Your reward for CURB

[Skorixor]

Star Wars Galaxies Offers a "Thank You" To Players "Double XP Week"

As a special thanks to our community for supporting us through our recent Combat Upgrade testing/publish process we would like to offer double-xp to our players.
For the first full week following the Combat Upgrade publish cycle. Beginning Monday May 2, 2005 at 12:01AM PDT and ending May 9 th at 11:59 PM PDT. Anytime you log in and play your chosen character will earn double-XP.

So, jump in with some friends, experience the new features for yourself, and enjoy double-xp with our thanks!

We appreciate your continued support our community is a big part of our success and we appreciate your loyalty and commitment to the game!
We plan to continue enhancing the game-play experience and adding high-quality Star Wars-style entertainment to the game throughout this year. Remember, you must have an active SWG account, in good standing, to log in to the game.

May the Force Be With You,

The Star Wars Galaxies Team

they should just say:

we can't find anyone to test this new crappy system, so we gott agive ya something. Oh and by the way, please try to ignore all the crappy bugs because this is Beta part (insert large number here) of SWG.

May the Force be with you (this phrase should be the tipoff right there it's going to suck)

[Jabe Adaks]

They forget to tell you that you'll get double xp if you don't crash to desktop.

Jabe

[Skorixor]

oh THAT's right

[Iri]

I don't like the phrase chosen character...does that mean only one of our toons per account gets this double xp?

[Skorixor]

I don't like the phrase chosen character...does that mean only one of our toons per account gets this double xp?

get this man a cigar, tell him what's he won!!


Why Johnny, he gets another lame reward!

[Zannon]

Well, they could just not give ya anything and not try to say thanks for being patient.

The fact of the matter is, everyone will hate this at first, but, if you give it some time to get used to it, I think it's a good thing. When I played on TC, I HATED it at first, but after a few hours on it, I think it was a lot of fun. Sure, I couldn't solo much, even at a level 80, but I could solo enough to have fun on my own. Going into it with the attitudue that it sucks just sets you up to not like it or anything about it.

I dunno, I guess maybe I the only one here that hates the fact that I can solo a rancor. When I first realized I could do that with a pistol, I got really disheartened with the game. I like the thrill of there being a chance I'm gonna die. Right now, there's just no excitement, no risk, and no feeling of accomplishment with the majority of the combat. Hell...all I do is mash a macro button when I fight. At least in the CU, I was doing things differently depending on the actions of the mob.

[Skorixor]

true, but a lot of people like to hunt solo, myself included...

and trying to get a group of friends online at the same time to hunt, so you can kill something more than durni's, are very hard to do (with my schedule anyway)

when was the last time you got more than 5 people in a group hunt?

I bet solo grouping gets bigger than it was before, not for the payouts, but for the ability to actually kill stuff that's difficult

and as far as rancor, it's not that you're a badass, it's that they are too wussy...rancors should be up there in difficulty with kimos/krayts imo

[Rebecca]

I agree with you 100% Zannon.
This new system scares be... But as a noble Twilek once said, most of all this hype is caused from fear of change.
I didn't play World of Warcraft, or Everquest 2. I don't care if the combat systems have been copied... That's just some smart people right there. "This system is really good, maybe we could implement some of these features."

I can solo Krayt Dragons, I can solo Gorax... I can kill everything in the Tusken fort all by my lonesome. Finally there will bit of realism us roleplayers can look forward to. The Tatooine desert might be a bit more fearful when those tuskens are seen far off... The Krayt Valley will be a place people rarely go. Despite the fact that it is changeing, and the system is being completely re-done... A system we have been testing for 2 years now. The current system sucks. I'm sick of the buff me, run out, spam 1 attack on thousands upon thousands of creatures, style... This game implements.

I plan to go Special Forces as soon as possible. And will remain special forces at all times, except while bounty hunting.
May the force be with us.

God I hope this doesn't suck.

[Sai'nu]

I really do wish I had the kind of enthusiasism some of you have about this. But I lean more towards the current system just needed tweaked to make sense. Certain creatures needed to be lvl'd up quite a few notches and the buff and run uber armor cut back a lot. Messed up continuity aside; one of the only real unique things this game had 'combat' just went out the window.

I mean, for crying out loud, the new fighting even looks aesthetically displeasing. How am I suppose to stay excited about boring looking attacks?

That aside; I'm going to stand by the only 'other' uniquness is the resource of 'tools' they have in swg.

Sorry for remaining the apathetic one about this; But I'm going to be depending on RP more and enteracting with their 'environment' a helluva lot less after this. There is a big difference between 'balancing' and 'retooling' which is what they did. Completely! This is usually when a different company takes over the rights to the game because the original people couldn't get their act together.

[Keer]

Does anyone know if the double xp applies to JtL space combat as well?

I don't see why it wouldn't, but ya never know....


EDIT: And as whacky as the last 24 hours and change have been, I gotta applaud SOE for giving up the double xp.

[Jabe Adaks]

Here is why this whole thing bothers me:

They are putting out a product that is inferior to the existing one, inferior only because the upgrade is still incomplete. They are doing it under the motivation of the Episode 3 marketing machine. Because of that, the work I have put in to my character over the past year is essentially getting pushed back or unadvanced. They change everything and expect that I will happily "respec" my character in one sitting when it took me months to even decide what I wanted the first time. How can I expect to respec my character when I don't even understand the new system?

I've played WoW, I have a level 8 hunter and enjoy the combat very much. The combat system works great in the game it was designed for. Blizzard created a game that works cohesively, lag-free and simple. You can't just steal good peice from other games and plug them in to yours. A game is an overall design that is thought out on a big picture basis. Seems like they lost that idea somewhere along the line.

As a developer I know how this happens: no time to fix the last 20 bugs, time to ship, make money and patch later. I also know you can only do this so many times before customer loyalty takes a permanent hike. I am disappointed mostly because this will be another black mark on a game that should be the best MMORPG in the industry. The framework for an incredble game is there, yet the track record is gruesome. You don't recover from that.

Bottom line, I am not so worried that this stuff will eventually get fixed. But the real problem is that the devs of our beloved game are not working on new features proactively anymore. Updates are not a surprise right now, its expected. When this happens innovation stops. They are putting out fires, operating reactively and attempting to bandage the bleed that games like WoW have set forth. They are working long hours and I guarantee morale is hurting over there. They are not making features that programmers at other companies would care about and they never will until they consciously decide to change. I've been on both sides of the fence as a programmer and product manager - you don't get ahead doing things this way.

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.co ... p?id=58247

*looks up* You can't get that back when word of mouth has become your worst enemy.

Jabe

[Hashum]

Sorry I just agree with Jabe 100% on this. I'm not so much upset that they're changing things, but that they're rushing to do it. They only gave us about 2 months notice to begin with which is short for such a huge game change. Then they push it up by almost two weeks with only 1-2 days notice.

Like Jabe said I have faith they'll eventually fix everything, but I just wish for something as big as this they'd have done it the right way. I understand the push to get the EP3 marketing pick up, and I can't disagree with their thoughts their from a business stand point. But we've all known that EP3 was going to hit sometime this summer for quite awhile, so it shouldn't have been a huge surprise to them. They should have been prepared for this in advance. Instead it feels like they were side swiped and are now trying to catch up.

When they make such huge fundamental changes like they have to Armorsmith, Jedi, TKM, and entertainers (Armorsmith especially changing their resources) people need time to prepare for that in game. And two months isn't that long, so I can't blame them for not getting into TC when they had so much they needed to do in Live to get ready for that. And bumping it up only compounds the impact.

[Skorixor]

got an email from sony that the servers would be down, and the new features of the CU, etc etc

then at the bottom of the email they threw in:

Don't take our word on how much fun these changes add to combat " try it yourself!

Player Comments from Test Center About Combat Upgrade:
"I love the combat upgrade ."
"I enjoy the new look of the hot keys, adding images was a great idea...."
"The new cooldown timers are much easier to understand."

OMG I'm glad they put that in there!! Now i'm totally stoked for this!!! THIS IS GONNA ROXXOR!!!!!!!

/sarcasm off

[Zannon]

got an email from sony that the servers would be down, and the new features of the CU, etc etc

then at the bottom of the email they threw in:

Don't take our word on how much fun these changes add to combat " try it yourself!

Player Comments from Test Center About Combat Upgrade:
"I love the combat upgrade ."
"I enjoy the new look of the hot keys, adding images was a great idea...."
"The new cooldown timers are much easier to understand."

OMG I'm glad they put that in there!! Now i'm totally stoked for this!!! THIS IS GONNA ROXXOR!!!!!!!

/sarcasm off

I have to admit...I got that yesterday and just stared at it for about 10 minutes thinking..."What a bunch of idiots."

[Jabe Adaks]

got an email from sony that the servers would be down, and the new features of the CU, etc etc

then at the bottom of the email they threw in:

Don't take our word on how much fun these changes add to combat " try it yourself!

Player Comments from Test Center About Combat Upgrade:
"I love the combat upgrade ."
"I enjoy the new look of the hot keys, adding images was a great idea...."
"The new cooldown timers are much easier to understand."

OMG I'm glad they put that in there!! Now i'm totally stoked for this!!! THIS IS GONNA ROXXOR!!!!!!!

/sarcasm off

I have to admit...I got that yesterday and just stared at it for about 10 minutes thinking..."What a bunch of idiots."

I am glad I am not the only one that thought this. Its like they think we're all dumb. "Oh hey look at this feedback, it must be great!" Pfft.

Jabe