jnrose Posted September 22, 2018 Share Posted September 22, 2018 First off I need to state this is not a matter of which game is better than the other but it's merely a elevation of both games. Again the comparison is one of differences not of superiority. I love Swtor and I had loved Galaxies! A quick run down of Galaxies. Star Wars Galaxies was an ambitious open world mmo released in the summer of 2003, the servers were then shut down a month before 2012- the rise of Swtor. Star Wars Galaxies lasted close to 9 years with a major expansions and patches added to the game. Galaxies was like nothing any Star Wars fan saw at that time, a galaxy opened to you and along with an intricate system. The setting of galaxies was between a New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. A variety of 12 planets and space zones, the scale of the planets were enormous granted there was a lot of open and wasted space but it felt like a endless world. In galaxies you could be anything you wanted to be class and race. There were 10 different races ranging from a twi'lek to a wookie, customization for that time had depth, custom sliders for bodies, faces and tattoos. As for the Classes you could have been a bounty hunter, officer, merchant, solider, dancer, and more however the most desired class was to be a jedi. This is where Galaxies separated itself, to be a Jedi was not an easy feat and nor was it common. The original gameplay was stale but the class system was complex and the method to become a Jedi was very polarizing! It was special to be one and required a lot of hard work and time. Then came the major update/patch to the class system and more, this had change the game for better or worse in others opinions. The game's RPG element had become mainstream, the classes were now categorized and were to be selected from the very start of the game for players, therefore now anybody can become a Jedi. This had caused an enormous shift for players, you either loved it or hated it! The premise of Galaxies was legendary at the time and the developers work had showed. Be who want to be, fly where you want go and follow your destiny. In my opinion that's what Galaxies was, however the biggest draw back was it's story, for better or worse it was lackluster. This where I believe Bioware shined with Swtor, Swtor's diverse character arcs and stories are great! I won't go in depth into Swtor due to most of you knowing the game but the most important feature of the game for me is the story. Although the game itself is simpler than Galaxies the RPG element of immersion is incredible. My take away is Swtor brought the immersion of Story while Galaxies brought complexity and depth. Both games are great and they are Star Wars in their own way. They're two different games, developers, teams and there's no reason they both can't learn something from each other, after all it is the same galaxy. Thank you for reading this forum, I know it's only a small portion of both games but I wanted share my thoughts in a general matter. Please leave your thoughts, opinions, and anything you wish to share! Thanks again and may the force be with you, always. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andryah Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 (edited) They were separated by a decade in terms of release and evolution in the MMO market. That market has shifted radically over the decade too... largely to various freemium flexible access models dominated by a theme park approach now days. The share a very loose similarity in terms of use of SW lore and IP. AND they take place in radically different timelines. One, SWG, followed pretty much the definition of a classic sandbox MMO. Wide open, and some players love it, but most players find it to wide open and just a lot of loosely defined perpetual grinding of one thing or another. One, SWTOR, followed pretty much the definition of a modern themepark MMO (modern = largely on rails and heavily bread-crumbed so that players could follow progression in leveling without the need for internet cheat sheets, or the need to actually grind mobs for XP). Most of the playerbase in MMOs wants themepark.. no matter what they troll in forums. There was this concept a few years ago of sand-park which was a player meme to have an MMO be the best of both. A few studios jumped on the sand-park bandwagon.. but never brought one to release.. leading one to conclude they either could not figure out how to do it well, or it was tested and deemed essentially to be sandbox style in terms of player popularity (which if you research sandbox MMO history... is pretty niche and generally not able to capture high market share). This is a discussion topic that likely will just go in circles as there are strong fans of each game and they will be happy to tell you why their favorite is better then sliced bread and how the other one is like gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. There will even be a few who claim it is the bread stuck to the bottom of your shoe and that gum is still chewy goodness. There is no better, or best.. there is simply different preferences by different players and you can play either today... because SWG got EMUed and is out there on an unlicensed basis (which considering Disney owns all SW related IP and is generally pernicious in protecting IP... is a bit surprising to me). Edited September 23, 2018 by Andryah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshenK Posted September 23, 2018 Share Posted September 23, 2018 An outstanding post really. SWG Pre-CU was one of the single greatest MMO's ever made. Everyone loved it I never saw one bad thing said until the dark times... Until the NGE... The NGE killed what was once the best game ever and if SOE had heard the players out all they had to do was fix a few small things and SWG and WoW would have been neck and neck. And just look around the WoW game doesn't work anymore, even people are leaving WoW big time with Blizzard scaming people to keep them in. If Disney was smart? They would hire the guys keeping SWG alive and relaunch it with a new coat of paint and fixes all around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annabethchase Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 .... Everyone loved it I never saw one bad thing said until the dark times... Until the NGE... I hated it. Most disappointing game I've ever played. It should have been fun but instead was mostly wandering around doing absolutely nothing at an incredibly slow pace. Kept giving it chances off and on for the entire run of the game and never found it even to be tolerable. Best part of the game was the standalone card game that was available on the launcher without even logging in to the real game. I found FFXI to be a much better game in the same era. LOTRO as well. SWG was just a huge pile of nothing IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Advent Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 I don't expect any game coming out under the Star Wars name to satisfy either sandbox or themepark gamers because Disney is enabling Lucasfilm's self-immolation and poisoning the value of the IP at a steady rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celise Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 An outstanding post really. Outstanding? hmm.. From what i am looking at of the OP's post? there is a very heavy lean if not a complete one sided point being made and almost all of the point was directed at SWG. i don't mind a person making a point about something, but if you really want to re-explore the old days? you don't need to throw in the name of SWTOR to try grab attention to it. what would be really an outstanding post is if the OP came back and finished up their opening post and put more context on why they like swtor as much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ardrossan Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 What these SWG nostalgia threads really do is make me detest a game that I never played. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celise Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 What these SWG nostalgia threads really do is make me detest a game that I never played. i only ever played SWG in trials and even then it wasn't that interesting in all honesty. from fighting on a space station to finding your way to the social hub of Tatooine. dancer was the easiest and most tedious class to level up. so you can actually play a good number of the quests once you find your way past the many abandoned player houses. my experience with SWG is limited and if i could of played again today if it had still been active, i could of apppreciated it. But it is one of those things i never got the chance to find out if it really was that good or bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casirabit Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 What these SWG nostalgia threads really do is make me detest a game that I never played. It could be fun depending on the class. What I miss the most is my traders. Combat was okay, honesty the skills we have in this game compared to the ones we had in SWG, we have a better selection of skills here than we did there. There were pros and cons of SWG as well and I know people want to paint SWG as the most perfect game, it really wasn't. If you were on the forums there was a lot of bickering and fighting just like we have here. I did love my entertainer but there really not a need for it here. The entertainer on SWG provided buffs to the combat characters but it really isn't needed here. Traders I loved but putting harverstors done not very likely here. I would like the ability to craft armor in any color I choose instead of adding dyes. A structure trader actually made furniture, not prefab kits and that is another thing I wish my crafters here could do, make actual furniture. The community was not that different than what we have here, other than you could hang out in the cantina, which is something my friends and I never did. They got buffs from my entertainer normally in our own city cantina and then we went and did things. Leveling was actually what I would call a grind unless you did the legacy and only that took you so far so then you had to acquire missions from a mission terminal to go and kill xx. Here you can get to 70 doing story missions which can be less grinding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syal Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 (edited) I miss SWG player cities... I always hop that one day, Bioware will work's on "stronghold citys", where guilds could buy a piece of land and allow their members to build their houses !) Edited September 24, 2018 by Syal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toraak Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 An outstanding post really. SWG Pre-CU was one of the single greatest MMO's ever made. Everyone loved it I never saw one bad thing said until the dark times... Until the NGE... The NGE killed what was once the best game ever and if SOE had heard the players out all they had to do was fix a few small things and SWG and WoW would have been neck and neck. And just look around the WoW game doesn't work anymore, even people are leaving WoW big time with Blizzard scaming people to keep them in. If Disney was smart? They would hire the guys keeping SWG alive and relaunch it with a new coat of paint and fixes all around. I hated SWG. I lasted 1 month during Pre-cu before going back to my previous MMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ardrossan Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 I should rephrase: It's not the descriptions of SWG that make me hate the game. It sounds similar to a lot of sandbox games that rely on roleplaying. If you like that, great, if not the actual PVE will be a bit lacking. What makes me hate the game, rather, is that it is almost always referenced to make a negative comparison about this game, like oh it would still be running if not for this game. OP actually didn't do that, though as others noted, he didn't really say much of anything about what's good about swtor compared to swg. I notice that the fanboys of swg tend to look back with rose-colored glasses, as if there were no acrimonious forum disputes or constant moaning that the game is dying well before BW came along. It makes me wonder if when this game goes we'll also have swtor fans camping the next star wars game [i'd lol if it was a cellphone game] complaining bitterly about how great this game was before x developer killed it to make room for another star wars game, and how we all loved this game and never had any complaints. Probably. The reliance on story is not likely to be repeated in a future mmo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 SWG was absolutely brilliant in a ton of ways...far ahead of it's time and an unmatched amount of player freedom, but also doomed to failure at the same time. Some of SWG's greatest strengths were also it's biggest faults (player cities vs ghost towns). The freedom to explore the Star Wars universe will remain unequaled for my lifetime I fear. SWG depended very heavily on players to make their own fun...something modern games don't have the luxury of doing. Players attention spans have shrunk and they want it all NOW, not 6 months from now. Gaming has changed a lot since the days of SWG's release. Hardcore gamers were once a niche market, but today were a billion dollar industry. SWTOR is what SWG had to become to remain relevant imo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darevsool Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 (edited) OP.. Why.....even.....make.....your....post? I loved SWG as much as anyone. I played from day 1 to the second they booted everyone off the servers for the last time. I've even played the emulators on and off for the last 5 years. The ONLY thing SWTOR has in common with SWG is the IP. I miss it, but it's been dead for a long time. And this game is NEVER going to be that game. Edited September 24, 2018 by Darevsool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odericko Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 Both are great games. If SWG was still around and being updated I would play both SWG and SWTOR since they're so different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodrac Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 I loved SWG. Best online gaming experience I've ever had. But that being said, it was my first MMO. I didn't know any better. There's no way in hell I'd go back to a grind like that. I would like to see the classless system, the complex crafting and player market, the player cities (if there was some way to keep them from becoming abandoned, lifeless eyesores) and the great times I had PvPing to defend our city again. But that grind.... never again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andryah Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 (edited) I loved SWG. Best online gaming experience I've ever had. But that being said, it was my first MMO. I didn't know any better. There's no way in hell I'd go back to a grind like that. I would like to see the classless system, the complex crafting and player market, the player cities (if there was some way to keep them from becoming abandoned, lifeless eyesores) and the great times I had PvPing to defend our city again. But that grind.... never again. Same for me. For it's time.. which let's be honest.. was at a different point in time in the MMO genre.. they provided a lot of interesting innovations.. some that worked well and some that did not. It was also the era of the average MMO topping out at about 300k players.... but WoW changed that paradigm forever (which for a time, sucked all the oxygen out of the MMO market and forced games like SWG, and other incumbent MMOs, to adapt or die off prematurely). The crux of the issue with SWG is it was complete sandbox in a largely theme park game genere... which is always a two edged sword for players (you get a lot of freedom... but it is absent any sort of bread-crumbed mission based game progression.) Sandbox MMOs are a niche in the wider player base and always has been. Sandbox also promotes a haphazard nature by players... as evidenced by empty player built communities all over the place as just one example. Edited September 24, 2018 by Andryah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wagerbane Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 First off I need to state this is not a matter of which game is better than the other but it's merely a elevation of both games. Again the comparison is one of differences not of superiority. I love Swtor and I had loved Galaxies! A quick run down of Galaxies. Star Wars Galaxies was an ambitious open world mmo released in the summer of 2003, the servers were then shut down a month before 2012- the rise of Swtor. Star Wars Galaxies lasted close to 9 years with a major expansions and patches added to the game. Galaxies was like nothing any Star Wars fan saw at that time, a galaxy opened to you and along with an intricate system. The setting of galaxies was between a New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. A variety of 12 planets and space zones, the scale of the planets were enormous granted there was a lot of open and wasted space but it felt like a endless world. In galaxies you could be anything you wanted to be class and race. There were 10 different races ranging from a twi'lek to a wookie, customization for that time had depth, custom sliders for bodies, faces and tattoos. As for the Classes you could have been a bounty hunter, officer, merchant, solider, dancer, and more however the most desired class was to be a jedi. This is where Galaxies separated itself, to be a Jedi was not an easy feat and nor was it common. The original gameplay was stale but the class system was complex and the method to become a Jedi was very polarizing! It was special to be one and required a lot of hard work and time. Then came the major update/patch to the class system and more, this had change the game for better or worse in others opinions. The game's RPG element had become mainstream, the classes were now categorized and were to be selected from the very start of the game for players, therefore now anybody can become a Jedi. This had caused an enormous shift for players, you either loved it or hated it! The premise of Galaxies was legendary at the time and the developers work had showed. Be who want to be, fly where you want go and follow your destiny. In my opinion that's what Galaxies was, however the biggest draw back was it's story, for better or worse it was lackluster. This where I believe Bioware shined with Swtor, Swtor's diverse character arcs and stories are great! I won't go in depth into Swtor due to most of you knowing the game but the most important feature of the game for me is the story. Although the game itself is simpler than Galaxies the RPG element of immersion is incredible. My take away is Swtor brought the immersion of Story while Galaxies brought complexity and depth. Both games are great and they are Star Wars in their own way. They're two different games, developers, teams and there's no reason they both can't learn something from each other, after all it is the same galaxy. Thank you for reading this forum, I know it's only a small portion of both games but I wanted share my thoughts in a general matter. Please leave your thoughts, opinions, and anything you wish to share! Thanks again and may the force be with you, always. History of Star Wars Galaxies under power of Sony online entertainment got a lot of mistakes. Wrong to have player cities with stronghold houses on the planet story map that is blocking game experience. Planet stories buildings don't look as original star wars comic books and the old republic movies. SOE and NGE development was not what we inspected and not educated for bring Star Wars comics alive. NGE stand for none Galaxies entertainment. Star Wars Galaxies had cyber online attacks like credit scammers, cheaters from game employees or people with fake resident location from people trying to theft playing for free without subscribe. Star Wars Galaxies started from 2001 before scammers and cheaters show up 3 years later. Those development came from Star Wars Galaxies could be sneaking inside Swtor or EA and messing up games. There could be people in development had online cyber crime history came from NGE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wagerbane Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 I miss SWG player cities... I always hop that one day, Bioware will work's on "stronghold citys", where guilds could buy a piece of land and allow their members to build their houses !) Disagree to have player cities on the planet map stories and ruins the Star Wars comic stories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damask_Rose Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 I was brought into SWG by a friend who is perhaps the biggest Star Wars fan you could ever hope to meet. Most of his 501st unit also started playing despite not being MMO players. What I find interesting is that they all drifted away very quickly and most never gave SWtOR a shot because they didn't enjoy their time with SWG. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunafox Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 You know, if they could've combined all the things of SWG and the story and companions of this game, they'd have an ideal property. I only played SWG near the bitter end. A friend I met in another game got me into it and in the time I played there, I found it was amazing, so different from all else I'd played. It was great, you could write a profile for yourself, you had to earn your flight licenses, and the crafting...wow. Chat bubbles, pve in space, so much open territory to explore, build on, have guild towns. Loved every minute I spent there. All it lacked was what this game offers, stories and companions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malkosha Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 I played SWG from the start and have done to the same for SWTOR. SWG wasn't very successful and was losing money. While I liked the game there is no getting around the facts and those facts negate even the most "rosy" of rose colored glasses. When it comes to SWG there is a reason they pulled the NGE and it was because they were losing money and needed to change the game. While the fans who played it may have loved it, there simply wasn't enough of them to keep the lights on and so the NGE went live hoping to rescue a sinking game. They failed. Thinking the game was the greatest thing ever and the NGE was a decisions made by the dev's on a fluke is wrong on many levels. It was done to to and save a dying game. Period. I personally believe the biggest issue was with the time period the game was set in. In that time, there were no Jedi's and the game didn't allow any. Well, at least until they tried to put some in to boost lagging sub numbers. Every SW fan wants to sling a lightsaber but to become a Jedi was a tedious feat involving mastering certain professions and it was different from player to player. Lets not even get into the "no Jedi's" cannon that reared its ugly head. That's another beast all on it's own. The Jedi thing was a total mess and failed to get the sub numbers it needed to stay alive. There were also some little things like no jumping that made the game feel under-developed. It had it's fun moments but all in all couldn't sustain a viable player base. The NGE was all about turning a sandbox game into a game on rails. The NGE alienated the loyal players and failed to attract newer players and was the final nail in the coffin. I liked the old SWG. I hated the NGE. If the old SWG was viable they wouldn't have pulled the NGE. It's really that simple. SWG failed because only a few wanted to play it. It couldn't compete with the current games at that time in sub numbers and that alone should say enough about the game. SWTOR, to me is a much better game all around and has been far more successful than SWG. There is a reason for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darevsool Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 SWG, before WOW, actually had one of the highest subscription numbers of the time. WOW, being a vast anomaly, came by and smashed everything else that was out at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darevsool Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 (edited) ideally, a mixture of the two games would have been fantastic! The original SWG profession system and original crafting system. SWTOR's story / level progression JTL instead of the on rails space that we have. The game would have never been finished. This game was rumored to cost around 300 million to develop and trying to mix those elements would have probably been a bad idea. Just look at how long Chris Roberts' space MMO (Star Citizen) has taken, and while some parts are "playable" it still isn't ready. Edited September 25, 2018 by Darevsool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts