Talk:Star Wars Galaxies/Archive 1

Untitled Discussion
Truly, the publishers of SWG show their competence here, on their own boards (warning, over 3500 messages from eloquent, dissatisfied customers in this thread.)

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=39804
 * I think there needs to be a little more NPOV on the reaction to the game. Opinion was a little more negative at launch because some of the features discussed during development were not present during launch. This is a big weakness of game reviews - they don't often look back at the game after 6, 12 and 18 months etc. A year on, many would agree the game has improved vastly - sure, some are still disappointed but game reviews for a MMORPG are barely relevant. Barneyboo 11:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * ^To the above poster: Note an Imporant thing though, the official forums only contain posts from people currently subscribed to the game. If you view posts elsewhere on the web, such as on IGN's SWG Vault, the number of people saying they'll come back and reactivate their accounts thanks to this or try the game whereas they never had before, as well as veteran players that may have taken a break or left the official forums because they felt they contained too much critisizm, outnumbers the number of negative posts. I don't have a personal problem with you writing whatever you want, as long as it's 'encyclopedical' and not over-dramatized, and the statistics about the non-official message boards and returning/new players remain in the article. I can count up the exact amount of members on IGN who have spoke for or against the changes. Thanks!


 * ^To the above poster: "All these nonofficial forums" are all anecdotal evidence. I don't think anything beyond the official forums or official numbers should be used.  Someone saying they'll return on a non-official forum does not guarantee anything.  They could just be trolling for flames.--Dc2005silk 15:32, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


 * There's nothing unique about the official forums in that respect. If someone posts on the official forums that she's leaving the game, why is that more credible than someone posting on another forum that she's coming back?  69.204.116.80 14:39, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh I agree completely. Someone posting "I'm leaving" is anecdotal as well.  But the fact that it is on the official forums proves that the person has an active account.  (You can only post on the forums if you have an account.)  That at least proves that the person is actually subscribed currently.  If they post a goodbye message, and there are no posts after the date they said their account runs out, that shows for the most part that the people are actually quitting.

All the same, if someone posts "I'm staying, I love the NGE!" on the official forums, you can pretty much guarantee that the person is subscribed and will stay for a while. If there are more "I'm leaving!" than "I'm staying!" on the official forums, that shows that at least among the active forum community - people are leaving. These are often the same people who have held important positions among the fan community. Even the managing editor of SWG Stratics has publicly stated he's moving to World of Warcraft. I did the same myself. Also, on 'theforce.net' Sony Online has publicly admitted that 10% - 20% of the players have quit. Although they still do not release official numbers. I'm willing to wager that they aren't 1/10 of WoW's numbers. --Dc2005silk 15:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

From the CBS Report, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/21/tech/gamecore/main1335511_page4.shtml, Quote SOE President John Smedley on the situation pre-NGE: "There's a reason that we did this. The story ... is kind of getting lost here ... the game was losing subscribers. We had to make this game more accessible to a wider audience or eventually we would not have a business,". Thus it seems numbers were already dropping Pre-NGE, and NGE was a way to keep the game alive. Also the article goes on to say, "Despite a multitude of furious postings at the Star Wars Galaxies forums about the NGE, Smedley told me the postings are only a vocal minority. Most players, he said, are in the game." Thus I have removed the following paragraph from the NGE section, "In the wake of these changes, many players returned to the game, but many also left. Additionally, the new game was not selling nearly as well as anticipated, not even making the top 900 on Amazon.com.  This has led to a dramatic loss in subscriptions to the game in its early career, as there has been a sporadic influx of new players to replace the mass "exodus". " UaConchobair, 03:33 3/4/06

Major POV by anons
I was looking at the recent edits and there is some major POV now in this article about views on SWG and Combat Upgrade in particular. I noticed a line "its now very hard to become a Jedi". I encouarge a purge of all such edits, but dont want to revert all the anon additions as some are valid. Opinions? -Husnock 06:32, 22 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree that the article seemed overly colored by opinion. As this is somewhere that someone looking into the game might go for info, I don't nessecarily mind the inclusion of opinons but I'd also like to see some positive spins given if the negative stuff is kept.  I'll try to take a look and see if I can find areas that can be reasonably edited, but will hold off to see if we get more commentary here.  --Syrthiss 19:14, 29 July 2005 (UTC)


 * A view such as "jedi are the hardest class to obtain" would've been a better alternative than deleting, since it would be an accurate representation of the way the game is set up (Jedi's take a considerably longer time than any other class since it's hardcoded in you can't go any faster than everyone else). - Moocats 10:48, 18 Aug 2005 (GMT-6)


 * FYI Jedi are now a starting class as of December 15 - so this part of the discussion seems moot.--Dc2005silk 15:28, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Cleaned the article up a bit
There are still some things that I dont like how they flow. If nobody gets to them before I do, I'll clean them in a day or so. --Syrthiss 14:55, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

does anyone have the game??
does anyone actually have this game or are you just telling what you know about it?


 * is this a serious question? yes I have this game and play it currently. --Syrthiss 21:06, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I too have the game, but sometimes the oppinions of those who play the game interfere with the facts, but then again, how can you talk about Star Wars Galaxies without ever playing it...--Bob Wier 20:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I have the game as well - and am relegating most of my contribution to the discussion rather than jumping into the main page in order to maintain a seriously neutral standpoint. I don't think that should preclude one from saying things like "SWG had a bug that made characters taller than buildings." so long as you don't add "SOE sucks." to the end of it.--Dc2005silk 16:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Bounty Hunter proffession
the bounty hunter profession is based on hunting and killing npcs and/or jedi players. the developers seem to have recently made this profession revole around mainly hunting the jedi PLAYERS instead of npcs. the jedi that were aparently seen by any npc or player will be shown on the bh terminals and hunted with a significantly larger bounty than the npcs. though the npcs do drop money and items, killing jedi increase pvp ratings and about 20k (or 20,000) more reward money. the jedi players were also significantly weakened because of the combat upgrade or CU. the only good part about the new system is that it marked the end of perma-death where jedi players would be permanently killed as the name suggests. Bounty hunter is a great Professsion to make money.


 * I don't understand your reasoning. Yes, BH are focused around hunting and PvP, but they have certainly not made it "revolve" around killing Jedi.  Their last few patches, for that matter, were meant to increase NON-jedi hunting measures, such as offering 'elite' or 'boss' marks that were worth up to twice as much and dropped very rare loot.  20K isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to some of the items that can drop off these special marks (upwards of 1 mil for rare items).  Jedi are currently, without a doubt, the top end damage class, hands down.


 * I also cannot, for the life of me, see how making Jedi as common as potato chips and unable to permanently kill them, a good thing. I could care less about the storyline and how Jedi are supposed to be "rare", I'm just worried about the sudden overflow of "l33t" jedi I've seen, where they think they're better than everyone else and deserve preferential treatment over all others.  A decent amount of research will show that the general population thinks otherwise of the above remarks. - Moocats 09:38, August 22, 2005 (GMT-6)

Does anyone else think that certain sections of the article are totally biased in favour of Jedi instead of BH? It's completely ridiculous.

No mention of +Cloak+, Force Run, the /Duel Bug or Armour Break. I think I'm going to be heavily editing this article when I get time. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tommo565 (talk &bull; contribs).


 * Frankly, I'd rather see most of the Jedi/BH crap get removed. It's mostly moot now, given the NGE; at best, a brief mention of the controversy (which, I believe, only got rolling after the CU) may be in order.  Powers 18:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
Wanted to take a second and explain why I removed some of the criticisms. At the moment, I feel the article has an ok level of NPOV. There is negative stuff, and positive stuff, and a lot of plain info. When you start adding items like caused many players to quit the game re the aug 16 patch, you need to have something to back it up IMO. Anecdotally, I know a lot of players who didn't quit the game because of yesterday's patch. --Syrthiss 02:00, August 18, 2005 (UTC)


 * I didn't quit just because my XP was nerfed and made invisible. I'm still having fun playing on Bloodfin as a Novice Creature Handler / Growing Bio-Engineer.  I imagine 90% of the people who say they'll quit are exaggerating and will get used to the new patch.  - Moocats 09:11, August 18, 2005 (GMT-6)


 * NPOV seems to be completely shot with recent changes regarding the NGE. There are a couple of paragraphs in particular that don't even try.  Unfortunately, I don't trust myself to be able to maintain NPOV, either, so I'm not going to make any changes.  69.204.116.80 13:08, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Change, NGE, Console
I have a feeling that SWG is about to change again, just like it did after CU. But this time I have heard that perhaps there will be a version of SWG coming out on the console. If someone could confirm this than maybe we could get some more info on it. I know there is a small section on NGE, but if any of you look at the NGE forums, the NGE FAQ, or even get a chance to play it (though the servers are always full on TC) I think we should expand. Any feedback?--Bob Wier 20:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * According to SOE the plan for consoles was scrapped. There are websites linking to old announcements for X Box, X Box 360, PS3, PS2.  These are all old pages for the most part, although I'd keep an eye on the PS3 one.  It is completely unconfirmed - and according to SOE (like that matters) it isn't happening for the forseeable future.--Dc2005silk 15:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

So, what if?
I will be getting this game soon, and I am wondering, can the player, if he/she wishes, go on a killing spree of all of the other players? Not that I would be doing that, just wondering. The Wookieepedian 08:20, 23 November 2005 (UTC) No, unless the others are from another faction and not on leave (off duty).


 * I'd suggest waiting until February. There are rumors that it may shut down, and even if it doesn't there is a distinct possibility the game may change again.

There is no content past level 30 and according to SOE it will not be 'finished' until June.--Dc2005silk 15:34, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

subscribers
In the part that mentions the subscribers hoping to get past the 1 million mark, not only has lineage but also games like final fantasy 11 and World of Warcraft (last i heard it was 4 million). I thinkthis should be updated to reflect this. 68.153.29.23 19:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

subscribers addendum
SWG according to MMORPG.com had at last count 250,000 active subscriptions. World of Warcraft has hit the 5 Million Subscription mark. NPOV you can have - but how is a relatively unknown IP from Blizzard smacking the shit out of STAR WARS if there is more positive to SWG than negative?

I was in one of the 120 player Metropolis cities... last I checked I think 1 or 2 of us are still there post-NGE.

--Dc2005silk 22:16, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


 * World of Warcraft isn't really a fair comparison. A quick look at subscriber numbers here shows that WoW pretty much blew everything (including EverQuest) out of the water.  As of July SWG is in 6th place overall, only slightly behind EverQuest II.


 * It's too early to see the full effects of the NGE, beyond personal anecdotes and original research. There should be published sources showing the subscriber loss soon enough. The Masked Sombrero 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Everquest & Everquest II are both also run by Sony Online Entertainment. A big thing that I run into on many message boards is that Sony's business practices are the downfall of these games. By all accounts - Star Wars is a more popular intellectual property than Warcraft. I would wager that if either Blizzard or Cryptic were running SWG - it would be much more popular. Let's not forget that the day that Star Wars went live no one could log in. Or game breaking bugs such as characters showing up as 50m tall, or the Stormtroopers showing up as 2 inches tall, or landspeeders that could not be dismissed and resulted in a city full of hundreds of landspeeders on fire. I have screenshots of these, as well as many many many other interesting bugs that have been pushed live by Sony Online. If Sony released finished games and listened to their testers who play on the TC server who say "Do not push this live yet." SWG would be much more popular. Players feel like they haven't been listened to - and end up paying $15 per month just to alpha-test. Also - I wouldn't hold your breath on Sony releasing numbers. They only refer to 'units sold' rather than active subscriptions.--Dc2005silk 16:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC) DC2005SiLk

The World of Warcraft phenomenon is, largely, unexplained as of yet. Some folks are predicting the bubble will burst soon, but with the first expansion on the way, it's impossible to say for sure. Best guess is that WoW hit a sweet spot in the evolution of MMORPGs and brought a LOT of Blizzard's vast online fanbase (the Diablo games, Starcraft, and Warcraft III) into the genre. Coupled with WoW's quick advancement and other gameplay features, everything clicked into place.

SWG came out over two years before WoW, perhaps before the genre was mature enough to attract large segments of the general Star Wars fanbase. Also, SWG was designed from the start as less a 'game' and more a 'virtual world'. That is the source of complaints about lack of content -- Raph Koster and the other original devs wanted the players to provide the content, with the game just there to provide the mechanics (more or less). And indeed, it seems those who have had the most fun in SWG are the roleplayers (who love to make their own content) and the PvPers (whose content consists of other players). Unfortunately, those two populations are not large enough to attract 'blockbuster' numbers to the game.

The NGE seeks to change that. Grant McDaniel has said as much (no word yet on what Koster thinks of it, but given his position in SOE, one assumes he must have signed off on it). It appears they're keeping as many of the 'virtual world' features as they feel they can, and putting in more 'game' elements to attract the rest of the MMORPG and Star Wars bases. Time will tell if it succeeds. 69.204.116.80 14:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Time *will* tell. But WoW only went live when Blizzard was convinced it was in a finished state.  SWG went live when the development needed an infusion of cash to continue development - where people couldn't even log into the game on the first day, and to this day SWG is in an alpha-state.  The early reviews tore SWG a new one with all the bugs and crappy gameplay.  I still have screenshots of the 50 foot tall characters, hundreds of burning landspeeders, and other bugs which were pushed live.  SWG *still* pushes bugs live.  Even when these bugs are made public and testers on the TC server plead for changes not to go live because they'll break the game - boom SOE pushes it live and then refuses to admit there are bugs.  It's SOE's business ethics more than it's game.--Dc2005silk 15:00, 27 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It's very rare for a MMORPG to be fully operational on the first day. WoW was nearly unplayable for the first few days because of server crashes and latency issues, especially the "loot bug".  The only MMOG I've seen that didn't have launch problems was City of Heroes. The Masked Sombrero 00:09, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It's very rare for a MMORPG to be in an Alpha state nearly 2.5 years after going live no? Alpha State being defined as 'all things which are supposed to be in the game are not yet in' - once we get that we'll be in Beta.  Most MMORPGs hover around beta status for a long time until the first expansion.  SWG hasn't even hit beta yet and they've released 3 expansions (many things from each expansion were broken).  Every other MMORPG I've played from CoH/CoV, EvE, WoW, SWG, Everquest, etc. - I've only been amazed at how lackluster of a performance a Star Wars game is given.  WoW ahd trouble the first few days because they were unprepared for how popular it would be and the servers were overloaded.  I can forgive that - because at least the game was in a finished state.  SWG on the other hand was pushed live with varying versions of code that caused game crashes and inability to log in.  The guy who headed development for SWG outlined some basic rules to follow when running an MMO.  SOE has broken every single rule that he laid out.  --Dc2005silk 15:34, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Disabled Gamers Cut Off By SWG's NGE
Dear guys writing this article:

Great article on SWG. I played from launch til NGE, over two years. I was Namav Forsirn on Chilastra, the renowed weaponsmith.

Here is my unabashedly POV take on SWG. SOE has turned it into a 9-profession FPS-style game solely for the kiddies, and removed mouse-only capability so you can only play with keyboard, so no disabled people can play now. Those gamers got the only life where they can walk, ripped away, not just horribly altered. I'm mourning. Does anyone care how incredibly HENIOUS and CALLOUS that is? Doubt it, as usual we're a tiny slice of the gamer demographic that is never even on the radar, but the demographic most reliant on games to communicate. Please put us on the radar.

Imagine logging on one day and you can't move at all. That's exactly what happened to me due to the NGE. :(

Am I bitter? Hell yes. I'm perma-boycotting SOE.

Please cover disabled gamers. There was a big thread about this on the SWG forums. No one listens or cares. Please care and add this to the article, if only in one sentence.

Thank you.

Nick


 * I refuse to play SWG any longer, but if you're still interested SOE has announced a 'mouse-only' control in the next publish for the disabled who only have the use of one hand. It remains to be seen if it works as intended (according to SOE everything does) - but even if it does the game is just not fun at the moment.  --Dc2005silk 15:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I echo the sentiments here. I use only mouse controls myself... and know how vital mouse-control was for the disabled gamers. When I first started this game I though how equaliing the game was for a great many people. Now... I feel so betrayed post NGE... Now, I have gone to Second Life, though you still have to use a keyboard to move and the graphics less polished, I have had nothing but positive interactions with the various customer service details of the game.Drachenfyre 20:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

CHANGES
Today I've added two extra things to the trivia section and created branches to mention the expansions of Star Wars Galaxies in the trivia area. I've mentioned both expansions as well as Expanded Universe characters encountered in SWG.--Dc2005silk 15:49, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Wars of SWG
I added a cleanup notice to the "Wars of SWG" section. Never having played the game myself I found it extremely confusing and full of POV language and I don't know enough about the game to clean it up myself. --TheKoG 07:50, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


 * The whole article is in need of serious revision. I've been working up the courage to give it a go, but haven't yet.  The "Wars of SWG" section is indeed one of the areas most in need of work, though.  Powers 16:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)