Mr Pink - its not MOO3 trust me on that - I have played both.

Miguel

guys in my PA seem pretty happy just to build fairly large industrial empires with mines, power stations, houses and factories. For those who want to actually play a game there are destroy missions (vs animals from general stations or vs imperial installations from rebel stations; havent tried imperial ones.

there are delivery missions (I cant be bothered as I dont need cash)

there are find a guy and escort him missions

there are make an item missions and find a resource misions

there are bounty hunter missions

dungeons are few and far between so far; bear in mind i dont pretend to have seen much of the universe at present

there are "theme parks" like Jabba's place where you get deeper in the more and more difficult missions you perform

there is PvP if you want to go overt imperial or overt rebel

it is VERY soloable; in fact for some professions at least to middling levels it is far more efficient to solo than to group; duo might in fact be the ideal number for many things

remember the best items come from player manufactures so very few missions are about loot per se - more of them are about faction or just plain cash (so far and in my experience)

what the hey - I am having fun!!

When I say terrible I don't only mean bugs. Gameplay in general is worse than EQ! If something is worse than EQ no way would I ever play it (Since I'll never play EQ). SWG was rushed cuase they want to suck as much money as possible out of you. I mean the game itself costs close to $50! Most other MMORPG cost $30. I heard economy sucks, bugs are so rampant people max out characters by second day, and the whole engine, made from scratch by people who never made one before, is quite awful. Most people say if they took EQ's engine the game would be far better.

Actually EQ cost nothing for the engine. 10 bux a month to play. If you wanted some single player missions, they cost about 40-50 bux for each box edition, but they included your first 10 bux monthly fee in there. The engine box alone was 10 bux, but it included your first monthly fee and no single player non net missions.

If SWG makes that kind of deal, I'll definitely pay the 10 bux to try it for a month.

Interesting. It looks like the strongest opinions come from people who haven't even played the game. :notsure:
[Message Edited]

After deciding not to buy it, I made an impluse buy yesterday.

I've had it for a day now.

I don't have a verdict yet, but my first impression is Everquest with Chewbaccas.

The graphics are nice... at least in the tutorial... towns are real laggy and the game a bit (still muching with graphics options)... I have a decent machien and had to buy a new video card just to play it.

I've tried out 5/6 of the basic starting professions.
Combat is okay, it's interesting and there seems to be a bit of tactics to it.

One thing I notice is the design is really inter-related.
Like if you want to be a weaponsmith, eventually you need stuff from player factories that you can't make...etc.
I guess that is supposed to encourage teammwork, but it seems like a pain.

You also get wounds after basically every combat that only a doctor can heal, and mental fatigue a dancer heals.

It has potential, I'm still deciding if I like it. Worst case scenario I can probably e-bay my starting character after a month and get most/all of my cash back.

After deciding not to buy it, I made an impluse buy yesterday.

I've had it for a day now.

I don't have a verdict yet, but my first impression is Everquest with Chewbaccas.

The graphics are nice... at least in the tutorial... towns are real laggy and the game a bit (still muching with graphics options)... I have a decent machien and had to buy a new video card just to play it.

I've tried out 5/6 of the basic starting professions.
Combat is okay, it's interesting and there seems to be a bit of tactics to it.

One thing I notice is the design is really inter-related.
Like if you want to be a weaponsmith, eventually you need stuff from player factories that you can't make...etc.
I guess that is supposed to encourage teammwork, but it seems like a pain.

You also get wounds after basically every combat that only a doctor can heal, and mental fatigue a dancer heals.

It has potential, I'm still deciding if I like it. Worst case scenario I can probably e-bay my starting character after a month and get most/all of my cash back.

If you're going to get it, wait about 6 months for the bugs to get worked out of it (based on the other MMORPG). I won't get it, but only because I just don't have the time anymore to play a game like that (:(

~SDC~

Sorry, double post.
[Message Edited]

Update: So far I'm having fun playing it. That's the bottom line... hopefully that'll last.

I'm sticking to a "fun" character, a fighter with support skills... I'll leave spending all day making weapons or dancing around tables to other people. Seems pretty easy to join groups, sell stuff, etc.

Re the lag in towns issue - it is very dependent on the town - I play mostly in Correlia which has a relatively low population and no noticeable lag. When I went sightseeing on Tatooine my framerate dropped noticeable and paly became quite jerky until I got out of town - a quick look at the number of blue (other PCs) dots on the radar showed why though!! Seems every player wants to visit the Mos Eisley cantina!!

On player interdependency - well that's really the whole point of MMORPGs isnt it? I mean if you dont play WITH other people then you may as well play a single player game.

Dont forget to tip those entertainers and medics!!

Anyone know of a cheap MMORPG? I mean STG is $15/month, EQ is now $12-$13/month. I can't really afford more that 5-10/month, and maybe 20-30 for the box. I wonder how many people will still continue to fork over that gob of cash to STG, for me as someone who works for a living thats a serious amount of investment.

I'd like to try a MMORPG now that I have DSL but my time is fairly limited and my cash moreso. Any ideas?

I know it sounds like a lot, but it really depends on how much you play the game. For better or worse, these types of games are really easy to get addicted to, so it's fairly common for a person to put 20+ hours per week. If you're one of those people, $3.50/week for that that many hours of entertainment isn't really that exorbitant.

I do agree about the upfront cost of the game. It's too high something that you have to pay a monthly fee for. And I can only shake my head at the people who paid $80(!) for the version whose sole real "benefit" is that it gives you those dorky sunglasses you can wear-in game.

SWG is fun and the bugs now are nothing compared to what was in the beta. There was one bug that changed everyone's appearance. I like to call it the 'My Tall Skinny White Man Changed Into A Short Fat Black Woman With Bushy Eyebrows Bug' or the 'My Average Height Black Wookiee Is Now A Short Skinny Asian Man With No Eyebrows Bug'. So, like I said, the bugs now are rather small and the team was pretty quick for fixing most bugs.

I hate monthly fees, but I don't buy any new games when I'm playing MMORPGs so I look at it that way.

Although SWG seems Everquest-like, they've improved lots of the annoying everquest things. No problem finding locations or your corpse. The built-in bazaar is like e-bay, I've had no trouble selling ANYTHING (no NPC buyers that I can find).

I do think the 80 dollar collector's edition is a big scam. The only real point is the shades. Oh yeah, they give you a female zabrak figurine.

The game system reminds me of a cross between Ultima Online and Everquest, which is good. I'm sure there's lots to do I haven't done. However, All the missions I've seen are kinda dull. Either blow up a camp or deliver a package (FedEx Missions). I hear there are others. Crafting and surveying are kinda dull, too.

I've done a buncha Destroy missions for the Rebels. You get 12 points a destroy... you need 200 to just join the rebles, and tons more to get any rebel perks.

If you've played Jedi Outcast or something, you feel like "wow, this is what the jedi are like they are so badass."

You probably won't ever get that same feeling in SWG. But it does seem like "well, it's still cool to be a sharpshooter in the Star Wars universe...."

I have pretty much seen what you have Miguel, but I think there's a ton of stuff that we haven't even begun to be exposed to: advance AI "pets" (not just animals, but rebel soldier or stormtroopers that will fight with you, droids (that can track your enemies, assist in fights (like AT-STs), provide medical support, construct things), bounty hunter missions, dynamic battlegrounds that actually has an impact on the game, i.e. one side can win and it's no longer a battleground, and as I understand it there are some static missions at certain notable locations like Jabba's Palace of the Emperor's retreat on Naboo (where Vader and the Emperor are currently at supposedly). All of these things are already there; I just haven't got to do them myself. And of course, they haven't even begun the monthly story arcs.

The list of interesting features is too long to list. And one thing that people don't seem to be praising as much as they should is the user interface. It's really got everything you could ask for: 12 24-item toolbars, macro creation, command line aliasing, arbitrary # of chat windows, in-game e-mail system, ebay style auctions, etc. Hell, it even detects certain things in your text (hello, different smilies, etc.) and will change your character's facial expressions and animations based on them.

There are two things that have been annoying me so far. First is that when you're walking through the various cities, there's constant shouting from people looking for other people to train them in skills so they can avoid paying the NPC trainers: "Can anybody please train me in Droid Building II. Please! Anybody!!!" It really sucks out any sense of immersiveness. They really should give a way to filter that out, or at least limit it to the university areas and private housing. Second, there's far too little music. 90% of the time all you hear is footsteps and action sounds, which quickly gets monotonous. It's really baffling considering the theme of the game has such notable music associated with it. (btw, the exceptions to this are when you're fighting or in a cantina, in which case there is always music.)

As for bugs, I've seen a few, but they're fairly minor considering the breadth and depth of this type of endeavor. I've had a few problems deleting waypoints and not finding the people described at the end of certain delivery mission, maybe 2 crashes and about 3 connections lost. There have also been two times where the server I was trying to get on was down for an hour or two. Again, nothing major considering the magnitude of this game and the amount of new people on it since launch. But if you're sitting on the fence about this game, waiting one month might be a good idea. And even if you do have more significant problems, they have very impressive customer support: live real-time chat help, in-game bug report interface, in-game customer service ticket creation for which they'll usually give you a response in 6-12 hours.

As for the comparisons to EQ or AC, I think a lot of them are fairly inaccurate. My guess is people are playing it in the same style that they're used to playing, so they're just seeing what similar and different from the perspective. But there are so many fundamental paradigm shifts in all the different aspects of gameplay, I think those types of comparisons can be really off. They're not outright wrong mind you, but they can be unfair or inaccurate. My guess is that this will become more apparent once the once the initial exploratory chaos settles a bit and people start figuring out a different style of play. I could be wrong. We'll see, I guess.

(I'm playing as Mikel on Sunrunner)

I joined the Rebels yesterday at Anchorhead on Tattooine. The game suddenly became much, much more enoyable. The missions are exponentially more fun, the faction perks are neat, the players are all around my ability and are Rebels.

I admit the interface is neat. That nobody mentions it is probably a good thing. But if you see bye in chat your character will automatically wave, stuff like that is nice.

So far I don't regret buying it.... just can't say how long I'll stick with it. One thing in these types of games is the timesink. To get Rebel leg armor I need 3000 faction points. I played all yesterday and got about 500.... the really big items need like 45000 faction points.

Okay the verdict is in.

I put my account on E-bay today after a little less than a week.

I'm glad I tried the game out, 'cause I would ahve wondered otherwise... but it's not for me.

I died more times yesterday than a game of Counterstrike, spent hours and hours walking to get my body... and that's in full armour, with a good gun, and level 3 weapons skills.
Everquest was like that too, but I guess I just don't have the patience anymore.

The online community aspects are neat, but I can see the game requires more time than I'd committ.

Thanks for everybody who inputted in this thread.

My account sale is at

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3536753121&category=11050


[Message Edited]

Well, I've played SWG for at least 250 hours solid since release (no, I'm not joking). I'll give you all my (long) story which will include lots of parentheses. Go figure, I'm tired. So here we go:

It's ungodly addictive for the first week or so, especially with the fresh economy we had. I started out as an Artisan, and wanted to be a Weaponsmith. I powerlevelled (aka spamcrafted until my eyes bled) so I could get the best and newest guns to the market before anyone else. As a result, I was the first Weaponsmith on my server, and managed to make a gross profit of around 1.5 million credits, 500k of which remain after blowing it on factories/houses/facilities/random stuff I didn't need. This is in a game where the majority of players (who also have no clue what they're doing for the most part) think 20k is a lot of money.

The game was really fun (with that character) for about 150 hours. After that I realised that more and more I was playing because I felt I had to; I had to go fetch resources from 6 different harvesters so I could make more guns. I had to make more guns so my vendor wouldn't run out and people wouldn't start emailing me whining about my vendor being out, etc. I had to sit around and stare at the screen typing /sample, waiting 3 minutes, typing /sit, waiting 2 minutes, typing /sample again, and repeating this. For hours. Just to catch up with the resources my harvesters couldn't extract, so I had enough resources to more or less make a bunch of stuff without ending up with 2k-5k resources left over. Basically, the game went from "play to have fun" to "play because you have to".

There are a lot of timesinks involved with crafting. The most notorious of these was quickly avoided by doing the double (triple/quadruple/quintuple in my case) crafting tool thing: grab like 5 crafting tools, get in the mindset of repeating the same 12 mouse clicks for 8 hours solid (no joke), and hopefully have enough experience from those boring 8 hours to go learn the next "skill box" (of which there are like 16 in every profession). This gets extremely old extremely fast. So yeah, we more or less got around the problem of waiting for one crafting tool to pop out one item (or component; lots of items require multiple components to assemble a single item, so you have to build like 2-5 separate pieces plus the finished object) by just stocking up on crafting tools.

The next time sink came with a recent nerf to the "sample" skill, which allows you to sit down wherever you are and extract resources from the immediate vicinity. This is the only way you can get resources until you're about 3 hours into the game (a lot longer if you're new), or you somehow manage to flip a profit making stuff nobody needs. The time in between samples was upped from something like 8 seconds to 24 seconds. Now it takes a solid 24 seconds to (hopefully, if your surveying skill is high enough) extract between 0 and 8 resources of any type. As far as I know, there is no item in the game which requires less than 20 total rseources, so even for those of us that are experts, it takes at least a minute to make one component. More on this later.

The next time sink is the sheer time involved with running around. You have to go to every single harvester, get the resources out of it (hopefully, more on this too), make sure it has enough power to keep working, and pay maintenance. This can easily take an hour or two if you have 10 harvesters going. Since there are no vehicles, player mounts, spaceships, or anything, you're reduced to walking everywhere. Most of the time, the stuff you need is nowhere near a crafting station, so you're going to spend a retarded amount of time just walking around, hoping you don't get shot by that red guy standing 70 meters away.

So, crafting in and of itself is a massive timesink, and more or less pointless for at least the first 5 hours of your trip into the game. You'll be making the same thing over and over, and when you're done making it, you'll destroy it, because nobody needs it. In the first couple of days, everyone was making scopes, because they gave us 40 experience each, and required about 16 minerals and 4 chemicals. For me, it took something like 9000 scopes to reach Novice Weaponsmith. Including the time spent twiddling away the Artisan profession, I'd say it took me about 18 hours of absurd boredom before I could make something that anyone would actually buy. So yeah. 18 hours so I could flip a 500 credit profit. Once you actually get to your elite profession, the experience splits, and it will require something like 175k to get the first levels of experimentation (_slightly_ better items), and 175k for the first decent items you can make. So with me, I made something like 180xp a minute making DL18 pistols, which required 2 components, plus the item itself. This altogether (not including sampling resources or hitting harvesters) takes about 3 minutes if you don't spamcraft multiple components at once. With spamcrafting, you can cut it to about 1 minute 15 seconds. I have no remote idea how long it took me to get that first elite profession skill box, but I was WELL past 24 hours of play time.

I stopped playing that character after achieving 4 skill boxes in Weaponsmith: 3 weapon boxes, 1 experimentation. Something just shy of 1 million experience. At 180xp every minute 15. You do the math. Needless to say, looking back on it, I would have given up FAR sooner if the "newness" of the game had worn off sooner (or if I was doing it now).

So yeah, that's crafters. It's totally boring, and a lot of your time is spent doing the same repetetive thing. And then destroying those precious things you have created, since nobody will buy them, and the bazaar (SWG ebay) has so much trash in it that nobody would buy them even if they could find it. For people that like to sit around and chat or whatever, crafting may be the way to go. Or maybe just casually crafting (good luck ever getting past the 3rd skill box) and picking up some weapon skills or whatever on the side, you could have a decent hybrid character. You'd get romped in PvP though. If your game is centered around PvE and social interaction (like SOE designed it), you'll get some amount of long term enjoymet out of it. If you like to see some results (other than a pointless number of credits in your bank) from your time spent in the game, you're going to want to go elsewhere. Maybe a combat or support profession?

Yes, combat professions. I'm still surprised how fun combat in SWG is, even though I'm more or less disillusioned with the game now. It isn't a "click button, watch mob die, repeat" affair; if you don't actively participate in combat by using special attacks and modifying stances, you're going to do two things:

#1: Get worse experience than crafters.
#2: Be obscenely bored.

Basically, combat is broken down into two phases: the initiation phase, where you probably go prone, hit off one of your specials twice, realise the mob has seen you, and stand up. The actual combat phase involves spamming the living daylights out of that same special, and hope the mob dies before you die.

Unarmed classes (Teras Kasi Artist) are a bit more interactive, as you can do a bunch of neat things instead of spamming your one uber attack special. Grouping is a bit more interesting, usually involving you going to a kneeling position, and spamming your uber attack while hoping that you don't pull aggro, and that whoever's taking the beating (probably the aforementioned Teras Kasi Artist) doesn't die.

The way I describe it sounds rather bland, but when you get down to it, that's really how it is. One attack over and over for most ranged professions, TKAs spamming 3 or so different attacks while hoping to not die.

After whatever it was that you're fighting dies, there's usually a rush to loot the corpse and/or harvest whatever resources (hide/bone/meat) may be present. After that, it's wash-rinse-repeat time.

The other professions (Medics, Dancers, Musicians) are more socially oriented. Medics sit around in the medical center all day, healing people and praying to god that they either get tipped or someone donates organics/nonorganics so they can make more stimpacks. Those medics who do go out with teams generally suck at healing, and aren't much use for anything other than the occasional partial damage heal. They certainly don't heal us TKAs that are tanking everything we fight much. Anyhow, Entertainers are a bit more interesting, as you get to sit in a cantina for your entire game session, and hit the same 8 hotkeys over and over to do "flourishes" and heal those watching/listening to you faster. Entertainer experience is the only experience in the game that is slower than Artisans - even I couldn't handle it. It's more of a profession for those looking for social interaction above all else. Sure, I guess you can grab a pistol and go sling some shots at a creature, and dance when they set up camp to heal... but I've only seen one person actually do that so far. You will, like the Medic, rely almost entirely upon the (fairly nonexistant) goodwill of others for survival.

Now, for the non-player stuff: the game is gorgeous, and even runs well on my (outdated?) ATI Radeon 8500. I can turn pretty much everything up, and the only lag I will get is from loading other characters. Having 1 gig of RAM is more or less a requirement for this though. Medium settings with 512megs works wonders for me, and leaves no desire for full-throttle settings.

The sound is mediocre at best. As a combat character, you're going to hear the exact same blaster sound the entire game, unless you happen upon someone with a SG82, or a bounty hunter/commando with one of their class-specific weapons. Scout traps are ungodly loud for some reason, and are extremely annoying. The same 3 battle musics (sp?) play over and over every time you enter a fight (which is why I turned off background music), and get very old before long as well. The only sound in the game that isn't extremely aggrivating after a while is the player music from Musicians in the cantinas; there's actually a great number of different songs they can play, and with the 8 flourishes they can do, it can be quite varied.

The worst part above all else in the sound category would be pets. You're going to be running around seeing droids doing the same "bleep bleep" or "bleepity bloop bleep" over and over again. I haven't really noticed it much lately over the creature handler pets' noise. Basically, creature handlers go out and tame wild animals, and these animals become their pets. So if you get into a group nowadays, there will be at least one (often up to 10) Creature Handler. Prepare to turn your sound off. There's nothing like 8 people with 24 different pets out all making loud and obnoxious noises on top of that same blaster fire and battle music. It really is the most hate inspiring thing I've ever heard in my entire life. After a bit of playing, you'll get to see more of why Creature Handlers are the most annoying class the game: a lot of their pet "tricks" (which they do a lot of) cause the screen to shake, loud booms to occur (destroying your subwoofer), and block the camera repeatedly. And right now, there's no elite profession played as much as the Creature Handler.

Now, the bugs!

Well, right now there's an abhorrent amount of problems with the game, including bugs. How the previous posters missed these, I have absolutely no idea, so I'll list them off:

#1: Facilities disappear.
Yep. You worked like a dog for 3k to buy a mineral harvester. You set it down, turn it on, and go off about your business. You come back the next day and ... it's gone? So you file a customer service ticket (read on!) and hope someone helps you with this.

#2: Opening your facility might crash you
Yay, your harvester reappeared! Guess we can delete that ticket that's over 24 hours old with no response. So we open the harvester and... boom. Hello desktop. Well, restart the game, and it works. Awful odd, but no worries. We'll /bug it later.

#3: Corpses disappear
Rough, died to a mountain dewback on my way back from Mos Espa. Now I have to go grab my corpse! So let's trek into the wilderness for another 15 hour hike (this time completely naked). We get to the waypoint for our corpse and ... it's gone too?! We /bug this AND open a customer service ticket. Hey, let's go spam the official forums too while we're naked in the desert!

#4: Crafting tool bugs
There are a lot. Attempting to spam through the interface and get that blaster power coupler made, you can likely either destroy the thing and have to start over, or pile up so many screens that your monitor turns black from the fading caused by some of the windows. Sometimes items get stuck in it for no reason, and you have to break out of spamcraft mode in order to retrieve them. Sometimes you'll also have plenty of room in your inventory, yet you can't get items out of the tool, your backpack, the bank, bazaar... anything. Better start destroying inventory stuff until you find the fat culprit!

#5: Can't connect
Yep, the game's supposedly out of beta. Yet a large number of people (myself included) have characters which randomly get stuck. You might get booted out of the game (connection lost dialogue, get used to this), and when you go to reconnect, you sit at the "Connecting to galaxy" screen for hours on end, to no avail. Sure, the galaxy is up, and your friends can get in, but you sure can't. Tough luck, time to start a new character until they reboot said galaxy.

#6: Connection to SWG lost
Yep, you're right in the middle of doing something, people start disappearing, and next thing you know, connection lost! You might come back right where you were, safe and sound. You also might come back dead. You also might come back and be where you were 15 minutes to an hour ago. Go figure, it's all in the dice.

#7: Rollbacks!
Everyone's favorite, the "oh my god, I just got booted back to where I was an hour ago!" bug. It happened quite a lot early on, but it's less frequent now. Needless to say, I got rolled back by 45 minutes earlier today. Sadly, that 45 minutes was the run from Bestine to Wayfar, and is one of the most boring trips in the game that I've found.

#8: More fun stuckness
Watch out for player buildings, some of them can disappear and take you with them, putting you in the "Connecting to Galaxy" limbo class of paying customers. Enjoy your new character on another server for a while.

#9: Obscenely slow response time from Customer Service
Originally, I did not actually think there was in game customer support. Seriously, no sarcasm at all. I had one ticket open from the day after launch, until a solid SEVEN DAYS LATER. Even then, the response didn't help, and my problem was not solved. There is more or less a complete lack of in game support. If you get stuck, deal with it. Nobody will help you. Out of game customer support is equally as bad: the phone support numbers are listed as "9am-9pm PST", however, they were closed at 6pm PST when I called one day. I have several emails from two days after launch which have yet to be answered. The customer support is abysmal, end of story.

#10: Permanent stat loss
Yes, this was reported in Beta 2, but hasn't been fixed yet. I've done the math quite a few times, and I can't figure out where about 239 stat points went; certainly not to wounds, or to another stat. Luckily, I don't play that character anymore, but he still isn't fixed. Proper use of this bug can cause negative stats, which equals unlimited statpower. Fun stuff for exploiters.

#11: NPC pathing
Those of us who actively participate in PvP might have noticed this. A lot of the guards (of which there aren't nearly enough) often get stuck running into buildings. Some smart souls have used this to their advantage, killing people in the middle of various places (imperial capitol on Tatooine for one), and then dragging the guards into the bank to get them stuck. Eventually the guards leave, and they go back to griefing. It's kind of amusing, and there are lots of other PvP exploits which haven't been fixed yet. Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend any new player go Overt and participate in PvP until they've been playing for at least a month, and can handle themselves without guard intervention.

#12: More PvP fun: faction point exploitation
Early after release (3 days), people already had figured out that they could get groups of people to do faction missions and constantly rack in 5-10 faction points per second. By day two of relase people had full sets of Stormtrooper armor, and squads of Dark Troopers and AT-STs following them. Early on, your pets didn't permadie, and you could keep them in battle as long as you pleased. Basically, early PvP was a madhouse, and was totally lacking any fun. They made it now so pets permadie, but smart people can still save their pets before they die. And really, who can solo kill an AT-ST that can take down a group of 20 enemies solo? The exploited pets remain, and they're still in full force. A few people have gotten dark troopers and such legit, but they use their pets sparingly, and I haven't really seen any lately. Even still, 5 hours work can get you a Stormtrooper, which is a match for any player solo. Except maybe a master Teras Kasi Artist. Basically, there's people wandering around with exploited pets, and they're smart enough to keep them alive indefinetly. No fighting back, might as well keel over and die without firing a shot in defense.

#13: Deed renaming
As it stands, all facilities and droids come in the form of "deeds". You use the deed, and then place your facility, or call your droid. Some smart people have gotten into the habit of naming useless droid deeds such things as "Player Association Hall" and charging millions of credits for them - much to the buyer's dismay. This still hasn't been fixed, so be wary of deeds from people you don't know.

Honestly, there are a LOT more bugs that I just can't remember right now (Carbineer profession gated, SG82s decay in under 12 hours use, etc) and don't feel like typing out. As a summary, the game is still early beta material. If you are NOT prepared to deal with large amounts of bugs, and a total lack of customer support, you'll be fine. If you want a solid game where you don't have to worry about losing your hard work to shoddy development, _stay_the_hell_away_.

I can say, it's still moderately fun. I get on every once in a while to show off my Novice TKA that outdamages everyone else in the game right now, and occasionally I scum up another skill box for him. PvP fights are so few and far between without borderline griefing right now that I wouldn't recommend buying it if you're into PvP - Shadowbane had PvP down solid even in beta, and was (I assume still is) extremely fun - far more enjoyable than SWG will ever be.

PvE is interesting, but once you realise that once you master your combat professions, there's nothing else to do, this will quickly lose it's appeal. Don't worry though; if you're not a TKA, you've got at least 250 hours of playtime involved in getting to master Pistoleer/Rifleman. Carbineer will likely take you a month of actual play time to get in it's current state. Commandos are so broken it's not even funny, and Bounty Hunters are extremely shallow, and pale in comparison to Pistoleer/Rifleman in PvP.

Crafting professions can be fun for a bit, but when you realise that you'll never make anything that someone else can't make, there's little point to it. Actual player skill isn't involved in any form, so it can get bland.

Most of the classes end up being cookie cutter style; wanna rule PvP? Zabrak Pistoleer/Rifleman, and grab some TKA while you're at it. Crafter? Rodian or Mon Calamari. Medic? Mon Calamari, obviously. TKA? Trandoshan - anything else is gimping yourself. Wookie? uh ... yeah, useless.

I can say that the character generation in the game is unbelievable, and has to be seen to be believed. It's one of the few things in this game that actually impresses me. Then again, you can only make fat wookies so many times before the joke gets stale.

Summary: If you can handle tons of bugs, no customer support, and style yourself as a near-pure socializer/sightseer, this game is for you. If you want high end content, PvP, etc., go play Shadowbane or something. Graphics are great, sound pretty much sucks. Interface is actually quite good, frequent rollbacks bad. No point to the game really, beyond socializing and maxing out your skill points for no apparent reason.

Hope this helps! Sorry if it looks a bit rough, It's like 2am and I've been up since 4am at the Veterinarian's office .

Er, almost forgot. Those of you looking for a really immersive Star Wars experience might want to look elsewhere. The only planet that feels Star Warsy for the most part is Tatooine. A lot of the terrain on the others looks really shoddy for some reason, given how good Tatooine looks. Then again, how bad can a desert with rocks really look? Obviously, a lot more time was spent on character/creature models than the world, but that's to be expected in a social game.

Also, nearly all of the NPC quests are bugged. No joke. You can't see Jabba or Palpatine at the moment because of these bugs. On the upside, the mission terminals work flawlessly . There is one set of NPC missions that works that I know of; every other NPC mission set I've tried to finish has been gated in some way or other.

Also, don't bother hoping to become a Jedi. It will take a loooong time to figure out how to unlock the "Force Sensitive" slot. And by long, we mean "upwards of 3 months".

I'm astonished that you've played that many hours already. You are one sick individual, my friend Your review was excellent, by the way. I don't know if too many people in this forum are playing the game, but I, for one, enjoyed reading it. Here's my comments on what you said:

First of all, I'm not too surprised at the post 150 hour mark , crafting monotony you described. tbh, I never understood the draw of being a crafter, and doing what you did, i.e. power-leveling a crafter, sounds like the most boring endeavor you could possible set out to do. But, frankly, I don't know what you expected. Other than the incredible amount of money you made, what you described is exactly what I would have imagined it to be.



Yeah, I found that annoying also. Then again, it's pretty much like all games of this genre. And what's the alternative? Instantly transporting to any coordinate you want? That just wouldn't make sense in the SW world. In any case, when they finally add vehicles and mounts, a lot of this problem should be alleviated. I just hope it doesn't look absurd with a million vehicles and speeders all over the place, especially since they're making all the vehicles single-person. It'll still make more sense than people running from one side of a planet to the other.



Well, several of them are crafting-related (1,2,4,8), so I've never seen them. Several (5,6,7) refer to the same standard server stability issues that all of these games have at launch. And, to be honest, the network problem only happened to me a few times. Clearly, your experience has been different. Then again, I've only played a small fraction of the hours you have. But I've heard a lot of people say that its reliability is above average compared to the initial weeks of previous launches of other MMORPG.

Of your list, the only thing I would really disagree with is what you said about customer support: "Obscenely slow response time from Customer Service. The customer support is abysmal, end of story." I've used their web-based real-time chat help a few times, and thought it was excellent. I basically had my answer within a few minutes. As for the customer tickets, I partially agree with what you said. The first couple of days, the response time was pretty slow (for me it was ~ 2 days), but that's not really surprising, and I wouldn't be too critical about it. They're never going to have that many new customers in one day, so it's pretty anomalous. They're now responding to them fairly quickly. I fill them out all the time (any time I notice something weird or have a suggestion), and they've all been commented on within 6-24 hours. It's not the 1-2 hours that they advertise, but I wouldn't call it abysmal. Given that they must be inundated with submissions, most of which are probably duplicate, I think they're doing a good job. The devs have not only got out daily updates and hotfixes, but they're also posting and discussing stuff on the message boards. (but you're right about their ticket response, a lot of them seem like form-letters they have macro'd.)

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Personally I've been having fun with the game, but I understand how you could feel the way you do. Even though I've also been pursuing a combat-oriented character (scout/marksman), I think I'm shooting for a different experience than you are. Given what you wrote, it seems like you're more of a power-leveler. That's obviously what you did with the crafter, and you talked of "ruling" PvP and choosing the "optimal" races for each profession. And I don't mean that as a criticism. I'm sure it's a ton of fun having an hyper-powerful character.

Unfortunately, I just don't think the game is yet ideal for that kind of play. A lot of things in the games just won't work right (or will be tedious) until certain market properties and synergetic player dependencies emerge. And those just aren't there yet. But that's not surprising; it would be impossible for that type of stuff to emerge immediately.

More importantly, though, there's just not that much content yet. Without it, having a powerful character would feel as pointless as you describe. Given what they've posted, the developers know this and freely admit it; in fact, they said it's part of their plan (though I'm not sure I buy that.) As they describe it, when they made Everquest, they didn't add interesting content/quests until the first expansion pack which was nearly a year after release. With Galaxies, they're trying to get that level of content going by the 3-month mark. Though I'm a bit skeptical about that, what I'm more concerned about is whether the markets and player dependencies will actually work out the way they hope. And if people decide to wait around to see if it will emerge, well, that will pretty much guarantee it won't. Hopefully, the new car smell will help them avoid the catch-22.

In any case, I think I've been enjoying the game b/c I'm much more interested in the role-playing aspects. I don't really care at all about having a powerful character. A lot of times, I think it's much more interesting to have flawed characters (or gimped as you described it To me, what's important is to have other like-minded players. I got a lot more satisfaction from some funny interaction/teamwork then killing and looting. And for that, this game has been quite good. I've dabbled in the socializing professions and those were surprisingly fun, though I don't think I'd do it all the time.

My main complaints have to do with things that decrease the immersion of the game. Like you said, the music and sounds are almost non-existent. I can't believe they dropped the ball on this. How can you not have background music all the time, especially in Star Wars? tsk, tsk. Second, the NPCs are utterly brain dead. They're no worse than other MMORPG, but the standard is a bit higher for a world that already been "realistic" actualized in film. Most of the NPC in this game just stand there in the same spot like lampposts. It makes the cities feel like ghost towns. They could learn a lesson from Morrowind.

Well, I better quite rambling now. To conclude, I think this game is going to take 2-3 more months to get the groundwork set up for good content. Some of this may be due to an early release (stability and mission bugs), but most of it is probably unavoidable given the dependence on player run economies/organizations. We'll I guess that's why God made Knights of the Old Republic
[Message Edited]

I work full-time. I play a little after work and a bit on the weekends... what made me decide to quit SWG was easy - not having much fun.

There were moments that were neat, but the fun factor was low... and there was too much boring time in between.

I have a job in real life, I definitely didn't want to be a crafter (great review above).... but spamming my best attack gets old... there's not that much stragety to it... I got killed ALOT.

I basically decided that I have 10,000 times more fun loading up Jedi Outcast for a half hour than I did playing SWG.

Maybe if it was my first MMORPG I'd be into it. I still fondly remember varioius Ultima Online game days and that was the buggiest thing I know of. Customer support was awful, and the Devs were like angry gods

(my favorite: I spent an endless amount of time learning to tame dragons... four days after I develop this skill after weeks of practice the Devs patch the game to make Dragons untameable -- and I can't get rid of the skill points.)

On the bright side, Knights of the Old Republic is getting FANTASTIC reviews for the X-Box. The PC version is in the works, and looks like the Star Wars RPG for me.

Before I forget -

When I decided to cancel my account, I went for a sightseeing tour... I thought maybe I had been avoiding the cool themeparks and been bored doing stupid missions.

I walked to Ben Kenobis Hut.

It looks just like a player house... and just like a player house I couldn't get in.

I walked to the Sarlaac pit. It looked kind of neat. Feeling suicidal, I JUMPED IN...
I was sure jumping into the pit would be certain death.

Nothing happened.

The Sarlaac pit is just an empty graphic with no game effect.

I walked to a JAWA city. It looked kinda of neat, lots of NPCS and Sandcrawlers... nothign to do there.

I walked to R2's escape pod (ep. IV). It was there. You couldn't get in, there was nothign special to do.

The "Game content" I had been playing with involved alot of shooting womp rats. And I was apparently doing the fun stuff.

There was a tombstone right next to the escape pod. How fitting.

Heh, I'm glad at least someone enjoyed my 2am rant .

Like I said, the game's obviously for those who value social interaction above actual gameplay. And honestly, I've beta tested (and played through release) a lot of games, including MMORPGs: AO, Planetside, Shadowbane, AC 1/2, EVE, etc. SWG kind of strikes me as the MOO3 of the MMORPG games: some people enjoy it, but for some it's the exact opposite of what we were hoping for. There really isn't any true point to doing anything, and given that fundamental aspects of the game are chain-broken (facilities disappear -> PA halls go AWOL -> your PA doesn't function correctly, etc), the questionable existance of any point keeps getting more and more dim.

I, for one, like to know exactly what I need to do. I want to do that; I am the penultimate achiever. The only thing I want to do is work my ass off to be the best. In SWG, there's no doing this; no matter what you do, you will end up just like a large portion of the rest of the playerbase. In Shadowbane there was a good variation even in characters of the same class. Planetside had tons of variation, and required that you use different strategies to accomplish things (yay sneaky grenade throwing). AO had... so much crap to deal with on your character that it was obscene (and very fun). EVE was .. well, sort of stupid, but at least the market and world design was totally revolutionary (and beautiful). AC 1/2 more or less suck, but who can blame them .

Really, my main gripe with this game is a lack of any overriding goal. This is pretty funny, considering that I mostly enjoy open ended games (EU2, Elite, Frontier, Daggerfall, etc). However, there is still some form of goal to be had.

No matter what you do in SWG, nothing really changes - there's just nothing to accomplish. Sure, you can work your butt off and start a PA, but then you're right back where you were. The only difference is now you (hopefully) have a guild tag and a guild channel. Back to square one. Running a business is a hit-or-miss deal right now given the fact that my shop has disappeared no less than 30 times since launch. No exaggeration. That's basically why I said that if your number one concern is social interaction, you'll love it. If not, go elsewhere.

Really, I hold firm to my belief that SWG has the worst customer support in the history of the gaming industry. I have a post on the tech board from day two which has yet to be replied to; I emailed a cut/paste of said post to support@whateveritwas, and have yet to get a response; I even cut and paste it into bugtool.exe. No response yet. Out of about 40 (another "no exaggeration") customer service tickets, exactly four have been responded to. I either had to delete old ones to make new ones (there's a limit of 3 or something), or I managed to resolve the problem and/or completely lose interest before anyone replied. Or my tickets simply disappeared, as has happened on a few occasions.

I might try SWG again in a year or two, after they bang out some expansion packs, fix all the bugs, and add some fun content (instead of the sightseeing listed above). It would be nice if they added some stuff (god knows what?) to make the game actually feel like Star Wars, instead of another MMORPG with Star Wars textures. Until then, I'm just griefing rebels in Anchorhead to kill time until the 24th, when I cancel.

PS I am a powergamer. It comes from playing Arctic, sorry

Greg Stamper wrote:


I don't doubt what you said one bit (amazing review, btw), but I'm curious: Why haven't you posted any GalCiv Games?

I just got the game a couple of days ago, haven't really had time to play it as I just got another job so I can pay for my trip to Europe next year. After I get out of college (woot?) hopefully .

Nor was I aware that you could post games?