OK, a weekend of play time is over and here it goes:

Since this fits into my experience I'll cover Draenor's comment concerning the bazzar terminals.  Yes all the best stuff is usually found at the vendor's but all I wanted was a simple faux Imp uniform; grey jacket, pants and gloves.  Ended up finding it all for 5000 but I had to go to 2 different planets and 3 locations, not to mention the 1 vendor had his stuff broken up by color and grey wasn't one of the choices  Now this isn't a game fault, but a merchant one in that they are the one's that decide where to sell things at.  Atleast SOE has beefed up the bazaar terminals so you can see the individual vendor sites and know what's in stock, color etc.... not like before when it was a guess.  I'll grade this one at a C since I shouldn't have to drive all over, but atleast I knew the stuff would be there.

Combat:  I have got to turn off the partical effects.  Those are the most annoying things I've ever seen.  Green bubbles, glowing red swords and I don't even know what the toon outside the starport was doing, all I could make out was some kind of fountain of text starting at his feet and going into the sky

My click to fight problem seems to have cleaned itself up, which was nice.  Tab to next target doesn't seem to be working right though.  Get's the first enemy but not the 2nd.  Have to manually do it, pain in a melee.

My space problem:  Got a trouble ticket in, we'll see if there's any movement prior to the free period running out.  Just to check I killed my base pilot skill on my alt (only had it for planet to planet travel) and went to see if I could join with the NPC's that blew off my main.  1st - I still had my privateer starter ship and could still use it to travel in  Haven't tried to actually fly it though.  Went to the Imp pilot NPC and he signed me right up so it's a problem with just my main toon.  Strange.

I don't like how the re-playibility factor isn't there. All the professions and factions run the exact same legacy quest and to be frank about it the majority of the quest storyline writting sucks.  You can tell all the spots where the writer got tired and just said screw it - Plot: Kill X, Kill more X, Kill even more X.  There are a few good spots but after doing it once you never want to run it again.  Atleast the space side has 9 different storylines (3 for each) but that's all carryover from pre-NGE.

Would I rather have skill points instead of the 9 iconic classes?  Yes.  Can I make due with just 9 choices (even though to be truthful of the 9 only a few are really good for solo play) ?  Again, yes.  Might not like it as much but still yes.

What I like.  I do like the appearance change they put in so you can wear your armor but not run around looking like it's on.  The variety is nice.

All in all SWG is still a fun game, especially for the one's that have never played it before.  It's a OK game for those that have played it before and don't bring a lot of emotional baggage to the game with them.

Will I actual pay to keep playing.  If it was just a me thing probably not.  I've tapped it out and don't really see the point anymore.  Seeing as it will be a family decision and would allow my son's at home to play an internet game with their big brother in San Diego then yes it may start showing up on my credit card statement again.

OK, after about 6 hrs of play time (or atleast running around time) I can give my initial impressions.

Yes there are a lot of players now and judging from the 'born on', 'refugee from' and 'fugitive from' titles they're all from the closing servers.

Count on a good hour of re-setup time after the move / game return as they have changed everything, so it was dig into the options time to put all but into it's place.

Bugs; yes they are still there, only different   Both my wife and youngest crashed the game, my boy and wife while running and then she did it again 4 more times just being in Mos Eisley cantina.  We have the graphics turned way down on their computer.  I managed to kill my computer once just standing still on my party barge and opening up the new appearance window and mines a last years pretty high end model.  Also there seems to be something wrong with clearing the target window, esc and click on nothing don't always work and you can forget about clicking on 1 thing and then trying to click on something new without manually clearing it first.  Starting combat doesn't always seem to work either, nothing like standing next to a red dot and not being able to swing at it.  And to top it off I seem to have lost my level 90's pilot skill.  The profession wheel just isn't there anymore.  Tried to join with a new trainer and they wouldn't even talk to me.  Don't understand that one.  Guess there's a reason why the initial log in message starts with 'We are experiencing a higher than usual number of support tickets......'

Since I'm a 90 and only dropped a year ago I've done all the solo stuff so I'm at a loss on the what now factor.  Did spend about 15min getting the rattletrap ITV collection, that wasn't much of a task but I like the look of the little ship.  Now what do I do with the other 29 days of my free trial?

Their new appearance thing.  This is one of those good/bad things.  I like how they're trying to add some visual variety by allowing you to wear clothes over your armor since everyone pretty much had the same stuff, but since it seems no one is making clothes all there is is the same looted stuff everyone else has.  That whole kill the merchants by allowing all the loot drop clothes and weapons has really emptied the bazzar terminals.

I don't know, my middle boy has his toon playing sax with his holo bandmates in his house, my youngest (10yrs old) is probably having the most fun shooting tipper thugs in Moenia.  At this point I'm just not seeing it.

No No No, the best bug was right after the speeders and such came out and you could call them up but not put them away!  The front of every starport looked like 1 big traffic jam / parking lot! LOL!

I still remember someone in a Chicken Walker stompping the crap out of them all in front of the Bestine Starport!

Ahhhhh the fun old days, Hahahaha

Originally posted by Thunderous

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Nebless

I can say that as of last night on Kett server>Tat>Mos Eisley I saw 6 to 8 players between the spaceport and cantina between 7 and 8 pm (PST).

 

Try that same test on Starsider.

 

You are bragging because all of the players from the dead servers have transferred to the more populated ones...

WHERE ARE THE NEW PLAYERS?  SWG will NEVER grow until the game is good enough to retain new players.  Even with the Station Pass SWG can't accomplish that...

So instead of going to every internet site and posting that SWG is booming and the populations are high, consider that it is the SAME players as last week, they are just consolidated on new servers.

SWG can't keep new players hence the populations keep declining over time.

Too true, but from logging in last night and this morning on Starsider it was a VERY pleasant surprise to see lot's of players in Bestine (looks like that's the main server transfer in point).  Reminded me of the old days when you always had players around.  Heck I even had some lag since I was on the kid's play computer!
 

I say keep dumping servers down to 1 and then when they finally lose all the players they'll know to shut up shop! LOL!

You know there are some really good space games out there, some really good Sci-Fi ground games out there and some really good social games out there and yes they beat the snot out of SWG cuz they're newer, more powerful or just better.  But I'm trying to think of any other games that have that combo in fairly equal parts like SWG.  It may not particularly shine in any of the area's, but it does give you 1 game where you can do them all.  For that fact alone you got to give it some good marks for coming out back in '03.

As far as the e-mail address goes, both in Nov and now I only got it at my up to date address (it got updated for the PoTBS acct I had on it too), not for the other 2 acct's, but all 3 accts are currently active as of yesterday.  So even if you didn't get an e-mail you might as well give it a shot at logging on. 

I work on the thought that if nothing else it's a free month of play time and I'm currently inbetween games so no loss anyway you want to look at it.

I never did anything for the Nov freebie so I'm guessing that's why all mine are on now.

For whoever asked how long: Jan 13 to Feb 12 (month), the same date's I think as the free toon transfers with building packups in March.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Nebless

I can say that as of last night on Kett server>Tat>Mos Eisley I saw 6 to 8 players between the spaceport and cantina between 7 and 8 pm (PST).

 

Try that same test on Starsider.

Oh I plan to.  I've seen his screen shots and I think it's a given that there will be more players on Starsider than Kett.  The whole fun factor being there or missing will be the true test.  Granted there's been new stuff in the year I've been gone, but is it new stuff I want to play with?  The card game is a BIG no, so we'll see.

Hey all I have a question.  Gutboy's "new quality artwork" comment got me thinking.  Is the artwork / graphic's really THAT much better or is it just that we all have better quality computers now than we did back in '03 when SWG came out?  Or a combo of the 2?

Well they're trying again.

As of 13 Jan it seems all inactive accounts have been re-activated for 30 days.  Along with this is the free toon transfers.  (And a snowball making machine!!! WTF?!?!? Yea that will really turn around SWG ..... snowballs on Tat!)

Part of it; they say, has to do with their March building cleanup and just maybe some SOE type actually read my post that just blowing buildings up wasn't enough and they'd need to just pack 'em all away cuz that's what's suppose to happen to any building on an account that hasn't seen movement since July 08.  Of course does the 2 free account activations they've done since then negat that lack of movement?  Any Takers?

My 2 youngest's wanted to see their old toons and since my oldest 'gave' an account to my middle boy so they could play together (right before his laptop touched itself prior to returning to San Diego) we brought their old account up and I did the move to Starsider thing for them.  Starsider must have some movement going as it took a couple of times to get them over.  From what the oldest said it's the one that most RP'ers are going (back) to.

I did my old account too since I was at it and will check it out and let people know what I see.  As of last night I was able to move my level 32 over, but kept getting blocked on my level 90 main.  Could have been just bad timing so I'll try again tonight as I'd rather check things out with him.

I can say that as of last night on Kett server>Tat>Mos Eisley I saw 6 to 8 players between the spaceport and cantina between 7 and 8 pm (PST).

by Gutboy

"They are doing a house packup event again AFTER the server transfer so the new people on a server have a chance to get a city if they want to. Our guild already has secured a city that will meet our needs before the transfer (level 3) that will be able to rank up once the house pack up is completed."

I was there for the first house clean up.  For whatever reason I started a day after everyone else and couldn't find a single building to blow up even though there were still plenty of empty buildings all over.

Maybe now that even MORE time has gone by the building maint. accounts will have finally run down and this one will.

I still think that unless SOE just packs up every building on all the planets and sticks them in the owners inventories to allow a fresh start it just won't work.    Of course that would be akin to them saying those players won't be coming back and that's something they don't want to face.

Originally posted by Gutboy

Why would they need to close any servers? I have been told it costs next to nothing to keep a galaxie up and running, with the amount of servers SOE has for all games it's not even a blip on the cost spreadsheet.

Along with the economic reason already given, almost all of the new content is group driven i.e. Hoth - to go you have to have a min group size party.  Shifting players over to servers with more bodies makes getting groups together easier.

Of course you know that with typical lack of foresight, they'll let all these players shift around, but won't have conducted any planet wide building clean up's to allow those players to form they're own cities etc.....

Originally posted by DrChicken

Maybe if you learned to move on from "injustices" inflicted upon you through a mere entertainment medium almost three years ago, you might be able to forgive a mistake a company made in customer service management. I played SWG all the way up to the NGE - quitting right after its release (I guess that means I missed out on a whopping $7.50 of that $15.00 monthly fee I paid). Hah, this is too ridiculous - my apologies.

I'm sorry, couldn't tell who you were directing your comment to.  If me, I played up to Dec 07.  Started Oct of the release year.   Only dropped because the solo PvE 'fun' factor wasn't there anymore. 

Originally posted by John.A.Zoid

 Also I like how you can't AFK Buff anymore which is something SWG always needed to do which is get rid of AFK buff bots. you have to tell the entertainer what you want ...

Not true John, my son still plays and there's 2 buff bots in the local starport, 1 for Imp's and 1 for Reb's.  You can't get the buff's tailored like you can with an entertainer, all you get is the stock / standard (for his guild) Pvp buff, but they are still present in game.

Cutting down the starport / shuttle wait times did more to kill the social side of the game than anything else I could think of.  My wife lived in the Cantina's dancing, but I never liked the lag in there so my socializing was at the starports and shuttles while I waited.  I'd pull out my 'sax' and start wailing and singing away.

Nebless - the singing dwarf bothian on Kett

Originally posted by kalrhael

By the way, as I can recall, in VO there was sections of pvp areas, and non pvp areas in space, are the pvp areas largely avoidable at the later parts of the game? I'm not much for pvp. 

As said it's a total PvP game.  Some area's are safer than others, but you can be attacked anywhere.  Having said that ......

Like you I'm not a Pvp fan but as I generally play as a courier / freight hauler pilot I don't see it as my job TO FIGHT.  So instead I'll hit the turbo's and haul for my jump point.  The part of this I really like is the rush of knowing that there is some very real danger out there.  I'm actually having to stay involved in the game.  No getting up and going for a soda while flying.  I'm consently checking my radar to see who's out there and if it is a non-my nation player, is he friend or foe?  Do I say 'Hi' or duck and hope he doesn't see me?

My biggest fun factor so far was getting chased by a hostile player and escaping.  I may not like Pvp but it sure add's spice to the game.

Yea I noticed that, but had to post to give others that might actually be interested and read this the true story.

Neither my son nor I have seen a single case of anyone camping the stations.  Plus you do have the capibility of checking for ships in the sector while inside the stations, which would give you a heads up of what's outside. Plus all the Nation's stations atleast have a no fire zone around them, which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to attack players close to the station. 

Even if you are seeing this, how is it differnet from any other game with PvP?

The closest we've come to a situation like this was in a station down on the edge of our nations space.  There was a Neutral nation player outside the station and when we flew in he came over and flew close to us, looped us etc..... but no shooting.  We went into the station and after coming out saw that a enemy (to our nation) had logged on in station.  Well my son and I thought we'd hang outside and attack him when he cleared the NFZ.  The guy would pop out every so often to see if it was safe and duck back in.

After a bit the neutral shot 1 and only 1 missile at me.  Wouldn't kill me, but got my attention and a bit later did the same to my son.  We finally got the idea he either thought we were going to steal his kill, he was the guys escort through pirate territory or we were just screwing up his attack plans since he wasn't going to come out if we were there.  Now he could have sent us a Tell/PM, but the missile worked just as well, so we left.

Here was a chance for a much more experienced player to rack up a couple of kills on 2 NooB's, but he DIDN'T DO IT.  I think that says alot about the game right there.

Just to check.  Did you download Bit Torrent first and then the game?  I know I had to really read the directions a few times to see how the flow was suppose to go as the whole Bit Torrent part (downloading before you could download) was a bit different than the norm.

After the Bit Torrent and the game download then it's a right mouse click - Run to open it and get it setup in your system.  Is this when it goes to black?

Originally posted by Ozmodan

This is without doubt the worst buggiest game I have ever played.  How anyone in their right mind can recommend such junk is beyond me.   I feel like an idiot even downloading it and trying it out.

 Well something in the game's write up must have caught your eye or you wouldn't have downloaded it in the first place. 

Could you possibly point out what these bugs may be?  My son and I have been playing a week now and neither of us have seen any bugs.  No rubber-banding of NPC's.  Nothing stuck inside anything else.  No NPC's leaning or sitting on thin air.  All of which I have seen in SWG and PoTBS.  And if you think it's a bug that after doing the mega-grind routine that you in your uber-ship got his behind handed to him by someone flying a beginner's NooB bus ...... wwweeeellll that's not a bug.

I can honestly say that for the staff size, what their budget probably was, the ease it plays on multiple systems (we have both Win XP and Vista), they turned out a pretty good game and I won't have any problem paying the $10.00 a month to keep a sub going.

I see it coming down to -

'Does the game have a built in fan base already?' 

Star Wars has probably the largest non-game fan base.  Those of us that saw it originally in the 70's, our kids with the new & re-releases, their kids with the cartoons and comic books.  If they could fix the game, yes it probably could come back.  There's so many that WANT to play a Star Wars game.  Whiether or not SW:KoTOR can capitalize on that remains to be seen.

The same could be said for the future Stargate and Star Trek games.  They both have fan bases already in place and just like SWG, those people are going to play and forgive SOME of the mistakes.  Once it goes over the edge, you'd still have the hardcore fans playing, but the rest would go elsewhere but in the back of their minds would always be 'if they fix it, I will return'.

For PoTBS.  It was a niche game from the start and yes I was in one pre-launch because I liked the period/style it was suppose to be.  It didn't deliever and I can't see it coming back to life, because it doesn't have a genre fan base and once people move on from it, they'll stay gone.

Itan - Armand's Reward.  Usually hits just as I'm approaching the landing bay 

A problem that I know of from past game's is my computer does somekind of cycle within 15 - 30 min of my starting play that causes a fps slow down, but this is totally seperate.  Just kind of weird.  Only station I've ever noticed it in.

Originally posted by moldyman44

..., but you might get bored of grinding (reaching level 10 across the board takes up to a month at most, and nothing requires more). And while PvP is great, this won't be a game you'll play for hours on end everyday, imo.

But why would you want to be 10/10/10/10/10?

What I've seen so far is depending on what 'profession' you decide you want to do, you concentrate on that area.  If you want to be a miner push in that area and blow off one or more of the others. 

Just because it's a PvP game doesn't mean you HAVE to push in that area.  If I KNOW I suck at fighting then why grind in that area if it won't ever do me any good?

Not sure about the addiction part since if you DO get into the game you do want to go play hour after hour.

To the OP re: Population.  On Christmas Day there were 65 players on line in the morning and it went down to 55 in the evening with only about 6-8 (from all 3 factions) actively talking on Global Chat.

I'm not a big PvPer, I actually perfer PvE, but I've been looking for a space game for a while now since I updated my graphics card and couldn't play FreeLancer and dropped Star Wars Galaxies when the missions got boring. What with a free 30 day trial you can get here on MMORPG & a 30 min download I figured I didn't have much to lose so decided to give it a try even if it was a Pvp game.

First if you've played FreeLancer or the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter games, alot of the game play and HUD will look familiar enough to help you ease into the game.

Since it is a pure PvP game it's nice that your starting spot is 'fairly' safe. No griefers camping outside the space stations etc .... so you can run the tutorial missions without too much worry.

This fact leads me to my first really nice thought on the game. It is kind of safe, but with just enough danger to keep it interesting and ensure you pay attention and not run your brain on auto-pilot.

On the downside, part of this 'safeness' may be from the smaller player base currently playing. All I can say is as it stands right now both my 14 and 10 yr olds can also play and not worry.

The missions. Seems to be a decent amount and variety of one's to choose from. They also seem to support the concept of becoming what ever 'profession' you want. Currently I seem to be leaning towards the life of a courier pilot.

It would be nice for the inital mission blurb to have a little more info in it like which system they want you to go to and maybe what the pay (rewards) would be. I'm not currently clear on the ramifications (if any) of my clicking mission accept, getting the full mission brief and then clicking abort (mission) if I don't like it. Will they not offer me anymore work? No effect? What?

Advancement/Leveling. Both fast and slow. I got 1 whole level jump in my trade section by just doing the first easy courier mission on one hand, but my light weapons / combat's been going slow since just random shooting the NPC miner droids only gets me 5 xp each. There is a droid shooting mission that gets more xp plus a bonus I may have to try, same with the Advance Fighting tutorial although that one sounds fairly robust just from reading it. My 14 yr old has gone up 1 or 2 levels from just doing the mining missions so that part sounds ok.

Graphic's. I like them, bold rich space views, different looking styles of stations, the 'foreign' language neon signs etc..., haven't had to tweak anything to raise my fps and with the exception of visiting 1 certain station that always stalls my system down to 1fps for a bit once I get close to it, I haven't encountered any problems, although my fore & aft radar displays went out of focus last night but that wasn't a game breaker as I could still make out the radar dots - they were just fuzzy not crisp circles. I'll see how they look tonight after work.

I do find the look of the ships a little weak (of course the neutral SWG ships were too), but from throwning the thought back and forth with my 14 yr old I'll give you that designing TOTALLY NEW ship designs that are real eye grabbers would be hard. What with all the other games and TV / movie shows out there you'd have to stay away from looking like anything that's been done before.

Gameplay. You have 2 types of flying control. Flight Assist which most games use I believe; mouse / keys to turn, fly like an airplane. And then you have the Physic's mode which I had seen before on the Babylon 5: I've found her game. 6 axis flight, just turning the ship doesn't effect your movement direction, you'd have to use your engines to power you onto the different direction. Does allow you to fly 'forward', point and shot 'backwards' but at the cost of not being able to see where you're going. LOL! If you lean towards motion sickness you may not want to try using the Physic's mode or fly in the 3rd person view.

Community. This has to be one of the stronger aspects of the game. You always have a good mix (differnt factions) of players on the Global chat channel and all of them are willing to answer questions no matter if they're your nations friends/enemies or neutral. That part of the game is just that - part of the game. Answering questions is outside of that, just players which is nice.

So to sum it up, come ruin my low population game   Get one of the 30 day trial keys and flood the game with players. You can't beat the price thats for sure and you just may be surprised and end up staying. Check out Vendetta-Online.com if you want more information.