Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
I Quit Long Ago - Did the GCW update work out well?
bleed0range
Member Posts: 109
I think it was GU15 maybe? It was set to be released not too long after the zombie thing last year. The big GCW update. I was wanting to know if any current players could tell me if the update is significant enough to warrant returning? I don't really want to re-sub but I remember that update having a lot of promise. Did it end up being as good as it sounded like it might be?
Comments
I played the vet trial, which was still going on when the GCW update was released.
At first, some people played it, because it "was something to do". And some people played it, because it made GCW absurdly easy to get, especially for crafters and ents, which had specific content they could do and get GCW, something not easily done before. To put it in perspective, I got 50k GCW in one day, and I did not even fight all the battles.A few people kept playing the city invasions, to get the no trade tokens for some no trade rewards, as some people seem to be willing to do. And like many other things, I will admit, they were fun, the first few times, until the shortcomings became more apparent.
First, the invasions caused/cause massive lag when there are toom many people in the same place, and with any new content like this, a lot of people went to do it, and as a result, things became a slideshow. Next, the way cities could be attacked was not particularly well thought out. Players could attack the city defenses and not be attackable by other players, this was generally considered poor design, because often, you sat there and watched people destroy the defenses you spent time building and could do nothing to stop them, as they were not PvP enabled. Also, the poor layout of static spots for defenses meant that many of the defensive structures could be attacked from odd angles and behind walls in cities, not even letting the defenses defend themselves. And finally, the bugs. Lots of bugs. Cloning problems. NPCs not spawning. Cities not actually getting an invasion and getting skipped. And the best one: the defense general (in bestine particularly) received buff from the towers built in the city, increasing his damage output. As you destroyed the towers, this buff was supposed to go away. Except that it didn't. The general got some ridiculous damage bonus, +800% I think, and was 1 shotting people through full buffs and armor and defensive skills.
And the "rewards" for all this stuff was another bunch of uninspired, no trade crap, not as good as the stuff the TCG puts out.
To answer your question: no, it was not as good as it was supposed to be. In typical SOE fashion, the execution was poor. No, it is not worth subscribing for, as I am sure many fewer people are doing them now, as the no-trade rewards have all been gained. Plus, populations continue to fall, all servers but Starsider and Flurry are mostly dead, including longtime heavyweights Bria and Bloodfin. Not on SS or Flurry? Even more reason to not bother.
I at least got to see all the stuff for free, or for the price of an email sent to SOE saying I didn't get the vet trial activation, which they then enabled. I would have been upset had I paid for it.
I've got a little mini-GU15 review over on the Vet board if you want more details but basically it was another good idea / poor execution deal.
Think of it as 3 new battlefields to play on or 6 if you count doing both Offense and Defense in each city. Once you've done them each once ........ Also as BVet said the lag they caused was bad. The original plan was to do just 1 city every 3 hours but as the lag 'fix' they did all 3 at once thinking it would spread the pop out and cut down the lag. Well it spread the pop out but even on SS there weren't enough players to go around so you ended up with all the Imp's at Bestine, all the Reb's at Karen and a low mix at Dearic. With the exception of the first couple of days there were never enough players to have good fights. Then throw in the Pvp / PvE at the same time and the fight numbers go down even more.
As far as the planetary control and the upcoming space control portions. Didn't see where that really had much of an effect.
Wait for a vet trial or go with a free one and check it out prior to tossing sub money in the pot.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Well said Burntvet. I logged on to Bloodfin during my vet trial and I could not believe how dead the server had become. In fact, I believe the GCW update was a significant factor in the death of Bloodfin. Many players, and even entire guilds, transferred/rerolled to Starsider or just all out canceled. Some servers are so devoid of players that there are not even complaints being made about the low population any more - like Gorath.
Just logged on a friend's account last weekend, and IMO no, Flurry is freaking dead.
Sadly, not even close.
The SoE Devs (or people directing them) have no clue what the playerbase is asking for. How they can be so disconnected from their players astounds me. They may "hear" what we're saying, but it's kinda like me going to Russia and trying to order a cheeseburger with no onion, no mustard and light ketchup...they simply don't understand at all what we want.
It worked out pretty well for me in terms of additional PvP content, with the new battlefields in as well it means a night of PvP can be quite varied as you hop between the usual contest for occupation of the city of Restuss, go to the invasion cities when the invasion is on and pop in to battlefields when the mood takes you.
If they could get the player places base system fixed it would be fantastic. There is some concept work being done on this by SWG players here for those that are interested: GCW Player bases: Input needed
I don't personally get too excited about the planetary control system, but I know players who do spend a lot of time making sure that their faction owns the majority of zones on a planet and this has since transistioned to the space portion of the game.
I'm not sure if the Test Center server is available right now, or if anyone will be playing on it, but if it is you can log on there with a trial account and set your character to level 90 with all the uber gear and give the system a try for free.
And there goes Badgers again...
Like I said in another post, Flurry is pretty much dead, it was the second highest populated server second to StarSider but seems to be a ghost town lately. And every planet are 90-100% Rebel controlled and Imps can never get it together anywyas, what hurts the most is that when a planet is controlled you have to pay extra fees to travel and such, I would imagine that's one of the few things that drives people from the game.