I constantly see people using SWG as a reference and I don't get it.  The game was totally crap and I say that from experience from having played it from when it was released for over a year.  This leads me to believe that SWG was possibly their first experience in this type of game having only tried it because it was Star Wars.  I base that on having met people in SWG who played for that reason alone just because it was star wars.

Reasons for its sucktitude;

1.  It was released well before should've.  

2.  No pathing so you could kill red con mobs by getting them stuck in world geometry and level a profession in one day.  

3.  Certain professions had incomplete skill trees or they didn't even work properly.  

4.  No quests, and what quests actually worked didn't reward anything.  You did a quest and the npc was like ok thanks... that was it.  

5.  If you weren't revisting locales that you knew of from the movies which provided minor interest you could do combat missions.  Then you could do more combat missions and more and more.

6.  Jedi's weren't in game from the start although they LIED about it.  They'd add the holocron B.S. later and grinding professions waste of time.  To top it off people would spend months grinding all of the 20+ professions to unlock their force sensitive character slot and they go and make Jedi a starting class rofl...  

7.  Removal of all but 9 professions ... lol  

8.  Early on in the game life nobody had armor people just wore clothes and pvp'd in them.  There was no damage reduction (75% dmg reduction was later added) and people were one shot, cloned, run out one shot, cloned run out.  This lead to what I labelled clone zerglings.  Unskilled newbs would stand around cloning centers and PVP there so they could clone and run back.  These same asshats would tell me I sucked because I roamed around outside of towns killing them doing their stupid factional missions.  I used to hide inside the terminals and gank them so they'd stand by the cloning center and send me challenges to come fight... ridiculous.

9.  Every major update changed the game to such an extent it was like a completely new game you had to relearn.  Total overhauls/nerfs of professions.

10.  Imperials could run around with AT-ST's and have up to 3 out at a time in the early days and then brag about how skilled they were at pvp rofl.

I'm sure theres more reasons why it sucked.  Of coure people will reply with the usual "bla bla bla the community,"  whatever.  The communities are the same on any server they come and go with time they're nothing special.

Shrug, a lot of that could be said about EQ1, however it was a great game too.

Fact is, SWG was a lot of fun and a solid game when it was released.

However, standards and expectations for MMOs have changed.

The people who really loved old SWG loved it for the game, not the unfinished state and its bugs.

They loved it because it was a virtual world set in a Star Wars universe. It was pretty much UO: Star Wars. It was an open game with multiple things to do and multiple paths to choose from. When LA has SOE 'WoWify' the game (making it appeal to the most basic of customers) the game lost that feeling and gained a whole new set of issues.

I myself never liked SWG for the simple fact I cant stand Star Wars. But I can see why people liked it (aside from the whole 'OMG its Star Wars!' thing). I can also see why people were really pissed when they pulled a 180 on the game design.

Pretty much those who are relativley new to the genre (those who started playing MMOs at the/after the launch of WoW) wont really understand. These days no matter how big an MMO world is claimed to be (Our map is the size of Texas!) the worlds are smaller and more linear than they used to be. The games are made less complex with a more raid and loot focus (pretty much all the subtle layers of old school MMOs have been stripped away; Social layer being stripped away is the biggest with economy being next - AH's while convienent have pretty much killed the local economies in games). In old school MMOs you had a reason for leaving Town A and making that trek to Town Z. Today you need not leave the main city in pretty much any MMO, because everthing you will possible ever need is right there.

Originally posted by fyerwall

The people who really loved old SWG loved it for the game, not the unfinished state and its bugs.

They loved it because it was a virtual world set in a Star Wars universe. It was pretty much UO: Star Wars. It was an open game with multiple things to do and multiple paths to choose from. When LA has SOE 'WoWify' the game (making it appeal to the most basic of customers) the game lost that feeling and gained a whole new set of issues.

I myself never liked SWG for the simple fact I cant stand Star Wars. But I can see why people liked it (aside from the whole 'OMG its Star Wars!' thing). I can also see why people were really pissed when they pulled a 180 on the game design.

Pretty much those who are relativley new to the genre (those who started playing MMOs at the/after the launch of WoW) wont really understand. These days no matter how big an MMO world is claimed to be (Our map is the size of Texas!) the worlds are smaller and more linear than they used to be. The games are made less complex with a more raid and loot focus (pretty much all the subtle layers of old school MMOs have been stripped away; Social layer being stripped away is the biggest with economy being next - AH's while convienent have pretty much killed the local economies in games). In old school MMOs you had a reason for leaving Town A and making that trek to Town Z. Today you need not leave the main city in pretty much any MMO, because everthing you will possible ever need is right there.

Pretty much this.

My friends and I enjoyed SWG mostly for the amount of freedom and socialization that was involved in such a 'virtual world'. I made a lot of friends with people from all around the world and it was just a lot of fun building cities and hanging out. It really could have been any other IP and it would have been just as enjoyable. 

After the NGE though the game lost a lot of its non-combat and social aspects and the community essentially fell apart and SOE paved the way for a newer, more mindless and immature community only interested in epic raiding & lootz.

My friends and I all moved to Second Life and I recommend it to anyone looking for a more social, sandboxy/creation type MMO.

Originally posted by Czzarre

 

Fact is, SWG was a lot of fun and a solid game when it was released.

 

seriously?  DId you just hear this, or assume this from reading all the pre CU, pre NGE fanboism on this site?

The game was anything but solid ..or fun at release.  The fact of the matter is, the reason SOE made such drastic changes is because it could neither hold or gain the subscription level it wanted.  The game was filled with exploitable skills and broken combat mechanics (line of site, for example, which still plagues the game although not as bad as it was)  Granted, there were some nice aspects of the game such as entertainers, but there were some game breaking aspects of the game like beast mastery.

if you want my opinion, the game is 10x better in its current state then it was when it was first released.  Not saying how they handled the transormation of the game was ethical, but the game was not this perfect gem as some folks here might want you to believe.

Originally posted by skarwolf

 I constantly see people using SWG as a reference and I don't get it.  The game was totally crap and I say that from experience from having played it from when it was released for over a year.  This leads me to believe that SWG was possibly their first experience in this type of game having only tried it because it was Star Wars.  I base that on having met people in SWG who played for that reason alone just because it was star wars.

Reasons for its sucktitude;

1.  It was released well before should've.  

2.  No pathing so you could kill red con mobs by getting them stuck in world geometry and level a profession in one day.  

3.  Certain professions had incomplete skill trees or they didn't even work properly.  

4.  No quests, and what quests actually worked didn't reward anything.  You did a quest and the npc was like ok thanks... that was it.  

5.  If you weren't revisting locales that you knew of from the movies which provided minor interest you could do combat missions.  Then you could do more combat missions and more and more.

6.  Jedi's weren't in game from the start although they LIED about it.  They'd add the holocron B.S. later and grinding professions waste of time.  To top it off people would spend months grinding all of the 20+ professions to unlock their force sensitive character slot and they go and make Jedi a starting class rofl...  

7.  Removal of all but 9 professions ... lol  

8.  Early on in the game life nobody had armor people just wore clothes and pvp'd in them.  There was no damage reduction (75% dmg reduction was later added) and people were one shot, cloned, run out one shot, cloned run out.  This lead to what I labelled clone zerglings.  Unskilled newbs would stand around cloning centers and PVP there so they could clone and run back.  These same asshats would tell me I sucked because I roamed around outside of towns killing them doing their stupid factional missions.  I used to hide inside the terminals and gank them so they'd stand by the cloning center and send me challenges to come fight... ridiculous.

9.  Every major update changed the game to such an extent it was like a completely new game you had to relearn.  Total overhauls/nerfs of professions.

10.  Imperials could run around with AT-ST's and have up to 3 out at a time in the early days and then brag about how skilled they were at pvp rofl.

I'm sure theres more reasons why it sucked.  Of coure people will reply with the usual "bla bla bla the community,"  whatever.  The communities are the same on any server they come and go with time they're nothing special.

 

Reasons 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 9: These type of occurrences are standard in MMO's like it or not, right or not; it's the "In" thing to do with MMO's and SOE was just ahead of the failure curve.

Reasons 4 and 5: In the sandbox, players do the work. The only purpose of NPCs in a sandbox is to give new players a place to start and useless afterwards, NOTHING else.

Reason 8: You didn't see the movies did you? If you did, you would know how much all that Stormtrooper armor did to protect them.

Reason 10:  Was leaked early on, there were devs for the game who were biased towards the Imperials, do the math.

I loved SWG till the CU crippled it and the NGE finished it off.  Was it the first MMO I played, HELL NO; it was 4 years too late to be my first.

Originally posted by Rayx0r

Originally posted by Czzarre

 

Fact is, SWG was a lot of fun and a solid game when it was released.

 

 

seriously?  DId you just hear this, or assume this from reading all the pre CU, pre NGE fanboism on this site?

The game was anything but solid ..or fun at release.  The fact of the matter is, the reason SOE made such drastic changes is because it could neither hold or gain the subscription level it wanted.  The game was filled with exploitable skills and broken combat mechanics (line of site, for example, which still plagues the game although not as bad as it was)  Granted, there were some nice aspects of the game such as entertainers, but there were some game breaking aspects of the game like beast mastery.

if you want my opinion, the game is 10x better in its current state then it was when it was first released.  Not saying how they handled the transormation of the game was ethical, but the game was not this perfect gem as some folks here might want you to believe.

LOL.....Thanks for the great laugh you brought tears to my eyes. It's one of the reasons I keep reading the forums on this site.

It's called 'nostalgia'.  

"In common, less clinical usage, nostalgia includes a general interest in past eras and their personalities and events, especially the "good old days" of a few generations back recast in an idyllic light"

I think that would describe most of the people that drone on endlessly about games that were so incredible when -they- played them, but for whatever reason, no longer do.  The one that most often really perplexes me, is this rose-colored-glasses view of EQ, which, when I played it, when it was brand new, struck me as being absolutely horrible, aside from the novelty of being one of the first of it's kind.  As someone that still plays games from 5-10 years ago...the idea that something was so incredible to someone, yet can be so easily dismissed and left behind, is rather curious.  I have a friend that still plays SWG, and he says quite frequently that the game sucks now, but he only plays it because 'the 'ol gang' is still there.  Different strokes, I guess.

Originally posted by Persephassa

Originally posted by fyerwall

The people who really loved old SWG loved it for the game, not the unfinished state and its bugs.

...

Pretty much this. 

After the NGE though the game lost a lot of its non-combat and social aspects and the community essentially fell apart and SOE paved the way for a newer, more mindless and immature community only interested in epic raiding & lootz.

This.

The NGE killed the social downtime and crafting parts of the game, mostly. There was a lot of "worldliness" about it before the NGE, you really felt like you were part of something and there was no rush, you just enjoyed it as it came and went.

It's something I still find difficult to explain, but it was definitely the social "tools." Not the chat system, mail system and whatever else; it was the fact that you could do something besides combat and actually get somewhere - and when you did those things, you made friends.

The greatest content (social aspect) wasn't built into the game, the game merely allowed it to come. This is something that other MMORPG designers overlook when they pack in all this content, because they don't understand that socializing needs breathing space, and that strict quantization only hurts communities.

"Be the first one to not do something." SWG did just that...

I liked SWG, but it didn't really feel like a "game" to me.

I'll elaborate; most MMOs are clearly games. You almost always log on to do something combat related like quests, grinding, dungeon-running or PvP. The underlying focus of the entire game is combat. There are other things, of course .. gathering, crafting, socialising, etc .. but in most games these things aren't designed nearly as comprehensively as combat related content.

SWG was the opposite. Resource gathering and crafting was in-depth, dynamic and required a significant time investment. There were entire classes built around non-combat activities and you only had one character. To be a crafter required dedication because you had to sacrifice your combat abilities.

It was more of a star-wars themed virtual world than a game. That set it apart.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

SWG was the opposite. Resource gathering and crafting was in-depth, dynamic and required a significant time investment. There were entire classes built around non-combat activities and you only had one character. To be a crafter required dedication because you had to sacrifice your combat abilities.

It was more of a star-wars themed virtual world than a game. That set it apart.

I really couldn't have put it better. SWG was a world more then a game. When they said no more world and made it into a leveling game it was a sad day. I remember playing a few months after launch for a while and I really did enjoy it. I felt so many things were open to me and I could really do ANYTHING in the world.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

I liked SWG, but it didn't really feel like a "game" to me.

A friend of mine thought it felt like a second job. That you didn't get paid for.

Originally posted by skarwolf

 I constantly see people using SWG as a reference and I don't get it.  The game was totally crap and I say that from experience from having played it from when it was released for over a year.  This leads me to believe that SWG was possibly their first experience in this type of game having only tried it because it was Star Wars.  I base that on having met people in SWG who played for that reason alone just because it was star wars.

You played a game you thought was crap for over a year???

Nostalgy.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

I liked SWG, but it didn't really feel like a "game" to me.

I'll elaborate; most MMOs are clearly games. You almost always log on to do something combat related like quests, grinding, dungeon-running or PvP. The underlying focus of the entire game is combat. There are other things, of course .. gathering, crafting, socialising, etc .. but in most games these things aren't designed nearly as comprehensively as combat related content.

SWG was the opposite. Resource gathering and crafting was in-depth, dynamic and required a significant time investment. There were entire classes built around non-combat activities and you only had one character. To be a crafter required dedication because you had to sacrifice your combat abilities.

It was more of a star-wars themed virtual world than a game. That set it apart.

Well, that sums it up better than anything I typed.

 This thread  is akin to "Why do people think Chocolate Icecream tastes good?", and then going on about their personal opinions and why Vanilla is the best flavor.

So called "content" usually serves to keep players distracted from an otherwise lacking basic gameplay, not to mention that the "content" would be powergrinded through anyway. SWG had content where it's incentive wasn't trivial rewards, but community. I spent my time trying to make the game better for me and my friends, rather than endless hours grinding levels and gear.

Sure SWG had bugs, and many professions needed attention, but nothing drastic enough to warrant a complete change of the game. The demise of SWG started on Christmas of 2003 with Jedi Holocrons, it peaked with the Jedi questline grind during the CU, and the NGE was the coup de grâce. Many people didn't like the CU, but it was still a sandbox and still SWG , NGE however, became WoW.

Swg was a good MMO because it didn't need to wave shiny trinkets infront of my face to keep me playing. 

I disliked everything about SWG. For me it had no redeeming value. Add to that that it is an S.O.E. game and their customer support is near nil.... yeah, no redeeming value.

My company recently started doing a lot of advertising in Second Life (long story), and I've come to realize that SWG and Second Life have a lot in common. They are both  perfect examples of the sand box concept, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing if you're into that.

I did love the freedom, but hated the forced grouping, lack of solo content, and pathetic terminal quests. Also, I personally found the game very unfriendly if you were casual. I could play a lot on the weekends but not every day, which meant that I was always behind when it came to earning money or working on my crafting profession. Also, the community on my server was very hardcore, and I found I couldn't just jump in for an hour or two at a time and have much fun. 

I think it comes down to whether you were looking for a good Star Wars game or looking to live in the Star Wars universe. If you're a gamer first and foremost, SWG was very disappointing.

PS - I don't buy the whole "every MMO launches with bugs" defense of SWG. The game didn't come out THAT much ahead of WOW, so there really is no excuse for the ton of bugs and massive instability. SWG still remains the only game where my main character disappeared from the server.

Originally posted by Boton

 This thread  is akin to "Why do people think Chocolate Icecream tastes good?", and then going on about their personal opinions and why Vanilla is the best flavor.

 

So called "content" usually serves to keep players distracted from an otherwise lacking basic gameplay, not to mention that the "content" would be powergrinded through anyway. SWG had content where it's incentive wasn't trivial rewards, but community. I spent my time trying to make the game better for me and my friends, rather than endless hours grinding levels and gear.

Sure SWG had bugs, and many professions needed attention, but nothing drastic enough to warrant a complete change of the game. The demise of SWG started on Christmas of 2003 with Jedi Holocrons, it peaked with the Jedi questline grind during the CU, and the NGE was the coup de grâce. Many people didn't like the CU, but it was still a sandbox and still SWG , NGE however, became WoW.

 

Swg was a good MMO because it didn't need to wave shiny trinkets infront of my face to keep me playing. 

Pretty much. Most people have a hard time understanding that not everyone likes the same thing as them, and that's it's equally ok and possible for others to like something else and that them liking something else doesn't belittle the stuff that they themselves like. No, if someone likes something else, they immediately go into attack mode and have to declare one "better" than the other so they can fell that they like the best thing or that they are right.

It's a small, sad little world when you can't see past your own nose.

Originally posted by Khalathwyr

Pretty much. Most people have a hard time understanding that not everyone likes the same thing as them, and that's it's equally ok and possible for others to like something else and that them liking something else doesn't belittle the stuff that they themselves like. No, if someone likes something else, they immediately go into attack mode and have to declare one "better" than the other so they can fell that they like the best thing or that they are right.

It's a small, sad little world when you can't see past your own nose.

I chalk it up to insecurity.  Most people need to validate their choice so when someone else chooses something else they begin to think that perhaps they've made the wrong choice but can't leave because they've invested time in it and thus have to bring the other one down.

Either way, I liked SWG because not everything was focused on combat.  There were entertainer classes, crafters, gatherers.  Like someone else said, you could go without fighting and still contribute somehow to the community.  That and there were quite a few people around willing to help you out or answer your questions without insulting first or making the rest of the community look bad.