Originally posted by BigBlackWook

Originally posted by iceman00

Originally posted by BigBlackWook

 With all the uproar around SWG demise, all the major things that got ripped from the game, one aspect that slipped through the cracks was the loss of the Teras Kasi profession with the NGE. People talk about losing CH, but CH was nerfed long before that to the point of uselessness. TKM was a staple in SWG. Everyone had one. That class was a blast to play with. TKMs were the jedi of SWG long before any of those glow stick wielding fight clubbers came stumbling in.

 My first class was BH, and I did pretty well in most pvp, except against TKMs. It was like shooting a brick wall with a water gun. Before the CH nerf you had TKM/Master CHs running around with Gurreks. That combo could take on twelve guys at a time.

 Force of Will alone made that class absolutely badass. I can't remember how many hate tells I would get from coming back from an incapp and db'ing the seemingly victorious player dancing over my corpse. My TKM was also a master doc, and my guild would not do any sort of group hunt unless we brought him along, period. Think your rifleman/cm is the end all be all? Think again.

 Then you had the stackers. A tkm/fencer/master brawler? Forget about it. Those guys were unstoppable.

 TKMs could regen mind, and we also one of only four classes that could attack mind. Essential in any kind of pvp.

 Just one more reason why SOE wil be remembered always as the purple butted baboons who screwed up Star Wars.

 

I'm gonna get flamed....

A lot of what he praises is exactly what was wrong with Pre-CU.  TKM's being God was absurd.  they should've been the ultimate in melee classes, a skilled master being able to go toe to toe with a Jedi.  Instead, they were being made into the uber class being able to stand up to both melee and ranged with little problem.  TKM's should've been low on damage, and high on defenses.  A true "tank" so to speak.

A TKM would've been fine I suppose if not for the wacked stacking system SOE had.  Stackers didn't improve PvP.  They ruined it.  But the fault was not with them.  The fault was with the over abundance of Jedi thanks to Pub 9, that made stacking essential to prevent PvP from becoming Jedi wars.  The original plan for modifying stacking in the CURB was a very good one.  Making stacking more realistic (instead of just taking the defensive trees in all professions) would've solved this problem right away.

I had in my posession a mind poison that ticked around 1.7k, and a mind disease that blacked any stat bar with one tick. with some rancor bile to give me a billion uses.  I ONLY used that on stackers.  And I always let them triple incap, just so I could say:

"You spent 500 hours number crunching the perfect template instead of enjoying the game, just to get triple incapped.

I honestly think people stopped enjoying the professions when they were trying to stack, instead just looking for the uber defenses.

No flame *coughs* lapdog of the oppressor *coughs*

Actually I think this post illustrates some serious points that drove what became the CU. You mentioned two key unbalances in swg, the defensive stacking and the dots. Make no mistake with my original post I wasn't defending stacking, I was just saying it was fun to play and hard to beat.

But the point is well taken, the population at that time was clamoring for the removal of stacking and the uber dots. The problem was, they couldn't leave it at that. Sony took everything out, everything that mattered, everything that was fun. And it stopped being a game. It became this wierd fragmented experience full of bad noise and false smiles. Who wants to play that?

One of the arguements the alternate view point is founded upon is how much the community had cried out for improvments. And I think that is what you are trying to get across here, but change for change's sake is never a good idea.

Anyway back on topic. Hijacking my own thread here. Who's got some more TKM stories? Here's one, it's my tkm/doc and his disease resists wailing the tar out of iceman's cm sonny corleone style. 

just to make sure, I wasn't defending uber dots either.  I only reserved those for stackers.  Matter of fact, I even labeled them "stacker special"

The CU did overdo it.  Realistic stacking (nothing was wrong with it in theory, just in practice) and a removal, or at least a reworking of dots.  Me I think dots should only have been able to effect the sub pools if they existed at all.

Originally posted by defenestrate

Originally posted by iceman00

So far the word is "gaurded optimism" in my guild.  With the beta and all a few of our guildies will file preliminary reports.  We've heard a lot of promises from gamespast.

Some of the features they are promising in this game are either downright cool, or have a ton of potential.  Yet time and time again promises have been made by developers, only for nothing.  (Vangaurd, Dark and Light, SWG, the list goes on.)  SOme of this was financial (or lack thereof), some was attempting to be too greedy.

One thing I know for sure. This goes right, our guild is expected to have well over 100-125 players flying our banners within the first month.

I dont know, the dev here from Flying Labs seems pretty sincere about whats going on. He could be blowing smoke up our asses by saying stuff like " THIS IS GOING TO REVOLUTIONIZE GAMING RARRR!!!" or other such nonsense. But he seems really sincere and honest and it is working for him.

WHat country you looking to represent? The guild Im in did a poll and we have around 100 people ready to join when the time comes, though I wont say what guild Im in, but we're pretty well known.

We will be a guild flying the flag of the British Empire.  We are in the process of building our Council for when the game goes live.  If your going to be british, send me a pm or what not, perhaps we can work on some co-operation for once the game goes live.  (My guild is known in any game that is community dependent as a broker in the faction to get everyone together.)

 And I never tend to doubt a dev's sincerity.  Most the devs I know are people who indeed love gaming, and really want to develop this stuff.

It's the logistics and management sides of it that make me incredibly cynical, being an IT professional myself lol.  So can it be delievered in a fashion that is timely and works?

Originally posted by Chessack

Originally posted by iceman00

I'm only looking at starting points here.  SOE has claimed they want to really bring back some vets.  I'm not saying I buy it or not.  I'm simply saying if they want to, let's see some action to start.  Before anything can be done, there needs to be an apology.

The reason I made the apology so vague is quite frankly, there are a million ways the NGE went wrong.  Many people might have a serious case of schedenfreude (sp?) watching Sony grovel, but I don't think that is realistic.  (though it would be theraputic for a second lol.)  They admit they made a mistake.  Well, they haven't truly admitted to anything until there is an apology.  That was my simple point.  As far as unethical and inexcusable (as well as downright stupid from a business standpoint), both of us are in agreement, and I've been hitting that note time and time again.

But once there has been an apology, what is there next to do?  Personally, I'd like to see them affirm to some 6 point plan or so, one of them being going on record stating that they will not bring forth engine altering mechanics. 

As I said in my post I was not disagreeing with you but expanding on the concept of the apology. Your OP basically said, "They need to more than just admit a mistake; they need to apologize for it." You're right, as far as that goes.

But...

... my point here is, what do they think the mistake was? This is not just an argument of semantics. If they don't even really understand what they're apologizing for, they're likely to just turn around and do it again... and again. After all look at the repeated behavior of SOE over the years with this game and the repeated underhanded, shady, dishonest dealings they have engaged in -- not just the NGE. That was only the most obvious and inexcusable example of it. They keep saying, each time they do these things, that, oops, they screwed up, and they will work to change. But they never do, and I'm quite convinced at this point that it's because of one of two things. Either they (a) honestly and truly do not understand what it is they are even apologizing for, or (b) they aren't really sincere and are just mollifying us. Maybe it's a little of both.

Either way, if they don't come clean in their apology not only by saying they are sorry but (as in my example) making it quite clear that they know what they are sorry for, then we will just have repeat after repeat of the same thing. After all, we have had repeat after repeat of the same behavior for years from them, usually within days of their "admission of culpability" type posts. Again, if they don't even know what it is they need to apologize for, saying "We're sorry" is just words.

As to them groveling, perhaps I came across that way but this is not my purpose -- to see them grovel. No, it's not about groveling and it's not about revenge. It's about the fact that when you really screw up, if you are going to try to earn back trust, you have to demonstrate clearly that you know what you did that was wrong, so that the offended party knows it at least might not happen again.

When I was a kid and got caught at something and issued an insincere apology my mother would often ask, "Are you really sorry you did it, or just sorry you got caught?" (or got punished). Implicit in her question is that there is a difference. If you're just sorry you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, the next time it's not being watched, you'll try for another cookie. But if you really are sorry you tried to grab a cookie that wasn't yours (to use a silly example) then even months later when nobody is there to watch you, you won't try to steal one.

So... this is not about SOE groveling or being made to look foolish. (They've already made themselves look far more foolish than any of us ever could dream of doing.) This is about them owning up... about them demonstrating in no uncertain terms that they know exactly what it is that they did wrong, so that we can be reasonably sure they won't do it again. Otherwise, if it's just, "We're sorry we lost subscribers" rather than "We're sorry for the bad things we did," then they are liable to turn around and do them again the second they have us back.

C

So far the word is "gaurded optimism" in my guild.  With the beta and all a few of our guildies will file preliminary reports.  We've heard a lot of promises from gamespast.

Some of the features they are promising in this game are either downright cool, or have a ton of potential.  Yet time and time again promises have been made by developers, only for nothing.  (Vangaurd, Dark and Light, SWG, the list goes on.)  SOme of this was financial (or lack thereof), some was attempting to be too greedy.

One thing I know for sure. This goes right, our guild is expected to have well over 100-125 players flying our banners within the first month.

I remember one interesting little spin given to justify the CU.  They said the reason they needed to change things was that artisans were laying down harvesters in the nightsister stronghold unbuffed and having no problems.

As a mining mogul, I knew this to be patently false.  One, barely any surveyors went to Dathomir.  The terrain was not very suitable for real mining.  Second, in the areas where the NS was populous, you were unable to lay down harvesters!  Second, even the strongest stacker never went to Dathomir unbuffed.  Even if you had 95% comp, to travel around Dathomir unbuffed was to invite certain death.

What they said was certainly true.  Armor was overpowered.  Based on poor planning, 95% comp was making the game a single player game, and the night sister elders were able to be solo'ed, even though they were supposed to be some of the most wicked mobs in the game.  Yet why did they have to invent a falsehood to tell the truth?

Originally posted by BigBlackWook

 With all the uproar around SWG demise, all the major things that got ripped from the game, one aspect that slipped through the cracks was the loss of the Teras Kasi profession with the NGE. People talk about losing CH, but CH was nerfed long before that to the point of uselessness. TKM was a staple in SWG. Everyone had one. That class was a blast to play with. TKMs were the jedi of SWG long before any of those glow stick wielding fight clubbers came stumbling in.

 My first class was BH, and I did pretty well in most pvp, except against TKMs. It was like shooting a brick wall with a water gun. Before the CH nerf you had TKM/Master CHs running around with Gurreks. That combo could take on twelve guys at a time.

 Force of Will alone made that class absolutely badass. I can't remember how many hate tells I would get from coming back from an incapp and db'ing the seemingly victorious player dancing over my corpse. My TKM was also a master doc, and my guild would not do any sort of group hunt unless we brought him along, period. Think your rifleman/cm is the end all be all? Think again.

 Then you had the stackers. A tkm/fencer/master brawler? Forget about it. Those guys were unstoppable.

 TKMs could regen mind, and we also one of only four classes that could attack mind. Essential in any kind of pvp.

 Just one more reason why SOE wil be remembered always as the purple butted baboons who screwed up Star Wars.

I'm gonna get flamed....

A lot of what he praises is exactly what was wrong with Pre-CU.  TKM's being God was absurd.  they should've been the ultimate in melee classes, a skilled master being able to go toe to toe with a Jedi.  Instead, they were being made into the uber class being able to stand up to both melee and ranged with little problem.  TKM's should've been low on damage, and high on defenses.  A true "tank" so to speak.

A TKM would've been fine I suppose if not for the wacked stacking system SOE had.  Stackers didn't improve PvP.  They ruined it.  But the fault was not with them.  The fault was with the over abundance of Jedi thanks to Pub 9, that made stacking essential to prevent PvP from becoming Jedi wars.  The original plan for modifying stacking in the CURB was a very good one.  Making stacking more realistic (instead of just taking the defensive trees in all professions) would've solved this problem right away.

I had in my posession a mind poison that ticked around 1.7k, and a mind disease that blacked any stat bar with one tick. with some rancor bile to give me a billion uses.  I ONLY used that on stackers.  And I always let them triple incap, just so I could say:

"You spent 500 hours number crunching the perfect template instead of enjoying the game, just to get triple incapped.

I honestly think people stopped enjoying the professions when they were trying to stack, instead just looking for the uber defenses.

Originally posted by Chessack
I think you have some good points there Ice, but I want to expand on one of them -- the "apology" part.

Here's the thing: They've said a few times either by implication or once or twice directly that the NGE "was a mistake." But my concern here even if they apologize is, why do they think it was a mistake? It's a mistake to them because they lost subscribers and company rep. On the other hand, it was a mistake, by my lights, because what they did was unethical and inexcusable. That is, they think it was bad because it had a bad end. I think it's bad because, whatever the ends, the means were unacceptable. If we let them get away with "the end was bad so we apologize" then we are just as bad as they are, allowing the end to justify the means.

So, if they want to truly apologize, what they have to do is back up and say, "The end we were trying to achieve did not justify the unacceptable means we used to get there." These unacceptable means include (1) overtly and knowingly misleading people about the expansion to get them to buy it when they otherwise would not; (2) as part of that deception, purposely waiting until the day after everyone's CC account was charged to announce the massive upcoming change; (3) making all sorts of minor changes to the CU to purposely preserve the illusion that they were working on it and keep the NGE a secret; (4) refusing to even remotely consider that what the vet players were saying had some validity; (5) caring about the potential market more than the current fans.

They have never apologized for any of that (and I doubt they ever will). When they say they "made a mistake," I do not get the feeling that they thought any of those 5 things were, themselves, a mistake, but rather, they think that "something" they did with the NGE lost them subscriptions. I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts most of them have no idea why they got so hammered in the subscription/reputation department. Their closest answer seems to be that once they found out we wouldn't like it, they should've launched it more slowly or maybe on alternate servers or something. But they don't understand why we didn't like it. Yes some of that was them changing our old game, but the main factor was them utterly dismissing long-time, multi-year customers as irrelevant and thinking they could treat us any old crappy way they wanted and we'd still re-up our subs.

Now, this is partly our fault, because we HAD been loyal to the game through a lot of BS. The rangers and BEs can tell you about this. Skill boxes that had no skills... skills that didn't work... recipe ingredients that never existed... uncraftable camo kits... etc... They stuck with it and were loyal, and I'm not really faulting that. After all I stuck with it through all sorts of Entertainer problems. But SOE took from this "No matter what we pull these idiot players still have 3 accounts each and keep paying us so we can do no wrong."

Of course what they did not count on was that it was not Star Wars that we were loyal to (the only thing, literally, that stayed the same from launch to NGE is the Star Wars theme, however corrupted and mis-handled), but the original game system, with all its flaws. But again, by sticking through the CU, which should have been unacceptable to most of us, and all the problems for months and years, they just thought they could keep messing with us.

This does not excuse their behavior... I am not blaming the victim. But, when they decided to do the 5 unethical and unacceptable things I mentioned above, if anyone raised objections, I'm sure that they said, "Don't worry, these players live to be abused. Look how we've treated them so far. We've got them hooked." And it is that attitude ("Don't worry, even though what we are doing is wrong the players will let us") that they need to be sorry for. That's the part that was unethical. Making a mistake is a mistake, and is not, by itself, unethical. Knowing you are doing wrong, doing evil, and doing it anyway just because you think you can, that is unethical.

So, if SOE wants me to change my tune about SWG, they not only need to apologize, for "making mistakes", but they need to be entirely specific and repentant about the reasons why these were mistakes. In short they would need to release an official statement that says something like this:

"We did purposely trick people into buying an expansion using false advertising, and we apologize for that. We knew you would all hate the NGE, and that is why we waited to announce it until we charged your CCs for the expansion, and we are sorry we did that. It was wrong.  We even tried to deceive you further by making irrelevant changes to the CU that we knew would be over-written by the NGE, and for that we apologize. It was unethical. We tossed aside everything our loyal customers said and did, every suggestion they made, because we did not value them as highly as we valued the idea of all those people not playing the game. We listened to people who didn't play rather than who did. That was wrong, because our current players had been loyal to us, and we should have repaid that loyalty in kind. We are sorry. For all these things we apologize. We understand why what we did was wrong, and will never do any of those things again."

That would be a real apology with some teeth.

Of course, we will never get it. But... if they just say, "We're sorry we rolled out the NGE the way they did," that means nothing to me. It means not that they are sorry about what they did to us, but about what the NGE did to them.

As a final note, Ice, I know you know all these things, and I 'm not posting this to argue but to add my own thoughts... I'm expanding on what I think "they need to apologize" has got to mean. Just "we made a mistake, sorry" ain't gonna cut it with me, or a lot of vets. What they did was not "a mistake" -- it was  willful set of malicious, dirty tricks designed to scoop in money and disregard customer loyalty, time, effort, etc. It was on purpose, in other words. They only view it as a mistake because it failed, not because it was wrong. And until that changes we have gotten nowhere.

C

First Chessack, thanks for saving this thread from devolving into another flame fest.  Perhaps I can give a bit of reasoning behind why I said what I did.

I'm only looking at starting points here.  SOE has claimed they want to really bring back some vets.  I'm not saying I buy it or not.  I'm simply saying if they want to, let's see some action to start.  Before anything can be done, there needs to be an apology.

The reason I made the apology so vague is quite frankly, there are a million ways the NGE went wrong.  Many people might have a serious case of schedenfreude (sp?) watching Sony grovel, but I don't think that is realistic.  (though it would be theraputic for a second lol.)  They admit they made a mistake.  Well, they haven't truly admitted to anything until there is an apology.  That was my simple point.  As far as unethical and inexcusable (as well as downright stupid from a business standpoint), both of us are in agreement, and I've been hitting that noet time and time again.

But once there has been an apology, what is there next to do?  Personally, I'd like to see them affirm to some 6 point plan or so, one of them being going on record stating that they will not bring forth engine altering mechanics.  But that is more a pipe dream.  I guess I'm just trying to theroize (everyone who reads my posts knows I love to theorize lol) that if Sony wants to develop a realistic olive branch, so at least people can generally say "hey, that's a start in the right direction" then we can move onto everything else.

But the entire bait and switch thing you mention would make that tough.  Short of a full refund, there really is no way to atone for what they did with that.  Even the most ardent pro-nge fanbois (think Obraik), admitted that the entire expansion release and switch was pretty shady.  Our former managing editor slammed it as downright dishonest and unethical.  Me, I guess if they demonstrated real resolve towards listening to the vets (which they have never done), I'd be willing to forgive on this point.  I can understand where most would not.

In a previous post, I talked about a lot of the reasons why vets were so pissed off.  Now, I want to suggest a few things SOE could do that would go a long way.  There will always be those who are either so jaded by something, or just love to start fights that they will always bash SOE.  (The former because of injustice, the latter just because he likes to fight.)  Nor do I (being realistic) think SOE will do this. However there is at least a chance.  Smedley and the devs have stated they want to reach out to the vets, do a real effort on bringing them back to this game.  Here's one way they can do it.

1.)  Apologize for your "mistake."

Smedley has admitted the NGE was a mistake.  In whatever way is for the moment irrelevant.  What happened with the NGE Smed admits was wrong.  There's no longer any debating this.  Yet if something is a mistake, you admit that what you did was wrong.  The only logical conclusion is to apologize for committing that wrong.  Otherwise, you are even more repugnant.  At least before the admission, you were not admitting guilt, hence you had no need of atonement.  Now you are admitting guilt, and without atonement, there is no chance at redemption.

This doesn't  imply Smed needs to get on his knees before the vets and cry mea cupla, begging for their mercy and absolution.  That's absurd.  What Smedley can say is that:

"at the time, we thought the sweeping changes were the right thing to do, to reverse the trend in the game that was heading downhill.  We were wrong, and I apologize to the veterans who cancelled as a result of this."  For good measure, he can even throw in that one cannot "turn back the clock" and magically roll back to (insert favorite publish here).

2.)  reach out to vets on how to improve the game.

Announce a real olive branch to vets.  Announce that they wish to assemble a group of vets from the pre-cu days who are not with the game to offer advice on how to bring back vets.  In order to prevent this from clashing with those currently enjoying the game (at least most the clashing) bring together those current players.  Have them send an email with a ceertain word amount of why they belong on this panel.

3.)addition to this, offer those veterans willing to return a real free trial.  None of this 14 day crap.  Vets who can demonstrate they played before, and are willing to work extensively on offering suggestions once this trial has ended should be offered at least one month of free playing time, to really play the game and come up with proposals.

4.)Invite the vets to a seat at a table.  After this free trial period has expired, announce a live IRC chat between Smedley, SOE Devs, and the players who went through this trial and those selected to discuss ways to improve the game.  I don't care how much you need to control it by only allowing certain opinions, time limits and such, just find some public way to have this discussion.  I'm sure MMORPG.com's chat room will be available.    (end shameless promo for the site I have worked for lol)

That's four things mentioned, without making one change.  I do think a good amount of vets would be willing to come forth (especially the intelligent articulate vets who want nothing but the best for SWG).  Of course they will have to say your proposals are no gaurentees.  But if they want to woo the vets back, they can start by LISTENING to them.  Here's a great first step down that path I believe.

Originally posted by Caswell

Originally posted by iceman00

Just look at the serious problems that existed in the economy when the CU hit.  Entire guilds did leave, especially crafters guilds.  The economy was in shambles, took a few months to correct itself (as all market economies eventually do), then the NGE hit and one of two things happened:

Inflation kicked in like crazy because people had all this money that no longer had any real worth

Once rare items were being sold for dirt cheap prices because they had lost serious worth.  (i.e. think RIS armor.) 

I'd kind of wondered how the economy has fared after the CU hit.  I'm thinking back to Shadowfire's armorsmith community, and I think the CU took three or four of the server's top five armorsmiths with it.  I was one of them so I have an idea just how much of the server a few individuals supported.

I know a few new guys eventually stepped in to fill the gaps, but I wonder if it ever got back to the point where a handful of dedicated crafters were providing enough high quality gear to supply an entire server.  I'm sure part of it is my vanity speaking, but from what I've read it never really did and the post-CU landscape was filled with lots of smaller scale crafters and a larger spread in quality of merchandise.  It's telling when you can search the forums for your old characters name and still get recent hits over two years since you left the community.

Hey Sio, who was the guy on Ahazi with 12 accounts?  Ahazi was my first server, actually bagged the first Jedi bounty on the server but got bored with bounty hunting once the E-Z mode driods were turned on.  In my time there the only guy I could think of with that many accounts was Firewind. 

Originally posted by Volvino
Hey folks...
Where did you go(MMORPG) after the NGE ?

shadow-knights.net.  :-D

Our guild site is more entertaining than any of the games out there hahaha.

Originally posted by AveBethos

I think I needed new underwear after this popped on my screen...

 

http://swvault.ign.com/View.php?view=DevNotes.Detail&id=67

 

Darth Smedleyous:  Execute Order 66!

Or my personal favorite I saw once:

I have felt a great disturbance in the force.  It is as if thousands of subscribers suddenly cried "oh s**t" and were cancelled.

Originally posted by SioBabble

I think it's interesting that one of the things the NGE did was to take away combat spam, in part because it was one of the windows on the supposedly "hidden" subsystems.  The catch was that NGE combat was so dumbed down, and the effects so obvious, that the players knew what was going on despite this subterfuge...particulary that most of your combat power was directly tied to your combat level, regardless of what weapon you had equipped, which was just not true in the preNGE game, because you didn't have an overt level, you had skills that gave you access to more powerful weapons and specials.

The devs pretty consistently underestimated the players' ability and desire to figure out how the game worked.

One of the things that was never tested hard in beta was the high end of both combat and crafting professions, resulting in the madness of the buff system nullifying encumbrance as a balancing mechanism.

Buffs and armor also made the dominance of the Combat Medic in PvP inevitable, both because the CM could target the "unhealable pool" of mind, and that the ability of the CM to bypass armor made them fantastically powerful when everyone was armored and buffed to the gills.  WIthout the armor and buffs, CMs would be relegated to support, because you'd die of melee/ranged attacks well before the CM's DOT poisons could harm you that much.

Even then you just needed a little bit of intelligence with the "godly cm."  (I became one of them because the guild demanded it.  What made it even worse was I actually knew what I was doing as a CM, whereas 95% of people who played it didn't.)  We stuck a carbineer with us in PvP.  That carbineer was able to obliterate the combat medic (CM's had little to no state defenses, especially your FOTM CM/RM or CM/DOC).  While they were knocked down on the ground, me (or whoever was CM) fired off the dots, and EVERYONE focused their firepower on the knocked down cm.  In short, he was dead in 5 seconds.  Me, I always stayed just outside the standard CM dot range (I figured out what the ranges were since I was also a cm crafter) making me pretty much invulnerable from their attacks.  I then made -100 tick poisons that had range well over 60m (that was after they nerfed the distance lol) which protected me from the rifleman, and also induced fear.  Whenever somebody saw they had been poisoned, they got scared and tried to find the doc as quick as possible, even if the tick was minimal.  It created confusion and disorganization, many times making the people we PvP'ed against easy pickings.

PvP had its problems, but those who were intelligent could get past the fotm rm/cm's and the headshot 3 spammers.

Originally posted by Rydeson
I love the Sandbox term.. and guess what.. That was MOST of the problem..

There was too many players in SWG that love exploiting the game and using the tools in the sandbox to grieve others..  You reach for a rake in the sandbox to play while another takes the same rake, brakes off a few prongs and uses it like a pitch fork to stab you..  So in the end, the Sandbox needed rules, because others were unable to play well with others..

I suspect that many of the others are the ones wanting pre CU back again..  The want that lawless game back with no rules and let them exploit at will..  I doubt that will ever happen again..One thing SWG did show that if you try to have a rules free community/game, you will attract every nasty PvP exploiter under the sun..  If PvP is so fun for some of you.. GO PLAY Planetside or WoW.. You can go PvP yourself to death..  LITERALLY.. lol

I don't see that one bit.  I think most of us were the kind that made the lives of exploiters a living hell.  Sorta put interdependency on a whole new level.  I.e. if there was a Jedi, that Jedi was not only on bounty terminals, but we used repetable contracts for a few days as a way to shame him.  When people left my guild to exploit, they found themselves unable to leave their house for a day because of all the bounty hunters.  Is that a bit mean?  Sure.  But it was the price of exploiting.  Known exploiters were banned from our city, banned from our facilities, etc.

When a rebel guild was exploting a spawn on our server, to the point they were throwing the GCW into serious imbalance, the fixing actually came from the more respectable rebel guilds, who declared /guildwar on them.  The most respectable of the rebel guilds (and also the most skilled at PvP) even sent emissaries to Imperial guilds, requesting our temporary co-operation as they announced assault operations, which ultimately ended up in a humiliating 2 day occupation of their player city by a combined rebel AND imperial force.  (wanna know what was most interesting, during that time rebels and imperials were not fighting each other in that city.)  It was a rather impressive show of force, the strongest guilds on the server sending a message that exploiting would not be tolerated.

Originally posted by Zathoral
Thanks for posting everyone, makes me feel better to know that im not the only one feeling this way. I think what i loved about SWG was the amount of freedom that there was. You could do so many things that you can do in real life as well as many things you cant. There was nothing more fun to me than just hanging out with my guild in our city and looking at the houses, streets, and gardens all around us so carefully organized. There was so much to do, if you got bored of one thing there were maybe 300 other things you could do with your time. Half of what i enjoyed about star wars galaxies wasnt even part of the game but was created by the players themselves. Star wars galaxies had a great community. People rarely smack talked in pvp like they do in so many mmorpgs today, and members of the opposite faction were equally friendly to me as those of my own faction. Recent mmorpgs have literally two things to do. Grind, and pvp. Sure you can stand around in an npc town and hang out but its just not the same. There is only one path, level up to max lvl, and pvp. In star wars galaxies you could enjoy the game just as much as anyone else without even mastering a class. The combat and pvp in SWG was good but nothing special. Personally i think im just going to wait for a new mmorpg with an open world and player housing to replace SWG. Unfortunately now that every mmorpg produced is WoW with different graphics i could be waiting a long time.

Our city was very well planned, and had a lot of entertainment.  Our cantina (The Drunken Imperial) was a frequent meeting place for guildies.  Our town hall had a massive meeting room for the guild (always had the exact number of guildmates for chairs plus 5 guest chairs for reps of other guilds), the elder council room (which sometimes had people in ST armor rp'ing as gaurds), and another building served the purpose specifically of conducting meetings with other Imperial guilds.

There was "embassy drive" as I jokingly referred to it, of medium and large houses (large only for our closest allies) of other Imp guilds that had a safe house and meetingplace setup in our city. 

We also encouraged overt shoppers to come and buy wares, and even engage in a lil PvP.  We had 4 large factional bases in a cross formation around the shuttleport, as well as faction scanners littered around the port and bases.  any rebels who came into town were almost sure to encounter problems.  What was funnier was the rebels took heart to this plan, and there were constant raids on the bases, where rebels truly acted as rebels do, attacking a financial target as well as a military one.  (Attacking customers and our mall, as well as our bases.)

You can't do these sorta things in the linear games that place no emphasis on community.

Originally posted by Caswell

Originally posted by SioBabble

One of the other things SWG failed to take into account is that many of their most fanatic customers had more than one account, so they could have multiple toons on one server.

Absolutely.  I honestly can't think of a single person that played SWG in any seriousness on Shadowfire that had fewer than two accounts.  I had three until I unlocked my Jedi, then I dropped down to two (only needed three toons).  Yeah, that kind of skews subscription numbers but it also means that you've got more active players in the game.  I think it'd be really telling to compare the number of active subscribers (not total subs, unique subscribers) pre and post-NGE.  It's probably not nearly as big a difference as people think, since you can pretty much rule out the idea that 250K unique individuals actually player.

I think SOE just completely failed to comprehend the importance of community in SWG.  When a person or even an entire guild decides to quite a game like WoW, it means little to everyone else on the server.  In a community like SWG had, if a key weaponsmith or armorsmith decided to call it quits it seriously disrupted the gameplay of others.

Just look at the serious problems that existed in the economy when the CU hit.  Entire guilds did leave, especially crafters guilds.  The economy was in shambles, took a few months to correct itself (as all market economies eventually do), then the NGE hit and one of two things happened:

Inflation kicked in like crazy because people had all this money that no longer had any real worth

Once rare items were being sold for dirt cheap prices because they had lost serious worth.  (i.e. think RIS armor.) 

Originally posted by SioBabble

Originally posted by iceman00

 That aspect was covered by the staff here on several occasions.  Dana Massey covered with little fanfare when the NGE first launched.  I covered it later, threw in a few more polemical remarks and attracted a bit more attention, for better or worse.  Granted, you might not have been around on the forums during those days, if not, you have added info to draw from.  :)

Kevin, are those articles still archived?  Can you provide a link to them?

I"d love to take a look at them.

Took a lil bit of digging around but found it.  :)

Fixing the Game:  Whether you like it or not!  Dana Massey

http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/325/gameID/6

The Pursuit of a Mythical Audience.  Kevin M Tierney

http://mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setview/features/loadFeature/714/gameID/6

I will readily admit that Dana's article was better, and I relied on a lot of it, I just added a unique perspective to the argument, and was a lot more partisan.  (Hey, it was an editorial, not journalism lol.)

Originally posted by Alordrence

Originally posted by PreCU

yup, same boat as you.

I tried kotor, game of the year and all that, great story line, unique, completely boring. I couldn't finish it. I needed a more dynamic game, basically another mmorpg with other people and an open feel. So I started playing WoW, sucked, tested lotro, sucked, stopped wasting my time and started reading up on games first. They all suck. I needed a non-linear sandbox type game with a player driven economy and skill box advancement system, basically I need another preCU.

The only game im looking foward to is WAR, but i have to admit PotBS is interesting and different.  Read this review, it sounds like it could be the next game for you sir.

http://www.whitewolfclan.net/pobs/review.htm

Originally posted by Wickersham

I am playing WoW, but it is nowhere near as good as Pre-CU.  In SWG I had a job that kept me busy - Master Ranger.  I had a real life note book that listed what trades needed what harvestable materials.   I checked the web everyday to see if anything good was available.   I think that is what was so great about SWG we had a reason to login everyday and work on our professions.  It was possible for a single player to be sucessful in that game without being in an elite guild or even having epic equipment - you just had to know your role in the Galaxy.

Yes master ranger was fun wasn't it.  As one on these forums said, it was not a profession, it was a way of life.  Even as a broken profession Master Ranger was still a blast.  It was also one of the most profitable professions around, and one of the easiest ways to make money. 

And not just hunting animals.  I don't know why, but I found hunting humans great as a master ranger.  :)  I had a few bounty hunters employ me to scout out an area and fix someone's precise location and I could follow them from quite a distance, transmit that to the bounty hunter, tell them what direction they were heading in, etc.  It was real time intelligence that a droid couldn't provide.  (I.e. I could also identify escorts, what kind of mobs were around the mark, etc.)  This kind of created content made ranger a blast for me, and provided a break from hunting contracts.  (While they were fun, they became less of an incentive when I had over 100 million credits and a flourishing resource business lol.)

Any other master ranger ever track humans?

Originally posted by eagle4x4

Originally posted by AveBethos

Completely agree.  Sony is an enormous organization, they can pick and choose their management from a list of the most qualified business minds in the world.  How in the heck did ANYONE at SOE think that the NGE was a good idea? 

I have a Business Management degree and probably half of my classes like Business Ethics, Small Business Management, International Business, etc, etc, taught the extreme importance of conducting ethical business with your clients, it was stressed seemingly more than any other topic. 

On top of all that, there was no test period for the NGE, no real preparation.  Just one day it appears, win or lose, live or die, the NGE was there to stay.  Speaking from the business perspective, it makes NO sense.  It violates almost every principle of successful administration.

Smedley is the top of the foodchain at SOE, he takes the blame.  LA surely has their share of the blame.  But either way, someone put one hell of a sell job on both SOE and LA to get the NGE implementation approved. 

I am glad to see that I am not the only person here to look at the NGE from a business perspective and say, "WTF"?

Thanks for backing me up

That aspect was covered by the staff here on several occasions.  Dana Massey covered with little fanfare when the NGE first launched.  I covered it later, threw in a few more polemical remarks and attracted a bit more attention, for better or worse.  Granted, you might not have been around on the forums during those days, if not, you have added info to draw from.  :)

Originally posted by AveBethos

Completely agree.  Sony is an enormous organization, they can pick and choose their management from a list of the most qualified business minds in the world.  How in the heck did ANYONE at SOE think that the NGE was a good idea? 

I have a Business Management degree and probably half of my classes like Business Ethics, Small Business Management, International Business, etc, etc, taught the extreme importance of conducting ethical business with your clients, it was stressed seemingly more than any other topic. 

On top of all that, there was no test period for the NGE, no real preparation.  Just one day it appears, win or lose, live or die, the NGE was there to stay.  Speaking from the business perspective, it makes NO sense.  It violates almost every principle of successful administration.

Smedley is the top of the foodchain at SOE, he takes the blame.  LA surely has their share of the blame.  But either way, someone put one hell of a sell job on both SOE and LA to get the NGE implementation approved.