ability to experiment with various combinations of the game until you could create your own Role playing character.
The extreme level of customization of your character could make you spend weeks and weeks until you found what you really wanted to be and then you could just throw everything away and start all over again.
A pre CU SWG Player was related to all of the other professions of the game, for instance you could never go to battle with an empty stomach (chef) or unbuffed (Doctor) or without having clothing attachments installed from a tailor.
This was a paradise for the swg players but on the other hand, a nightmare for the support of the program. Every change in the game required extreme ammount of attention since the slightest careless change would break the current balance of the Game and of course since software companies want to stop evolution of their products because it costs a lot of money, SOE decided to inherit a more arcade model from the other MMos.
I don't think we will ever see an SWG like MMo coming around again.Current MMos use logic and engines created for more arcade online games and not for virtual worlds like SWG.
It had tremendous potential, never realized.
What you had was a fan base that loved Star Wars so much that they were willing to give the game a chance.
And the game stabbed them in the back.
It betrayed the legacy of Star Wars.
Nah, it really wasn't that good in the first place.
It was regarded by many as a mild success. Meaning it did well enough from the Star Wars theme alone, but not because of anything else. It was good enough to keep running, but not good enough to be popular.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
I'm Here. I'm Awesome. Get Used To It.
It was my first mmorpg
you where droped in the game and you could choose your class if you didn't like it you could drop it and take other class instead of making a new char.
i liked it why
- lots of planets to go places to see
- housing ; varius houses en you could decorate then use them as a shop
- having own shop
- builing city's
- guilds
- artisan was great. you had to look for your rescorses for ex. not every metal is the same one day its good the other it sucked
- you could mine your metals, herbs, energy
- having factory so you can make large quanteties of something
- mounts
- Pvp
- the medical center where doctors heal you and have a chat
- the cantina where the dancers talked to you. (i was a dancer an got lots of tips) (after a while everyone was macroin it for jedi)
well sort said it was more then just grinding up a level an play pvp. I tryd lots of professions not all. then came patch after patch to break th whole thing.
It was fun becouse you could to lot of things besides making money by killing or selling.
lived near the waterfall theed, naboo
had a shop in coronet, corellia
an houses in mos enta, tatooine for storage
Lots of people didnt know what they had til it was gone. Even i, someone who still thinks SWG is/was the best MMO, i bitched and moaned about a lot of stuff, everyone did, but they kept playing, me it was mostly PvP and the guild/community.
A lot of people in this thread make these arguements that could be made about almost every MMO. Im guessing the majority who played it, bitched and moaned about stuff, but really enjoyed it when it came down to it.
One of the greatest moments was then they said they were going to release the CU. In Coronet, Correlia starport, hours and minutes before they brought down all the servers to patch them with the CU, everyone, hundreds of hundreds of people were shouting stuff like, "Its the end of the world!! Who wants some punch"
All these funny things against SOE.