why then in the life I have described which is all about compromise whether you choose to actually compromise or not is the expense of a 15 dollar subscription fee so danged important to a small community of veterans who no longer play the game because they now hate it.
If your credit card was double billed for a months sub would you "compromise" by letting it go?
Or would you do something to remedy that issue?
this doens't make sense so I dont understand
If my credit card is double billed I would call about the mistake BECAUSE its a mistake and get it fixed but its still a choice if that is what your getting at but an obvious one that one makes when a mistake is made. If the next statement is that your mad at sony cause they double billed you once then okay but does it make sense to scream it from the rooftops for 3 years?
I just found it interesting that you would imply that a $15 sub fee is "so danged important" to vets but you'll make an effort to retrieve $15 if it was taken from you.
But that is completely unrelated to this conversation.
You make some interesting points(albeit a little confusing in it's delivery). But the thing that I'd like to point out from all of this is that compromise, on the part of gamers, is apathy - and apathy is destroying this industry for everyone who wants more out of their online experiences.
Some things we have to make compromises on as it affects our lives in profound ways. As so many have pointed out this is just a game - and not compromising on this shouldn't have a profound affect on our lives.
Rather it should have a profound affect on the industry.
You are right, apathy is deteriorating the MMO industry. But it isn't an apathy due to SOE, but more accurately due to Blizzard.
World of Warcraft was such a lighting-in-a-bottle one time hit, that now nearly every game development company wants to duplicate it. Nevermind that doing such is akin to the studios trying to mimick Star Wars in the late 1970's and early 1980's, all of which ended in disaster. Lighting-in-a-bottle is just that.
Companies that try to go further away from such an engine, like AoC or POTBS, run into a host of problems. I feel one reason for this is that too many gamers make automatic comparisons to WoW, for any new game that comes out. Think that is false, look at the Game X vs WoW threads that flood the gaming sites and forums whenever a new game is announced.
The problem with SWG, even the current state, is that despite being a far cry from what the Vets enjoyed in the Pre-CU era, for many it is still a better game than what is out there right now. Obviously, if they felt that AoC, PoTBS, CoH, WoW, LoTRO, and et cetera were better, then they would be there.
Are returning Vets happy that SOE took away the original game? I seriously doubt it. Are they willing, though, to pay for the current SWG- which at least they still garner some enjoyment from- as opposed to playing a game they don't care for at all? Obviously, the answer is yes, for them.
Is that rewarding bad behavior, questionable business tactics, or whatver else you want to call it? To you and some others, sure. For them, no it isn't. For them it's about playing a game they still enjoy (be it less than before in some cases) versus playing a game they don't enjoy at all (obviously the other MMOs out there).
And not everyone wants to go without playing a MMO. For example, I don't play off-line or console games. When I am at home, don't feel like going out or reading, or the wife is out with her girlfriends . . . I log-in to my MMO of choice. Of course, I don't enjoy the current Star Wars and don't sub to it. I'm playing Pirates of the Carribean Online after tiring of CoH and WoW (and I think AoC is crap), as I await the 2 week trial for PoTBS.
But, I still understand where they are coming from.
here is the thing times change and so do "styles". I love sandbox games but we know that they dont sell well. So an attempt was made I guess to remove some of the sandbox from the game. I can't force a company not any company on this planet to create a game for a minority playerbase. Money gets tight (it can be seen when we see things like lucas arts laying people off). I can't force a company to make the old swg or bring it back but I can have fun with what is presented to me now. Once upon a time coke came in glass bottles and the sizes of various package were twice the size of what they are now like say potatoe chips etc. The consumer can kick and scream and demand the glass bottles and the larger bags of potatoe chips but these silent nerfs occured due to a financial bottom line in some ivory tower. I want the chips and the coke (i'm a coke addict.. ..) so i guy the coke that is presented to me in the cans even though i really liked glass. Then there is those plastic bottles omg I hate those.
So now WoW is created and SWG and various other games. The create them to accomodate the majorty and not a minority. I hated wow because of the style and the fact that I hit a wall at the level cap and there was no content. I used WoW up in about 3 months after its release and its the only game that i have never opened up again to play a year later when new stuff is introduced. All the yammering in the world from a smaller player base wont change the fact that they are going to make something that they can afford to make and that will please the largest number of players. Its like PVP and PVE. PVE sells because its more popular so games that are successful have a large amount of pve in them. Casual gamers are on the rise so content is added for that group.
So I look at the titles presented and if my choices are to play the game I think is the best then obviously I"m going to play that. I"m not going to play a game I hate and I"m not going to not play a game because some guy had a bad experience. I will judge for myself. I dont discount what happened to people but the fact of the matter is that it didn't happen to me and I had no real issue with what they did other then they changed my product and so i made a decision to leave for a long time. Its not the first product I have had changed and downsized etc and it wont be the last.
lastly I love the token comment about me marketing for SOE. Anything that is not hatred is seen as 'viral marketing". I dont care if you play or the other guy plays i have my fun. What I do care about is seeing some guy post his thoughts and being accused of working for SOE and being a marketer and then being told what a dolt he is for playing it. Bottom line hate SOE you like and hate SWG all you like as your entitled to hate and not like stuff just I think a lot of us wish that they would not throw the hate our way jsut cause we post on a forum with a bunch of guys. Its when its thrown my way that I can't help but think OMG get over it already and move on and stop making the same old tired accusations and comments over and over again about me, my intelilgence level and marketting for sony.
The last game I tried was POTBS I found it terrible. At that time my SWG account was closed. I opened it as a result of having round not a single game that I liked. I found POTBS to be very linear and I am not a huge pvp fan and so found that game obviously not to my liking. I didn't compare POTBS to WoW actualy I compared it to SWG. All I could think of is if people hate SWG for what it is now and its a better product I wonder where in this linup of games POTBS falls as to me it falls way beyond the minimum specs I want in a new game. SWG had more stuff to do and presented to me a large world which was more diverse. I returned to SWG as a result of having tried most of the new releases (didn't bother with AOC it reminded me of WoW). Coincidentaly the last new game I tried was POTBS and it was the game that made me decide that I would stick with SWG as right now its much more fun and well I want to have fun. POTBS will probably fall into that pile with WoW of games I never pick up again because for me it was a god aweful game..
Blizzard built an EQ style clone plane and simple. Saying they are responsible for the apathy in the market is just plain wrong. They built exactly what they set out to do. The problem is there has been so many failures with the non-EQ clones that there just isn't much incentive to do anything else. The market is hungry for something else as can be seen by the volume of Conan sales, but people and companies are to gunshy to do anything innovative or dangerous. Just because WoW struck paydirt doesn't mean they are responsible for the choices every other company makes with their products. At some point companies need to be held responsible for their own choices and products and not blaming one company.
The problem with the MMO market is that Blizzard made the penultimate DIKU MUD MMO, and everyone else is thinking they can have similar success by making something similar. WoW is beyond the MMO, it is a cultural phenomenon. People who don't play video games know what Wow is. It has been featured on several television shows.
The next big hit, which won't likely be anywhere near as big a WoW, has a much better chance of comming from the UO/original SWG mold, but it will need to have all the content that UO and SWG were supposed to have but never got. Both UO and SWG were intended to have quests and storylines. The fact is, the developers left out half the game and then took off in a different direction before ever trying to add the missing half. Who knows how well either game would have done if they had ever been finished n a form that actually resembled their original concepts? Sadly, pretty much every company looks at them and judges them without taking into account that neither game was ever actually finished close to their original concept. Sandboxes and content are not an either/or proposition. Unfortunately, the only two major ones scrapped the content to make release, and never went back to add it before their core games were altered to the point where they don't resemble what they once were, or what they were intended to be.
For anyone who followed UO during its development, you might remember the idea of dragons invading towns to feed from a couple interviews. Those links explain what the actual system was intended to be, and the reason why it never happened. Unfortunately, the developers never made any attempt to replace it (or at least none that was successful enough to make the love game).
SWG was intended to have actual quests and other directed content, along with tools to allow the players to make their own directed content for other players (the storyteller system). Unfortunately, the tools weren't fully implemented until the core game was ruined to the point where the game is no longer wrth the effort to play it, nor is it worth the space it takes up on a hard drive (save for a certian flightless bird).
Anyway, a successful, meaning finished (which includes content beyond regrinding skills), sandbox game has yet to be released. Until one is, nobody can honestly judge the potential sandbox games have in the MMO marketplace.
why then in the life I have described which is all about compromise whether you choose to actually compromise or not is the expense of a 15 dollar subscription fee so danged important to a small community of veterans who no longer play the game because they now hate it.
If your credit card was double billed for a months sub would you "compromise" by letting it go?
Or would you do something to remedy that issue?
this doens't make sense so I dont understand
If my credit card is double billed I would call about the mistake BECAUSE its a mistake and get it fixed but its still a choice if that is what your getting at but an obvious one that one makes when a mistake is made. If the next statement is that your mad at sony cause they double billed you once then okay but does it make sense to scream it from the rooftops for 3 years?
I just found it interesting that you would imply that a $15 sub fee is "so danged important" to vets but you'll make an effort to retrieve $15 if it was taken from you.
But that is completely unrelated to this conversation.
You make some interesting points(albeit a little confusing in it's delivery). But the thing that I'd like to point out from all of this is that compromise, on the part of gamers, is apathy - and apathy is destroying this industry for everyone who wants more out of their online experiences.
Some things we have to make compromises on as it affects our lives in profound ways. As so many have pointed out this is just a game - and not compromising on this shouldn't have a profound affect on our lives.
Rather it should have a profound affect on the industry.
I doubt I would notice a doulbe billing 15 bucks a month so no i probaby would not do anything about it unless it was recurring and then I suddenly noticed. I would notice a 300 dollar overcharge. If i was double biled enough to notice sure like anyone I would attempt to stop it as its an error and if its a recurring error sure. I brought up the 15 bucks because you did :P
I also stated that if i had been double billed I didn't notice
So not sure what your getting at really ify ou see someone taking more money then they should its an error and you correct it as its an accounting problem. Would I work hard to get 15 bucks back from a company double billed to me once. The answer is no. I would ask of course just like anyone (maybe). I would not stop doing businses with a company however on the basis of the fact they double billed me by accident and I have been overcharged a lot more then that and I have made attempts to get it back and in some cases those attempts failed. I still do business with those companies though because they have a product I want and THAT is the compromise you speak of I am assuming. I dont consider someone evil for doing this and I dont think that people are horrible for doing business with companies that screw up heck there are more that screw up then dont.. In any event not sure what you find interesting. Other then if i noticed I was being double billed for something I would of course try to deal with it especially if its a recurring error. That's just human nature. I would nto sue them or run to a message board about it though. I would simply put in a phone call or ticket to the company and call my credit card provider up and inform them. So again not sure what your driving at of course anyone seeing a mistake is going to try to get it corrected as its an accounting error that needs to be fixed.. ??
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
here is the thing times change and so do "styles". I love sandbox games but we know that they dont sell well. So an attempt was made I guess to remove some of the sandbox from the game. I can't force a company not any company on this planet to create a game for a minority playerbase. Money gets tight (it can be seen when we see things like lucas arts laying people off). I can't force a company to make the old swg or bring it back but I can have fun with what is presented to me now. Once upon a time coke came in glass bottles and the sizes of various package were twice the size of what they are now like say potatoe chips etc. The consumer can kick and scream and demand the glass bottles and the larger bags of potatoe chips but these silent nerfs occured due to a financial bottom line in some ivory tower. I want the chips and the coke (i'm a coke addict.. ..) so i guy the coke that is presented to me in the cans even though i really liked glass. Then there is those plastic bottles omg I hate those.
I just want to point out exactly how incorrect your line of thinking is Ummax.
You say you can't force a company to bring back SWG and then in the very next sentence you bring up something from the Coca-cola corporation as an example of how that is true??!?!?!
Perhaps you forgot the single best example of a company bending to the will of a consumer when they ditched the original coke formula and replaced it with "new coke". The backlash from consumers was so over whelming that Coca-Cola brought back old coke as coke classic. That is just how far out of touch your analogies are.
What you are describing about making due with what SOE gives you is called apathy. The old SWG game could have been brought back, but enough people chose to accept a lesser product they did not want or ask for and continued to give money to SOE. I just want to be clear so you understand that when you give these companies money you are telling them you approve of their actions and you further empower them to do as they wish when they should be doing as you wish. Those who continued to pay for a game they did not enjoy as much helped ensure they would never get the former product back again. Think about that.
You can make whatever excuses you want and create any number of meaningless analogies, but that doesn't change the reality of what happened and how things came to be.
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
here is the thing times change and so do "styles". I love sandbox games but we know that they dont sell well. So an attempt was made I guess to remove some of the sandbox from the game. I can't force a company not any company on this planet to create a game for a minority playerbase. Money gets tight (it can be seen when we see things like lucas arts laying people off). I can't force a company to make the old swg or bring it back but I can have fun with what is presented to me now. Once upon a time coke came in glass bottles and the sizes of various package were twice the size of what they are now like say potatoe chips etc. The consumer can kick and scream and demand the glass bottles and the larger bags of potatoe chips but these silent nerfs occured due to a financial bottom line in some ivory tower. I want the chips and the coke (i'm a coke addict.. ..) so i guy the coke that is presented to me in the cans even though i really liked glass. Then there is those plastic bottles omg I hate those.
I just want to point out exactly how incorrect your line of thinking is Ummax.
You say you can't force a company to bring back SWG and then in the very next sentence you bring up something from the Coca-cola corporation as an example of how that is true??!?!?!
Perhaps you forgot the single best example of a company bending to the will of a consumer when they ditched the original coke formula and replaced it with "new coke". The backlash from consumers was so over whelming that Coca-Cola brought back old coke as coke classic. That is just how far out of touch your analogies are.
What you are describing about making due with what SOE gives you is called apathy. The old SWG game could have been brought back, but enough people chose to accept a lesser product they did not want or ask for and continued to give money to SOE. I just want to be clear so you understand that when you give these companies money you are telling them you approve of their actions and you further empower them to do as they wish when they should be doing as you wish. Those who continued to pay for a game they did not enjoy as much helped ensure they would never get the former product back again. Think about that.
You can make whatever excuses you want and create any number of meaningless analogies, but that doesn't change the reality of what happened and how things came to be.
There is no way you would know that SOE would have brought back pre-cu just because the number of subscribers. There was enough bitching going on at the time the NGE hit to make everyones mom call in and complain. And yet, SOE still did not bring back Pre-Cu. This has gone way off topic of what my OP was about..
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
If MMO gaming isn't being destroyed it's because of people taking a stand against things like this.
If the NGE brought in 1 million new subs that would have sent a clear message to the entire industry that doing things like this pays off.
I have no doubt that the only regret SoE has about this is that it wasn't successful. I also believe that given a chance, particularily with a very high probability of success, they will do it again.
Originally posted by hosal There is no way you would know that SOE would have brought back pre-cu just because the number of subscribers. There was enough bitching going on at the time the NGE hit to make everyones mom call in and complain. And yet, SOE still did not bring back Pre-Cu. This has gone way off topic of what my OP was about..
You are right that I don't know for sure that SOE would have brought old SWG back, which is why I said they could have. My point was that enough people didn't vote with their wallets and decided to give SOE a third chance with SWG, even when SOE was acting against their best interests, which helped dim any chance of old SWG coming back.
Anyhow, congrats on getting some new blood on the server. Maybe I will swing by on the vet trial and see how old Krettlemoor is doing. If my houses are still standing and resource quality still means anything in crafting, I might just have a contest for all the contents.
Originally posted by hosal There is no way you would know that SOE would have brought back pre-cu just because the number of subscribers. There was enough bitching going on at the time the NGE hit to make everyones mom call in and complain. And yet, SOE still did not bring back Pre-Cu. This has gone way off topic of what my OP was about..
You are right that I don't know for sure that SOE would have brought old SWG back, which is why I said they could have. My point was that enough people didn't vote with their wallets and decided to give SOE a third chance with SWG, even when SOE was acting against their best interests, which helped dim any chance of old SWG coming back.
Anyhow, congrats on getting some new blood on the server. Maybe I will swing by on the vet trial and see how old Krettlemoor is doing. If my houses are still standing and resource quality still means anything in crafting, I might just have a contest for all the contents.
I love positive post, send me a tell on Hosal if you're on Kette
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
Ref:Foomerang
Hosal, I have NEVER said Pre-CU was perfect or the end-all MMO. I couldn't stand the combat and it lacked content. It was still a very rich MMO with a complex system of community.
This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
ummax and these other people who are trying this little advertising campaign on behalf of SOE/LA are destroying a bit of MMO gaming for everyone when they do these things... They are rewarding companies who treat their players unethically. It's Stockholm Syndrome at the worst. Why would ANY company hesitate to act the way SOE/LA did when people will go out of their way to do advertising for them????? Anyone who financially supports SWG today is slapping the face of everyone who once got burned by most likely illegal and most certainly unethical business behavior. I don't care it is has been 100 years since the NGE was secretly coded and then pushed on the world, corrupt business is corrupt business. SOE used misrepresented subscription money to code and develop a new game while advertising and flat out lying about the existing one. ummax and the OP should be very proud of supporting a company that participates in this, without apology atonement.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
Ref:Foomerang
Hosal, I have NEVER said Pre-CU was perfect or the end-all MMO. I couldn't stand the combat and it lacked content. It was still a very rich MMO with a complex system of community.
This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
Sue them if you got cheated and it was illegal. I'm sick of me and my friends and supporters of this good game coming in and flaming up my forums. Go to the veteran refuge and whine about how "cheated and illegal" SOE did you. Quite frankly i don't think anyone on this forum other than the flamers want to listen to the crap. I know i don't. But keep the flaming going, because i know it will.
So, who do I get in touch with in-game to join or how? I realize I just started, but it won't take me that long to catch up.
If you join the kettemoor server get in contact with me on Hosal Amaris, or anyone with the Novous guild logo. Thanks!! Look forward to playing with you!
Well Hosal, I'll be happy to debate you on why the game is NOT good if you like. You are sitting here claiming it's a good game but the majority of people overwhelmingly disagree with you, and they spend their money elsewhere.
The combat is horrid. Classic RPG combat, dumed-down, sped up 5X to simulate the appearance of "fast" combat. Large scale battles will always fail in SWG because the combat system puts a major local stress on the servers. Combat was much better Pre-CU, and I didn't like Pre-CU combat.
The economy is busted. Dumbed down economy to permit loot drops. Decay removed which lessens the need for crafting altogether. A rich and complex player-driven economy scrapped for a simple kill/loot system.
Instances. Yep, the dreaded word in todays MMO games. Instancing is a cheap and easy way to give cooke-cutter experiences to the consumer robbing them of exploring new worlds, new areas, and basically removing sandbox elements even further.
Professions. Some of the WORST in any MMO I have ever played. Forget the fact that Pre-CU had well over 30 professions, but the "iconic" professions are elementary and busted. Smuggler... What's the purpose after all these years? What exactly do you smuggle? Officer, built for large scale battles, oops, combat is busted so large scale combat isn't viable. Jedi, nerfed and nerfed until they may actually end up as ghosts running around the server unable to speak to other players. Crafters! Now that's a good one. What useful items are you crafting? How about combat as a crafter? Not really a point is there...
Bugs. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Go to the official forums and check out the list of bugs that have been present since 2003 and 2005. Go play WoW and see how much rubberbanding or spawning in rocks you see. My bet is it won't happen once, and the WoW servers are full of players...
You claim it's a good game but when compared to other MMOs it falls short in most areas. The best parts of the game come from Pre-CU, the rest is just a poor clone of WoW. That is how the CURRENT game stands. SWG has less than 10,000 subscriptions. That means it probably has less than 5,000 players.
The plug needs to be pulled. It's a disgrace to Star Wars fans and MMO games everywhere. Nevermind what SOE/LA did, how they did it, look at the game and what MOST people think of it. It's dreadful. They secretly coded and went live with an AWEFUL game.
Well Hosal, I'll be happy to debate you on why the game is NOT good if you like. You are sitting here claiming it's a good game but the majority of people overwhelmingly disagree with you, and they spend their money elsewhere. The combat is horrid. Classic RPG combat, dumed-down, sped up 5X to simulate the appearance of "fast" combat. Large scale battles will always fail in SWG because the combat system puts a major local stress on the servers. Combat was much better Pre-CU, and I didn't like Pre-CU combat. The economy is busted. Dumbed down economy to permit loot drops. Decay removed which lessens the need for crafting altogether. A rich and complex player-driven economy scrapped for a simple kill/loot system. Instances. Yep, the dreaded word in todays MMO games. Instancing is a cheap and easy way to give cooke-cutter experiences to the consumer robbing them of exploring new worlds, new areas, and basically removing sandbox elements even further. Professions. Some of the WORST in any MMO I have ever played. Forget the fact that Pre-CU had well over 30 professions, but the "iconic" professions are elementary and busted. Smuggler... What's the purpose after all these years? What exactly do you smuggle? Officer, built for large scale battles, oops, combat is busted so large scale combat isn't viable. Jedi, nerfed and nerfed until they may actually end up as ghosts running around the server unable to speak to other players. Crafters! Now that's a good one. What useful items are you crafting? How about combat as a crafter? Not really a point is there... Bugs. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Go to the official forums and check out the list of bugs that have been present since 2003 and 2005. Go play WoW and see how much rubberbanding or spawning in rocks you see. My bet is it won't happen once, and the WoW servers are full of players... You claim it's a good game but when compared to other MMOs it falls short in most areas. The best parts of the game come from Pre-CU, the rest is just a poor clone of WoW. That is how the CURRENT game stands. SWG has less than 10,000 subscriptions. That means it probably has less than 5,000 players. The plug needs to be pulled. It's a disgrace to Star Wars fans and MMO games everywhere. Nevermind what SOE/LA did, how they did it, look at the game and what MOST people think of it. It's dreadful. They secretly coded and went live with an AWEFUL game.
Debate all you want, I'll still be playing this game tomorrow..the next day, and so forth. Everyone talks about subscriptions and stuff, where's the proof of only 10k subscribers? You may not like it, but a vast majority do. That's why vet's return daily. Read proof, yes..the game is not "the best" never said it was. But if it was as "AWEFUL" as you say, then there would not be active subscribers. It has improved alot since the drop of NGE. Thanks for your input and own opinion though.
Well Hosal, I'll be happy to debate you on why the game is NOT good if you like. You are sitting here claiming it's a good game but the majority of people overwhelmingly disagree with you, and they spend their money elsewhere. The combat is horrid. Classic RPG combat, dumed-down, sped up 5X to simulate the appearance of "fast" combat. Large scale battles will always fail in SWG because the combat system puts a major local stress on the servers. Combat was much better Pre-CU, and I didn't like Pre-CU combat. The economy is busted. Dumbed down economy to permit loot drops. Decay removed which lessens the need for crafting altogether. A rich and complex player-driven economy scrapped for a simple kill/loot system. Instances. Yep, the dreaded word in todays MMO games. Instancing is a cheap and easy way to give cooke-cutter experiences to the consumer robbing them of exploring new worlds, new areas, and basically removing sandbox elements even further. Professions. Some of the WORST in any MMO I have ever played. Forget the fact that Pre-CU had well over 30 professions, but the "iconic" professions are elementary and busted. Smuggler... What's the purpose after all these years? What exactly do you smuggle? Officer, built for large scale battles, oops, combat is busted so large scale combat isn't viable. Jedi, nerfed and nerfed until they may actually end up as ghosts running around the server unable to speak to other players. Crafters! Now that's a good one. What useful items are you crafting? How about combat as a crafter? Not really a point is there... Bugs. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Go to the official forums and check out the list of bugs that have been present since 2003 and 2005. Go play WoW and see how much rubberbanding or spawning in rocks you see. My bet is it won't happen once, and the WoW servers are full of players... You claim it's a good game but when compared to other MMOs it falls short in most areas. The best parts of the game come from Pre-CU, the rest is just a poor clone of WoW. That is how the CURRENT game stands. SWG has less than 10,000 subscriptions. That means it probably has less than 5,000 players. The plug needs to be pulled. It's a disgrace to Star Wars fans and MMO games everywhere. Nevermind what SOE/LA did, how they did it, look at the game and what MOST people think of it. It's dreadful. They secretly coded and went live with an AWEFUL game.
~you are not talking to me but i'll adress some points you make,.. starting by one i hate ,,, decay... decay was the most stupid thing in swg, andmade either people grinding quenquers and pikets in short and underwear with second hand quality items so they not risk decay on the good stuff. and sadly that good stuff rarelly was used... and i do know what i'm talking, since i had a full suit or armor and top of the line crafted weaponry that i basically never used so it wouldnt decay...
as a result, even when the use of good items was needed , the risk of decay made people affraid. I had probably tghe best de-10 pistol crafted EVER in SWG with legendary kray tissue and 89x dmg before power up s , and it rarely left my bank safety depostit box. Think i fired it ten times....
let's go on the second. combat... better pre cu? not sure... everypne put that attacks in macro, queued actions and that was it. Oh wait, no it wasn't.. you either had attacks that dmg the mind or you would lose in pvp.
my combat routine was:
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
/torsoshot
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
and it got even better the moment i had a sonic weapon...
And to ensure you survived as much as possible, everyone stacked dodge and melee/ranged defense . Oh and since there were some profesions that had more base dodge and defense than others, everyone ended up being either tka or having fencer on his template. that was the truth about about combat.
lets see waht we had more.... yea we didnt had isntances,, apart the corvette, we had some nasty caverns , that almost none visited, apart the akuan cave to get the +melee defense rings, and the temple of exar khun for some rifle if i remember correctly.
crafters did weapons and armor, ents and doctors buffed and the rest passed all the time either:
a) grinding profs to unlock jedi
b)running rancor missions in solo groups in dathomir
c) nailing nighsisters or krayt dragons for crystals and pearls.
d) jedis grinding in the "end of the world" to not get visibility
e) a few select BH running jedi missions, i got really good at getting people afk or loading and in 4 seconds could make a jedi lose days of playtime cause i stalked then afk. i even PERMADEATHED some dude cause i got in afk and killed him, but the mission didnt complet so i could clone camp him . and thats how conniver, the second person to unlock jedi on my server was permadeathed 3 times. he got so depressed he quited playing after.
there were people complaining on the boards about balance all the time, about eyeshot, combat medics poisons, tka and defense stackers, and the fact that melee dominated the combat on a SW game- and we are not talking about jedi per se, but any kind of melee'r. oh and about weapons with mind dots. then there were people complaining about lack of loot, what reduce pve to running missions or nailing a small number of special beasts (krayt's ackalay gorax).
that was swg pre cu/nge. ANd i actually liked it because i was on the upper part of the food chain. Only because of that. Was in a guild of extreme hardcore players that controlled the server economy, and as such ended up being able to do whatever i wanted . But have the perception and insight that many didn't.
if they havent reduced the number of professions (and that was the bad blow) and actually took time to polish the CU and the NGE, most wouldnt even complain.
Hosal, No one including the former players are saying the Pre-cu was some mythical perfect bug free game. The overwhelming majority however found it to be a much much better foundation of a game than anything SOE has pushed out since, but it was unfinished and mismanaged and thus lacked retention power. Instead of trying to finish the game post launch Sony worked on expansion packs and secret game revamps in spite of what the players wanted and was promised.
People kept resubbing over and over and over again, because they wanted to play the game, but it just was never finished. The concepts though were outstanding, where as they are not so great anymore in comparison.
The original game was not by any means a failure, just the company managing it was. If they had even once tried to do what the players wanted things might not have ended up as they have.
Originally posted by AveBethos This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
See now if you feel they took your money and they aren't entitled to it or werent then go and get it back using lawyers and such
They didn't take any money that I didn't give them to play a game. I quit for awhile and I stopped paying and then one day I went back and my characters were intact and my inventory was intact and I put my credit card info in again and started playing.
I lost nothing and they took nothing. If you feel differently that's fine however I played a game that existed and then I left for a time until they did something to make me want to resubscribe. The software still works I have the little disks (well not trials of obiwan I just got that and it was a download only..) but anyhow....
On a side note sony wasn't obligated to keep my characters intact and in moth balls for 3 years but they did they own the characters not me I just rent them. I got a pretty good deal and lost nothing but did come back to find I had characters that were not missing one item.
I'm sorry you feel ripped off however as I said ad nauseum as an adult with my own little pea brain and who makes my own decisions I dont feel I was ripped off and have voluntarily with no qualms what so ever put money down on a monthly subscription fee again to play a multiplayer game that I enjoy moreso then any other MMORPG I have played passed and present. That's all there is too it. I"m not betraying anyone or condoning anything neither is anyone else who chooses to pay money for a game.
Please feel free to do your own thing but dont hate on other players because they wont do what you want them to do and I wont force you to come back and play a game you hate run by a company you hate okay?
This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
waot. let me see. you think people should stop playing a game they like for a subjective question of principle that MIGHT not even be shared by everyone, just because you think so.... Jesus man, the only stand i am taking with my money is to have fun. something i have atm with swg. when I stop having i'll terminate my subscription. the truth is i'm not going to lose my lifetime trying to redeem whatever.
Comments
If your credit card was double billed for a months sub would you "compromise" by letting it go?
Or would you do something to remedy that issue?
this doens't make sense so I dont understand
If my credit card is double billed I would call about the mistake BECAUSE its a mistake and get it fixed but its still a choice if that is what your getting at but an obvious one that one makes when a mistake is made. If the next statement is that your mad at sony cause they double billed you once then okay but does it make sense to scream it from the rooftops for 3 years?
I just found it interesting that you would imply that a $15 sub fee is "so danged important" to vets but you'll make an effort to retrieve $15 if it was taken from you.
But that is completely unrelated to this conversation.
You make some interesting points(albeit a little confusing in it's delivery). But the thing that I'd like to point out from all of this is that compromise, on the part of gamers, is apathy - and apathy is destroying this industry for everyone who wants more out of their online experiences.
Some things we have to make compromises on as it affects our lives in profound ways. As so many have pointed out this is just a game - and not compromising on this shouldn't have a profound affect on our lives.
Rather it should have a profound affect on the industry.
You are right, apathy is deteriorating the MMO industry. But it isn't an apathy due to SOE, but more accurately due to Blizzard.
World of Warcraft was such a lighting-in-a-bottle one time hit, that now nearly every game development company wants to duplicate it. Nevermind that doing such is akin to the studios trying to mimick Star Wars in the late 1970's and early 1980's, all of which ended in disaster. Lighting-in-a-bottle is just that.
Companies that try to go further away from such an engine, like AoC or POTBS, run into a host of problems. I feel one reason for this is that too many gamers make automatic comparisons to WoW, for any new game that comes out. Think that is false, look at the Game X vs WoW threads that flood the gaming sites and forums whenever a new game is announced.
The problem with SWG, even the current state, is that despite being a far cry from what the Vets enjoyed in the Pre-CU era, for many it is still a better game than what is out there right now. Obviously, if they felt that AoC, PoTBS, CoH, WoW, LoTRO, and et cetera were better, then they would be there.
Are returning Vets happy that SOE took away the original game? I seriously doubt it. Are they willing, though, to pay for the current SWG- which at least they still garner some enjoyment from- as opposed to playing a game they don't care for at all? Obviously, the answer is yes, for them.
Is that rewarding bad behavior, questionable business tactics, or whatver else you want to call it? To you and some others, sure. For them, no it isn't. For them it's about playing a game they still enjoy (be it less than before in some cases) versus playing a game they don't enjoy at all (obviously the other MMOs out there).
And not everyone wants to go without playing a MMO. For example, I don't play off-line or console games. When I am at home, don't feel like going out or reading, or the wife is out with her girlfriends . . . I log-in to my MMO of choice. Of course, I don't enjoy the current Star Wars and don't sub to it. I'm playing Pirates of the Carribean Online after tiring of CoH and WoW (and I think AoC is crap), as I await the 2 week trial for PoTBS.
But, I still understand where they are coming from.
here is the thing times change and so do "styles". I love sandbox games but we know that they dont sell well. So an attempt was made I guess to remove some of the sandbox from the game. I can't force a company not any company on this planet to create a game for a minority playerbase. Money gets tight (it can be seen when we see things like lucas arts laying people off). I can't force a company to make the old swg or bring it back but I can have fun with what is presented to me now. Once upon a time coke came in glass bottles and the sizes of various package were twice the size of what they are now like say potatoe chips etc. The consumer can kick and scream and demand the glass bottles and the larger bags of potatoe chips but these silent nerfs occured due to a financial bottom line in some ivory tower. I want the chips and the coke (i'm a coke addict.. ..) so i guy the coke that is presented to me in the cans even though i really liked glass. Then there is those plastic bottles omg I hate those.
So now WoW is created and SWG and various other games. The create them to accomodate the majorty and not a minority. I hated wow because of the style and the fact that I hit a wall at the level cap and there was no content. I used WoW up in about 3 months after its release and its the only game that i have never opened up again to play a year later when new stuff is introduced. All the yammering in the world from a smaller player base wont change the fact that they are going to make something that they can afford to make and that will please the largest number of players. Its like PVP and PVE. PVE sells because its more popular so games that are successful have a large amount of pve in them. Casual gamers are on the rise so content is added for that group.
So I look at the titles presented and if my choices are to play the game I think is the best then obviously I"m going to play that. I"m not going to play a game I hate and I"m not going to not play a game because some guy had a bad experience. I will judge for myself. I dont discount what happened to people but the fact of the matter is that it didn't happen to me and I had no real issue with what they did other then they changed my product and so i made a decision to leave for a long time. Its not the first product I have had changed and downsized etc and it wont be the last.
lastly I love the token comment about me marketing for SOE. Anything that is not hatred is seen as 'viral marketing". I dont care if you play or the other guy plays i have my fun. What I do care about is seeing some guy post his thoughts and being accused of working for SOE and being a marketer and then being told what a dolt he is for playing it. Bottom line hate SOE you like and hate SWG all you like as your entitled to hate and not like stuff just I think a lot of us wish that they would not throw the hate our way jsut cause we post on a forum with a bunch of guys. Its when its thrown my way that I can't help but think OMG get over it already and move on and stop making the same old tired accusations and comments over and over again about me, my intelilgence level and marketting for sony.
The last game I tried was POTBS I found it terrible. At that time my SWG account was closed. I opened it as a result of having round not a single game that I liked. I found POTBS to be very linear and I am not a huge pvp fan and so found that game obviously not to my liking. I didn't compare POTBS to WoW actualy I compared it to SWG. All I could think of is if people hate SWG for what it is now and its a better product I wonder where in this linup of games POTBS falls as to me it falls way beyond the minimum specs I want in a new game. SWG had more stuff to do and presented to me a large world which was more diverse. I returned to SWG as a result of having tried most of the new releases (didn't bother with AOC it reminded me of WoW). Coincidentaly the last new game I tried was POTBS and it was the game that made me decide that I would stick with SWG as right now its much more fun and well I want to have fun. POTBS will probably fall into that pile with WoW of games I never pick up again because for me it was a god aweful game..
The problem with the MMO market is that Blizzard made the penultimate DIKU MUD MMO, and everyone else is thinking they can have similar success by making something similar. WoW is beyond the MMO, it is a cultural phenomenon. People who don't play video games know what Wow is. It has been featured on several television shows.
The next big hit, which won't likely be anywhere near as big a WoW, has a much better chance of comming from the UO/original SWG mold, but it will need to have all the content that UO and SWG were supposed to have but never got. Both UO and SWG were intended to have quests and storylines. The fact is, the developers left out half the game and then took off in a different direction before ever trying to add the missing half. Who knows how well either game would have done if they had ever been finished n a form that actually resembled their original concepts? Sadly, pretty much every company looks at them and judges them without taking into account that neither game was ever actually finished close to their original concept. Sandboxes and content are not an either/or proposition. Unfortunately, the only two major ones scrapped the content to make release, and never went back to add it before their core games were altered to the point where they don't resemble what they once were, or what they were intended to be.
For what UO should have been, read these:
www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/
www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uos-resource-system-part-2/
www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uos-resource-system-part-3/
For anyone who followed UO during its development, you might remember the idea of dragons invading towns to feed from a couple interviews. Those links explain what the actual system was intended to be, and the reason why it never happened. Unfortunately, the developers never made any attempt to replace it (or at least none that was successful enough to make the love game).
SWG was intended to have actual quests and other directed content, along with tools to allow the players to make their own directed content for other players (the storyteller system). Unfortunately, the tools weren't fully implemented until the core game was ruined to the point where the game is no longer wrth the effort to play it, nor is it worth the space it takes up on a hard drive (save for a certian flightless bird).
Anyway, a successful, meaning finished (which includes content beyond regrinding skills), sandbox game has yet to be released. Until one is, nobody can honestly judge the potential sandbox games have in the MMO marketplace.
If your credit card was double billed for a months sub would you "compromise" by letting it go?
Or would you do something to remedy that issue?
this doens't make sense so I dont understand
If my credit card is double billed I would call about the mistake BECAUSE its a mistake and get it fixed but its still a choice if that is what your getting at but an obvious one that one makes when a mistake is made. If the next statement is that your mad at sony cause they double billed you once then okay but does it make sense to scream it from the rooftops for 3 years?
I just found it interesting that you would imply that a $15 sub fee is "so danged important" to vets but you'll make an effort to retrieve $15 if it was taken from you.
But that is completely unrelated to this conversation.
You make some interesting points(albeit a little confusing in it's delivery). But the thing that I'd like to point out from all of this is that compromise, on the part of gamers, is apathy - and apathy is destroying this industry for everyone who wants more out of their online experiences.
Some things we have to make compromises on as it affects our lives in profound ways. As so many have pointed out this is just a game - and not compromising on this shouldn't have a profound affect on our lives.
Rather it should have a profound affect on the industry.
I doubt I would notice a doulbe billing 15 bucks a month so no i probaby would not do anything about it unless it was recurring and then I suddenly noticed. I would notice a 300 dollar overcharge. If i was double biled enough to notice sure like anyone I would attempt to stop it as its an error and if its a recurring error sure. I brought up the 15 bucks because you did :P
I also stated that if i had been double billed I didn't notice
So not sure what your getting at really ify ou see someone taking more money then they should its an error and you correct it as its an accounting problem. Would I work hard to get 15 bucks back from a company double billed to me once. The answer is no. I would ask of course just like anyone (maybe). I would not stop doing businses with a company however on the basis of the fact they double billed me by accident and I have been overcharged a lot more then that and I have made attempts to get it back and in some cases those attempts failed. I still do business with those companies though because they have a product I want and THAT is the compromise you speak of I am assuming. I dont consider someone evil for doing this and I dont think that people are horrible for doing business with companies that screw up heck there are more that screw up then dont.. In any event not sure what you find interesting. Other then if i noticed I was being double billed for something I would of course try to deal with it especially if its a recurring error. That's just human nature. I would nto sue them or run to a message board about it though. I would simply put in a phone call or ticket to the company and call my credit card provider up and inform them. So again not sure what your driving at of course anyone seeing a mistake is going to try to get it corrected as its an accounting error that needs to be fixed.. ??
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
I just want to point out exactly how incorrect your line of thinking is Ummax.
You say you can't force a company to bring back SWG and then in the very next sentence you bring up something from the Coca-cola corporation as an example of how that is true??!?!?!
Perhaps you forgot the single best example of a company bending to the will of a consumer when they ditched the original coke formula and replaced it with "new coke". The backlash from consumers was so over whelming that Coca-Cola brought back old coke as coke classic. That is just how far out of touch your analogies are.
What you are describing about making due with what SOE gives you is called apathy. The old SWG game could have been brought back, but enough people chose to accept a lesser product they did not want or ask for and continued to give money to SOE. I just want to be clear so you understand that when you give these companies money you are telling them you approve of their actions and you further empower them to do as they wish when they should be doing as you wish. Those who continued to pay for a game they did not enjoy as much helped ensure they would never get the former product back again. Think about that.
You can make whatever excuses you want and create any number of meaningless analogies, but that doesn't change the reality of what happened and how things came to be.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
Thank You
I just want to point out exactly how incorrect your line of thinking is Ummax.
You say you can't force a company to bring back SWG and then in the very next sentence you bring up something from the Coca-cola corporation as an example of how that is true??!?!?!
Perhaps you forgot the single best example of a company bending to the will of a consumer when they ditched the original coke formula and replaced it with "new coke". The backlash from consumers was so over whelming that Coca-Cola brought back old coke as coke classic. That is just how far out of touch your analogies are.
What you are describing about making due with what SOE gives you is called apathy. The old SWG game could have been brought back, but enough people chose to accept a lesser product they did not want or ask for and continued to give money to SOE. I just want to be clear so you understand that when you give these companies money you are telling them you approve of their actions and you further empower them to do as they wish when they should be doing as you wish. Those who continued to pay for a game they did not enjoy as much helped ensure they would never get the former product back again. Think about that.
You can make whatever excuses you want and create any number of meaningless analogies, but that doesn't change the reality of what happened and how things came to be.
There is no way you would know that SOE would have brought back pre-cu just because the number of subscribers. There was enough bitching going on at the time the NGE hit to make everyones mom call in and complain. And yet, SOE still did not bring back Pre-Cu. This has gone way off topic of what my OP was about..
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
If MMO gaming isn't being destroyed it's because of people taking a stand against things like this.
If the NGE brought in 1 million new subs that would have sent a clear message to the entire industry that doing things like this pays off.
I have no doubt that the only regret SoE has about this is that it wasn't successful. I also believe that given a chance, particularily with a very high probability of success, they will do it again.
You are right that I don't know for sure that SOE would have brought old SWG back, which is why I said they could have. My point was that enough people didn't vote with their wallets and decided to give SOE a third chance with SWG, even when SOE was acting against their best interests, which helped dim any chance of old SWG coming back.
Anyhow, congrats on getting some new blood on the server. Maybe I will swing by on the vet trial and see how old Krettlemoor is doing. If my houses are still standing and resource quality still means anything in crafting, I might just have a contest for all the contents.
You are right that I don't know for sure that SOE would have brought old SWG back, which is why I said they could have. My point was that enough people didn't vote with their wallets and decided to give SOE a third chance with SWG, even when SOE was acting against their best interests, which helped dim any chance of old SWG coming back.
Anyhow, congrats on getting some new blood on the server. Maybe I will swing by on the vet trial and see how old Krettlemoor is doing. If my houses are still standing and resource quality still means anything in crafting, I might just have a contest for all the contents.
I love positive post, send me a tell on Hosal if you're on Kette
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
Ref:Foomerang
Congrats on getting everyone on the server to join your guild.
Good one...
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
Ref:Foomerang
Hosal, I have NEVER said Pre-CU was perfect or the end-all MMO. I couldn't stand the combat and it lacked content. It was still a very rich MMO with a complex system of community.
This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
I don't think they're destroying MMO gaming at all, quite the opposite. You're looking into the situation far too far.
The point of MMO games is to get together with other people, develop a community and have fun. By the sounds of the OP, this is exactly what they're doing. It's what MMO game discussions should be about.
This game and this company do not deserve nor garner enough respect for this. We have taken such a strong stand against unethical behavior yet it is underminded by people like this, yourself, ummax, nikoz, and others, who constantly subscribe, support, and even publicly advertise this game FOR SOE/LA.
SWG will never be anything more than a place where less than 10,000 diehard Star Wars fans will go to play a single player MMO and most of us know that. But it is the fact that you people come and viral market this game on sites like this that tells a company like SOE that what they have done and the way they have acted is at least ok in the eyes of some, and some will even do their advertising for them...
I know you, ummax, are any of the other viral marketers won't "get" that nor care to get that, but it is the way it is. I don't give props to someone who in turn slaps us back in the face by marketing this junk.
That fact remains that despite what some people will tell you, Pre-CU wasn't the greatest MMO of all time, in their own opinion it may well have been, and I have absolutely no problem with that.
However the fact remains that SWG NEVER got the amount of subs, that SOE and/or LA wanted. Pre-NGE/Pre-CU whatever you wanna call it was a failure, because this game has the SW IP attached these two companies thought they would get millions of subscribers (WOW-Esque), but those subs never materialized.
Now I'm not for a second saying that the Devs (PTB) took the right option with the CU or NGE, but the fact remains that although some people will tell you Pre-CU was perfect, it clearly wasn't. Not even mentioning the bugs/lack of content/unbalance, the simple fact is that Pre-CU didn't get enough people playing the game, so it doesn't really matter how much a certain individual liked the game, or liked to be able to use /wave, /smile, /setmood: angry.
SWG didn't deliver in terms of Subs and Revenue.
As such, drastic changes were made.
So although some pople like to portay; a perfect game that had no problems, and then a group of spiteful Devs came along and ruined a great thing for no apparent reason... well I'm sorry but that just wasn't the case.
Ref:LukeHalcyon
pre-cu was fun because you could mix n match whatever you wanted. but in all honesty, if you wanted to be effective at pvp, you had less choice than you do now.
otoh, i miss mixing a crafting prof with combat just pve purposes. BE was unique in that it was a class that specialized in buffing non-combat classes. ranger was a lot of fun too.
i do not miss being killed by my mind being targeted: the only bar that you couldnt heal, except for CMs who would take a whopping 250 mind wounds each time they healed mind. so in essence, you had a mind bar that you couldnt heal, not even by a medic or doc, and classes that specialized in taking it down. so whats the point of playing anything but a rifleman or 2h swordsman? not much. you could stack def and be a fencer/whatever. or you could be a cm and have 3 dots that went through walls, never missed, and each one did as much damage per tick as a single weapon attack.
back before ch nerf, you could have 3 pets, 3 faction npcs, and a nasty prenerf probot and be your own 8 man army. that was kinda cool, but again, broken.
then you take a game that has more non combat and support classes than combat classes and throw in an alpha class that requires no wep smith, no armor smith, can tank, heal, do ranged and melee dps, cure wounds, basically negating the need for every aspect of class interdependency. with the initail promise of perma-death quickly taken away, THAT is what ultimately killed the old game. it was devs responding to just about every player grinding jedi and whining about their shiny new alpha class.
so my advice, just enjoy what you can with what you got now. if you dont like it, theres the door!
Ref:Foomerang
Hosal, I have NEVER said Pre-CU was perfect or the end-all MMO. I couldn't stand the combat and it lacked content. It was still a very rich MMO with a complex system of community.
This issue has NOTHING to do with Pre-CU being perfect or not. It has everything to do with the unethical and ILLEGAL manner in which SOE treated the customers for 8 months. It has everything to do with you people viral marketing on the net in favor of a company who treated so many in an unethical and illegal manner.
Some of you don't seem to get that. By taking a stand WITH YOUR MONEY against things like this it helps to prevent it from happening again. By supporting it LIKE YOU'RE DOING sends them the message it is simply ok, and people don't mind. Heck, you'll take it one step further and actually go out and advertise this game for them, saving them even more money.
Sue them if you got cheated and it was illegal. I'm sick of me and my friends and supporters of this good game coming in and flaming up my forums. Go to the veteran refuge and whine about how "cheated and illegal" SOE did you. Quite frankly i don't think anyone on this forum other than the flamers want to listen to the crap. I know i don't. But keep the flaming going, because i know it will.
If you join the kettemoor server get in contact with me on Hosal Amaris, or anyone with the Novous guild logo. Thanks!! Look forward to playing with you!
Well Hosal, I'll be happy to debate you on why the game is NOT good if you like. You are sitting here claiming it's a good game but the majority of people overwhelmingly disagree with you, and they spend their money elsewhere.
The combat is horrid. Classic RPG combat, dumed-down, sped up 5X to simulate the appearance of "fast" combat. Large scale battles will always fail in SWG because the combat system puts a major local stress on the servers. Combat was much better Pre-CU, and I didn't like Pre-CU combat.
The economy is busted. Dumbed down economy to permit loot drops. Decay removed which lessens the need for crafting altogether. A rich and complex player-driven economy scrapped for a simple kill/loot system.
Instances. Yep, the dreaded word in todays MMO games. Instancing is a cheap and easy way to give cooke-cutter experiences to the consumer robbing them of exploring new worlds, new areas, and basically removing sandbox elements even further.
Professions. Some of the WORST in any MMO I have ever played. Forget the fact that Pre-CU had well over 30 professions, but the "iconic" professions are elementary and busted. Smuggler... What's the purpose after all these years? What exactly do you smuggle? Officer, built for large scale battles, oops, combat is busted so large scale combat isn't viable. Jedi, nerfed and nerfed until they may actually end up as ghosts running around the server unable to speak to other players. Crafters! Now that's a good one. What useful items are you crafting? How about combat as a crafter? Not really a point is there...
Bugs. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Go to the official forums and check out the list of bugs that have been present since 2003 and 2005. Go play WoW and see how much rubberbanding or spawning in rocks you see. My bet is it won't happen once, and the WoW servers are full of players...
You claim it's a good game but when compared to other MMOs it falls short in most areas. The best parts of the game come from Pre-CU, the rest is just a poor clone of WoW. That is how the CURRENT game stands. SWG has less than 10,000 subscriptions. That means it probably has less than 5,000 players.
The plug needs to be pulled. It's a disgrace to Star Wars fans and MMO games everywhere. Nevermind what SOE/LA did, how they did it, look at the game and what MOST people think of it. It's dreadful. They secretly coded and went live with an AWEFUL game.
Debate all you want, I'll still be playing this game tomorrow..the next day, and so forth. Everyone talks about subscriptions and stuff, where's the proof of only 10k subscribers? You may not like it, but a vast majority do. That's why vet's return daily. Read proof, yes..the game is not "the best" never said it was. But if it was as "AWEFUL" as you say, then there would not be active subscribers. It has improved alot since the drop of NGE. Thanks for your input and own opinion though.
~you are not talking to me but i'll adress some points you make,.. starting by one i hate ,,, decay... decay was the most stupid thing in swg, andmade either people grinding quenquers and pikets in short and underwear with second hand quality items so they not risk decay on the good stuff. and sadly that good stuff rarelly was used... and i do know what i'm talking, since i had a full suit or armor and top of the line crafted weaponry that i basically never used so it wouldnt decay...
as a result, even when the use of good items was needed , the risk of decay made people affraid. I had probably tghe best de-10 pistol crafted EVER in SWG with legendary kray tissue and 89x dmg before power up s , and it rarely left my bank safety depostit box. Think i fired it ten times....
let's go on the second. combat... better pre cu? not sure... everypne put that attacks in macro, queued actions and that was it. Oh wait, no it wasn't.. you either had attacks that dmg the mind or you would lose in pvp.
my combat routine was:
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
/torsoshot
/eyeshot
/eyeshot
and it got even better the moment i had a sonic weapon...
And to ensure you survived as much as possible, everyone stacked dodge and melee/ranged defense . Oh and since there were some profesions that had more base dodge and defense than others, everyone ended up being either tka or having fencer on his template. that was the truth about about combat.
lets see waht we had more.... yea we didnt had isntances,, apart the corvette, we had some nasty caverns , that almost none visited, apart the akuan cave to get the +melee defense rings, and the temple of exar khun for some rifle if i remember correctly.
crafters did weapons and armor, ents and doctors buffed and the rest passed all the time either:
a) grinding profs to unlock jedi
b)running rancor missions in solo groups in dathomir
c) nailing nighsisters or krayt dragons for crystals and pearls.
d) jedis grinding in the "end of the world" to not get visibility
e) a few select BH running jedi missions, i got really good at getting people afk or loading and in 4 seconds could make a jedi lose days of playtime cause i stalked then afk. i even PERMADEATHED some dude cause i got in afk and killed him, but the mission didnt complet so i could clone camp him . and thats how conniver, the second person to unlock jedi on my server was permadeathed 3 times. he got so depressed he quited playing after.
there were people complaining on the boards about balance all the time, about eyeshot, combat medics poisons, tka and defense stackers, and the fact that melee dominated the combat on a SW game- and we are not talking about jedi per se, but any kind of melee'r. oh and about weapons with mind dots. then there were people complaining about lack of loot, what reduce pve to running missions or nailing a small number of special beasts (krayt's ackalay gorax).
that was swg pre cu/nge. ANd i actually liked it because i was on the upper part of the food chain. Only because of that. Was in a guild of extreme hardcore players that controlled the server economy, and as such ended up being able to do whatever i wanted . But have the perception and insight that many didn't.
if they havent reduced the number of professions (and that was the bad blow) and actually took time to polish the CU and the NGE, most wouldnt even complain.
Hosal, No one including the former players are saying the Pre-cu was some mythical perfect bug free game. The overwhelming majority however found it to be a much much better foundation of a game than anything SOE has pushed out since, but it was unfinished and mismanaged and thus lacked retention power. Instead of trying to finish the game post launch Sony worked on expansion packs and secret game revamps in spite of what the players wanted and was promised.
People kept resubbing over and over and over again, because they wanted to play the game, but it just was never finished. The concepts though were outstanding, where as they are not so great anymore in comparison.
The original game was not by any means a failure, just the company managing it was. If they had even once tried to do what the players wanted things might not have ended up as they have.
See now if you feel they took your money and they aren't entitled to it or werent then go and get it back using lawyers and such
They didn't take any money that I didn't give them to play a game. I quit for awhile and I stopped paying and then one day I went back and my characters were intact and my inventory was intact and I put my credit card info in again and started playing.
I lost nothing and they took nothing. If you feel differently that's fine however I played a game that existed and then I left for a time until they did something to make me want to resubscribe. The software still works I have the little disks (well not trials of obiwan I just got that and it was a download only..) but anyhow....
On a side note sony wasn't obligated to keep my characters intact and in moth balls for 3 years but they did they own the characters not me I just rent them. I got a pretty good deal and lost nothing but did come back to find I had characters that were not missing one item.
I'm sorry you feel ripped off however as I said ad nauseum as an adult with my own little pea brain and who makes my own decisions I dont feel I was ripped off and have voluntarily with no qualms what so ever put money down on a monthly subscription fee again to play a multiplayer game that I enjoy moreso then any other MMORPG I have played passed and present. That's all there is too it. I"m not betraying anyone or condoning anything neither is anyone else who chooses to pay money for a game.
Please feel free to do your own thing but dont hate on other players because they wont do what you want them to do and I wont force you to come back and play a game you hate run by a company you hate okay?
waot. let me see. you think people should stop playing a game they like for a subjective question of principle that MIGHT not even be shared by everyone, just because you think so.... Jesus man, the only stand i am taking with my money is to have fun. something i have atm with swg. when I stop having i'll terminate my subscription. the truth is i'm not going to lose my lifetime trying to redeem whatever.
Stockholm Syndrome... That's all I can say.
I don't think this game help anyone hostage...
Veni, Vidi, Vici