Essentially it seems you're saying the next big thing - will be something different. Thats not radical thinking, its the bleedin obvious. 

I rolled a crafter and really enjoyed the process. Even with the simplified process it took time and effort to get the best resources possible to make gear people wanted to buy.

The problem with changes like these is they are impacting an increasingly small number of players and it makes it harder and harder to come into the game or even catch up.

For example, my main was a BH, occasionally a mando,  and had many millions of credits in the bank, largely obtained through crafting some of the best ship-parts on my server. I took a little break from SWG shortly after the RE system for ground-based loot came in. I cam back a few weeks later to find I was now significantly disadvantaged in pvp - a major part of SWG gameplay nowadays. Even in PvE and in instances, I needed to get the best possible mod bits to be useful to a group. So I turned my trader to making the mods. It does take a long time to craft the trash parts to RE into a +35. Enough time in fact that I could barely begin to make some of the collections.

IT sounds like that situation has been remedied a little as there are now so many +35's going around they are much more affordable. But making more exclusive items, weapons etc., is surely only going to roll things back.

I'm not a against leet-loot. Its good that that there are some things that are harder to get than others. But when the population of servers is as small as SWG's typical galaxy it puts anyone just coming into or returning to the game at a significant disadvantage. Populations are so small they are easily dominated by long-time players. In a massavely populated game like WoW for example you can pretty much avoid imba players due to the sheer statistical unlikeliness of coming up against them in pvp. But in SWG - you're gonna get owned all the time until you can buy/loot enough credits to get level.

I was actually quite surprised at all the hullaballoo they made of the combat system in Tabula Rasa - its not all that different to what we have in SWG and have had for more than a year. It plays like an FPS but with dice-rolls in the background. If you  want to you can turn off auto-aim and aim manually and get a bonnus to your rolls. The only major difference I've seen in TR is the inclusion of factors like taking cover, movement, and kneeling in the rolls.

Yep, the trial is the way to go. It does limit certain things though. You can only chat so much in spatial chat and I think your trading options are limited too. These measures were put in last summer to combat gold farmers spamming adverts. But you'll get a feel for the gameplay, how the professions work and so on.

Farstar and Chimaera are the most populous EU servers. I think Bria and Sunrunner seem to be popular US ones.

Originally posted by shukes33

Ill check tonight what server im on! lol i never took much notice.But i will def check tonight as i could do with a few friends in the game :) i feel im missing out on so much in this game it seems to be so many things to do .

Please do post what server you're on. If its mine I'll be happy to help you figure out how to get things done ingame. and please ignore all the trolls - there are an awful lot of people who have nothing better to do than watch these boards for an opportunity to slag a game they don't even play.

Originally posted by SonofSeth

I kinda like the almost cartoony looks. I played Crysis on high setting, watched CoD4, Assasins Creed and Uncharted on PS3... All of them look great, they realy do. Enviroment is truly beautiful and immersive, but when we come to the character you are playing, or in case of FPSs, characters you are shooting at immersion get's headshoted.

It's the thing with artificial characters, the closer they are to real world graphics the more you are aware they are in fact 3D models.

It's also one of the reasons WoW works so well, not because it's most beautiful, but because you spend very litle time watching how realistic it looks, you accept it's a game and go with the flow... true to life avatars only end up looking creepy anyway, not beautiful.

 

Nice to hear about other stuff in game, after the first trailers it looked boring and unimaginative, now it's starting to look like it could actualy be very fun to jump in occasionaly and do some  MMOing from my La-Z-Boy.

What strikes me most about The Agency is the developers appear to actually be trying to make a MMOwith different mechanics to all the others. I love the idea of gaining XP in proportion to how well I play a mission. In the example given in the story, it sounds like you get more XP, or at least cash, for saving all four pillars than for just one. So better players can actually level and grow faster than people who just have a lot of time on their hands to grind.

The idea of extending the game outside the PC environment also seems to be being developed. Some dude whose name I forget, was on Major Nelson's podcast recently talking about doing things like this. I love the idea that I could be getting emails or texts in RL from the game. Perhaps bad for careers or school grades, but surely the next step in MMO immersion. Imagine it - you stay up till 2am to complete a mission and gather a piece of top secret software. You log off for a few hours sleep before heading to work. At 10am your phone buzzes - in-game intelligence has decoded what you brought in last night and has your next target. 'Er, excuse me everyone', you say to your colleagues, 'I have to pop out for a minute'. And then you're racing off to the nearest Starbucks to get online and find out what's next at The Agency. Could be very cool, very addictive.

Originally posted by daeandor

This post totally feels like bait.  I recommend you read about NGE before you come back and are shocked to death.  You may like it, you may not, but the game is not at all the same as it was back then.

But I guess it helps to have some balance to comments.

In short, a lot has happened since you left. Combat is different, more FPS style, though not totally run and gun. You still need to choose your skills and gear and have a sense of timing, when to attack, when to retreat, at least in PVP. Beast-mastery, collections, weapon, armour, and clothing attachments, and heroic encounters are probably the biggest additions to the game. But tbh you'd be better off researching them on swg.wiki.

There are still a lot of bugs and glitches in the game but is there a game out there that is completely free of problems?

You can try SWG for free from SOE's SWG site and at least get a feel for how the game works now and thats probably going to tell you more than the average forum.

Good luck, see you ingame.

Far Star has a reasonable population (by SWG standards anyway) if you're looking for a Euro server. Always something going on , we've had a few Live events in the last couple of months and there are plenty of guilds running.

Originally posted by Gutboy

And the new publish should be live in a little over a week, it will include new space content (missions and 4 new ships including 3 new gunboats). Also there is a new boardable spce station to gather and run the new space missions from.  There will also be a new heroic encounter that involves boarding a Star Destroyer and defeating the troops and bosses inside it.

Is it really coming that soon?

Originally posted by JediPopey

I ended my sub. after beast master came out... whats new and good now ? before I resubsribe

The biggest changes are probably in chapter 7 - collections and Heroics. Collections are pretty much what they sound like - collections of items that when complete give you badges and items. Some are based on loot, some on locations, some on kills, some on crafting. For examples, some mobs drop pieces of five different collections centred around item counts for housing. Collecting all the pieces of a collection gives you a badge and an increase in item count of 100 for any house you own. Another collection involves killing a few hundred of several different types of Tusken. The reward is a new title - Tusken Terrorizer. Some say its a loot grind, others, like me, enjoy the incentive to see more of the Galaxy and do more than stand around SP's comparing armour or PVP'ing in Restuss.

Heroics are instances by another name. The first three are varied in style, but essentially all involve battling waves of enemies and then a final Boss. Rewards include increases to combat stats, new sets of jewellery, and some nice loot drops.

There was more stuff included in chapter 6 than BM, but I don't know how much of it you saw before quitting.

Originally posted by redcap036

ok, so what is NGE then?

and thank you all for your answers and post.

The original game, as launched, is what's known as pre-CU. Between the CU and launch of the NGE is generally referred to as pre-NGE (alhough this term can mean pre-CU as well).

The CU revamped all sorts of areas of the game, notable the combat system, changing the way many things were done and how the game played. The NGE went even further. Essentially it changed the whole game, with the exception of (most) locations.

Some of the most controversial changes were reducing the number of professions available to nine, making Jedi available as a profession from the get-go, removing Creature Handlers, changing combat from a turn-based system to a more FPS style, and simplifying crafting.

The NGE is probably the most controversial move ever undertaken by a games company. It pissed off a lot of players who had invested time and money into the old system and felt ripped off. Questions like the OP tend to generate a lot of posts about indivuals gripes with the system. Generally the two most popular complaints are that its too easy to be a Jedi now and that combat is too simple.

Originally posted by Spaceman316

NGE:  Not Good Enough!  After you already destroyed the game with PreCU.

Who are you talking to? I didn't destroy SWG with anything.

Most people on my server use their guild and faction channels. Guild comes by default when you join a guild. Faction is still optional though.

We also have a Heroics channel set up, but it is rarely used. Unless there is an official Heroics channel noone's told me about.

I wouldn't ask for a new server as  I like the one I'm on. I can see how it might be nice to be back on the level playing field without the bloated economy and such, but I think I'd just find it hard to leave my main toons behind.

If you're a euro player, Chimera has the highest population, followed I think, by Farstar, then Infinity. I play on FarStar and there's generally always something going on, PvP or PvE. Calls for groups for the heroics seem to start as early as 9am nowadays but of course the peak is midday to mid-afternoon.

Much as I wish it weren't so, I reckon the chances of a bona fide expansion pack are pretty slim. Subscriber numbers are low and the damage done by the backlash over the NGE so high.

The game is constantly expanding though. Others have already mentioned the new content in the chaps 7 and 8. But we've also had a lot of other stuff in chaps 5 and 6 this year. It seems SOE's strategy is based more around making effective use of the property they already have than developing new stuff from scratch.

So we're more likely to see new questlines based around the planets we already have than a new planet altogether (no likelihood of seeing Hoth or Corsucant anytime soon :()

Hmm, I have one month to recruit four people into SWG and if I can do that I'll get a 'Lightbender' BARC....

If I'd known this was gonna come up I could've asked everyone I know to buy me a new SWG account cos that seems the most likely way I'm gonna get SOE four new subs.

Originally posted by FikusOfAhazi

Originally posted by Guernica

You know there's an entire board for this sort of thing, right, and its not this one?

You know this site has moderators, right, and you're not one.

lol, calm down, dude. Just a friendly suggestion that there's a better place to air thoughts like this. No need to get excited.

You know there's an entire board for this sort of thing, right, and its not this one?

My mistake - looks like I wondered into the wrong board by mistake

Why should SWG have atmospheric flight? The closest to that in the movies is the battle on Hoth - snowspeeders vs AT-ATs, and Luke crashing on Dagobah.

What the hell would you do if you could fly in the atmosphere? Fight each other? You can do that already in space, just as Lucas intended. Buzz people on the ground? Do we need to think for more than a second to realise how annoying that would get within minutes?

Even the almighty WoW only brought free-flight in for TBC because it would've been impossible to implement to the original game and for the same reasons it will never be brought in to SWG. The terrain isn't designed to allow it (maps have borders and unfinished areas you are not meant to see) and the engine, physics that is, couldn't handle it.  Come to think of it, the graphics probably would suffer as well - I get lag already sometimes in my AV21!