Hello folks,

Been many many years since I was part of SWG, the best MMO I ever had the pleasure of playing. But a lot as changed and most veterans have accepted that now. But I've been hearing some praise towards the new Development team working on SWG and have been considering another visit. Trouble is, it's been so long that I'd fully expect to get lost the minute I jump in. So I'm looking for some advice. 

If I'm honest, most of the pleasure I obtained from SWG back in the day came from Guilds and player cities. Now I know a lot as changed and if I can recall correctly, 'ghost town' cities were gotten rid of by the developers. But I sense that being part of a social and possibly even roleplaying guild might actually help me gel into SWG again. They were the aspects I enjoyed most in SWG. I would love to be able to create my own special character again and be part of a thriving, social and interesting guild. I'm not totally sure on how many people still play SWG, a mate of mine checked it out about 2 months back and informed me that cities and servers were mostly dead to my disappointment. 

So I'm not sure about that, but I would like some advice on if I did return. I'd most probably return as a human character, never could roleplay any of the other races to well and I'm not the best roleplayer about (as in I'm not a Star Wars Super Fan, I'm simply a fan). But I would like to hear what SWG is like at the moment, I was told that the market is a bust. I use to spend so much of my time harvesting and selling in SWG and absolutely loved every minute of it, I spent so much time that I never really developed my character to any massive degree. He was never one class, he was just a human harvester who could handle himself if danger came calling and I liked it that way. 
 

If anyone as any good advice, maybe even returning veterans themselves then that would be brilliant.
Thanks!

Hi SaitanMar,

Always nice to hear from an old vet.

I think you'd certainly be able to enjoy SWG again, the harvesting/crafting game is still there pretty much as it was with a bunch of improvements.  I spend all my game time these days running my Structures (combination of the old Architect and Shipwright) and Engineering Trader (Droid Engineer and Artisan) and find it a lot of fun.

Would you be reactivating your old account or creating a new one with new characters?

If you are using your old account, which server were you playing on before you left? 

Let me know which one and I can suggest some ways to find a nice community to join.

There are commands such as '/who roleplay' that will give you a list of all players interested in Roleplay currently logged on to your server.  You can then send them a tell or in game mail enquiring about the Roleplaying community.

You can check the Player City Listings and look for a large city on the server and planet of your choice, Rank 4 and 5 cities have a waypoint to city hall listed.  You can go inside the city hall and examine the terminal inside and it will give you the name of the mayor whou you can contact about joining the city.

I hope that helps, and welcome back!

OP

You could credit card it up and play with your old account.  May I suggest you do the free trial if you are wondering if the cost is worth it against what you may have heard.  There have been at least two expansions since precu days.  One going to CU and one going to NGE (kind of).  I can't remember if the trial has all expansions or not.  But even if it doesn't it's free.

If you do the trial remember to get off the noob station as fast as possible to get into the real game world you remember.  This is especially a smart thing to do as a crafter character.  I found it to be a waste running around on the noob station as a crafter.

If the game still funtions to your liking you can always credit card it then.

Just a thought that is readily ignored.

Enjoy either way.

 Thanks for the information folks, very helpful. 

I would have to start up a new character. About the time of the large changes my character became a bit of mess (something that happened to a lot of players) and to be totally honest, I wouldn't know where to start with him again. I think starting off a fresh faced character would probably help me in more ways then one, especially when one considers roleplaying. I would love to try out some harvesting and maybe even crafting if the market is worth it, I remember reading about a year back that the market was a bust and not worth the investment like it was back in the day. 

I'm interested, but not solely keen on doing every quest or so. As for the starter planet, I have been told different things. Some folks have told me to simply do it, while others have actually informed me to ignore it totally. So not to sure about that, doesn't exactly sound to interesting though. I think it would be a better bet to find a city that's solidly populated and try to play my part. I was told that the starter missions can actually provide some neat little early items, one being an harvester so maybe I'll still do the early tutorial stages. 

I use to play on Ahazi, which I believe is an North American server. For some reason I ignored the European servers (being European and all) so hopefully I shan't make that mistake again. As for the actual game and expansions, you can get the SWG: Complete Collection cheap now. Infact I know I could get it for around £10 now, with all expansions included.

Also, what of that other expansion I heard of. The one based in Cloud City, maybe I dreamt it. I believe it's was rumoured around the time they officially announced Star Wars: The Old Republic?

Well I'll see if I do officially try a return. Worth a go I guess! Thanks again! :)

Originally posted by SaitanMar

 Thanks for the information folks, very helpful. 

I would have to start up a new character. About the time of the large changes my character became a bit of mess (something that happened to a lot of players) and to be totally honest, I wouldn't know where to start with him again. I think starting off a fresh faced character would probably help me in more ways then one, especially when one considers roleplaying. I would love to try out some harvesting and maybe even crafting if the market is worth it, I remember reading about a year back that the market was a bust and not worth the investment like it was back in the day. 

I'm interested, but not solely keen on doing every quest or so. As for the starter planet, I have been told different things. Some folks have told me to simply do it, while others have actually informed me to ignore it totally. So not to sure about that, doesn't exactly sound to interesting though. I think it would be a better bet to find a city that's solidly populated and try to play my part. I was told that the starter missions can actually provide some neat little early items, one being an harvester so maybe I'll still do the early tutorial stages. 

I use to play on Ahazi, which I believe is an North American server. For some reason I ignored the European servers (being European and all) so hopefully I shan't make that mistake again. As for the actual game and expansions, you can get the SWG: Complete Collection cheap now. Infact I know I could get it for around £10 now, with all expansions included.

Also, what of that other expansion I heard of. The one based in Cloud City, maybe I dreamt it. I believe it's was rumoured around the time they officially announced Star Wars: The Old Republic?

Well I'll see if I do officially try a return. Worth a go I guess! Thanks again! :)

I would definately play through the tutorial, its a good way to find your feet upon returning to SWG and doesn't take long at all.  You can chose to jump ship down to Eisley after running a few basic quests for Han Solo or continue on to get a Badge for completing all the quests which many veteran characters wont have access to.

If you start a new character on Chimaera or Farstar you'll find a health population on both servers.  The economy on these servers is also very brisk, not sure why anyone would consider it a "bust", there is always a niche to fill and credits to earn.

The Cloud City video was fan made, somewhat of a hoax.  SoE confirmed it as such.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

The dead server problem was partily fixed by allowing players to move from the low pop ones to higher pop one's.  I went from Kett to Starsider (a popluar designation) and it was like night and day.  Somewhere around here is a list of the popular servers.  Starsider like I said, Bloodfin and a few others.  Check it out before you pick.

The dead city problem wasn't fixed.  They've had 2 building clean up's that I know about but the rules were such that a lot couldn't be cleaned out.  Plus none of the factories, harvesters etc... were touched so still alot of dead stuff around.  The latest patch did give mayors the tools to clean out dead houses from thier cities after 2 or 3 months, be interesting to see if it works.  Currently there is a city cap on.  Hard to put new stuff in and until the higher stuff is really cleaned out, nothing new can move up beyond a level 2.

No matter what they do I don't think you'll really see any 'lively' player cities.  Some have once a week RP events and that's when they come alive.  The storytelling token thing SOE put if probably was one of their better idea's even if the underlying part was for the players to create their own content vice having the Dev's do stuff.

As far as the legacy quest line goes.  Parts are very good, parts are very bad.  But you do get some fairly good end rewards from it.  For straight leveling just running using the mission terminals and doing 10 a day will get you up the quickest and put some coin in your pocket.  Another downside from the Legacy quest line, now that I've re-read your posts, is you can't hop around on it and pick & choose.  It's a straight linear run so you have to do the bad with the good.  Only at the higher levels (75+) can you pick and choose from the post-Legacy one's.

Economy.  Starsiders is running some weird hyper-inflation thing, but enough other server players have moved in and have been under cutting their prices so you may see costs come down.

Originally posted by Nebless

The dead city problem wasn't fixed.  They've had 2 building clean up's that I know about but the rules were such that a lot couldn't be cleaned out.  Plus none of the factories, harvesters etc... were touched so still alot of dead stuff around.  The latest patch did give mayors the tools to clean out dead houses from thier cities after 2 or 3 months, be interesting to see if it works.  Currently there is a city cap on.  Hard to put new stuff in and until the higher stuff is really cleaned out, nothing new can move up beyond a level 2.

 

Hmm, I packed up a whole bunch of factories and harvesters so I know that works.  The house packup enabled players to back up any houses where the account was inactive, the next step in clearing out "dead" structures will be on June 1st where any structures inside a city where the owner has not logged in for 90 days can be packed up.

More information here: Feature - City Beautification Project

That should clear out some more space in cities for you.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Nebless

The dead city problem wasn't fixed.  They've had 2 building clean up's that I know about but the rules were such that a lot couldn't be cleaned out.  Plus none of the factories, harvesters etc... were touched so still alot of dead stuff around.  The latest patch did give mayors the tools to clean out dead houses from thier cities after 2 or 3 months, be interesting to see if it works.  Currently there is a city cap on.  Hard to put new stuff in and until the higher stuff is really cleaned out, nothing new can move up beyond a level 2.

 

 

Hmm, I packed up a whole bunch of factories and harvesters so I know that works.  The house packup enabled players to back up any houses where the account was inactive, the next step in clearing out "dead" structures will be on June 1st where any structures inside a city where the owner has not logged in for 90 days can be packed up.

More information here: Feature - City Beautification Project

That should clear out some more space in cities for you.

I actually didn't try any factories or harvesters as I thought they were still on the protected list and never saw any of them show red.  My main point was you still have the massive trade lines between Bestine/AH and all around Theed.  That tells me either there's still ALOT of people playing, everyone has 10 houses each or the clean up wasn't complete enough.  Anything short of a 100% auto pack up to totally cleanse the planets so we can all start over probably won't be enough.
 

My question on the mayors pack up ability really comes down to; you have a class 3 or 4 city with shuttle, cantina etc.... and dead houses.  You may or may not have people that want to move in.  Do you cut your own throat and take out dead houses which may drop you to a lower city level?  And then can't get back up.  Or stand pat?  If you have replacements then doing it makes sense.  If you don't ........

We have 1 'dead' house in our village, came with the land where we dropped the city hall.  If we can get rid of it, we will, but who's to say the guy hasn't logged in once in the past 2 months or just plays somewhere else and no one's ever seen him.  I know he's never visited the house since he hasn't auto become a citizen like the system says we will.

Only time will tell

Originally posted by Nebless

I actually didn't try any factories or harvesters as I thought they were still on the protected list and never saw any of them show red.  My main point was you still have the massive trade lines between Bestine/AH and all around Theed.  That tells me either there's still ALOT of people playing, everyone has 10 houses each or the clean up wasn't complete enough.  Anything short of a 100% auto pack up to totally cleanse the planets so we can all start over probably won't be enough.
 

My question on the mayors pack up ability really comes down to; you have a class 3 or 4 city with shuttle, cantina etc.... and dead houses.  You may or may not have people that want to move in.  Do you cut your own throat and take out dead houses which may drop you to a lower city level?  And then can't get back up.  Or stand pat?  If you have replacements then doing it makes sense.  If you don't ........

We have 1 'dead' house in our village, came with the land where we dropped the city hall.  If we can get rid of it, we will, but who's to say the guy hasn't logged in once in the past 2 months or just plays somewhere else and no one's ever seen him.  I know he's never visited the house since he hasn't auto become a citizen like the system says we will.

Only time will tell

Any houses currently up are from accounts were active at some point after July 1st 2008 and the character that placed them still has credits in the maintenance of the structure or in their bank.

The mayors only choice under the 90 day inactivity 'Zoning Violation' rule is to flag a certain number of citizens stuctures to mark them as "safe":

Rank 1 City = 1 Safe House
Rank 2 City = 2 Safe Houses
Rank 3 City = 3 Safe Houses
Rank 4 City = 6 Safe Houses
Rank 5 City = 8 Safe Houses 

After that, the rest are available for any passerby to pack up.  Mayors can not protect non-Citizen Structures, so that chap whose house is inside your city boundry will be flagged as a 'Zoning Violation' unless he logs in 90 day before June 1st., or at least 90 days previous to the next city update after this system goes live.