Star Wars Galaxies

So I log into the latest 'Please come back!  Pretty please!' trial earlier and have decided to share my experience with you, the reader.

First thing I do, which is what I've done in the last two trials I logged into (last September and last February, the September one I actually tried to play the game, the February one I just rand around and looked at how dead the servers were), is to log in and look at how many people are on the various servers where I have existing characters.  The servers where I have characters are Bria, Tarquinas, Flurry, Naritus, and Sunrunner.  Bria, being the most populated server, has a bunch of folks playing on it, nowhere near the pre-NGE levels, but the current core gameplay systems, mainly combat, couldn't handle the pre-NGE level of players on a single server (the pre-NGE system couldn't handle Bria's population at a couple points).

The Bria population is about where Sunrunner was prior to the NGE, which isn't jam packed, but there are enough people that you could find someone to group with.  Flurry had an alright population, at least compared to the other three.  Sunrunner was dead.  Not pining for the Fjords, not resting, and there's no beautiful plumage.  My trip to Mos Eisley, Theed, the space station added in the space publish, Restuss, and the village had a total of eight players.  Three in Mos Eisley, one gold spammer and two entertainers in the cantina having cyber sex, one in Theed, who didn't move in the five minutes I was there, and a whole three people AFK outside the Restuss starport.  Tarquinas only wishes it was as lively as Sunrunner.  Seriously, if you wish there was a post apocalyptic MMO currently available, log into Tarquinas and just travel around on the planets.  Naritus had a bit more life than Sunrunner, primarily because I happened upon folks here and there while traveling in the wilderness.

My former Master Creature Handler/ Master Bio-Engineer, which was respected to a commando becuase I had a couple heavy weapons I must have looted at some point, was logged off in the middle of nowhere on Yavin 4.  I decided to ride the cloner express to get to town and make looking for the lack of players quicker.  After getting killed by a Black Sun something or other, I found myself underneath the cloning chamber of one of the Yavin outposts.  Thinking that must be a bug, I ran through the basement walls, out of the outpost, and got killed again.  This time I chose to clone where I must have last payed (listed as "null").  It turned out to some player town on Dantooine.  Once again, I found myself cloning underneath the cloning chamber.  was willing to chalk that up to my cloning data being very old (over two years I think).  So I run out and die again, this time intending to clone in an outpost with a starport.  What do you know, I find myself underneath a third cloning chamber!  Three times in a row of cloning underneath the cloning chamber?

After looking around the main cities and supposed player 'hotspots' on that and a few other characters, I decide to actually try and play the game.  I did notice that player movement looks a whole lot less ridiculous when your character has a two handed gun, so I guess that's something that has improved.  I take out my NGE Jedi on Sunrunner and see how things stack up.  First off, the UI is still unintuitive and horrendous.  Seriously, it should be a crime to sell a product with a UI that is that bad.  Honestly, SOE should suspend all trials, Vet or otherwise, and delay all other development until the UI is completely changed (hopefully to something decent, but with a dev team comprised of castoffs and the otherwise cheap to employ, if anyone could make it worse they could).  Anyway, I took my post NGE Jedi for a spin.  I at first ignored the WoW talent system ripoff.  That was a major mistake as I was very quickly incapacitated by an NPC fifty levels lower then me (it was a white <> Rebel NPC in Coronet).  Afterwards, I decided to pick the Dark Side talents, since I was an Imperial Jedi, in keeping with the game world's fiction.  After respecting, I was able to make short work of several similar NPCs.  I will give props to the developers, because they were able to keep me from becoming over confident.  Three different NPCs were able to stand right next to me and shoot at me, while I was unable to attack them back.  I would attack them with one of my special attacks, the attack would fire without the obnoxious particle effect going off, the NPC would take no damage, but it would run right up to me and start shooting, knocking down my health.  I thought NPCs being able to shoot through walls and other obsticles was a brilliant design concept, but the NPC that runs right up to you and you can't attack is much more impressive.

I will admit they have fixed the specials not firing bug.  My special attacks only didn't fire at a rate of about one out of ten, not counting the NPCs that couldn't be attacked.  That is much better than the old eight out of ten they were at when I originally canceled.

My opinion of the combat system is unchanged from the last time I played with it.  It is the worst combat system that can be found in any MMO currently available.  For a version of the NGE combat system that actually functions properly, check out Tabula Rasa.  Be warned, it still isn't very fun.  The UI is just flat out horrible.  The talent system does make me feel all warm inside, as if WoW's developers suffered brain damage and developed a piss poor version of theirs.  The collection system is asinine.  Considering the combat system is horrible, I can't understand how making people engage in it more is a good thing.

All in all, SWG retains its spot as the absolute worst MMO I've ever tried.  It is possible that there is an MMO that is worse than SWG currently is, but I haven't seen it.  As much as LEC and SOE should be ashamed for charging money for it, anyone who is subscribed should be around a hundred times more ashamed for paying for it.  As I mentioned in a post here, that was deleted six months after I made it for some reason, if you have the choice between SWG and the Plague, take the Plague.  Both will make you feel horrible, but the Plague won't charge you for the privilege.

Took my second account main, who is an old MD/MCM and now level 90 medic, and went to Aurellia to pick up the box for all the instance tokens.

All the doors to the buildings in Aurellia were "default appearance" boxes.  This was not true on the last trial back in February.

Oh, and still rubberbanding in various places, still sometimes can't loot something I'm standing right on top off because it's "out of range".

Gotta love bugs that have been around since beta.

I also decided to give this last "trial" a test run.

I created a brand new toon just to try to look at this from a potential new players view. The first thing that hit me was also the horrible default UI in SWG-NGE! I went down to that droid room on the noob station. When I started shooting at one of the droids, I found out that I was actually shooting at a droid that was behind the "eye" of the camera, not the droid that I thought I targeted!

At this point my patience was already running thin, but I started to look at the options and the UI stuff. I tried the other UI set-up's (classic SWG and the MMO type), but couldn't really find any difference from the default SWG set-up. I now started to manually customise the UI just to get it to a somewhat usefull level, in the end I got so bored with it that I gave up (this because you pretty much have to change everything!!).

Every game has their own UI and sometimes their own unique way of handling/presenting things. Just because the UI's are different I have never really had a problem adjusting and getting used to unique UI's except for SWG-NGE!! The default SWG-NGE UI really sucks big time. It got to be the worst one I have ever seen or tried to use in any game I've played.

I remember when I started playing the original SWG. It took some time to get used to the UI, but the point here is that once you got used to it, it was actually working ok and you never had to spend a lot of time tweaking it into a usefull UI. Sure there were things about it that I found strange like the radial menus, but after all it was working OK!

Originally posted by epf1

I also decided to give this last "trial" a test run.

I created a brand new toon just to try to look at this from a potential new players view. The first thing that hit me was also the horrible default UI in SWG-NGE! I went down to that droid room on the noob station. When I started shooting at one of the droids, I found out that I was actually shooting at a droid that was behind the "eye" of the camera, not the droid that I thought I targeted!

At this point my patience was already running thin, but I started to look at the options and the UI stuff. I tried the other UI set-up's (classic SWG and the MMO type), but couldn't really find any difference from the default SWG set-up. I now started to manually customise the UI just to get it to a somewhat usefull level, in the end I got so bored with it that I gave up (this because you pretty much have to change everything!!).

Every game has their own UI and sometimes their own unique way of handling/presenting things. Just because the UI's are different I have never really had a problem adjusting and getting used to unique UI's except for SWG-NGE!! The default SWG-NGE UI really sucks big time. It got to be the worst one I have ever seen or tried to use in any game I've played.

I remember when I started playing the original SWG. It took some time to get used to the UI, but the point here is that once you got used to it, it was actually working ok and you never had to spend a lot of time tweaking it into a usefull UI. Sure there were things about it that I found strange like the radial menus, but after all it was working OK!

 

In a fit of mendacity exceeded only by the term NGE itself, the "SWG classic" UI setup is the original NGE abortion.

The true "classic" UI can only be sort of restored by massive changes in keymapping to options that are not apparent.  It takes at least 30 minutes of fiddling to get a anything near the original much more functional UI back.  Key things to find and activate include target lock, auto fire toggle, and, for me at least, auto-run toggle, which is default NUMLOCK but for a right handed mouse person this is incredibly stupid.

Apparently the morons at Lucas Arts INSIST on retaining the pseudo FPS UI as the default, and not banishing it to well beyond the outer rim as it should be.

Thanks for sharing. Nothing surprising info for me.

In short since 27.04.2005 the game is crap and since 15.11.2005 the game is unplayable for someone sane.

Originally posted by SioBabble

 

Originally posted by epf1

I also decided to give this last "trial" a test run.

I created a brand new toon just to try to look at this from a potential new players view. The first thing that hit me was also the horrible default UI in SWG-NGE! I went down to that droid room on the noob station. When I started shooting at one of the droids, I found out that I was actually shooting at a droid that was behind the "eye" of the camera, not the droid that I thought I targeted!

At this point my patience was already running thin, but I started to look at the options and the UI stuff. I tried the other UI set-up's (classic SWG and the MMO type), but couldn't really find any difference from the default SWG set-up. I now started to manually customise the UI just to get it to a somewhat usefull level, in the end I got so bored with it that I gave up (this because you pretty much have to change everything!!).

Every game has their own UI and sometimes their own unique way of handling/presenting things. Just because the UI's are different I have never really had a problem adjusting and getting used to unique UI's except for SWG-NGE!! The default SWG-NGE UI really sucks big time. It got to be the worst one I have ever seen or tried to use in any game I've played.

I remember when I started playing the original SWG. It took some time to get used to the UI, but the point here is that once you got used to it, it was actually working ok and you never had to spend a lot of time tweaking it into a usefull UI. Sure there were things about it that I found strange like the radial menus, but after all it was working OK!

 

 

In a fit of mendacity exceeded only by the term NGE itself, the "SWG classic" UI setup is the original NGE abortion.

The true "classic" UI can only be sort of restored by massive changes in keymapping to options that are not apparent.  It takes at least 30 minutes of fiddling to get a anything near the original much more functional UI back.  Key things to find and activate include target lock, auto fire toggle, and, for me at least, auto-run toggle, which is default NUMLOCK but for a right handed mouse person this is incredibly stupid.

Apparently the morons at Lucas Arts INSIST on retaining the pseudo FPS UI as the default, and not banishing it to well beyond the outer rim as it should be.

My former guild leader typed out all of the steps needed to nearly recreate an actual classic (that is pre-nge) UI.  It was indeed a huge undertaking involving all kinds of non-intuitive changes to keymapping. 

I had a choice between trying to follow all of the key-mapping steps, or go back to some incredibly monotonous paperwork.  I chose the lesser of two evils and did my paperwork.

Also, calling the original NGE UI "classic" is another example of SOE b.s..  I guess when you're in the habit of misrepresenting things, it gets hard to stop (shrug).  I hope I never find out what that's like.

I agree with everything the OP said except for the populations...

I played on Flurry just a few weeks ago with my Pre-CU alt and I counted 30 people on the entire server on a Saturday night...  Worst population I have EVER seen on an MMO server.

Bloodfin had maybe 75 or so, entire server.

Pre-CU there were still hundreds and hundreds of players on Flurry, Lowca, and others even during off-peak hours...

SWG is the worst MMO I have ever played.  It just doesn't have anything worth doing.  And what it does offer is mostly broken.  The combat is dreadful.