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Originally posted by Suvroc

Ok then let me throw some numbers back to you.

I believe that at this point the general consensus of most people is SWG currently has approximately 100K subs. You theorize that 1 in 10 are vets, so therefore 90% of SWG's current players are newer.
I also believe that the general concensus seems to be that as of Nov. 14th '05 SWG had approximately 200K subs. This, by your rough estimates, then means that 5% of those players are vets that currently play.
You're telling me SWG lost 95% of their subscribers due to the NGE?
That's what I would call a disaster!
Oh, and so much for the idea of the "vocal minoirty".

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Well 95% is exaturating, it's more like 84%, and with reliable accuracy at that. Bria and Ahazi are the only homes of most players now and Bloodfin and Chimeara are close behind while the 21 other servers are ghost towns. The last ethereal scan on all servers at peak hour showed 10,362 players online.

I said 84% because before the NGE/CU, 300K+ actively subscribed but in the NGE it's reported 49K which is about 84%.

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Originally posted by Suvroc

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Originally posted by sookster54

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Originally posted by Suvroc

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Originally posted by bLoOdYm3

i dont get it dudes...
I hear so many ppl have beens dissapointed by SOE and SWG tself.
I agree in a partial way of viewing the problem but if so there are so many problems then y are so many players still on the game?
Many ppl keep playing Star Wars Galaxies and have a lot of fun 2.If as u say u r so dissapointed then y bother play the game or even post in to SWG forums?...
Dont get this the wrong way,,i m just curious..

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If I still played SWG I'd be posting on their official forums - not here.

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Same, I still read the forums sometimes and at times I wish I was subscribed just to reply to some idiot on there.

I've read some of the pre-CU related threads and people say that there aren't as many negativity about the NGE as some say there to be but someone made a point "the ones that likes pre CU or doesn't like the NGE aren't active anymore" hence can't post on the SWG forums. MMORPG forums is where the chunk of us are, and I actually think SWGEmu's forum is getting more members than SWG's official forums has active overall right now.

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Funny thing to me is that I to read the official forums (old habits die hard it seems) and I'm surprised, but not shocked, at how many people still say they prefer pre-CU. It's like SWG now is some kind of consolation prize rather then a first place trophy.
Besides, how can they gauge the "negativity" people have towards the NGE when it gets deleted from the official forums?

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I actually can't remember the last game that let you keep your character and items/money when going from beta to live, get serious. :P

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Originally posted by Suvroc

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Originally posted by bLoOdYm3

i dont get it dudes...
I hear so many ppl have beens dissapointed by SOE and SWG tself.
I agree in a partial way of viewing the problem but if so there are so many problems then y are so many players still on the game?
Many ppl keep playing Star Wars Galaxies and have a lot of fun 2.If as u say u r so dissapointed then y bother play the game or even post in to SWG forums?...
Dont get this the wrong way,,i m just curious..

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If I still played SWG I'd be posting on their official forums - not here.

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I've read some of the pre-CU related threads and people say that there aren't as many negativity about the NGE as some say there to be but someone made a point "the ones that likes pre CU or doesn't like the NGE aren't active anymore" hence can't post on the SWG forums. MMORPG forums is where the chunk of us are, and I actually think SWGEmu's forum is getting more members than SWG's official forums has active overall right now.

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Originally posted by BushMonkey
Because SOE will screw you out of your investment to get more less subs.

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I am crossing my fingers that this game rises with potential with Richard Garriot as a veteran game designer (Ultima *, UO, Lineage *, CoH/CoV) and a decent franchise company to host it (NCSoft), but I'm hearing more negatives than positives about this. I have seen clips as old as 2004 so I assume this game has been in the works for years, probably almost a decade.

Then agan Wayne Gretzky had his "off" days too.

I do see some similarties between TR and NGE, but as said above it seems much improved. The landscape however seems strikingly familiar, kind of like WoW's, and the combat content reminds me of the story Starship Troopers and a pseudo-FPS seems to make sense with this type of sci-fi game like PlanetSide was.

I've seen vids of it on Youtube before and wasn't sure when it'd come out, I'm checking into the public beta right now myself and if it's good I may pick this up in Nov.

I try not to play games on my Dell Inspiron 1501 (yeah LOL), but I found the Omega driver helped for the built in ATI X1150 but only has 512M ram and I have been meaning to upgrade that, I was able to put Call of Duty 2 and City of Heroes on it with slightly noticable video lag but tolorable, and SWG is a bit less graphics intense so it should run smoothly.

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Originally posted by bLoOdYm3
i dont know about u guys ...but i have been playing SWG for 1 year now...(think so)...i truly believe that its one of the best mmorpg games around...it gives u a really exciting story b4 even u create ur character and it has a line to follow...
Most rpgs are based on pvps and leveling but SWG is cooler than most of them..it offers the classic things that are needed and provides more and more staff to the lovers of Star War..
From my point of view its a great game and worth playing...
Anyway..cya..

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As for the story after character creation, I kind of liked the combat upgrade's version better. I wish there was still a clip of it on Youtube or something.

Don't forget Zabrak's equilibrium, it was very nice in combination with CM, heal your own pool from your health+action while you heal others. My favorite race was Mon Cal, I had my mind pool buffed up to 7K all the time and took forever for people to take my mind pool out.

A classic server or two might be a wise idea, they should have adequet money to spend on this since I'm surprised with supposadly 10,000 active subs ($150,000/mo) they can maintain 25 servers of which over half of those are in the "dead" section.

Originally posted by namelessbob

 

Originally posted by feldrin

The really sad thing is that only a small percent of players were really active in pvp. A large portion participated in pvp once in a while but most did not. SOE made most of the changes to the game because of an unbalanced pvp game. Changed the game for a few with total disregard to everyone else.

 

Most did not pvp? Whoa i think not. I knew an absolute gaggle of people pvping. It caused a lot of issues and in the end I had to become buddy buddy with a lot of commandos to have protection from other commandos flamethrowers wounds. Attacking a 10 or so deep squad with 2 or 3 commandos and 2 or 3 BH/Mrifles wasn't the best idea heh. 1 shots and wounds out the ying - yang. (Have fun sitting for hours in the cantina!)

Half right, half wrong- in most games, the PvP community is very small compared to the PvE or RP community but the PvP guys speaks louder which often leads to devs changing or nerfing things which happens in nearly all the games.  If I remember right, pre-CU the PvP community only made up about 20% of the game's population.

Before the NGE you could go through your entire SWG career without a single swing at another player, there was no forced PvP- only you chose to force yourself into PvP (lightsaber visibility, attacking a TEF'd target or faction member).  In the NGE you could avoid PvP combat but that means you are missing 50% of the game's content.

But in the NGE, Restuss is really the only thing to do and to get the armor or weapons and even move up in the ranking ladder you would have to get involved with PvP even if you are 100% PvE orientated.

My nephew gave me a 14 day trial key and I tried it out, needless to say WoW is the only game that I simply cannot stand playing ironically being the world's most popular MMO at this time.

I guess I could say I am an MMO addict too, though I am sticking to City of Heroes/Villains right now until something comes out, hopefully Warhammer online will be worth it and the Star Trek online that has been in the works for years.  I would have still been playing SWG if it hadn't become such a piece of junk it is now, I am not a fan of those heavily armored warrior with an axe or a fairy with a magic wand fantasy type, I like modern (or futuristic) sci-fi types, PlanetSide struck gold on me for a while.

Originally posted by Tonev

You know, after reading this and seeing what you saw when game first came out. I have to disagree with one thing in here.

THe Jedi isn't what really destroyed the game it was the medical buff system and the way armors could get to 70-90% resists. I know hundreds of people who would set up AFK macros until mastered as Jedi (and other professions) due to the 70-90%kinetic resist armors.

I think if they wouldn't have messed with this system and kept each at a cap say 50% we would have never seen Jedi running around or imbalance issues with pvp in the game. I agree thought it was a fun and better time than the NGE crap (Ranger/Rifleman/Master Defender here).

The doctor prof needed something to be worthwhile, but I agree the buffpacks got too powerful by the winter of 2004 and so did composite armor.  I was an armorsmith/doctor early on with one of my characters and I made composite suits that was around 56-60% which I think is where the armor cap should have been (like it is now) and that ALL armor should have been given oppourtunity to add stun layers as well.  As for doctor buffs, people went crazy with Janta blood, and the 2000 tick disease/poison Ackley venom CM packs got carried away too.

The devs in City of Heroes has tweaked things in the game instead of pushing a new game with the same name, and look at how many players are still around after the big issue 4-5 nerfs/changes, they were done for the good.  Hopefully they never get stupid enough to implement a stupid FPS-ish crappy GUI frontend client like SOE did.

There were alot of things devs could have easily tweaked without doing an overhaul on the combat system and core system twice.

Originally posted by MarlonB

 

'm going to make an update to my own post.

I have made the download of the Vets trial and it was the best thing I could do.

Eclipse is not very populated but Chimaera is "High" in Europe prime time and I've never seen it bellow Medium at least in normal hours of the day in Europe, so the game is far from dead in that aspect

To make things short I'll just say that I will be resubscribing the game when the trial period is over, so I can continue to have fun in the Star wars.

 

It's marked high when there are more then 3 people logged in

I paid close attention to that ages ago.  During the NGE, the devs tweaked the threshold, I know for a fact that Lowca and Tarq both lost a chunk of players and both were always "light" before the CU but now Tarq can reach "medium" once in a while.

Before the CU, Ahazi and Bria were consistantly in the medium status and occasionally heavy while Bloodfin and sometimes Gorath reached medium, Bria had many many many many many players back then and the anti-CU rally protest showed that.

My estimates on numbers
Pre-CU: 500-2000 "light", 2000-5000 "medium", 5000+ "heavy"

NGE: 100-300 "light", 300-500 "medium", 500+ "heavy"

Here is a slightly old link of a network analyst scan with results that seemed consistant with the server selection screen's population status at peak hour: http://www.shadowsinmotion.com/news-updates/swg-server-population-revealed/

The pre-cu "content" seemed to have been based heavily on the Star Wars EU, a friend of mine read alot of the EU and noticed alot of similarities in SWG back then, such as the location of Nightsisters and Singing Mountain clan and why they fought each other, there was a reason for each type of mob being where they were in the game.

Originally posted by =GK=Darkstar

In fact most of the original pre CU players are still playing whilst all of you guys live with this We hate SOE crap.

Sorry dude but I find this really difficult to believe, my friends list was above 70 members on it and almost always 20-25 online at a time back then in 2003-2005, when I went to play a little during the vet reactivation trial there was 0 online, ZERO.  I did recognize a few names wheN I wandered around but they were also on the vet reactivation trial, a couple were liking the changes, but I personally wasn't satisfied.

As a matter of fact quite a few I knew from back then don't even mention SWG anymore, they're off playing WoW, GW or EQ2, CoH, or just plain not playing any game at all.  My old guild's website/forum died out and doesn't exist anymore.

Originally posted by Gindacca

You know what I'd really love to see introduced in the game?  Customizable, CRAFTABLE Jedi robes.  I would love to hang my elder robe in my house and run around with a unique robe or set of clothes of my own design that are as good or close to as good as a knight robe.

You know, for the time I have spent reading the forums after I quit playing shortly after NGE launched when Jedi had 0 armor on their robes, people had endlessly suggested craftable Jedi clothes and robes- devs simply brushed those under the rug and moved on.  I think this would have been a great idea, I was a big fan of wearing "street" clothes before the NGE.

Originally posted by Trandoshan14

It is the Windui Crystal. It's a violet color, and it does a cold elemental damage. and 6% chance of something else, but I can't remember. But it's possibly the best crystal out there

When I logged on during the vet reactivation trial, I tested out the cold damage Kenobi crystal I had (wish I had gone with B'nars), it was changed from the useless 20% slow to 7.5% damage increase, no way it's the best crystal since B'nars does 70% damage increase and Bane's is almost as good with lowered damage taken.

So about this 5th gen coming in ch 7, it'll be higher than Jinsu and ORH?

Originally posted by Shayde

 

Originally posted by SioBabble

Setting the game in the period between ANH and ESB did create limitations on it, but I think Koster picked that period in particular because he wanted to appeal to an adult, not kiddie, audience.

Too bad for him that the ADD wankers at Lucasarts are all totally obsessed with lightsabers.

 

The only limitation was their imaginations. There was virtually a million plot directions they could have gone, because there was about 2 years between ANH and ESB.

 

It was a civil war. Maybe Tallus had a weapons plant that needed destroying? The gungans resisting imperial rule? Hell.. the tuskens could have tried to take over Mos Entha. That's just three things off the top of my head. The parameters were "Don't break canon" and they couldn't even stop from doing that.

There were countless EU characters to run with.. Admiral Dalaa, all of the Rogue Squadron (Man, wouldn't it have been great to have you be able to work your way into Rogue Squadron by space missions? The 181st if you're Imp? ) They could not just be an NPC you get a couple chat bubbles with, but something tangible.

 

They had such a vast canvas and they didn't even know it.

The changes to Jedi in publish 9 wasn't a bad thing either, it made Jedi a bit more balanced and countered the need for perma death (and skill loss) which was a pretty harsh penalty due to connection and stability bugs that existed, and had they not made the FRS too easily farmable with fight clubbing it would have been better (I stayed at rank 0 knight as a master healer).