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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.

A SERIOUS WARNING about SWG and SOE from a WEEK ONE VETERAN!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 44
Date: May 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided

*Sigh* Where to begin...

This game could be better named:
"Star Wars Galaxies: A Development Team Vs. A Player base".

Never in all my life, have I seen a company alienate so many people in pursuit of the almighty dollar. It's truly sickening. I WAS a 20-month veteran of the game, I had been playing since week one (I've canceled my account and will NEVER do business with SOE again!).

PLEASE, READ ON...

In the beginning...
This game was alright; it was fun, it was unique, and it was totally bug-ridden and unbalanced. Over the course of the last 20 months, the SOE Dev team have made us promise after promise to do certain things to fix and enhance this game. They in fact did very little, if anything at all. They milked us. They exploited the "Star Wars" name to make a buck. They made promise after promise after promise... and never delivered squat. Don't believe me? Just ask any "Smuggler" in the game for their opinion.

They strung us along and led us to believe that the "fixes" to the game were right around the corner! Instead, they were hard at work on an "Expansion Pack" to sell us! And then once again "promised us" that the fixes we've all been waiting for were the next big thing waiting for us, "just hang on, this game is going to be great!" They promised us that they were going to do this "Combat Upgrade" and do it right, and it "wouldn't be released until it's ready!"

We all had a lot of hope, we thought that they had finally figure out that they had totally screwed up and were trying to make amends with a player base on the brink of total collapse. God, how wrong we all were...

Well, much to everyone's surprise, they made the announcement that the long awaited "CU" would be coming out along with the "Rage of the Wookiees" expansion pack! Uhhhmmm... did I miss something somewhere? The alpha test for the "CU" was supposed to begin in January, it never happened. Beta testing began in April, 4 whole weeks before it was supposed to go to live! We all rolled up our sleeves and dove in. I think after the first week or so, the sad realization of what was happening to our game begun to sink in...

They went and copy/pasted EQ2 code into the SWG game so they could "streamline" their operation by having ONE DEV TEAM WORK ON BOTH SWG AND EQ2!!!

The CU was supposed to go live on May 5th. SOE decided to push it to live a whole 2 weeks sooner than that. Honestly, with all the bugs that were still in beta, and now in live, beta could have gone on another 4-6 months! I guess they figured they could milk us all a little more and dump this beta on the live servers and let us pay to test it. Why am I not surprised?

The CU itself is unplayable. It has become Everquest in space, or "EverStar Galaxies QuestWars" as we call it. There are just too many things to list. There are a lot of other more technical reviews which go into much more detail over on the page for the stand-alone game.

As you all can imagine, the player community was totally enraged! We went to the SWG Forum boards to voice our concerns. The only response we ever got back from SOE was THOUSANDS of deleted threads and players banned from the forums. Facing futility, a large portion of the player base has left the game, permanently this time.

This is just not how you do business. I personally will NEVER deal with Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) EVER again. I DO NOT pay MY HARD EARNED MONEY to be lied to, deceived, ignored, strung along, censored, and banned for voicing my concerns. I do not pay money to folks who treat me, a PAYING CUSTOMER, in this fashion.

Star Wars Galaxies is dead. Servers are emptying. People are moving on to other games where folks know how to appreciate their patrons. If you are a fan of Star Wars, and this is the only reason I ever started playing this game to begin with, you will be sadly disappointed!

SWG is nothing more than an exploit of a title, a milk machine. I for one, am tired of being milked.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

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!!!!

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

Terrible!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 30
Date: May 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

SWG Publish 0.121450 April 28, 2005

In this publish we bring to you the much anticipated Combat Revamp! Get ready for these exciting changes:

AI
~Improved AI lets creatures triple incap players more efficiently

UI
~Removed Star Wars specific icons and replaced them with cartoons
~Fixed an issue where players knew how to move and interact with the game

Server Stability Enhancements
~Improved server stability by encouraging thousands of players to remove themselves from the game

Professions
~Removed fun and exciting moves from combat professions
~Crafters no longer are hounded by players who once needed their skills
~Fixed a problem where Entertainers were important to game play
~Jedi reset to allow players a chance to re-grind millions of XP and FRSXP

Loot
~Valuable and rare weapons now function below normal weapon levels
~Anti-decay kits removed for certain professions

Player Cities
~Fixed a problem where some cities still had active players

Misc.
~Fixed some issues that would keep players from crashing to desktop
~XP now allows players to continually grind so no new content will be needed
~Removed customer service

If you are experiencing a bug in game please use the /bug reporting feature and provide as much details as possible to help us fix the problem.

Thank you,
Sony Online Entertainment

(SWG sucks now. I wouldn't play it if it was free)

The Jedi Order wasn't the only thing wiped out recently...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 21 / 33
Date: May 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game from day one. I am just a gamer and sometimes roleplayer who enjoys hunting creatures with friends along with socializing at the end of the day. A month ago I would have said this was the best MMORPG ever published, certainly the most unique. Sure it had a few bugs and a few things were unbalanced, but for the most part it was a totally enjoyable experience and I'm happy I had the chance to play it.

Happy I had the chance to play it before the Combat Upgrade (CU) that is. For those of you thinking about buying this game you'll never know what a great game you missed. Instead, you'll just get Everquest II with a Star Wars skin. I'm not saying that makes the game a bad one, just be prepared for what you're buying. You missed your chance for the great game that was SWG and now you'll just get this watered down fantasy version. The game we all had is gone and now that the bulk of players have left in disgust those of us who remained behind are starting to realise it won't be coming back. Most of us are examining what we have been left with-
- Most of the player crafters have left or changed profession. This has made all the weapons and gear in the game lacklustre or rare and expensive. Crafting is now so hard and incredibly long no one seems to want to fill the void.
- Same goes for Doctors. Most player Doctors have left or changed profession meaning that you'll always be running around wounded unable to find someone to heal you.
- Pets are no longer unique creatures with their own special abilities and stats. Now it's all level based so a level 20 snake is exactly the same as a level 20 bantha, just different appearance skins.
- We cannot attack while riding a mount anymore so safari hunts are a thing of the past.
- We now have the Everquest II toolbar and warm-down timers making combat just a "click and watch the timer" affair. Combat is now slow and predictable as a result. We get into combat, press the first button, wait for the timer, press the second button, wait for the timer, rinse and repeat.
- The places we used to adventure in are now filled with weak creatures that give 1xp per kill (Keep in mind some skill boxes cost 450,000 or even 1 million xp to obtain) or 125th level or even 225th level creatures (Keep in mind players are capped at level 80 so even with a group of eight level 80s you won't be getting through some places now if ever).
- We used to have auto-attack so if your character was shot at by a hidden enemy, it would turn and start returning fire until you could use your special attacks. Now your character will just stand there unmoving taking damage while you search the screen for the enemy, target it, and click your first attack button. This would probably work if enemies didn't spawn in mid air or in places you cannot target due to bugs....
- The game is VERY bugged. To give you an idea, I posted three bug reports before the CU, now I post one every second day. Not that it matters because the response is always the same.."The developers are aware of the problem and are working to fix it. Have a nice day." I'm sure it's just an automated message now.
- Every third or fourth mission you take will be bugged or broken in some capacity, especially on Kashyyyk (the new expansion) which is the bug capital of the universe.

Having read this you're probably asking why am I still playing? Addiction I guess, I miss the game I had so much fun with and part of me is hoping that they will return the things that made SWG. My account is also paid up until August so I guess I'll hang around until then before leaving for good.

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.

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!

soe killed starwars

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 26
Date: June 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

i started playing this game on the first day of launch. i must admit it was an enjoyable experience for a while until you figured out the only thing fun about it was the familiar setting of the starwars universe. it is a shame what sony online entertainment has done with this franchise. don't believe the comercials that soe is pushing, EVERYONE has abondoned this game and the comercial is filled with outright lies. the current plan is to put out a dumbed down version so they can unleash it on console gamers and rake in a few more dollars solely based on the starwars name.

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