Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

Even if you cant subscribe to SWG specifically, couldnt you still play it with the station pass?

YOu would have had to have station pass subscription before last friday.  If you had station pass before then, then yes.

I think the original SWG community was a once in a lifetime thingy. I have never before SWG or after played in such a friendly tight-knit community. You know, even the pre-cu TEF gankers was nice people. I had some good talks and laughs with some of them. Even some of them ended up in my friend list. Insane... lol. I think if they tried again with the same concept they would never get the same community again.

The community was the main reason I played this bug ridden game for so long. The game in itself was one of those unpolished gems that could have become a shiny diamond but sadly remained unpolished(even though they tried both with the CU and NGE).

I have overcome all feeling of bittersweet betrayal at this time, so farwell SWG it was a good run!

Found some vids on youtube that made me a bit nostalgic.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0C491596D7A3A3FD

SWG was the best MMO I ever played. What it lacked at the begining was epic Quests and some epic instances.

What if the had the Hoth instance at the start of the game :)  Hoth was my favorite instance when I returned just a lot of fun.

Farwell SWG.

DarkAchilles Lord of Bastion "StarSider"

Brilliant game with the best RP possibilities ever offered. The feeling of accomplishment in your character and the freedom of creating that character was (and is) truly un-matched. I know people say it was akin to UO but I never played that so I don't know.

After all these years I still have tons of great memories of SWG.  I had to move on after NGE but I know that I will raise a glass for all of the good times, when the servers do shut down.

I have a lot of memories of Precu SWG, both triumphs and defeats.  Having played many mmos since, I can say easily that the memories and friendships I built there were stronger than in any other game since.  That's not to say that Precu SWG was better than any game since, only that it fit me better.

Things I miss...I miss my friends ofcourse, my dog Lucky, my ton ton Shotgun, my big giant fluffy rabbit from Rori ( I forgot her name).  I miss the city I lived in, I had a choice spot across the cantina and in eye's view of our town's shuttleport.  I miss the city before that I founded with three close friends and the joy and pride we had watching it grow.  I miss the raids into the neighboring town.  I miss my nemesis, who used to wear that damned orange jumpsuit, and whenever I saw that damn gaudy thing out of the corner of my eye, I knew I was in trouble.  I like how we finally became friends.  I remember one time during a huge reb/imp fight, how he ran up to the hill I was sitting on and we sat down together, reb and imp and watched the carnage below together.  It was kind of....romantic with the sunset and all, hehe.

I miss exploring planets, killing exotic creatures, and stumbling on a really good weapon or armor shop with decent prices.

I miss the drama and the adventure that was SWG.  I miss my characters who became virtual extensions of me, shades of myself in the digital world.

Still, six years later (after NGE) all my best MMO memories is from SWG 04-05.

Kinda scary! There could be MMOs today that could be ten times as massive asd SWG.....but no!

My first MMO ( Pre CU and NGE ) and still the one I consider the best , bugs and annoys glitches included. Great community, always something to do whether it was hanging out in Eisley,especially in the med centre fixing wounds and buffing guys up, doing guild stuff in the city, filling and decorating your house with all sorts of junk, spending endless hours visiting player vendors all over the place, crafting ; even looking back the jedi grind doesn't seem so bad now compared to games that have come since. But then maybe that was just down to the guys and girls I played with back then. Played mostly as a Doc/TK and also a Creature Handler .My prized possession was my Bacta Tank from the Jedi Village quests and sadly enough a Faamba that I used to walk around Eisley at night !!

Had some great fun and met some truly great people that i feel priviliged to have known. The whole NGE thing was a terrible shame  but there you go and no need to say anything further about it as that's been beaten to death. I did go back to the game every year to have a look but it was never the same game and the empty friends lists were a sad sight to see.

Great article :)

Hit the nail on the head with this one. Even as I read the article I started thinking back to all the great features this game had to offer. More importantly though it was the community that made this game so great. Made lots of friends, people that I still keep in touch with today.

Goodbye Gorath!!!

R.I.P. SWG

Never played SWG but knew someone who played it at launch.  Loved learning more about it; thanks Isabelle.  I also loved your article on button-mashing and immersion; couldn't agree more; Vanguard gameplay suffers from the same - button mashing and mindless quests detracting from what would otherwise be a very immersive game.

When time permits, I'll be reading all your articles. :). 

Originally posted by Vortex5oo 

 

The community was the main reason I played this bug ridden game for so long. The game in itself was one of those unpolished gems that could have become a shiny diamond but sadly remained unpolished(even though they tried both with the CU and NGE).

  

Nailed it. The community, pre-CU, was absolutely magic. Made some life long friends whom I continue to talk to on a very regular basis (and sometimes game with). Maybe it was just my experience, but the overwhelming majority of people I ran into in-game Pre-CU seemd to be rational adults bent on fullfilling their Star Wars fantasies and making their way in the Galaxy.

That all ended on Nov 15th 2005. The grown ups, knowing their rights as consumers and seeing they were being taken advantage of, voted with their wallets and left.

Now, I've said before, and I'll say it again. I've gone back on various vet trials (and I'm actually subscribed right now so I can witness the sunset on the inside), and it DID improve. A lot. It actually became somewhat playable again. But it wasn't enough. Those that left weren't looking for a functional version of the NGE, they were looking for an apology (and not that flacid 'apology for how they introduced the NGE'). Goodwill has a price. It can be paid for up front in the form of an actual apology, followed by actionable reperations of the situation, or it'll be paid for later, in this case in the form of SWG being shuttered (not to mention lost sales on many SOE titles going forward).

Anyways, RIP SWG. You were THE best gaming experience I had ever had.

you know, it hurt my heart the other day when i thought about the fact that i can never log into this game again. i really would have liked to fly my millenium falcon one more time. ride around on my speeders and let me toon set, watching tatooines suns! im gonna miss this game, but it is time. I pray that develpoers have learned from the mistakes of this game, and have also learned what people were so passionate about in this game... no matter what happend to it, it was still one of the best games and communites ive ever played in and will always have a very close place in my heart!

May the force be with you SWG!!

Managing a player city and a droid building empire. Also Pre-NGE of course. Such a good game at that time. My wife hated the game. Eventually had to choose between her or it. Got divorced anyway. Should have picked the game. It stole a lot less money from me.

It was the last real mmo, pre world of warcraft.

Pre-NGE

I think it was the best MMORPG to date.  I would still be playing if NGE never happened.

Without a doubt!

Always remeber that the SWG death was not in vain.  NGE will never happen to another MMO you love.  It is now the blueprint of what NOT to do with your MMO when you want to attract new players.

I can still remember logging in my creature handler to a screen telling me I had to pick a new profession.  They had completely changed the game without one notice to anyone.  I don't think I have ever been so disappointed in a company as I was with SOE at that point. 

I had just managed to add a very rare creature to my menagerie the week before and the thought of never having access to play with that or any of the other creatures saddened me greatly.  I had just invested in the latest expansion pack just a week before and my guild had a big event planned on the new world for that weekend.  It never happened, noone wanted to play anymore.

I unfortunately gotten a 3 month subscription the prior month so I was stuck with the game until January.  By December our once bustling guild town was a ghost town.  I was back playing Wow as there were at least people playing that game.

Yes the game had it's problems, but drastic changes the NGE introduced made it far worse.  The servers they are closing are not the game that many of us remember fondly, it is just a pale shadow of what once was.

While reading this article chills went down my back. And I have the feeling that I have lost something. This game was what an MMORPG should be. For me I think it was 2 things - players could change the world with houses and cities. And you needed to buy items from players, not just loot them.

When I think about my time playing wow, I can remember quests, dungeons and raids, its a game. But when I think about  SWG I remember different happenings and experiences, its what I would call a virtual world.

Buying the first house, visiting friends at their home and looking at the decorations. Meeting a girl at 3 a.m. on Endor,  going on a shopping trip with her where we meet an ID/Tailor who understood what she did and made my charakters apperance much better then it was before :)  Sitting in cantinas and chatting while players danced and made music. Meeting people out in the wilderness and putting down a tent when the rain starts to kick in. 

I can not say why, but SWG had an awesome community and meeting someone had always the possibility of beeing a nice experience. Farewall to all the great people from Ahazi server.

I remember way back when SWG was announced.  I had been out of the Navy for a few years, and was living at home with the parents still...the parents had just ought a new computer, and man, I was psyched!  I then got out of the gaming scene for a looong time, and when I got back into it (after moving to Florida, establishing a new life, etc), the game had gone into the NGE phase.  I missed the boat on the good stuf, and to this day, I regret not having played the game in its full glory.  I played the game for perhaps a week, didn't find it to my liking, and abreuptly ceased play.

Although I've never REALLY been a SWG player, I bid a fond farewell to the game that first brought Star Wars to the MMO genre. 

I came to SWG shortly after the NGE hit (which stands for 'New Game Enchantments' not 'Experience'). It was okay but I feel a lot for the people who had been there earlier. Reason is that I've heard so much of preCU and preNGE SWG while playing that it made me 'hate' the NGE version. Still I kept my sub until last year (It was more paying than playing really) and was glad when I finally dropped it. SWG just didnt feel good anymore. It was boring, you had to go search for other players cause there were hardly any around and the devs were not seriously working on new worthy content anymore.

I've returned to the game last month with the 45 days free time and now can continue till the end since they changed my sub to 'Exempt'. I guess I'll be there the very last day but won't shed a tear cause the whole experience left a bittersweet taste that I've played something of which I've missed the best time possible.