Patches breaking the game arent new in Sony house, EQ had a lot of them as well.
The bigger the patch, more things would get broken in the process, and more often than not the the servers would soon go down again for more emergency patches.
Oy. Sounds like it’s time to check out that Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion after all…
I dunno, giving SOE any more money is probably just a bad idea.
I was gonna give this game a try… but now I feel like going back to DAOC… that Atlantis xpansion looks MIGHTY cool. Swimming and shit… rocks!
GO CUBS!
etc
The release had been delayed a year, and most of that year was spent in intense, nonstop, 15/7 crunch mode. There was no other option left but to ship.
Play it, or don’t. Early adoption in a MMOG is hell, even with a decent release.
That said, early players of SWG got -HUGE- advantages, which players who joined a month or two later missed out on:
- nerfing Probots, so that the ones early in the game’s release are much more powerful, giving early players a huge advantage;
- removing the strongest creatures from the game as pets, so if you didn’t get a baby creature earlier you can no longer tame one, giving early Creature Handlers huge advantages;
- significantly bumping up the XP needed to gain levels in certain classes, such as Rangers;
- removing healing XP for healing pets, making it much harder to gain medic levels;
- removing the ability to build structures on certain planets, so if you happened to get one on early, you have a convenient base on the toughest planets, which more recent players don’t have a chance at;
- removed the ability to get full resources for harvesting baby creatures, and full creature handling XP.
- nerfing the best Rifles in the game, T-21s, giving players who got them early a huge advantage.
Those are just a few, off the top of my head based upon the classes I’ve played, all of which have a very significant effect on gameplay.
Joaen and I shitcanned our accounts at the beginning of the month. Went to AO: Shadowlands. The zoning glitches and such are STILL in AO - which frustrates her to no end - but by god it’s a solid game. SWG, we just ran completely out of things to do, and we both hate tradeskilling with a passion.
That said, early players of SWG got -HUGE- advantages, which players who joined a month or two later missed out on:
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This is actually a reason I will never try SWG. I didn’t care for the beta and skipped the release. I don’t want to play a game where I’ll always be a second-classer no matter what I do.
In EQ and DAOC, late adopters get the benefit of mudflation and added stuff (better items, spellcrafting, etc) which means that the early adopters don’t have a permanent advantage.
Eh, what do I know. I just never really cared for the overall design concept of SWG so I guess I’m a curmudgeon.
I’ve been enjoying LDON on EQ and I’m looking forward to Trials of Atlantis on DAOC.
Dan
That said, early players of SWG got -HUGE- advantages, which players who joined a month or two later missed out on[/quote]
So existing items weren’t changed? It was only new items which got nerfed?
Does this mean things like The Holy Blaster Rifle will get passed down like a sacred heirloom?
In EQ and DAOC, late adopters get the benefit of mudflation and added stuff (better items, spellcrafting, etc) which means that the early adopters don’t have a permanent advantage.
If you played in the first month of DAoC you got the benefit of faster leveling. They nerfed leveling after about a month because, in Mythic’s own words, players were leveling “faster than intended.” I can’t remember the early days of EQ that well, but Druids could kite reds early before they got nerfed.
My feeling is you should play right away. The game’s probably at its most exciting that first month when everyone’s discovering it.
That’s always true in a MMOG, even without the SWG-specific examples you listed. First in learn how the game works first, and can establish guilds (or PA’s, as they’re called) that provide a useful social structure that keep them interested. Finding a group of players that you can play with and consistently don’t make you want to quit, is the hardest thing for any MMOG newbie to resolve.
This helps the newbie versus the guys who got the uber-powerful T21’s (before they were nerfed) how again?
— Alan
I guess then the moral is, only join an MMORPG when it launches, or not at all?
Well, no. Early adopters are often the first to get bored and quit, or get frustrated by unfulfilled promises and bugs. :) What I described is just what drives some players to get in early. You only learn the dynamic of player loyalty after a few months have passed. SWG hasn’t been out six yet.
Absolutely – pre-nerf Probots, or “extinct” pets, are exceptionally valuable right now – more than 100 times as valuable as the biggest castle in the game. To the extent you can can an extinct pet, generally because someone is quiting the game, they are costing hundreds of real dollars, or 2-10 million credits in-game.
My level of interest hasn’t waned largely because of the community I’m in and the players I’m around (of whom some I want to kill some of the time but never all, all of the time). Last night we had our first trial. There’s even a courtroom set up nicely for the purpose in a courthouse structure. Players had agreed to the ground rules before hand and the case itself wasn’t scripted but an incident that just sort of arose.
I won’t pretend this excercise felt very Star Warsy or that it was as gripping as a Law and Order episode but it was fun and fairly interesting. Surprised me that almost everyone stuck around for the full 3 hours or so to witness the trial. Likely had to do with the status and reputations of some of the individuals involved who are movers in the community.
Afterwords there was a late night debriefing OOC where we talked about what worked and what didn’t and discussed some of the problems (including, as you might guess, trial length).
Could this have happened on any MMORPG? Probably. But I’m still struck by the quality and maturity and sheer numbers of roleplayers in SWG. We have all kinds of issues and problems but most folks seem vested enough in this experiment in a roleplaying city working that they’re willing to sit down and talk rather than just scream or backstab.
Absolutely – pre-nerf Probots, or “extinct” pets, are exceptionally valuable right now – more than 100 times as valuable as the biggest castle in the game. To the extent you can can an extinct pet, generally because someone is quiting the game, they are costing hundreds of real dollars, or 2-10 million credits in-game.[/quote]
See, that just sucks. I don’t want to play in a game where some people have this supercool and powerful pet or object and my only chance to ever get one is to spend real cash for it. That’s just irritating.
Mark, folks freak out about minutae and get obsessive about effectiveness. In reality in SWG the powercurve is infinitely more shallow than in any other game. I had a pre-nerf probot. It died pretty fast without me there to babysit it. It also looked exactly like the post-nerf probot. Not so very cool. But in the world of power obsessives any little edge is earth-shattering. The pre-nerf probot had alot more hitpoints and a slightly better rate of fire but I really doubt it would turn the tide of a big battle. It was a better tank than the post-patch version but, eh, if you really want effective pets be a creature handler. Not a very huge deal except to those inclined to make huge deals.
Yeah, but I still find it annoying. Why didn’t they just level the playing field and nerf all probots? I hate nerfs, but I think I hate players with unfair advantages even more.
I completely agree, although it’s a tough decision for the developers to make – SOE has taken a mixed approach, making some nerfs across the board (like prohibiting any non-creature handlers from having powerful creatures), while others (like the ones I listed) have been grandfathered.
The types that have been grandfathered are the sorts of things that individual players would have put a lot of effort into or be personally attached to – acquiring a powerful creature, saving up or crafting a probot, building a house.
I had a pre-nerf probot. It died pretty fast without me there to babysit it.
But it’s now no longer possible to lose pre-nerf probots - they can’t be destroyed, so the remaining ones are just that much more valuable. I disagree with Brian’s statement that there isn’t much of a difference been these pre-nerf droids/creatures – some of them are drastically more powerful, and/or less vulnerable because of armor.
But as Brian says, the powercurve in SWG is infinitely more shallow than in other games, so it’s not as much of a grind to develop a cool character.
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