And neither is NGE. Face it, it’s time for both sides to take off the rose-colored glasses and admit that SWG; be it orig/pre/post or whatever was and is a flawed game. Which one is more flawed? Can’t say, that’s so subjective as to fall into the ‘how many digits can you take Pi to?’ argument. Which IS more playable? Hands down its NGE; BECAUSE it’s the only one SOE now offers. IF SOE offered both pre & post versions than you could argue which one, but they don’t.

A lot of players voted with their dollars when NGE came out and it didn’t seem to have as much or enough effect. Will anything down the road? Who knows?

So on that happy thought let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the flaws in both...

- Professions
Old
32 skills. Be all you can be, how ever you wanted to be. Except there quickly became THE template everyone just had to have to be the best. So you can say 32 different, but the reality was a bunch of template clones

New
9 choices. Some variation, but not enough

- Jedi
Old
Super hard to get (way too hard?), the fix: holocron’s. You finally unlocked it? Now take a number and wait for the old man to come get you and take you to the super secret training village. I was all for only having a few in game, but they just handled it in such a strange way.

New
Starter profession, now it’s way too easy

- Leveling
Old
Level grinding and even worse macro level grinding. Camp a good NPC spawn point, set up your macro, go to bed and wake up the next day with a shiny new high level toon. Or go out and slaughter so much wildlife that PETA would drop dead from the shock.

New
Quest level grinding. One size fits all professions, factions and flavors. Some good stories, some bad, some really bad.

- Clutter
Old
Housing everywhere you could think of. The Theed and Moinia Vendor lines. The Valley of the Lag between Bestine and AH.

New
It’s still there except it’s just a dead world.

- Broken things
Old
Broken/nerf’d story lines, professions and missions. ‘I went there, where’s the NPC?’, Carbineer, mission points inside buildings.

New
Left over animations, crafting lines, missions. If you’re going to put in new, clean out the old! Mission points still inside buildings.

- Canon
This would pop up from time to time usually in the context of ‘we can’t do that, it’s not canon’.
Old
Mummer thugs, fighting pets

New
All the Clone Wars marketing tie in’s

And we could go on and on. Both games have their problems. I’d say NGE’s are worse if only because they have so many pre-NGE one’s they didn’t clean up.

Something I personally think, is that WE the players helped to screw up the pre-NGE game. Why?

- Buffing a level 1 to the max, outfitting him in the best comp armor around and running him through the hard missions to level him up fast. And then whining that the game needed more and more harder high level stuff to ‘challenge’ them. This is where the DWB and Corvette came from. No one wanted to take their time and just play at a lower level, everyone just HAD to be max’d out.

And because the dev’s were stuck in this rat race of coming up with new challenging stuff, they blew off the low level bugs and nerf’s since players were just blowing by them anyway, so why fix them. How often did we hear the mantra ‘X profession is nerf’d; we’ll fix it next build’ and it would just get pushed farther and farther back? How far? I think they were hoping so far back that people just forgot about it.

So in the end what did we end up with? I’d have to say two totally different games. SOE should have just given SWG:NGE a different name. Linking it to the old was one of the biggest dis-services they could have done.

For what it was, Pre-CU was something different, many of us took it to be plenty good. That it was more popular is beyond question. The NGE on the other hand, was signicantly more "not good" and the mass cancelations to the point that the accts server crashing for 2 weeks after the NGE is testament to that.

SOE took what was a fundmantally good game, to many of us, and drove it into the ground, largely caused by a lack of play testing. Would everything have been as "easy" had SOE tested comp armor and doc buffs made with near perfect materials? Probably not. Anyone designing/testing a game with half a brain would have done that and figured out that some reasonable caps were necessary. Same with CM poisons and mind fire DOTs. But SOE was stupid and the game suffered for it.

Just doing those few, non-complicated fixes would have solved untold numbers of problems in PvP and PvE. "Balance" too, although SOE has been galactically stupid on that issue, as well.

Never mind the hundreds of other bugs that made it live at launch, some of which exist to this day.

Among SOEs biggest sins is that of putting deadlines before quality and speed before thourough testing.

One reason among many I won't be playing another SOE title.

Totally agree.  

It's just that so many on BOTH sides will immediately attack a poster that doesn't have the same opinion as they do.  That's why I said "take off the rose colored glasses".  How is it even remotely helpful if a new person types in a question like "what is the best to do ..... " and the next poster lists a pre-CU template build?  Even something as mild as that is still a form of attack and in no way/shape or form answers the guy's question.

Everyone just needs to lighten up.  It was and is only a game and I for one would hate to be some bitter old man on my death bed 50 years from now still raging about 'the day SOE screwed us!'

I've never forgotten the insane amount of bugs in the old days, but I felt the old system had more room to be great, the new one is like a RC Cola version of WOW. And if I'm thirsty why drink imitation when I can have the best. At least the old system could have expanded on a niche like eve.

There is also the feeling of, I dunno...lawlessness. Like anything could have happened in the old game, wild west style that I have found in no game since.

Originally posted by Nebless

- Buffing a level 1 to the max, outfitting him in the best comp armor around and running him through the hard missions to level him up fast. And then whining that the game needed more and more harder high level stuff to ‘challenge’ them. This is where the DWB and Corvette came from. No one wanted to take their time and just play at a lower level, everyone just HAD to be max’d out.

I suppose I'm confused with this statement...

A level what ? in pre-cu...

Considering how small a percentage of the population on Starsider was taking on the "very hard stuff" I never personally saw this as a problem.

The main issue was they had never worked on or had any concept of "hard caps" which most MMO's have.  Which lead to stacking and pretty much the majority of the issues .. right down to buffs.

Anyway more or less OP is correct since there is only one product live atm.

Something I personally think, is that WE the players helped to screw up the pre-NGE game. Why?

- Buffing a level 1 to the max, outfitting him in the best comp armor around and running him through the hard missions to level him up fast. And then whining that the game needed more and more harder high level stuff to ‘challenge’ them. This is where the DWB and Corvette came from. No one wanted to take their time and just play at a lower level, everyone just HAD to be max’d out.

AMEN!!!

Though I can't say I agree that players are responsible for that.

Composite Armor wasn't just the best armor, it was BY FAR the best armor.

Doc buffs weren't a slight edge; it meant the difference between $1000 contracts and $6000 contracts.  Between hunting Wampa's or Rancor.  It made things massively imbalanced.

In the end, if you create a community which encourages doing things a certain way, a way that provides a HUGE advantage over any other way, don't blame the population for choosing it.

Pre-NGE was good as an MMO for its time, it just wasn't very good for Star Wars, at least in terms of overall design.  Graphics were good... audio was good... the first time Lukes' Theme played when the sun(s) went down... THAT was good stuff.  Player houses and cities...

But when the time came to say, "great!  what do I do?  Can I kill Stormtroopers?" 

The answer was:  "Wait til' you get doc buffed and some composite armor.  Otherwise, you won't have a chance til' level 40." 

Not seeing the Star Wars in that.  Not one bit.

CU, even with its flaws, was a step in the right direction for mob combat balance.  Unfortunately the radical changes bugged everything, and nerfed the medical profession.  Later it would be found that instead of fixing the damage they did, they'd just take out every feature they broke and not tell anybody.  Enter: NGE.

I don't think Pre-NGE would save this game.  The folks that seek it now... I bet half of them would quit in a month if it were to come back.  The "good ol' days" weren't just good because of the game; they were good because it was good for its time, had a population, and friends hadn't moved on to other games.

SOE made a really bad choice for a perfectly good reason:  subs were falling(WOW), and those subs remaining weren't playing nearly as much as they were.

Originally posted by Antarious

A level what ? in pre-cu...

Considering how small a percentage of the population on Starsider was taking on the "very hard stuff" I never personally saw this as a problem.

Talking levels about pre-CU is of course wrong and I only used it to convey the mind picture of a low level toon since listing a template wouldn't have made the same impact.

As far as Starsider goes, I know that was THE RP server back then so it might not have stood out as much.  But on Kett I can remember newer players with all kinds of buffs and comp armor from their guild mates going on the larger missions etc....  Back in the days where wearing ST armor unbuff'd was difficult due to encumbrance and how it affected your healing rate.

My only argument is that 200k+ thought pre-CU was better...after the NGE a majority quit. 

I wonder why that was?

Meh i had fun. Something i haven't found in any other game since. PreCU definitely had something going for it that other games lack. What was it? most likely the freedom it offered in playstyle.

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

Originally posted by Nebless

Totally agree.  

It's just that so many on BOTH sides will immediately attack a poster that doesn't have the same opinion as they do.  That's why I said "take off the rose colored glasses".  How is it even remotely helpful if a new person types in a question like "what is the best to do ..... " and the next poster lists a pre-CU template build?  Even something as mild as that is still a form of attack and in no way/shape or form answers the guy's question.

Everyone just needs to lighten up.  It was and is only a game and I for one would hate to be some bitter old man on my death bed 50 years from now still raging about 'the day SOE screwed us!'

You are the poster in this case though, so now you are predicting what? At least in pre-cu mode, all of the game systems worked in tandum. It took them three years following the NGE launch to make this happen again. In the mean time the economy tanked, the population fled, and the player support of SWG made it's name legend (and not a good one). So, you tell me, in retrospect, which system was better? Why did you even post this? To simply respond to yourself?

I think one thing the OP is missing is the fact of what old SWG could've/should've evovled into - thus making it a hands down no comparison to the changes and which was truly better.  Yes it had a ton of bugs, a whole lotta imbalance, and needed refinement in a major way.  But the fact remains that there's not been a game since that had the potential and the downright fun of what swg once was.

I was a fixture on Starsider, and even though I'd end up putting more time into WOW when it released I could never look back now that both are a memory (to me) and once think that WOW is in any way shape or form classic or has near the potential of what swg could've evolved into.

This is why people who know sandbox crave it like a drug .

It's kind of like when 2 people break up yet keep calling each other or obsessing about what the other is doing or being angry still - all indicators there are still feelings.  I think SWG can be marked as the biggest failure of all time because of what happened, and the number of people (including myself) still posting about it several years later is a true testament to that.

Even the main emulator out there is still going strong and even though unfinished growing in population.  It's truly mind boggling how SOE or Lucas or the two together could not see fit to at LEAST bring back an old school server.  I'm certain they know the players hate them both and personally I've always blamed Lucas, SOE only types the code but Lucas has creative control and is the true devil here. 

Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

tired of seeing the magic 250k number

250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

Originally posted by ummax

Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

 

tired of seeing the magic 250k number

250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

Well considering you completely made all of that up to justify cutting the entire population in half, I'll throw in that the majority of people I knew in game only had one account, and only a few had multiple accounts. Therefore 250k is pretty accurate.

But if we want to use your logic, then we can apply it to the NGE. Cut the current population in half, the current actual number of real people playing is is 41.

Originally posted by ummax

Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

 

tired of seeing the magic 250k number

250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

I knew a number of crafting types who kept multiple accounts when I started. I also know most of my guild at the time were individual accounts (this was shortly after launch). Most of us were happy to regrind a profession vs purchasing another license and then paying an extra $15. I think you are correct that the number is not as hyped, but then again the number has never been confirmed. All I know is the multiple accounts, and the players behind them disappered, in front of them were the individual accounts, and I followed quite soon thereafter. The one thing thay cannot be denied is the number of guild chats that went completely silent, and the number of houses you are going to see wiped from the landscape pretty soon (not that this is a bad thing for current players).

Originally posted by Abrahmm

Originally posted by ummax

Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

 

tired of seeing the magic 250k number

250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

 

Well considering you completely made all of that up to justify cutting the entire population in half, I'll throw in that the majority of people I knew in game only had one account, and only a few had multiple accounts. Therefore 250k is pretty accurate.

But if we want to use your logic, then we can apply it to the NGE. Cut the current population in half, the current actual number of real people playing is is 41.

The majority of the people i knew in eclipse in the good old days had at least 2 accounts, but the magic 250k players number is a fair accessment since (i'll come back to the 250 000 in a bit), IMO, at his peak SWG had about 500 000 accounts (notice accounts)

Still, it is worth pointing out that even before the NGE, or even before the CU, numbers had dropped considerably. SWG foruns then were a mess with ravaging complaints about imbalances, like defence stackers, or the fact that a several buffs (food, spice, medical and entertainer) had become essential to do almost anything in the game, or broken story arcs, of the lack of loot (yes, lack of loot),  and many other things.

I, for example, stopped playing ~3 months before the CU . And was not the only one.  "it's dead jim" comes to mind when I remember that period.

And yes, pre-cu should have evolved. And the evolution was the CU and then NGE (that was a bloody mess ).  

The golden question is, even if they had done it differently, would those 250 000 still be playing the game?

Reality check: last years have show that themepark mmo's are more profitable than sandbox ones. I like sandbox more, but I am not blind. the current "console mentality players" reject the idea of a sandbox game

console mentality player - aka as the masses, the ones that make or kill a game when faced with a sandbox mmo:

huh? wtf is this?  I have to think now to play huh? here's the map pointing out where the quest givers and quest areas are? where the boss? where is the epic items? ARRRGH I want my highway to Overpowerness and a GPS -

 250 k players or 500 k accounts was a good number for a time where mmo's were a new thing, probably equivalent to today's 2 million players. Yet the peak population that swg had in it's  CU time was bypassed by wow in a glimpse- a cartoonish themepark game. 

Originally posted by Nebless

And neither is NGE. Face it, it’s time for both sides to take off the rose-colored glasses and admit that SWG; be it orig/pre/post or whatever was and is a flawed game. Which one is more flawed? Can’t say, that’s so subjective as to fall into the ‘how many digits can you take Pi to?’ argument. Which IS more playable? Hands down its NGE; BECAUSE it’s the only one SOE now offers. IF SOE offered both pre & post versions than you could argue which one, but they don’t.

A lot of players voted with their dollars when NGE came out and it didn’t seem to have as much or enough effect. Will anything down the road? Who knows?

So on that happy thought let’s take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the flaws in both...

- Professions
Old
32 skills. Be all you can be, how ever you wanted to be. Except there quickly became THE template everyone just had to have to be the best. So you can say 32 different, but the reality was a bunch of template clones

New
9 choices. Some variation, but not enough

- Jedi
Old
Super hard to get (way too hard?), the fix: holocron’s. You finally unlocked it? Now take a number and wait for the old man to come get you and take you to the super secret training village. I was all for only having a few in game, but they just handled it in such a strange way.

New
Starter profession, now it’s way too easy

- Leveling
Old
Level grinding and even worse macro level grinding. Camp a good NPC spawn point, set up your macro, go to bed and wake up the next day with a shiny new high level toon. Or go out and slaughter so much wildlife that PETA would drop dead from the shock.

New
Quest level grinding. One size fits all professions, factions and flavors. Some good stories, some bad, some really bad.

- Clutter
Old
Housing everywhere you could think of. The Theed and Moinia Vendor lines. The Valley of the Lag between Bestine and AH.

New
It’s still there except it’s just a dead world.

- Broken things
Old
Broken/nerf’d story lines, professions and missions. ‘I went there, where’s the NPC?’, Carbineer, mission points inside buildings.

New
Left over animations, crafting lines, missions. If you’re going to put in new, clean out the old! Mission points still inside buildings.

- Canon
This would pop up from time to time usually in the context of ‘we can’t do that, it’s not canon’.
Old
Mummer thugs, fighting pets

New
All the Clone Wars marketing tie in’s

And we could go on and on. Both games have their problems. I’d say NGE’s are worse if only because they have so many pre-NGE one’s they didn’t clean up.

Something I personally think, is that WE the players helped to screw up the pre-NGE game. Why?

- Buffing a level 1 to the max, outfitting him in the best comp armor around and running him through the hard missions to level him up fast. And then whining that the game needed more and more harder high level stuff to ‘challenge’ them. This is where the DWB and Corvette came from. No one wanted to take their time and just play at a lower level, everyone just HAD to be max’d out.

And because the dev’s were stuck in this rat race of coming up with new challenging stuff, they blew off the low level bugs and nerf’s since players were just blowing by them anyway, so why fix them. How often did we hear the mantra ‘X profession is nerf’d; we’ll fix it next build’ and it would just get pushed farther and farther back? How far? I think they were hoping so far back that people just forgot about it.

So in the end what did we end up with? I’d have to say two totally different games. SOE should have just given SWG:NGE a different name. Linking it to the old was one of the biggest dis-services they could have done.

 

That seems like a pretty balanced overview--an enjoyable read.  I also have to agree with you that over-writing one game with another was the worst thing SOE could have done. 
 

I think the idea is that people just pretty much lost everything that they had built together, with very little warning, and a lot of misdirection.  Then it was replaced with something that was even more broken and incomplete.

So, I think people are likely to remember the good things that were taken away from them, against their wishes; and they're very likely to hate what was forced on them instead.  SOE has been trying to polish the NGE for years now, but no amount of polish is going to offset all the damage that they did; and it still isn't very shiny when compared to the competition's games like WoW, EVE and Lotr.

As for StarWars games that are available, well SWTOR will end the SOE monopoly on the IP.  There's also another alternative in the works that I won't discuss out of respect for those that allow me to post here.

---

Originally posted by ummax

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Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

---

 
tired of seeing the magic 250k number
250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

---

Originally posted by sookster54

 

---

Originally posted by ummax

---

Originally posted by sookster54

 

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

---

 

 
tired of seeing the magic 250k number
250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

---

There was a post back in 2004 reporting 250K unique subs but 300K-320K accounts, is that what you're referring to? :P

 

no actualy its not

Originally posted by ummax

Originally posted by sookster54

In YOUR opinion, pre-CU wasn't good, but your opinion won't be agreed upon by 250K players that vanished overnight. :)

And if you think "level 1" (which there was no such thing of) buffing up and doing hard stuff is bad, you have no clue on what goes on in City of Heroes/Villains, which to say is worse.

 

tired of seeing the magic 250k number

250 might possibly stand for the number of paid accounts, but no way it accounts for the number of actual players.   I knew very few people who only held one account, in fact I think I was the only one in my guild at the time that held one account.   Most held 2 and some held obscene numbers of accounts.   So if you cut off about 100k your probably closer to the actual number of actual real people who are individuals playing this game.  (this has been pointed out by others before of course and of course ignored).

Probably because it's irrelevant.