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Wasted Potential

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 247 / 281
Date: May 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Quite possibly the very best idea for a MMORPG, and also, quite possibly the very worse execution as well. The idea of an online game set in the Star Wars Universe was definitely the most enticing game idea I had ever seen. I actually had to buy a whole new computer to play it two years ago.

This game has, or to say, had dozens of new innovative ideas. It was the first MMORPG to use a skill system, instead of a level system, since I had played UO. It had the greatest crafting system I had ever seen in any game. It was also the first online game I know to include professions specifically aimed towards casual gamers. Players could choose to be Dancers or Musicians. You could place your own houses all over huge sandbox style planets.

Most of things were flawed, and had issues with something being too strong, or not strong enough. For the longest time the game's developers tried unsuccessfully to balance and fix the flaws with the game. A great deal or progress was made in the twenty-two months since the game's launch, but evidentially not enough. The developers created a patch called the "Combat Upgrade" or CU for short.

The combat upgrade fundamentally traded a very flawed, though original and innovative combat system, for a very flawed bland overused combat system. The upgrade switched from a skill based system, to the overly used level system that so many other games have. A unique armor system that involved different damages and certain enemies and armories having certain protections and vulnerabilities was replaced with simply all armor having very similar protections to everything, as well as every enemy having the exact same protections now as well.

Though it was named the Combat Upgrade, this change greatly effected all the non-combative professions as well. Medical professions lost the ability to craft their own medicines, and now simply heal without them. (much like priests or clerics in other games) They may only heal in combat now, if they wish to advance through their profession. Crafting has been made much more simple, and weapons and armor now all very similar stats, and the difference between an exceptional craftsman and a inexperienced one is now very little.

As for it being Star Wars, it's more like Everquest with Star Wars names and characters pasted over it now. The game is set between Episodes IV and V and yet there are dozens of Jedi running around. Ithorians, a pacifist race according to the Star Wars Canon, have 3 suits of exclusive battle armor and can learn just as many destructive skills as other races. The rebels in the game are never hiding and always very much out in the open.

To be a Jedi in the game you must travel a very long, boring, and tedious path full of time sinks and tons of grinding. If you become a Jedi, all that remains is to continue grinding to learn new Jedi skills. They only way to gain XP as a Jedi, good or bad, is to simply kill things over and over again with a lightsaber. Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies is simply another combat profession with different weapons. After you reach Jedi there are no quests or missions for you, at least none that a Non-Jedi could do.

The Total Experience is priced extremely cheap for the reason this game isn't worth much anymore. Both the expansions mostly eye candy and offer little replay value. Jump to Light speed adds a player's chance to fly in space and fight other starships. However space combat is very redundant and the quests and missions for space are all very much the same. NPC ships only tactic seems to be fly circles around you and make you chase them until you get off enough hits to kill them. Rage of the Wookiees added the Wookiee homeworld. However, unlike the other ten planets in the game, which were massive sandbox styles maps that could take a great deal of time to explore, Kashyyyk is simply a large themepark to amuse players. You're limited to trails which lead to instanced dungeons, there's very little to explore. The quests on Kashyyyk are simple quests that offer novelty items from the movies. Such as a suit of Clone Trooper Armor, or a picture of General Grievous.

I've been playing since the game's launch late in June of 2003, and have been playing it regularly since. The developers at Sony Online Entertainment have constantly ignored concerns and requests from the player base, and continue to make horrible decisions based on things they never explain to it's loyal customers. The most recent change to the game as left me with no friends left to play with, and can't even find a reason to log on anymore. SOE seems to not only know nothing about Star Wars, but also nothing about managing a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game as well. If you like Star Wars I'd recommend Knights of the Old Republic, Battlegrounds, or Episode III. If you like online games you might want to try City of Heroes or World of Warcraft. But even if you like both Star Wars and Online games, I wouldn't recommend this game to you.

Broken promises & poor management is killing SWG.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 135 / 155
Date: June 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

For those that were back on Everquest during the forum wars may understand what I speak of. We fought every Nerf Verant threw at us. We posted, we discussed, we flamed, we got banned. But we still played EQ cause at the time it was the best. Smedley (President of Sony Online Entertainment) showed up and tried to coral us in, couldn't, so he shut down the forums and turned them into an automated moderated post-it note board. Many of us knew then we could not fight to fix EQ so we left.

We wandered for a bit in the nothingness of MMORPGS at the time until we found the pre-launch forums of SWG. We found out that Verant was going to handle it as they were bought up by SOE and we felt a darkness, but we pushed on, cause we were sure LUCASARTS was in true control.

For 2 years before game launch those were days filled with debates about the timeline, weapons, classes, PVP vs PVE, city boundaries, vehicles, and every thing a kid who grew up playing with star wars action figures ever wanted in a video game. This was before KOTOR or Battlegrounds or Jedi Academy and we all felt SWG was going to be our ultimate Star Wars experience.

We watched as our game was shaped into a vision that we all could live with. We watched as Beta started and was rushed, we watched as the launch of the game by an experienced MMORG company was still handled badly. We should have known then that Verant/SOE was going to screw it up.

We watched as promise after promise was broken. Those that bought the special collectors edition, those with the sunglasses? We were promised that the sunglasses was just the start, that many more IN GAME items and options would be given to those of us that paid the $75 for the collectors set. That was one of the first promises they broke, we never received anything else, none of the Tattooes, the clothes, the vehicles we were promised before launch for buying the special edition.

We then saw as main features were pushed 6 months back from launch. We watched as classes were nerfed into oblivion and utterly destroyed to never fully recover, the creature handlers know of the great Ch nerf of Nov 03.

We watched as soon the Jedi craze became an epidemic as NO Jedi were unlocking. We couldn't even find out the WAY to unlock Jedi. We chased Hermits through the fields we wore HELPER tags and we entered every fixed building on every planet hoping to unlock the jedi secret. Rumors flew of magnificent quest filled adventures that would unlock the Jedi, yet when the truth came out, it was anti-climatic.

Then we watched as too many jedi unlocked as Christmas Holos were given out and months later we find out the jedi code was changed from 5 to 8 professions and most people at the end were having to unlock all 32 professions to reach jedi. Another promise broken.

We watched as many professions needed fixing and were ignored cause of the Jedi problems cause it was obvious there was no Jedi system in place before launch and the Devs were wingin it.

The new popular phrase became, "We will fix it in the CU (Combat Upgrade)."

This was used for every question for 8 months on anything non-jedi related. We then find out that the Devs push the CU back until after JTL cause well, they need to get an expansion out cause they promised us Space ships a YEAR ago before launch. Another promise, a HUGE one, again broken.

Now the CU comes and we find out it isn't an upgrade but a complete new game system. It has changed every single character in the game and has forced many of us to change the characters we have had for 22 months to something else. The CU hasn't fixed HALF of what they promised to fix for the last year. We still have many classes that need revamps that are barely dealt with in the CU.

Now Smedley shows up again and says the CU is a good thing and that after the CU we will be making many more changes. We have waited for the last 2 YEARS for the promised changes and now again, you push them back. Smugglers and SL have waited 12 months for revamps and still have to wait. The CU did not FIX anything, but introduced a slew of new bugs and problems instead that you will need to spend the next 6 months ironing out.

Worst of all is the fact that NOW you have FORCED all your paying customers to Beta Test a bug riddled Game system as per Dallas Dickinson Producer for Sony Online Entertainment comments in this article.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/610/610552p1.html

"Dallas Dickinson: We've been testing it for a full month, both internally and on the test center. We were simply not at the point of getting enough feedback from people. A number of things had come out, and we had fixed all of them. It's a tiered thing when you're working on a massively multiplayer game. The number of eyes you have on any system, especially one as fundamentally large as the combat system, that increases the rate at which issues are borough to the surface. We weren't getting enough new issues, so we had to bring it out in front of the community, take some pain (which we have), and get the real issues brought to our attention. That's the process we're going through right now. Issues are reported to us, and we're responding to them as fast as we can, but we had to go live in order for us to see these issues."

This blatant use of the customer base as beta Testers has crossed the line of good game ethics, as they just admitted that they have forced a flawed game on their paying customers.

After all the broken promises and trust that SOE has whittled away from us, they have the audacity to force the players to be beta testers now? It is my hope that now that Episode III is done, LUCASARTS takes SWG away from SOE finally and starts to take a true interest in the fans still here. Actually, I just hope LUCASARTS makes a NEW SWG MMORPG and shuts this one down due to poor management.

The Force has left this game, PASS

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 25 / 28
Date: June 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

OK, I USED to play and love this game for 8 months. It was my favorite game ever and I played it every day. I like being an entertainer because it was the most social profession. The infamous Combat Upgrade took an entertainer's livelihood away and forced so many players out that cantinas are empty. Therefore, there is no longer people to talk to.

I liked being a Master Swordsman. However, the CU has made enemies and players into a level based system on top of a skill and class based system. It doesn't work. Why are there level 100 MOBS out there when the max level is 80? Levelling has become impossible and I get killed by things that were once easy to me. The armor and weapons I had and used to buy are now useless and prices have skyrocketed due to lack of crafters (because crafters have a 0 combat level any MOB can kill them in 1 hit, forcing many of them to leave) and products being produced.

I also enjoyed playing as a doctor. I made a lot of money selling buffs (stat enhancements) and that was how I made most of my money. However no buffs are worthless and no one wants to buy them anymore. Also I cannot gain any more experience in the hospital by healing people, I have to heal them in the wild in groups. Tell me, how am I supposed to gain experience when the population has dropped so low that I can't find a group.

The lack of support from Sony Online Entertainment has alienated their customers. The first few days of the combat upgrade they had a special "combat upgrade forum" in which 80% of the comments were negative. What did SOE do about these? Did they listen? NO. Did they respond? NO. Did they ease people's anger? NO. They deleted negative posts, banned people who wrote those posts, and would send high-level MOBS at any in-game protesters to "clear them out".

The CU was only in the test server for a few weeks and was completely unfinished and 80% of the feedback of it was negative. What did SOE do? They forced an unfinished and buggy product that was disliked by most on their loyal fanbase. And yet the recent replies from SOE wonder why people left. I could go on and on about the injustices from SOE but that would just waste everyone's time.

I can no longer go off by myself. I can no longer make money.This game used to be great. It used to be unique. It used to be FUN. Now it is a clone of Everquest in a Sci-Fi shell. SWG is not unique anymore and is just like anything else...except a lot more boring. This new "total experience" is priced so low because of the lack of players in the game and so that they can attract more hopeless suckers into their product. Any of you new players who come will never experience how good this game WAS. Go play World of Warcraft or Guild Wars (Both of them I play). I wouldn't waste $1 on this game let alone $25. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!!!

What is installed by this box set will be completely patched over with a new game.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 21
Date: December 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

You can find the new game, the "Star Wars Galaxies: Starter Kit" which was released after nearly 7 years of development time, and nearly 3 years of that spent on live servers being paid for by subscribers to the game, on Amazon also.

From Alpha to Beta and then back to Alpha. Maybe back again if enough myrmidons stay subscribed to finance SOE through this rocky period.

A very nice pistol, the "Trandoshan Hunting Pistol" which was a quest item included in this expansion as a special quest item that could be used until it decayed, was broken, or was sold made for a very nice Jedi hunting weapon for Bounty Hunters.

What has the new patch changed in the previous statement?

1.) The "Trandoshan Hunting Pistol" is no longer useable by Bounty Hunters but instead now by spies.
2.) Since it was a biolinked weapon you cannot use it unless you want to be a spy instead of a Bounty Hunter.
3.) It's irrelevant anyway as the pistol now does the same amount of damage as every other pistol in the game, negating the 30 - 40 minute quest that it takes to get the pistol.
4.) The pistol no longer decays so you can use it forever - negating the crafting economy in the game.
5.) You can no longer hunt Jedi in the game - and Jedi are now a starting profession that 90% of the players are playing as.

I described a single quest item that I received from a quest I completed in the Rage of the Wookies expansion. I've given you 5 things that were immediately negated about it by the latest patch called the "NGE" or "New Game Enhancement" (90% of my collected items had these new 'features' that ruined them and the time spent collecting them.)

The insulting thing is that SOE has gone back to the drawing board with SWG trying to make it a copycat of WoW in order to (they hope) compete in the long-term. They hope that you (the paying customer) is such a Star Wars freak that you will continue pumping money into their Alpha-Test of a game in order to finance the development of what they hope it will eventually be.

As-is things are horribly broken. Medic is the strongest class in the game and a level 30 medic can solo-kill 4 level 80 player Jedi.

The game is upsetting to many because the original dev team working on SWG had a vision, and many people knew that vision and stuck with the game for so long in the hopes that it would be realized.

SOE seems content to head in the direction of what their "WoW playing focus groups" tell them they need instead of what the players have asked for.

To get the same effect, slam your head into your computer desk repeatedly to the tune of John William's opening Star Wars theme and flush $15 down the toilet once per month.

SOE has ruined the potential that this game had - and is running in the opposite direction from where they should have been. They blame everyone but themselves. It's captivating as a car wreck to watch - and upsetting for those of us who knew the game's potential.

We've still got our memories... fun was had in spite of what they did to the game. It's not worth playing any longer.

Game Developer Internal Memo

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 28
Date: June 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Note to all SWG Game Developers,

Step 1: Take Everquest II
Step 2: Halve the quality of the graphics
Step 3: Add laser guns and space ships
Step 4: Ignore any bugs that result
Step 5: Put a sci-fi title on the cover, maybe Battlestar Galactica? Hmm, no, what about Star Wars? Yes Star Wars!

And we have ourselves a winner! Those suckers will be lining up!

Regards,
Sony Online Entertainment

This game is dead

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: June 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This was a decent game at one time. There were a slew of bugs, and there was a lot of boring stuff to deal with, but there was something unique about it all. It was just amazing fun. The breadth of the planets, the professions, the experiences was great. It may also have been what killed SWG. The developers never seemed all that competent, and were certainly badly understaffed. But it was still a great community, and I had a lot of fun, playing every night for a year.

Now, I can't stand the ground game. One of the things that made SWG so unique was the real focus on non-combat characters. You could make money, have fun, talk with friends, and spend all your time working in a variety of professions without killing anything. You were an important part of the SWG world. Combat classes were a little stale and repetitive, but after s few weeks of grinding, you could defend yourself against most things and engage in the high-end content, which was survivable with a group.

Now, combat classes have been all screwed up. Some sort of weird, arbitrary system has been imposed that looks more like Magic:The Gathering cards than the multi-profession blends we had before. In other words, if you are Class A, you can defeat Creature B and C, but not D. You have to be Class E to kill Creature D, but Creatures B and C can easily kill you. It's stupid. And unless you are a Bounty Hunter or Rifleman, your goose is pretty much cooked if you try to solo - which you will, because the servers are so dead now there is no one to group with some nights.

And the non-combat classes? Completely wrecked. Doctors had a number of roles. True, they had become glorified buff-bots, but that was just a balance issue, buffs were too strong. Instead of a minor fix, WHAM! down comes the nerf-hammer and doctors are useless, except in combat, where they are dead ducks unless they also take the time to grind out a combat class or two. Entertainers? The devs couldn't think up anything good for them, so they became true AFK buff-bots. Rather than tweak that system, WHAM they are useless now. Crafters? Absolutely vital to the economy. Someone has to make all this junk that gets used. Instead of doing a little tweaking to armor and guns, making them gated like spaceships are, and some other things, WHAM!. They still craft, though a lot of their goods and resources are now useless, costing millions of credits, but the CU has had the (I am sure) UNEXPECTED effect of making them as helpless as babies outside their doors, where they have to go to collect resources. So now, instead of a crafter specializing in a couple of crafting branches for variety and more fun, they can only do one branch, and must grind a few combat roles just so they can go to their mineral resource collector without getting killed by a pack of wild rabbits.

Consequently, people playing crafters are gone. Doctors are gone. Entertainers are gone. Even some combat roles that got seriously nerfed, like Teras Kasi, are gone. Smugglers and Creature Handlers and Bio-Engineers have been long gone. There will be nothing but Bounty Hunters and Riflemen and Jedis soon. And the Jedis really got borked in the CU as well. They are extremely weak early, yet must make themselves very visible - and with all the BH classes, they don't last for a day. So Jedis will leave. Then BH's have no targets. Will it be a Rifleman's Galaxy when all is said and done?

The only thing that kept me in so far, and I have cancelled my account, it runs out in 2 days, is Jump to Lightspeed. The missions are boring, unrealistic and repetitive, the AI is dull and simplistic, the ship movement is slow and kludgy, and the physics are astoundingly bad, even for a reasonably intelligent high school grad. But it's still fun to fly around with a few mates and blow things up. And the multi-player ships are cool. Completely useless and unplayable in any sense, but still a cool idea.

And that is the moral of my long story: Star Wars Galaxies was (and is, if LA will fire SOE and make SWG II) a great idea, with lots of cool, original and unique ideas tried in a halting fashion. But so much was poorly designed, badly implemented, untested, and never fixed correctly. The entire emphasis of the dev team has been on maximizing short-term profits, by working on expansion packs instead of fixing issues, by adding inane graphical geegaws instead of fixing issues, and by ignoring the customers. The result has become, over 20 months, an unplayable mess.

If you want good role-playing alternatives, some people say Everquest II or World of Warcraft, though friends tell me the bloom is off those titles as well, and EQ II seems to be on the same path as SWG. If you want space-based action and an interesting economy, try EVE Online, which is where I have switched my money. It's complicated and starts a little slow, but the graphics are astounding, the gameplay deep, and the dev team very interactive with the customer fanbase.

From a disillusioned former player: this game is dying fast

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: July 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I played Star Wars Galaxies for about 16 months and in the beginning, it was a great game. Not perfect, but still great. I lost interest in it and finally cancelled a few months ago because, simply put, it's no longer Star Wars. The idea behind this game was that you could create YOUR OWN character to inhabit and run around in THE Star Wars saga. This could have been the definitive MMORPG. Sony Online Entertainment got their hands on what was the hottest property around and utterly ruined it. I'm not going to touch upon the Combat Upgrade because that's been gone over a zillion times already: this game simply no longer has any of the spirit of Star Wars in it. Smugglers can't smuggle, medics are crippled, crafters and merchants have been run out of business, entire cities have become desolate ruins. All that's left are about twenty-seven thousand Jedi running around "owning" each other with lightsabers. C'mon: how many Jedi were SERIOUSLY running around at this point in the saga's timeline? Oh yeah, that's right: there is no sense that we're even really in the saga at all, period. It *says* that it's after A New Hope and before The Empire Strikes Back, but SOE has fubared the chronology and canon so bad that it's hopeless to believe there's any semblance of genuine Star Wars story going on here. Fercryingoutloud they put General Grievous in the Wookiee expansion... when he should have been DEAD for at least 20 years already! This game shouldn't even be called "Star Wars Galaxies": it'd be far more accurate to call it "Star Wars Costume Party" and that's how I refer to it to my friends. This game is going down the tubes so fast, that if LucasArts hasn't already considered yanking the franchise away from SOE then it doesn't deserve my buying another game from them ever again on grounds of sheer incompetence and neglect! The older players are going away and the only new players are generally the ones that bought into SOE's slick advertising that you could "live out" the Star Wars saga. They're going away now too. All that will soon be left are a bunch of Jedi wannabes screaming at each other in the middle of a Mos Eisley that's seen better days. Maybe someday LucasArts will deliver a MMORPG that's REALLY worthy the title of Star Wars, but until then keep your money (or invest it in a REAL online game, like Guild Wars) and skip over Star Wars Galaxies, because this game's had it. May Sony never be given another franchise like it again!

Why so many veterans are now bashing this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: May 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I urge anyone considering this game to spend their money elsewhere. Compare the reviews dated before 28 April 2005 (the day of the Combat "Upgrade") and those dated after, for the original game (Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided) and the first expansion (Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed). You will see that this company, Sony Online Entertainment, has broken faith with its user base, known in other industries as its "customers."

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed playing 4 Star Wars Galaxies accounts for nearly a year at $15/month, I have paid nearly $720 to SOE in subscription fees alone, plus over $200 for the software for those accounts. For paying SOE nearly $1,000 of my hard earned cash, they have rewarded my patronage with a bait and switch scheme that completely changed the product that I purchased and expected to get!

Sony Online Entertainment appears to have forgotten that its customers come first. Therefore, their customers, including this one, are going to companies that understand this relationship.

Pass on this

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: June 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a 2 year vet. I seen SOE do a lot of things over the years. Having been with them from 1999 to April 2005, starting with Everquest and finally ending in Galaxies. I have seen them nerf, wreck and destory classes in Everquest. It has gotten so bad from Everquest that all certain class even in demand for groups, others well good luck. Now comes along Star Wars. It was a fresh idea-however after nearly 2 years you gotta question why SOE opted change the Combat system into a level based game. People may say it is great. But having survived Everquest for 4 1/2
years. The much talked about CU feels and plays like Everquest with a Scifi theme. This is not even 1/10th the feel of Star Wars more like Everquest. Now people who highly rate this game there are few of them. The servers are getting bare. I just ended up canceling my own account-with giving my credits and equipment to a friend. SOE has a case history of treating the users as garbage and they are continuing that trend here. This is the worst game that they ever made. If you want the Star Wars experience. Read a book, play any of the known Star Wars games. Galaxies will make it feel like Everquest.

I asked this question once going to ask it again. What is so special about Star Wars Galaxies these days. It maybe titled Star Wars, but it plays and feels like Everquest. If you want the first sci-fi fantasy game this is the game for you. Assuming you have time to locate a group. With the level system in place any skills prior and are now a waste-From what I am hearing the class to be just to get back is rifleman and Bounty Hunter. Contrast to belief this is NOT the Star Wars feeling. This is nothing more then a waste of $30 bucks plus a $15 per month fee.

don't waste your time or money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 29
Date: June 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I loved the game, but have since cancelled my account. Wasted countless hours for the devs to totally change the game. My recommendation is this....if you see this being given 4-5 stars, in my opinion, it is the devs themselves giving those kinds of feedback to try and salvage their jobs...UNLESS YOU PERSONALLY KNOW SOMEONE THAT RECOMMENDS THIS GAME TO YOU, DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES A MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION! And that is even moreso considering all of the current negative feedback. Hope that helps someone save some cash...it's a cool idea, but they ruined it! There are TONS of people who have quit the game since they totally changed it...cities which were packed are now virtually empty...99% of the friends I have made have quit the game because it is now AWFUL! I voted by cancelling my subscription to a game that i had spent a LOT of time building my character on...it was very hard to do, but why continue paying for a game that is not the same game I enjoyed. I just feel even sorrier for the people that prepaid for a year to get slapped in the face. Hope it helps!

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