Lets face it, the majority of the MMOG games have launch problems, but the fact is, SOE has enough experience in this area and they should’ve seen this coming.
In truth, the more popular and anticipated an MMOG is, the more likely it is to have launch day problems if the devs aren’t prepared. SOE should have been prepared because of the hype surrounding the title.
However, the general consensus is that the game sucks. Even a good launch day isn’t going to solve that problem. To me, its looking a lot like that whole Black & White (hype without substance) fiasco or Anarchy Online (hype, substance without preparation) again.
SWG will fail. Period. Primarily because the only thing it has in common with the Star Wars franchise we thought we were going to play in, is the name. Goddmannit, who in their right minds would want to develop a Star Wars game without, oh, I dunno, the Jedi, space flight, VEHICLES!!! etc
I predict that Koster is a gonner. Watch this space.
You MMO playing fuckers sure are a masochistic lot. 10 years from now you’ll be spending months in giddy anticipation lining up to get the opportunity to pay $15 a month for Massively Multiplayer Hiring A Hooker To Push Pins Into Your Scrotum. Oh well, thanks for feeding the beast and all.
But it keeps wiggling around when I move my mousewheel!
My wife decided to play SWG while I am taking a pass for now. What this does do though is allow me to see what kind of fun things are going on now that it is live. So far in 4 days the servers have been taken down 2 times for patches once for 3 hours another for 2 if I am not mistaken and both on the weekend of all times. The first patch caused a 3 hour rollback so players lost 3 hours of playing time! Also there is this neat little bug in the game that has been around all of beta and apparently hasn’t been fixed where all tells, groupchat, guildchat, and email goes down and you can only communicate in visible range with speach bubbles. Of course the biggest part of any MMORPG in the long run is for people to meet people they like and form communities. Kind of difficult if you can’t talk to anyone who is not right beside you. :)
While not on the AO or WW2OL level of disaster this has to be the 3rd worst launch of an MMORPG ever. As Jeff Green mentioned before this is inexcusable.
Let’s say it is the third worst MMORPG launch ever. Who cares? Is somebody handing out an award or something?
Having not given one shit about the game up to this point, I went and bought it anyway. I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit–how much of that is pure gameplay joy and how much simply a result of not having already ruined the game for myself by getting too involved pre-launch (as is usually the case) I don’t know, but I think it’s actually a pretty impressive product. Yes, I’ve been disco’ed a few times and yes, I’ve had to patch, but big friggin’ deal. It may be hard to believe, but I’ve actually survived the experience.
Here’s my big complaint: how come the box says I get a free 30-day subscription with my purchase (which is true), but doesn’t mention that I’m forced to pay for a 30-day subscription in order to activate my account (also true)? In other words, I only get the free 30 days if I pay for 30 days first. I’m not usually one to jump on the always trendy class-action lawsuit bandwagon, but I have to tell you, this highly deceitful little maneuver pissed me the fug off.
As for the game itself, though, given what it’s trying to be I think it’s pretty much a home run. For the most part I do feel like a character in a Star Wars movie and tend to think of myself as watching a movie as I play. I think this is the sort of experience the devs were shooting for and they’ve pretty much hit the mark, in my opinion.
Are you referring to entering in your credit card? This ia method by which you can thoughtlessly subscribe and continually subscribe to the game without having to enter in your credit card later. The idea is that people will forget, etc. and hence when the 30 days are over you will choose to keep & subscribe to the game. Or you forget and 6 months later you see your bill and go, “holy crap.”
It also apparently works pretty well. A lot of people report discovering the error months after, as in your example. Plus, a lot of people want to be ABLE to play again, just in case. Of course, the case never comes up again, so they get screwed. Get a CC dedicated to MMORPGs, so you will notice these things. And if you take that advice, you play too many MMORPGs.
I’m not really sure you can act like people’s carelessness is some big bad plot by the developer to screw people. There are plenty of reasons to require a credit card signup, not the least of which is to make sure you can hold someone responsible if they break the terms of service.
Sad but true. I am a seasoned veteran of MMORPGs. I honestly thought SWG was going to have a perfect launch, with years of EQ experience, and two perfect patches behind them. I was disappointed that SWG contains all of the horrible mistakes that EQ did, and some that EQ still has.
It bugs me that good concept games are being squished away from ever existing because unplayable crap is being vomited onto the store shelves at best possible speed. A star wars MMORPG has immense potential, higher than almost any OTHER MMORPG, being that the star wars universe is HUGE, and COMPLEX and FAMILIAR, and FUN. Yet, from all reports, SWG is none of these things. It’s numbingly tedious, half-finished, often boring.
Bleh. The near-universal negative reviews have caused me to not buy it. I admit to buying most MMORPGs as soon as they came on the market. However, I have now learned my lesson.
So, I think things will change for the better eventually. Even the most rigorous fanboi is going to understand that s/he must put their foot down and make the developers put out a GOOD game, or no game at all. Supply and demand.
Heh. Yeah, it’s gonna happen unless a lot of these companies with upcoming MMOGs have business plans to make money off fewer than 50,000 subscribers, and that’s being generous.
I think there’s room for a few more winners, though, which probably means some existing games will be hurt, at least in terms of curtailing any chance for growth.
My problem isn’t with credit card signup. If you would actually read what I said, you would notice that I said they forced me to sign up for a month’s service. That’s exactly what I meant. They forced me to choose one of three radio buttons labeled “Monthly $14.95,” “Half-yearly $whatever,” and “Yearly, $whatever.” I don’t know about you, but that says to me that my card will at some point be billed X amount of dollars. True, I might be able to go in and cancel now, but a) I don’t know that that won’t make me unable to access the game anymore since it’s a requirement to access it in the first place, and b) the burden shouldn’t be on me anyway. If they want to handle things this way, they should tell me up front, BEFORE I’ve purchased the game.
Is it possible that Star Trek is more respectable than Star Wars now? I actually LIKED ST Nemesis more than Episode 1 and 2! Data dying brought a tear to my eye… okay it didn’t. But it was still pretty cool.
No. Voyager and Enterprise have really hurt your case.[/quote]
I have to agree. I shudder to imagine what a Star Trek MMORPG would turn out like, given that it would have to be approved by the current folks at Paramount.
Then again, I loved the original Star Trek (warts and all) and the original Star Wars movies (except for the Ewoks, of course), and I think everything about the modern versions are crap… so maybe I’m just turning into a crochety old curmudgeon before my time. :twisted:
