sliem :
So I heard that SoE "destroyed" their MMO game "Star Wars Galaxies".
I have not played this game but I'm wondering how did they "destroy" a game?
I assume with one or more bad patches but I'd like to know the details.
Does anyone willing to reveal the dirt?
Thanks.
Its a long Story, Jedi is only a part of it, if all they had done was to annoy and lose the jedi population it wouldnt have devestated the game as much as it did, although that is a part of the issue.
Basically they changed game play significantly, with little warning and against the wishes of the majority of the playerbase. The first big change was the Combat Upgrade, which simplified the combat system substantially - not necesarily a bad thing in itself - the game had a lot of issues that needed fixing, but they devestated techniques and play styles people had been used to, they flushed the usefullness of previously legendary equipment, They went from a unique health system to a generic mmorpg combat level system.
About a year after that SOE still couldnt "balance" the game and decided to flush the combat system completely, and go for a semi FPS interface destroying the usefullness of the non combat professions in the process, and breaking a ton of content. This was the biggest mistake they made, before the NGE you could mix and match skills from amongst a ton of professions creating your own custom class, after the nge you picked one of 9 classes and were the identical to everyone else in your class, the same update destroyed the usefullness of all existing weapons and equipment, forcing everyone to "start again - 12 months after the last big flush". They released this out of the blue with 1 week warning just a week or so after they had got everyone to pay out for an expansion.
The rage was epic...
The game lost most of its playerbase and continued its down hill path for a long time until eventually the leadership of the dev team changed and they started listening to the playerbase, at which point the game finally started heading in the right direction. The Infamous John Smedley actually said "sorry" for the whole affair and admitted they did it all wrong. These days most of the servers are ghost towns, legaciesof the older days, but there are a few playable servers, starsider (if you dont lag too much as the population there is HUGE) bria, and a few others.
To be honest the population these days is largelly far happier than they ever were pre-CU even, the devs largelly listen to the playerbase and add tons of content and items on a regular basis, crafters and entertainers even get updates and additions. Im not a big fan of "balance" (I liked playing odd ball templates rather than the power builds that the PvPers flocked to) but the professions are actually fairly well balanced these days. I Personally find the combat system less enjoyable than the old days, I miss the degree of uniqueness you had before, but the rest of the game is better than ever now. Many people who never played the old combat system have no problem with the new system. Especially since they restored auto aim, reducing the targetting issues that plagued the early nge release.
Pre NGE Jedi were very much an alpha class, at the immediate launch of the nge, pretty much every class became just as powerfull, many people saw this as a nerf of jedi, but for PvE jedi were generally as powerfull as ever (although the system was very very broken), but the rest of the playerbase were brought upto the same level. Meaning those who flocked to jedi for the "I win" button suddenly had no real advantage in game.
It has to be said that having an alpha class in a mmorpg was probably a design mistake in the first place, made worse by making it easier to get and maintain, initially Jedi had Permadeath! The rush to become jedi destroyed a lot of the community interaction in the game, as becoming jedi was a largelly solo grind. The jedi Vs bounty hunter forum wars were legendary in their own right, (game design originally intended for bounty hunters to hunt jedi to control the jedi population - eventually as the penalties were reduced for bounty hunter deaths, it became nothing more than a "big game" hunt.) it really wasnt good for the general community to be so divided. I would say the current approach to jedi and bounty hunting in game is what should have been done in the first place, BUT once you have "god mode" in a game which has to be "earnt" (although many were smart enough to be able to get all the way through jedi with little work using in game macros in quiet areas!) ripping it away is going to be painfull... A bad solution to a bad bit of game design.
Galaxies was released too early, to catch a marketting goal, it was launched in a poor state half baked and the man whos vision created the world of galaxies move on when the game launched - losing its original direction and vision. Hence it remained in a poor state for a long time. Some of the changes made to try to bring it to a finished state were appallingly thought out and implemented. IF it had been launched in the state it is now 7years later it would have been a far bigger game. Of course these days the graphics just arent up to modern standards...
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