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Rathask wrote:

Well,I'm sure Sony doesn't give a rat's ass about this given both their past track record and what seems to be happening now, but I'm gonna post this anyway.

A little history is in order before I get to the part about JTL:I've been playing since four days after the start of the Shadowfire server (July or August of 2003), so I've had the chance to see this game evolve. And not for the better. I used to be happy here - used to LOVE it in fact. Sadly, every profession that I've ever loved playing in this game has been nerfed to hell and gone, and those professions that weren't nerfed became obsolete with the emergence of the new FotM.

Even worse was the appearance of Jedi in PvP. When I bitched about it, people would always say, "Well, if you don't like it, why don't you grind out Jedi then?" The answer to that is simple: I play to have fun and to relax, hence my time is precious. Grinding is not fun. In fact, it's stressful. Not worth it. The fact that I got owned by a Jedi every time I clicked the "overt" button killed any enjoyment for me, since PvP was my bread-and-butter. I stopped logging in. I even thought about cancelling my account - almost did it, too! In the end, I just went off and started playing EVE Online, which I do enjoy. Not too long ago I started logging in again to see what it was like; apparently, Jedi had suddenly become more widely available. All you had to do was a bunch of boring quests over and over again for months until you'd unlocked all the requisite trees. Again, I'd rather shoot myself in the foot than waste my time with this bull. I'm not going to PAY SOE for the privilidge of logging on to WORK. I'm trying to de-stress from my REAL job.

So nothing much had changed, except a bunch of patches focusing on Jedi had come out instead of the much-awaited combat balance. Then I hear that the combat balance is pushed back past the launch date of JTL. This shocks the hell out of me - to wit, if you build on a crumbling foundation, the house will collapse. I wanted the combat revamp. I wanted a chance to have fun with a character I'd been playing for over a year. Instead, they're putting out an expansion that may or may not be any good, but still leaves the same old shattered foundation in place. You can imagine how that irked me. I said, at that point, "Well, if they're pushing the combat balance back, I really don't want to play. They've shown they don't care about customer service - not only with the rude arrogance of their CSRs and their unresponsiveness to problems, but also that they don't care about whether or not the customer isenjoying the game."

I sat on that thought for a while, only logging in occasionally. After a series of game glitches that caused me to be overt long after I was supposed to be, get killed in PvP several times and end up overt after cloning in a neutral city, and having my items decay even though they were insured and it was a PvP death, I decided to call it quits. Mostly this was because of the aboive-mentioned problems with the game, but also because the CSRs never responded to the bug reports I put in. In fact, the CSRs have never responded to ANY of the /bug reports I've made over the entire time I've been playing.

So I cancel my account.

Since my account's still active until December 2nd and I've got a lot of friend who I'd really miss, I try to keep up to date with the goings on on my character's server, Shadowfire, by trolling the forums. On the forums, I keep hearing all sorts of talk about JTL, both good and bad. I check the links from the main SWG website and discover that, whatever else I may think of SOE and their policies, the graphics for JTL look awesome, and I hope the gameplay matches.

It was here that I decided I'd give SOE one last chance to keep my business: if JTL was good, I'd resubscribe. If JTL was horrible or mediocre, I'd leave it cancelled.

Today, I run out to the store after a loooong day at work and pick up a copy of JTL. I install it and get ready to hop into space. The thing I immediately notice is that i'm getting MASSIVE server lag and that it's now taking five minutes to load every time I use a shuttleport, starport, or jump into or out of space. So it really starts to bug me that time I could spend having FUN is being WASTED because SOE didn't get their hardware upgraded far enough (or whatever the actual reason is).

The next thing I notice is how the lag affects my flying in JTL. I find myself shooting at a Z-95 headhunter and hitting him repeatedly. Suddenly, he's gone from my screen or way off-target, and this begins to happen repeatedly and is obviously a result of lag.

Here's where it gets ugly: I get shot up. That's no big deal, or wasn't because I didn't bother to look at my character sheet. Then I get shot up again, this time due to lag. I repair my ship a second time and head back out to battle pirates, TIEs, whatever I can find. Again, lag is my bane, and to top it off my shots don't seem to be hitting as much, or at least not as hard. I die again and repair. Head back out, and now my weapons are doing almost NO damage and the lag's just as bad. This happens one final time, and then I give up and land. Five minutes of loading later, I found that I had 800 battle fatigue and my HAM bars were almost completely black. My thought is, "I only died four times, and I get this?!" So I go looking for an entertainer in Mos Espa, since that's where my flight trainer is. Only problem is, it's 2:30am and the only entertainer there is training novice musician skills. That's half an hour or more to heal, time I haven't got because I need to get to bed.

After giving up on healing theridiculous battle fatigue total("ridiculous" especailly when there are times late at night when you just can't find any decent entertainers to help you), I decide that at least I'm going to cash in the XP from my time playing and get one box of Rebel Pilot. I head to the back room and the trainer there, only to be told I have to complete more missions and that no, she will not train me. At this point, already thoroughly pissed that SOE set such a high battle fatigue and HAM penalty, frustrated with the lack of entertainers, and downright murderous about the lag that's wasting so much of my limited time, I'm ready to walk out. I try accepting the mission to check if she will train me then, but to no avail. I even go so far as to CANCEL the mission, but that doesn't help either except to incite a condescending remark from the NPC trainer when I talk to her to find out if training is available (I had more than enough XP). How pleasant.

At this point, I just log. I have now officially wasted every moment since I got home from work on a laggy, less-than-fun (mostly because of the lag) game when I could've kept the money and used it for something else.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, the only reason SOE made it so that you also have to do a number of missions to get a skillIN ADDITION to the XP is so that they could string out the players longer and milk them for every dollar they have. That's not right. My other issues with the expansion have already been ennumerated: massive lag, massive bf and wounds from dying in space. All in all, these have contributed to a total lack of enjoyment.

Congratulations, SOE, you managed to scam me out of $30.

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Message Edited by Rathask on 10-28-2004 04:43 AM

Message Edited by Rathask on 10-28-2004 04:44 AM

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MarikRoman wrote:
I'm not lagging at all in space but I have noticed increased load times when shuttleing/landing/launching, and more lag on the ground as well.

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