My first character was going to be a bothan entertainer/tailor (account 1).  I wanted more vendors than what the final template for her was going to allow so, a month after I started playing (as in April 1, 2004 and May 1, 2004), I added a second account that was originally suppose to mainly support my first toon but she ended up being CH/shooter instead.  A few months later I moved to another server (not a character transfer but with different toons).  Around the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005, I added a 3rd account.  In March of 2005, I switched servers once again and started the characters on this server being able to plan templates according to having 3 toons (a crafter, an entertainer, and a combat...although that changed when CU hit).

So the quick answer to your question is the most paid accounts I ever had at one time was three (with 6 toons on one server when I would return for a month or so at a time during that first year of NGE), with one account having JtL until JtL became a free addition to the game.

SWG was when I became a true "alt-oholic" although most MMOs don't have a reason for needing alts (other than different combat styles and maybe a different "starting zone").

Fondest memory?  It's difficult to say, so many memories (who would have thought back then that one would ever miss that annoying little noobie droid that could be difficult to delete)....

...some of my funnier memories of SWG involve the noobie things I did (I started nearly a year after the game launched): getting my first mission terminal quest as an entertainer and having no better sense than to walk all the way from Mos Eisley to Anchorhead because I was following the arrow and had no clue about the distance of things (this was my second MMO but the one I considered to be my first "traditional" MMO since my first MMO was TSO).  Also, while waiting to get something I needed to make my computer compatible with SWG, I looked through the information and started planning what I wanted to do in SWG.  Being on of those rare fans of ewoks, I decided I wanted to live on Endor (remember I WAS a noobie) so when I started playing the game I got to Endor as quickly as I could (had money for the trip to Endor but no money to get back), fortunately someone came along while I was stuck on Endor and gave me the credits I needed to get back to Naboo (not only enough credits for the trip but so many credits that for a newbie I felt rich...I think it was 10k)

....the memories of seeing some of the creatures in SWG for the first time, some of them were larger/taller than the buildings

....the memories of how populated some server cities were; how Anchorhead, which in NGE is dead, was once filled with people doing group missions and other activities

....the memories of CH, hoping for a baby animal to spawn, hoping that the tame would take and sometimes running to break aggro so a person could try again (I went back to SWG a month or so ago on a 12 day trial and there are no more baby animals wandering Tatoo, NGE killed them all)

....memories of people I met and guilds I was in during SWG

....memories of feeling like one lived in the Star Wars Galaxies, playing out one's own life whatever that might be, even if it wasn't as a major character in the story; and along with that, the memories of seeing the original movies in a whole new light (when Luke made the comment about the womprats, I now knew what womprats were, I'd seen them and I'd killed them)

....oh, and when someone is wanting people to give them stuff/money in other games I play these days I remember: "BN stands for Bothan Nation, not Begging Noob"  :P

Despite all the bugs that needed to be fixed and all the things that needed to be tweeked, SWG in its Pre-CU format is the best MMO I've ever played because it was unlike any other MMO I've ever played.  It had combat and non-combat skills that were both essential for the game and a person could focus on EITHER one or both (unlike most MMOs were one can loot pretty much everything one needs and if one chooses to craft its a secondary skill that requires a combat skill to be leveled up first).  Players were not leveled.  The person fresh from the character creation page could group with a person who had nearly complete template and BOTH could get xp.  This helped with the community that existed in the game.  Most MMOs have levels and once you outlevel other players you can no longer group together without messing up xp.  In SWG, guilds could recruit new players and help them.  Friends or fellow guildies could leave for days, weeks, or months and join right back into the group with no problems when they returned.  Then in SWG there were choices, lots and lots of choices....classes; skill boxes to earn, drop, and re-earn without having to pay a fee to change ones template; methods of gaining xp (could go to any planet at any time or stay on one planet for the entire game...sure some planets were more difficult with higher risks but you still could choose to go there, unlike most games that lead you from zone to zone as one levels there way through the game; there were missions from mission terminals; there was doing random kills for a decent amount of xp; there were those few "themepark" quest lines)....

True there are some adjustments that needed to be made, and so much more potential in the game that was never reached, but compared to other MMOs, SWG pre-CU is the best one I've played so far.

EDIT: BTW, for SOE to later say they wanted to do more to appeal to female gamers, they messed that up when they messed up what they had in SWG.  As a female gamer, I bought SWG because it said on the back of the package that some of the choices I had included tailor and entertainer.  A month after I started playing, I had a second account and started combat classes (Just how many times did I make characters that had amongst their template CH? *sniff*)  I also saw other women who came to the game the same way and ended up going combat including wives of guildies.  Not saying that all female gamers want non-combat, but it did have that extra appeal.  Plus, as easy as the targeting and killing spawns may have been pre-CU, it also allowed those who enjoyed socializing during hunts to do so.

My thoughts on a few things that have been brought up....

Holocrons were either already in place or came out around the same time I started SWG so I can not speak as to what effect they had on the game.  Part of what killed the social aspect of the game was connected to the same thing that created the social aspect of the game -- in SWG players actually needed other players (for the materials crafted, for the buffs, to kill things with higher xp value) plus there was the time to kill while waiting [for the next shuttle, in the buff line] then people discovered ways to solo the game (ahhh the solo grouping) between a mix of strong armor, strong buffs, and the perfect skill tree setup add to that the introduction of personal spacecraft which took away a lot of waiting around and there went a large part of the social aspect of the game.

Why was rping so easy in SWB (in the pre-cu format at least)?  I contribute to two factors.  First, Star Wars is a familiar IP.  Most players were familiar with the storyline and typical characters so it was easy to build on to that knowledge.  Second, there were always people around...cantinas, shuttles, spaceports, player cities, guilds that actually served a purpose, etc.  Since it wasn't a game that moved people from one leveled section to another and players didn't risk outleveling each other, rp didn't have to be a highly planned event.

Sandbox games don't exist or aren't successful?  There exist a little known "free to play" MMO out there thats about as sandbox as a game could get, pretty much ALL the content is player created.

Would I play a game designed like SWG minus the star wars skin?  I would love to find one.  I would at least try it out.  Preferably there would be some improvements over the way SWG was set up (those "rose colored glasses" I must be wearing to have such fond memories of SWG aren't quite as rosy as people might assume, I know there were issues with the game, I just didn't like the way SOE went about "fixing" them AND I also know that as flawed and buggy as SWG was, there's not another game on the market like it).  The difficult part will be finding an IP of any sort that has the immersion level that Star Wars has.....familiar locations, animals, species, clothing, armor, music, weapons, roles, factions.  Honestly, to work it would probably need to be an original IP but will people connect as well with an original IP.

-- probably sci-fi to allow for a variety of species and environments along with multiple planets and perhaps space

-- a character development system that did not involve levels and while there would be tougher and easier areas players would be able to gain xp almost anywhere and travel through areas as they wished (with the right grouping)

-- the ability to go from new character to fully developed character solo but have areas that required groups

-- a combination of quests and mission terminals

-- the ability to choose combat, non-combat, or various combinations of the two

-- player economy where what players make and find/loot are needed by other players and the non-combat skills are needed by combat

-- player cities and server cities with different benefits to both (to encourage advanced players to continue visiting server cities and get newer players to wander into player cities)

-- non-combat player would be able to stay in city and within a certain distance of city safely and have means of traveling from one city to another but would need a person with combat skills to venture far beyond cities

-- various planets could allow for a variety of cultures/ "time periods" and advanced versus non-advanced civilizations to the point that one might need to disguise him or herself to be on certain planets because that planet would be unaware of other species existing

-- a variety of servers from  open PvP to no PvP (and degrees in between)

Still looking for a game that offers what that one had, although I imagine it will be difficult to find....not just un terms of a lack of games that use that style/set-up but also because of the immersiveness the IP gave the game (people are very familiar with star wars and come into the game with knowledge about the setting and feelings about the storyline....ex.: there was something to base the choice of faction on other than reading a "background" off a website..... plus star wars had a known environment--familiar planets/cities/places of interest, known weapons, known clothing, known armor, known music, known "professions," known species, known animals.....nearly everything had a familiar element to it so the player stepped into a world they recognized and they were able to be a part of that world).

Because I have not found anything that replaces it, I still find myself missing it from time to time and wishing there were a way to get it back.  I seriously don't think Old Republic is going to be the answer.  It may be done better but I think it will be based on the same premises that got us NGE.

Replied before reading through all the other responses.  Another memory hit me.....my first encounter with a fambaa.   Was still fairly new and had been doing most of my grinding on Tat (2nd account that I got 1 month into playing, guns and ch toon).  Another person and I decided we wanted to try another planet.  We go to Naboo and get missions.  I think it was dark when we got to the fambaas.  I see the thing and react in a "what did we just get ourselves into?" manner.  Those things were huge to me at that point (I'd prob seen a krayt by that point and I knew the power of those things) and I figured the power of them would match their size.  As critters went in SWG, fambaas weren't exactly the weakest but they weren't exactly the most powerful things either (strength didn't really match up to size).

One of my favorite creatures was the woolamander as a bio-engineered pet.  I still remember the one that belonged to the first BE/CH I ever knew in SWG.  Captn Howdey was his name (the woolamanders...don't remember the characters name).  I liked the way he looked and as a noob entertainer/musician (on my first toon) he seemed powerful to me.  I like monkeys so on one of my CHs (yes, one of them...I played on 3 different servers during my time in SWG and each one had a CH) I had a "monkey" collection including a few woolamanders.  Another favorite of my pets was a rather large monkey type character I tamed on Naboo.  It wasn't easy to find (it didn't spawn in massive quantities).  For a master CH, it wasn't very high leveled but I had fun with it because of the size of the thing.  It's foot was as large as the bothan that owned it.  It was taller than the shuttleports so I loved to have that thing pace back and forth in front of the towns shuttle and get people's reaction in guildchat (or other chat channels) as they landed.

Considering the cover story for PC Games I'm surprised there isn't more in this forum about it.  Maybe I just needed to go to next page of posts to see it.  I figured there'd be tons of "told you so"s and opinions about the new Bioware MMO.  Maybe it's in the general SWG forum.  Well, according the the exclusive, SWG will continue to exist alongside Star Wars Old Republic.  The way people will become connected with good or evil sounds interesting.  Not sure if it will be anything I'm interested in compared to the original SWG but will continue to keep eye on it.

Depends on the design of the game and how housing is handled.  In a leveled game, housing does not make as much sense except to provide extra storage for a player who is willing to travel back to the area they have already outleveled in order to access storage.  Instanced housing is also not that great.  Player cities in a skill based game can be great.  They help with the feeling that you are living in that world.  I loved player housing in pre-cu SWG.  Player cities had the possibility of providing everything one needed to develop their character.  Sure, many player cities were like ghost towns except for a few vendors but there were also very active player cities with people always running in and out making purchases, getting heals and buffs, running missions, getting training, crafting items, defending bases, and roleplaying (in roleplaying I'm including all player driven activities that were not needed to advance in the game.....parties, guild meetings with avatars all in same room, weddings, etc.).

Some people did not like player cities because they felt it spread people out to much but I always found people in the major server cities.  Others felt that it took away from PvP but I figure if people wanted to engage in PvP they would go to places where they knew PvP would occur (server cities especially those with lore faction alignment....Bestine and AH).  Plus, player cities meant players could place bases and protect those bases (want real PvP? engaging in guilds versus guilds battles over bases was a good way to do it, or is it that their definition of PvP was one shot killing a noob with TEF before the other player could even see a red dot? because that was the only "PvP" that was lost by the implementation of player cities).

The thing I find funny (ironic) about #1 is that, while that was given as one of the reasons NGE was "needed," the game seems more complicated now days.  When someone post how something in the game doesn't work right, how many times has Obraik or one of the other current players responded with "if you would....that wouldn't be a problem" type posts?

Let me see:

-- if you would read forums....

-- if you would use mods.....

-- if you would change your key mapping....

-- if you would use expertise points....

-- if you would play until your character was higher level.... (gotta love that one....if you will pay to play a game you do not like long enough the game will eventually become enjoyable once your character is maxed out? what kind of game is that? "don't take time to enjoy the game (being as it isn't enjoyable anyway) but rush to the end of the game and then it will be fun" )

Odd, I hopped onto SWG in 2004 after waiting to get a graphics card that the game would work with (another funny thing about SOE...it was on the list of exceptable graphic cards and about a year later it was listed as one the game was known to have bugs with) spending that time determining what species I wanted to play and where I wanted to live (noobie me, I wanted to live on Endor with the Ewoks) and I was able to play the game with little knowledge more than what the noobie droid taught me and a few abbreviations I'd learned playing TSO (such as LOL, AFK, ....basic chat talk).  Did I get the maximum experience out of it during those first few weeks or during the entire time I played it? No, but I was able to play the game and enjoy it....and I did become a little more "hardcore" as time passed.

Now it seems that in order to enjoy the game you'd better be able to figure out how to force the game to be enjoyable in a hurry.  Don't even bother logging in for the first time until you've researched every aspect of the game and downloaded all the needed mods.

Originally posted by Camman321

 

 

Social/community: While it seems the forums are booming with activity, ingame, no so much.

 

There is no region or general chat. The only chat you EVER see is if you're standing next to some one, guildchat, group or a tell. There's no trade chat, general chat, recruit chat, NOTHING!  This is very lame and unexceptable for MMORPG.

 

You join a guild. But the only benefit of a guild is to talk to people. There is NO option fo a guildpage. You have no clue who's in your guild, you'd barely know your own guild name if it wasn't sitting above your head.

 

Chats....others may exist and need to be set up to see but there was a time they weren't needed (probably part of reason they still aren't in use today).  Between guild, tells, and local one could hardly keep up with all the chatting anyway.  And back to community, people knew where to find groups so there was no need for a "LFG" chat server or planet wide.

Groups....maximum of 20 people, no levels on players so noobs could be grouped with "completed template" with both benefitting from the grouping.

Guilds....served plenty of purpose back in the day if you had a good one.  People needed other players back then even if just to get supplies (and there was decay so it wasn't "max my character, get what I need, set for life of game" but "crap, broken weapon/armor/speeder/....need to get it fixed/replaced" and hoping it didn't happen at a bad spot) or buffs/heals.

Basically, this game was VERY different back then.  If you saw the bit with Koster and some other guy describing what the game would be like, you'd know a LOT of thought went into the game...so much that a crappy dev team can't compete with it (although a group of individuals who use to play the game....or a couple of groups...are trying...but that's something to be left out of these forums).

If SWG had started out as NGE?  At least it would be a whole lot easier to find a game that replaced it if the desire to play MMOs continued to exist after that experience.  TSO hooked me on MMOs due in part to it's social aspect.  When I started playing SWG, I thought I was playing a "traditional" style MMO.  (I knew TSO was different as it didn't have combat and was based on a single-player sim.)  I thought ALL other "traditional" MMOs would be designed like SWG.  Then the levels were added with CU along with massive grouping but for the first time I heard the words "we have enough low level people in our group."  What a change!  The second combat character I created during pre-cu, I headed straight to AH on Bria.  I had learned from my first combat toon that grouping in AH was the best way to get xp (I'd started as a noob getting xp on things outside Mos E which is the LONG way to noobie grind.)  Someone was advertising for group members but no noobs please.  Kept my mouth shut, joined the group, and was a successful member of the group with not much more than a starting profession unlocked box.  There was no big flashing "NOOB LEVEL" sign over my head that allowed people to discriminate against me.  Then came NGE and the crap that went with it (in CU people of various levels could still group, kill things of higher level as member of group, and get good xp from the group).  The NGE started out unplayable but I will admit I returned a few times....with the time I stayed getting shorter and shorter and me usually ending up dancing in the empty guild city's cantina as I chatted with the few guild members left using SWG as an expensive chat room.

BUT, post NGE I went through several other MMOs in an attempt to find one like SWG....after all remember I thought SWG followed a "traditional" MMO model.  After all, it turned a year old around a month after I started playing it so the language was in place and used like it was a common language (player cities, server cities, mission terminals, waypoints, skill boxes ...).  How was a noob to MMO worlds with combat to know that the language was fairly unique to SWG (and perhaps a few other MMOs)?  I thought it would be rather easy to find a replacement.  How wrong I was!

IF NGE had been my original SWG experience, IF I had not been turned off of MMOs by the bugginess and style of playing that was NGE in the beginning (assume the game was playable after a year on the market and I was not totally turned off by the way the game was designed which is a big stretch for the second so let's go with maybe I would not have assumed that all MMOs had the same system or me being so hooked on MMOs from TSO that I was willing to give others a try), and IF the lack of need for community (AKA the "social aspect") had not turned me off MMOs, at least there would have been other, even better, games to play.  BUT then we are assuming that I would have even picked up SWG to begin with since the description on the box that convinced me to buy it as I was standing in the store waivering back and forth was the ability to be a tailor or entertainer.  In a game designed from the beginning as NGE, would those professions have existed?  If looting starts out as the best way to get stuff, why have crafting professions at all? If kill, loot, repeat in a grindfest is the mode of a game, why have a profession based on actually taking time out of a grindfest to heal or buff?  I know I wouldn't have needed a second account because traders are straight traders with all the skills they need for trading so I wouldn't have bought a second account based on a need for vendors as my master crafter/master tailor/master musician template didn't have any extra points for getting more vendors.  And it was getting hooked on CH from the first CH/BE I met in game that caused me to turn that second account into a combat toon.

Aww, you beat me to the punch!  Saw this trailer in the movie theater tonight and was wondering what type of game would be made from it.  It has a video game look to it already.  Don't know about MMO but you know some type of game will be made to go along with it.  I doubt LucasArts would pass up the chance to make as much money from the movie as possible.  Remember the 2 major game changes to SWG were tied the new triology.  The first came around Episode 2 if I remember correctly and the second came with Episode 3.

Originally posted by thenetavenge

 

Originally posted by Arndur

 

Originally posted by rdrpappy

Most of my rewards from the paid expansions were null and void after the NGE, ie. I could no longer use or equip them.

Imagine paying for several expansions, running the quests and recieving the quest rewards and then having the game compay scrap it all, completely change the game, not tell anyone in advance and alter the characters you had been working on for 2 and a half years.

That do it for ya?

Ummm i installed a pre-nge cd even though i didnt start till after nge and i got all the rewards. I also saw alot of people using them too. Never once did i hear about someone not being able to use them.

 

Dont listen to the vets. You werent screwed over and the game in its current state is not that bad.

 

Um you don't 'get it', it has nothing to do with them not working as in broke. It has to do with them not working because they are no longer a part of the game in the NGE.   For example a great Accuracy attachment item that no longer works, or a good weapon that the NGE turned into a piece of crap.

There were 1000s of items in the game the NGE either made obsolete or simply the developers deleted them from the player's inventory or House.

This is what POed a lot of people, as they maybe played for a year to obtain Object X, and the NGE made it worthless, killing all the time they played and all the reward was gone too.

 

I see someone has already addressed this misconception.  If a person didn't play until after NGE, it wouldn't matter which CDs were used to install the game, the person would get NGE.  The items referred to by rdrpappy are no longer available...or if they are....hmm, would SOE really continue to give people something that is null and void such as objects designed for professions that no longer exist?  If using pre-NGE CDs changed the current stuff in the game, all those screaming for pre-cu would simply re-install their original disc and "oooohhh, I used the pre-NGE disc so I now have the pre-NGE stuff and it all works perfectly fine!"

Originally posted by Lateris

They are like this

"Are you Jeff Vader's brother? Can you get me his autograph?"

"Death by tray it is!"

Although, I guess in the case of NGE the "All the power of the Death Star and we can't get a dry tray?" should be turned in to "All the power of the Star Wars IP and a well known company and we can't get a decent game?"

On Chilastra -- IA (Imperial Army) use to rp.  Not sure if they still do or not.  The city (IACC) is located on Naboo.

SWG had a good balance in traveling during the portion of pre-cu I played.  There was a combination of mounts, shuttles, and vehicles by that time.  It kept you from having to spend a large amount of time walking from quest to quest at least until you had unlocked travel locations (like WoW and other MMOs I've tried) but it was not insta-travel so one met other people in common locations and often had a few minutes of exchanges with other players.  With my combination of professions, sometimes the shuttle wait was also a moment to get crafting or entertaining xp.

As for whether or not there were "casual" players in pre-cu SWG....yes, there were.  Pre-cu was a great game for a casual player, IMO.  I may have spent many hours playing the game most of the time but I could also pop on and find something to do with less than an hours play time (craft a few items, perform in cantina for a few minutes, grab a couple of close missions from the nearest terminal).  Also, being as levels were not plastered all over the game, I knew people who popped in the game every few months but had no problem rejoining the same people in activities because there was no "oops, we've moved on and outleveled you so you can't do the things we are doing."  As far as buffs and armor, I played without them for the better part of my first couple of months of playing.  With the ability to have a 20 player group, I did fairly well without them until I went to more difficult planets.  As for guild activities, I guess the ones I participated in that required buffs had plans in place for the buffs and I didn't participate in them if my time was so limited.

As for Gutboy's concern about chatting up entertainers who are actually 32 year old, 240 pound men, doesn't seem to me he got the "social" aspect of pre-cu SWG.  I played entertainers and I really enjoyed the profession (wish I could find other games with a good combat/non-combat combination of professions) but it was more about meeting other people not "romancing" the customers...after all, didn't care to be even virtually flirting with "jailbait" that may have been on the other side of the computer  (where's 32 year old Bob when you need him? guessing he was single since he lived in his mother's basement     *hums Brad Paisley's "Online"*).  My entertainers opened doors for me to find good guilds which provided people to play other parts of the game with.  There was none of this getting in a random guild which is no more than another chat window and most likely not even very good for that.  Socializing was about having fun with other people while playing a game.  But then again, it seems now days people want to pay a monthly fee to solo a multiplayer game short of when they want to pvp (yes, I still remember that post nge quote of a player thinking he shouldn't even need crafted items from other players...all he wanted other players for was pvp....hmm, for $50 a year I can access XBox Live which allows me to play all my 360 games with online feature if all I want with other players is pvp).

Originally posted by hgavin9

Hi I too played SWG up till NGE and completely agree with a lot of the arguments put forward.

 

I would be interested to know whether SOE are protected by stating "Game Experience May Change DUring Online Play" on the game case

I always thought this was connected to the rating system as in "because we can not completely control what people do, the content of the game as created by the company may be rated 'T' but, upon going online, player may be exposed to 'AO' material."  Also figured it covered changes made by others: player cities come and go, new buildings get placed, the vendor you spent so much time last play session hunting down may now be gone, the group you played with last time may not be online this time, etc. (changes that would not occur during most solo games because the game saves as it was last played except in some games like "Animal Crossing" where some changes do occur between playing due to a "real time" type of system but even in games like these the change is not as major as it is in an online game).

I also saw people coming back to SWG after trying WoW.  Plus the first advertisements I saw for SWG were around the time of CU so, along with the new movies coming out, people came into the game who had never experienced pre-cu.  If SOE had tweaked the game a little rather than what became the CU, the game probably would have been in a totally different place population wise.