My straw was the NGE, like so many others. (See sig.)
I started playing late Pre-CU and I had a blast. I was training Doc, hanging out in the Medical Centers a lot, and meeting a lot of people. Times were great. I had finally hacked out Master Doc, and spent what seemed like 16 hours a day for the next few weeks doing hunting missions to earn enough credits to buy medicine crafting supplies and start handing out buffs for some real dough. No sooner than I got my supplies together...the CU got pushed live, and all my medicine crafting supplies (several million credits worth, all earned the hard way) suddenly became useless. Anyway, I rolled with it for the time being.
The next few days were frustrating, to say the least. The Doctor profession got totally gimped with the CU, as we all know. Wounds were gone, which turned all the Medical Centers into empty buildings. Doc XP was now awarded only in combat, much to the ire of anybody who wasn't a Master Doctor yet. Heals drew tons of aggro, so I ended up usually just sitting in the middle of 8 bols, healing myself over and over while the riflemen et al. would pick them off from range. Doctors had turned into glorified tanks. Other members of my prof were respecing out by the hundreds, it seemed. I even had another player approach me one day and tell me that I was the only Doc he'd seen in days. He actually thought that there were no more Doctors in the game! But still, I rolled with it through the entire CU, and I actually got used to it.
Then, finally, the NGE hit. I cancelled the next day. My guild--close to 100 strong--all but vanished within the first 24 hours. My guildchat and friends list were completely empty. The NGE played like garbage (it still does), and SOE finally finished off the Doctor profession for good. That was when I swore off SWG, and I've never been back. A truly sad ending to what used to be my favorite game of all time.
Ok, I need a drink now. Sorry to ramble to you guys like this.
Played: UO, SWG Pre-CU (until 11/16/05), Various F2P's Playing: GW Awaiting: WAR, DF Never played: WoW
For me? Spending two years grinding Jedi and then, just when I'd got to the last trial of the Jedi Knight Trial sequence, cancelling it it - and cancelling it with a lie, 'We are suspending the trials so we can reengineer them and make them better'.
For me, the straw was that I am bored with the game. It doesn't hold my appeal like it did Pre-NGE. Plus SOE never listens to the player base. The die-hards on the official forums will say otherwise. But I seriously think they are deluding themselves. If they listened to their customers, the profession Top 5 issues would have been addressed and fixed. They can't even do that.
I hit the cancel button yesterday on 3 accounts and they will expire on the 11th of April. It's sad that it had to come to this because this was my first MMO and I enjoyed it a lot. The magic that it had died for me a long time ago. I'm just now accepting it.
Actually, even if they hadn't executed order 66 on CH, the rest of the NGE would have done it anyway.
InstaJedi
No more decay
Basically telling all crafters to FOAD.
Then there were the idiotic UI changes, and the pseudoFPS combat. This change made it impossible for one of my guild's leaders to play the game. IRL one of his hands had been injured, which made it impossible for him to use WASD and a mouse at the same time. The original NGE interface did not allow for any changes in binding on the mouse at all. You had to use the moronic NGE interface.
So he was gone. Along with a lot of other people who could not play the game with two hands, let alone three.
The stupidity of the NGE interface is beyond forgiveness.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
I quit when Jump to Lightspeed was based on Wing Commander not X-Wing Alliance / TIE Fighter. Thats, serious, bullshit.
Interesting - can you explain the difference between these games? And why you preferred one over the other? I ask this because JTL, though it was delivered late, people had to pay for it and it was incredibly small, was largely considered to be one of SOE's few successes?
In relation to the NGE (as I believe was the OPs point), my breaking point came within 2 days of live NGE, in which I PvP'd smuggler vs medic, and the action was comical at best -- and not in a good way.
From the ridiculous amount of speed, constant healing by both parties, the inability to target my prey (there was no autoaim at this time), the repeated clicking or need to hold in a mouse button, the specials that did less than anything/everything I had in CU-based SWG, the removal of the smuggling "games" and cap that all with the fact that the battle lasted 10 frustrating minutes.
I won, but I could not see this game working with multitudes of folks PvPing like this. Despite the fact that current players might come around and say that they PvP with massive numbers, that it's fun, etc... I could not see it working like it did in the Good Ole Days, especially not on Bloodfin.
Coupled with the fact that the changes drove many of the server's best PvPers away, there wasn't much left to be spoken for.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
The straw that broke my back [Err actually more of a two part thing]
Part 1.
To make the intro short, i pre-ordered SWG back in 2003 and went out and got it the day it came out, ranted while they smoothed out the 1st day glitches and logged in to play. Decided to make a marksman and went at it...Finishing HS, moving, getting a Job, and joining the military i cancelled the sub. NGE came around in 2005 so i decided "why the heck not..gonna log in and check it out again" heh thats when NGE went and took a giant steaming pile of crap on my "experience"
1. I log in and my marksman is standing naked because all of the bone armor and tusken weapons items and etc... i went grinding weeks at a time are no longer wearable..i must reclass... heh...yay
2. WTF happened to the server pop? Ghost town on Bria....
3. Complete cluster F*** of an U/I
Disgruntled, bewildered and somewhat irate i log off....
PART 2..
(Two weeks later) <insert elavator music>
Ahhh why not..ill create a character from scratch... Me being a jedi fanboy i pick a Jedi and go at it.
1. Wow lots of people to group with and go on quests (NOT..insert scarcasm...i appear as the only Lvl 5 jedi running around with a giant butter knife of a force pike)..oh hey im stuck in a quest because the quest NPC refuses to allow continuation of a quest for me (sent in a petition...no reply..nada...zip..none...sent 2 more...NO reply for two weeks...3rd week.. "we apologize for your inconvinience we are currently experiencing an issue with this quest which will be addressed during the next patch deployment, please bare with us"...ok....so i plod on..
2. After much grinding and reading up on good XP quests i hit lvl 50 in my jedi ...except there is so little of a new player base you cant even grind away on quests...once a few hours i would spot a fellow lvl 50 or 60 player to attempt to tackle a difficult mission..to no avail...
3. WTF Happened to the game? My old AMD 2800+ 2 GB of Ram and Radeon 9800 Pro ran this puppy like a fat kid on crack..Now on a Amd 4800+ X2 Dual core with 3GB of Ram and a X1800 ATI vid card it plugs along at the speed of a doped up lemur. I think Smed kicked the graphics dept in the nuts....
4. And finally...the incessant gold/credit/farmer spamming at every....every ....every starport...I gave up...after spending a full month attempting to get back into game, looking past the bugs that are so numerous so aggravating so immeasurable, the plummeting subscription base and the bugged quest system that made college level calculus look like tic tac toe i hit the cancel button..My toon of nearly 4 years is currently in Limbo...A part of me wishes so badly for the good ol days to come back, the rich professions system, the great combat, the exploration and the over all atmosphere of what once was...but now all i do now is think of what could have been..and Go Pew Pew in eve online......
I was AWOL from the game from about a month before the CU till about the 3rd month into it. So I basically missed out on the really buggy phase of the CU. Honestly I didn't mind it but then again I wasn't a hard core PvP'er or a Jedi so I didn't have as much to lose as the others did. When the NGE hit I ran around dueling everyone, something I'd never done in this game, and beat almost every single person I ran across. It made me sad that my FPS skills were so useful suddenly.
I quit shortly after but came back after Expertise was added. The game had become bareable and the PvP was really hot on my server at the time. So I stayed and actually had fun. Then the updates that added things like new stats and Expertise stopped and Heroic Instances and Collections began. It became obvious to me that any updates that added any depth or complexity to the gameplay and metagame aspects were over and now the grind BS ripped from other games was the word of the day until further notice.
In other words, the game is as interesting right now as it will ever be. So I decided if I was going to be stuck with grinding and instances, I'd play them in a game that didn't have the bugs and had all my friends playing. Why play a crappy rip-off when you can play the polished original?
Originally it was the CU. But I was preparing to make my peace with the CU and start over. Then the NGE hits. It was more the "way" the NGE was implemented than anything else, bad as the changes were. It was a classic case of "bait and switch."
I still think the death of SWG actually happened at Publish 9 with the opening up Jedi to anyone who wanted it. It only took us almost a year to realize the game was already dead. As Kreia said in KOTOR2 "It is such a quiet thing to fall." Paraphrasing the second part "but a deafening thing when realized."
The CU was like a sledge hammer to the back. I remember that morning(central european time), looking on the new post on the official forums about some changes to the game, thinking to myself "Finally they gonna fix all the bugs". 20 minutes later, after reading the post, I felt sick. I realised they gonna change the game in a very drastic way. This was not only fixing the bugs, this was replacing the core of the game with a new core. The game would never be the same again.
So much people I know and loved just quit after the CU and vanished. I stayed and tried to learn to love the game again. Much of the complexity that attracted me to the game was gone. But at the very end of the CU I sort of accepted the changes. Dont get me wrong, I love the complex pre-cu era the most, but with the fixes to the professions slowly coming out, the game was rather fun again at the end of the CU. I played as a Squad leader most of the CU(I played my pre-cu moisture farmer/droid-engineer a couple of months into the CU before I quit him) and the updates they made to Squad leader was quite nice. Ranger and Smuggler was up next if I recall it right.
Then WHAM! They hit us with the NGE and the back broke like a dry twig. I remember just throwing away the mouse and mouse pad into the wall when I read about the NGE on the forums. I just gave up right there and then. I logged in and my guildys was very upset. Some even left the guild and the game right there and then. A very sad and chaotic moment.
The rest of us stayed to the bitter end. The last night before the NGE update, we had a party in our player city. A band played, dancers danced, race track, some friendly pvp, fireworks(a lot of fireworks!) and a lot of chatting. Felt like a 4 hour long goodbye. As the evening progressed, one after one logged out. Eventually I took a stroll on the dunes of Tatooine around our city. I found a good spot on highground, sat down. It was right in the foredawn and you could still see the stars even though the suns started to light up the horizon. It felt like the right spot to end the adventure of Star Wars Galaxies. I then said a heartbreaking goodbye to the last of the mates online and logged out. I never logged in with either my pre-cu crafter or Squadleader again.
The guild tried to stick together via the guild forum, but slowly it all fell apart and one day the forum was just gone. Sad.
I have played SWG after the NGE via Trials. But only for a day or two before uninstalling it again. Doesnt even count as game play, more logging in, running around looking at the landscape views and then logging out.
Wow was long ago I ranted about SWG. Felt good. Cya this time next year again. lol j/k
The NGE removed all the tools and the ability for the players to rebuild the community. They had been destroying the community the entire time after launch and the players kept rebuilding it. Never faster than what they could destroy but as long as those community building mechanics remained..the SWG community could be rebuilt. After the NGE removed those things..there was nothing the playerbase could do except save what was left from further destruction. That was the final straw for me. Destroying a community and any ability or chance to rebuild it.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
When the NGE went live i thought it was going to be alright, i didn't really know what to expect. I knew i didn't like the fps targeting so i was planning on leaving anyways but wanted to try it out. but the main thing that made me quit was when they nerf'd clothing attachments. the years of hard work spent to attain my gear was wiped away in one day. i lost 250+million credits worth of attachments that i spent all my hard earned cash on. and to top it off i was a precu jedi, i grinded my heart out to get jedi then grinded my heart out again to complete my template only to have the NGE add ten more lvls on top of my current build. which was not really a big deal at the time me and all my buddies exploited the flea mission and got it in one night. but if i had to do it the old fashion way i would be really pissed, it was mostly the concept that made me upset at the time. oh yeah did i mention jedi was a starting class? yeah slap in the face from the devs imo, words can't describe how many jedi felt when they worked so hard to get what they had and someone at the click of the button can obtain a jedi without working for it.
The CU was like a sledge hammer to the back. I remember that morning(central european time), looking on the new post on the official forums about some changes to the game, thinking to myself "Finally they gonna fix all the bugs". 20 minutes later, after reading the post, I felt sick. I realised they gonna change the game in a very drastic way. This was not only fixing the bugs, this was replacing the core of the game with a new core. The game would never be the same again.
So much people I know and loved just quit after the CU and vanished. I stayed and tried to learn to love the game again. Much of the complexity that attracted me to the game was gone. But at the very end of the CU I sort of accepted the changes. Dont get me wrong, I love the complex pre-cu era the most, but with the fixes to the professions slowly coming out, the game was rather fun again at the end of the CU. I played as a Squad leader most of the CU(I played my pre-cu moisture farmer/droid-engineer a couple of months into the CU before I quit him) and the updates they made to Squad leader was quite nice. Ranger and Smuggler was up next if I recall it right.
Then WHAM! They hit us with the NGE and the back broke like a dry twig. I remember just throwing away the mouse and mouse pad into the wall when I read about the NGE on the forums. I just gave up right there and then. I logged in and my guildys was very upset. Some even left the guild and the game right there and then. A very sad and chaotic moment.
The rest of us stayed to the bitter end. The last night before the NGE update, we had a party in our player city. A band played, dancers danced, race track, some friendly pvp, fireworks(a lot of fireworks!) and a lot of chatting. Felt like a 4 hour long goodbye. As the evening progressed, one after one logged out. Eventually I took a stroll on the dunes of Tatooine around our city. I found a good spot on highground, sat down. It was right in the foredawn and you could still see the stars even though the suns started to light up the horizon. It felt like the right spot to end the adventure of Star Wars Galaxies. I then said a heartbreaking goodbye to the last of the mates online and logged out. I never logged in with either my pre-cu crafter or Squadleader again.
The guild tried to stick together via the guild forum, but slowly it all fell apart and one day the forum was just gone. Sad.
I have played SWG after the NGE via Trials. But only for a day or two before uninstalling it again. Doesnt even count as game play, more logging in, running around looking at the landscape views and then logging out.
Wow was long ago I ranted about SWG. Felt good. Cya this time next year again. lol j/k
The Second Day Vet
A good summary of what we all went through. Well said brother. Brings back good memories of fun times with some excellent people.
The NGE removed all the tools and the ability for the players to rebuild the community. They had been destroying the community the entire time after launch and the players kept rebuilding it. Never faster than what they could destroy but as long as those community building mechanics remained..the SWG community could be rebuilt. After the NGE removed those things..there was nothing the playerbase could do except save what was left from further destruction. That was the final straw for me. Destroying a community and any ability or chance to rebuild it.
I think the problem was they also catered to a brand new community. I remembered coming back for one month, and came back to my guild. I noticed something, the old gaurd was almost entirely gone. In its place was a bunch of new players, whom, to say it mildly, would never have been considered for recruitment by myself or the council back when we ran things. They were boasting in guildchat about which exploits to do to obtain a level fast enough. In our glory days, our guild was foremost on the server as an opponent of exploiting. If you left our guild to exploit, your reputation was ruined. It saddened me immensly to see in guildchat promotion of exploiting. Indeed, I found more in common with my sworn enemy of old on the server in the Rebellion. The two of us gamed for the next week or so reminiscing of our legendary battles between our two guilds that made all of Dantooine a hot zone. We realized those days were gone. What had once been honor amongst foes was replaced in a lot of areas by griefers and leet speakers. You had those before in SWG, but the community as a whole frowned upon them. On Eclipse, they became the regulars.
Now I had authority in my guild due to my senior status, and that I was a ranking member on the general council. I could've put a stop to it, but why? When the call came for an official disbanding of our SWG chapter, I quietly voted yes. I'm not even sure if our beloved city still exists there, but if it is, it is a memorial to a time that once existed and will never exist again.
It has been almost 4 years, and still we have never found a game to reunite in. That is the main reason I cannot play SWG. I may be able to have fun, but everywhere around is full of memories of what once was, and will never be.
Indeed, I found more in common with my sworn enemy of old on the server in the Rebellion. The two of us gamed for the next week or so reminiscing of our legendary battles between our two guilds that made all of Dantooine a hot zone. We realized those days were gone.
I can attest to this, as I had similar experiences the few times I poked my head into NGE-land. I found myself speaking with enemies on a totally different level, as if we had just witnessed a train wreck.
Like those "man, what happened" type moments. Very sad.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
I agree, the Jedi slap in the face was the end for me, I tried the NGE, I didn't like the targeting system at all. All my hard work to achieve several master badges, and, the work to achieve towards Padawan was just gone.
Isn't that what we play games for?
To achieve a sort of victory after so long trying to achieve a goal, then, after that goal is reached, trying for that next big step?
But, no, SOE/LA didn't care about the long time players who worked hard at thier characters, and, thier achievements, we weren't good enough to have a say in how we wanted to play the game. Yes, they built the world, but, we were the ones who lived in it. All the Devs and GMs had to do was create theier Great Characters, THEY!!! never actually took the time to build those characters, they never actually did the quests from start to finish, nor, did they actually sat in local and listened to the conservation of the local, or, any of the chats. Why should they, it wasn't thier policy to get the feel for the players, or, the community, after all, even though we were paying customers, we were no more than great big bundles of money bags that they couls squeeze every last little penny from, then, when they were done, throw away the game we loved, all because of the word, progress. To shame
I played through the CU, it didn't matter to me...but when The NGE hit and I had worked hard to finally become force sensitive only a few days earlier, that kind of broke my back right there. What else can I say that hasn't been said by every other SWG Veteran.
Granted I tried SWG NGE a few more times but as someone else stated, basically I ran around for a second to admire what was...sighed then realized that it was not the same.
Playing: Diablo 2, Medievia, SWG EMU In between: Eq Mac Retired: Guild Wars (2x), EQ, DAoC, PSO, Tibia, Runescape, WoW, SWG, Maple Story Waiting: WaR (hesitant), New Star Wars MMO
For me it had nothing to do with rule sets. For me it was deciding to watch Star Wars A New Hope (about 4 months after launch) and realizing that SWG had almost nothing to do with SW other than graphics and sound.
The NGE (the less-than-two-weeks beta in test center and the damn launch.)
I realize the NGE was a crappy system, which I, along with many others, keep on posting on the test center forum to tell them NOT to put it out to live server. When the day came, I got so pissed that I wanted to cancel my subs but there's a slight problem. No refund for the yearly subs unless I want to go through the hassle of charge back stuff.
So I actually still plays a bit after NGE (even though I gave up the hope they would roll the damn thing back, and will not continue the damn subs.) I tried to say it's a new game, but when I respec my character to a jedi (since my friend made it to Jedi just before CU, so I did to play with him and see what Jedi is like.) Well, the system was so broken that in order to do anything worthwhile as jedi, you pick up a damn pistol or a rifle. And for those who were doing Krayt hunts, a Jedi can kite a krayt do death with rifle in his hand. Such a broken system that I uninstalled the damn thing around Feb of 06.
I'd actually pretty much dropped the game pre CU, because I'd come, very reluctantly, to the conclusion that the devs weren't listening to their players. I was a tailor, and after close to two years of seeing the same top issues on the tailor board, reposted time and again with pathetic, doglike optimism by the correspondents, and never ever being acted on by the devs (they wouldn't even give us a true yellow shade, for Christ's sake), I'd left. When the CU came out, I briefly went back, then realized my second profession, dancer, had been pretty much rendered pointless by the elimination of battle fatigue. At that point, I left again.
I was fighting the urge to try it yet again, right around the time the NGE hit, and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I'd dodged that particular fiasco. I've never returned.
In my opinion, all the problems with SWG come down to a simple failure of the developers and management to listen to their players. They didn't listen to us pre CU, post CU, or with the NGE. They've always said that will change--that the culture of not listening is gone. Then they fail to listen again, and act surprised when they screw something else up. I wanted to think better of them, but after extending them numerous second chances only to see the same attitudes persist, I came to the conclusion it was hopeless. I've seen nothing on this board or any other to restore my hope. As a result, I'll never play SWG again, and probably never another Sony game. I can only be treated with so much contempt before I walk out the door.
Comments
My straw was the NGE, like so many others. (See sig.)
I started playing late Pre-CU and I had a blast. I was training Doc, hanging out in the Medical Centers a lot, and meeting a lot of people. Times were great. I had finally hacked out Master Doc, and spent what seemed like 16 hours a day for the next few weeks doing hunting missions to earn enough credits to buy medicine crafting supplies and start handing out buffs for some real dough. No sooner than I got my supplies together...the CU got pushed live, and all my medicine crafting supplies (several million credits worth, all earned the hard way) suddenly became useless.
Anyway, I rolled with it for the time being.
The next few days were frustrating, to say the least. The Doctor profession got totally gimped with the CU, as we all know. Wounds were gone, which turned all the Medical Centers into empty buildings. Doc XP was now awarded only in combat, much to the ire of anybody who wasn't a Master Doctor yet. Heals drew tons of aggro, so I ended up usually just sitting in the middle of 8 bols, healing myself over and over while the riflemen et al. would pick them off from range. Doctors had turned into glorified tanks.
Other members of my prof were respecing out by the hundreds, it seemed. I even had another player approach me one day and tell me that I was the only Doc he'd seen in days. He actually thought that there were no more Doctors in the game! But still, I rolled with it through the entire CU, and I actually got used to it.
Then, finally, the NGE hit. I cancelled the next day. My guild--close to 100 strong--all but vanished within the first 24 hours. My guildchat and friends list were completely empty. The NGE played like garbage (it still does), and SOE finally finished off the Doctor profession for good. That was when I swore off SWG, and I've never been back. A truly sad ending to what used to be my favorite game of all time.
Ok, I need a drink now.
Sorry to ramble to you guys like this.
Played: UO, SWG Pre-CU (until 11/16/05), Various F2P's
Playing: GW
Awaiting: WAR, DF
Never played: WoW
the nge and turning jedi from something special into a noob class.
For me? Spending two years grinding Jedi and then, just when I'd got to the last trial of the Jedi Knight Trial sequence, cancelling it it - and cancelling it with a lie, 'We are suspending the trials so we can reengineer them and make them better'.
For me, the straw was that I am bored with the game. It doesn't hold my appeal like it did Pre-NGE. Plus SOE never listens to the player base. The die-hards on the official forums will say otherwise. But I seriously think they are deluding themselves. If they listened to their customers, the profession Top 5 issues would have been addressed and fixed. They can't even do that.
I hit the cancel button yesterday on 3 accounts and they will expire on the 11th of April. It's sad that it had to come to this because this was my first MMO and I enjoyed it a lot. The magic that it had died for me a long time ago. I'm just now accepting it.
Actually, even if they hadn't executed order 66 on CH, the rest of the NGE would have done it anyway.
InstaJedi
No more decay
Basically telling all crafters to FOAD.
Then there were the idiotic UI changes, and the pseudoFPS combat. This change made it impossible for one of my guild's leaders to play the game. IRL one of his hands had been injured, which made it impossible for him to use WASD and a mouse at the same time. The original NGE interface did not allow for any changes in binding on the mouse at all. You had to use the moronic NGE interface.
So he was gone. Along with a lot of other people who could not play the game with two hands, let alone three.
The stupidity of the NGE interface is beyond forgiveness.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Broken classes, no galactic civil war and cruddy missions. This was month 2-3.
the unending spew of lies and crossed messages about bugs and nerfs .....
also the CUNGE
I quit when Jump to Lightspeed was based on Wing Commander not X-Wing Alliance / TIE Fighter.
Thats, serious, bullshit.
Interesting - can you explain the difference between these games? And why you preferred one over the other? I ask this because JTL, though it was delivered late, people had to pay for it and it was incredibly small, was largely considered to be one of SOE's few successes?
My last straw: The utterly boring, generic and repetitive legacy quest line....
In relation to the NGE (as I believe was the OPs point), my breaking point came within 2 days of live NGE, in which I PvP'd smuggler vs medic, and the action was comical at best -- and not in a good way.
From the ridiculous amount of speed, constant healing by both parties, the inability to target my prey (there was no autoaim at this time), the repeated clicking or need to hold in a mouse button, the specials that did less than anything/everything I had in CU-based SWG, the removal of the smuggling "games" and cap that all with the fact that the battle lasted 10 frustrating minutes.
I won, but I could not see this game working with multitudes of folks PvPing like this. Despite the fact that current players might come around and say that they PvP with massive numbers, that it's fun, etc... I could not see it working like it did in the Good Ole Days, especially not on Bloodfin.
Coupled with the fact that the changes drove many of the server's best PvPers away, there wasn't much left to be spoken for.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
The straw that broke my back [Err actually more of a two part thing]
Part 1.
To make the intro short, i pre-ordered SWG back in 2003 and went out and got it the day it came out, ranted while they smoothed out the 1st day glitches and logged in to play. Decided to make a marksman and went at it...Finishing HS, moving, getting a Job, and joining the military i cancelled the sub. NGE came around in 2005 so i decided "why the heck not..gonna log in and check it out again" heh thats when NGE went and took a giant steaming pile of crap on my "experience"
1. I log in and my marksman is standing naked because all of the bone armor and tusken weapons items and etc... i went grinding weeks at a time are no longer wearable..i must reclass... heh...yay
2. WTF happened to the server pop? Ghost town on Bria....
3. Complete cluster F*** of an U/I
Disgruntled, bewildered and somewhat irate i log off....
PART 2..
(Two weeks later) <insert elavator music>
Ahhh why not..ill create a character from scratch... Me being a jedi fanboy i pick a Jedi and go at it.
1. Wow lots of people to group with and go on quests (NOT..insert scarcasm...i appear as the only Lvl 5 jedi running around with a giant butter knife of a force pike)..oh hey im stuck in a quest because the quest NPC refuses to allow continuation of a quest for me (sent in a petition...no reply..nada...zip..none...sent 2 more...NO reply for two weeks...3rd week.. "we apologize for your inconvinience we are currently experiencing an issue with this quest which will be addressed during the next patch deployment, please bare with us"...ok....so i plod on..
2. After much grinding and reading up on good XP quests i hit lvl 50 in my jedi ...except there is so little of a new player base you cant even grind away on quests...once a few hours i would spot a fellow lvl 50 or 60 player to attempt to tackle a difficult mission..to no avail...
3. WTF Happened to the game? My old AMD 2800+ 2 GB of Ram and Radeon 9800 Pro ran this puppy like a fat kid on crack..Now on a Amd 4800+ X2 Dual core with 3GB of Ram and a X1800 ATI vid card it plugs along at the speed of a doped up lemur. I think Smed kicked the graphics dept in the nuts....
4. And finally...the incessant gold/credit/farmer spamming at every....every ....every starport...I gave up...after spending a full month attempting to get back into game, looking past the bugs that are so numerous so aggravating so immeasurable, the plummeting subscription base and the bugged quest system that made college level calculus look like tic tac toe i hit the cancel button..My toon of nearly 4 years is currently in Limbo...A part of me wishes so badly for the good ol days to come back, the rich professions system, the great combat, the exploration and the over all atmosphere of what once was...but now all i do now is think of what could have been..and Go Pew Pew in eve online......
/end rant
I was AWOL from the game from about a month before the CU till about the 3rd month into it. So I basically missed out on the really buggy phase of the CU. Honestly I didn't mind it but then again I wasn't a hard core PvP'er or a Jedi so I didn't have as much to lose as the others did. When the NGE hit I ran around dueling everyone, something I'd never done in this game, and beat almost every single person I ran across. It made me sad that my FPS skills were so useful suddenly.
I quit shortly after but came back after Expertise was added. The game had become bareable and the PvP was really hot on my server at the time. So I stayed and actually had fun. Then the updates that added things like new stats and Expertise stopped and Heroic Instances and Collections began. It became obvious to me that any updates that added any depth or complexity to the gameplay and metagame aspects were over and now the grind BS ripped from other games was the word of the day until further notice.
In other words, the game is as interesting right now as it will ever be. So I decided if I was going to be stuck with grinding and instances, I'd play them in a game that didn't have the bugs and had all my friends playing. Why play a crappy rip-off when you can play the polished original?
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
Originally it was the CU. But I was preparing to make my peace with the CU and start over. Then the NGE hits. It was more the "way" the NGE was implemented than anything else, bad as the changes were. It was a classic case of "bait and switch."
I still think the death of SWG actually happened at Publish 9 with the opening up Jedi to anyone who wanted it. It only took us almost a year to realize the game was already dead. As Kreia said in KOTOR2 "It is such a quiet thing to fall." Paraphrasing the second part "but a deafening thing when realized."
The CU was like a sledge hammer to the back. I remember that morning(central european time), looking on the new post on the official forums about some changes to the game, thinking to myself "Finally they gonna fix all the bugs". 20 minutes later, after reading the post, I felt sick. I realised they gonna change the game in a very drastic way. This was not only fixing the bugs, this was replacing the core of the game with a new core. The game would never be the same again.
So much people I know and loved just quit after the CU and vanished. I stayed and tried to learn to love the game again. Much of the complexity that attracted me to the game was gone. But at the very end of the CU I sort of accepted the changes. Dont get me wrong, I love the complex pre-cu era the most, but with the fixes to the professions slowly coming out, the game was rather fun again at the end of the CU. I played as a Squad leader most of the CU(I played my pre-cu moisture farmer/droid-engineer a couple of months into the CU before I quit him) and the updates they made to Squad leader was quite nice. Ranger and Smuggler was up next if I recall it right.
Then WHAM! They hit us with the NGE and the back broke like a dry twig. I remember just throwing away the mouse and mouse pad into the wall when I read about the NGE on the forums. I just gave up right there and then. I logged in and my guildys was very upset. Some even left the guild and the game right there and then. A very sad and chaotic moment.
The rest of us stayed to the bitter end. The last night before the NGE update, we had a party in our player city. A band played, dancers danced, race track, some friendly pvp, fireworks(a lot of fireworks!) and a lot of chatting. Felt like a 4 hour long goodbye. As the evening progressed, one after one logged out. Eventually I took a stroll on the dunes of Tatooine around our city. I found a good spot on highground, sat down. It was right in the foredawn and you could still see the stars even though the suns started to light up the horizon. It felt like the right spot to end the adventure of Star Wars Galaxies. I then said a heartbreaking goodbye to the last of the mates online and logged out. I never logged in with either my pre-cu crafter or Squadleader again.
The guild tried to stick together via the guild forum, but slowly it all fell apart and one day the forum was just gone. Sad.
I have played SWG after the NGE via Trials. But only for a day or two before uninstalling it again. Doesnt even count as game play, more logging in, running around looking at the landscape views and then logging out.
Wow was long ago I ranted about SWG. Felt good. Cya this time next year again. lol j/k
The Second Day Vet
The NGE removed all the tools and the ability for the players to rebuild the community. They had been destroying the community the entire time after launch and the players kept rebuilding it. Never faster than what they could destroy but as long as those community building mechanics remained..the SWG community could be rebuilt. After the NGE removed those things..there was nothing the playerbase could do except save what was left from further destruction. That was the final straw for me. Destroying a community and any ability or chance to rebuild it.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
When the NGE went live i thought it was going to be alright, i didn't really know what to expect. I knew i didn't like the fps targeting so i was planning on leaving anyways but wanted to try it out. but the main thing that made me quit was when they nerf'd clothing attachments. the years of hard work spent to attain my gear was wiped away in one day. i lost 250+million credits worth of attachments that i spent all my hard earned cash on. and to top it off i was a precu jedi, i grinded my heart out to get jedi then grinded my heart out again to complete my template only to have the NGE add ten more lvls on top of my current build. which was not really a big deal at the time me and all my buddies exploited the flea mission and got it in one night. but if i had to do it the old fashion way i would be really pissed, it was mostly the concept that made me upset at the time. oh yeah did i mention jedi was a starting class? yeah slap in the face from the devs imo, words can't describe how many jedi felt when they worked so hard to get what they had and someone at the click of the button can obtain a jedi without working for it.
Keeper
A good summary of what we all went through. Well said brother. Brings back good memories of fun times with some excellent people.
I think the problem was they also catered to a brand new community. I remembered coming back for one month, and came back to my guild. I noticed something, the old gaurd was almost entirely gone. In its place was a bunch of new players, whom, to say it mildly, would never have been considered for recruitment by myself or the council back when we ran things. They were boasting in guildchat about which exploits to do to obtain a level fast enough. In our glory days, our guild was foremost on the server as an opponent of exploiting. If you left our guild to exploit, your reputation was ruined. It saddened me immensly to see in guildchat promotion of exploiting. Indeed, I found more in common with my sworn enemy of old on the server in the Rebellion. The two of us gamed for the next week or so reminiscing of our legendary battles between our two guilds that made all of Dantooine a hot zone. We realized those days were gone. What had once been honor amongst foes was replaced in a lot of areas by griefers and leet speakers. You had those before in SWG, but the community as a whole frowned upon them. On Eclipse, they became the regulars.
Now I had authority in my guild due to my senior status, and that I was a ranking member on the general council. I could've put a stop to it, but why? When the call came for an official disbanding of our SWG chapter, I quietly voted yes. I'm not even sure if our beloved city still exists there, but if it is, it is a memorial to a time that once existed and will never exist again.
It has been almost 4 years, and still we have never found a game to reunite in. That is the main reason I cannot play SWG. I may be able to have fun, but everywhere around is full of memories of what once was, and will never be.
I can attest to this, as I had similar experiences the few times I poked my head into NGE-land. I found myself speaking with enemies on a totally different level, as if we had just witnessed a train wreck.
Like those "man, what happened" type moments. Very sad.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
I agree, the Jedi slap in the face was the end for me, I tried the NGE, I didn't like the targeting system at all. All my hard work to achieve several master badges, and, the work to achieve towards Padawan was just gone.
Isn't that what we play games for?
To achieve a sort of victory after so long trying to achieve a goal, then, after that goal is reached, trying for that next big step?
But, no, SOE/LA didn't care about the long time players who worked hard at thier characters, and, thier achievements, we weren't good enough to have a say in how we wanted to play the game. Yes, they built the world, but, we were the ones who lived in it. All the Devs and GMs had to do was create theier Great Characters, THEY!!! never actually took the time to build those characters, they never actually did the quests from start to finish, nor, did they actually sat in local and listened to the conservation of the local, or, any of the chats. Why should they, it wasn't thier policy to get the feel for the players, or, the community, after all, even though we were paying customers, we were no more than great big bundles of money bags that they couls squeeze every last little penny from, then, when they were done, throw away the game we loved, all because of the word, progress. To shame
I played through the CU, it didn't matter to me...but when The NGE hit and I had worked hard to finally become force sensitive only a few days earlier, that kind of broke my back right there. What else can I say that hasn't been said by every other SWG Veteran.
Granted I tried SWG NGE a few more times but as someone else stated, basically I ran around for a second to admire what was...sighed then realized that it was not the same.
Playing: Diablo 2, Medievia, SWG EMU
In between: Eq Mac
Retired: Guild Wars (2x), EQ, DAoC, PSO, Tibia, Runescape, WoW, SWG, Maple Story
Waiting: WaR (hesitant), New Star Wars MMO
For me it had nothing to do with rule sets. For me it was deciding to watch Star Wars A New Hope (about 4 months after launch) and realizing that SWG had almost nothing to do with SW other than graphics and sound.
The NGE (the less-than-two-weeks beta in test center and the damn launch.)
I realize the NGE was a crappy system, which I, along with many others, keep on posting on the test center forum to tell them NOT to put it out to live server. When the day came, I got so pissed that I wanted to cancel my subs but there's a slight problem. No refund for the yearly subs unless I want to go through the hassle of charge back stuff.
So I actually still plays a bit after NGE (even though I gave up the hope they would roll the damn thing back, and will not continue the damn subs.) I tried to say it's a new game, but when I respec my character to a jedi (since my friend made it to Jedi just before CU, so I did to play with him and see what Jedi is like.) Well, the system was so broken that in order to do anything worthwhile as jedi, you pick up a damn pistol or a rifle. And for those who were doing Krayt hunts, a Jedi can kite a krayt do death with rifle in his hand. Such a broken system that I uninstalled the damn thing around Feb of 06.
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
I'd actually pretty much dropped the game pre CU, because I'd come, very reluctantly, to the conclusion that the devs weren't listening to their players. I was a tailor, and after close to two years of seeing the same top issues on the tailor board, reposted time and again with pathetic, doglike optimism by the correspondents, and never ever being acted on by the devs (they wouldn't even give us a true yellow shade, for Christ's sake), I'd left. When the CU came out, I briefly went back, then realized my second profession, dancer, had been pretty much rendered pointless by the elimination of battle fatigue. At that point, I left again.
I was fighting the urge to try it yet again, right around the time the NGE hit, and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I'd dodged that particular fiasco. I've never returned.
In my opinion, all the problems with SWG come down to a simple failure of the developers and management to listen to their players. They didn't listen to us pre CU, post CU, or with the NGE. They've always said that will change--that the culture of not listening is gone. Then they fail to listen again, and act surprised when they screw something else up. I wanted to think better of them, but after extending them numerous second chances only to see the same attitudes persist, I came to the conclusion it was hopeless. I've seen nothing on this board or any other to restore my hope. As a result, I'll never play SWG again, and probably never another Sony game. I can only be treated with so much contempt before I walk out the door.
--Chastity