Bugs are one thing, every game has them no matter how "polished" a game is there will always be bugs. There was never a SWG bug that made me say "thats it I quit" But CU and NGE is not a bug! This is totally screwing the game over! Although I vowed never to pay to play SWG again, if a Classic Pre-CU server were to open I would resub faster that it took me to hit the cancel button!
And to the OP... Why do you have to bring back old memories?!? The fun I had while playing greatly outweighs the rage I have for what they did to the game. It was the people that made it fun, no matter the bug or nerf, the friends you had help you laugh it off as just another SWG day. Too bad I lost contact with many great people...
_________________________________
Currently Playing: Eve-Online On the Backburner: EQ2 Retired: EQ, DAoC, WW2Online RIP: AC2 Tried: Ryzom, Roma Victor, RoM, KH2, Forsaken World, AO, AoC, APB Quit: SWG PRE-CU(Radiant/Starsider), WoW
yea i remember going to Dant MO and it would be packed full and the starports packed full with lines waiting to be buffed. Why cant $OE/LA look at the bigger picture of pre-cu equals more subscribers?
Ya gotta wonder what the response would be from gamers if SOE just started over with the original concept using new technology for the engine, like Vanguard or even EQ2.
I've played for around 4 years now, I remember that time-zone, It had it's fun points, but people were always calling for nerfs and change. If only you had kept your mouth shut
Hate to break it to ya, but every mmo in existance that has official or unofficial forums are filled with nerf / change threads.
The SWG devs are the only ones dumb enough to react to them by changing the whole damn game into crap.
Now CoH...that's a game that has stayed the course, but also incorporated player feedback in a cafeful, calculated way.
Ya gotta wonder what the response would be from gamers if SOE just started over with the original concept using new technology for the engine, like Vanguard or even EQ2.
Everyone must know by now that SWG 2 if done right would be HUGE. SWG has seen a heck of a lot of gamers sub over it's years. People that liked the original SWG would check the game out, people that liked the CU would check the game out, and the people that liked the NGE would check the game out.
A real developer would take the best of all 3 and put it into one game, carefully considering all feedback from SWG 1 (and more importantly knowing when certain feedback is crap, disregarding it completely).
Now if only we could get SWG 2.....Lets start with the original SWG lead developer, and stick him under the lead designer of KOTOR.
I remember sitting in my Camp, chilling out, and having people just pop in to recharge. It was kinda cool and fun. Every now and then a fight would break out and I had to choose sides. At the time, I hated it, having to choose, but in retrospect it added so much to the game, TEF. I had to be careful (well, really, a ranger always did) when I got bored of hunting or PvP, I'd switch to my alt account (and that was the real beauty of SWG, you could only have one toon per server and only 1, yes, 1 Master profession. Games like WoW have screwed this up, making economy irrelivent or even non existant. When everyone can be a fighter and a crafter, whats the point?)
I used to Love being an Architect. I had my shop, Archs & Crafts all set up with the maximum amount of vendors. Every two weeks when they released a new painting, I would be there to buy it the minute it came out. Then off to my factory and make a bunch, shove them on the vendor for 50k credits, and watch the credits roll in.
I used to feel needed and at home on the wanderhome server. I could go to almost any town and say "I made that building" You never get that kind of satisfaction from anything out or coming out now.
Yes there were bugs, yes there was tons of greifing, but that was what should have been fixed (CM was the worst. I always thought they should have been the ones to do corpse pull, not doctors, and also they should not have been using poison, they should have been a group healer, where as a doc could heal one person at a time with mass amounts, CM would do a bunch of people a little bit.), not the stuff that was working!
If a game came out with this kind of diversity, I would be there at the drop of a hat.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. --Aristotle
I know many dispised the 10 minute shuttle waits, entertainer buff and doctor buff lines and merchant barking at major starports but those are exactly how people made friends, formed guilds, player city founding and invitations or mission/PvP groups and it made a very thriving community. Personally I think CoH/V's MMO community is the best by far, it's very very rare to see complaints about classes or bitching at each other in a strange internet (or counter-strike) language (which is extremely common on WoW forums!).
With the NGE, the community and economy are almost non existant. ITV and 1 minute shuttle/ships eliminitated most of that and lack of item decay slowed down the economy. In order to meet new people you would have to go to Restuss and half the time you end up fighting them there, that is the only concentrated location on the entire galaxy server, sure there are some spread out on Mustafar.
I was just reading some threads on the SWG official forums, it's hilarious at how some supports SOE and SWG just straight up tells you to quit and shut up, and that the game isn't dying- and the majority of those are registered in 2005 with a couple from 2003-2004. They need to look around the internet for MMO research to see that SWG is dwiddling down to its death- not overnight but gradually.
I remember sitting in my Camp, chilling out, and having people just pop in to recharge. It was kinda cool and fun. Every now and then a fight would break out and I had to choose sides. At the time, I hated it, having to choose, but in retrospect it added so much to the game, TEF. I had to be careful (well, really, a ranger always did) when I got bored of hunting or PvP, I'd switch to my alt account (and that was the real beauty of SWG, you could only have one toon per server and only 1, yes, 1 Master profession. Games like WoW have screwed this up, making economy irrelivent or even non existant. When everyone can be a fighter and a crafter, whats the point?) I used to Love being an Architect. I had my shop, Archs & Crafts all set up with the maximum amount of vendors. Every two weeks when they released a new painting, I would be there to buy it the minute it came out. Then off to my factory and make a bunch, shove them on the vendor for 50k credits, and watch the credits roll in. I used to feel needed and at home on the wanderhome server. I could go to almost any town and say "I made that building" You never get that kind of satisfaction from anything out or coming out now. Yes there were bugs, yes there was tons of greifing, but that was what should have been fixed (CM was the worst. I always thought they should have been the ones to do corpse pull, not doctors, and also they should not have been using poison, they should have been a group healer, where as a doc could heal one person at a time with mass amounts, CM would do a bunch of people a little bit.), not the stuff that was working! If a game came out with this kind of diversity, I would be there at the drop of a hat.
And that is what precu was all about being needed by someone else, it built a strong community, man i miss Ranger Tracking the hero of Tatoonie quest for peeps. Got good at it too.
Or taking my SW/Medic alt to mos eisley and healing a newb chatting with him and dropping a new ship with all the goodies on them. ah those were the days my friends and we thought they would never end .
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).
Bugs are one thing, every game has them no matter how "polished" a game is there will always be bugs. There was never a SWG bug that made me say "thats it I quit" But CU and NGE is not a bug! This is totally screwing the game over! Although I vowed never to pay to play SWG again, if a Classic Pre-CU server were to open I would resub faster that it took me to hit the cancel button! And to the OP... Why do you have to bring back old memories?!? The fun I had while playing greatly outweighs the rage I have for what they did to the game. It was the people that made it fun, no matter the bug or nerf, the friends you had help you laugh it off as just another SWG day. Too bad I lost contact with many great people...
Man you hit the nail on the head with this post! My thoughts exactly! To the OP awesome post you captured what I and a lot of other Vets dearly miss about one of the best games out there!
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.
I thought about the possible removal of secondary stat buffs. That would have ensured that docs were still making buffs, and things like encumbrance and stat migration would still be factors to consider. This also would have removed that ability to spam your best specials, thereby making combat much more immersive and difficult.
Seems to me like a simple solution to many compliants that had been overlooked, which unfortunetely had been the case with so many things in pre-CU times.
That brought a tear to my eye... that explains the feeling that I had every time I used to log on. Its about the social intertaction and the people you meet along the way. I miss SWG so bad, SOE just never cared until it affected they're wallet. In all, I just want to play Star Wars, the story, the characters, the whole lore of Star Wars... I miss it.
Those days cannot and will not ever be again. It was a unique experience in a unique MMO. The world was new and pleasant to all of us. It will take some time but there will be another game that gives us all that feeling again, and it won't be SWG.
I remember being out on Dantooine, I had no idea at the time how to become a Jedi. I was out with my RL brother, was finishing up a Mission with him, at which point I would have mastered Swordsman.
We finished it up, and I mastered swordsman. Then all the sudden, I see this message flash across the holonetwork. "Attention Citizens, this is an Imperial Holo Alert. Lord Vader has detected a disturbance in the force. Someone has been detected using force powers. If you see or find this person, you are ordered to report this violation to the nearest Imperial Offfice near you."
Everyone was like, what's going on. Even I was talking to my bro on TS like, WTF is that man. A few moment's later I got this message popup. Congratulations! You have become one with the force! On behalf of the SOE Team we would like to congratulate you on your new powers, and your new rank of Jedi Initiate!
I was like OMG No way. I noticed I had gotten a new bar underneath my mind pool I was like wtf is that. I had become a Jedi as of patch 6.
I remember the first time I ignited my saber. Oh how I would love to go back to those days. Writing this post almost made me cry.
If they ever bring back PRE CU SWG....I will be back to playing in a heartbeat.
A wonderful original post that, even five years later, evokes the extraordinary wonder of the pre-CU SWGinverse.
I remember my diminutive albino Bothan, levelling entertainer in Bestine Cantina, getting into an argument with a similarly sized Rodian.
We decided the only way to settle this was to duel old school: in our underwear with CDEF pistols.
Because neither of us had any combat skills at all, the duel went on for half an hour with plenty of screaming, falling over and strange abuse. It all ended when a Rebel CM with a pet dewback burst into the cantina and attacked everybody.
Smedley has already admitted the NGE was a huge mistake. I'd like to the the game that was prior to the NGE return. The crafting and merchant system alone was one of the best implemented systems and my opinion has not yet been duplicated or surpassed in any other MMO.
Ya gotta wonder what the response would be from gamers if SOE just started over with the original concept using new technology for the engine, like Vanguard or even EQ2.
The problem is Raph Koster and a number of the original SWG team are gone. SOE doesn't have the creative talent anymore and has lost touch with the MMO market.
Based on what SOE is about to spew out onto the market you would get a game designed to suck money out of people with real money transactions that has a thin star wars skin pasted over top of it. Sony hasn't made a game since the original everquest. Smed and his revenue models overpower anyone who is actually interested in making a game and the products always suffer as a result.
Despite the bugs and may issues...it will be very very hard for any game to compete with the amazing player driven game that was pre cu. It was amazing....thanks for your post.
Comments
Smedley never played SWG. Heck, his first post on the forums wasn't until after the uproar about the first combat upgrade. Go look.
/crying
Bugs are one thing, every game has them no matter how "polished" a game is there will always be bugs. There was never a SWG bug that made me say "thats it I quit" But CU and NGE is not a bug! This is totally screwing the game over! Although I vowed never to pay to play SWG again, if a Classic Pre-CU server were to open I would resub faster that it took me to hit the cancel button!
And to the OP...
Why do you have to bring back old memories?!? The fun I had while playing greatly outweighs the rage I have for what they did to the game. It was the people that made it fun, no matter the bug or nerf, the friends you had help you laugh it off as just another SWG day. Too bad I lost contact with many great people...
_________________________________
Currently Playing: Eve-Online
On the Backburner: EQ2
Retired: EQ, DAoC, WW2Online
RIP: AC2
Tried: Ryzom, Roma Victor, RoM, KH2, Forsaken World, AO, AoC, APB
Quit: SWG PRE-CU(Radiant/Starsider), WoW
Achiever 47% / Explorer 40% / Killer 87% / Socializer 27%
The scar left upon my broken gamer body by NGE/SOE/LA is much like the wound Frodo got by the fearsome Nazgul - it never seems to heal properly...
Dritzz Darkwood of the once proud Corbantis server
yea i remember going to Dant MO and it would be packed full and the starports packed full with lines waiting to be buffed. Why cant $OE/LA look at the bigger picture of pre-cu equals more subscribers?
Ya gotta wonder what the response would be from gamers if SOE just started over with the original concept using new technology for the engine, like Vanguard or even EQ2.
The SWG devs are the only ones dumb enough to react to them by changing the whole damn game into crap.
Now CoH...that's a game that has stayed the course, but also incorporated player feedback in a cafeful, calculated way.
Everyone must know by now that SWG 2 if done right would be HUGE. SWG has seen a heck of a lot of gamers sub over it's years. People that liked the original SWG would check the game out, people that liked the CU would check the game out, and the people that liked the NGE would check the game out.
A real developer would take the best of all 3 and put it into one game, carefully considering all feedback from SWG 1 (and more importantly knowing when certain feedback is crap, disregarding it completely).
Now if only we could get SWG 2.....Lets start with the original SWG lead developer, and stick him under the lead designer of KOTOR.
I remember sitting in my Camp, chilling out, and having people just pop in to recharge. It was kinda cool and fun. Every now and then a fight would break out and I had to choose sides. At the time, I hated it, having to choose, but in retrospect it added so much to the game, TEF. I had to be careful (well, really, a ranger always did) when I got bored of hunting or PvP, I'd switch to my alt account (and that was the real beauty of SWG, you could only have one toon per server and only 1, yes, 1 Master profession. Games like WoW have screwed this up, making economy irrelivent or even non existant. When everyone can be a fighter and a crafter, whats the point?)
I used to Love being an Architect. I had my shop, Archs & Crafts all set up with the maximum amount of vendors. Every two weeks when they released a new painting, I would be there to buy it the minute it came out. Then off to my factory and make a bunch, shove them on the vendor for 50k credits, and watch the credits roll in.
I used to feel needed and at home on the wanderhome server. I could go to almost any town and say "I made that building" You never get that kind of satisfaction from anything out or coming out now.
Yes there were bugs, yes there was tons of greifing, but that was what should have been fixed (CM was the worst. I always thought they should have been the ones to do corpse pull, not doctors, and also they should not have been using poison, they should have been a group healer, where as a doc could heal one person at a time with mass amounts, CM would do a bunch of people a little bit.), not the stuff that was working!
If a game came out with this kind of diversity, I would be there at the drop of a hat.
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
--Aristotle
I know many dispised the 10 minute shuttle waits, entertainer buff and doctor buff lines and merchant barking at major starports but those are exactly how people made friends, formed guilds, player city founding and invitations or mission/PvP groups and it made a very thriving community. Personally I think CoH/V's MMO community is the best by far, it's very very rare to see complaints about classes or bitching at each other in a strange internet (or counter-strike) language (which is extremely common on WoW forums!).
With the NGE, the community and economy are almost non existant. ITV and 1 minute shuttle/ships eliminitated most of that and lack of item decay slowed down the economy. In order to meet new people you would have to go to Restuss and half the time you end up fighting them there, that is the only concentrated location on the entire galaxy server, sure there are some spread out on Mustafar.
I was just reading some threads on the SWG official forums, it's hilarious at how some supports SOE and SWG just straight up tells you to quit and shut up, and that the game isn't dying- and the majority of those are registered in 2005 with a couple from 2003-2004. They need to look around the internet for MMO research to see that SWG is dwiddling down to its death- not overnight but gradually.
And that is what precu was all about being needed by someone else, it built a strong community, man i miss Ranger Tracking the hero of Tatoonie quest for peeps. Got good at it too.
Or taking my SW/Medic alt to mos eisley and healing a newb chatting with him and dropping a new ship with all the goodies on them. ah those were the days my friends and we thought they would never end .
i seriously cried.
something about SWG... it just took hold of you, and wouldn't let go, until they severed the connection with a chainsaw.
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).
Man you hit the nail on the head with this post! My thoughts exactly! To the OP awesome post you captured what I and a lot of other Vets dearly miss about one of the best games out there!
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.
I thought about the possible removal of secondary stat buffs. That would have ensured that docs were still making buffs, and things like encumbrance and stat migration would still be factors to consider. This also would have removed that ability to spam your best specials, thereby making combat much more immersive and difficult.
Seems to me like a simple solution to many compliants that had been overlooked, which unfortunetely had been the case with so many things in pre-CU times.
That brought a tear to my eye... that explains the feeling that I had every time I used to log on. Its about the social intertaction and the people you meet along the way. I miss SWG so bad, SOE just never cared until it affected they're wallet. In all, I just want to play Star Wars, the story, the characters, the whole lore of Star Wars... I miss it.
Those days cannot and will not ever be again. It was a unique experience in a unique MMO. The world was new and pleasant to all of us. It will take some time but there will be another game that gives us all that feeling again, and it won't be SWG.
I remember being out on Dantooine, I had no idea at the time how to become a Jedi. I was out with my RL brother, was finishing up a Mission with him, at which point I would have mastered Swordsman.
We finished it up, and I mastered swordsman. Then all the sudden, I see this message flash across the holonetwork. "Attention Citizens, this is an Imperial Holo Alert. Lord Vader has detected a disturbance in the force. Someone has been detected using force powers. If you see or find this person, you are ordered to report this violation to the nearest Imperial Offfice near you."
Everyone was like, what's going on. Even I was talking to my bro on TS like, WTF is that man. A few moment's later I got this message popup. Congratulations! You have become one with the force! On behalf of the SOE Team we would like to congratulate you on your new powers, and your new rank of Jedi Initiate!
I was like OMG No way. I noticed I had gotten a new bar underneath my mind pool I was like wtf is that. I had become a Jedi as of patch 6.
I remember the first time I ignited my saber. Oh how I would love to go back to those days. Writing this post almost made me cry.
If they ever bring back PRE CU SWG....I will be back to playing in a heartbeat.
For now, RIP my beloved SWG.
A wonderful original post that, even five years later, evokes the extraordinary wonder of the pre-CU SWGinverse.
I remember my diminutive albino Bothan, levelling entertainer in Bestine Cantina, getting into an argument with a similarly sized Rodian.
We decided the only way to settle this was to duel old school: in our underwear with CDEF pistols.
Because neither of us had any combat skills at all, the duel went on for half an hour with plenty of screaming, falling over and strange abuse. It all ended when a Rebel CM with a pet dewback burst into the cantina and attacked everybody.
Greatest fun I ever had online.
Smedley has already admitted the NGE was a huge mistake. I'd like to the the game that was prior to the NGE return. The crafting and merchant system alone was one of the best implemented systems and my opinion has not yet been duplicated or surpassed in any other MMO.
Those were the days... Great post
Based on what SOE is about to spew out onto the market you would get a game designed to suck money out of people with real money transactions that has a thin star wars skin pasted over top of it. Sony hasn't made a game since the original everquest. Smed and his revenue models overpower anyone who is actually interested in making a game and the products always suffer as a result.
Despite the bugs and may issues...it will be very very hard for any game to compete with the amazing player driven game that was pre cu. It was amazing....thanks for your post.
Argrhh ...
You made me lookup my old guild-hunt screenshots ... 10+ master CH's with each 2-3 pets out ... it was a mess, but soooo much fun....