Star Wars Galaxies

 I liked pvp better before. I dont really give a hsit about Restuss.

PreCU SWG was the best MMO I've played to date but to be perfectly fair once the doc buffs got out of control the entire game went to shit.  When you have insane buffs for two out of three HAM pools and mediocre buffs for the other one we all saw the huge imbalance it spawned in regards to which classes became effective in PvP.

Mind was always the weakest target in combat and with each profession built on attacking a specific HAM pool the ones with mind attacks naturally rose to the top of the PvP food chain while the rest were completely gimped and worthless. 

Even pikeman was worthless until the introduction of mindfire DoT pikes.  Couple the out of control doc buffs with armor that we should have never been able to don in the first place and all of the sudden all of the PvE content in the game became a complete joke.

It's why the corvette and DWB mobs were made so much tougher than everything that came before them.  They had to compensate for the god mode doc buffs allowed.  It was completely retarded that I could tank 8-12 rancors and kill them all with my bare hands.  Actually, that's more than retarded.

So before doc buffs destroyed all PvE and PvP balance in the game the combat was absolutely fantastic.  Once the buffs ruined balance and the devs decided to neglect the entire game to push patch after patch of jedi rubbish (and you're a moron if you don't think jedi was the biggest downfall of SWG, Koster was right to have fought so hard against their inclusion) it was just a matter of time before the game went to complete shit.

Originally posted by lkavadas

 Couple the out of control doc buffs with armor that we should have never been able to don in the first place and all of the sudden all of the PvE content in the game became a complete joke.

And the only reason you could wear such effective armor was due to buffs anyway, which sadly negated the encumbrance of armor - nevermind negating the cost of using specials associated with weapon encumbrance.

Again, curbing buffs was absolutely necessary in order for all aspects of combat to work as it was intended - and that was an incredible game design underneith all those buffs.

Originally posted by TheHavok

First off, im not trying to hate on SWG at all, past and present form.  I simple just want to know what made star wars galaxies such a great came back in the day before the CU and NGE.  I played the trial for 2 weeks a couple of months after it was released but i didn't get a good feel for the game.  So please, explain to me what the old SWG was like.

The amount of players was the only thing that made me enjoy that game, I met some people that I liked, and tore through games with them for the next year or two.

Originally posted by Suvroc

 

Originally posted by lkavadas

 Couple the out of control doc buffs with armor that we should have never been able to don in the first place and all of the sudden all of the PvE content in the game became a complete joke.

 

And the only reason you could wear such effective armor was due to buffs anyway, which sadly negated the encumbrance of armor - nevermind negating the cost of using specials associated with weapon encumbrance.

Again, curbing buffs was absolutely necessary in order for all aspects of combat to work as it was intended - and that was an incredible game design underneith all those buffs.

The other thing that happened was just as doc buffs were taking off, the devs nerfed the hell out of the critter mobs because they wanted to weaken CH in PvP, which further weakened PvE content.

We have to see such a good MMO as PRE CU was.

Best crafting in any MMO i experienced.  Smart  profession and skill design.

Very good for teams and definetally a grouping  and team encouraging game. Although more team content was needed.

God where do I begin?

- A player operated economy, where crafting actually had a purpose (not just the stupid junk RE/attachment grind), and you gained crafting xp when a player used your item (weapon or armor) while you were logged on.
- 32 professions with almost a hundred if not more, different possible combinations.
- No FPS style manual targeting
- Non instanced dungeons like the Geo cave and Deathwatch Bunker and very challenging mob spawns like the Nightsister Elder (way more challenging than now).
- Creature handler, that's all I have to say.
- Ranger with their tracking.
- PVP happened everywhere you go, not just Restuss; it happened in Theed, Corellia, player cities, player faction bases, or just in the middle of nowhere like Lok and Dantooine.
- PVP wasn't "buff wars", of course you needed doctor buffs and had the occasional spice and foods but the buffs wasn't "game breaking" and didn't differ from one another, now a non GCW ranked player has no match for a Major-General ranked player with 3+ rows of buffs (I've seen one with 4 FULL rows!) and takes so little damage with tons of block and 12K+ armor.
- Trainers, you had to go find a trainer to learn your new skill that you gained xp for, not the stupid profession wheel that grants you the skill upon leveling.
- Many servers had a striving population, and many guilds had a healthy size between 150-300 members, any guild now are lucky to even have 80.
- The economy wasn't stupidly inflated like it is now, having 10 million credits in 2005 was not very common and now many people has 999 million credits on more than one character.
- Each server had a CSR assigned to the server; Lowca had CSR-JasonP, he got very well known on the server and was very helpful, he and Pex helped set up some great events in the past.
- Practically no lag in a 50 player pvp battle, compared to now even with 25 players the lag can be incredibly bad with 3+ minute delays.
- Combat animations were actually functional and one of the most beautiful parts of the game.
- Pistols were actually worth a damn.
- The list goes on, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Oh and the bad things of SWG pre-NGE:

- Rubberbanding (still happens).
- Items disappearing in houses and guild halls (fixable by logging for 15 mins).
- Server boundry exploits, with smuggler double slicing and lightsaber crystal overloading (still exploitable today with some things).
- Bugged bounty hunter missions with NPCs spawning in trees or rocks or unattackable at wp 0,0 on a planet. And tier 1 bounty box was also bugged.
- Combat medics were able to throw poison/diseases through walls and buildings.
- The HAM system was whacked, the mind bar shoudl never have been small.
- Armor resistance was too high with the 75% pvp damage reduction, composite had as high as 90% resist with 40% stun resist.

Originally posted by Daffid011

SWG was brilliant, fresh and fun all the while being horrible, broken and not worth playing at the same time. 

By the time they introduced holocrons the design team had lost all focus on the game and went into complete damage prevention mode.  Every change they made was a bandaid fix that gave short term relief at the expense of long term health for the game and here we are 5 years later.

Well said, Daff.  Your comments above are exactly how I feel.  I was there at launch, and left a few weeks after Holocrons.  Every patch up to that point was an attempt to add content (pets we could ride, then speeders, player made citi