Star Wars Galaxies to End December 15th

[DavinFelth]

While I'm aware this is old news (I found out the same day) I felt that I should post it up anyway since it's fairly momentous and means a lot will change in the emulator communities. Below is the official SOE announcement followed by my own comments.

Dear Star Wars Galaxies™ Community Member,

We write to you today to inform you that on December 15, 2011, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and LucasArts will end all services (MMO and Trading Card Game) for Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). The shutdown of SWG is a very difficult decision, but SOE and LucasArts have mutually agreed that the end of 2011 is the appropriate time to end the game.

We are extremely grateful to all of the SWG fans. We have had the rare opportunity to host one of the most dedicated and passionate online gaming communities and we truly appreciate the support we’ve received from each and every one of you over the course of the past eight years.

In recognition of your incredible loyalty, we are extending special Fan Appreciation offers to the current SWG community. We also plan to go out with a bang with a galaxy-ending in-game event in December and hope to see you all there. The details relating to these offers and events as well as the timeline and specifics regarding the discontinuation of the service, are provided below.

Again, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our player community for making SWG one of the best online communities in gaming history.

Sincerely,

Sony Online Entertainment & LucasArts

You can find some more detailed information about exactly how services will end here.

While many of you may be rejoicing about the fact that SOE has failed to keep the game going, that you have been vindicated in your opinions that the NGE destroyed the game, we mustn't forget that this is the end of an era, that the real SWG game that many of us subscribed to for many years, that many of us played and made friends and built our characters on will be gone. You may not like me giving money to SOE but it doesn't matter anymore, I am seriously considering resubscribing for the death of the game we all used to love, you're welcome to join me, I will most likely be on the Eclipse server.

But, with the death of the old, comes the birth of the new, the emulators are all making fast progress and the fact is, there is going to be a huge number of refugee's from SOE's game looking for somewhere to satisfy their SWG fix, even though the gameplay is different, the atmosphere, the rich environments, the music and some may argue with this but the community are still the same. I can only implore you all to welcome these refugee's with open arms, after all, they love SWG too but most of all, they love Star Wars. If these other SWG players feel welcome, then we can expect to play SWG with an even larger number than before and really establish a community on par with what SWG once was.

But what about SWTOR? I personally am looking forward to TOR but I will definitely be playing SWG too, while an obvious advantage is that it will be free, the real advantages are what made SWG great in the first place: the community aspect of the game and below are just a few of the things that SWG has over TOR:
Player Housing & Cities
In-depth crafting system
Completely player driven economy
No instances (True Sandbox)
More Realistic Space Flight (After JTL)

I know that list is tiny and I'd like to make an extensive list of things SWG has over TOR but I just don't have the time to think of everything myself so I encourage you to post things you can think of as a reply to this thread in addition to your thoughts on the closure of SOE's SWG, will you be logging in for the last time on December 15th? I'm interested to know.

Davin

 

[Kayliaah]

Great post Davin.
Soon the SWG emulators will be the only thing left for us, and SWG's resurrection will begin.

Just imagine what would've happened had SWG never been emulated.

 

[Tonberry]

I agree with Kay, great post. I was going to resub but I don't think I will be now, I cant usually stay logged in for more than a few hours, it'd be even worse as a lagfest which the last few months most likely will be. The only reason to resub would be to get the last couple of patches, even then I dont think its worth it.

 

[Kayliaah]

I agree with Kay, great post. I was going to resub but I don't think I will be now, I cant usually stay logged in for more than a few hours, it'd be even worse as a lagfest which the last few months most likely will be. The only reason to resub would be to get the last couple of patches, even then I dont think its worth it.

Lol that's the very main reason, then personally I don't know I'll try to login just to see what people talk about, and probably to say goodbye to that old friend, after all it might have changed a lot and not for the best but it's still the official SWG that is being put to rest.

 

[Kayliaah]

How do I change my windows welcome screen back to normal?
I did something and changed the theme of it. It is now dark blue with a windows logo at the top right. This theme makes my calculator and my itunes not function. How to I change is back to the original welcome screen (the light blue one) ?

Wannabe smart bot thought its tricks could fool humans.
Next time don't put clothing ads in your signature, meh, it's not like you have the capacity to learn anyway.

Skynet's trash can is this way. --->

 

[ImperialAssasin]

well they just demo'd atmospheric flight at fain faire <_<
It'll be interesting what the devs for live come up with the last few months, SOE didn't plan on shutting SWG down, it was confirmed at FF that LucasArts refused to let the license continue. (Insert TOR will not be that impressive statement here)

 

[Tonberry]

(Insert TOR will not be that impressive statement here)

It might not be that impressive to you, but I can guarantee it'll be outstandingly impressive in what it was developed to do. Make money. It wont surprise me at all if it pulls in more money than SWG ever has within its first year, probably less lol.

 

[MechWarrior001]

It might not be that impressive to you, but I can guarantee it'll be outstandingly impressive in what it was developed to do. Make money. It wont surprise me at all if it pulls in more money than SWG ever has within its first year, probably less lol.

You know what else was also made to make money? Every P2P MMO and Micro-transaction systems. At least, that's why I think the execs allowed them to be made anyways.

 

[Tonberry]

It might not be that impressive to you, but I can guarantee it'll be outstandingly impressive in what it was developed to do. Make money. It wont surprise me at all if it pulls in more money than SWG ever has within its first year, probably less lol.

You know what else was also made to make money? Every P2P MMO and Micro-transaction systems. At least, that's why I think the execs allowed them to be made anyways.

Strangely enough I'm well aware of that. My point is you just have to look at the current numbers to know WoW and TOR will be dominating the market for a very long time.

 

[DavinFelth]

I think it will be interesting to see which way TOR goes, certainly for the first year it's going to have a huge subscriber number. There are around 1.5million people signed up for BETA alone and if the game is good and gets rave reviews and everyone is telling their friends about it then it's going to do extremely well. EA's financial people have said that if the game gets at least 500,000 subscribers for one year then it's turning a profit. Of course a huge factor is plainly that it's Star Wars so there's already a huge fanbase

 

[Neo1715]

I'm not a fan of games with such huge subscription numbers, so I don't see myself picking up TOR. In general, it seems that a larger population means a less polite and intelligent average player.

But then again in smaller communities like Liberator a few idiots can make a much larger impact. I just hope some method of accountability can be figured out by release.

 

[Kayliaah]

TOR will obviously be huge, at least the first year, then it'll be the same as every other MMO out there, people qill either get bored and quit or will stay because it's Star Wars, Bioware, both, because it's a next gen Star Wars MMO made by Bioware etc...

I understand that some people might be interested in that kind of game, but instances and rail shooting aren't for me really, I'll probably miss the storyline which is a shame, if they stick with what they do best then too bad, I just wish we could've had a single player KOTOR III as a trilogy closure before the big ass MMO, ah well.


At least I hope TOR will bring enough money to Bioware so that they stop fucking up their next games, I'm surely getting ahead of myself EA will probably suck them dry lol.

 

[lucien1988]

I don't mean to 'necro' a thread, but here we are over a year later... SWG NGE gone, SWGEmu thriving, TOR flopped.... Yeah, I think SWGEmu is the right place.

 

[DavinFelth]

I don't mean to 'necro' a thread, but here we are over a year later... SWG NGE gone, SWGEmu thriving, TOR flopped.... Yeah, I think SWGEmu is the right place.

And while I've been playing SWGEmu a fair bit I still haven't played TOR since the last early access

 

[lucien1988]

I don't mean to 'necro' a thread, but here we are over a year later... SWG NGE gone, SWGEmu thriving, TOR flopped.... Yeah, I think SWGEmu is the right place.

And while I've been playing SWGEmu a fair bit I still haven't played TOR since the last early access

I played TOR since early access, gave it a chance.. hoped.. yeah... No thanks lol. It was alright up till level cap, I enjoyed the story and cinematics, but that was it.... Sad waste.

 

[DavinFelth]

I don't mean to 'necro' a thread, but here we are over a year later... SWG NGE gone, SWGEmu thriving, TOR flopped.... Yeah, I think SWGEmu is the right place.

And while I've been playing SWGEmu a fair bit I still haven't played TOR since the last early access

I played TOR since early access, gave it a chance.. hoped.. yeah... No thanks lol. It was alright up till level cap, I enjoyed the story and cinematics, but that was it.... Sad waste.

Yeah, in the early access weekend I tried a few different characters, really it was a race for me to get the ship and once I'd done that I lost my drive a little.

I had been planning to keep playing after early access but lack of time and not wanting to spend the money on it forced me to put it off and after a while the game started getting slated so I just thought, screw it, I'll just play classic swg. And it's true, story and cinematics were probably the best thing about it, I haven't really played much KOTOR but I can't help but think SWTOR would have been better as a single player game, though to be fair I never played any of the operations or flashpoints and my player interaction was limited.

 

[Tonberry]

People who slated SWTOR simply never gave it a chance. As well as that, you can't slate an MMO if you haven't even stayed long enough to join a fun guild and make some great friends. MMOs simply aren't meant to be played solo and if you try to you'll find yourself becoming quickly bored. That said I'm not defending the game. (Or rather Bioware)

Another turn off for people, especially in the early game is the story aspects. For example the Consular story (Which I played first) was so boring so I can easily see why someone would get sick early on. But the Inquisitor story had me hooked so bad I leveled up at over twice the speed just to see how it played out.

I also imagine at least half of the people who whined about the game just didn't research which would be their ideal class, considering they all have such a different feel unlike most MMO's these days.

SWTOR was a great game at launch no matter what anyone says but Bioware have fallen down a seriously deep ditch over the course of this year and dragged the game with them. No longer a respected company in my eyes. Anyone who gave it a proper chance and had a nice guild praised it at release up until their second major update. I was playing SWTOR up until a few months ago and even then I only really lost interest because of Bioware's ridiculous logic and decisions.

The first mistake they made was delaying the release of rated warzones, which was a big mistake considering PVP in SWTOR is the best I've seen in pretty much any MMO. It was one of the biggest highlights for a lot of players and messing that up definitely started a chain reaction of utter shittiness.

The other reason I decided to quit was a lot of guildies left (unable to tolerate Bioware's repetitive lying) and just like when NGE hit I suddenly couldn't stomach playing without the great friendships I made when the game first came out. Community is 50% or more of the great vibe you get from an MMO. You all played SWG at some point in its lifespan so you know exactly what I mean by this. I still keep in touch with my guildies who would just chill in mumble. We've checked out a few newer games since but I imagine we'll continue to return to SWTOR every once in a while to see if Bioware have fixed their act.

Its a shame. They could've easily bounced back from their early mistakes, but they just started tumbling down hill faster and faster after that.

 

[ImperialAssasin]

PSWG will launch in december a year after the death of live. More hilarity ensues as TORtanic struggles to stay afloat

 

[Tonberry]

PSWG will launch in december a year after the death of live. More hilarity ensues as TORtanic struggles to stay afloat

I wouldn't hold your breath for PSWG. As for SWTOR, it's still been more successful than any other MMO since WoW became the competition to beat.

Judging by how many subs DCUO got when it went F2P, I doubt SWTOR will be in trouble any time soon. If I recall, when DCUO went F2P they had a 700% increase in revenue. Considering that game was pretty terrible, its an impressive increase.

 

[Kayliaah]

Another turn off for people, especially in the early game is the story aspects. For example the Consular story (Which I played first) was so boring so I can easily see why someone would get sick early on. But the Inquisitor story had me hooked so bad I leveled up at over twice the speed just to see how it played out.

I love how in the Consular story, everybody treats you like a mere apprentice even after you beat the hell out of your Master when she "loses control", you just proved that you're better than her in body and mind, and yet she sends you on a boring errand to unveil a SPR DARK and unpredictable plot against the Order, and all you can say is YES MASTER PLEASE ENSLAVE ME MORE I LIKE IT.

At least you "see" Bastila and Vandar in that totally pointless Noetikon plot at the beginning, seriously, if Bioware want to make you run back and forth searching for ancient Jedi stuff, they could at least make it interesting, here it's always the same thing, fight your way through countless amounts of baddies that aren't even hard to beat but they're just annoying as hell because they just won't let you pass (unless you go the stealth route). It doesn't make the quest longer, it makes it tedious and repetitive.

Even the Smuggler storyline which I tried first, sends you across the galaxy to catch one freaking man who took your ship, okay I would be pissed if somebody took my ship full of valuable cargo but can't you at least loan one to catch the thief instead of running planet to planet ON FOOT while the guy laughs at you through his holograms, and you can't catch holograms. It's a good thing this plot didn't take too long to end, or I would've been pissed!

The Jedi Knight one, I actually forgot what it was about. OH YEAH right, be a good super hero and disable all the weapons of mass destruction in the freaking galaxy, knowing that most of them came from the Republic and those stupid idiots weren't careful enough with them so some evil guys, the Sith, who would've guessed, took advantage of your stupidity and tried using them against you at every turn, and you, like a good little white knight, you follow the Republic and never ever question it or your Order being a bunch of Republic tools, because you're a good little puppet, and you like it.

I liked the Trooper story because for once I could forget about all that Force is guiding me kinda crap and focus on the actual mission, it turned out okay overall, yes it was kinda predictable but again we know how the writers at Bioware think by now, or is it EA? I always confuse the two.

The BH story, sometimes they gave you dialogue/action choices that would make the Sith shiver and I liked it. But I hate Hutta with a passion, and the fat slugs living on it too.

Imperial Agent was probably one of my favorites, I liked the intrigue and how, even though you worked for the Empire and thus the Sith themselves, you could still cause trouble on both sides, I made my agent a total nutcase, when I had the option to cause mayhem I would jump on the opportunity and it was kinda satisfying.

So yeah the Inquisitor, I liked how everyone treated you like nothing because of your "background" and how you became part of their Order, it was pretty interesting RP wise, they kept telling you how you could never become a Sith and that you were basically just a tool used for your affinity with the Force, but those arrogant pricks didn't realise that by making you hate them it would allow you to channel your anger and make you grow stronger, you just had to wait for the opportune moment to strike back.

And lol, the Sith warrior, for some reason, I wanted to make a light Sith and it felt good, a bright light in the middle of all that darkness was pretty recognizable, and I think I worked on that Juggernaut the most, upgrading to maximum, being a total unmovable tank, I had no issues being the massive shield in the party, taking aggro while others shot lightning from the back like nubs. Probably my favorite character.
I don't know, I always felt that a Jedi going Dark was too easy, while a Sith living in darkness and saving people was more interesting to me and I'm glad I had those opportunities, hell I'm sure some roleplayers made their Sith warrior a Jedi spy, working on the inside to take down as many baddies as they could, I mean it worked most of the time because the plot allowed it.


Tried not to spoil anything so the slow people don't start raging at me because I "ruined their game experience".

I played PVP too and Huttball was my favorite because it was nonsensical, trying to catch the ball jumping around with those steam tunnels or whatever you call them, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and it made me laugh like an idiot, I didn't know when I had the ball, because yes I managed to grab it more than once and some idiots decided to throw it to me, I was wondering why everybody was onto me so I was running away trying to escape them and you had people in the team chat saying THROW THE BALL THROW THE BALL, but I didn't know they were talking to me lol. I actually scored three times when I got used to it, and god I hate those assholes pulling you into the fire or pushing you into that green poisonous liquid, degenerates all of them. That's why I brought my stealthy Inquisitor to stab them in the back, so satisfying.

Also, farming Flashpoints for epic gear, I must have done the starting FP for both sides, Black Talon and the Esseless a dozen times each, I had my Consular healer fully upgraded eventually but I was still crap, I should've brought my Juggernaut, but in the end I found out that using the Key vendors I could get orange wearables in which I could put epic mods to own the place, all my credits and commendations went into that stuff, added to the defensive trees I became that unmovable object I talked about, even though I was wearing a Leia style bikini I still couldn't get hit for some reason lol. The only problem with the defensive Juggernaut is that when you're alone and not in a group, it takes ages to finish off a boss, or elite however they call them.

I should've bought the physical key thingy for my account, or I shouldn't have used a key at all, the application was the worst thing ever, and one thing went wrong and restoring it wasn't an option so I lost it entirely and I couldn't access my account anymore. The ONLY way to remove the key was to call Bioware directly (no interwebz support), and while it pissed me off to no end I finally decided to try, after waiting for 30 minutes on the phone in two attempts I decided to just give up, I wasn't in the mood anymore.

I remember when the game was packed, I could find people anywhere, especially in the Fleet on both sides, it was packed with people, even though they were just standing around probably waiting in queue for Warzones or dancing, it started going downhill and I saw less and less people, until the Fleet had around 20 players, that was before they decided to merge the servers, I wasn't there for the merge obviously, since I couldn't access my account anymore. RIP Red Eclipse.

Seriously though, they had SO MANY servers at launch, most of them were empty, while some of them were just Heavy or completely locked, after the merge they only had like 20 servers left or something, they should've done it like EvE, imagine the lag fest it would've been, so much fun.

I can't be bothered with the game at this point, I had fun sometimes, otherwise I wouldn't have played all the classes but their support is a joke, at least I bought the game with one of those 30 days cards, so I didn't have to start using the monthly fee, and I had like two months to play it, it was still 80€ worth of nothing in the end, I could say that I got my money worth while playing for so many hours with all the classes and PVP and Flashpoints, but still, it managed to piss me off even more in the end. I didn't try everything in the game but whatever really, my account is still there somewhere, unless they decide to delete it because of inactivity which wouldn't surprise me, but I just can't be bothered anymore, I made a terrible mistake using that Key app, and most of the blame falls onto me, the rest is because Bioware/EA are retarded.

I miss Bioware Corp.