Starwars Galaxies?

Moridan · March 2007

I gave WoW a spin, and didn't really care for it. So I thought I'd try out another MMORPG my computer should be able to handle. By the time I get home, SW Galaxies should be downloaded and I've got a 14 day free trial.

So what do you guys think of it? I understand some major (and controversial) changes have been made, and you can start off as a Jedi now. I've also heard it is more like a FPS now. How do you get a lightsaber, and how is lightsaber combat handled?

Thanks

Just_Bri_Thanks · March 2007

Walk away now, and we will never speak of this again. Just pretend it never happened.

Insider · March 2007

Delete the file and forget it ever happened.

Better yet, format your hard drive. You want no trace of SWG on your computer at all.

(Yes it is this bad)

Moridan · March 2007

You guys care to explain why this game is so bad?

Hevach · March 2007

The new combat system's the start of it. It's an awkward mating of an FPS and diablo-style RPG. That's the best way I can think to describe it - whatever way you spell it, it's a pain, since it's strapped into a game that was designed for something very different. I really think it could have worked had the game been built from the ground up with this in mind, but as a late change, it feels like just that.

A lot of the depth of the game was gutted out. They are bringing back one of the dead professions, but in a changed form. Jedi are now just another player - since everybody can be one now, changes have been and probably will continue to be made to make them a balanced class.

I quit very shortly after the thew combat system went in, but not because of the changes, but the community. The community that's survived is becoming one of those hardcore, insular MMO communities that drive away many potential new players. Never, EVER mention that you played (let alone liked) any commercial MMO, especially WoW or Everquest. You might get away with Anarchy Online, but you'll be lectured on end about the matter. Any "WoW clone" (and by the community logic, every non-pre-CU SWG game, even UO, is a WoW clone - there's a definite feeling that those who talk never played WoW) will get you flamed into oblivion. There's even some minor grief towards "old jedi" who did it the hard way. It's got a bad case of the "Not Invented Here"s that comes to resist every change - even when the things they want are implemented, many resist it for irrational fear that it'll turn the game into "WoW in space." I find this doubly ironic since it was an act of innovation that wrecked the game in so many eyes to start with.

The economy's halfway between stagnant and broken. It's basically what you see a lot in small MMOs with this sort of community. The bulk of the playerbase has been around for a VERY long time. Most have billions or tens of billions of credits and little sympathy for anybody with less than 150 played to save up. Even saying "Wow, that's a lot" about prices can get you called a n00b and a beggar on Bria. Mayors also loathe to give zoning rights for fear that you're only there to "vote against them."

The community seems to be holding on waiting for one of two things that SOE has said will never happen: SWG2 with the original systems back in place or a "throwback server" to before the new systems were in place.

It's dead, Jim. Find a new game, don't look back.

Moridan · March 2007

Thanks.

So it sounds like Galaxies is a bust.

So what game do you guys recommend that meets the below criteria:

1. Free trial
2. Runs great on a mid-range computer. I'll be using a laptop.
3. Isn't WoW

Fragtastic · March 2007

I'm suprised it hasn't been said already but, I think the answer to your question is Eve Online. Alot of fun once you get the hang of it and if you ever played Ultima Online, it really captures that sense of danger and fear of loss that that did. Plus it runs great on everything, free trial and a pretty helpful community.

Just_Bri_Thanks · March 2007

I hear Eve is pretty popular right now...

Moridan · March 2007

Eve does look pretty cool, but I was looking for something more conventional. Not sure how much I'd get into being a spaceship all the time.

And thanks again for answering my questions guys.

Scooter · March 2007

There's always CoX...I don't know if there's free trials availible at the moment or not, but look around and you could probably find a box for less than the price of a month. CoH is better for low-end comps than CoV.

Corvus · March 2007

Scooter wrote: »

There's always CoX...I don't know if there's free trials availible at the moment or not, but look around and you could probably find a box for less than the price of a month. CoH is better for low-end comps than CoV.

The combined box with both games ,Good vs. Evil edition, is in wide release now, so thats probably the best thing to pick up. Its $30 or so, with a month of play included.

lowlylowlycook · March 2007

If the CoH/V free trial is over and you want to check it out, I can help you with a code. Let me know.

Insider · March 2007

Moridan wrote: »

Thanks.

So it sounds like Galaxies is a bust. So what game do you guys recommend that meets the below criteria:

1. Free trial
2. Runs great on a mid-range computer. I'll be using a laptop.
3. Isn't WoW

EVE as many already said.
DAoC is good fun on the Classic servers. Best PvP you will find in a MMO right now.
Guild Wars could be good too, no monthly fee.

Spawnbroker · March 2007

I refuse to play Vanguard, even if the concept interests me. I'm unsure if any of you heard about the big upset during beta testing. Well, my dad was beta testing Vanguard (he's played EQ since beta) and was really excited about it. There was a very active tester that everyone in beta knew and liked. He would routinely find bugs and report them to the devs, and the devs were communicating to him that he should continue checking on these bugs to see if they get fixed after patches.

He would do this, and report it again when it wasn't fixed. After about a month, his account got banned for 'exploiting bugs in the game.' He posted this on the Vanguard beta forums, and there was a mass exodus of beta players from Vanguard. Many people think this mass exodus of beta testers was the reason why Vanguard is a WoW clone, and a bad one at that.

It's also why I recommend you stay away from the game. I don't support companies that pull that shit on their beta testers, considering I beta test quite a few new MMOs.

Edit: I'm gonna throw my vote in with the CoX crowd, and also Eve is a lot of fun if you can survive the learning curve.

Wren · March 2007

you can get banned in a beta for exploiting bugs? what the hell. just sounds like they have retard GM's

SilentCoconut · March 2007

EverQuest 2 is pretty fun, now. They've got a trial out that let's you try the new race and starting city, and both are insanely better then the old areas. It also has a pretty mature and solid player base, though there are times when there are very few players in your level range online to group (mostly that's for the mid-60's, though). And if you ever played the original EverQuest, the nostalgia is overwhelming. And the game actually runs extremely well on my laptop (a 6 month old Dell Inspiron E1505). It's definitely the best non-WoW fantasy MMO out right now.

And although it doesn't have a trial, I'd like to repeat what Spawnbroker said - avoid Vanguard. It's an hideous to look at, buggy and unpolished. The game needed at least 6 more months in beta, and even then, it's inferior in every way to many games already on the market.

Jasconius · March 2007

Only play EVE if you hate fun and are easily impressed by uninspired space graphics to the tune of a rotation of photoshopped nebulas. Yes I said it.

Define your midranged computer, everyone has their own definition of what is midranged, I consider mine to be midrananged border-line antiquated, and it can run Vanguard.

City of Heroes IS cool, but you either love it, or hate it, it's the definition of treadmill MMO's, the saving grace is the character customization, which is enough for some people.

You don't need to necessarily hit up retail MMO's if nothing is jumping at you, there are plenty of Korean/Free MMO's floating around that satiate your desires.

I would highly reccomend surveying Vanguard, the game is remarkably unstable but that will come along in time. If you don't mind group play then it has alot to offer someone who wants a little more depth in their play experience.

TalonZahn · March 2007

A bunch of us from PA are playing Navy Field. We're on the Arizona server.

It's free, chews up time, and is amusing.

http://www.navyfield.com/

Download an older client from Fileshack, Fileplanet, etc... and then patch up when you log in. It's WAY faster.

I also like to play America's Army Online. Also free, and it let's me shoot people in the head.

[Edit] I used to play SWG with my brothers and we all left after they removed the professions and made Jedi a choice at the creation screen. We loved the space combat side of it. I started long before the first changes to combat were made. It was pretty much a flaming dive to earth from there on in.

Jasconius · March 2007

An additional note, I recently resubscribed to SWG (last week actually) to see the games progress.

It's not really an FPS anymore, they got rid of the stupid part where you had to be cursored over your target to hit him. Now you just click to select a target, and hold down the trigger, you dont need to be hovering over him. So in essence the only difference between the targetting system now and at release is that your combat cursor-more is fixed instead of allowing wiggle room.

The classes have been defined with talents, etc, but the true problem with that game is prohibitive lack of content and a very poor existing community, as previously mentioned in this thread, that has exploited the prior editions of this game so much that they are literally billionaires, and as such they have shattered the economy.

The Dude With Herpes · March 2007

Man; just try out any game you're interested in and decide for yourself what you do and don't like about each game and then pick one.

So and so could go on and on about why they don't like this game or that, but those game have subscribers so there are obviously people who do enjoy it. FFXI for example, people say all the time that people still playing are just stuck there because of the time they invested and not because they enjoy it. Which is a dumb as shit statement to make, I bet if you asked the people still playing if they liked it they'd say yes and tell you why. Their opinion isn't invalid because the general consensus is that FFXI sucks; quite the opposite. Their opinion is valid because they do like it and they are still playing it.

That's just an example, I wasn't trying to defend or attack FFXI.

I recently quit WoW after playing since beta. Did I quit because the game sucks? No, I quit because I was bored. However, for some reason many people that quit x game because they were bored immediately jump on the "x game sucks because I quit" bandwagon and it's just a useless argument.

And particularly in the MMO genre, trying to prove x game is better than y is completely worthless because the inherent appeal to addiction and to a degree OCD of the player obviously different aspects of different games are going to seem better or worse to different players. There's no way to flat out say that x game is better than y because z in this genre. It's all about what appeals to you more.

Don't get me wrong, there's MMO's I've tried and totally hate for very specific reasons, but I hate them. I don't harp on my friends who still play WoW just because I got sick of it. Hell, they're still having fun, why try to take that away from them? And I know if nothing else but because of time invested I will eventually be back in WoW. I just don't know when. There's things I don't like about WoW, but I inherently find the game fun. But just because you find something fun, doesn't mean you'll still find it fun the 262467267345 time you do it.

Anyway, my point is, just check out what you want to check out. If you don't try SWG simply because people here say it sucks, then you're doing yourself a disservice because hell, you might love it. I have friends who are passionate about SWG, have been playing since day one, and despite earlier posts about an anti-n00b social aspect, they actively tried to get me and whoever else they could talk to into it because they enjoyed it so much.

/rant

Scooter · March 2007

Jasconius wrote: »

City of Heroes IS cool, but you either love it, or hate it, it's the definition of treadmill MMO's, the saving grace is the character customization, which is enough for some people.

I'm not gonna get all fanboy or anything, but I will say that I have played definitive treadmill MMOs (watch out for anything from Korea or China) and CoH ain't close. Probably the only way CoH qualifies as treadmill is that it doesn't really have anything to do besides combat, but that's more a depth/width/whatever issue.

Jasconius · March 2007

Combat in that one warehouse, over and over and over again. Except it might have blue lights instead of white ones.

Maybe some torn wallpaper. And that crate might be farther down the hall.

The Dude With Herpes · March 2007

Jasconius wrote: »

Combat in that one warehouse, over and over and over again. Except it might have blue lights instead of white ones.

Maybe some torn wallpaper. And that crate might be farther down the hall.

Wow, you really haven't played it since it was released have you?

EDIT: Or at the very most past the first 10 levels.

Jasconius · March 2007

I've played every issue until 7.

They've added maybe five tilesets to the game since it came out, and even those are rehashes of old ones. Fifth Column caves? CoT caves with metal jutting out of the walls, for one example. (What are Fifth Column called now I can only remember their old, good name)

My roommate plays CoV for hours every day, I am heavily exposed to it, I have given it a chance with every new issue and I can still almost count the tile sets on my fingers.

The Dude With Herpes · March 2007

How is this any different than any other MMO? Even WoW which sports the most "versatile" amount of instances; you're either in a cave, a castle or a city. So they change the graphics on the walls to make you think you're in a different place. You're still going through an effective "cave" fighting the same type of mobs in the same numbers dispersed in the same fashion.

No matter what game you're playing if you're in an "instance" you're still in a cave with different decorations. In CoH it's just that every mission is in an "instance" so that repetition is going to seem more enhanced than like WoW that has 99% of it's quests outside. And for CoH's outside I have to give them points for a semi-diverse set of zones given that the entire game is played within a city; which even in RL is inherently repetitive.

I'm not saying CoX is a god game, or anything like that. But to attack the fact that it has a limited number of graphic sets is pretty silly in a genre where the gameplay can't change from level 1 to level 200 without alienating the players. The games are repetitive by nature.

Jasconius · March 2007

What I am pointing out is that for a game that is essentially just a chain series of instanced content, in two years they could have at least made enough tilesets so that if I sit down for two hours I'm not likely to end up in the same one three times in a row, by design or happenstance.

There's nothing else to do, the danger zones (Perez Park, etc) have basically phased out of vogue, so all you can do is story arcs.

In a game like WoW you may be in a cave more than once, but it's not like they took the exact same rooms and corridors and just shuffled them around. In WoW, any two caves are made of rock, in CoH, any two caves are just carbon copies of each other with the rooms in a different sequence.

The Dude With Herpes · March 2007

Jasconius wrote: »

What I am pointing out is that for a game that is essentially just a chain series of instanced content, in two years they could have at least made enough tilesets so that if I sit down for two hours I'm not likely to end up in the same one three times in a row, by design or happenstance.

There's nothing else to do, the danger zones (Perez Park, etc) have basically phased out of vogue, so all you can do is story arcs.

In a game like WoW you may be in a cave more than once, but it's not like they took the exact same rooms and corridors and just shuffled them around. In WoW, any two caves are made of rock, in CoH, any two caves are just carbon copies of each other with the rooms in a different sequence.

Go do RFC then do MC and say that again.

I'm glad that they phased out some of the zones like PP. Street sweeping was all there was to do there and it was boring as hell. Lots of people are still in the Hallows doing Frostfire and Attus. Tons of people are also in Faultline doing the new stuff which is actually pretty good and has excellent rewards for low level.

And even in WoW, so you go in a cave, say Deadmines. How is that different than Uldaman? The color is different and the mobs are different. Same deal as CoX. Even the new Outlands instances aren't terribly interesting. For all the buildup and deal made about lore for Burning Crusade, leveling 60-70 was amazingly light on lore. Zangarmarsh and netherstorm are the only two zones that are remotely interesting or even partially different than the zones previously in Azeroth, and even zangarmarsh is duskwallow/swamp of sorrows with shrooms instead of trees.

Besides that, how is it better to make you spend 10 levels (or 15 with STV or Barrens) in the same zone with the same tileset, same mobs, same quests for hours and hours and hours; but somehow it's a crime that you might do two warehouse missions in a row in CoX? Hell, level a Night Elf. You go from a purple forest to a black forest to a green forest to a jungle. So you might level some in Hillsbrad and/or Desolace in the 30's. Desolace is badlands is burning steppes is shimmering flats is hellfire is etc etc etc.

Look, again I'm not trying to defend CoX as better than WoW or anything; they're totally different style MMO's even if some of the core functionality is similar. My point is that there is no inherent difference between the way content is displayed in CoX as it is in WoW or any MMO for that matter.

Jasconius · March 2007

There's plenty of difference.

You cannot say that going to the same warehouse hundreds of not over a thousand times in the line of leveling up your character constitutes a "good job" by the developers.

RFC may be similar to MC but you don't go to RFC 500 times, and MC would be labelled "optional" content, whereas instanced missions are the only source of true content in CoH.

The Dude With Herpes · March 2007

So, what do you define as the "true source of content" for wow? Instances? You can't possibly make the arguement that is better than what CoX does. Which is better, doing 6 20 minute "instances" where you might or might not get a different interior each time or doing 1 2 hour instance where the content is exactly the same every single time you do it. You can say "you don't do RFC 500 times" but you do do UBRS/Strath/Scholo 757536135 times preTBC and even after TBC you get what, some more instances that aren't anything different than the ones at 60 oh but you get them at a harder difficulty level if you want. Wow, that's diversification of assets.

Not instances then? Leveling, quests? There's no inherent difference between killing 20 bunnies in the 1-5 zones as there is killing 30 clefthoofs at 67. And more often than not there's hardly a difference in zones. Virtually every class in WoW has most of it's "core" abilities by 10-15, all that changes after that is you can do more damage with those abilities. So, in complete honesty if you do everything in Elwynn and Westfall you've done every single thing there is to do in WoW. It's up to the player to decide if they like it enough to keep doing it. I'm personally one of the times that can do things a lot before I get sick of it, so WoW kept me plenty entertained for as long as it did.

And I can say that running the same warehouse hundreds of time in the line of leveing up constitutes a good job by developers if you can honestly say that killing 30 of a monster as a quest, collecting 10 of an item as a quest, or taking a book off the shelf and handing it to another guy thousands of times over the course of leveling is a "good job" by developers.

In CoX you do it in caves, warehouses, police stations, cities, sewers, different caves, more different caves, alien bases, mad scientist lairs, office buildings, mansions etc. In WoW you do it in a forest, a field, the hundredth town full of buildings that are completely identical to every other town of that faction, ad nausiem.

It's the same damn thing.. The only difference is the setting. In fact, I'd go so far as to say in CoX you're more likely to do things in sequentially different locations than you are in WoW because while you may be zone locked level wise like you are in all MMO's, at least within that zone you have some diversity, which WoW can't boast.

Jasconius · March 2007

You're completely excluding the scale, if WoW only had 15 zones in the whole game, THEN it would be the same thing.

mark · April 2007

What a pity, SWG seemed so interesting... I was planning to give it a try.

How did it look like at the beginning ? Was the atmosphere different ? What didn't work out ? :...:

Nocren · April 2007

Supposedly a few hardcore fans are reverse engineering the code to make a Legacy server with all the old stuff put back in and I believe choice material from the new stuff (manly the stuff that worked).

I think it's called SWGemu or something like that.

Jasconius · April 2007

And then they get sued.

The original game had more problems, with class imbalance and a ridiculous jedi system (that being there even was one).

And about 100% less PVE content, because it had none at release.

orpheus · April 2007

Just to throw in to this "Which game is better than which game" debate, I'd like to say this:

Auto Assault was the worst ever.

Ever.

Wren · April 2007

I think the old Jedi system, as bad as it is there being one, was still better than the new one where you have a thousand running around and that aren't really uber powerful like they should be.

mrflippy · April 2007

KingsHand wrote: »

Look, again I'm not trying to defend CoX as better than WoW or anything; they're totally different style MMO's even if some of the core functionality is similar. My point is that there is no inherent difference between the way content is displayed in CoX as it is in WoW or any MMO for that matter.

Blizzard is doing something that Cryptic/NCSoft isn't, because WoW certainly seems much less boring and manages to hold my interest for far longer.

HarshLanguage · April 2007

Jasc has a point about CoH, repetitive missions IS one of the biggest problems with the game. But in those few tilesets, you will engage is crazy wall-to-wall combat with superpowers going off constantly and bodies flying everywhere. And you will have fun. CoH/V performace is not so hot these days at max settings, but it'll certainly run fine with low settings.

Now, EVE you will either love or hate. There is little middle ground. If you don't like risking your money (and significant time) basically every time you play, all the time you play, you will not enjoy the game at all. Many parts of EVE are tensely boring. That's not a typo. Say you're mining -- you will be bored, but tense because you could be attacked any time. If you like risk, and enjoy carving your own niche, you will probably enjoy it. It certainly offers the most complex player-run social and political system in any MMO, which you have to admire even if you hate the gameplay. Anyway, they pass out 14 day trials like candy, so check it out. Should run OK on older hardware.

Guild Wars is a great old-school combat RPG with MMO trappings. And it's only as multiplayer as you want it to be. Looks awesome on old systems, too.

Avoid: SWG, Anarchy Online (it's free for a reason), Horizons (hah!), Saga of Ryzom.

Can't speak for the rest. I own copies of WoW, EQ2, and Auto Assault but haven't felt the desire to install them. :oops:

The Dude With Herpes · April 2007

Jasconius wrote: »

You're completely excluding the scale, if WoW only had 15 zones in the whole game, THEN it would be the same thing.

The zones in the game can be grouped in 15 or less tilesets. The differences are minor and barely qualify them as an independent zone.

Elf Forest:
Teldrassil
Darkshore
Ashenvale
Feralas
Felwood
Moonglade

Open Range:
Westfall
Barrens

Desert:
Tanaris
Shimmering Flats/Thousand Needles
Badlands
Silithus
Blasted Lands
Durotar

Winter Wonderland:
Dun Murogh
Winterspring
Alterac

"Scenic":
Elwynn
Redridge
Hillsbrad
Loch Modan
Mulgore

Haunted forest:
Felwood
Darkshire
Silverpine

Haunted Other:
EPL
WPL
Deadwind Pass
Azshara
Tirisfall

Swamp:
Wetlands
Swamp of Sorrow
Duskwallow Marsh
Ungoro

ZOMG Fire is teh epic!!:
Searing Gorge
Burning Steppes

Stonetalon doesn't really fit because it's got a mix of tilesets at different elevations.

TBC zones hardly add any diversity until you reach Blades Edge/Netherstorm. The rest are just the same with some slight difference (mushrooms, glowy things in the trees, random pointless floating islands). Leveling 60-70 the only time I really felt I was somewhere else was when I hit the edge of a land and you can fall.

So; no, I wasn't excluding the scale. More zones != more diverse zones. It's all the same damn thing over and over and over. And sure there are some minor "aesthetic differences" but those usually fall under: different color fog, different color trees, different color monster. None very deep. Oh, and the enemies tend to get bigger.

Look; I played WoW for 2 1/2 years including beta; it obviously was fun enough for me to keep playing (or otherwise had me by the balls). I'm not questioning that. But to try to defend it as some bastion of diversity or visual utopia is just naive and/or purposely ignoring reality.

mrflippy wrote: »

KingsHand wrote: »

Look, again I'm not trying to defend CoX as better than WoW or anything; they're totally different style MMO's even if some of the core functionality is similar. My point is that there is no inherent difference between the way content is displayed in CoX as it is in WoW or any MMO for that matter.

Blizzard is doing something that Cryptic/NCSoft isn't, because WoW certainly seems much less boring and manages to hold my interest for far longer.

Pointing out the important word there. Each game has it's fans, and CoH has been around longer and has people still playing since day one. So Cryptic must be doing something right too.

Again, I'm not saying blizzard is doing something wrong. I'm saying it's an MMO, and it's differences and "improvements" aren't as groundbreaking as people would like to believe and the base formula is identical to every other MMO; they just packaged it in a slightly prettier "package".

Scooter · April 2007

You know how GV has an unwritten rule about "Superman vs. Batman" debates? I'm thinking we need one of those for MMO vs. MMO debates. Not that this has gotten too much into flamefest territory, but it is in a SWG thread.

The Dude With Herpes · April 2007

You're right; sorry.

I wasn't so much trying to say anything inherently bad about WoW as much as I was trying to say that other games have their own merits and appeals to different players; and that WoW doesn't have any fundamental aspect that makes it better; it's style just has a more mass appeal probably.

For some reason being a paladin seems less nerdy to a non-gamer than being a super-hero. o.O I actually had a conversation similar to this the other day with my wife when I was trying to show her how to play CoH and she thought it was geekier than WoW which we used to play together on occasion. She's a total non-gamer.

X5 · April 2007

@OP

Lord of the Rings: Online

Open beta starts tomorrow, and it'll last about 2 weeks.

Anarchy online is an old one, but good, and the vanilla game is free. (subscription required for any xpacs)

CoX would be good if they offer any amount of free time. I enjoyed these games for the little bit i played em.

But whatever you do, don't don't don't download SWG

Penny Arcade

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