Originally posted by navaji

I'm glad I started this post...I see there is alot of diffrent views.

I never had the glitch issues everyone else talked about and I played 4-5 hours a day for close to 2 years. I must have been very lucky.

My concern with this new game is that it will funnel you into a story line and not allow for much freedom or creativaty. I was never a quest player, even back in the old EQ days. I hunted for XP never did quests. So for me a heavly quest driven MMO (like Conan) is just to confining, I like the sandbox.

Same here, I never experienced these issues some folks are ranting and raving about, and I played at least 5 hours a day. I ran tons of missions from the terminals and never once saw a lair spawn in the sky. *shrug* Guess I was lucky too.

I also never saw the terminals as a primary conduit for "story", either. My Bothan Doctor making his medical supplies to sell and healing folks of their wound was my story in the SW universe. I didn't need random npcs telling me to go do this and that in order to feel some sort of accomplishment or heroic. I found ways to do that on my own, and the folks I helped expressed their appreciation for my efforts. That, to me, is heroic. That, to me, is a sense of accomplishment.

Meh, to each their own. Some people want adulation from npcs screaming "yay, you're a hero". I prefer gaining the respect of other players (whether through combat prowess or by providing a useful service) who have the capacity to give merit or not to my deeds and aren't scripted to pat me on the back.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...I also never saw the terminals as a primary conduit for "story", either. My Bothan Doctor making his medical supplies to sell and healing folks of their wound was my story in the SW universe...

Personally, I'd hardly call performing your character's basic function a "story", anymore than I'd call sitting in a laundromat watching clothes tumble dry a "story". But as you said, to each their own.

Originally posted by navaji

I'm glad I started this post...I see there is alot of diffrent views.

I never had the glitch issues everyone else talked about and I played 4-5 hours a day for close to 2 years. I must have been very lucky.

My concern with this new game is that it will funnel you into a story line and not allow for much freedom or creativaty. I was never a quest player, even back in the old EQ days. I hunted for XP never did quests. So for me a heavly quest driven MMO (like Conan) is just to confining, I like the sandbox.

Bear with me, as with six months of beta testing Conan, I threw in the towel on that rubbish game. But with the one possible exception of the quest to leave Tortage (which last I remember was skippable), what was preventing you from "hunting" for XP without a script? How were you confined?

Not to beat you up over this, but I've heard similar claims before. Nevertheless, I've yet to see a game wherein you couldn't skip quests altogether and grind to your heart's content. Am I missing something?

 SWG was okay but not great. I stayed with it from 2004-2006 and experienced it's many incarnations. That was the first problem I had with it. It was like a playing a different game every three months that first year because they went to the CU in early 2005 and then the NGE in late 2005.  Every time they changed the combat system I had to change my armour and weapons. What's really sad is the combat was the LAST thing that needed changing. A little tweaking here and there to take care of the unbalance with melee vs ranged and it would have been fine. Instead, they dumbed it down to a cheap FPS,which I HATED.

The game always had bugs which was never adressed and the DEVS always ignored every classes problems with the exception of the Jedi crowd. That was their second big mistake. A game that takes place during the Empire Strikes back all of a sudden has jedi igniting their lightsabers in cities which totally undermines the story of the game.

There are too many problems with thatgame to list. Let's just say I'm glad a new one is being done by a new company. 

Hopefully, this new game will be NOTHING like SWG. 

Originally posted by hanshotfirst

Originally posted by navaji

I'm glad I started this post...I see there is alot of diffrent views.

I never had the glitch issues everyone else talked about and I played 4-5 hours a day for close to 2 years. I must have been very lucky.

My concern with this new game is that it will funnel you into a story line and not allow for much freedom or creativaty. I was never a quest player, even back in the old EQ days. I hunted for XP never did quests. So for me a heavly quest driven MMO (like Conan) is just to confining, I like the sandbox.

 

Bear with me, as with six months of beta testing Conan, I threw in the towel on that rubbish game. But with the one possible exception of the quest to leave Tortage (which last I remember was skippable), what was preventing you from "hunting" for XP without a script? How were you confined?

Not to beat you up over this, but I've heard similar claims before. Nevertheless, I've yet to see a game wherein you couldn't skip quests altogether and grind to your heart's content. Am I missing something?

I think the difference is in old SWG you got extra XP for group grinding. There was a big difference with killing a bol by yourslef and doing it with a group.Your grind time was greatly lessened.Not many games(if there are any) give you that.

That's another good feature that SWG had that they took away. By taking away group XP with the NGE, they made the quickest way to XP the boring as hell quests. And were they ever BORING.I play MMOs to be with people. Not NPCs. 

SWG before CU i think was the best MMO i have ever played. And i will probably try The Old Republic just to see if it can be compared to the old SWG i used to like so much.

SWG is much better in its' curret state than it ever was.

SOE actually fought back the dumbing down wanted by Lucasarts. They fought back so well that the best thing to do was to make a new MMO: TOR. Now Lucasarts can tell Bioware to dumb it down.

Well.. At least it will have a nice storyline.THats what KOTOR was about anyway

Originally posted by hanshotfirst

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

...I also never saw the terminals as a primary conduit for "story", either. My Bothan Doctor making his medical supplies to sell and healing folks of their wound was my story in the SW universe...

 

Personally, I'd hardly call performing your character's basic function a "story", anymore than I'd call sitting in a laundromat watching clothes tumble dry a "story". But as you said, to each their own.

Well, it is what you make of it and if you choose to make little of it, well, that's what you'll get in return. Thankfully enough tools were there and I met enough cool people that the medical company I made was fairly well known and through it created some memorable roleplay experiences. I've yet to experience an instance where an npc roleplayed back in a dynamic manner or at all.

Reading text on a screen is story, I suppose. So is reading a book. All mmo characters have basic functions, be it crafting or shooting a blaster pistol. I personally get more out of my play time interacting with other players and their dynamic stories, backgrounds, motives and desires that they create for their character (and incorporating my character's in with theirs) than a static or 3-4 choices of dialogue you get with npcs. MMOs should offer you as many venues as possible to interact and create in the world, not just "read along", in my opinion. Not just pew-pew-read-click-read-pew-pew. Having things like a large, varied crafting system, player constructed buildings (from bases to personal housing), as examples, give such venues. Sure, those in SWG weren't perfect, but they were a step in the right direction of what could, and in my opinion, should be any MMO company's goal to create.

But yeah, to each their own. It would be nice to see games offer both routes of experiencing story. One for those who want to read the book and one for those who want to write it.

"I gave up on SWG when they started messing around with the combat patch...however there was a 2 year period right from release that te game was exceptional.

So what I want to know is everyone looking forward to this SW MMO because SWG went to crap or did everyone think SWG was crap at launch? I feel that SWG had an absolute amazing look and feel, until they started trying dumb it down.

I will most likely play this game, but it makes me feel so dirty to think that instead of getting SOE to fix the SWG game to it original state, that everyone feels its time to make another SW MMO.

Please inlighten me as to why most folks don't even make note that SWG every was made..."

15 posts but no one has jumped all over  you?

I will try to "inlighten" you...there are about 5 MILLION threads on this site asking the same thing you are with your poll...

Anyway...

Originally posted by ZtyX

SWG is much better in its' curret state than it ever was.

It is (in therms of less bugs and less incomplete content) but it is nowhere near, and I mean like 1/1'000'000 as much fun. As a matter of fact, in it's current state it's just dust.

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by hanshotfirst

Originally posted by Abrahmm

LOL come on. What could you possibly dislike about player cities, great crafting, and a skill based system?

 

First of all, I believe I specified I wasn't opposed to a skill-based system — assuming it's balanced and free of exploits. Are you going to argue with me that's unreasonable, or pretend SWG's skill-based system was beyond reproach?

There were a few slight imbalances in SWG's skill system, but you are over-exaggerating how bad they were. The biggest problem with the skill system was the lack of a stat cap, which was needed. Beyond that, SWG's skill system was one of the best character customization implementation I have ever seen. 

A few 'slight' imbalances?  What game were you playing? 

You mentioned a stat cap; well that was THE issue.  The lack thereof didn't lead to 'slight imbalances, it lead to great imbalances.  Where do you think the term 'temploiter' came from?

I have to agree with the few of you out there who thought that SWG was a good game. I played on and off starting with it's release. Right at release the game had too many bugs and I quit playing, but it seemed that in my opinion when I came back that enough (far from all) of the bugs were fixed that made the game tolerable to me. Then the CU came out, and it really didn't sway me much. I still loved being a Master Ranger. One of the few on my server. I really enjoyed it whenever I'd go to the cantina and have the other players recognize me, say hello, and ask me to fetch them some hide from a certain planet, or wild milk. I enjoyed comming accross other players in the wilderness, popping up a camp and just chatting. I liked the fact that I could sit back and watch the city that I live in grow, and my house sitting water front. For whatever reason, I must've been one of the few people who loved to fish, because my fish fetched a pretty penny for in home decoration (anyone else remember building aquariums in their house?). I loved the interdependence on other players and the bonus to group xp. It forced players to interact with others to get almost anywhere. I created my own story. When the NGE came out, I felt completely betrayed because they axed my Ranger class. Told me to go be a Spy instead.

For those of you who care to read this, this is a post from my weblog I had at the time. See if this sounds familier to any of you:

Monday, November 07, 2005

I finally have something worth writing about.

About 2 weeks ago, I heard that my Ranger profession in Star Wars Galaxies was finally getting a much needed revamp. Upon looking into this, I found that this was in fact bad news for me. When I hear "Ranger" I think of a forest ranger, a survivalist, a frontiersman, someone who can find their way in the wilderness, and more or less live entirely on their own. Well, when SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) hears the word "Ranger," they think army ranger, special forces, spies, or the Antarian Ranger. I was somewhat displeased with this news, but other than smugglers (also set for a revamp at the same time), no one really cared. Even other Rangers didn't care so much, some did, most didn't.

About a week after that, the entire SWG community got some news. It seems to be universaly agreed bad news. SWG is changing forever. As of November 15th they are going to be releasing what is now being called NGE (new game enhancements). People will no longer be able to surrender skills to change professions. Force Sensitive will be one of the 7 (techincally 9) starting professions. That means no more "soul searching" or POI chasing to become glowy and start your 3 month quest to become a jedi initiate. You have to choose 1 and only 1 profession (with the exception of politician, and pilot), and in order to change professions, you have to delete your character. This has upset so many people in the game, including myself, that most people are leaving the game, or have already left. I've seen a few of my friends just go off into the wilderness to their favorite places to sit under a tree to fall asleep forever. *tear* Some people I know went to their favorite cantina (either "The Golden 'C'", or the catina in Theed, Naboo) in order to have a few drinks with friends, listen to some good music, watch some fine dancers, and simply pass away. Behn announced at a town meeting of his pending suicide. He started giving away some of his stuff, and today there was a memorial inside city hall along with a gravestone at his medical center.

The new release will be November 15th, and my account ends on November 22nd. That will give me 7 days to decide whether I like the NGE. If I don't, I plan to return to my Ranger roots, and go back out into the wilderness where I will also sit near one of my favorite locations and log off forever.

And I've stuck true to my words. I tried the NGE out for all of 4-6 hours, walked over to a memorial that my player city had placed in memory of the old ways and logged off... forever.

Originally posted by oddjobs74

The problem with SWG was that it wasn't Star Wars.  It really had nothing to do with Star Wars. If you changed the looks of architecture, ships, armor, weapons ect, There was nothing to remind you of Star Wars.

Everybody in armor? Smugglers? Martial Arts masters? There was no Galactic Civil War in evidence. The quest syestem at launch was basicly via terminals, which gave a good read and cool description of a mission, but every time what you had to do was drive 3K miles to some random location in the middle of nowhere to encounter 3 storm troopers chillin by a flag doing jumping jacks, clapping or dancing. Then, after your 1st shot, you stood there and shot them at point blank for a minute and a half while they punched you. Now they are all dead, so you have to shoot a flag for a half an hour untill it is destroyed in a spectacular explosion. Mission acomplished. Now do this about 9 billion times.

The character models were rediculous. A belt thats like  3 foot wide ring around your waist? They didnt have swimming pools in SWG...And again Armor..why does every character have to be in armor? It simply Isn't Star Wars.

It was a poorly executed concept, and the fact they had jedi in it at all was a mistake. There was again, just nothing Star Wars about except for the skins, and look of the enviornment.

With that said I did enjoy the mechanics of the game at launch. I liked the 3 pools of health. The crafting was great, Housing and player cities was nicely done, and it was somewhat playable if you took the Star Wars part of it with a grain of salt.

haha, the mission system was terrible, and really only served to give completely new players a means through which to earn some money...I remember grinding missions in order to make 30k in credits to buy a set of Chitin armor, back when the best armorsmiths still weren't making anything better than armorweave.

And then the glorious 90% composit came out...i was awestruck by the stupidity of having to get BUFFS just to put your armor on, and God forbid I accidentally take a piece off and have to spend 10k to get rebuffed to put my bracer back on.

Originally posted by hanshotfirst

Originally posted by VGTheory

Awesome things that need to be implemented into other MMORPGS:

*Player cities

*Crafting based economy

*Massive crafting experimentation/resource qualities

*Skill Point system that is refundable (other than talents, which are boring to me) 

 

With the possible exception of a skill point system (one that's thoroughly balanced, tested, and exploit free — unlike SWG), I couldn't disagree more.

I don't think it suits every MMO, but i do love all of those qualities and would like to see more MMO's with them. Just maybe not all.

EDIT: Also, im one of those people who loved galaxies Pre-CU and stopped after they, imo, screwed it.

Originally posted by ZtyX

SWG is much better in its' curret state than it ever was.

 

um no. at launch, the game was exciting peice of junk with little to no restrictions that everyone wanted recycled.

now its just a peice of junk thats not even worth recycling.

SWG player economy was better then Eve. 

SWG leveling up wasn't a chore. 

SWG fireworks were graphically and audibly pleasant.  

SWG combat was cerebral.  

SWG was really a big sandbox, no other game comes close to player created content.  

SWG mining wasn't a grind, it was actually fun cause you didn't do the mining manually yourself you looked and sampled for minerals in a thoughtful manner then plopped down a thumper which does the mining for you.

Then someone went and screwed it up, nice.

Originally posted by Nerf09

SWG player economy was better then Eve. 

Really??

SWG leveling up wasn't a chore. 

Of course it wasn't. All you needed was a good recursive macro, and something worthwhile to watch on TV.

SWG fireworks were graphically and audibly pleasant.  

Um, ok?

SWG combat was cerebral.  

Cerebral? Really??

SWG was really a big sandbox, no other game comes close to player created content.  

Except, of course, games that far exceed it, like Spore or Second Life.

SWG mining wasn't a grind, it was actually fun cause you didn't do the mining manually yourself you looked and sampled for minerals in a thoughtful manner then plopped down a thumper which does the mining for you.

It was actually fun 'cause you didn't do the mining yourself? That's like saying, "cooking is fun, 'cause I go to restaurants."


Then someone went and screwed it up, nice.

What if, they added space and made it the sandbox part? Kotor experience for your avatar and ground game. Then a very tiny and far less complex eve in space with JTL combat. Would that be at least a type of comprimise even if it will never happen?

Originally posted by hanshotfirst

Originally posted by Nerf09

SWG player economy was better then Eve. 

Really??

SWG leveling up wasn't a chore. 

Of course it wasn't. All you needed was a good recursive macro, and something worthwhile to watch on TV.

SWG fireworks were graphically and audibly pleasant.  

Um, ok?

SWG combat was cerebral.  

Cerebral? Really??

SWG was really a big sandbox, no other game comes close to player created content.  

Except, of course, games that far exceed it, like Spore or Second Life.

SWG mining wasn't a grind, it was actually fun cause you didn't do the mining manually yourself you looked and sampled for minerals in a thoughtful manner then plopped down a thumper which does the mining for you.

It was actually fun 'cause you didn't do the mining yourself? That's like saying, "cooking is fun, 'cause I go to restaurants."


Then someone went and screwed it up, nice.

 

aside from harvesters when i first started mining skills in swg I would make a macro and the game would do it for me, I would read a book or do some crap around the house with the sound up loud incase i wandered out of my player city and something started attacking me, when i really think about it, I truly didnt do much ''playing'' in pre-cu I macrod everything just about, the only thing I didnt macro was space, the kashyyk quests and jtl stuff.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

I enjoyed SWG at launch. I liked the fact that it took into account many non-combat oriented aspects of living in the SW universe into significant account and allowed players a chance to play something outside of percieved "iconic" or "heroic" roles. I spent the vast majority of my time as a Doctor, healing folks that came into the hospitals of their would damage as well as gathering the best stat resources to make stimpaks, wound packs and other pharmaceuticals to sell in our pa mall and in the 3 outposts on various planets we had.

Was a good feeling knowing I was helping other folks enjoy the game the way they wanted (pvp or pve combat) in a manner that was very satisfying for me as well.

Hey khal you may like roblox online, it is a legos type mmo where everything is uder created, my kid plays it and it is quite fun, just thuoght you may like to check it out as i was reading that quote thing in yer sig under yer post.

The original SWG was the best game I've ever played.  Then AND now.  And I play a LOT of mmo's and console games.  Were the graphics the best, no.  Were there bugs, certainly.  Were there imbalances...yes.  But I've never had as much fun as I did pre CU SWG.  I've never played any other game 16 hours straight like I did a couple of times with SWG.  I've been searching for other mmos since the demise of SWG with the horrendous NGE to fill the void left by that game but none have lived up to it.  I play WoW now mostly because of the polish of the game but quite frankly am not having any fun anymore with the game and just playing sparingly until 2010 or 2011 when TOR comes out. 

I remember the day that the first Jedi was discovered ( I was on Intrepid, the first server to have a Jedi in SWG) and man what an AMAZING feeling.  Or when there still were a relatively small number of us Jedi and I'd have 2-3 BH's come after me as I'm trying to level.  Absolutely exilierating, I'm hoping TOR can recapture some of those feelings again for me.  I'm not looking for a game with all the same features SWG has.  If it's totally different in most aspects of the game I'm fine with that.  But Star Wars is THE premiere IP of them all for me, and with SWG dead I just cant WAIT for TOR.

Played SWG from launch for 2 years. So far it's still the best experience and fun I had in all mmo I played, around 10 of them.

It's wasn't perfect, far far from it.

- bad points: rushed launch date, too buggy, combat balance (high buff, high armor, high heals, dizzy/KD, CombatMedic,...), too much grinding, lack of content.

- good points: player cities, customized housing decoration, skilled based from over 32 professions, crafting, crafting, and did I say crafting?

SWTOR is stil far from launch, but I doubt that it will be near SWG at all. If I want to play the original SWG again, there is ******. Sorry I can't name it, I was already warned on this forum not to.

the player bounty hunter system i thought was great. especially with jedi. it was alot of fun. of course there were alot of bugs in every system, but alot of great idea's that weren't just implemented to perfection with no imbalance.

grinding a toon and having a BH attack you from nowhere was always fun, also being the BH. the player cities were fantastic, as were the player owned base's.

the crafting/trading system was tremendous.

the biggest flaw of the game, was SOE's resource stat management, they allowed resources to get to high that allowed crafters to make insance Comp armor sets. Having such strong armor with such high stats rendered certain profressions useless or close to useless in general pvp, such as pistoleer, carbineer, (in some case's TKM even)

Originally posted by navaji

I gave up on SWG when they started messing around with the combat patch...however there was a 2 year period right from release that te game was exceptional.

So what I want to know is everyone looking forward to this SW MMO because SWG went to crap or did everyone think SWG was crap at launch? I feel that SWG had an absolute amazing look and feel, until they started trying dumb it down.

I will most likely play this game, but it makes me feel so dirty to think that instead of getting SOE to fix the SWG game to it original state, that everyone feels its time to make another SW MMO.

Please inlighten me as to why most folks don't even make note that SWG every was made...

 You thought SWG was dumbed down, your in for one big treat then, my predictions about the go to point A kill 5 thugs go to point B is congrats your a trained rat.    You actually think this games going to be anything more than a comic book look and AOC style lead you around by your knose game play, your dreaming more than thier marketing team.
 

I never liked SWG.  I got drawn into it as my only option for first of all, an MMO, but also a Star Wars brand game.  I absolutely hated the route SOE took with that game.  I felt that they totally didn't capture the Star Wars Universe in the art, but also added a bunch of stupid things from the EU that I found totally stupid.

However KOTOR is a new part of the EU that I actually like.  It's actually the only part of it that I like.  It's just like the Star Wars that I know and love set thousands of years before the movies.

I think SWTOR will capture what SWG never did.  And it will do what SWG could never do and that's immerse the player into the Star Wars Universe the way they were meant to be immersed.