Everywhere I heard the patch that introduced new game enhancement for star wars galaxy was a terrible betrayal and horrible. People said subscribers left in flocks.

 

I can't find much of anything about NGE on the star wars wiki, can someone give me a detailed explanation on why this patch was so bad and how it caused so many people to quit? I have never played SWG but it has intrigued me.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Xanikk
wrong title

It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, at first? Ya ok I can go with it being bad. But over time when more and more content was introduced it became a nice playable game, not like it once was but it kept those who sill played happy. Those that left never gave it a chance, or did then left but never bothered to check up on all the updates and everything afterwards. But those that stayed, enjoyed it for what it is. Edited March 7, 2012 by Wolfninjajedi

The NGE fundamentally changed the game from a skill based, free form system, to some hodgepdoge Everquest-esque wannabe Level based system. It simplified the game and made the Jedi a class, which pissed off a lot of people because it was originally a long quest and require a lot of xp to actually start acquiring abilities. I was Force Sensative when the NGE and CU went live.

 

In any case, it took away the enjoyment that was SWG. The ability to combine multiple skills to make your own "build" was quite enjoyeable. I had the most fun as a Combat Medic/Pistoleer.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Galaxies

The game has gone through two major "upgrades": the "Combat Upgrade" (CU) and later the "New Game Enhancement" (NGE), its final form. Gameplay mechanics for combat and armor/weapon systems received a major update in April 2005 when SOE released the Combat Upgrade that replaced a system that allowed players with combat professions to stack defensive abilities from various skill sets, while also fixing an exploit that allowed players to have their character attack freshly spawning non-player characters (NPC) and creatures while away from their computers in order to gain combat skill experience. The New Game Enhancements was implemented in November 2005. Major changes included the reduction and simplification of professions, simplification of gameplay mechanics, and Jedi becoming a starting profession

NGE was the patch issued November 2005, It is widely and incorrectly stated as what killed Galaxies. The Game was leaking subs well before NGE came out and it was in fact in response to the falling numbers of subscriptions. After NGE a new playerbase was introduced to the game and it went on with a healthy amount of subscriptions for 6 more years.

 

the servers were only closed after Lucas Arts and SOE "mutually" decided there was no need for 2 Star Wars MMOs on the market.

 

The servers were shut down on December 15, 2011 a few days before the release of SWTOR. Not because of NGE

Edited March 7, 2012 by Emencie

New Game Ehancments didnt kill SWG, the community and piss poor game design did...though tbh it was a final nail in the coffin.

 

Anyways, to describe the NGE....

 

Imagine you had played TOR for 2 years+, then with no warning, no notice, nothing but rumors from players that got banned on the spot.....Bioware took the game down for a few days and removed your class and forced you pick another one, made all your items obsolete, and fundamentally changed the game play of TOR. That was the NGE for SWG.

I left because of nge. Not even a year before, they released the combat upgrade, which really upset players. They refused to listen to their paying customers on what we wanted. A day after a new expansion came out, they released nge without warning. I was on the forums daily, and never even saw a hint of it. I was pissed that i spent so long playing this game I loved, and they ruined it. A few days later, they announced we could get our money back for the expansion pack if we cancelled within a week. That is why I ddn't stick around. I was upset at how they treated customers again. I wanted it to be clear, that as a paying customer, my input matters. If the only way to get my money back was to give the new, very very broken system only a few days tryout, then so be it. I loved that game. Most of my time was spent in space. I want that type of flying here. I hope every company has learned from soe. Listen to your customers.

New Game Ehancments didnt kill SWG, the community and piss poor game design did...though tbh it was a final nail in the coffin.

 

Anyways, to describe the NGE....

 

Imagine you had played TOR for 2 years+, then with no warning, no notice, nothing but rumors from players that got banned on the spot.....Bioware took the game down for a few days and removed your class and forced you pick another one, made all your items obsolete, and fundamentally changed the game play of TOR. That was the NGE for SWG.

 

not only that, they also completely changed the game. In pre nge SWG you leveled skills, not character levels. IE if i wanted to be a better shot with my pistol i went out and used it and as i used it i leveled my pistol skill. They changed it to character lvls like everything else to compete with wow.

It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, at first? Ya ok I can go with it being bad. But over time when more and more content was introduced it became a nice playable game, not like it once was but it kept those who sill played happy. Those that left never gave it a chance, or did then left but never bothered to check up on all the updates and everything afterwards. But those that stayed, enjoyed it for what it is.

Yeah, all 5 of them had a blast playing on near-empty servers. The NGE basically killed SWG, even though it took a few years to finally lie down and die.

Yeah, all 5 of them had a blast playing on near-empty servers. The NGE basically killed SWG, even though it took a few years to finally lie down and die.

 

Ya...ok sure 5 players. There was far more then 5 but to each his own. Lasting almost a decade even with the updates/changes isn't a failure in my book.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Wolfninjajedi

Star Wars Galaxies was dying. People can say what they want but the game was collapsing upon itself. They were bleeding some 10000 subscription per month and so, in their desperation, SOE devised the New Game Enhancements.

 

For the people that loved SWG before the NGE, it was ruined and they left. However, the NGE opened the door for more people to come in. This allowed the game to get a reasonable population and allowed it to survive a couple of more years.

 

People may have hated SWG after the NGE but the fact of the matter is, without it the game would have died years before it was actually shut down.

SWG...the only game "Improved" to death in an effort to make it more "iconic" and "Star Warsy".

 

I would estimate a majority of the players were happy with the basic Pre-CU version of SWG (minus the bugs, of course). The basic play was solid and enjoyable and the feeling of being in control of ones character was wonderful.

 

Then came the CU, and in the influx of Jedi. It felt as if several million voices cried out, and were unsubbed. But SWG was able to plug on, since the basic gameplay was still intact, just the underlying numbers had changed. New content was added, and there was much rejoicing...

 

But then came NGE....without warning the game went from a complex combination of skills and decisions and truly unique combinations to cookie cutter charaters running around. Ugh.

 

Good Riddance.

This post keeps turning into a rant, so I'll try to summarize very quickly...

 

SWG was originally a sandbox game.

 

It also had a lot of issues, and eventually only people who were playing it were (a) people who really liked the sandbox, (b) people who only played because all their friends were also playing, and © people who only played because it was the only Star Wars MMO available.

 

(That's a sweeping generalization, of course, but it seemed that way to me...)

 

Some executives then looked at how WoW was doing, asked themselves why a game with the Star Wars license wasn't doing that well, and they decided that something had to be done.

 

(Insert quote: Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it.)

 

Deciding that sandbox games were a small niche market, they apparently decided to throw away their existing, small customer base, in favor of attracting a new, larger customer base.

 

So, overnight, they turned the sandbox game into a WoW clone, removing all the critical sandbox elements. Pretty much everyone in customer group (a) left almost immediately, myself among them, holding bitter grudges against SOE to this day, and suffering twinges of painful nostalgia whenever we see a thread like this one.

 

Unfortunately, the game overhaul was quite incredibly shoddy in ways that almost defy belief. One quick example - The Jump Key. Originally, there was no jump key, the game not being Mario. But players like to jump, right? So they made the spacebar move the character up and down. This served no purpose whatsoever, and it still worked when you were dead. They Just Didn't Care indeed.

 

And so, the massive influx of players they were hoping for never happened, or at least it didn't for a long time. Instead, they articles appeared in the New York Times about what a poorly thought-out disaster it had been, and hopefully, at least by now, the industry might just have learned a very important lesson.

 

Perhaps not well enough, but we shall see...

This post keeps turning into a rant, so I'll try to summarize very quickly...

 

SWG was originally a sandbox game.

 

It also had a lot of issues, and eventually only people who were playing it were (a) people who really liked the sandbox, (b) people who only played because all their friends were also playing, and © people who only played because it was the only Star Wars MMO available.

 

(That's a sweeping generalization, of course, but it seemed that way to me...)

 

Some executives then looked at how WoW was doing, asked themselves why a game with the Star Wars license wasn't doing that well, and they decided that something had to be done.

 

(Insert quote: Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it.)

 

Deciding that sandbox games were a small niche market, they apparently decided to throw away their existing, small customer base, in favor of attracting a new, larger customer base.

 

So, overnight, they turned the sandbox game into a WoW clone, removing all the critical sandbox elements. Pretty much everyone in customer group (a) left almost immediately, myself among them, holding bitter grudges against SOE to this day, and suffering twinges of painful nostalgia whenever we see a thread like this one.

 

Unfortunately, the game overhaul was quite incredibly shoddy in ways that almost defy belief. One quick example - The Jump Key. Originally, there was no jump key, the game not being Mario. But players like to jump, right? So they made the spacebar move the character up and down. This served no purpose whatsoever, and it still worked when you were dead. They Just Didn't Care indeed.

 

And so, the massive influx of players they were hoping for never happened, or at least it didn't for a long time. Instead, they articles appeared in the New York Times about what a poorly thought-out disaster it had been, and hopefully, at least by now, the industry might just have learned a very important lesson.

 

Perhaps not well enough, but we shall see...

Well said, as this pretty much summed up what the hell the execs at SOE (and Mr Smedley) were thinking, if you could call it that. They decided that a few hundred thousand subscribers weren't enough and tried to steal market share from Blizzard by remaking their MMO into "WoW in space". If it weren't for their stupidity, SWG would still be around today as a good niche game, much like EVE Online.

So lucasarts never made sony change the game?

Well said, as this pretty much summed up what the hell the execs at SOE (and Mr Smedley) were thinking, if you could call it that. They decided that a few hundred thousand subscribers weren't enough and tried to steal market share from Blizzard by remaking their MMO into "WoW in space". If it weren't for their stupidity, SWG would still be around today as a good niche game, much like EVE Online.

 

This really sums it up for me...they wanted WoW market share. They tried to turn it from a nice little sandbox game into a themepark. 30+ classes (can't remember the exact number right now) was cut down to 9 classes, completely eliminating some classes, including my main's, Creature Handler (later they tried to reintroduce it, but I had already left). I had 3 accounts with all the expansions...including the last one that was released just prior to them announcing the NGE. I cancelled all three about a week after they introduced the NGE. I gave it a try, but I hated what it had become. I never knew what Pre-CU was like, but I loved what the CU was. It was the first MMO that I really saw myself sticking around for years with.

 

I chalk up the reason they did this was because of the above, and that they listened to focus groups rather than their community. The community was blindsided by it.

 

I chalk up the reason they did this was because of the above, and that they listened to focus groups rather than their community. The community was blindsided by it.

 

The first time I read the post, I missed this part, but the very last sentence I think is what drove most people away. It cannot be stressed enough, there was no warning.

 

One day, the day after a major expansion came online, it had to patch again, and there was NGE. It was not that they made changes. They made huge changes, with no warning. Eliminated a lot of the playable professions. Made many of us respec, with no warning.

 

For those of you who have never had to change to a different profession in a game, it is horrible. When you go 50+ levels learning how to play a character, changing professions to suddenly be a whole new one at 50 is the worst thing ever. For groups, you are that ignorant guy who knows nothing about how to play. You don't know the best combination to make moves in.

 

But again, it wasn't the changes really. It was the lack of warning. Those who knew about it were under non-disclosure agreements. It was probably the worst customer service experience a game developer has ever done on such a large scale.

So lucasarts never made sony change the game?

 

It was both of them, at the time Lucasarts was in the mind set of Star Wars = Gold...then this weird fantasy game was suddenly beating it (at the peak SWG had around 300k subs...in 2003-2004 that was huge). They demanded the game be streamlined and appeal to the masses, something it was never designed to do.

 

Sony and it's boss John Smedly pissed themselves with excitment and basically patched together an entire new game on the old ones infrastructre in a few months time.

 

It was both thier fault, LA should have been contented with thier playerbase and built off it and SOE should have developed a game that actually worked.

I wasnt around pre nge/combat upgrade w/e its called but i played post CU and i still enjoyed it. not as good as wow, but it was the best damn starwars mmo until this. Ill admit i really miss flying my ship but hey.

I did play an emulator of the original and ill be honest i thought it sucked, seemed so scattered and i had no clue where i could go and not have abunch of **** easily killing me. but hey w/e lol SWG is the past and this game is the future.

Ya...ok sure 5 players. There was far more then 5 but to each his own. Lasting almost a decade even with the updates/changes isn't a failure in my book.

 

Because it was licensed to run. So they made the TCG and milked morons of their money.

It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, at first? Ya ok I can go with it being bad. But over time when more and more content was introduced it became a nice playable game, not like it once was but it kept those who sill played happy. Those that left never gave it a chance, or did then left but never bothered to check up on all the updates and everything afterwards. But those that stayed, enjoyed it for what it is.

 

im gonna have to disagree with that last sentence. the game officially died for me when the nge hit and the only thing that kept me around was the community. ive been playing the swgemu for a week now and as unfinished and buggy as it currently is its tons better than the trash called nge

Pre-NGE, Galaxies had a few challenges - bugs, a lack of storyline content outside a few themepark areas (the only PvE content was generic mission content... head over to this area and wipe out a cluster of mobs and their spawn point that is threatening some generic settlement; or Bounty Hunter missions that could only be picked up by members of the Bounty Hunter class).

 

So the people who wanted a story, and be led through the game from quest hub to quest hub, found the freeform sandbox idea to be terrible. For the rest of us, who really enjoyed the chance to explore a planet without f***ing Exhaustion Zones, and who wanted to make our own story, loved it.

 

The same people who wanted a storyline generally wanted a class progression system. What SWG gave you was a pool of 250 skill points that, if you had the relevant experience, you could put into learning skills from professions. The "archetypal" professions were there (you could be a Bounty Hunter, for example, which required certain scouting and weapon skills as pre-requisites. On gaining those skills, you could learn the basics of Bounty Hunting and work on your BH skills. If you only wanted specific skills from that tree and you wanted skills in other professions, you could learn just those skills and create your own skill template. For example, you want to be a Bounty Hunter who uses a rifle? Fine, learn the Bounty Hunting basics and also start the Rifleman profession. As such, hybrid builds were very common, and they allowed each player to create their own character profile and skill set.

Altogether, there were around 40 professions to work from, and there was a more integrated community based around cantinas and med centres. Getting into battles gave you mental wounds and battle fatigue, plus physical wounds (especially when you died and had to be resurrected or cloned) that would reduce your combat effectiveness. The only way to remove those wounds without waiting for a month was to go to a cantina to watch dancers or listen to musicians (to heal the mental wounds and Battle Fatigue) or a med centre to be healed by medics/doctors who would heal your physical wounds. There were also Image Designers in the game, who would help you change the physical appearance of your character. All of the dancers, musicians, doctors and image designers were real players, not NPCs, so there was a much greated social aspect to SWG than there is with SWTOR.

Player housing was added soon after launch, and introduced the Politician profession, which allowed players to form their own cities with facilities, run elections and have a periodically elected mayor (yes, SWG had democracy). Player housing allowed players to have a private or public space for storage and that they could decorate or use to host their own merchandising vendors where they could sell stuff, and those vendors were linked into the SWG equivalent of the GTN.

Crafting was a complex endeavour that many people did not enjoy, but for those who persevered with it, the financial rewards were substantial, and the best crafters in each profession on any given server were famous people within the community.

The in-game economy was extensive, with crafted items, crafting materials, and NPC loot drops available for sale.

 

Fundamentally, the game started off with very little content and a ton of bugs. Mounts, player housing, space, material spawns and crafting, etc., were all added post-launch, and most of the major bugs were addressed. A similar experience to SWTOR in many aspects.

The player base peaked relatively early in the game, and subscriber numbers started to decline (although not at a precipitously fast rate) 3-4 months after release, but the active player base (around 500 thousand at peak 3-400 thousand just before NGE, afaik) were very active. After the NGE, the player base dropped very quickly to below 100 thousand based on the unofficial figures I saw at the time.

 

Overnight, the NGE completely removed most of the 40 professions in the game, and the ones that were left were replaced with 8 linear professions based on Star Wars archetypal classes from the films. The game went from a sandbox "live and write your own story" approach to "this is your storyline, run this mission, kill x, go and talk to y for your next mission".

Ironically, there are a lot of similarities between SWTOR and SWG post-NGE, certainly more than with the pre-NGE SWG, which had more in common with EVE Online.

The worst part of the NGE change, at least for me, was that before in the CU (and pre-CU) you had an intense amount of post end game stuff you could do for character improvement. Following combat level 80, you could kill time and make progress and have countless hours to do it, always working toward more FS skills or Jedi training if that's what you wanted. At the very least you could still get a few additional skills from the basic lists to round yourself out.

 

When the NGE hit, the players literally had nothing to do after the end game. I can't italicize, bold text, capitalize, or otherwise augment the word "nothing" enough, so I won't try. There was no point at all to playing the game for anything new to do afterwards. And this didn't change for months. So in the end, most of the few holdout players did finally bail out.

 

So for me, that was what did it. Having practically an infinite amount to do to improve my character, to suddenly having nothing at all to do, was the NGE's biggest failure IMO. I might have given the changes more of a chance if Sony had bothered to think through giving me some post end game content.

It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be, at first? Ya ok I can go with it being bad. But over time when more and more content was introduced it became a nice playable game, not like it once was but it kept those who sill played happy. Those that left never gave it a chance, or did then left but never bothered to check up on all the updates and everything afterwards. But those that stayed, enjoyed it for what it is.

 

Yes all 500 people that left enjoyed it --

 

I tell ya you fan bois...

 

YES SOME OF US CAME BACK --

 

YES WE TRIED IT --

 

Do not assume we did not, what you should assume is that it was so bad people stayed away from the game that won "The worst MMO" for three years straight on MMOPORGs site.

 

What you should tell people is the President of the company said it was his worst mistake he made making that change.

 

What you should mention is that it was soooo bad they had to merge servers down to nothing because NOBODY WAS PLAYING IT.

 

What you should have said is that sadly when they changed the game and tried to make it a over the shoulder shooter it was a huge fail and at no time did anyone ask for it or want it.

 

What you should mention is that the game failed so bad that entire towns were left in ruins... people did leave in droves and that yes the game changed so much by making Jedi a CLICK ON LUKES HEAD thus making it a useless class and making the efforts made by many people worthless.

 

What you also forgot to mention -- THE FREAKING UI CHANGE ??? yeah.. that was not even hard.

 

It's funny because at no time was it (GOOD OR FINISHED)...... so please... do not make us post all the links from the people of SOE saying how they wished they had not done it.. don't.

 

On a side note: Jeff Freeman posted and said prior to him taking his own life sadly he WISHED HE NEVER MADE THE NGE OR HELPED WITH IT.

 

SO with that said, I think it is pretty safe to say the NGE was a trainwreck of a move.

 

OH HEY BUT IM SURE IT WILL BE AROUND FOR A WHILE...

 

Oh wait... They deleted the game... so yeah, I think that fact speaks for itself.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Iskareot

For the rest of us, who really enjoyed the chance to explore a planet without f***ing Exhaustion Zones <snip> loved it.

 

Not to single you out, but I've seen this complaint many times as an alleged "shortcoming" of TOR compared to SWG and it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. SWG might not have literally had Exhaustion Zones it's true, but every planet had invisible barriers that you couldn't get past even though you could clearly see past them and there were no obstacles in the way. This is no more realistic than Exhaustion Zones and it allowed for no more freedom whatsoever. Both games have/had points you couldn't cross and both enforced it artificially because there is no other real way to enforce it. Ok, so one does minuscule damage until you leave of your own accord and the other imposes an invisible "force field" but as far as affecting your ability to explore a planet the two are virtually identical.

 

So please, can we lay this falsehood to rest?

Not to single you out, but I've seen this complaint many times as an alleged "shortcoming" of TOR compared to SWG and it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. SWG might not have literally had Exhaustion Zones it's true, but every planet had invisible barriers that you couldn't get past even though you could clearly see past them and there were no obstacles in the way. This is no more realistic than Exhaustion Zones and it allowed for no more freedom whatsoever. Both games have/had points you couldn't cross and both enforced it artificially because there is no other real way to enforce it. Ok, so one does minuscule damage until you leave of your own accord and the other imposes an invisible "force field" but as far as affecting your ability to explore a planet the two are virtually identical.

 

So please, can we lay this falsehood to rest?

 

The only planets where this holds true were the wookie planet, instances, and mustafar.

 

EVERY other planet you could cross from one edge of the map to the other. Yes planets were "rectangle maps" but you could freely travel any direction.

 

There were zero invisible barriers on the core worlds except at maps' edges.