Without "greed", there would be no SWG, or any other MMO, in the first place...
I wish people would stop using greed as the natural setting for all businesses. There's a difference in trying to be as successful as possible and being greedy.
The thing is, swg didn't need to be on the same level of wow, or even eclipse eq. 300 thousand x 15 bucks is 4.5 million per month! More than enough to pay for a dev team and still make a handsome profit.
The problem is that if you make your game more, not less, like wow, then what's going to happen is you're going to be competing with wow. And wow is VERY good at being wow. Better to lap up the sw fans and sandbox fans who want nothing to do with wow, or who try woe and find themselves feeling empty.
Unfortunately greed of execs prevailed and the game tried their hand at the wow game, and failed.
Lessons learned? ? Remains to be seen I guess.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
As mentioned several times, SWG was released in a horrible, buggy state, with many parts absent or unworkable. I had friends working on the game, and their private tales of awful mid and upper management shenanigans were pretty instructive. They warned me off playing it. The top guys involved, some with million dollar salaries, were responsible for many of the terrible decisions surrounding the game. And a significant portion were asshats to boot.
They would have been better off just refining the original, as at least they'd have been likely to keep their core players. I suspect though that by the time the game went through its defining NGE change, they probably couldn't actually fix the original game engine -- lots of the talent (programmers, designers, etc) having been long gone and/or disgruntled.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
While greed is a valid point, NOTHING in those days compare to games these days. I mean PAYING to play a game in alpha state that when finished will be F2P. I guess the game companies finally found a winning formula. Not making a great game, just make a game with great hype then capitalizing on that.
Honestly the game had TONS of potential, BUT it was created and RUN into the ground by SOE. I mean how can you fail with a Star Wars License ? I realize SWTOR is not a great example but it is one. As a mmorpg it is pretty damn horrible but as a RPG with multiplayer aspects its pretty awesome. If you play it as a Coop Knights of the Old Republic its pretty damn good. Trouble is people dont generally play it for the story they play it for PVP and showing off cash shop items.
Should SOE and LucasArts have seen before SWG launched that it wasn't going to be the type of game capable of attracting the number of players they were aiming for?
Absolutely. Not because of the game systems themselves, but because the game was a buggy pile of refuse at release. They rushed it out the door to beat WoW to the market, somehow not understanding that it would be better to launch a complete game after WoW than a rushed POS before WoW.
Why do you think SOE and LucasArts felt that the risk in changing the game so substantially by implementing NGE was justified?
No clue. A desperate try to attract more players? Okay, but they knew full well that the changes would alienate many of their current players. I guess they saw WoW's numbers and thought that any themepark with a similar structure ought to do nearly as well, and perhaps draw in more new players than alienate old ones. Stupid thinking, but then again most people seem to lose their common sense the moment they receive their MBA.
After WoW had established itself as the market gorilla, how much potential did SWG still have to grow its user base whether via NGE or other changes?
If they had simply fixed what they had, I'd say the chances could have been good. WoW acted as a 'gateway' for a lot of people to the MMO genre, and I think a polished and fixed SWG very well could have attracted those who were looking for something a bit more complex. Not to mention it was one of very few MMOs not set in a medieval fantasy world.
How popular do you think SWG would have become if it had been designed more like NGE in the first place? Would it have become the first MMOG to reach a million subscriptions?
I think it would have done much better. I think a lot of people were expecting a more narrative-focused game, and were disappointed when none of the characters loved by the fans really showed up. Without them, let's face it, the game was pretty much just a run of the mill partial sandbox.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
Should SOE and LucasArts have seen before SWG launched that it wasn't going to be the type of game capable of attracting the number of players they were aiming for?
Absolutely. Not because of the game systems themselves, but because the game was a buggy pile of refuse at release. They rushed it out the door to beat WoW to the market, somehow not understanding that it would be better to launch a complete game after WoW than a rushed POS before WoW.
Why do you think SOE and LucasArts felt that the risk in changing the game so substantially by implementing NGE was justified?
No clue. A desperate try to attract more players? Okay, but they knew full well that the changes would alienate many of their current players. I guess they saw WoW's numbers and thought that any themepark with a similar structure ought to do nearly as well, and perhaps draw in more new players than alienate old ones. Stupid thinking, but then again most people seem to lose their common sense the moment they receive their MBA.
After WoW had established itself as the market gorilla, how much potential did SWG still have to grow its user base whether via NGE or other changes?
If they had simply fixed what they had, I'd say the chances could have been good. WoW acted as a 'gateway' for a lot of people to the MMO genre, and I think a polished and fixed SWG very well could have attracted those who were looking for something a bit more complex. Not to mention it was one of very few MMOs not set in a medieval fantasy world.
How popular do you think SWG would have become if it had been designed more like NGE in the first place? Would it have become the first MMOG to reach a million subscriptions?
I think it would have done much better. I think a lot of people were expecting a more narrative-focused game, and were disappointed when none of the characters loved by the fans really showed up. Without them, let's face it, the game was pretty much just a run of the mill partial sandbox.
Huh? EQII was rushed out to beat Wow and was a worse buggy mess than SWG at the time. SWG had evolved past it's buggy stage by the time Wow came out.
If they had kept the sandbox instead of attempting to change it to a themepark there is a good chance the game would still be around. Probably would have done better as a themepark at release, but I think it would have died quicker.
If they had optimized the code and put in a better quest system, made it easier to get to Jedi and added some extra character slots instead of NGE the game might have bloomed.
I don't care what a developer says, it was Smedley who initiated the change. He bears sole responsibility for the disaster.
Oh and there were most of the characters and places from the movies in the game, you just had to look for them.
It was like the Milenium Falcon. It was a hunk of junk but it had it where it counts. Despite all of it's issues it is still the greatest MMO experience I have had.
Originally posted by dumpcat It was like the Milenium Falcon. It was a hunk of junk but it had it where it counts. Despite all of it's issues it is still the greatest MMO experience I have had.
The Millennium Falcon had the special power of 'Screenwriter on your side'; a very powerful perk. SWG didn't.
It being your greatest MMO experience doesn't make the game well designed, or delivered in a reasonably finished state.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Should SOE and LucasArts have seen before SWG launched that it wasn't going to be the type of game capable of attracting the number of players they were aiming for?
Absolutely. Not because of the game systems themselves, but because the game was a buggy pile of refuse at release. They rushed it out the door to beat WoW to the market, somehow not understanding that it would be better to launch a complete game after WoW than a rushed POS before WoW.
Why do you think SOE and LucasArts felt that the risk in changing the game so substantially by implementing NGE was justified?
No clue. A desperate try to attract more players? Okay, but they knew full well that the changes would alienate many of their current players. I guess they saw WoW's numbers and thought that any themepark with a similar structure ought to do nearly as well, and perhaps draw in more new players than alienate old ones. Stupid thinking, but then again most people seem to lose their common sense the moment they receive their MBA.
After WoW had established itself as the market gorilla, how much potential did SWG still have to grow its user base whether via NGE or other changes?
If they had simply fixed what they had, I'd say the chances could have been good. WoW acted as a 'gateway' for a lot of people to the MMO genre, and I think a polished and fixed SWG very well could have attracted those who were looking for something a bit more complex. Not to mention it was one of very few MMOs not set in a medieval fantasy world.
How popular do you think SWG would have become if it had been designed more like NGE in the first place? Would it have become the first MMOG to reach a million subscriptions?
I think it would have done much better. I think a lot of people were expecting a more narrative-focused game, and were disappointed when none of the characters loved by the fans really showed up. Without them, let's face it, the game was pretty much just a run of the mill partial sandbox.
I disagree, the NGE was really the final nail in SWG's coffin, but the rot was already in place with the whole CU, adding levels to a game that didn't need them was a dumb idea, it didn't work, and was a huge part of the problem, but the first misstep was when they tried to implement Jedi through the 'hologrind' it changed the dynamics of the game into something ridiculous, but the NGE was a horrible option, if the game had been created as that version to begin with, it would have failed far faster, and we wouldn't be having this discussion because i really don't believe that anyone would have missed it. The NGE didn't fail just because they changed SWG and people didn't like it, the NGE failed because it was utter rubbish, at first SWG was held up as an example of why you should never change a game after release, at least not that significantly, but the fact is, if the thing had been any good, then people would have played it, just look at Square Enix, if there was ever an example of changing a game for the better, there it is, FFXIV's first launch was dire, NGE dire, but now, its a hugely popular and successful game, disproving the supposition that changing a game after release is a recipe for disaster, instead, the only thing that matters is if the game is any good, FFXIV;ARR is, SWG;NGE was however just awful, simple as that.
I will never stop wishing the original design, true to it's place in the Star Wars timeline between Episodes IV & V (without player Jedi), could be debugged and balanced without any major re-design. There was so much, so right, about SWG. It was a masterpiece "in the rough", the likes of which has not been surpassed.
I must be the most backwards person then. I had zero interest in SWG as it launched, and did not purchase the game until the NGE. Of course, by then it was indeed a ghost town. Still I think that had the game launched with that model, they would have done much better.
NGE in a nutshell. My max level toon vanishes up SoE's collective arse overnight. They give me a respec token. Not to be too full of rage until I had at least tried the new model I respecced into a BH. The respec token was bugged and 30 levels vanished up the same collective arsehole. I contacted a GM only to be told he could do nothing about it and that I would just have to level up again. I told him that I could do nothing about my credit card refusing to pay SoE another penny and quit along with the other 140,000 or so players that left the game on the same day. The sad thing is that this experience was not unique to me.
If SWG had launched with the NGE it would have been empty in months because it would have had as little polish as the original release. If SWG had been released by Blizzard on the other hand we may now be viewing it as we view WoW. The game that brought a crap ton of new players to the genre at the same time as smashing all that was good about MMO's when they were niche. You know, small things like good communities for instance.
I got over the SWG debacle years ago, but I still would never touch a single game this Walton guy works on for as long as I am playing MMOS. .....and with that I will be avoiding CF. It never really interested me anyways.
He basically confirmed what a lot of SWG defenders on these forums refuse to believe, that SWG peaked at far less players than SWTOR had at its lowest point in 2012, and that it was bleeding subs well before the NGE (went from a little over 400k down to 250k before NGE was even announced).
Yes they were also influenced by WoW's numbers, but to claim that NGE wasn't a last ditch effort is strait up sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalala" at this point.
Didn't they release an expansion a few weeks before NGE which was then srapped?
Anyway, reason I left the game was because there was nothing to do after reaching max level. The battles in the first picture did not happen.
That pic did happen, but it was pre-nge. pre-nge battles were found everywere, from towns (for the right to controll said town without game mechanics) those battles were also at player towns to destroy the base setups those towns had , basicly giant raids of 50+ vs 50+
swg is to date one of the best games ever made, there were plenty of less active mmo's (player count) and the game could and should have run for the decade to come. but eh like all pre-crisis industries it was simply not enough for the owners/shareholders.
atleast swg continues in a other form and bin a lesson to the industrie
He basically confirmed what a lot of SWG defenders on these forums refuse to believe, that SWG peaked at far less players than SWTOR had at its lowest point in 2012, and that it was bleeding subs well before the NGE (went from a little over 400k down to 250k before NGE was even announced).
Yes they were also influenced by WoW's numbers, but to claim that NGE wasn't a last ditch effort is strait up sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalala" at this point.
sw:tor came out almost a decade after swg, in swg time there were only a few million gamers , in 2012 that number had grown to hunderds of milions.. cant compare the two in terms of player numbers at all..
its like saying that in 1990 more people had sony cd players then in people had phillips cd players in 1980 ..
The first thing is that if it had the NGE in the first place, there would have been nothing to distinguish it from anything else other than that it was Star Wars. Now let's think about this for a moment. The most common complaint now is that every game is WoW with different graphics and one or two gimmicks. And currently the MMO industry is in trouble. It's numbers are slowly dwindling precisely because everyone wants to be WoW.
The format SWG initially started with, though it didn't have the numbers that were wanted, was a great format. It was different, and interesting. Something that no one else was doing. SWG DID have the potential to change the industry. Instead, in a desperate nonsense attempt to grab onto what WoW was presenting (let's face it, WoW already existed for a while in record numbers when SWG suddenly decided to do a complete about face and change its format almost totally) ended up causing even more problems in the end because it alienated the players that it already had.
At that time, WoW was at its peak. There was no possible way that SWG could have grabbed players from them. So not only did it not grab the players it wanted, it also alienated the players it already had.
What SWG did made no sense whatsoever. It's not "should have made it like the NGE in the first place" because that would have made it generic, and wouldn't have helped.
Instead of being happy with what they had, instead of capitulating to the format that WoW established, SWG should have continued with what already existed, and expanded on it. It's never a good thing to copy others. You want to be your own product.
Let me put it another way... You remember what happened with Coca Cola, don't you? When Pepsi hit the market, they wanted to compete harder and they changed the recipe to become New Coke. And nearly went under because of it. They had to reinstate the old recipe as Coke Classic. Because Coke Classic is what people wanted. So let Pepsi be Pepsi and Coke be Coke. They are both good. Being different hasn't been a bad thing for either of them.
It should have been the same with SWG. Being different isn't bad so long as you do it well.
SWG has the best of both worlds. Half the peopel who claimed it was the best game ever probably never played it. And it had a clear cut definec moment (at least for most peopel ) where the game was killed with a single action.
truth is the game wasnt nearly as great as everyone remembers, thats why I know most people who claim to have played it and make these comments didnt play it. Nor did the NGE kill it off it was dying long before then. When (cant remember now) took over that was it. That started all the problems.
But it was an SOE game and other than Eq (which was a decent game at the time) SOE has failed miserably (probably why they no longer exist) on the gaming front. So it was doomed from the start. We just didnt know it was going to be the crown jewel of SOE failures.
I was one of these early time SWG players, and SWG was my first MMO ever. I guess, both we the gamers and SOE simply didn't know better in those early days. Keep in mind, in 2000 when development began, we knew virtually nothing about how MMOs and the internet would develop.
NGE cut me right into the heart. I played a lot of time as Entertainer in a group, giving buffs, healing combat fatigue, and once and then giving haircuts. And as Creature Handler. So the the NGE essentially took away everything from me. From one day to the other, almost everything I had build was gone.
Still, I always had understand for their doing. Back then, the numbers of people who are into such complex pure sandbox games were greatly overestimated. But nobody knew for real back then. Even today, some deny that. Today, we all would know, if you build a pure sandbox, don't expect 500k+ to play that. But it was a harsh learning process. SWG had flaws, and they became even more clear to all of us, when WOW launched. I was in a 200+ guild back then in SWG, and virtually everyone who tried out WOW was hooked. I saw the game, the server and the guild literally bleed out people before the NGE, so I understand they were desperate to turn it around. It simply could not go on like before. SWG as it was, was way too much a niche game, only we didn't realize it back then.
However, what I DON'T understand is, why did they have to take away those things which were working? Why could they not add the new combat classes and still leave those old classes in, which were not combat focussed? Why could they not add the quest on top of the existing system? I guess, in hindsight, it would have been better to just start a new SW MMO from scratch, based on the experience. The sad reality is, that the huge fail of SWG caused all the following MMOs to stay as far away from ANY sandbox elements as possible, and we have those reduced mere combat MMO of today.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Originally posted by Talonsin Admittedly, 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.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Originally posted by Talonsin Admittedly, 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...
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.
Comments
I wish people would stop using greed as the natural setting for all businesses. There's a difference in trying to be as successful as possible and being greedy.
The problem is that if you make your game more, not less, like wow, then what's going to happen is you're going to be competing with wow. And wow is VERY good at being wow. Better to lap up the sw fans and sandbox fans who want nothing to do with wow, or who try woe and find themselves feeling empty.
Unfortunately greed of execs prevailed and the game tried their hand at the wow game, and failed.
Lessons learned? ? Remains to be seen I guess.
RIP Ribbitribbitt you are missed, kid.
Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
Dwight D Eisenhower
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
Henry Rollins
As mentioned several times, SWG was released in a horrible, buggy state, with many parts absent or unworkable. I had friends working on the game, and their private tales of awful mid and upper management shenanigans were pretty instructive. They warned me off playing it. The top guys involved, some with million dollar salaries, were responsible for many of the terrible decisions surrounding the game. And a significant portion were asshats to boot.
They would have been better off just refining the original, as at least they'd have been likely to keep their core players. I suspect though that by the time the game went through its defining NGE change, they probably couldn't actually fix the original game engine -- lots of the talent (programmers, designers, etc) having been long gone and/or disgruntled.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
While greed is a valid point, NOTHING in those days compare to games these days. I mean PAYING to play a game in alpha state that when finished will be F2P. I guess the game companies finally found a winning formula. Not making a great game, just make a game with great hype then capitalizing on that.
Honestly the game had TONS of potential, BUT it was created and RUN into the ground by SOE. I mean how can you fail with a Star Wars License ? I realize SWTOR is not a great example but it is one. As a mmorpg it is pretty damn horrible but as a RPG with multiplayer aspects its pretty awesome. If you play it as a Coop Knights of the Old Republic its pretty damn good. Trouble is people dont generally play it for the story they play it for PVP and showing off cash shop items.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Huh? EQII was rushed out to beat Wow and was a worse buggy mess than SWG at the time. SWG had evolved past it's buggy stage by the time Wow came out.
If they had kept the sandbox instead of attempting to change it to a themepark there is a good chance the game would still be around. Probably would have done better as a themepark at release, but I think it would have died quicker.
If they had optimized the code and put in a better quest system, made it easier to get to Jedi and added some extra character slots instead of NGE the game might have bloomed.
I don't care what a developer says, it was Smedley who initiated the change. He bears sole responsibility for the disaster.
Oh and there were most of the characters and places from the movies in the game, you just had to look for them.
The Millennium Falcon had the special power of 'Screenwriter on your side'; a very powerful perk. SWG didn't.
It being your greatest MMO experience doesn't make the game well designed, or delivered in a reasonably finished state.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I disagree, the NGE was really the final nail in SWG's coffin, but the rot was already in place with the whole CU, adding levels to a game that didn't need them was a dumb idea, it didn't work, and was a huge part of the problem, but the first misstep was when they tried to implement Jedi through the 'hologrind' it changed the dynamics of the game into something ridiculous, but the NGE was a horrible option, if the game had been created as that version to begin with, it would have failed far faster, and we wouldn't be having this discussion because i really don't believe that anyone would have missed it. The NGE didn't fail just because they changed SWG and people didn't like it, the NGE failed because it was utter rubbish, at first SWG was held up as an example of why you should never change a game after release, at least not that significantly, but the fact is, if the thing had been any good, then people would have played it, just look at Square Enix, if there was ever an example of changing a game for the better, there it is, FFXIV's first launch was dire, NGE dire, but now, its a hugely popular and successful game, disproving the supposition that changing a game after release is a recipe for disaster, instead, the only thing that matters is if the game is any good, FFXIV;ARR is, SWG;NGE was however just awful, simple as that.
NGE in a nutshell. My max level toon vanishes up SoE's collective arse overnight. They give me a respec token. Not to be too full of rage until I had at least tried the new model I respecced into a BH. The respec token was bugged and 30 levels vanished up the same collective arsehole. I contacted a GM only to be told he could do nothing about it and that I would just have to level up again. I told him that I could do nothing about my credit card refusing to pay SoE another penny and quit along with the other 140,000 or so players that left the game on the same day. The sad thing is that this experience was not unique to me.
If SWG had launched with the NGE it would have been empty in months because it would have had as little polish as the original release. If SWG had been released by Blizzard on the other hand we may now be viewing it as we view WoW. The game that brought a crap ton of new players to the genre at the same time as smashing all that was good about MMO's when they were niche. You know, small things like good communities for instance.
He basically confirmed what a lot of SWG defenders on these forums refuse to believe, that SWG peaked at far less players than SWTOR had at its lowest point in 2012, and that it was bleeding subs well before the NGE (went from a little over 400k down to 250k before NGE was even announced).
Yes they were also influenced by WoW's numbers, but to claim that NGE wasn't a last ditch effort is strait up sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "lalalala" at this point.
Didn't they release an expansion a few weeks before NGE which was then srapped?
Anyway, reason I left the game was because there was nothing to do after reaching max level. The battles in the first picture did not happen.
That pic did happen, but it was pre-nge. pre-nge battles were found everywere, from towns (for the right to controll said town without game mechanics) those battles were also at player towns to destroy the base setups those towns had , basicly giant raids of 50+ vs 50+
swg is to date one of the best games ever made, there were plenty of less active mmo's (player count) and the game could and should have run for the decade to come. but eh like all pre-crisis industries it was simply not enough for the owners/shareholders.
atleast swg continues in a other form and bin a lesson to the industrie
sw:tor came out almost a decade after swg, in swg time there were only a few million gamers , in 2012 that number had grown to hunderds of milions.. cant compare the two in terms of player numbers at all..
its like saying that in 1990 more people had sony cd players then in people had phillips cd players in 1980 ..
The first thing is that if it had the NGE in the first place, there would have been nothing to distinguish it from anything else other than that it was Star Wars. Now let's think about this for a moment. The most common complaint now is that every game is WoW with different graphics and one or two gimmicks. And currently the MMO industry is in trouble. It's numbers are slowly dwindling precisely because everyone wants to be WoW.
The format SWG initially started with, though it didn't have the numbers that were wanted, was a great format. It was different, and interesting. Something that no one else was doing. SWG DID have the potential to change the industry. Instead, in a desperate nonsense attempt to grab onto what WoW was presenting (let's face it, WoW already existed for a while in record numbers when SWG suddenly decided to do a complete about face and change its format almost totally) ended up causing even more problems in the end because it alienated the players that it already had.
At that time, WoW was at its peak. There was no possible way that SWG could have grabbed players from them. So not only did it not grab the players it wanted, it also alienated the players it already had.
What SWG did made no sense whatsoever. It's not "should have made it like the NGE in the first place" because that would have made it generic, and wouldn't have helped.
Instead of being happy with what they had, instead of capitulating to the format that WoW established, SWG should have continued with what already existed, and expanded on it. It's never a good thing to copy others. You want to be your own product.
Let me put it another way... You remember what happened with Coca Cola, don't you? When Pepsi hit the market, they wanted to compete harder and they changed the recipe to become New Coke. And nearly went under because of it. They had to reinstate the old recipe as Coke Classic. Because Coke Classic is what people wanted. So let Pepsi be Pepsi and Coke be Coke. They are both good. Being different hasn't been a bad thing for either of them.
It should have been the same with SWG. Being different isn't bad so long as you do it well.
SWG has the best of both worlds. Half the peopel who claimed it was the best game ever probably never played it. And it had a clear cut definec moment (at least for most peopel ) where the game was killed with a single action.
truth is the game wasnt nearly as great as everyone remembers, thats why I know most people who claim to have played it and make these comments didnt play it. Nor did the NGE kill it off it was dying long before then. When (cant remember now) took over that was it. That started all the problems.
But it was an SOE game and other than Eq (which was a decent game at the time) SOE has failed miserably (probably why they no longer exist) on the gaming front. So it was doomed from the start. We just didnt know it was going to be the crown jewel of SOE failures.
I was one of these early time SWG players, and SWG was my first MMO ever. I guess, both we the gamers and SOE simply didn't know better in those early days. Keep in mind, in 2000 when development began, we knew virtually nothing about how MMOs and the internet would develop.
NGE cut me right into the heart. I played a lot of time as Entertainer in a group, giving buffs, healing combat fatigue, and once and then giving haircuts. And as Creature Handler. So the the NGE essentially took away everything from me. From one day to the other, almost everything I had build was gone.
Still, I always had understand for their doing. Back then, the numbers of people who are into such complex pure sandbox games were greatly overestimated. But nobody knew for real back then. Even today, some deny that. Today, we all would know, if you build a pure sandbox, don't expect 500k+ to play that. But it was a harsh learning process. SWG had flaws, and they became even more clear to all of us, when WOW launched. I was in a 200+ guild back then in SWG, and virtually everyone who tried out WOW was hooked. I saw the game, the server and the guild literally bleed out people before the NGE, so I understand they were desperate to turn it around. It simply could not go on like before. SWG as it was, was way too much a niche game, only we didn't realize it back then.
However, what I DON'T understand is, why did they have to take away those things which were working? Why could they not add the new combat classes and still leave those old classes in, which were not combat focussed? Why could they not add the quest on top of the existing system? I guess, in hindsight, it would have been better to just start a new SW MMO from scratch, based on the experience. The sad reality is, that the huge fail of SWG caused all the following MMOs to stay as far away from ANY sandbox elements as possible, and we have those reduced mere combat MMO of today.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
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.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
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...
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.