I used to love playing on SWG, it was in fact my very first mmorpg.  I liked it so much i got myself 2 accounts to play with.  While maybe not the best guy at rpg's i thoroughly enjoyed it, although some factors were annoying.  The Combat upgrade was needed, to an extent, to prevent people taking unbeatable templates and thrashing you in combat.  They only needed to separate maneouvres to different fighting styles, but no - they revamped the whole thing and killed the game for me.  The main thing that madde most veterans leave, i think, was when you could start of as a jedi after all those people worked so damn hard to get it.

As for WoW - i tried a trial off my brother and was very unimpressed - it was too cartoony.  I cannot, however, deny its success and popularity but i dont think it has really set any particular standards that other rpg's must follow to be successful.  It all boils down to personal taste and preference, its irrelevant what an rpg has done before - if you like the theme you are gonna try it.

I have not found another online rpg to alleviate my needed fix for sci-fi roleplay since SWG, none have really appealed to me.  If galaxies returned to "how it was" i would for sure return.  I have heard rumours by word of mouth that another SW rpg is in the works, but it may well be just a rumour and load of bs.  I will continue to hope it isnt rumour, and pray a new SWG RPG comes out for me to try.

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Originally posted by ukpredator

I used to love playing on SWG, it was in fact my very first mmorpg.  I liked it so much i got myself 2 accounts to play with.  While maybe not the best guy at rpg's i thoroughly enjoyed it, although some factors were annoying.  The Combat upgrade was needed, to an extent, to prevent people taking unbeatable templates and thrashing you in combat.  They only needed to separate maneouvres to different fighting styles, but no - they revamped the whole thing and killed the game for me.  The main thing that madde most veterans leave, i think, was when you could start of as a jedi after all those people worked so damn hard to get it.

As for WoW - i tried a trial off my brother and was very unimpressed - it was too cartoony.  I cannot, however, deny its success and popularity but i dont think it has really set any particular standards that other rpg's must follow to be successful.  It all boils down to personal taste and preference, its irrelevant what an rpg has done before - if you like the theme you are gonna try it.

I have not found another online rpg to alleviate my needed fix for sci-fi roleplay since SWG, none have really appealed to me.  If galaxies returned to "how it was" i would for sure return.  I have heard rumours by word of mouth that another SW rpg is in the works, but it may well be just a rumour and load of bs.  I will continue to hope it isnt rumour, and pray a new SWG RPG comes out for me to try.

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ukpredator ... like you, SWG was my hubby's first mmorpg and thoroughly enjoyed it.  To this day he has not found another mmorpg that could match the content it once had.  I, too, had an account on SWG and miss the content and diversity it once had.  What game today could match?   The ground pounding, space combat, various professions to master, the opportunity to advance to Jedi/Sith, the player communities which were forged through friendships and trade ... the list goes on.

The developers and suits made a decission, NOT by player recommendation or opinion, to revamp the entire content of the game, leaving many of us lost and most of us departing our beloved game, friends, and dis-heartened with the vast gaming community of mmorpgs. 

Sure, there will always be people who will continue to sign up with the current game-play and enjoy it.  However, they will never know what it was truly like to be or see the diversity we once had. 

Many of us have tried WoW, but the game-play leaves most of the Veteran SWG players hollow ...   WoW cannot replace what we once had and still wish we had.

I am not damning WoW or the current game-play of SWG ... just saying, many of us miss the SWG we had signed up for.

SWG was my first mmo, and frankly, was the best. Its a pity SoE have changed it so much.. I would of thought it was the obvious move to de-evolve the game back to its roots, and go from there.  I guess its too far gone to rescue...

I've seen the entire development of the swg game.  I played at launch and eventually left because as many have already stated the game was rushed to market, and I tired of the balance issues.  I however never completely dismissed the idea of coming back.  With the first combat upgrade I saw some steps in the right direction in my opinion, though balance issues still existed, the game at its core was still what I wanted, a true living breathing world.  I returned with glee as I started from scratch with my best friend on our quest to jedi, sure the grind is long but it was going to be o so sweet when we finally achieved our goal.  Things were going great, sure certain combinations were over-powered and yes the game had bugs in there that had been there since the game launched (still not sure how soe could allow the same bugs to exist for 4 years) but IT WAS FUN.  So my friend and I joined a great guild and played most all of our free time.  So eight months after my return we were both lvl 80's and over two thirds through the jedi grind.  We constantly talked of what jedi skill we were going to pick how we would build our jedi's to complement each other for pvp against the empire players.  Then with no notice Sony destroys everything and I mean everything we worked for, the game became a very bad wow clone with low lvl immature players with light sabers everywhere.  They destroyed the in game economy by making quest items so much stronger than other stuff that crafters had no reason to craft and worst of all my buddy had an inventories worth of creatures that he had been training that he couldn't even bring out any longer.  The worst thing about it is that if you told it how it wass on the message boards your post would be emmitted or worse you couldn't even post, last time I checked this isn't nazi germany and my opinion is just as valid as those such as Kay226 who were in the minority.  I was one of those that walked away and the reason is simple yes I had a lvl 90 jedi but so what, so did everyone else, and every jedi was exactly the same no variety no mixing and matching classes....nothing left to do but stand around looking at your glow stick.  I will never play another SOE mmo, in my opinion SOE has lost any cred that they had with these changes and I whole heartedly agree with the article, its just to bad that the people that truly lost were the dedicated players such as myself.  Now in regards to kay226's post, bad mouthing everyone and anyone who disagrees with your opinion that the game is better now than before, I say to you accept the fact that a majority of former/current swg players are just like me, we paid for one thing and then after many many months of paying SOE's bills we were marginalized so that sony could chase that wow customer base.  For you to sit and tell us what we can and can't say is silly, if you truly believe that this steaming pile of cookie cutter characters, poor gameplay, glitches, broken quest and nerfed professions is good by all means waste your money with SOE all you want, but don't tell us what we can and can't say, players such as myself are what built that game and now we have to walk away from it because that game is gone.  For me I learned a hard lesson, and will never play another SOE game again( I also quit everquest2 due to SOE's lack of care for its customer base). Best Regards to those in my shoes and I'll you all again when Lucas wises up and pulls the license from SOE.  I believe that will happen and we will see a good SWG mmorpg again one day, til then COH has become my cyber home.

SOE just cant admit they've made a huge mistake, and instead are just trying to fix it, (/sarcasm on) WOW, they've really helped boost their player base with this incredible NGE (/sarcasm off)If anything they've lost more players than they've gained, which is not worth it, i just cant believe they ruined the best game ever (at least it was my MOST favorite game of any other game i've ever played) now....it doesnt even compare. This article is 100% true and i dont know why LA/SOE cant just see it and make the necessary changes that we all need to have fun again

Amen brother... Amen.

Loved the game up until NGE. What a waste of money.

The problem with SWG is that SOE and especially LA could never get the 1 million mark they had wanted. At it's height SWG could only get around 200,000 players, which is very small for such a large venture. Their goal was to attract the general population, not just a few hardcore and they failed by only attracting a few hardcore.

Now with games like WoW, EQ 2 and the many other mmorpgs now out on the market, they are desperate and looking for ways to broaden their appeal. In the end, SOE and LA are not looking to please a few hardcore and if they can't get SWG to appeal to a larger audience, it will eventually be written off as a failure. At best, if they cannot generate the customers they need to keep the game afloat, you will end up with a continuing game with no further develop. LA will not hang on to this albaltross forever.

They never wanted to be like EQ I or UO who have very small hardcore population that barely generates income. Times are changing and with the huge success of WoW, more companies are going to be pushing the hardcore aside and trying even harder to appeal to the mass population. In this day and age for a large corporation, appealing and creating games that appeal only to hardcore players amounts to failure.

The problem with hardcore players is simple, what they want is not what the general population wants in a game. For hardcores it will always be that small company looking to fill a nitch that will produce the game they are looking for. Large corporations  that appeal or try to appeal on a mass scale, will never make them truly happy.

Is it wrong to be hardcore? Of course not. Should companies listen to the ideas of the hardcore? Of course they should, but only to a very limited extent. You have to realize at some point that most people are not hardcore and because of that a conflict of ideas is inevitable and any game that has mass appeal will probably not be the game you find ideal.

The loyal hardcore players tried to tell them, many times.  But apparently some marketing geek knew more than my consistent support for the game.  Our guild had 400 players equating to probably 300 active accounts.  SOE pissed it away for what?

Fivo Asia

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Originally posted by Fivo

The loyal hardcore players tried to tell them, many times.  But apparently some marketing geek knew more than my consistent support for the game.  Our guild had 400 players equating to probably 300 active accounts.  SOE pissed it away for what?

Fivo Asia

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SWG was a failure from the start and it is because they could only attract the hardcore that it failed. The  customers they lost were paltry considering the game barely made it over the 200,000 mark and so what? SOE and LA never wanted SWG to appeal only too such a small group. It  is  "because" they listened to the hardcore players in the beginning the game failed to attract broad appeal and they found out to late that hardcore have no clue as to what the general gaming community wants considering most gamers are not hardcore.


Again, in the beginning they did listen to hardcore players and it brought them nothing but failure, as it failed to achieve mass appeal as a result. As for the changes that hardcore players did not like that SOE and LA had hopes would attrack a broader base players?

It was too late for them to recover, other games filled the gap and so in the end there was nothing they could do to salvage the game. If SOE and LA would have ignored the hardcore from the beginning and researched what the general population of the gaming community wanted while creating the game (similar to what Blizzard did), they could have achieved better success. By the time the realized that the ideas of hardcore players that were implemented was a disaster, it was all over but the crying for SOE and LA.

For all of WoW failures (and there are many), it appeals to a wide range of players because levels 1 - 59 are fun and Blizzard did away with the hardcore view. It is the end-game that has become horrible, before that many players love the game.

Why are so many players now becoming upset with WoW? Because it is designing much of it's content around one group of players and a very small at that - Raiders and if they don't they don't change their ways, some other game will come along and push it aside. Any game that focuses too much on one small group, will inevitably fail if they don't realize the errors in their ways.

While I do agree that the game in the beginning was geared toward the hardcore crowd, many of the changes had broadened the games appeal to those who had only limited time to play, my proof, my guild was full of people who where full time parents and worked 40 plus hours a week, did this take away from there experience while they played not at all.  SWG was all about doing what you wanted not just toward the hardcore crowd.  Those people who played less often were still very much involved in our weekend guild events and what you fail to mention, and this is very important, combat level was just a suggestion of what you should fight.  Many guild events involved two to three groups of members, many of which were low lvl characters, the great thing was they could still contribute in battles and the higher ups looked after the others, it was great.  I challenge you to find any other mmo that allows a group up high levels to bring along a few low level entertainers with them and have success, it was all in how you played and the sky was truly the limit in how you played.  I myself was a Commando/Combat Medic/Teras kasa artist, I usually tanked while healing the group as a whole and fighting at range and close up, no other MMO that I've ever played would allow such a combo but in SWG I had quite a bit of success with this model, and if I hadn't I could justs drop the skills that didn't work and try something else.  If anything I thought that if someone was willing to be social and join a guild (it is a MMO after all) you could have fun no matter how much time you had to play.  As far as your point that SWG was never successful it did have over 200k in customers at its peak and pre wow standards that was a huge user base playing in game.  If anything WOW seems to have set back the development of new and different ideas in MMO's, developers seem to be aspiring to create there own little wow to rack in the cash.  I've played wow, in no way is it a bad game but its not my cup of tea.  That virtual world feel of SWG is not present in WOW, and many of the users in wow seem very rude and immature(I know every mmo has its group of players such as these but wow has quite a few of them due to the success.)  I do agree with you on many of your points however, companies are here to make money and niche games don't generate the income.  One last point however, do a search for wow hacks, there soooo many hacker programs out there to give players an unfair advantage, I'm not talking macro's and such I'm talking create items with stats that aren't anywhere within the boundries of the game.  This type of thing leads to imbalances in game that can't simply be fixed with a patch, and before you point out the dupe wipes item deletion etc keep in mind that honest players frequently get con'ed into buying these great uber items not knowing anything of this type of practice, then when the dupe wipe/illegal item deletion happens the player is simply out all there hard earned gold.  Success on the wow's scale breeds a very shady environment that Blizzard will be combating for the life of the game.  I honestly wouldn't even mess with pvp in wow knowing that many players wiill go to any length to win.  IF anyone wants to see the extreme of what I'm talking about check out the forums on various sites on a little game called knight online, of course that game is the extreme but it will give you a bit of insight into what is happening in many mmo's. 

Thats just my two cents, I completely respect your opinions and agree on many points but SWG was not a failure at least not until NGE.......... 

I don't know about this "hardcore" thing.

When the game first started, it was the most casual friendly game I have seen.  It was easy to level, and easy to contribute right from the first day.

Did it develop into a hardcore game?  It did, and the CU only cemented the hardcore image.  With levels, damage, and scaling metrics, it was all about the level, and grinding, because there was no way for anyone with basic skills to contribute.  Even armor became level dependent.

NGE is just hardcore by design.  Its all about pwnage and being ub0r, because there is no important things anyone of a lower level in their iconic professions can really do.

In what way was SWG hardcore ?

- Maxing a skill was easy
- no UbeR-Loot
- there wasn´t anything you NEEDED to do in order to be a successful player, no specific profession you had to choose, no camping, no whatever, atleast not until they issued these idiotic holocrons.
- infact, back then the only crowd that was shouting was the hardcore crowd, they used to say the "Game is too easy, I can´t be better than everyone, make me a jedi".

-Which, eventually, they did.

SWG was the first major publication that managed to recapture the feeling of late-90s UO. MMORPG with the "RPG" part wholly deserving. It was full of bugs but nobody seemed to care all that much, not even SOE
I subscribed the day it hit the shelves and I played straight through to the CU. Then I quit and restarted 2 months before NGE. Now I quit forever, because "game experience may change during gameplay" was driven to an extreme by SOE. Infact, everybody quit. ...Except the hardcore-players, that is.

And concerning the article: Well written, but really, this (and more) had all been already said 12 hours after the NGE announcement.

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Originally posted by kay226
Ok, enough is enough dont you think? How long are you guys going to go on and on about how bad these changes were? Seems to me you are actually trying to wage a war against Sony and the Star Wars Galaxies game, relentlessly bad mouthing the game anywhere you can and whenever you can.
I understand your frustration caused by the dramatic changes, i would have been frustrated and angry too but hey its been so long the changes have been made and you guys still going on and on about it, maybe its time to let it go and maybe get a life in the process. Give it a rest guys, the game is still great after the changes and no matter how much you ramble its not going to be changed back to the original form.
I respect your point of view and i admit you are right to be angry but enough is enough, im sick and tired of seeing this kind of posts everywhere all the time.

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I'm with Kay226 & Squidi on this issue - to all you WHINERS! - BUILD A BRIDGE AND GET OVER IT! - you know what? there was a REAL IMPROVEMENT that those changes made to SWG it got RID of the majority of you WHINERS! from the game.  Did you guys ever stop to think that maybe thats what SOE WANTED? - they realised THEIR game needed changes to draw more people to it and certain 'negative elements' currently playing the game were turning off new players with their rhetoric?.
SOE dont have to 'veto' their intentions to the likes of you guys and despite a previous post I noted I MOST CERTAINLY am not swayed by the opinions of others least of all you WHINERS! on my choice of purchases or game selection. SOE didnt ASK you guys to subscribe to THEIR game and NO-ONE said you had to keep subscribing when its direction took a path you didn't like - TOUGH! - vote with your feet and leave - which most of you did (GOOD ONYA) - just dont try to sway the choices or opinions of the 'unjaded' MAJORITY who should at least try the game as it stands TODAY - it MAY be what THEY like or perhaps not buts its THEIR choice - NOT YOURS..

ps. If you WHINERS! feel compelled to reply to this post PLEASE dont put too much effort into it - I won't be returning this thread to fully enjoy them.

<ding ding> <round 1>

I played SWG from launch for a little under 3 years. I tried to have the fun we all had in the beginning(pre-CU) and the game just became more and more unbareable for me. With most of the vets quitting and the one's left online less and less, harder missions became impossible tasks on deserted servers. After accepting the fact that the true idea of SWG had become lost in the neverending search to make the game a clone, I too added my signature to the long line of cancelled subscriptions. 

Seeing websites like this, that agree SOE/LA went about this all wrong, makes us proud that some still believe in community ethics and not corporate "get rich quick" schemes. Your article was dead on and I haven't read an article about this subject that can be compared to how well you did yours.

Very well written article.

SWG was my first MMO love and i played it for just over a year. I had 2 accounts and has just convinced my gf to start playing when the NGE hit. I still have her unused copy of swg total experiance sitting under a pile of disks on my desk.

the biggest problem i think was SOE, they got way to greedy when it came to SWG. they were hoping to cash in on star wars fans passion for Mr Lucas' wonderous story but what they fail to realise is that due to the depth and scope of star wars content created outside of the films they would have to adhere to the storyline, cannon and expanded universe, in order to keep people happy. The first big mistake was including jedi in a period of time where there should be none. endless grinding and lack of content was the second mistake and the NGE put the final nail in the coffin.

The really really sad thing is in a market that is currently over saturated by fantasy MMO's and bad sci-fi MMO's a game like SWG is very badly needed and should a company with a good reputation such as bioware create a new SWG based in the KOTOR time line or indeed even the post ROTJ time line I have no doubt that the game would be a true WoW beater.

RIP SWG. WoW is now my home

And Whinners I Never Complained About The Game Till The NGE.  I Started Playing 1 1/2 Months After Launch

If SOE Did Not Go And Screw Up SWG Me My Brother And My Dad Would All Be Playing Still lol.

Even If They Would Some How Change It Back To Normal Im Willing to Be Most Would Come Back :P

Having read this review makes me feel a little better knowing there are others out there in the gaming industry  who have a clue...

I played Star Wars Galaxies religiously for two and a half years. At one point we had a 125 member guild, active in meetings and hunts once a week and always willing to help one another. We were one of the longest running Jedi protectorate guilds on our server and I enjoyed playing on several others as well, until Sony started making changes for the "betterment of the gaming experience". The Combat Upgrade (lovingly referred to as the Combat Unbalance")  saw the dwindling of players and, in the end, the decision to close the guild's doors forever. In the time that I revelled in SWG, I made not only a great many friends but a lot of them I call family now as we all know each other real life. I view it as the only reward to having played the game...

For the veterans it was a second home. It was the first MMORPG I had ever played, being a veteran of LARP and tabletop prior. Sony's systematic destruction of the game still makes my stomach flip. We had joked once of reinstalling the game to our computers just to see how much damage had been done; the thought of actually doing it made me physically nauscious and we gave up the idea. The only time we think of SWG is with remorse over "the loss of a fantastic game destroyed by a meddlesome deaf/blind caretaker". All three of us, and all of our friends, actively play other games now and gladly invest our money in them, but none could compare in our opinion to SWG in its glory days, previous to the Sony/LucasArts debaucle. We don't miss it the way it is now.

Thank you Kevin for posting your review. Doubt anyone at Sony will pay any attention to it, they didn't listen to us in-game, but your voice made me feel a little better. Thanks.

Sad...But so true.  =l

Well i wasn't exactly a veteran of SWG but it was my favorite MMO i've ever played. I've mostly played Guild Wars, FFXI, Diablo/D2, CoH/CoV, and WoW. I also briefly tried Lineage 2 and DAOC but did'nt "spark" with them. I stopped playing MMO's for a while right before the Combat Uprgade (CU) came out. I liked SWG for basically 2 reasons. #1) it was the most social game ive ever played and #2) it wasnt the classic level system, it was skills/mix instead. This is what made it different and better. I liked having options to make a character and eventually work my way up to Jedi. About a week ago i decided to get back on to swg not knowing about the CU/NGE and i was shocked. I couldn't even move there was so much lag and the game was completely ruined.

I think the came bring most of the vets back as n most of the players that quit still periodically check for swg updates cuz im assumming we all love star wars universe. they should take the came back to pre-CU and work from there or scrap it and make SWG 2 based off pre-CU, then allow a free open beta for a while. Make players love it again. I heard somehwhere there is an swg 2 coming out in 08' not sure if its true but i would try it just cuz of one plain fact, i want a different mmo and i love star wars p.s. (the only game i would quit it for would be if they made a Mortal Kombat mmo <hehe i love that more>)

But seriously SOE just needs to admit that they f*** the game up and reverse it, if they admit they were wrong, then they would get players back

...currently playing wow.....level 40 horde......have to take periodic breaks because of boredom......

All so true, and I agree completely. Unfortunately for me I was one of the veterans Kevin mentions, who had been playing since a little after the release and up until the WOW closed beta began. It is true that the game had many bugs and holes all over, but at least in the early stages these were more or less being taken care of and devs listened even to silly little things the players wanted, like for example, a better way to move your furniture around the place. However, at some point, a grand line of new content kept comming in, and around and about the Corellian Corvette time i had seen two of my cities become ghost towns and me and a couple of other friends the remnants of those by then. And then the class 'revamps' started. I was one of the most sucessful entertainers on Infinity, I made a living of it and suddenly I was obsolete. The characters entire life was being an entertainer, and now I was more or less forced to abandon a character that I had been playing for more than a year, which is far more than most subscribers can claim. I was not a happy bunny I can tell you that. And so when the WOW open beta began I left. Why stay and pay a game that does not respect you as a payer and player?

But the thing is that SWG IS the best world there is with so many of its advantages being so major that they overwhelm every other mmorpg out there. Even on WOW, we were reminiscing of the 'good old days' and grieving the need to be in WOW and not in SWG. Needless to say, I left WOW a great deal sooner than SWG because of the boredom of the 'long distance runner'. And now the SWG emulator is about to get out. I hope it goes well because I am going to be stuck on it like glue! But a part of me still wants the 'real' Galaxies back. And I know I'm not the only one. Miss it? You're not alone. Tell THAT to SOE...