Star Wars Galaxies: Report #2
Ekim, 2003-09-04

You have to be Zen to enjoy SWG these days. "Adapt and conquer" should be the new motto for players that have the required constitution to endure the changes with a smile, as crippling as it can sometimes be. New MMORPGs have this nasty habit of changing drastically in the first few months of their life. SWG isn't about to break tradition, and the profession changes that we began to see last month have not only continued this month, but will go on for a long while still!

We're changing the game, here's a crutch

In the middle of August SWG saw a few drastic updates that changed the way a lot of players played the game before. Enemies that were easy kills one day became impossible to hit the next. Probots, those faithful (but greatly overpowered) combat droids that everyone loved so much, were hit with a nerf bat so hard that players started to cast them aside, and almost no one uses them anymore. Some things changed, then came back to the way it was before, then changed again. Players were heard through this, and that's why some changes were reverted, but it still was all very drastic.

Creature handlers probably saw the biggest changes so far, with their abilities revised so that a low level player can't use high level pets anymore (which makes sense!). But as essential as some of these fixes were, it doesn't change the fact that it was frustrating for players to lose the power that they had been previously given. And yet many more nerfs, and boosts, to other professions are coming our way. Many! Commandos, Bounty Hunters, Bio Engineers, and many others still need a lot of work before they are at a decent level.



The problem with these kinds of changes is that the existing players often have to completely revise the way they play the game. While this could sound somewhat refreshing, it's not… It borders on the frustrating. It's even more frustrating when you know that even more changes are coming along. Quite honestly, although I continue to highly enjoy SWG, I still wouldn't recommend anyone joining the game until some key elements are implemented (player-cities and/or mounts), unless they know and understand that the game will probably make a few more 180 degree turnovers from now until the end of the year.

The development team has also brought AT-ST's to the game as factional pets that Imperial players can actually purchase with their faction points. This addition was questionable at best since these two legged metal monsters are largely overpowered. In the spirit of Star Wars and it's story, it's true that the Empire is much stronger than the Rebel Alliance at that point in time, but this is allowing players to grief the opposing faction. A player with two AT-ST's in his tow does not leave much of a chance to other players, and threatens to kill the PvP aspect of the game.

When looking at the big picture though, you can see that the developers are committed to making SWG as good as it can be. A recent burst of developer activity on the official boards certainly helped. The game has its flaws, but it remains a good MMORPG. And since the developers are obviously committed to making it better, and are willing to listen to the community, I strongly believe that before long SWG will truly be complete.

This isn't the story you're looking for… Move along

One special gripe I have this month is with the story. The developers have decided to go ahead with the story, despite the obvious and urgent need to fix certain things related to loot drops and quests first. The story we were presented with, called "The Cries of Alderaan", was pretty bland and very simplistic (perhaps voluntarily so). The way the developers decided to have all players involved is by making them find disks on the corpses of humanoids that they kill. At the end of the month the developers will catalogue the total number of disks each faction (Imperials and Rebels) have, and will then use this to decide which side "wins". This will affect how the next act of the story will unfold. There is also a special message encrypted in these disks, and the player that will figure out how to decode it first in each faction will "win" extra faction points.

All in all I would say that it is pretty disappointing. The disks, found as loot, were dropping at an incredibly slow rate from the outset (this has been somewhat fixed lately, although the drop rates remain purposely very low), and only a few power gamers have managed to gather them all. Most people resorted to buying the disks from those players who had extras, which defeats the whole purpose of the challenge, in my opinion. The story had no real effect on the environment of the game yet except for the addition of special loot, so many players ended up completely ignoring it. I guess we can only hope that things will get better with future story arcs.

Final thoughts

I guess when all is said and done most people are still enjoying SWG, but the road is very bumpy. Even though most changes were positive at their core, the fixes come in very late since some of them should have been addressed before the end of beta. Additionally, other urgently needed fixes (bugged factory crates, pets continuously stopping at the edge of cities, items disappearing from inventory only to reappear the next day…) are still not addressed. Since this was the first official billing month, I think players should have expected a little more. All of this explains the low score this month.

If you are Zen enough, there are some very good things to be experienced in SWG, and patience will surely be rewarded eventually.

Report Score: 60% *

See you again next month for another status report on SWG's progress.

SWG Status Report 1

* The monthly report score does not reflect the general quality of the game as a whole, but is an indication of the progress the game has made since the last review or report. We take a more detailed look at the network status, content updates, and bug fixes for instance, rather than gauge how good or bad the game is. For a more detailed look at the general quality of the game, please read our official review.