Talked to a guy that works for SOE

[Kindreth Kin]

Do u really?Truelly? =)

[Kindreth Kin]

Know what i TRUELLY MISS? The old RSF GANG!!!!!!!!!!
I mean RSF use to be one of the biggest on the chilly server. Hell i remember when we didnt have a shuttle. had to ride from Espa. Lol. Shit i remember when fort tuskin was a challenge and you didnt dare go there without a buff. lol. and dragons where hard as hell. And every week we would hit the vette at least 5 times a week. Everyone wanted a AV-21.
I remember Vik taking me on my first group hunt on dant on the chilly server.
I also remember these little bothen running around recruiting for the RSF. NIGHTER.
Damn those were the good times.
Standing in line in cnet to get a buff so we could either go hunting, DWB, vette, pvp, geo, nightsisters or something. it was great then. Cause i miss mellee fighting. Pikeman, swordsman, TK.

[Mobus]

darkmatter said:

We all know the SWG universe is far from the real timeline that is supposed to be based.

I like to think of it as an alternative reality where everything is silly and were actually in inside a "themepark"

Hey kin!

Happy Birthday!

If you are referring to Jedi, yes, the high concentrations and public display of their sabers/powers is very against the time line, but their mere existence is probably not. It is unlikely that Yoda and Obi-wan were the only Jedi to survive order 66. In fact, we know that it was Darth Vader's responsibility to hunt down surviving Jedi. So we know that some did indeed survive the Clone Wars. How many is not said. Yoda is probably very wrong when he says "the last of the Jedi will you be." Dagohbah certainly isn't the best place to gather any kind of information. On top of its remote location, I'm sure the heavy Dark Side aura there even made it hard for Yoda to do his "yo I'm reachin' out across the galaxy with the force n' sensin' u" thing, too. lol But it is clear that Jedi are a sight not seen in the days after the Clone Wars. That is because what Jedi do remain, whether it be a dozen or hundreds, are in hiding. This isn't even to mention things like the Nightsisters and other force-sensitives...but they don't count, heh.

It is not hard to argue that there shouldn't be any Jedi other than Luke/Yoda in this time line. But it is also not hard to argue that there are more than them. The galaxy is a big place, it is unlikely that there are no force sensitives out there who have managed to train themselves to some degree, and even maybe acquired a lightsaber, or acquired the knowledge to build on themselves. Teaching themselves would explain the weakness of the SWG jedi too.

But it doesn't matter. Trying to give excuses like I am is just...comfort food! It does no good, it makes me feel better about the game but it is still against the timeline for 500 glowsticks to be swinging around at every bar fight in the Galaxy. Things like the Master Titles and people forming "Jedi Academy" guilds kind of screws things up, too.

During the days when Jedi were extremely rare, extremely hard to become, and extremely powerful...well it was believable then. It was easy to believe a handful of Jedi still existed and were in hiding. Hiding so well that people like Obi-wan, Yoda, and of course Vader had no idea of their existence. That was the point of their hiding after all. So it made sense that there were a few running around in our galaxy. What went wrong is how they started to pop up everywhere as soon as SOE decided to open them up to the masses by revealing how to become one. One day there were maybe 6, then suddenly there were 60, then 90, then 200, then 400, then the next thing you know everyone can press "Jedi" and become one, easy as that.

I think Alpha classes are a bad idea, but so is having Jedi as powerful as every other class, even if you make excuses like "well, they are prolly self taught." lol But if the mmo has to have Jedi, they better damn well kick some major non-Jedi ass when they can toggle a "Jedi Master" title above their little heads! Amiright?

If only the devs never started the hologrind. It all went downhill from there. If we never know how to become a Jedi, we'd have no where near as many glowsticks as we do now. Change how to become a Jedi when people start to figure it out, problem solved.

But of course, then that leads to the problem of everyone wanting to be a Jedi but only being able to be one through sheer luck or genius, even if you pay the same price per month as everyone else. It is no win. It sucks for customers and it isn't fair. So SOE/LA tried to compromise by making it hard, but possible with dedication, to become a Jedi. They underestimated the number of people who would morph into hardcore gamers if it meant they were guaranteed to become a Jedi. Pretty soon, making them available to everyone was the only logical choice, because everyone was becoming one in a month or two worth of playing anyway.

Just a no-win situation. If ever they make another SW mmo, it NEEDS to either be all-player Jedi, in a different timeline (one that has a lot of Jedi...), or it needs to be NO player Jedi.

The in-between thing they tried to do failed miserably. Smugglers waited 3 1/2 years to smuggle because of Jedi. Then the devs were so busy revamping and adding things to the game to make it look like less of a beta that the smuggling system smugglers finally did get sucked terribly.

And that's a wrap, I'm done ranting for at least a few minutes.

[Mobus]

kindreth said:

Well let me start by saying if SWG NGE would have come out 3 years ago like it is now i would have to still go with we would have hated it. Reason being is simple
1. NGE is way buggier then pre-cu ever was. Pre-cu had bugs but not at all like NGE does. They still have problems with the combat system. Like AOE damage percentage. Also The rubber band effect is still a issue. They still aint fixed it after all these years. And to be truthfull i dont care what SOE/LA say's, there is now way that this was the original way that they had planed the game to be. Because now it is way to WoW like.
2. there is still not enough content in the game to keep a person interrested in it after so much time. I still say that if they would have just kept adding new content to the game instead of changing the whole damn game they would still have full servers and may have had to add alot more servers. But noooooooooooooooooooo, Lets kill the only game that is different then any other game out there. I mean stop and think about it. SWG pre-Cu was totlly different then any other game that was and is out there. you had 32 different ways to go with your proffession. Jedi were Rare (the only thing i saw that they could have changed on that would have been to make where only certain amount of people on the server could have been jedi at the same time and kept perma death that way if one died someone could take their place) you could drop certains trees in you profession and regrind anouther. There was less lag pre-cu. Annimations were a hell of alot better. Pvp battles lasted forever and where fun. Not like it is now where if one side losses they go hide or run off or loged off for a hour and waited tilll the other side got board and left and they come back to fight knowing no one is there to fight except one or two people. Never was like that. Making money was alot easier for crafters and Docs because they truely had a purpose. And to be truthfull i think if pre-cu would have stuck around with JTL Space would have been alot huger. But hay that is just my thought. Hell entertains had a huge purpose to and where fun to watch. Now i will say that in pre-cu they should have done something about the AFK grinding, they should have found a way to stop it. Cause that is one thing i can truely say i never AFKed grinded. I was always at my keyboard. But as far as the core of the game they should have left it alone and SWG would not be a ghost town now.
And thanks Dark.
Sorry yall /rambling off.

Hey, don't apologize for rambling. You aren't the only one doing your fair share! lol You make many good points about precu vs NGE. And I agree with most of them. One thing we all tend to forget, myself very included, is that precu did have its fair share of very bad bugs and design problems. Remember composite armor clones? 30 minute-1 hour doc buff lines? AFK grinding you mentioned, I always forget that one. There were also things like mind damage being "THE END ALL PWN YOU NOOB THING TO TARGET1!1!!" and stun damage type being "THE END ALL PWN YOU NOOB THING TO SHOOT YOU WITH!" lol That was terribly annoying. As for 32 ways to go about your profession. Wow, that was amazingly great. Best thing about precu, even if so many of the moves didn't work. You could choose not to get those moves, after all. There were a *lot* of options, many more than just 32, because you could mix and match and truly come up with your own template. Of course there were a handful that stood up to the test of combat much better than others, but there were certainly many more than there are of classes now. There was uniqueness that is only now starting to come back to SWG, and to a lesser extent in my opinion, with the exception of a much larger choice in armor types and weapon types.

Many things about the NGE are better than precu. Visa versa applies, obviously. But if you think about it, almost all the things that are good about the NGE could have easily been applied to the precu!!! So easily! More armor types? Bingo. Done. A month or two of development time instead of years of setback 'cuz we just felt like revamping the game. Moves that work? Bingo, just fix the dame things. Why revamp the game when you can fix them in shorter time?! People weren't complaining about the system as a whole, they were complaining about very specific things. So fix those things. *sigh* I don't get those suits and devs.

The CU was two steps forward and one step back. It was a great improvement over precu, but it's backwards movement was because they changed things *too* much. They made it too hard on themselves. Instead of coming out with a revamp that fixed all the moves and fixed things like stun damage and "target that tiny mind pool for the quick incap" combat, they decided to redo more than they had to. Precu had its problems, but no complete overhauls and revamps were required, only TLC, bug fixes, and content.

Basically, the devs went about everything the wrong way! heh It is so sad. It started with continually tweaking Jedi and making them easier to achieve, and ended with the NGE being thrust at us like a pressure cooker full of shit exploding in our faces. It is like they habitually spent precious development time working on the wrong things. Bug fixes, move fixes, content...is that really so hard? Well yeah, sure it is when you are busy turning the live game into a beta (NGE)!

Sheesh, yet another flame towards SOE/LA. I'm on a roll....or something.

[Mobus]

kindreth said:

Know what i TRUELLY MISS? The old RSF GANG!!!!!!!!!!
I mean RSF use to be one of the biggest on the chilly server. Hell i remember when we didnt have a shuttle. had to ride from Espa. Lol. Shit i remember when fort tuskin was a challenge and you didnt dare go there without a buff. lol. and dragons where hard as hell. And every week we would hit the vette at least 5 times a week. Everyone wanted a AV-21.
I remember Vik taking me on my first group hunt on dant on the chilly server.
I also remember these little bothen running around recruiting for the RSF. NIGHTER.
Damn those were the good times.
Standing in line in cnet to get a buff so we could either go hunting, DWB, vette, pvp, geo, nightsisters or something. it was great then. Cause i miss mellee fighting. Pikeman, swordsman, TK.

I agree Kin. RSF was by far the best thing about SWG. It made SWG for me. All these I miss precu soooo much feelings and memories are because of how sexy sweet RSF was back then.

And you just reminded me of one part of combat the CU messed up. I thought the CU was good because it added moves that actually worked and had a purpose other than damage or a dot (like smuggler's mes for example. Pretty cool.) or the occasional cool move like feign death, but the CU was bad in that they really made non-Jedi melee combat boring. I remember trying it out and thinking "ugh, this is no where near as fun as TKM was." Now *that* was some fun. Anyone who ever was a TKM will never forget being a torrent of fist and foot, a blood-eyed, razor fisted death dozer. Swordsman was probably a more effective killing machine, but something about TKM was a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

I think I may be starting to think that even the CU was a total and complete bad idea. I used to like it, but I can't remember why anymore except for being a Jedi. Maybe that was always the reason. I was a Jedi in the CU, so I have good memories regarding it. But precu was most likely only a few well worked patches from surpassing the CU in polish and functionality of moves.

I should have jumped on the rollback bandwagon while I had a chance. Now it is like beating a hole in the ground that used to be a dead horse. =P

So when's that emu coming out? haha

[Mobus]

One last thought and I think I'm done for this very late night. SWG2. They'll make it. They have to. MMO's are a huge part of the gaming market now, and becoming a huge part of society even. They will not pass up making a SWG2. I have no doubt there will be one. I just don't know when.

Another thing I know is that there will be a beta. Every mmo has a beta! You probably know where I'm going. How many of us are going to sleep/murder/kidnap our way into the beta if there is one?

We deserve to have influence over how the next Star Wars MMO is made. Am I right?!

Now another thought: How great would it be if somehow the RSF crew made it into the beta? Now those would likely be some rewarding and exciting times!!

Just thought I'd throw out something sexy for us all to think about. I've done too much negative rambling. Like three novel's worth. lol So think about that sexy thought. RSF all together in the next SW mmo beta!

[eoro]

Sexy!

[Ehrgeiz]

I beta tested swg so I would like to beta swg2 and watch as they release the game way too early again lol.

I do want to add something, when swg first came out nobody liked the combat they all wanted a NGE style combat system. Now that its in we all want the old sytle back.

[Lezaro]

that'd be pretty cool to beta a SWG game.. except for all the bugs

[Mobus]

I agree about the bugs. But we'd get to help fix them. Finding and gathering info, especially on bugs, helps the devs out a ton. And if you can tell a dev how to reliably replicate a bug, well that is the ultimate in bug reporting hehe. I think it would be a cool feeling. Sure we may see 20 bugs a day, but if we all did our job as beta testers, that could be 20 bugs we helped the devs isolate and fix! Twenty less bugs for launch. 8)

I sure do hope that we get into that faraway beta. And I hope the companies do things right this time. You are so right Ehrgeiz, they released SWG way, way too soon.

A MMO should never, EVER be released as prematurely as SWG was. WoW and LOTRO are the only mmo's I've seen who waited as long as was necessary to come out with a polished product (I'm sure others have, just haven't played em myself). Those two mmo's were in far better shape the day of their launch than SWG is now, four years later. How about them apples? lol

[Mobus]

I booted up a 14 day trial to check out the beast mastery changes. I always loved CH, even if I never had the patience to master it. I've been reading a little about the changes. I haven't gotten high enough level to spend any expertise on beast mastery yet, though. When I do I'll try to fiddle around with it and tell you guys what I think.

forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?&topic_id=314790 Check out this thread. It is sucking me in lol. Look at the chuba balancing on its tongue on page 8! I miss my chuba named Negilum. It did such wonderful backflips! Even more, I miss my gurreck, Oliver. I wonder if I could get one in the 14 days I have...doubtful, but worth a try. I was going to try to level up pilot in 5 days to take part in a space event and see how many people turn up for them on Starsider, but beast mastery is new and therefore more tempting.

[Lezaro]

beast master isnt enough to pull me back in, check out the new theme parks though i want to hear what those are like from a guy who's played SWG and WoW

[Lezaro]

anyone else notice that as far back as you can go on the RSF forums.. this is the only one to have breaken 100 posts!

[Mobus]

Hehe, I have noticed how long this thread is getting! There's a lot to be said from us vets about SWG, indeed.

I'll try to check out the new things, but I don't know what I'll be able to do in 14 days. I won't be playing too terribly much I'm sure. So we'll see. What level is the new themepark? I'll try to check it out if I can get to an appropriate level.

So far I have noticed that people seem to go gaga over their pets. They really enjoy them. They are fun to see, and look like a lot of fun to have as well. I'll try to get one soon! I also noticed that they have done something with weapons. Damage. It is different, but I'm not sure how. Basically when you examine a weapon now the stats are a *lot* like they were precu, I do believe, as in there are the same ones. Maybe they were like that the last time I played in the NGE too, and I just forgot.

One thing that has definitely changed since I've last played is stats. I've not had a chance to check that out yet, but the rundown is in the "current chapter" notes. starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/en_US/players/content.vm?page=Current%20Chapter

They sound like good changes, but it is impossible to tell without testing them out first hand. What they seem to be doing is adding back much of the complexity that they took away.

[Mobus]

Mm, I've found some interesting reads! I highly, highly suggest you all read these. They are long, but well worth it.

First:
www.mmognation.com/2007/05/01/its-about-that-time-again/
Then the 2nd part:
www.mmognation.com/2007/05/02/sideline-designing-for-star-wars-galaxies/

You won't be disappointed. There is a special surprise in there, too, about another Star Wars MMO. I won't tell you which article or give you any more info than I already have, because I want you bums to read both of them in their entirety! /grin Seriously, unlike my own ramblings, I think his are worth the read.

PS Type "SWG" in the search box for some more articles, very recent ones (within days of today