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November 15th isnt just F2P day but the day that changed SWG forever


DarthMaulUK

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As you know, I was a huge Star Wars Galaxies fan. I played the game very early on up until the servers shut down. On November 15th, 2005, Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts with Producer Julio Torres launched the most significant change to the title: the New Game Enhancements (NGE). Many fans of the game quit shortly after the release of this change to the combat system.

 

For many, it was a players first real taste of deception as not a word was uttered from SOE about the huge changes and their impact as the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion was launched together with the Starter kit and NGE. Taking 34 classes down to just 9.

 

Happy Birthday NGE/SWG!

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Will people ever forget this game and let it die?

 

 

It failed, the whole the reason they brought the NGE is because they were losing money in the first place thats why they redesigned it.

 

Considering the game lasted eight years and only closed because LA would not renew the license with SOE, SWG wasn't a failure. Yes, the game had problems and many of them. But it was not a failure.

 

To answer your question, NO! I will never forget Galaxies. I had a blast in my time there, all of it during the NGE. I do wish people would stop bringing up Novemeber 15, 2005, however. We all know that is when the NGE went live. It has no bearing on STOR so stop posting about it.

Edited by Kilikaa
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Considering the game lasted eight years and only closed because LA would not renew the license with SOE, SWG wasn't a failure. Yes, the game had problems and many of them. But it was not a failure.

 

To answer your question, NO! I will never forget Galaxies. I had a blast in my time there, all of it during the NGE. I do wish people would stop bringing up Novemeber 15, 2005, however. We all know that is when the NGE went live. It has no bearing on STOR so stop posting about it.

 

The confirmed max of subs is 350,000 for SWG.

 

 

90% of MMOs out Today have twice that and up.

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Considering the game lasted eight years and only closed because LA would not renew the license with SOE, SWG wasn't a failure. Yes, the game had problems and many of them. But it was not a failure.

 

To answer your question, NO! I will never forget Galaxies. I had a blast in my time there, all of it during the NGE. I do wish people would stop bringing up Novemeber 15, 2005, however. We all know that is when the NGE went live. It has no bearing on STOR so stop posting about it.

 

The only reason it lasted 8 years was because it was licensed to run. If it was LA's or SOE's 100% owned development team on it they most likely would have pulled the plug.

 

And yes, SWG failed. They projected nearly 1 million players at launch and barely got 1/3 of that. So I'd say they set their own expectations on how good their game was.

Edited by AMKSED
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The only reason it lasted 8 years was because it was licensed to run. If it was LA's or SOE's 100% owned development team on it they most likely would have pulled the plug.

 

And yes, SWG failed. They projected nearly 1 million players at launch and barely got 1/3 of that. So I'd say they set their own expectations on how good their game was.

 

An eight year run does not make a failed game.I bet if TOR wasn't being made SWG would still be around. Call a failure all you want. The fact it lasted eight years says otherwise. Failed MMOs don't last half that long.

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An eight year run does not make a failed game.I bet if TOR wasn't being made SWG would still be around. Call a failure all you want. The fact it lasted eight years says otherwise. Failed MMOs don't last half that long.

 

Here Here I 2nd that. If it was free to play it make more money then swtor any day because they had some much stuff they could have put on the swg store that people would have payed real money for, I know I would have.

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The confirmed max of subs is 350,000 for SWG.

 

 

90% of MMOs out Today have twice that and up.

 

Considering that SOE has never in the past 9 years released sub numbers for any of its games, I doubt your characterization of "confirmed."

Nevertheless, the game was "bleeding subscriptions" (words from Jeff Rubenfield's blog here http://rubenfield.com/?p=86) up until that day for many of the same complaints posters have made about SWTOR.

For the most part, it never recovered, not because of the quality of game that existed on December 16, 2011, but because you cannot radically change a game 2 years into its life and not upset a large portion of your fans irrevocably. Well, we will see how the re-launch of Final Fantasy XIV does I suppose.

For all the efforts that the flightless bird has achieved, it is still the same flawed game that existed on April 26th, 2005 and was "bleeding" subscribers. When the novelty fades, and the rose colored glasses get cleaned, people will realize the imbalances, the lack of a meaningful GCW, and the absence of compelling end game content that existed in 2005 still exist in their flightless bird in development for the past seven years. They will realize that with all their freedom to play in their sandbox, they are still missing important RP tools like Storyteller and Chronicle Master, major industry innovations that happened late in the game's life cycle but most nostalgics never wanted to try because they were too angry for something that happened years prior.

Those nostalgics will once again realize that it is still hard to compete when there is an alpha class so dramatically more powerful that pvp and pve become trivialized and boring. Unless of course, it was their love of said alpha class (and their resentment of its effective nerfing) that motivated them to create and play the game-which shall-not-be-named in the first place. Much like the flightless bird it is nicknamed after, it will still be lacking atmospheric flight and (better) balance in spaceflight simulated combat, and end-game space content beyond the (horribly bugged, in 2005's version) RE game and dogfights with interceptors around 0,0,0 in deep space.

Will the most innovative, detailed, and creative social, crafting, and housing system in an MMO to date be enough to blind them from those gameplay realities? I doubt anyone can honestly expect a game that is now nearly 12 years old from the infancy of its development can challenge any current MMO title, let alone SWTOR, but I will let them have their fun.

Meanwhile, I still await a true sandbox Star Wars MMO with compelling ground, space, social, crafting, and pvp experiences.

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An eight year run does not make a failed game.I bet if TOR wasn't being made SWG would still be around. Call a failure all you want. The fact it lasted eight years says otherwise. Failed MMOs don't last half that long.

 

SWG was licensed to run. So they milked its players by staying P2P and introducing the TCG which ALL these collectors wanted those items. The means that they had a contract to run that game with LA so it HAD to stay up. And SWG didn't fail? If it was a good game and lived up to what everyone thought it was going to be then SWTOR never would have been a though.

/thread

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The confirmed max of subs is 350,000 for SWG.

 

 

90% of MMOs out Today have twice that and up.

 

And back then the confirmed global market for mmos totaled about 3 million.

 

 

Thats a LIONS SHARE of the market compared to the paltry 300k subs bioware has today.

 

Those subs are still leaking btw.

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And back then the confirmed global market for mmos totaled about 3 million.

 

 

Thats a LIONS SHARE of the market compared to the paltry 300k subs bioware has today.

 

Those subs are still leaking btw.

Okay kid. Back then, in 2003, 3 million was NOT that number. Don't come here throwing obviously stupid numbers just because your game died. And SWTOR has nearly 500k subs. How does it feel like SWTORs record low is still more than SWGs record high?

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Okay kid. Back then, in 2003, 3 million was NOT that number. Don't come here throwing obviously stupid numbers just because your game died. And SWTOR has nearly 500k subs. How does it feel like SWTORs record low is still more than SWGs record high?

 

 

SWTOR does not require 1/100th of the envolvement SWG did to be a succesful player.

 

Even as nerfed as it was after NOV 2005. SWG still contained more than this game.

 

Many players play SWTOR only because SWG is not around anymore. (and that's why LA pulled the plug on SWG too)

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SWTOR does not require 1/100th of the envolvement SWG did to be a succesful player.

 

Even as nerfed as it was after NOV 2005. SWG still contained more than this game.

 

Many players play SWTOR only because SWG is not around anymore. (and that's why LA pulled the plug on SWG too)

 

I must disagree of why I am playing SWTOR because SWG is no longer around. I too played the game on the second day of its release.. (the first day, the game was down) and i left when the Obi Wan expansion came out. The only thing SWG had that SWTOR does not have would be crafting and the player environment.

Crafting has been SWG core, no mmo, from what I have seen has been able to recreate that.

The player environment you will never get in any mmo because we now have the ability to make more characters oppose to SWG's only one character per server unless you unlocked. Before with one character in SWG, everyone knew you.

But SWG wasnt any good after OBI Wan. I have dl that game a few times after I left including its last month of gameplay and the game was horrible. No one was around. I was alone in Coronet.

and JTL, that expansion was after its release, therefore TOR can still implement that type of gameplay.

 

I play SWTOR because i love star wars.. but i didnt play SWG after obi wan killed the game.

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I love these topics. Yeah, NGE blew and, to me, ruined SWG. I played a few weeks here and a few weeks there after 2005 but the NGE classes were boring.

 

A previous poster talked about the Jedi as an alpha class. They were difficult to kill 1 on 1. For the last couple of months I had an awesome BH spec with Doc, TKM, Pistoleer, Fencer and some BH to get the Jedi missions. Loading up on buffs and coming up with strategies to collect bounties was a blast. I lost as many fights as I won.

 

I guess the thing I miss the most is the ability to change professions at will. Did it take some grinding? Yes. Was it doable? Of course. For a time before that my toon was a TKM/Politician. I spent my time kicking back and building a player city. I even had some points left over to be a muscian. Good stuff.

 

SWG is gone. Folks need to get over that and stop posting about it here. SWTOR is what it is. The only thing they have in common is Star Wars.

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I must disagree of why I am playing SWTOR because SWG is no longer around. I too played the game on the second day of its release.. (the first day, the game was down) and i left when the Obi Wan expansion came out. The only thing SWG had that SWTOR does not have would be crafting and the player environment.

Crafting has been SWG core, no mmo, from what I have seen has been able to recreate that.

The player environment you will never get in any mmo because we now have the ability to make more characters oppose to SWG's only one character per server unless you unlocked. Before with one character in SWG, everyone knew you.

But SWG wasnt any good after OBI Wan. I have dl that game a few times after I left including its last month of gameplay and the game was horrible. No one was around. I was alone in Coronet.

and JTL, that expansion was after its release, therefore TOR can still implement that type of gameplay.

 

I play SWTOR because i love star wars.. but i didnt play SWG after obi wan killed the game.

 

Check out the upcoming MMO 'The Repopulation" http://www.therepopulation.com/

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The confirmed max of subs is 350,000 for SWG.

 

 

90% of MMOs out Today have twice that and up.

 

Now I am one to slam on the PRECioUs as much as the next guy, but that would be incorrect. The themepark genre dominates the MMO world, but not all games keep 350k NA subs after launch.....matter of fact few do according to estimations. Before WoW, EQ was the leader at 450k. Games I know of that have been around the 350k level(or more) for 6 months or longer include EQ, EQ2, LoTRO, FF XI, TOR, and WoW. Sandboxes have EVE(and SWG if you wanna argue it took 6 months to drop below 300k.....that would be pushing it). Only talking about western subs BTW.

 

 

What was deceiving about SWG numbers is that folks ran multiple accounts due to one char per server rule. So although it sported 200 to 250k subs up until NGE, there really wasnt many unique individuals playing. Semantics when it comes to money, but true just the same......SWG wasnt very popular. EVE has this same thing, as RMT helps to prop up sub numbers in the way of PLEX.

 

 

Nowadays hearing someone carry on about SWG is either a case of needing to let go, or some type of play on "yeah I was at Woodstock". When Nov 15th hit 7 yrs ago, I was among those saying it was lame what happened to the SWG folks. Nowadays it is a case of will you shut the frack up......we heard it already.

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SWTOR does not require 1/100th of the envolvement SWG did to be a succesful player.

 

Even as nerfed as it was after NOV 2005. SWG still contained more than this game.

 

Many players play SWTOR only because SWG is not around anymore. (and that's why LA pulled the plug on SWG too)

 

Is that before you write the recursive macro, or after? It takes a pretty damn boring game for it to include botting scripts.

 

 

SWG was full of fail. You decorated your houses, did some crafting, or stood in line for some buffs to fight the same PVP contests. PVE was totally lackluster, and left folks regrinding profs to match up with the flavor of the month class.

 

Did I mention bugs.....cause that was a nice mini game for masochists playing SWG.

 

 

SWG was a huge empty parking lot with "Ghost town waiting to happen" signs posted.

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The confirmed max of subs is 350,000 for SWG.

 

 

90% of MMOs out Today have twice that and up.

Bzzt. Wrong. The 350,000 was a rumored peak. They did, however, sell more than two million copies.

 

Anyways, it is ironic that 11/15 marked the downfall of one Star Wars MMO and possibly the downfall of another.

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Bzzt. Wrong. The 350,000 was a rumored peak. They did, however, sell more than two million copies.

 

Anyways, it is ironic that 11/15 marked the downfall of one Star Wars MMO and possibly the downfall of another.

 

350,000 was confirmed by a developer. And they sold 2 million copies like 1 year before the game was even shut down. And that doesn't mean jack because I knew that I purchased nearly 6-10 copies of that game.

 

The more accounts I had to AFK with the richer I became in-game.

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I will say it again. SWG was not a failed game. It lasted EIGHT years. Failed MMOs tend to die in less than half that time. The original game, the CU version and the NGE all had their problems. My six years were all spent in the NGE. The last two years of Galaxies were better than Warcraft at any point of it's life. SWG haters can say whatever they want, but to me and many others, Galaxies was a good game that we all had fun playing. It was certainly better than that steaming pile of crap Warcraft.

 

Every MMO will eventually be shutdown. TOR was a big reason LA decided not to renew the license with SOE. Now all future Star Wars games are going to be made by LA itself. People can call SWG a failed game or, like me, they can say it wasn't. It doesn't matter since it is all based on opinion. My opinion is that SWG was a good game with problems, TOR is a good game that is still growing and Warcraft is a piece of crap that needs to grow up and become a real game.

 

We will always remember games we had fun playing and games we hated. We should never forget the good times. But I agree that people need to stop bringing up the day the NGE went live. Especially in other game forums. It has no place here.

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I will say it again. SWG was not a failed game. It lasted EIGHT years. Failed MMOs tend to die in less than half that time. The original game, the CU version and the NGE all had their problems. My six years were all spent in the NGE. The last two years of Galaxies were better than Warcraft at any point of it's life. SWG haters can say whatever they want, but to me and many others, Galaxies was a good game that we all had fun playing. It was certainly better than that steaming pile of crap Warcraft.

 

Every MMO will eventually be shutdown. TOR was a big reason LA decided not to renew the license with SOE. Now all future Star Wars games are going to be made by LA itself. People can call SWG a failed game or, like me, they can say it wasn't. It doesn't matter since it is all based on opinion. My opinion is that SWG was a good game with problems, TOR is a good game that is still growing and Warcraft is a piece of crap that needs to grow up and become a real game.

 

We will always remember games we had fun playing and games we hated. We should never forget the good times. But I agree that people need to stop bringing up the day the NGE went live. Especially in other game forums. It has no place here.

 

It was licensed to run..

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