Can someone please explain to me why SWG was so awesome

[Cburkejr]

Why did they shut it down and not make it free to play?

[Deacfrost]

I never played SWG, but I always wish I had (I was playing EQ2 from launch until last year).

 

There's a good article about the end of SWG in this months PC Gamer. In a nutshell, they claim the death of SWG was due to SOE panicking that everyone wanted to be a jedi, so sacrificed the entire game to let everyone do it much easier.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Deacfrost

[sly_swg]

people complaining about bugs: as the mechanics were so much more complex than the current crop of mmo's like wow/swtor (whose mechanics can be figured out be a 5 year old) the game was more prone to bugs...

 

the complexer the program, the more lines of code, the more bugs...

 

some concepts I really miss:

-spice (temporary boost for a few minutes, with a downer afterwards)

the food system: you had a stomach for food and drink, a fixed digestive rate, so find food -with the right duration/filling and finding the ideal way of stacking was a game in itself

NPC intelligence: a lot of people that played the game don't even realise this, but the AI was awesome, you had social and non-social mobs, and even herdable mobs...

some mobs even could be milked to use for uber-food!!!!

 

 

swg, besides being the best social mmo, als is pretty much the only one that poses an intellectual challenge (if you decide not to go cookie cutter)...... except maybe Eve Online I really LOATHE the fact modern mmos are so dumbed down... boredom seems to chase me away

[sly_swg]

I never played SWG, but I always wish I had (I was playing EQ2 from launch until last year).

 

There's a good article about the end of SWG in this months PC Gamer. In a nutshell, they claim the death of SWG was due to SOE panicking that everyone wanted to be a jedi, so sacrificed the entire game to let everyone do it much easier.

 

it's more complex, but for a part similar to most mmo's: devs listen to the very very vocal minority who, in stead of really looking how to play, systematically calls for buffs or nerfs...

 

what actually killed SWG was the 2 lobotomies that were performed (CURB and NGE) and the fact that even the transtion was done very poorly (gear conversion, not fun to work a month to get the best weapon of that type in all of SWG, to see it reduced to crap when curb hit)

[Pirana]

Honestly I never played it. spent most of my time during these years playing either Everquest or Final Fantasy 11.

 

Not sure I entirely understand this sandbox concept

 

also heard they actually had bounties and people hung in cantinas on regular basis

 

so why did a game that sounds this awesome/immersive get tossed in the trash?

 

 

The following video gives you a basic idea. There were a few mods used, but overall, pretty much spot on, and probably the best film for, or of the game.

 

I played five years myself and was there until the end. I won't give any of my own viewpoints as most have already been made by others in this thread. Anyway, if you haven't watched it, it's worth the view, even for those that never had the opportunity to play SWG.

Edited February 24, 2012 by Pirana

[Tamanous]

The game had a certain appeal but that ended after a very few things.

 

It had a nice look with characters and buildings but it's terrain was horrid. The physics were horrid. They implemented a slow down when running up hills that was countered by a scout style skill in one of the trees but axed it soon after launch. Hills then after were extremely silly with going up them faster than normal travel for the most part due to the terrible physics engine. Rocks and speeders were another nightmare.

 

The skill tree design was a grind fest that turned into pure exploitation of obtaining bonuses for combat. Each min/maxer basically took their main tree ... and some staff tree. So you were commando/staff tree, Teräs Käsi/staff tree, bounty hunter/staff tree etc etc. Until jedi came out and then the game became nothing more than grind out your jedi and pwn anything else for the most part.

 

In a world where Jedi were scarce, there were thousands of them everywhere.

 

Maps of planets lacked any touch of hand crafting (save perhaps Tatooine for what I remember). The worlds were square and likely tried emulating being the whole planet (instead of just one small area like in Swtor ... like it or hate it). Pve was horrid as the planets were primarily designed as place to survey and mine resources.

 

Questing consisted of about 5% designed content and story and 95% random mission terminal assignments. This of course simply turned into a grind fest for xp, money and loot. When you weren't doing that you were afk macro'ing as the game supported that fully.

 

Housing was rather nifty though and would have fit nicely into a much better game. Crafting was for the dedicated and not the casual. It was more of a sims game anyway and those who liked it will rave about it but those who are Star Wars fans and have not experienced Eve-in-Star-Wars in any of the movies, comics, novels, shows, rpg, etc etc .. because it wasn't ... were left puzzled by the poorly mixed concept.

 

The game launched well enough with tons of players and the social aspect took off but within a very few months the player towns created became ghost towns, houses never actually vanished so the landscape was ruined with previous player towns taking up the prime real estate. Cantina's went from lively locations to dancer bots with no real players online much ... then those left.

 

Then the NGE ... no point talking about that.

 

Good riddance is what I say. The SWG rose coloured glass wearing crowd will say otherwise but the few thousand players who actually stuck with that game aren't enough to voice any opinion for change. People will blame SOE but the game was doomed to fail from the start. It tried something new ... but ultimately something that wasn't Star Wars.

[sly_swg]

I disagree 100% with above post......as he starts out complaining about terrain negotiation (AWESOME CONCEPT), which incedently never was removed afaik, certainly not pre-curb (maybe in nge?).....the terrain was awesome, the huge planet size too

[DeuceKewlage]

I can sum up SWG with one video.

 

 

The most exciting thing to do, in SWG.

 

 

If the best thing to do, in a game, is to AFK dance, then there is a serious issue.

 

The issue with SWG was, they listened to their customers. F5 anyone?

 

[Drallbait]

It was not awesome for me. For example, the first quest I took in the game was completely broken. I spent 5-10 hours trying to figure out how to complete it and then read it was broken. How can the very first quest you would run into in a MMORPG not work?

 

Then leveling was often about going to a terminal that told you where to find a Bird Nest, killing giant birds, and then the Nest, over and over again.

 

But what was interesting was:

 

- Crafting system - until you got to the Harvester part which was too much like work.

- Social interaction - Who couldn't appreciate the Twilek dancing girl players buffing you in the Cantina while you sipped strange cocktails - at least the first 2-3 times.

- Profession System - mostly meh to me, but some people loved this. My friend said he enjoyed replacing someones eyebrows 10,000 times to level "Image Designer".

- Player built housing. But mostly this was a bad thing as it turned into Ghost Towns.

 

To really get into the game mechanics of e.g. PvP, you had to play for a long time just to figure out what was going on and get your pre-requisite gear.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Drallbait

[AMKSED]

No.... It wasn't

 

(See I have an opinion as well )

 

 

There was a lot more than what you described. May not have been your cup of tea but the fact remains (and this CANNOT be disputed) that everyone has their own opinion of the game.

 

I played from launch to about 6 years straight and then went back now and again until it shut down.

 

Again, opinion. I am not correct nor am I wrong.

 

To you it was awful... To me, it was the best MMO experience I have had.

 

to each his/her own, I suppose

 

A game that was shut down and is considered the biggest MMO joke ever.

[dvrocc]

SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) was ahead of its time in many aspects and was just pure fun and awsomeness till the CU (Combat Upgrade) came along which pretty much killed the game in 7 months flat.

 

Iit basically made every one force sensitive but only allowed a few jedi per server and people who made jedi before the CU found them selfs kicked back to force sensitive because there was limited spots and what made it even worse is that when a player cancledhis account that had a jedi on it the spot was never giving up or released back into the game world so people started dropping like flies.

 

The classes were really fun and there was more then enough to do though I never got to play all the clases in my 12 months worth of playing I did play the combat medic, doctor, scout, carbineer, pistoleer and the one that harvest the meat from animals which I can't remember XD

 

The Architech was the Coolest since you were the ones that could offer the player houses & cities which was really cool, also the ability to decorate your house inside with some ofthe loot you found armor, weapons or certain artifacts was awesome.

 

The two moments of awesomeness were both in 2004, when I first landed on the planet Dath-something! (can't remember the planet name) I was with my brother and a friend and I fell behind due to the dam trees behind in the way or something and I got over this ledge and was AWED by the view it as really cool then 2 seconds later I was dead, I was like ***?!? then looked around and I was owned by a rancor in two hits LMAO.

 

Second moment was in a outpost I was a scout heading out to harvest some meat and there was about 70+ people landing there since it was a busy transport spot and out of the blue this player runs in the open area screaming help and there was a Dark Jedi NPC on his butt it killed like 30 people before we all teamed up (IMPS & REPS) to take it down it was about 100 people or so 15 minutes to kill this Dark Jedi NPC, we formd a group and had the one class that had the "focus fire" skills so it was crazy and it was laggy but heck of fun XD

 

I could go on for hours but I am logging to TOR!

[Littlemayhem]

Another QQ kiddie made a thread about how he thinks SWG is superior to TOR. First off: The games are very different because SWG was a Sandbox MMO, but if you want to see why the game was so bad you can easily go on Youtube and see a lot of people's reasons why they left the game. If not you can see my review of the QQ kiddie's list here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2844990#post2844990

 

Well I played it for 4 years and liked it, so I understand why people say it wasn't a good game.

[Darth_Malevolent]

Cause it was umm... the first Star Wars MMO maybe that allowed you to inhabit the Star Wars Universe?

 

Man, bashing it in hindsight of Swtor, or Wow thats been active for 10 years is unfair. It was a good game back then, allowing you to be a variety of classes taking on numerous jobs; and for the time, decent mmo graphics

[Deewe]

I can sum up SWG with one video.

 

 

How about

the Bounty hunter?

 

Or The Sith code

 

Light sided?

 

Some nice dancing stuff:

 

To finish fun stuff:

Edited February 18, 2012 by Deewe

[AnnonSeek]

I guess the best part of SWG was being able to craft an item for 20 - 30 thousand credits and then selling it for 40 - 50 Million credits. Fun times.

[Nomeld]

pre-cu SWG was a collection of great concepts and ideas but the game itself was broken and bugged to hell.

 

it was so much more social and PvP was much more personal than any other MMO and I believe thats way it has such a lasting impact on its players.

 

I think its safe to say that the reason we keep crying a river over it is because nothing has come close to it and probably never will because the concept doesn't agree with the depends of modern MMOs where everything has to be fast and rewarded with "epic lootz"

 

Ultimately SWG was doomed to fail not because of SOE’s greed or its bugged gameplay but because it was a Starwars game that wasn’t very “starwarsy”, Almost as if the developers got so carried away with all the concepts that they forgot the brand, Lucas Arts said it had to change… so it died.

[GlaDOSowen]

Tried the SWG EMU, it was pretty good. Basic, yes, but good (and It's still in beta, so that's not much of a problem). And it's amazing that they reversed engineered the entire Pre-CU (or whatever that horrid update you guys talk about was called) version of SWG Edited February 18, 2012 by GlaDOSowen

[BraaxusKun]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R-lsVo9Kew

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwb5BGqHHtE&feature=channel

[superlizard]

Ultimately SWG was doomed to fail not because of SOE’s greed or its bugged gameplay but because it was a Starwars game that wasn’t very “starwarsy”

 

I have to totally disagree with this statement. The moment you log into SWG it is walking into the Star Wars world. What isn't anything like Star Wars is SWTOR. Its a linear generic soldier shoot em up game. Doesn't feel like Stars Wars at all.

 

You had the characters from Star Wars, ships, vehicles, huge cities wasn't alot in SWG that wasn't Star Warsy.

[TKMaster]

Ultimately SWG was doomed to fail not because of SOE’s greed or its bugged gameplay but because it was a Starwars game that wasn’t very “starwarsy”

 

I have to totally disagree with this statement. The moment you log into SWG it is walking into the Star Wars world. What isn't anything like Star Wars is SWTOR. Its a linear generic soldier shoot em up game. Doesn't feel like Stars Wars at all.

 

You had the characters from Star Wars, ships, vehicles, huge cities wasn't alot in SWG that wasn't Star Warsy.

 

I'll give you that...untill you met the community. Names like 'Idid Yourmom', rebel jedi in hotpants dueling in front of 50 stormtrooper NPC's who couldnt touch them because they were "offduty" spaming "pwnt nooobz!!!!!!!! i rapedurface!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!lawlalwlawl" 100 times a muinite or having 50 ppl stand in the Lok desert calling 500 blown speeders all at once with macros so they could intentionally crash a server or....well the list goes on and on.

 

Nope, didnt feel like SW to me after say spring 2004.