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A few questions about this game.
NismoGTR
Member Posts: 35
Is the game sand-box type open environment? Are there things to do besides PvP and PvE, like is player interaction common? Is there a purpose for player interaction like trading and whatnot? I am a fan of the franchise but never tried the game because I thought it was strictly instanced PvP and PvE stuff, but I like the freedom of sand-box type game more. And how many characters can I make with one account? And is it true that I can't tranfer a character to another server without paying a fee? And how many servers right now would you say are reasonably populated?
Comments
Wow lots of questions. I haven't played in a long while but I'll answer your questions to the best of my knowledge.
2 characters per server allowed.
2 servers are commonly called populated....just read around and you'll find out which 2 they are.. I think Bria is one.
You need to pay for a char transfer from one server to another.
There are still things to do besides pvp and pve... you can craft, explore, play dress up, and decorate your house.
The game used to be a sandbox environment. Now a large part of that freedom no longer exists, but there are still alot of sandbox qualities left. You can build a house anywhere you want, decorate it to your heart's content, and what you do is largely up to you. The character freedom of advancement and path for content/quest are much more rigid now, so I wouldn't say your adventure leveling up to cap is sandbox-ish anymore.
Can't comment on the rest of your questions as I think they are all dependant on how the game exists in its current state. Hope that helps.
I recently tried doing another 14-day trial so I can see what the game is like for a new player.
Even though I find the combat system simplistic, repetetive and boring I forced myself to endure 16 levels. In that time I never had nor needed to purchase a single item, or speak to a single person. In essence I was playing a single player game in an MMO environment. I found the game to have much more lag then I ever experienced, with the exception of course of massively populated areas in the past like Theed, Coronet, etc..
Although I would have to say that I was thankful that missions gave so much xp and I was able to level quite rapidly because nothing else felt worthwhile or fullfilling in accomplishing. I felt as though there was no community to contribute to.
All in all I would say that the easy grind helped in blinding me to the lack of interesting combat and boring content. I would recommend not looking to deeply at anything and checking your mind at the login screen.
Take it at face value and try not to scratch the surface, cause what lies underneath is quite bleak IMO.
Thalos Vipav
Star Wars Galaxies: R.I.P.
No, that's 2 per server. Not sure about the limit per account... 10?
This freedom used to extend to your proffessions skills as well but for better or worse, this has changed and the leveling process is linear now. You do have expertise trees for your character however, which allows you to pick and choose skils and abilities that you think matches the way you like to play your character. It's not as free as the previous system, but it still gives choice.
There's certainly more to do then just PvP and PvE. Firstly, SWG is essentially two games in one with the Space and Ground sections of the game. If you need a break from the PvP & PvE on the ground, you can change it up and launch into Space. On the ground game, outside of PvP & PvE you have a number of other things you can do, such as house deco (houses aren't instanced in SWG like other games), roleplay, Storyteller, planet exploration, collections, crafting, resource surveying, and the list goes on. You have alot of freedom to do what you want really.
PvP isn't instanced at all, even the PvP zones are not instanced. It can happen pretty much anywhere in the game from the streets of Eisley to the paths of the Ryatt trail on Kashyyyk if people choose to. On many servers, it's common for people to setup PvP events in different locations. There are PvP zones that are scattered around the galaxy but there's no restriction on who and how many can enter (except for the Level 75 restriction on Restuss).
Player interaction at the early levels is low, you do get alot of the stuff that you need through the entry quests. As you move up though or develop tastes in side activites, your dependincies on others will increase. Except for weapons (although the best weapons in the game for most with Chapter 7 are now crafter made), you will be relying alot on crafted goods, fromt he armour you wear to the house and furniture you use to decorate it. Being that the economy is player run in the game, even when you buy loot items you are dealing with other players and the credits go to the person you bought the item from. The best buffs in the game come from player Entertainers and they can customise a buff for you to suit the activies you plan on doing.
Server population discussions through out the whole life of the game have always been controversal discussions. Generally speaking, servers with at least Medium ratings during prime time are reasonably populated servers. On no server are you going to be able to go to every single Starport in the game and see groups of people standing around as this has never been the case with SWG. There's always hotspots that people congegrate around. Outside of these congegration points, people tend to go directly to where they need to go and due to the freedom of travel I mentioned earlier, there's no common path to see people traveling on.
I'll try to add something new to the discussion.
The game environment is, even with a quite rigid levelling scheme, still very open to exploration and making your own way in the world. It is not the sandbox it was in the beginning, but after around level 40 you are going to be pretty much making your own story up. This fits in nicely with the type of people that tend to like Star Wars - imaginative people who like to create scenarios, as opposed to just experiencing them. ust my opinion, no flames please.
The options for player-interaction are actually pretty good. The storyteller system allows you to create scenarios with a wide variety of npc toons, rewards, scenery, and atmospheric effects. If you want to create a garrison of stormtoopers guarding treasure in the Corellian wilderness with a treasure chest and your favourite Star Wars music, you can. Then you can invite friends to group up and play through waves of attacks, with rebel players on one side, Imperials on the other.
The trade scene is very strong. Many players create one combat toon and one crafter. The crafter they then use to set up a shop or shops around the galaxy. The recent Beast Master system needs a lot of components to get into and all types of crafter can make money from this.
The latest chapter also included a Collections system. Some collections are like the badges of old where you just had to travel to some place of interest or kill a named mob to collect. Some though require you to physically collect objects. Again, the options for trade are there.
There is also a fairly strong Entertainment scene. While we are not talking about making music like oyu see in LOTRO, there are non-combat toons hanging out in the cantina's, networking and so on.
The thing to bare in mind about all this is it all depends on how many players there are in your galaxy (the server). Obviously if there are few players, there won't be the strong scenes I have described. I can recommend Far Star as a good Europen server, not sure about the US servers.
All sounds great, right? It is, I love the game. Sadly I do not play atm. not because of the game, but because it just will not run properly on my Vista laptop. Even my old 2.6ghz XP machine needed 1gig RAM before it would run smoothly. It seems the antiquated SWG engine just does not make the transition to dual-core computing very well
I'll try to add something new to the discussion.
The game environment is, even with a quite rigid levelling scheme, still very open to exploration and making your own way in the world. It is not the sandbox it was in the beginning, but after around level 40 you are going to be pretty much making your own story up. This fits in nicely with the type of people that tend to like Star Wars - imaginative people who like to create scenarios, as opposed to just experiencing them. ust my opinion, no flames please.
The options for player-interaction are actually pretty good. The storyteller system allows you to create scenarios with a wide variety of npc toons, rewards, scenery, and atmospheric effects. If you want to create a garrison of stormtoopers guarding treasure in the Corellian wilderness with a treasure chest and your favourite Star Wars music, you can. Then you can invite friends to group up and play through waves of attacks, with rebel players on one side, Imperials on the other.
The trade scene is very strong. Many players create one combat toon and one crafter. The crafter they then use to set up a shop or shops around the galaxy. The recent Beast Master system needs a lot of components to get into and all types of crafter can make money from this.
The latest chapter also included a Collections system. Some collections are like the badges of old where you just had to travel to some place of interest or kill a named mob to collect. Some though require you to physically collect objects. Again, the options for trade are there.
There is also a fairly strong Entertainment scene. While we are not talking about making music like oyu see in LOTRO, there are non-combat toons hanging out in the cantina's, networking and so on.
The thing to bare in mind about all this is it all depends on how many players there are in your galaxy (the server). Obviously if there are few players, there won't be the strong scenes I have described. I can recommend Far Star as a good Europen server, not sure about the US servers.
All sounds great, right? It is, I love the game. Sadly I do not play atm. not because of the game, but because it just will not run properly on my Vista laptop. Even my old 2.6ghz XP machine needed 1gig RAM before it would run smoothly. It seems the antiquated SWG engine just does not make the transition to dual-core computing very well
Hmm...that's odd. Myself and several others are running dual-core systems...and it's helped my performance a ton. But I still went with XP on my new system.I know there were some posts about optimizing for Vista and SWG, maybe you could dig in on that some....although the best optimization you can make is to call Microsoft and rollback to XP