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A Great Game Now Ruined

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 21
Date: May 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am afraid that many of the recent hostile reviews of Star wars Galaxies are justified.

When it was released, the game was a deep and fabulously sophisticated experience. You could do all the usual MMORPG things - fighing, adventuring and exploring - but you could also do much more; you could build factories, you could survey for rare minerals, you could be a dancer in a cantina, you could be an Image Designer (basically a 'super hair dresser/plastic surgeon), you could be a doctor specialising either in healing or in germ warfare, you could fight against other players as an Imperial colonel with your own giant robot or you could fight against tough non-player, system-run Krayt Dragons or pirates, you could be an assassin with a high powered rifle or a Teras Kasi Artists (a kind of kung fu specialist)... The possibilities were endless.

However, it was recognised that, in combat terms, some of the fighting professions were 'unbalanced' (in other words, some top level combat professions would always beat others in a fight).

In early 2004, it was announced that the combat system would be 'rebalanced'. However, the CURB (Combat Upgrade Rebalance) was delayed and delayed and delayed.

Until, in April of this year, it was suddenly announced that the CURB was going to go live with only minimal testing. Testing is incredibly important to MMORPGs and involves interrogating both the technical and gameplay aspects of a large piece of coding.

The reason for this sudden announcement - tho' never acknowledged by Sony - was that the movie Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith is being released in mid-May and Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) wanted a new product that it could market alongside the film.

So the CURB was released early. And, in the opinion of the large majority of players, it has changed the game. The CURB not only 'balanced' the combat professions but it changed every aspect of the game. Everything is much simpler now, more rudimentary. This is because SOE wished to emulate the style of other games with larger player bases like EQ2 and World of Warcraft. The games are aimed at a younger audience. Also, the expected 'Revenge of the Sith' is also expected to be pre- and early-teen.

A very restrictive levelling-system has been imposed over the whole game. Many professions are now rendered literally useless. Cartoonish animations have been introduced.

The long-term players had asked for combat to be balanced. What they have got is a whole new game that is unlike the old SWG.

What is worse, this new game has been forced out early without proper testing (because it HAD to be released to coincide with the movie release) and therefore there are many bugs, glitches and flaws across the whole game. SOE is doing its best to correct them but there are so many and some are so complex that the game is likely to be 'broken' for many months to come.

The forums (the chatboards where players discuss the game) are in uproar. This has not been mitigated by a heavy-handed community policing policy by SOE which has involved the deletion of posts critical of the CURB and the banning of some players.

The hostility to the new SWG is unparalleled in MMORPG history. Of the estimated 250,000 players of the game, some 15,000 have signed an online petition to have the CURB released. Game sites are being inundated by player emails condemning the game. News sites are beginning to pick up on the players' online revolt (including the BBC).

For all these reasons, I cannot recommend buying SWG as it stands. This is a great pity. A once great game is in a state of shambles.

"Bait and Switch" in the RPG world.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: December 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game back when it first came out, before any expansions or anything like that. It took a lot of time to get used to the interface and how it worked, but once you got the hang of it it became a rewarding and fun game.

Then came the expansions...

SOE and Lucasarts have been offering new planets to explore and space missions and quests to complete, but rather than focus on fixing the bugs during development, they have put these new programs into play with many glaring defects in it.

The latest "Improvement" to this game is called the NGE, or New Game Enhancement. What this managed to do to the game was cause a huge majority of players to leave the "lives" they had created. The gameplay is even buggier than before, with many of the abilities either firing late (after 5 seconds from when you activate them) or never. The quests, of which there are many, are very, very bugged and in many cases cannot be completed due to the "improvements". The much vaunted "player based economy" is crumbling because the NGE renders such professions as crafters, traders, artisans, and entertainers as, well, useless.

As for diversity in gameplay, the NGE has removed the vast majority of the professions available and forces everyone to play as one of 9 "Iconic professions". What does this mean? Well, if you have 100,000 people playing the game, and they have to be one of 9 professions, then that means you will have AT LEAST 10,000 other people out there who have the exact same abilities and skills as you. Needless to say, it gets boring, really fast.

The only thing about this game that is anything even remotely resembling fun to me anymore is the space combat portion, the "Jump to Lightspeed" expansion. However, once you have finished all the quests (took me less than a week) there is nothing to do in space but fly around looking for things to blow up. At this time, you can find a lot of veteran players who have cancelled their accounts, moved on to other games, or formed websites and petitions to SOE to bring back the older, original verion of the game. That should tell you something.
My opinion of this game? Its not worth it anymore. If you want a Star Wars first person shooter, get Battlefronts II. If you want a Star Wars RPG? Im afraid it has gone the way of Alderaan.

it was good but not anymore!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: May 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Save your money people it was a great game, the most diverse I ever played. Now with the combat upgrade it's ruined.

This is NOT the game I paid for!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 23
Date: May 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I absolutely loved this game pre CU. I played at least 2 hours per day; EVERY DAY, for 2 years! I had 3 seperate accounts, all working together in game. Sony Online pushed thru what they called an 'upgrade', however it completely changed the game. It rendered useless what I had been learning, making, stockpiling & accomplishing in-game. Now my master crafting profs are borked, and the PVE element of the game has been amazingly 'rebalanced' so you must group to achieve any type of worthwhile xp. The CU has radically altered the game I purchased, and paid $15 a month for so much that I have cancelled my accounts, and had to say goodbye to many friends.
Do yourself a favor, pass this one over, it's not worth the time, headaches and HORRIBLE customer service from SOE.

Wasted Potential

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 23
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.

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.

80% disapproval before launch! Worse game "upgrade" ever...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: May 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I don't say this lightly. I played since day 1 and put up with a lot from SOE. They ran two polls (two!) which both ended up with worse than an 80% disapproval rating before they pushed the "combat upgrade" a week ahead of schedule to live! THEN, they forgot to backup the servers and had to roll two servers back several days. Unbelievable. Take out the CU, fix the game.

Oh yeah! All that stuff about the "majority liking it?" It's crap. The last time I logged in, of well over 100 active people on my friends list, 4 were logged in. And of my entire guild of over 80 people, only one was on. Also, the busiest player area on the game (Coronet Starport) had about 15 people in the area. Usually it numbers four or five times that. Plus, the numbers don't lie...if the majority liked it, that would have been reflected in one of the two polls SOE took about the CU. Unless under 20% counts for a majority, no one who says the majority likes it has a leg to stand on.

A ruined game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: May 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I was once a loyal fan of SWG. The game was the best MMORPG I had ever played. For 9 months I built up my character and as soon as I was confident with my template in combat, they throw the bloody combat upgrade at all their long time gamers. I said to myself "wow this is great they are finally balancing combat". Then I bought the game and realized that it was a waste of money. It is now just like every other online game as it has been sucked into the ever growing pit of online gaming monotony. I highly reccomend that you invest your money in another game because this one will now bore you to tears.

The expansion is just a quest restrictionive cheap beta ware

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: May 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

SWG has continued to spiral downhill. The new expansion is nothing but a few quest that are completed in a week. You cannot roam the new planet since the whole expansion/planet is quest restrictive. it leaves you no reason to return after you finish the weeks worth of content. Considering it has been released prematurely and is actually being beta tested live with half the content in it broken. Why would anyone in they're right mind want to buy this if they were told the truth is beyond me. This has not saved the game if anything proves swg continues to deliver beta software to live and disrespect they're player base with a lack of content but flashy names and titles.

What a huge disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: May 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've played this game for nearly two years, and the Combat Upgrade has generally destroyed a wonderful game. Thousands of people are leaving as a result. The company refuses to address the issues which adds greatly to the disappointment. I feel betrayed by Star Wars Galaxies. Don't buy this game unless you hear that significant changes or roll backs have occurred.

Death of a formerly great game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: May 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played this game for two years, since the first day it was released. I cancelled both of my subscriptions today. Sony has completely removed the ability for my characters to progress in this game by releasing an 'upgrade' that was clearly not tested well enough. It is full of bugs, nothing works correctly anymore. But even those are forgivable sins. The biggest problem with this game is Sony's unwillingness to discuss franky the status of the game with their customers. I have played this game for over 2 years and have defended them at every controversy. This game may be salvagable and may even end up being playable and fun, but I will not be there to see it, and I recommend spending your money on Matrix Online, or Guildwars over this game.

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