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SWG pre CU?
snowytechna
Member Posts: 185
Ummmm I have never played SWG so I have no idea what SWG pre CU means but I keep hearing it. Can any1 explain what the whole deal is, why do people go beserk over it?
Comments
It was a combat upgrade to Star Wars Galaxies that drastically changed gameplay.
It's that x-girlfriend your friend has that he compares every girl to forever... you know, he keeps her pictures around and sulks about her regularly. All the other girls in his life pale in comparison, and none will ever be her... and he'll never get over her.
So, to those of us free of that depressing memory, consider ourselves A) Lucky.
Less Whiny, C) able to enjoy MMOs.
...I hate "Pre CU Vets" personally... they're depressing and are exactly like "that guy".
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
@OP
CU = Combat Upgrade
NGE = New Game Enhancements
So SWG pre-CU is in reference to it original incarnation before any MAJOR changes occurred. This can be argued of course with the release of JTL (Jump to Lightspeed Expansion) but generally speaking still considered part of the pre-CU era.
Pre-CU consisted of 100% skill based advancement, multiple professions, player run economics and gameplay.
CU consisted of a level based system, nerfed professions, skills and loots.
NGE in turn was a level based system with majority of the professions removed, and some of the remaining profs broken badly. No player economy to speak of.
There is a lot more things, theres to much to list. CU and NGE also brought a lot of cool things to the game, only one problem, most of it was broken and hasn't really ever been fixed.
In a nutshull the game had many professions. It's been awhile, and I can't remember how many. But basicaly as your character progressed, you got points that allowed you to buy skill boxes. So in effect, you could mix and match professions to create all kinds of hybrid characters. Or if you wanted, you could master a profession and have points left over to add even more skills to your toon.
Now I believe they have dwindled the professions down to 9. I could be mistaken on that point.
Another cool aspectof precu swg is that if you wanted to, you could give up skills to learn new ones. So if you decided you didn't want to be a master gunfighter anymore and wanted to use rifles, you could give up skill boxes and start learning rifles. The advantage of this was continuity of character...you could keep the same toon you loved and experiment with different builds. The disadvantage was that it allowed people to create flavor of the month templates.
Another thing about precu swg was it was more sandbox. Since precu swg, the game has become more quest driven with the Legacy quests. Some people didn't like the shift in focus and the penalizing of characters for grouping because in the old days grouping up with friends was a great way to get xp.
And finally, they changed combat and the user interface. The went from a more typical combat system to a shooter type game. Now combat is a core mechanic, and some people felt changing it was very wrong. In addittion to combat changes, there were changes to armor and weapons that people worked very hard for, and the conversions were not always welcome. The interface in the old days was much better.
There were some downsides to the old system. Profession imbalances. Armor and weapons overpowered. Too many buffs. Insane DOTs. All these could have been fine tuned, but instead SOE changed the game to a CU version and then to an NGE version. When people complained, SOE told them they were no longer the target audience, in effect dissing the original community which then felt slighted in addition to being heartbroken over the loss of their game.
That's it in a nutshell, atleast how I remember it. There are a lot of people who have much better memories than me and can go into much greater detail though.
Well the "Girlfriend" was brutally murdered by SOE/LA. (To keep with the analogy)
She was also a super model with emotional issues
That being said I miss a high quality sandbox game. Unlike the first girlfriend analogy, it's more like losing your first girlfriend and finding out there are no more women in the world.
it was an incredibly bugged, incredibly unbalanced version of SWG that launched.
it was also the best mmorpg i've ever played, pretty much complete freedom and the good points of the game made the bad points more than bearable.
Ty for the replies. After reading Terranah's post I understand why people get so mad at SOE.
Just like Caesar's ghost haunts Brutus so does the memory of SWG haunt me and many others.
I had played Meridian 59 and EQ for prior 7 years so SWG wasn't my 'first love'. She was just darn near perfect.
If SWG designers had put more emphasis on Civil War, i.e., giving more and different benefits to players that committed to the war the game would have been perfect.
Stanley.
Meridian59 '96-'99/Everquest (Vallon Zek) '99-'03/Shadowbane '03/SWG '04/This and that '05-'10/Eve Online '11/LotR '11-'12
There was 32 proffessions i think and you could be anything you wanted to be and remove skills and put skills back on without making a new character. you had the freedom to do absolutly anything to your hearts content (within the boundries of skill distribution points ofcourse). And ofcourse the Templates look like this..Vets do not look at this unless you want to cry. http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/181/screenshot0069yi7.jpg
Also i just realized this was CU because we had levels the original game we had no levels what so ever just tier and templates.