Apparently SWG had millions of subs

[BlueArab]

From what you see in the forums, to news articles and in-game chat, it sounds like SWG had millions of subscribers when they closed it down.

 

That game was great when it came out, and then fell into a downward spiral along its eight year span. The only reason it made eight years was because of its easy to maintain, sandbox gameplay. There was very minimal development or upkeep, so it could go on, even with the <30k subs it had towards the end.

 

Looks like everyone has suddenly heard of this Star Wars game that had housing, space combat and sandbox features, and now they are demanding TOR to become its reincarnation. SWG, no matter what you have heard, was not that great of a game.

Edited January 3, 2013 by BlueArab
grammar

[Wolfninjajedi]

Its the old

 

"You don't know what you got, till its gone" thing, but in this case....ya SWG was really just meh. I mean it was fun, that you could just go around and socialize and furnish your own house/starship but that just seemed to be really the only highlights of it.

 

1. Player cities were empty and a pain to navigate through

 

2. You pretty much had to play the market or craft, if you wanted to become rich(something that not everyone could do.)

 

3. Space was empty save for a few small players here and there.

 

4. Questing was...ugh so tedious.

 

5. Players charged fortunes for modding/crafting items. Yes I understand, that the materials to make said items takes time...but this all goes back to not everyone can suddenly become rich.

 

6. Crafting was a pain in the *** sometimes, yes it was elaborate but really folks...it was a pain sometimes. You had to plant the harvesters in locations that could fit, wait, gather them up, then go to a crafting station(or if you had one there just use that), make this part to go into that part, have a specific mat that is exactly the same mat you already have, but no it has to be a specific variant of the mat.

 

7. Combat was...ehhh...

 

8. Updates took long to complete.

=======

 

Thats all I can really think of, I enjoyed playing SWG but..it wasn't all that great.

Edited January 3, 2013 by Wolfninjajedi

[Amaste]

Each game has their strong point. One thing I know for sure is SWG will be far more memorable to me than TOR could even dream of, just on the different models the games were running on. I know I'm not the only one who remembers the minute details of where I started and what I did on SWG 9+ years ago (dear god, it's almost been a decade), where as with TOR I cant even remember my first characters name from launch a year ago with it all the same quests running together in my head. =/

 

/shrug

[DarkSunRaider]

SWG vet here, Intrepid Server, Eclipse Server

 

a few things to understand ...

1) SWG was pre-WoW and at its most had 300k subs, back then that was a lot. WoW set all new standards getting subs in the millions and tens of millions.

 

2) SWG actually had forms of itself and pre-Combat upgrade, Pre-New Game Enhancement. and the final product.

 

3) SWG launched way too soon it was nothing when its started, no missions/quests just kinda wander around and explore. which for a lot of us was great.

 

4) SWG pre-CU and Pre NGE had roughly the equivalent of 32 playable classes, but they were not classes. they were professions, which you level by doing stuff of that class, if at some point you wanted to do something else you could just start doing it. if you ran out of skill points to unlock new abilities you could simple "drop" old ones you didn't use anymore.

 

5) first expansion was Jump to light speed, HUGE space combat full 3d zero gravity capable of PVP with dedicated PVP area and the ability to flag and PVP where you were. this also introduced the 3rd faction, you didn't have to be Rebel or imperial you could be a freelance pilot.

Pilot skill level totally independent of anything else only space xp raise pilot and pilot skills didn't not take away from your ground skills. so basically you had 2 full separate games in one.

 

6) player built cities, housing, player driven economy.

 

7) a very unique and at times frustrating crafting system that actually had the idea that the best gear in game was crafter mad not loot drop system that everything uses.

 

8) if you wanted to be a Jedi/sith, you had to earn it, pre CU you had to do the holo grind, where mastering one of the professions (at random for each character) would unlock force sensitivity. But then you had to learn and gain alot of force xp doing force related tasks and abilities, which is EXTREMELY dangerous as the more you did you gained "visibility" or started getting a Bounty on your head that MASTER player bounty hunter could get from there bounty board and Hunt you for cash.

 

9) as mentioned above, Bounty Hunters actually hunted players

 

For all this good sounding stuff... there was HUGE HUGE downfall. the Dev's tended to ignore player base, the game was en-mass riddled with tons of bugs and glitches. the gfx were never cutting edge day 1 and never improved at all

 

PVP system had no instances very lil reward and major griefing abilities with corpse camping.

 

Sony never really had full control and Lucas Arts back doored them made a WoW look alike and forced it on Sony and while the ship sank all parties involved blatantly let SoE take the blame and down fall for SWG epic failure of NGE

 

In time with re introducing bits and parts of the original game it slowly became at least playable, but by then was so much code written overwritten that it was just a train wreck of a game.

 

Great Concepts, Horrible execution. and is now MMO and on-line gaming industry of what NOT to do with an MMO.

 

it was never about number of subs it was about the players that loved it REALLY REALLY loved it, and that is what you still hear to this day.

[internaty]

I loved it for 2 simple resons both where patched to oblvion.

 

1: no classes.

I cant stress out enought how classes in any game ruin player's ability to custimize to personal taste.

It is the main reson why i love skyrim's leveling system.

You get better by doing,

And not getting xp and suddle become better at stuff you never did.

 

2: Very big worlds.

I know where mos eisly ancorhead and most entha are because of swg.

Admitly the player housing sucked but the offical cities where always great to visit.

 

Dont get me wrong i find swtor is way better.

 

But these two reson is what i love and miss about swg.

Edited January 3, 2013 by internaty

[doctor_atomic]

I loved it for 2 simple resons both where patched to oblvion.

 

1: no classes.

I cant stress out enought how classes in any game ruin player's ability to custimize to person taste.

It is the reson i love skyrim's leveling system.

You get better by doing not getting xp and suddle become better at stuff you never did.

 

This is the Big Lie of game design. So called classless systems quickly devolve into template systems, players rush to use the FotM skill template and everyone ends up looking the same. I recall back in AC1 I was told I had to set up my skills in one specific way or I would not be competitive. In addition, without classes you cannot have special abilities that set a class apart, if an ability is available and useful then everyone will take it.

 

It is true that class systems can be taken to stupid extremes, troopers and agents should be allowed to use pistols or rifles, for example, but class systems are still better than skill systems.

[Amaste]

This is the Big Lie of game design. So called classless systems quickly devolve into template systems, players rush to use the FotM skill template and everyone ends up looking the same. I recall back in AC1 I was told I had to set up my skills in one specific way or I would not be competitive. In addition, without classes you cannot have special abilities that set a class apart, if an ability is available and useful then everyone will take it.

 

It was no different than a system like this. There's always going to be a group of players that only want to play what's considered OP/FoTM. The fun was rolling a template or class that was considered inferior and rolling the bads on their "OP" setup.