Star Wars: Galaxies
Troubled Movie MMO tie-in from Sony Online Entertainment and Lucasarts
Shameless reblogging, I know, but this is brilliant:
MMOG Nation: Prelude to a Merge?
In which Michael gives us a heads-up about an inspired upcoming Star Wars: Galaxies event - the systematic, and organised demolition of all player housing belong to player accounts that have been inactive for a year or more - "Use it or lose it!", which is all very fair and expected, but what isn't, is the manner of the demolition - the remaining players get to do it!
Presumably, the 'Condemned' housing will be given hit-points, and become shootable. I imagine the Commando class (if it even still exists...
Episode LXXVI - DONUT WARS
It is a dark time for Star Wars: Galaxies
Faced with increasing Player unrest, The Shock
Imperial Dev Team impose more and more drastic changes
on the game, in an attempt to restore contentment to the servers.
After a somewhat bizzare skirmish with an online webcomic, involving 1200 donuts
elite teams of SOE scientists redouble their efforts on turning the tide of rebellion that even
now threatens to overwhelm Galaxies and bring massive unsubscribing indifference to every corner of
the network.
Meanwhile, on the remote moon of Slashdot IV, Bothan spies bring news of an amusing turn of events from deep
within an Imperial...
Interesting Slashdot repost:
Slashdot: CBS News Fields SWG Hatemail
Finally, we're seeing some sort of real numbers relating to the much discussed 'NGE' rework for Star Wars: Galaxies. Obviously, there's no way to verify that figure - 10k concurrent users across all 25 servers, but it's a believeable, and shocking number, and shows just how damaging a badly planned and executed patch can be, regardless of intentions: SirBruce's last data point for SWG has 250k subsxcribers in total, from July 2005. I'd guess that's much lower now, but by way of comparison, EVE Online just announced 100k subs, and regularly boasts...
Good grief...just what the hell is going on in there?
Gamespot: Trials of Obi Wan Refund Offer (Via Slashdot)
This is SOE we're talking about, right? I can only begin to imagine how angry the remaining SWG players are by now, but having the expansion you bought redendered mostly useless within a week or so of buying it would test even my limitless patience (clinical addition). You know, I was quite prepared to pass the whole episode off as just a hiccup - teething troubles, but then I recently recieved an email from one of my longtime online friends, who loved...
Ha! This just in, the day after I cancel my SOE Access Pass subscription:
Aggro Me: SWG Combat Upgrade Upgrade
Plenty of comentary abounds.
On the one hand, I respect and admire a MMO that no longer gives a toss what it's players think anymore, and who are now committed to drastically changing the game beyond recognition, over and over, until they get something that sticks. On the other, I've been burned a few times now, and at this stage, couldn't care less how much more patronising they intend to make SWG...
Welcome to SWG! Please select a character class:
Han Solo [ ]
Luke Skywalker...
In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, my usual WoW Level-Buddy has been struck with a sporting injury, rendering them unable to actually play, so in the interests of continued teamwork, I’ve spent the week poking about in other games, in particular Star Wars: Galaxies. Regular readers will no doubt know my current opinions on the whole tangled mess that is Post-CU Galaxies, and with that in mind, I decided to grind away at what I perceived to be the easiest and most far removed from combat profession in what remains of the game; Master Image Designer.
Frankly, it’s a ludicrous...
So we’ve seen what sorts of changes to combat the ‘Combat Upgrade’ has made to Star Wars: Galaxies, and been quite grumpy as a result, but what about everyone else? One of the key things that set SWG aside from The Rest, was the sheer diversity of play styles available to the new player.
Out of six starting professions, only two were explicitly combat-based; Brawler and Marksman. At last, I thought, a game that understands that I might not want to fight all the time.
Two of the other four, Medic and Scout, were certainly involved in combat by association, but had...
So I finally got around to seeing the Star Wars: Galaxies ‘Combat Upgrade’ for myself. This was mostly by accident, mind you – I only reinstalled because I wanted to catch up with an old online friend who is quite a SWG fan, and also because, with the Station Pass, I’m not actually paying for it, as such.
It’s hard to describe my feelings about it really. Regret, disappointment, loss…words like that. So much has changed it’s hard to blame any one thing, but the overall impression I have is as if the game had been lobotomised, for it’s ‘own good’....
At last, a balanced and coherent look at what the Star Wars: Galaxies Combat Upgrade really plays like:
MMORPG.com:Combat Upgrade or Combat Downgrade?
Worth a look if, like me, you still don't quite know what the Combat Balance actually is, only that it is 'Bad Ju-Ju!'.
So to sum up, grouping got buffed, soloing got nerfed, and I thought I was only joking when I said it would be Everquest II with blasters! It's a shame really - I quite liked the casual soloability of the old system, but now it seems a lot more of an exercise in downtime minimising, via enforced...
The question on most MMO Pundit's lips about now is "Lucasarts, What were you thinking!?". The folks at MMORPG.com actually went out and asked it:
MMORPG.com: Galaxies Combat Upgrade Q&A
Remember kids, you haven't been nerfed, you been "redefined and distingushed", and *mystical jedi handwave* the new game is better; you just haven't given it a chance yet. Luke Skywalker tried soloing and got his hand cut off, so why should you be any more special, hmm? Star Wars = Grouping. (Or more precisely, leeching combat xp off Han Solo the whole time.)
So all in all, the offical line seems to be...
Apparently, I've grossly under-estimated how badly a MMORPG development team can balls up a major content patch. Seems the much vaunted Combat Upgrade is anything but. Predicatably, the SWG Boards went crazy, but then Change is always Bad. However, closer inspection seems to show a great many genuine concerns.
Rather than try to interpret them myself, heres a sumary from the folks over at SWGPetition:
SWG Petition: CU Changes
Clearly some emotive stuff - some items on the list are a bit subjective, but I've seen enough other people covering the changes to get a general impression that on the whole, the Combat...
Meanwhile, out in the Rest of Gaming:
Star Wars Galaxies: Combat Upgrade
Seems my old SWG server is due for a massive rejig tomorrow, which is a pain as I've only just uninstalled SWG to reclaim some disk space. I still get irritable when I think about SWG's combat system, and I've been out of it for at least six months, so I may have to reinstall and see what it's like now. Opinion seems divided on the move, some calling 'Dumbed Down' already, and sit in protests abound:
N3rfed: AN SOE_EMPLOYEE_1 SAYS "THIS IS THE COMBAT UPGRADE YOU'RE LOOKING FOR"
(I hope the...
Heres some news!
Wookietastic
I expect this is an occassion for great excitement for People Who Like Star Wars, and more specifically, People Who Think Wookies Are Cool. Personally I always thought Star Wars could have done just as well without Chewbacca (who was generally outclassed and outacted by a midget in a wheeley bin with no lines at all), and certainly Episode III could do without an Army of Wookies, which at present, seems to be the big selling point for the film. "Come see! We have not one Chewbacca, but many!" Feh.
As for Galaxies, well, this expansion is clearly a...