WoW: A mass exodus?

[Jabe Adaks]

I am really beginning to feel the tremors... A lot and I mean A LOT of players will probably be jumping ship when WoW comes out. Its hard to dispute that SWG is in serious trouble in the big picture, there are even a few SOE threads where players are organizing and saying things like "what WoW server are we going to pick?".

That's pretty bad.

Over the last few days I have taken a few steps back and decided to take in some of the things in SWG that I have never tried. I went to all the POI's, I have done the Imperial theme park, Jabba's theme park and started the Hero of Tatooine quest.

It was mindless.

Every theme park I have played is a matter of running back and forth and doing one of two things; talking or killing. I did a proof of concept on this by ignoring the conversational text of the last half of Jabba's theme park. I gave affirmative answers and ran to my waypoint. If I got attacked I killed everything, if I didn't, then I conversed and ran back.

I completed the theme park while being completely oblivious to the story line.

I only knew that the game's mechanics allowed for only 1 of 2 outcomes in every mission and that those missions would always be within a 1000 meters of the palace. I completed the whole thing in under two hours and I felt like I had just finished grinding something.

I keep coming back to the same idea here... Its the people I play with that is holding this together. The community that has formed is great, despite the lack of depth provided in the game. Despite this, I really think WoW is going to hurt us and hurt us bad.

For the first time, I have a realistic fear that SWG isn't going to pull through because the masses wanted other things fixed before launch or immediately thereafter. And now they're plopping down a space expansion which easily doubles the amount of code to fix and debug.

May the force be with us in this dark time.

Jabe

[Dwilah]

I haven't been with the game since launch. I've already had friends leave for other games. It saddens me. MMOs are just The Thing right now...I haven't played any others. I don't know what they're like. I have a hard time believing they're that much different, from what other people have told me. My friends that have left...they go over to another game for awhile, they're excited...they talk about coming back to Galaxies. I think it's just a natural cycle. People want to do something new and different.

I encourage us all to focus on the story, regardless of how mindless it could possibly be. Storytelling, story creating...it's what this community is focused on promoting, isn't it? At the risk of sounding like a sappy hippy camp counselor, let's focus on our goals of uniting the RP community and having a damn good time doing it. The game is a tool, a setting...it has its issues like any man-made set, but let's remember the fun stuff. Shall we?

[Ekade]

I keep coming back to the same idea here... Its the people I play with that is holding this together. The community that has formed is great, despite the lack of depth provided in the game. Despite this, I really think WoW is going to hurt us and hurt us bad.

Community is everything.

Game mechanics will ALWAYS get boring. They could do more aside from the "success or failure".. but that would invariably get boring as well. Player created content is the only way to keep things fresh and exciting. It is IMPOSSIBLE for Devs to keep up with demand in this regard. Think of games that are ALL content.. like the Baldurs Gate series. You chew through the content in 100 hours or so, then you are done. The same will happen in any MMO.

This past year of playing SWG has been the most fun in gaming that I have ever had, and it keeps getting better.

I do not think we should adopt the attitude that things are bad and only getting worse. This is self defeating. Why even try? Once you are there, you are done. The SOE forums reek of this and that is why I hate going there. They make it a point to sour the milk for everone else. It is hard enough to rally the community without people spewing negativity all over the place.

I am of the mindset that things are good here, they could be better but they are good. Before us we have a myriad of wonderful possibilities. I like that fact that I am DONE leveling my character, and I dont feel the need to ride the endless XP treadmill in order to have a character powerful enough to do things with my friends. I can focus on what I love, RP.

Yet another MMORPG theory I will share with you:
"As time goes on, the people that remain are more and more like you." I am somone who love SW, and loves RP. As time wears on and I look around, the people I see have similar traits. I think this is a good thing.

Let the MMORPG bandwagon jumpers jump. They jump into WoW, and in a few months they will probably jump at the next thing.

[Keer]

Well, I don't know about jumping the bandwagon as there are many who jumped to SWG. But I have seen WoW and it's nothing to sneeze at...

I have 3 friends currently that are WoW Beta Testers. I have watched them play it. I have enjoyed watching them. And I am envious.

At first the character art threw me. Didn't like it at all. But after reading the background stories ( I've never played any of the Warcraft series) and seeing my friends play it, I got over the animation and started feeling it.

One bad dream of mine consists of me getting accepted for WoW Beta, an Undead Warlock saying "You know you want to RP me. Come ride atop your flame hooved Nightmare, souring souls as you go! Bwa hah hah haa! "

I truly can't say, but it's honestly going to be a hard choice to make. As broke as it is, I love my Smuggler. *tears*

[Zannon]

May the force be with us in this dark time.

Jabe

Don't mind him...he's the king of the gloom and doom post to bring everyone else down. I guess it comes with being dead and rotting. He probably can't stand his own stink.

(I'll answer this seriously later)

[Jabe Adaks]

May the force be with us in this dark time.

Jabe

Don't mind him...he's the king of the gloom and doom post to bring everyone else down. I guess it comes with being dead and rotting. He probably can't stand his own stink.

(I'll answer this seriously later)

The king of the gloom and doom post?

Maybe I am just getting caught up in everyone else's gloom, I dunno. It could be the tremendous amount of player negativity and scathing reviews from the big sites. I don't have any plans on leaving, but I think that some cool people may soon be lost to other MMOGS.

Jabe

[Keer]

Also,

While I am done "SOE bashing" since it just makes me look that much more stupid for continuing to play and pay, I have to say that Blizzard gets serious respect for not rushing to release their product knowing things are still going to be kinda batty for their paying customers.

MMORPG's and home video games in general are the newest form of show business. And despite their newness I believe some of the old rules still apply:

90% of the time the business in Show Business will always be more important than the show.

Despite that, from what I've seen of WoW, Blizzard is really closing that percentage gap.

Credit where credit is due. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Zannon]

I didn't mean to offend ya, man...just giving you a hard time and making light of your serious post.

/looks around for a X'an post to pick on.

/finds one.

/runs off with evil grin.

[Jabe Adaks]

I didn't mean to offend ya, man...just giving you a hard time and making light of your serious post.

/looks around for a X'an post to pick on.

/finds one.

/runs off with evil grin.

Nah I am not offended, it just made me wonder if I am the gloom and doom poster. I always hated that guy.

Jabe

[Weyune]

Okay, Im out of the loop. What is WoW?

[Zannon]

shhhh...nobody tell her.

[Af'ecks]

The people and the RP that I've met and done in this game not only keeps me in it, but got me to buy a second account. Hence my chick. It's to RP a growing city, when the city isn't really that RP-ish, so I have Auroria to do all that. Most of my RPing is done here, on the boards, as i don't have a lot of play time now that I've started working, but I want to develop a storyline for my city, and have it interact with what goes on in Noc.

For example, I'm currently working on a semi-scripted video in which rebels attack Imperius while her troops are training in the mountains. They get a distress call from a boy who snuck into city hall (mayor got executed...), and speed back toward Imperius. Training group arrives moments before reinforcements from Imperial Outpost (perhaps from Noc?). The Imperials corner the rebs and let the base defenses tear them apart. wounded are healed, dead are reconstituted, damage repaired, big party.

Cool eh?

Oh yeah, I need to finish my wall and drop bases for that to happen. oops.

[Novall]

Seeing as how i've already been an undead god over an empire of players...I dont care to play a game that may encourage me to do that again

[Gaaralow]

Well, of course it the people you play with that makes or breaks a social game. All MMORPGs are. The setting (Star Wars, Warcraft, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever) is just decoration. But the system, on the other hand, is also extremely important. It's what makes it a game.

To be honest, if Jump to Lightspeed isn't a vast improvement, I'm gonna drop this game like a bad habbit. I love the company, and the stories are nice, but it is a game, and the game's system and content just isn't fun and exciting anymore. The ability to hop on almost any night and play with some friends, and high hopes for JtL, are the only things keeping me interested anymore.

Any game (role-playing games in particular) need a good engine/system and loads of fresh content to keep people interested for extended amounts of time. That's why paper RPGs release supplements and modules. The SWG devs just aren't doing that. Not while JtL is in development. Sure, players can add content, but not enough to keep everyone interested for long. Plus, not all players can get to player made events at certain times. The fate of SWG is all on the "expansion" that should've been done for the release.

This game is poorly thought out, incomplete, and stale, and that's why folks are easly leaving it and congregating in another, plain and simple.

And now for the good news. After JtL is published, not only will devs have more time to debug, but more time to insert more content. This game may actually resemble the Star Wars universe! Hopefully they can fix the system. Give us the game they promised long ago. And it's not too far, far away.

[Nyu]

Everything gets boring sooner or later, expecially when you already did all that you likes and such things.

In the beginning there was only Ultma Online and it's still going, strange uh? Not too much if you keep in mind the huge comuny it have.
SOE with SWG just show how much crappy the system is: everybody knows that the game was released only 50% completed and we played for months a beta and bla bla bla.
We all read and heard stuff good and bad about SWG and in every other game your will go will be the same, maybe less maybe more.

Personally I play alot the paper RolePlay of StarWars so what I can't do in the game I can always do it in the paper RPG.

There isn't an eternal game, there will be always the boredom line that you will trespass soner or later.