Star wars galaxies - the truth is out there

speeduk · 15 May 2006 at 01:26

I follow the SWG forums closely because I still hope this game will get sorted out in the near future...

Anway I found this.....

After months if not years of nothing but lies - the top man owns up to messing up the game which had possibly the most potential out of all mmorpgs.....

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/...sage.id=632844&view=by_date_ascending&page=15

The SWG community has been voting with it's feet since the NGE came about. Either we end up being right about our ability to turn the ship around and make a game that's BETTER than it was before, or we were wrong and we fail. Either way we were losing subs before the NGE and believe it or not, we are losing them at a slower rate than before. I'm not going to pretend we didn't lose a bunch of subs from this. We did. And I don't think the game is where it needs to be yet to aquire new subs. But it's getting there with each and every publish.

At the end of the day there are a lot of people in this community that wonder why we did this? Why did we "deliberately" try and **** people off. Obviously that wasn't our intent. This is a business and we needed to improve the results of the business. Did we make a mistake? Maybe.. but only time is going to tell on that one. One thing is certain. We made a mistake with how we presented it to the community, and for that I'm sorry. I still think it was a needed thing though. It's not as simple as "you should have just fixed the things we were complaining about". That doesn't address the very real fact that what we had was a hardcore game that wasn't going to attract the mass audience that the Star Wars IP brings to the table.

I think this is the first time he has admitted to losing people from the game due to the NGE and also totally messing up the way the NGE was implemented.

Oh well it only took 6 months? :rolleyes:

Darkwave · 15 May 2006 at 01:29

They lost me due to the CU, then again to the NGE. Screw them, they're morons.

Zefan · 15 May 2006 at 01:29

Let's face it, the only thing that'll bring Galaxies back to it's former glory is a remake, not a rollback. Hopefully the new game being talked about will live up to the greatness of Pre-Cu, hell even Post-Cu wasn't that bad. NGE = Sin.

Darkwave · 15 May 2006 at 01:33

I love how they keep insulting the general gamer's intelligence by calling pre-CU "hardcore" too. It wasn't "hardcore" at all, maybe unbalanced, but definitely not hard to learn to play.

I've got friends with kids only single-digits old who used to play pre-CU, and those kids have said "I don't want to play this anymore daddy, it's boring now." True story.

speeduk · 15 May 2006 at 01:41

Exsomnis said:
I love how they keep insulting the general gamer's intelligence by calling pre-CU "hardcore" too. It wasn't "hardcore" at all, maybe unbalanced, but definitely not hard to learn to play.

I've got friends with kids only single-digits old who used to play pre-CU, and those kids have said "I don't want to play this anymore daddy, it's boring now." True story.

That wasn't hardcore - that was unique and actually fairly interesting.

Hardcore is EVE online.

Edit: This sums up my SWG experience....

When I was a little kid and first saw Star Wars I thought Stormies were the coolest guys ever. They had that awesome armor, a great theme song, and were the "faceless face" of the Empire. Loved it.

This game was originally set shortly after the end of Episode IV. Back when the game first launched people played to have fun, to explore, to learn their profession. People weren't even sure if jedi was in the game.

Then SOE leaked it to gain/retain subscribers. All of the sudden the entire focus of 75% of the players' experience went from enjoying their profession and living in the SWG universe to some mindless jedi grind. This shifted the entire point of the game.

Then they went ahead and made the village and all of the sudden the entire server would be on Dathomir doing this or that. Jedi had great power, but even by the time of the village jedi were popping up everywhere. Every day in Theed after Pub 7 I remember seeing 3-5 jedi all the time.

But what about me? What about the lowly Stormtrooper who didn't give a hoot in hell about the force? Who deleted that stupid force crystal. Who sent the old man packing every time his ugly face showed up. Where was my path of advancement for my character? Where was my Stormtrooper Academy? Where my Storm Commando training?

They funneled the entire userbase of this game into a single alpha profession. They wasted years of development time on a single profession instead of focusing on the core game.

Everyone else got elbowed out of the way. Stuff got pushed back and forgotten about. Smugglers? The GCW update? C'mon....

VeNT · 15 May 2006 at 01:48

how is EVE hardcore
it only takes 3 years to learn the basics

I've never played SWG but I was tempted to when it came out, whats all these NGE/CU stuff about?

SAJ · 15 May 2006 at 01:49

Hardcore? What a joke!
When SWG first came out, my friends seven year old daughter was able to grind her own character unsupervised. And his five year old could do the same with minimum supervision.

In fact the memory of those two happily playing SWG has kept my life mmorpg free to this day.

speeduk · 15 May 2006 at 01:51

VeNT said:
how is EVE hardcore
it only takes 3 years to learn the basics

I've never played SWG but I was tempted to when it came out, whats all these NGE/CU stuff about?

Eve is hardcore compared to pre cu SWG. Only 3 years to learn the basics? It took me a day to learn the basics in SWG.

CU = combat upgrade.
NGE = pile of crap they forced on players 6 months ago which 90% of people hated.

VeNT · 15 May 2006 at 01:52

speeduk said:
Eve is hardcore compared to pre cu SWG. Only 3 years to learn the basics? It took me a day to learn the basics in SWG.

CU = combat upgrade.
NGE = pile of crap they forced on players 6 months ago which 90% of people hated.

what did it change?

speeduk · 15 May 2006 at 01:54

VeNT said:
what did it change?

I was gonna skim it lol because it changed a lot of things.

Basically it went from a game with variety to a jedi fest. The devs went away from the original concept of the game and turned it into KOTOR online - but in a very buggy/beta state.

I was a creature handler/sniper/hunter character. At the peak I was making millions a day hunting. Then after the combat upgrade they made it so hunting was not really a valid way to earn money.

Then they scrapped creature handling from the game after the NGE. :mad:

A poll on the forums showed that a lot of players were creature handlers of some sort (about 20%??).

VeNT · 15 May 2006 at 01:56

speeduk said:
I was gonna skim it lol because it changed a lot of things.

Basically it went from a game with variety to a jedi fest. The devs went away from the original concept of the game and turned it into KOTOR online - but in a very buggy/beta state.

lame
tbh thats what I love about EVE
its not all "OH I'M THE BESTEST SNIPER111"
anyone can own anything with the right setup and teamwork and I'd say just about every player over 3 months is unique in his skills set

speeduk · 15 May 2006 at 01:58

VeNT said:
lame
tbh thats what I love about EVE
its not all "OH I'M THE BESTEST SNIPER111"
anyone can own anything with the right setup and teamwork and I'd say just about every player over 3 months is unique in his skills set

Edited in some more in my above post. I am sure some of the other forum members will share their experience.

Grr @ 2am think I will pass out now.

Darkwave · 15 May 2006 at 02:10

In Star Wars Galaxies I always played the teras kasi artist, pikeman, fencer, weaponsmith, armoursmith, bio-engineer, and creature handler classes the most. Funnily enough, they're the ones that got hit the hardest by the NGE.

Since I knew I was going to quit anyway, I used my character respec to try out Jedi. Boy did it stink in the NGE, not to mention that everyone else in the game was now one too.

dbmzk1 · 15 May 2006 at 08:38

I miss pre-cu. I even miss cu when I think about it. I played a rifleman doctor. It was one of the best games about. Then the NGE came and I have never played it since.

SOE = imp scum

Saying that I am playing EverQuest 2 at the moment so... lol

barney · 15 May 2006 at 10:45

I left when they put the stupid force progression trees in as it really was KOTOR online as said above.

I had 2 accounts one a Weaponsmith/armorsmith "alt" and my orginal account which went through loads of combat professions but was always a smuggler/pistoleer at heart

My Alt ended up being my main char and i used to spend about 90% of my playing time (which was a lot in them days) just crafting or touring the galaxy doing resource surveys or even just sitting in my shop and chatting to the people who came in to buy my stuff. It WAS the best MMORPG ever despite its many faults and bugs but having Jedi destroyed the whole game. Especially as SOE then made Jedi the whole focus.

I remember reading the forums and all the time being promised that professions like Smuggler, carbineer and Commando would all be vastly inmproved and that there would be special missions for smugglers but none of it ever happened, every patch there would be an easier way for people to grind out a Jedi toon and yet more stuff that was for Jedi's only.

It really is a very good lesson to every games publisher/designer on how not to "improve" a game.

VeNT · 15 May 2006 at 11:00

barney said:
snip

If there is one thing I've learned from SOE its that they don't give a **** about the player base.
as long as they get enough money to make a profit they are happy
look at planetside, who cares about all the bugs/exploites, just keep trying to add content!
even when the games dead!

Noxis · 15 May 2006 at 11:34

SWG was fundamentaly flawed and doomed to fail from the outset - ignoring the glaring problems of no content when first release along with bugs ITS SET IN THE WRONG TIME PERIOD

Star Wars is without a doubt THE best universe to set a sci-fi mmorpg, its an already developed world with a massive amount of depth and potential storyline for scope.

They should have set it after the 6 films when the Jedi numbers are building back up, they should allow FULL UNRESTRICTED pvp allowing people to fully go to the dark / light side. As well as fully explore galaxies and go between planets, build bases towns (as they allowed people too). So much could have been done, but they set it in the wrong time frame from the outside and killed pretty much any potential.

Chris1712 · 15 May 2006 at 11:42

Exsomnis said:
They lost me due to the CU, then again to the NGE. Screw them, they're morons.

Quoted for truth. If they rolled it back to pre-cu or even post-cu/pre-nge, i would be back on it in a flash. Loved playing this game, loved the universe and all the items, and the detail, and the gameplay. It was just a perfec mmo.

EDIT: I disagree with the above, it should be set when it is, the whole point of the game is to be the guy in the background, not "OMFGWTFBBQ I WANNA BE A JEDI!!!11", you have numerous other pants star wars games for that. This is what i really hate about the NGE, its just dumbed down so much, and you can be a jedi from the start, wtf is that about. They should kill it with fire from orbit.

Zefan · 15 May 2006 at 11:42

Noxis said:
ITS SET IN THE WRONG TIME PERIOD

I disagree. Time period was fine - when there were no jedi around. Jedi did utterly kill the game. I remember when I used to go "OH MY GOD. A JEDI. :eek:

" but that didn't last long come CU and NGE. I agree that it was the best MMORPG to date by a stupidly long way.

Nieldo · 15 May 2006 at 12:20

I used to play swg, was a bio engineer, it was great, I had a house out side of a city on Tatooine.

I had just managed to make some good contacts to sell my wares to and I had invvested in some harvesters and survay skills.

Was quite fun but I didnt play enough and ended up leaving, its a shame now because I would probably end up going back to it now I have a computer that would probably run it flawlessly

.

But I tryed the new patch thing via a trial, didnt play through the tutorial it was so crap