Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Non Star Wars SWG
lostscout5
Member Posts: 57
Most SWG vets seem to fall into 3 main types
1. Those who wish SOE would roll back to pre-CU { will never happen}, or improve/change SWG to the point that it's playable again {highly unlikely}. A sub group is those who believe in the EMU efforts
2. The one's trying to find another game to replace SWG. {some games seem to have some elements of SWG, but never enough}
3. And those who have given up all together and are trying to move on.
I was in group 1 for about 2 years after the NGE, gave up and moved to group 2 . Can't seem to give up all together and join group 3.
Lately I've been thinking of a compromise. What if there was a game that had all the elements of SWG, { Skill based Scifi sandbox, ect ...} But wasn't based on the Star Wars IP. Either a totally new game with a different IP, but with the same game play or an EMU project that drops the trademarked SW appearance. Is something like this possible, would anyone be interested aside from me?
Any thoughts ?
Comments
If this has been covered some were else, could somebody give me a link?
I probably belong to all 3 groups. I'd love to play precu swg again. I'm very interested in emulators since SOE has no interest in having a precu swg, but from what I've heard the emus are not complete. I really have no interest in playing a poor incarnation of precu swg. I would be very happy paying for a monthly sub or donating monthly to an emu if it was quality but I just don't see it. One of the emu projects I was following has really, really slowed down in terms of the updates so I'm wondering if it's peetering out.
But years have passed. I moved on as have most. That doesn't mean I don't think back fondly on my time. But I never ran into my bedroom and jumped on the bed, burying my face in my pillow while crying "DIE SOE DIE!!!!" I think really too much is made over the percieved hystrionics of precu fans. We loved the game. For some of us it bacame a little more than a game because of so much time and energy invested. But at the end of the day it was a game, and I think much of the anger vets felt came from not just losing all the time and energy invested, but the percieved lack of caring by a big corporation that really spit in the face of it's devoted customers.
Anyway, I'd love to play a non Star Wars mmo that was basically SWG just reskinned to remove the Star Wars. It was never that great in terms of honoring the IP anyway. For me I loved the game first. The fact that it was Star Wars was on the list, but down a ways, and maybe that's why I liked it so much. I didn't freak out over things that broke canon or were inconsistent with the timeline, etc. I was more interested in my friends, building our city and taking the fight to those pesky rebels
I'm in a group that would love an immersive StarWars experience that has absolutely nothing to do with the large corporation that seemed to spit in the face of their customers, especially when the customers were working hard with the devs to smooth out the bugs of a shaky release.
The dynamics of pre-cu were very immersive, but the IP was also important. Cut out the SOE, and I'd be in like a shot.
I know what you mean. What first drew me to SWG was the"Star Wars" IP. But KOTOR will not be the open sandbox game that SWG was in the begining, and that's kinda what I'm asking about. I'm looking forward to KOTOR and I hope it does well. But I also want a game that gives me a little more freedom .
Well, I never jumped on my bed crying, but the " DIE SOE DIE !" part did cross my mind a time or two !
Anyway, thanks for the comment. I personally think it would have to be done with a new IP, in order to recapture the feel of pre CU SWG. Trying to shoehorn an existing IP into our expectations would impossible. Unless anyone can think of an IP that would fit. I'm open to ideas.
Well I was group one and group 2. I played for about a year after the NGE hit. While all my other friends had gotten mustafar refunds. Both me and the wife keep our Bunkers. I moaned and groaned and asked for a rollback.
I even tried that pos idea of bending your own swg with the swg bootleg project where you compiled your own servers I think it was called the swg emu. What a disaster that was. Needless to say blew a hard drive trying to do that tarp.
Meanwhile my playtime had picked back up greatly in EQ2, and then the beta for lotro rolled out. Lotro soon replaced swg for me. Until Moria rolled out, LOTRO became about the gear and grind, now its about the store. So I eventually rotated back to EQ2. I always liked eq2 since 2004, and it really has taken a lot of the bitterness out of the entire swg thing for me.
I have to say if somebody could really come up with the code to swg before the cu, then I would play it, but with none of the stuff that was involved with the bootlegged project of making and compiling your own servers, thus playing swg by your self.
I have come to the realization that soe will never correct the mistake they made with the nge, they have even said they messed up. However the nge is here to stay its not going anywhere. I keep hearing about how many folks are playing it, I could care less. I hope those folks love it. SWG-NGE is dead to me forever.
So yes if you get somebody with the code to the pre-cu and get them to release it without getting copyright infringement all over it from soe, then yes I would pay to play it.
Just to be clear, you mean TOR and not KOTOR, right?
-- When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather; not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
Part of my problem is that I've never really cared for the whole sword and sorcery thing. I think thats part of why I obsess over SWG, it's scifi. Although LOTRO sure was pretty to look at !
Opps ! Thks good catch. Yes TOR not KOTOR
I liked the sci fi aspect as well. For some reason precu SWG was so easy to rp in. I rp'd 3 characters with ease. It never felt forced or phony. For some reason in other games I have a hard time roleplaying, like there is a mental block or something. I don't know what it is...
But in SWG I had a little back story and my characters each had their own seperate little personalities and even different friends. Sometimes I would even take a step back and marvel at the fact that I could be 3 different people so convincingly and still be me.
I'd love to find whatever SWG had in another game and start rping again, where it didn't feel forced. Maybe I just lost my imagination though...
You know, that's a good point. It was easy to RP in. I'm no "carebear", I always like to PVP. But it really was easy to RP in SWG. You may have hit on a good topic for a thead in another forum. What makes some games easyer to RP than others ?
The answer: Reasons to socialize. RPing comes more naturally when you're thrust into positions of having to socialize. That was SWGs greatest strength; you had to work with others.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
That's part of it. I Think it was also that there were so many things that were social. Almost every MMO tries to have a social aspect but SWG had them all over the place. For crafters all the best resources were on the most dangerous planets. This lead crafters to ask for escorts. Animal resources needed scout and ranger players to harvest them for the crafters. A POB ship needed a pilot and at least 2 gunners. And on and on. New MMO's try to force players to group and often leave it at that. I soloed LOTRO until level 18 before a really needed to group, and before that I hardly ever talked to anyone at all.
Well, I did say reasons and not a reason.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Crafters asked for escorts? Yeah, like, in the first 6 to 9 months. After that, Crafters fell into the behavior of "I can do it myself, I don't need anyone else" and cleaned up like Corps that are "too big to fail". They worked alts and that killed that social branch.
The reason SWG was as social as it was wasn't because it was designed to be this wonderful social landscape, but becaue there wasn't ANYTHING ELSE TO DO BUT SOCIALIZE. I'm a pre-launch vet. Stayed until the face-spitting and fraud and as someone that networked enough to have had the first player owned cantina on my server with no money down I can tell you, without any reservation, that the great social game you're remembering is a memory seen through rose colored glasses. Within less than a year, that title turned into a relatively banal social experiment gone wrong.
It wasn't by design that it was as you remember. It was a lack of options. And that was only sustained long enough for people to begin to resort to the self-serving natures you hear about in EvE and the like.
Yes, I have anger issues. They taste like chocolate bunnies.
ooo interesting! I never thought of that but it's an interesting point.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Entropia Universe is similar to SWG, but is a real cash economy game.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
I think the decline of the social aspect of the game has more to do with the game changes than anything you mention.
The holocron craze was the start and lacking any real direction for content, that is what players were given to focus on. Think about what it did to the game. It took players out of the profession they were interested in playing and put them on some massive grind fest to chase some time locked profession by playing professions they were not interested in. Instead of players playing what they wanted, they were given "content" that made them constantly level up a profession, delete it and repeat that process for almost all the professions. I recall how horrid the community got around that time, because people stopped caring about the game and just cared about being a jedi with a glow stick. Also a result of that lack of content, which was a result of the game releasing at least a year premature.
Things only got worse from that point with each design shift the developers slapped on the game. Add to that the other problems you mention and the result was almost unavoidable due to lack of decent management of the games focus.
Spot on Daffid011! I was never in denial of the problems SWG had, but it was an immersive, player-run world that many enjoyed until the poorly executed changes and unwanted revamps tore it apart - the NGE obviously being the worst of the lot. The closed and empty servers attest to that.
So true....so true. The hologrind had a terrible impact on our guild and city. Not to mention me personally. I went from creature hunter gunfighter which was my choice to getting a holocron that told me to master droid engineer. I still remember the hours of clicking through meaningless recipes to try to master that accursed profession.
At some point, I made some cool droids and quit the profession grind. I decided playing the game the way I wanted and hanging with my friends was more important than sitting in some back room for hours on end doing somethting I didn't want to do. Ofcourse, others of my guild were not so enlightened. The hologrind fractured our little community.
As far as I'm concerned, the hologrind was the beginging of Stupid.
SWG was my favourite game but I dont give a fck about starwars so I was group 2 right from the start.
I just liked the elements that made SWG, SWG.
For those of us who started MMO back in the late 1990's or Muds before that have to come to realize that MMO's are now being made for a New Generation of gamers entering their Teens. The sandbox MMO as we once enjoyed is completely dead. MMO developer follow the money, and the money is now in linear MMO's aimed at a new generation starting their Teens. The Genre is dead for us now, time to move on back to the few top single player games that able to immerse and challenge us first and second generation of Pc gamers.
I completely agree, the gaming industry has changed to appeal to a newer generation of gamers and to not just make a successful game, but to make the biggest profit margin possible by appealing to a broad audience.
The market has obviously changed, but even gamers like myself (who still treasure my old memories of SWG) have changed. I used to play a game to play a game and didn’t constantly compare it to my ideal of perfection or the list of games that had elements that I liked. I’ve became spoiled from the constant new game parade and my tolerance has shrunk, while my expectations have grown. There are many things about SWG and EQ1 that would ruin my experience with a game today, but I easily shrugged it off back in the day.
Wow, sure glad I was on Lowca and not Starsider. It sounds like you were put through hell ! Besides I never said it was a GREAT social game, just that it had a lot of different social aspects that you don't see in newer games. A started playing 3 months after launch and stayed for 51/2 years. I was in the same guild almost the whole time and the DRAMA was unreal at times . Little secret, one of the reasons I stayed in that guild was because I thought the social chaos was really funny !
I think the whole holocron mess was part of the original design. It was just a really bad idea.