Star Wars Galaxies

SWG was by all means a horribly-made game.  There were more bugs (game critical bugs) in SWG than any other MMO I can think of.  Major overhauls to the game (for the worse) and many showings of contempt for the playerbase are what most attribute to the game's decline, but we all know the game was ripe with problems.  Instead of adding new content and fixing problems, SOE continually decided that they needed to change things.  I would say that most of the updates were fixes or redos.  Imagine what the game would have been had it been far less buggy, worked properly, and saw a continual influx of updates and new content.

Despite all of this, many people absolutely fell in love with this game.  This game has one of the most vocal communites and is definitely one of the most known (in terms of MMOs).  But if it was so horrible, why did so many continue to play it?  For me, it was the underlying philosophy.  I was free to do what I wanted.  No matter what I did, whether it be staring at the scenery or leveling up my skills, I wasn't wasting time.  For argument's sake, I'll use WoW as an example.  In WoW, is it ever really possible to just do nothing without accomplishing something?  For me, I can't just stand around in a major city without feeling like I'm wasting my time (as I should be grinding or questing).  In SWG, whatever I did felt like a good use of time.  The other big thing is that SWG was a true MMO.  There are plenty of non-sandbox true MMOs, but recently MMOs have not really been MMOs.  When I was playing SWG, I was playing WITH a bunch of other people.  Even if I was soloing, I was still a part of the living, breathing world (community) that was created.  I depended on those people for not only context, but my very cyber-survival.  MMOs today are more like single player games that you can play alongside a massive amount of other people, but not with them.

I am a firm believer that, had SWG been created with the same quality as a game like WoW (quality, not design philosophy), it would have seen far greater success than it did.  There's no real reason for this post other than the fact that I wanted to share with you all the very essence, in my opinion, of SWG; the real reason this MMO was so great.

SWG's original system fostered community through interdependence.  No one profession could stand on its own...Teras Kasi probably came closest to pulling it off, but even it had limitations...as in that it was pretty useless against nightsisters and peko peko albatrosses.

I loved hanging out in cantinas and medical centers, for example.  Downtime was fun! It was easy to roleplay in the virtual reality that was actively fostered by the design of the game.  Just going out and killing stuff was only one component of what made the experience so addictive and fun.

The community is what made classic SWG so beloved.  The CU and and particularly the NGE did not foster community the way preCU SWG did.  I never thought I'd ever join a guild when I first started playing...but I did, and much of my play was oriented around group activities.  I absolutely loved the fact that you had to rely on other players for weapons, for armor, for food, for medical care, for dealing with your battle fatigue, for vehicles, for clothing...it was a wonderfully immersive experience from the getgo.  All this group activity, this community activity...felt no more forced than it does IRL.  It felt natural.

There was something for everyone ...

The chatty people were found in the cantina's, entertaining people ...

The entrepeneurs started their own shops / crafting. Crafting was particularly good in this game, as it was easy to learn ... but hard to master... and you could start crafting from day 1 !!! My newbie scout could craft crappy clothes from the moment he started playing !

The fighters ... pick your world :) ... there was sooo much to fight ....

The harvesters ... again, you could spend days and days finding that one high quality resource .... it was a job on it's own.

The caring people were in the hospitals, attending your wounds ....

The animal lovers ... i have yet to find a game where beeing a beastmaster was so much fun .... i spend 1 year just on collecting rare pets ....

And then the guilds ... building your own towns .... defend it .... select a mayor, have a hospital, cantina, hwatever you wanted.

The list goes on ... and on ...

Yes, there were many bugs, yes the graphics enigine was pretty crappy :) .... but man ... there was something for everyone...

So many who love SWG so much?

Do you mean all 5 of them??

A couple years ago I was struggling to understand why I enjoyed SWG so much when a thought occured to me. SWG was described as a "sim" style of game, so could Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs... http://two.not2.org/psychosynthesis/articles/maslow.gif ... be relavent to a game?

I found the question rather intriguing, and saw that my own personal ingame experience could follow this pattern - at least more so than any other MMO I've played. This, I believe, builds a stronger bond with your character therefore making the environment more conducive to being sociable.

Originally posted by SioBabble

I loved hanging out in cantinas and medical centers, for example.  Downtime was fun! It was easy to roleplay in the virtual reality that was actively fostered by the design of the game.  Just going out and killing stuff was only one component of what made the experience so addictive and fun.

Haha ... I played for just the opposite reason. See, I was an artisan on Bloodfin. No one helped me. I asked, and I asked, and I asked. Nobody. I had to learn everything out myself, and artisanship wasn't the easiest thing to pick up if you don't have someone teach you the ropes. Anyways, I eventually switched professions various times, but each time felt extremely competitive. That's what got me hooked; it was how competitive Bloodfin was. I tried making characters in other galaxies and everybody was so nice to me, basically throwing credits my way to help me succeed, that it sort-of lost that touch it had when in Bloodfin I could run into any Spaceport and hunt overt rebels down with my flamethrower and smuggling attacks and abilities. There's much more .... satisfaction killing your enemy if he's someone who really hates everything you stand for, not someone who you like but just doing it to role-play... Bloodfin had the taste of individualistic pride and courage to stand for what YOU wanted to stand for, not what everybody else was doing. Yeah, I was a Master Commando and Master Smuggler when they were majorly nerfed, but you know what? Even though I wasn't the best at PvP, in the end I got used to it and figured how to win more often than not. I taught myself.

... anyways, you get my point. If it wasn't for the Bloodfin galaxy, I might have just gotten plain bored with SWG three months after I had it.

And commando and smuggler are about the two best professions right now in game.

Ah fuck. See how much SoE hates me?

I liked the flamethrower, but throw me a frikkin' bone and give me something else that's usable under the pre-CU system. Even the usable flamethrower, with decent stats and all, usually missed in PvP, which is really sad to see pretty cool fire effects be wasted by, "you missed" text on the bottom of the scene. How can you really miss a close target with a flamethrower anyway?!

Now that I think about it, if the emu team is working on SWG are they going to intentionally make the game unbalanced the way it was in publish 9 (the publish they are going from)? If so, then they are pretty fucking stupid...

It's not fair.

Originally posted by Suvroc

That's great but I'd rather play a nerfed prof in game that offers a supierior experience then a strong prof in a game that offers a lesser experience.

(Below) QFE.