Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

complete download, install, play and see

 experience the game by yourself

u will answer yourself

ppl do love starwars, but do not like soe's vision/acts regarding game development

waiting kotor online atm

miss starwars

To understand you have to start with pre-CU and the lies from SOE.  They...by their own admission chucked their current playerbase for a playerbase that never materialized.

They have poisoned their own name and games by their own actions.  What more can be said than that?

As a new player, or a returning player willing to put aside some bad times in SWG's long past history, it's likely that you will very much enjoy SWG.

SWG had a botched launch and was originally designed more as a simulated world than a computer game, over the years SoE tried to make it appeal to a wider audience by introducing more popular MMORPG elements such as quests and other content. 

Mistakes were made.

I'm sure you'll enjoy the game as it is now though, if you're a Star Wars fan then this is the game for you.

 SWG was an open world.  No levels.  Combat was fun.  Grouping with friends to take down a Krayte Dragon was totally awesome.  They made mistakes here and there but the game remain very fun and not restrictive.

After listening to their own player base, they introduced the Combat Upgrade (CU) and it received mixed reviews.  Also receiving mixed reviews was the profession grind for a Jedi.  To appease those that hated this grind they started the "force sensitive" part of the game where you could go to a hidden village once you achieved certain "badges" and start working on being a Jedi.  It was a long process.  Still mixed review although the negative seemed to outway the positive.

So far SWG ran typical to many other MMOs with their decisions.  Some hated the changes, some applauded it.

Then for some reason SOE decided to change the entire face of the game.

The New Gaming Experience!!!  TADA!

No longer could you be a Master Bounty Hunter and then decide to change over to a Master Cook.  A new restrictive class system was put into place.  One of those classes you could select was a direct slap in the face to those that spent countless hours to grind out a Jedi with holocans or the force village.  You could join the game as a Jedi.

Now to new players the class system may be fun and exciting.  The "hold your hand" quest system added could also be considered a good thing by new players.  However you must remember that veteran players such as myself loved the game as it was.  Once the NGE came into play ... it was a totally different game.  It lost appeal.  I tried NGE 3 times.  Once when they implemented it and then twice as a returning customer to see if things were better.  It just isnt the same game for us.

Maybe it is fun, but to take a game that we loved and destroy the whole concept of it caused most of us to look elsewhere.

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

The "game" doesn't have anything, and it sure is hell isn't a simulation.

1. The GCW uses a rank decay system that was already proven in WoW to be a bad idea.

2. The economy suffers from hyper-inflation, so the new player won't be on a equal playing field for several months.

3. Leveling up is a snoozefest, because the Legacy quests weren't designed to even hide the fact that they were meant to be grindy.

5. The community (last time I played, 1 year ago) has devolved from a mature playerbase, to a "lol noob" pvp type playerbase.

Planet exploration is only fun when there's something interesting to see. That's subjective, but see for yourself. PvP is only fun when there is balance, which a new player won't have for quite a while. PvE is only fun when a person is challenged and the content is interesting. This game just doesn't have that. What it does have is a fun combat system with left over sandbox features from the Pre-NGE game (which are fun). If whatever they brought out in the last year is fun, I wouldn't know, since I haven't gave the game a shot since then.

I've thought about returning and creating a new character on Starsider, since that's where the RPers are, but I've went through the legacy quests once and I couldn't bear to go through it a second time (it's that terrible). That shouldn't stop you from trying it and hopefully having fun though.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

As a new player, or a returning player willing to put aside some bad times in SWG's long past history, it's likely that you will very much enjoy SWG.

I can say with complete honesty that I am certainly one who has given SWG many chances and it has not in any way given me any enjoyment worth $15/month.

In addutuin to what the previous couple of posters have said, a big thing that has turned people off is that SOE continually keeps changing the game, so what people enjoy doing today, or enjoyed achieving can be (and have been) wiped away with one update.

With the last game update, for instance, the Spy class (where was that in the original 32+2 profs?) was overpowered to the point that it has killed what remained of PvP on may servers. Go to the main PvP location in SWG now (which is in itself a failure of the redesign, PvP used to go on all over the place), Restuss, and look over the battlefield and see.... nothing. Players have either given up on PvP, and there is no one there, or all the people there are spys, because spy is  so overpowered.

SOE has been doing that kind of crap for years, people like something, work on something, and SOE jacks the whole system, and what they liked was gone or no longer possible.

SWG seems to shoot SWG in the foot at every opportunity.

• SOE have changed the game a lot. Some old players like it and others don't. Myself I miss some of the old professions and the combat system.
• The game is old. Graphics are not that bad, but the "system" is old and the game still have 5 year old bugs, still a lot of lag problem, crash etc.
• There is no talk about this game anymore. WoW is in the media everyday. By that they make people think that WoW is great and so on.
• SWG have a new Dev team that don't know the game like the old team.
• Last, they are trying to make this game something close to WoW. And  they fail at that.

But yes, the biggest problem is that SOE change the game too much, change it before they think.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

As a new player, or a returning player willing to put aside some bad times in SWG's long past history, it's likely that you will very much enjoy SWG.

Considering how long the game has had a free trial, the nearly constant offer to returning players free trials and the dwindling population of the game I don't think it is fair for you to assume that someone trying the game will enjoy it.  If what you suggest is true then the game would be growing and not merging servers and working for years on how to fix population problems.

Based on the 'success rate' of the free trials over the years I think you would be closer to the truth if you assumed someone wouldn't like the game.

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

People don't play this game because it is broken, boring, empty, old, and overall pretty shoddy.

If it were quality, more people would play it.

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

Biggest reason for me is the archaic game engine which isn't in any way intended to be used the way they are using it in SWG.

Horrible collision detection, which allows you to get hit as you take cover behind a building and can't fire back.  Stupid things like lack of ability to jump in an effective way(it's just an emote), OR even climb up a shallow set of stairs from the side(a jedi in a game where you can't jump... brilliant!).  Benny Hill inspired character animations, "speeders" that do about 20 mph.

Simply put, with the exception of what the IP brings to the table(the decor, the music, beautiful star destroyer ridden skies) there's nothing there.

I'm not part of the massive "bring back pre-cu!" crowd.  But at least that system worked well with the game engine.  Every few months or so I do the free trial, and every time I get the same feeling; like the game is broken.  Like somebody took the Neverwinter Nights gaming engine and tried to make a FPS out of it.

But the trial is free.  Try it.  Make sure you at least get off the space station to make your judgement, if you can tolerate it for that long.  The good news is, if you haven't seen what other newer games have to offer, you may be alright with it.  As long as you're having fun, that's what counts.

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Originally posted by DeadlyByDez
Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

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Just kidding, there's more to it behind the scenes to why, it's just too long of a story to tell, but if you click the link in my sig it'll summarize part of it.

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

The simplest answer is the correct one:

The game just isn't very good.

Beyond the game's history, and the history of contempt the company behind it has shown towards their customers, the current game is a mishmash of poorly implemented systems built on top of a horrible core game.  The combat system is flat out awful, unfun, and broken.  The classes are generic and bland.  The game engine was not built to support the current psuedo-FPS combat system, which makes mass PvP tedius at best, and unplayable at worst.  The space game is decent, primarily because the developers don't understand it and it has been mostly left alone since it was added.

Again, the primary reason SWG has the small number of subscribers it currently does is because it is just not very good.  Conversely, the only reason the current game has many of the current small number of subscribers is because it has a small tangential connection to the Star Wars franchise.  Take away lightsabers and Stormtroopers, and you are left with a fundamentally flawed and broken product.  As it is, the current fundamentally flawed and broken product has the Star Wars label slapped on it, and so it attracts a much bigger audience than it deserves.

SWG is broken and can never be fixed. It has fundamental gameplay glitches and pitfalls that only the most hardcore, addicted Star Wars fan could find a reason to enjoy. It's just gone, so lets just forget about it and let KOTOR mmo start us fresh.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Considering how long the game has had a free trial, the nearly constant offer to returning players free trials and the dwindling population of the game I don't think it is fair for you to assume that someone trying the game will enjoy it.  If what you suggest is true then the game would be growing and not merging servers and working for years on how to fix population problems.

Based on the 'success rate' of the free trials over the years I think you would be closer to the truth if you assumed someone wouldn't like the game.
 

The free trial has always been available, it's how a lot of players end up starting out in Star Wars Galaxies.

I see lots of new players signing up for SWG every day via the trial.

When the Returning Veteran trial is active, I also see large numbers of players coming back to SWG, enjoying themselves immensely and going on to pick up a subscription.

My perceptions of SWG's population, having played consistently for five years, playing on many of the various servers, collating statistics from various sources and talking with the games Developers are very different from someone who perhaps just posts about it on a message board.

From all those sources of information, I see SWG as a busy and growing game that is enjoying quite a successful period if you factor in the follies of it's past.

It's not for everyone, especially many of the veterans and I completely understand that.  I played Ultima Online for five years and left due to some changes to the game that I didn't enjoy and despite trying once to get back into it I just couldn't, too much had changed and too much time had passed, it just wasn't the same game I loved.

If however you don't have a history like this with SWG, I'm sure new and returning players will at least be entertained with that SWG has to offer. 

Two years ago I wouldn't have recommended this game to anyone, but it has improved so much in the amount of content, features and bug fixes that I would encourage anyone to give it a go.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

The free trial has always been available.

I don't think that is entirely true.

From my recollection the first trial made available was from an issue of PCGamer in December '04.

Originally posted by Suvroc

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

The free trial has always been available.

 

I don't think that is entirely true.

From my recollection the first trial made available was from an issue of PCGamer in December '04.

You're trying to debate with someone who thinks that SWG has more subs then ever.

Originally posted by Suvroc

I don't think that is entirely true.

From my recollection the first trial made available was from an issue of PCGamer in December '04.

/shrug

Maybe I should have said "The free trial will always be available".
 

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

If the game had stayed on course when it was originally introduced it could have very much been a great success, unfortunatelly SWG went through so many changes and each one making the game worse.

New players do not understand how SWG used to be with all 32 professions and the tight inter-crafting that it used to be, but now all thats left is an empty shell of what could have been one of the greatest SciFi MMO's.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker 

I see lots of new players signing up for SWG every day via the trial.

When the Returning Veteran trial is active, I also see large numbers of players coming back to SWG, enjoying themselves immensely and going on to pick up a subscription.

My perceptions of SWG's population, having played consistently for five years, playing on many of the various servers, collating statistics from various sources and talking with the games Developers are very different from someone who perhaps just posts about it on a message board.

From all those sources of information, I see SWG as a busy and growing game that is enjoying quite a successful period if you factor in the follies of it's past.

If you see LOTS of new people starting EVERYDAY and vets returning all the time, then the game would be growing.  Realize that over time these new people (and returning vets) would swell the populations so that server mergers would not be needed. 

Devs and players for years have been talking about the need for servers mergers, yes years, the growth in the game you refer to would have filled those gaps.  The truth is that it hasn't. 

How many years worth of vet trials and free trials do you think it would take to fill up more than 4ish servers worth of players when combined with the rest of the games population? 

Your opinion that the game is in a growth period is contradicted by the fact that the company has been taking steps for a while to fix the low population problems (more talking about it for years than actually doing anything).  I don't know what else can be said. 

I've only tried SWG a few times since the NGE was released and I no longer play the game as it looked like a massive empty game. I was on the European-Chimaera server and other than the PvP'ers outside the starports/the AFK entertainers I saw very few other players, although I only did the first 30 levels as a Jedi. This was last weekend during the evening when I last tried the game as my friend wanted to try it again due to missing sandbox MMO's (he had obtained a Jedi about a month or two before the NGE was released). It was also depressing going past all the abandoned structures probably indicating how many people had left the game.

The only bits about the game I liked was Tansarii Station and also the space combat as I was a big fan of the old X-Wing/TIE Fighter games. I was also still having gameplay bugs that I had when I first tried the NGE in early-2007 when I had bought the game as part of Star Wars Galaxies - The Complete Online Adventures release, or the one that gave you the AT-RT vehicle.

I also have a problem with a company that can change a game a lot without listening to its playerbase. If it can do it to the pre-NGE players then it can also do it to me.

There's also the fact that there's the new Star Wars MMO coming out so I don't want to waste my time investing in a game that will more than likely be dropped.

Originally posted by Daffid011

If you see LOTS of new people starting EVERYDAY and vets returning all the time, then the game would be growing.  Realize that over time these new people (and returning vets) would swell the populations so that server mergers would not be needed. 

Devs and players for years have been talking about the need for servers mergers, yes years, the growth in the game you refer to would have filled those gaps.  The truth is that it hasn't. 

I posted this the other day, just going to repost it as it applies and explains why SWG is growing even with a Free Character Transfer currently in effect:

Players naturally gravitate towards each other in an MMORPG, after the NGE PvE combat was so messed up that all high level content could be easily solo'd.

Chapter 6 addressed this and made grouping with others essential for high level PvE. On some servers, players had trouble finding others to run this content with (the existing community tools for finding others were very poor at this time, and were not improved until Chapter 10) and they started to move to higher population servers, some paying to move their characters and some just re-rolling on more populated servers.

This continued and spiralled until the general population of SWG was skewed across the top 13 servers, leaving 12 servers of players that wanted to move but were unable to move due to current restrictions on the Paid CTS (unlocked slot, resources etc) or just the cost of the service.

SoE addressed all these concerns for those players, and they all moved.

The Server Population Imbalance was primarily caused by a snowball effect of players gravitating towards each other and leaving a vacuum in their wake, the Free CTS has addressed this issue for a large majority of players.

With SWG a busy and growing game, it is my hope that these "Transfer from" servers can rebuld themselves and I am actively trying to support the small communities that remain on these servers.
 

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Daffid011

If you see LOTS of new people starting EVERYDAY and vets returning all the time, then the game would be growing.  Realize that over time these new people (and returning vets) would swell the populations so that server mergers would not be needed. 

Devs and players for years have been talking about the need for servers mergers, yes years, the growth in the game you refer to would have filled those gaps.  The truth is that it hasn't. 

 

I posted this the other day, just going to repost it as it applies and explains why SWG is growing even with a Free Character Transfer currently in effect:

Players naturally gravitate towards each other in an MMORPG, after the NGE PvE combat was so messed up that all high level content could be easily solo'd.

Chapter 6 addressed this and made grouping with others essential for high level PvE. On some servers, players had trouble finding others to run this content with (the existing community tools for finding others were very poor at this time, and were not improved until Chapter 10) and they started to move to higher population servers, some paying to move their characters and some just re-rolling on more populated servers.

This continued and spiralled until the general population of SWG was skewed across the top 13 servers, leaving 12 servers of players that wanted to move but were unable to move due to current restrictions on the Paid CTS (unlocked slot, resources etc) or just the cost of the service.

SoE addressed all these concerns for those players, and they all moved.

The Server Population Imbalance was primarily caused by a snowball effect of players gravitating towards each other and leaving a vacuum in their wake, the Free CTS has addressed this issue for a large majority of players.

With SWG a busy and growing game, it is my hope that these "Transfer from" servers can rebuld themselves and I am actively trying to support the small communities that remain on these servers.
 

Is this an attempt at British humor?

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by DeadlyByDez

Ok I ge the whole PRE CU thing. Surely his game has everything for the star wars fan? PvP battles space flight, planet exploration mass pvp. I am downloading the trial now. Can someone please tell me why this game is not bigger than wow?

 

Biggest reason for me is the archaic game engine which isn't in any way intended to be used the way they are using it in SWG.

Horrible collision detection, which allows you to get hit as you take cover behind a building and can't fire back.  Stupid things like lack of ability to jump in an effective way(it's just an emote), OR even climb up a shallow set of stairs from the side(a jedi in a game where you can't jump... brilliant!).  Benny Hill inspired character animations, "speeders" that do about 20 mph.

Simply put, with the exception of what the IP brings to the table(the decor, the music, beautiful star destroyer ridden skies) there's nothing there.

Basically this is it for me too, I tried this game twice and couldn't be bothered to buy it both times. It's an old game that missed it's chance at greatness and can never ever get that back.

It's archaic and passe now and there's just too many better alternatives out there in terms of MMOs.