I wouldn't say PE is as bad as $OE. Now, if they waited a year after launch and did this then I'd say they were just as bad. I personally played the beta and wasn't impressed at all. My first five minutes of the game consisted of getting stuck, using a /stuck command and then being perma stuck after respawn.

Considering the quality of some of the mmo's being released, including some greatly made F2P mmo's, I can understand the decision. Plus, as I'm anticpating a great STO game, I'm glad they fluffed the dev team. My only hope is that they only transferred thier vet leads to STO. I'd hate to see STO reach beta in the same state as G&H.

The "x2" refers to your processor being a dual core processor. It's not a 5 ghz processor, it just runs better then a single core 2.5 ghz. Dual-Core processors can outperform the single-core processor  on multi-tasking and the like. Most games out there don't take advantage of using dual cores yet.

Originally posted by safwd

Well apparently 50K people are still enjoying SWG, so let them enjoy it. This is my point.

It is understood that you, and many others hate SOE. So dont play there games. We who dont hate SOE understand that you do. Thats ok with us, we arent going to try to force you to play SOE games.

Unfortunetly many who hate SOE start to throw out random crap that is in no way accurate to further spread the hate of SOE.

Some examples:

SOE ruined EQ after they took it from Verant- False, Sony always owned Verant, from day 1.

SOE ruined EQ when they added Luclin and beyond- False, SOE changed EQ when they added that stuff. Some didnt like it but some did.

SOE did a horrible job with the release of EQ2- Ok, that was in true. But they also fixed it and it is a very popular game now.

SOE ruined Vanguard- False, hard to do when they didnt create Vanguard, they are trying to save it though

SOE ruined Gods and Heroes- The newest one, again hard for them to ruin a game that they had no hand in developing. Maybe that are evil enough to do it anyway though.

And the greatest to all SOE haters hearts: SOE ruined SWG with NGE. Perhaps this one is true, i never played the game. But i can pretty much guarentee that that was not there objective when they did it. I really doubt they wanted to lose money. If you want to blame someone for NGE blame WoW, that game is what caused some of the games that we loved to lower to the least common denominator with the hope of bringing in the millions of new MMO players.

So again, hate SOE if you want, its cool. But try to use facts when you do so. Reading SOE is the devil gets a little weak after the 1 billionth time.

And a game losing subs after 4 years (SWG) and 9+ years (EQ) isnt a sign that SOE sucks, it is a sign that the game is old.

On your SWG comments. If you haven't played the game then you should talk about why we, the vets, hate SOE. You just end up sounding like a SOE Fanboi. The vets are upset with SOE  for 3 simple reasons.

1) SOE launched EQ2 and began to see a little bit of a drop in SWG subs and a slight rise in EQ2 subs so they then push a stupid feature into SWG changing the keyboard layout to EQ2's config(This is where I became weary of them). The players hated it and demanded it be changed back. After a bit of bitching SOE gave us back our original config but they left the EQ config in. A bit fishy but, ok.

2) EQ2 was doing better then SWG in sales and subs so SOE decides to push the Combat Upgrade live giving players about 2-3weeks notice with no previous discussion with it's playerbase other then they were working on a publish called combat upgrade. The Combat Upgrade was thier way of bringing over some elements of EQ2 over to SWG and hoping it would revitalize the game. Again, the playerbase complained and began asking for the old version back. This time SOE put in some earplugs and said to themselves, "they'll get over it". Instead, they found out how much we loved the old game and hated the EQ2 make-over. SWG lost about 100,000 subs because of this. Some came back and some didn't.

3) WoW is released and SOE begins to see a drop in SWG subs as WoW's subs break records. Once again, SOE implements the NGE to make the game "easy to play without a steep learning curve". This time SOE gave warning before they went live but they insisted the majority of the community wanted these changes based on focus groups. Focus groups of SOE employees maybe. SOE went live with the NGE and quickly found out that the majority of the community DID NOT want these changes when the majority of the playerbase cancelled thier subs leaving them with the shell of a community it once had.

Now that's why alot of us SWG vets hate on SOE. Next time you make an arguement about why SWG players hate SOE try and be a little informed or avoid bringing it up.

As for Vanguard and G&H, SOE is forever tainted by SWG. Even other companies view them as such. This is why PE went public saying SOE will not have any decision making in thier games. I doubt that very much. If a publisher like SOE throws the devs some money to help out then it's only obvious they're going to have some sort of input. Vanguard was a mixture of a bug riddled game with a SOE tag. Most who played beta quit within a week or two because of the bugs and shadey gameplay. Word of mouth about the game and players past experiences with SOE played a role in Vanguard's death out of the box.

If your looking for content then I'd say archlord. However, if your looking for a semi-polished game with few bugs then I'd say RF.

Archlord wins in the content aspect but the game has a fair amount of bugs, some have lingered since beta, and the game's economy is outlandish. In some cases players charge hunderds of thousands or millions just for good level 15 gear which is a tad extreme since mobs drop maybe a hundred credits or more in your mid-20's-30's. This may have changed since the implementation of a new server. One downfall of this game is it's tendancy to force a player to rely on Item Mall purchases such as xp orbs, defense boosts, attack boosts and the like. While a player can go without these purchases, you will find yourself at a constant disadvantage with those who have them which makes the game very unbalanced. The highlight of the game takes place during massive PvP castle sieges which pits players against each other to become The Archlord - King of Chantra and gives that player some pretty cool perks. However, you have to be level 60 or higher to enjoy this aspect. 

RF wins for being a solid game. You'll find few bugs here and a decent amount of stuff to do with the highlight being a Race vs Race PvP war over mining rights for the "Core". However, you must be level 25 or so to take part. The economy is balanced in this game and even the most expensive profession ("Driver" or Mech rider) is easily affordable if you don't mind mining overnight while your race has the core.

All in all,  I've played both games for a good while and I liked both games for different reasons. I would suggest giving both a try just to see what fits your gaming style better.

There are two reasons why I laughed really hard when I heard this:

1) Didn't Smed just publicly apologize to the community for the huge mistake they made by implementing the NGE without consulting the playerbase? Media trick to save face in the eyes of other companies? I think so.

2) The avid fanboi's keep claiming SOE is making swg better and nothing like the NGE will EVER happen again because they've learned from thier mistakes. They proved you wrong huh? I don't think SOE cares about the playerbase at all. SOE does what it wants and will continue to do so until the game has 1 server with a skeleton population.

When I quit swg I had two charcters I relied on the most, Jedi (we all know how that turned out) and Medic (nerfed the only thing that made the class worth a damn). I'm glad I quit when I did, I don't think I could handle having two useless classes.

I don't believe any MMO out today would be able to hold an audiences attention, with the exception of Eve or possibly Earth and Beyond. Both have a deep history and can easily be developed into a 2 hour movie.

Conan has been done and would only appeal to the fans of the books and old movies. While I wouldn't mind seeing another conan movie, I don't think it would draw the audience numbers that studios are now aiming for.

WoW might flop in theaters just because most audiences would expect the story to be something as epic as lotor. It could be pulled off but I don't think it would be nearly as successful as people think.

City of heroes wouldn't work because you need to focus on certain characters and telling thier story. I think that would be kind of hard with hundreds or thousands of other heroes flying around saving people while your main character is debating what to do about a villian. If you take away the other heroes and just provide the story with a couple then your not really staying true to the IP and it will flop because of that also.

To tell you the truth, I don't believe this apology was meant for the gamer's. I believe it was a merely a act to save face in the eyes of the media and other companies looking for powerhouse publishers.

Since the controversial implementations of the CU and NGE without giving consideration to the opinions of thier playerbase, most of whom strongly opposed the changes, SWG has lost subs and SOE has been met with strong negativity in everything they do by players, media and other companies. This poorly implemented decision is now known through the MMO world as a model of what not to do and will continue to haunt SOE in all thier future games. They found this out the hard way when PE went public trying to deny SOE would have any decision making concerning one of thier upcoming MMO's. I believe this was the spark that caused smed to even consider a public apology.

In closing, apology not accepted. While I give him credit for finally giving one, I don't believe it was given for the right reasons.

There isn't a way to keybind. The controls are set. As for invertion, I don't ever invert any of my games so I haven't explored how to do it in PW.

"Gods and Heroes development team by 30 to 40 people, citing the need for a less specialized team."

What this says to me is "combat upgrade". The only way you can manage to lay off 30-40 devs specializing in certain areas of the game mechanics is if your planning to revamp the whole system to make it more simple. Anyone who has played a game "published" by SOE knows that gloomy cloud over the horizon.

I have a feeling this game will turn into another SOE dusty gamebox come release. Now I could be wrong and this could mean nothing but, looking at SOE's track record with everything thier involved with minus the everquest series I would be extremely shocked if PE and SOE didn't revamp the game into another EQ2 or WoW clone.

SOE is in this for the money and nothing else, despite thier claims to please players. It's fairly easy to influence developement when you say "look at this game and it's profits, now look at games like yours and thier profits".

This may have been a PE decision to take the game in a new direction but if you think SOE didn't play a role in influencing this then your sadly mistaken.

Originally posted by Gameloading

Originally posted by Serling

OMG! All you have to do is think of what Sony did to Star Wars Galaxies and realize they'll now have a hand in NCSoft's projects (most of which have been pretty solid).

Sony: KEEP YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF GUILD WARS 2!!!

They have a deal with Sony for the Playstation 3, not SOE.

I agree. He mentioned " A deal with Sony to bring NCSoft to the PS3 and PSP". With this deal however, I'll be watching closely for mention of SOE. Considering SOE's bad rep with alot of the gaming community, I doubt NC will let them encroach on any of thier titles. At least I hope.

I wouldn't say SWG is making a comeback. At this point in the game's career I believe that to be impossible. An increase in server population isn't really anything to base a comeback off of. Considering swg has over 30,000+ trials going at a time, you could see a flux in players one month and a decline the following month. Rinse and repeat.

While I give the DEVs credit for trying to revive the game, I believe it's too little to late. Most of us vets who stuck around through all the changes gave up on seeing anything worth while a long time ago. Be wary of chapter publishes that promise new content. Rehashing old themeparks for the 5th time is not new content. This is why my account is still on the cancelled list.

I've given up telling players that this game isn't worth touching. The truth is, if you've never played pre-cu or cu then you'll never miss it like those of us who had the chance to fall in love with a totally different game experience. Fresh nge players seem to like it. This is the only reason why this game still exists, along with a few diehard vets.

Is SWG making a comeback? No

Is SWG dying? Not anytime soon

My advice to those considering this game is to not even bother. Many players have had thier accounts taken over and have had items, money, quests and attribute points all wasted and/or deleted. Upon reporting this to the GM's we recieved the following response:

" I't's not possible.
the account was blanked out  immediately once  given away.
your account was stucked  in the server because of the lag
please wait for a moment ,and try again~"

Since that response this has happened to other players and no one is getting a response from the devs or GM's. This is not a lag issue. Lag does not spend your money, blow your attribute points, delete your items and quests.

Originally posted by Krileon

ROFL.. some of you people on this dang site (and outside of this site) are so freaken ignorant and stuck-up.

 

"Has SOE on the box. WON'T BUY IT!"

"Envolves SOE. WON'T BUY IT!"

They screwed up SWG, but that was with LucasArts approval so don't ever forget that.

They fixed EQ1 before Brad tanked it. I will admit they drove it a bit to far with so many expansions.

EQ2 had a ruff start, but turned into a fantastic game.

Planetside is doing better and continues to grow.

Matrix Online sucks due to concept.. come on.. that concept is just.. dumb.. movies are "Ok", but a game? No thanks. Not SOEs fault.

Vanguard is doing much better then before and they are improving it at a hugely rapid rate.

You people act like they are the freaken plague. Your under-educated brains can't comprehend the differense between. PUBLISHER and DEVELOPER. They have absolutely NO SAY in the final product. You need to understand this. They're a good company, but to many idiots screwed up their good name. Not them. Your half-arse assumptions is what screwed it. Now you spread your stupid lies accross the web and cause discontent in others.

Anyway.. whatever.. I planned to try it weither SOEs name was on it or not.. i'm not that shallow

If you love SOE then that's your business but don't assume that others are so readily to accept half-hearted appologies and dumb excuses like "we didn't know. we had a miscommunication." (reffering to thier explaination why they kept changing the game and not adding content.)

SWG = bombing. I doubt it was lucas arts idea to put in a Everquest control scheme. If you want to believe SOE's lines of bs then more power to ya.

EQ series = SOE's money maker. This is the only game they don't seem to want to mess with.

Planetside = least said about this title the better

The Matrix Online = Tanked for a reason. Most of the players were SWG refugees. When they heard SOE was taking over for WBE that hit them with bitter memories and they left before they recieved more of the same.

Vanguard = Almost everyone I talked to said the game is recieving updates as you stated. However, the same players also say the game is boring and they don't have the patience to stick around.

As long as $oe has nothing to do with it then I really don't care. However, if blizzard got hold of it and they did cartoony characters like in WoW then I'll just give up on SW MMO's forever.

It seems to me that this thread is, more or less, a rant on PE's lack of info.  While I, too, wouldn't mind more info on the game I don't see how the lack of info released determines the fate of the game.

The "cookie cutter" gameplay, mentioned in the initial post, is a standard amongst all MMO's. Questing is a major part of telling your game's story and allowing the player to become part of  or interact within the story. A game without questing is just a grindfest without a story(See Asian Grinder MMO's). Leveling gives the players a reason to continue playing and a sense of satisfaction upon reaching a goal. Combat, nothing to be said here. Combat is a integral part of the fun in MMO's. At least for most of us.

Most polls taken by Dev's always end up showing that solid PvE content takes frontseat to PvP content. I base that off of 7 polls I've seen in other MMO's which always showed PvE was the major concern of the players, followed closely by PvP content.

As for the rest of the post regarding broken promises and such, I cannot comment on what PE has or has not done because I don't follow thier company to closely. However, if your referring to them mentioning they will release info and then fail to do so as a broken promise then please feel free to return to my opening statement.

I understand entering beta early in development to seek player opinions and bug check but comon! This game shouldn't even have a 1.0 tag on it or be called beta. If they said v0.1 alpha test then I might have cut this game some slack. As a phase 4 beta I cannot believe how terrible this game is.

I couldn't bring myself to even get through the character creation on this game. All the races look the same as well as civilizations(common, geo, etc.) with the exception of the outfits which aren't anything remotely special. Let's not even mention the keymap issues. If your willing to sit through a cheesy game experience then this beta is for you. If not, try something else.

The statement, "The initial release version of these PreCU servers will be just prior to release of the Combat Upgrade publish." Kinda let's you know this is a hoax. SOE has said time and time again that they will never go back. Now they're supposedly going to invest in pre-cu/cu servers?! I think this post is just SOE's way to try and hold on to it's playerbase a little longer while trying to keep the SWEmu peeps guessing.

I think if SOE and SWEmu both come out with Pre-cu/CU servers then your going to see alot of canceled subscriptions anyway. The reason being, we know how SOE regards thier playerbase. Ask them thier opinion and then ignore them and do what SOE wants.

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

Originally posted by kwai

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

Originally posted by kwai
And you guys still keep on whining , bickering like lil bitches, its really sad to see

Either you play the game or you don't simple as that, no reason to sit here and write a novelle about old days, its getting tiresome after a few posts with the same shit and the same people posting in it just to whine, yes i call it whine because its all you ever fucking do, christ , do something usefull with your time.

I'll admit it can make people uncomfortable to read outpourings of negative emotion, particularly if you have a low tolerance for that sort of thing. 

Some people though find it helpful to get their feelings out and have them understood and validated.  Believe it or not this is healing to them to some extent.  I realize this isn't everyone's preferred style of coping with loss or disappointment, but it does work for many.

Also, along with a lot of shared emotion in these threads, there is often an attempt to provide an analysis of why things are the way they are, why this is not desirable, and what could still be done to improve the SWG situation.

The fact that strong feelings are often a part of these posts suggests to me how emotionally powerful a MMORPG experience can be.  A better understanding of this power and impact will emerge I hope, and be reflected in the care with which companies interact with their playing communities.

ArcAngel

 

 

 

Finally a reasonable reply.

Well ive played since 2003, yes ive complained , yes ive whined about it, but that was then , u wont see me here on forums writing shit about any game at all , i dont trash talk or try to keep people away from anything or draw them to anything, what people are posting here now ArchAngel is something thats been written a thousand times if not more, why keep going on ? , its just the same old post over and over again , i've become to think of thoose posts as trolling.

Well yeah I can see where you're coming frrom I think.  Ruminating on negative things indefinitely can become an unhealthy hobby.  Being unable to grieve something and then reinvest somewhere else can really get you stuck in a bad spot.  What complicates this whole scenario in my view are a few things:

-People challenge each other's views of reality, so people who want validation keep shouting louder waiting for others to say, "ya ok you've got a point there."  When this doesn't happen things just seem to escalate into flame wars, and yeah those are very unproductive.

-Another problem here I think is that SOE seems to ask for player feedback and input still, and they still hold out the idea that some things may be restored.  When you've got that going on, people are likely going to scream until they feel they get heard.

-Also, a lot of people really want pre-cu servers and hold up another SOE game with "classic" servers as an example.  When they hear SOE say they "can't" do classic servers, they don't believe them I think.  It seems to come across more as, "we won't."  So I think a lot of people keep posting with the hope of changing minds at SOE.  The company's history of going back and forth on issues isn't really helping them there in my view.

-Still other people want more of an apology from SOE before they will be ready to "let them off the hook" so to speak.  There was an apology for communication and timing around the NGE, and that helped some to move on.  Others though feel a need to hear a more comprehensive apology.  Something along the lines of, "we shouldn't have misled you with our ToOW marketting, we shouldn't have imposed unwanted changes on you, we shouldn't have deleted your professions and progress, we're sorry, and we'll try to somehow address the harm that was done."

So there are a lot of complicated things going on that keep this ball of chaos rolling.  People listening to and respecting each other would help a bit I think.  People agreeing to disagree would help.  Some folks being able to let go of stuff might do them some good (I don't say this glibly though, or think its easy to do).  SOE making a more comprehensive apology might help some;  and SOE interacting with players in an open, honest, consistent way would also be helpful.

All in all though, this is a real complicated social mess--the kind that is much easier to create than to correct.

ArcAngel

 

"People agreeing to disagree would help", I think you nailed it with that comment.  Most of the vets from day 1 miss the old game and often talk about or refer to it for comparison. Most often this is met with "then quit" or "stfu" comments. Most of the vets that are left don't want to quit. We want to help make the game what it was, fun! Does this mean we want the NGE gone? No. While it would be nice to have the original game restored, we know this will never happen. However, that doesn't mean we should stop trying to get some of the old features back like jedi content, old skill sets and harder missions.

We may disagree on what version of the game is best, but all-in-all we're all riding in the same boat so let's just concentrate on not sinking! 

I played SWG from launch for a little under 3 years. I tried to have the fun we all had in the beginning(pre-CU) and the game just became more and more unbareable for me. With most of the vets quitting and the one's left online less and less, harder missions became impossible tasks on deserted servers. After accepting the fact that the true idea of SWG had become lost in the neverending search to make the game a clone, I too added my signature to the long line of cancelled subscriptions. 

Seeing websites like this, that agree SOE/LA went about this all wrong, makes us proud that some still believe in community ethics and not corporate "get rich quick" schemes. Your article was dead on and I haven't read an article about this subject that can be compared to how well you did yours.