Community Relations Archive

My partner and I started playing SWG the moment we could import it to Australia. We played for almost a year – the final straw in leaving was after completing the Imperial Theme parks – pets and stormtroopers in tow we went to do the Corellian Corvette mission. In about three and a half-seconds, we got killed. As a master Creature Handler, and high ranking Imperial who had worked really hard to level my character, gain faction, earn troops… I couldn’t believe we’d died so quickly. I couldn’t believe that an ‘instanced’ area would be so poorly designed, and so utterly incapable of providing any entertainment, just meaningless slaughter.

Now, this is all old news, and you might be wondering why I’m bringing it up. The game had gotten to the point where I’d essentially ‘mastered’ my character trees, and I’d gone through about nine or ten different classes, and had my fun. They’d put in that new area to fight (which I now can’t remember what it’s called. The Geonosian bunker maybe? Or the one before that, forgive me it was some time ago). And so, after the crushing defeat and complete and utter lack of fun…we decided that we’d leave SWG and go fishing in another MMORPG pool.

As players, we find a class we’ll enjoy, and then figure out strategies to play together. We don’t generally solo, as a married couple we play together, and duo, and occasionally pick up groups – though living in a different time zone this can be quite difficult. Our main goal is fun. Not uber loot, not being the best of the best. Large scale raids don’t really appeal having done a lot of these things in EQ1. With my work and study commitments, I am very much the ‘casual’ gamer these days. Meaning – I might play Sun-Thurs, for about three to four hours a night (which for us, is casual). Nevertheless, we still contribute a monthly fee for both of our accounts, and participate in the game.

.Having run the gamut of MMORPG (Starting with EQ, and going through to DAOC, COH, Horizons, Neocron, WoW) I’ve come to the point in my life where I realise there is little point committing yourself to a game when there are patches put through that negate your fun. When the game ceases to hold particular enjoyment for you – for whatever reason… you should stop playing. There are plenty of games out there, many of them have strong and unique characteristics, many of them have the same problems.

The main problem, and yet, the main advantage of the MMORPG is the fact that it is constantly fluid, and constantly evolving. The development communities are stuck with the unenviable task of trying to sort through hundreds of thousands of posts to assist them in making the right decisions for their particular game’s evolution. I do not personally blame developers for their decisions. They make what they believe are the best decisions for the longevity of their game within the confines of the corporate entity they are part of. Longevity equals consumer dollars, which equals profit, which in the end (understandably) is their goal.

My personal belief is that the best way to ensure games continue is to add content. In a game like SWG that means thematically based things. People want to be a part of the Star Wars Universe. I don’t play Star Wars for PVP. If I wanted PVP I’d return to DAOC – which is undeniably the most superior of all PVP games, solely because that is the game’s main focus. This doesn’t mean that I don’t deny the pleasure of PVP in a Star Wars environment, it just means it isn’t why I play SWG. I played Star Wars to participate in the galactic war, to have an effect upon the universe. The best things they ever did for SWG was to have the Dead Eye project, and events along those lines, where players can influence the world they play in through their participation.

Now, if you’ve read this far, I applaud your patience.

Now, we left SWG for the lack of fun, and we came back for the Combat Upgrade. We tried it out for a week and really enjoyed the complexity of the new system, many improvements had been made. We played for another week and bought the new Space and Kashyyk expansions. The Space Combat is spectacular – I really enjoy that aspect of the game, although I would prefer if there were more thematically based quests which included space. Kashyyk (I think I spelt that wrong) was a fantastic idea. Quests, new zones, all the rest of it. Except for that fact that my relatively high end machine absolutely dies when I enter the lower levels of incredibly horrible buggy design. I’ve fallen through the map on that tree level more times than I can count – and lets say it isn’t much fun running around at 4fp when I have all the graphical options turned right down.

That aside, there was the recent publish with the creature handling changes. Okay, that was good, and I was interested by the idea of learning new abilities for my pets. As a master creature handler, the ‘Gotta catch them all’ aspect of the CH was something I’ve always loved. Earning the experience for the abilities didn’t bother me that much, since it would be great to learn new things – and added purpose to the game. However, with many Bio-Engineered pets (which I made myself in a previous incarnation) I suddenly had to go out and train new pets. With very little capability in mask scent that can be difficult, but it becomes even more difficult when I attempt to train creatures and fail up to 15 times per baby (and sometimes more) even as a Master CH in my attempts to catch the little fellas. Not much fun. But that’s okay, I persisted. Took the quest from the Geonosian on Kashyyk, and went to the lab on Yavin (or was it Dantooine?)… anyway… went there and my partner and I were fighting through. Then… I got killed. Twice. Through the floor. By a critter I couldn’t select, and couldn’t get to pop through the map. That was pretty irritating, so we gave it away as a bad job. Then publish 22 came through, with the great experience ‘nerf’ of 2005.

Now while the experience modifier has apparently been reversed, and the equations set back to normal it was truly the final straw. To me this patch, and the way it was done was indicative of many of the problems which plague many MMORPG’s. I was well on the way to unlocking my force sensitivity whilst balancing my creatures, and everything else – and all of a sudden, there was this new hurdle. It would take me many, many, many times longer to be able to do anything because experience had been changed. And why? Why? So that I would have to commit to 400 days worth of grinding play to be able to achieve anything beyond what I’d already currently done.

Definitely not fun. The attitude that we “must grind” in order to make headway in the game is ridiculous, and not appealing at all. It does indeed only hurt the casual player, and doesn’t effect those who have already spent months exploiting the preexisting systems in order to maximise their character efficiency. If you want me to play SWG then don’t make it take hundreds of times longer for me to achieve anything – spend your time adding content to make the Universe more enjoyable. Spend your time fixing things that are clearly bugged. I don’t mean ‘unbalanced’ I mean bugged, like the new Rage of the Wookie expansion I wasted my money on with quests that don’t work and zones that are impossible to navigate.

I generally don’t approach forums, for the most part they are filled with flamers, and complainers – who whine, and yet, oddly, still continue to play the thing they ‘despise’. The few posts I do make are ones such as this, in the hope they will be read, and on some level, considered – and perhaps, in time, contribute to the evolution of games such as SWG. As a player, and a consumer of this game, I do the one thing that I can in order to show my displeasure with the direction of the game. The XP modification was the final straw in my current decision making process – even though it has been reversed, the decision to focus on this kind of issue means that the things I want to see fixed aren’t high on the priority list in the game.

In final and very long closing, I have once again cancelled my SWG account. I won’t deny a possible return in the future, but until the current mentality alters, I won’t be returning to the game.