Posted by Kwip on October 27th, 2003 | 2 Comments 
I feel I should start out by saying I didn’t leave SWG with hate in my heart. At some point in the future, I’d really like to get back into it. But the only way that’s going to happen is if some of the things on our lists change.
Especially the one about my computer sucking…
Why SW:G Was Okay… Just Not $14.95 a Month Okay…
10. My computer sucks. I suppose I should put this as number one or something, because it has a HUGE part to do with why I had so much trouble in the game. However, I think that even if it weren’t an issue, the others would still be a problem, so I’m leaving it as number ten. But the game performed horribly for me – often times I’d find myself bouncing around the wilderness like some deranged Cheshire Cat; disappearing here, re-appearing there, usually in the midst of some killer monsters…
9. Lag. This could probably tie in with number 10, but even playing it on Ground Zero computers, the thing lagged badly whenever I entered a crowded area.
8. Goal. What was I doing on this world? What was there to work towards? I loved the idea of playing a strongly neutral smuggler – I had this great concept worked up where I would be careful to chose missions that would balance out my faction status. But after my five-hundredth mission of “Take X to NPC Y and return,” I was completely bored out of my mind. Yes, I was earning credits, but other than that, there was nothing tying me into the game. I suppose if I had played a strongly pro-Rebel or pro-Empire character, maybe I could’ve tried to get more immersion out of it, but I doubt it. Nothing I was doing in the game felt like I was working towards any ‘larger picture.’
7. Downtime in general. Whether it was from injuries, ‘battle fatigue’ (a concept I thoroughly hated – when was the last time you heard about Bobba Fett having to hang out at the local cantina for six hours just because all that fighting was really getting him down?), or some other bizarre cause (I once had a bug where the NPC I sought couldn’t be located. I was where they were supposed to be, but nobody, including the help staff, knew why they weren’t there. I was told to wait around for them. Whee.). If I’m playing a game, I want to be spending my time playing it. I don’t want to have to sit around healing, listening to music, or watching Ewok-wannabees shake their groove thing at the cantina.
6. Crafting sucked. Every game that comes out promises us new and exciting crafting, but if your revision of the crafting method involves simply inserting additional steps – of the same thing – in the process, that’s not really new. I want something like Puzzle Pirates, where crafting is actually challenging and not a matter of clicking repeatedly. I don’t want to be able to look up how to build a new blaster in my help files or on a website. I want to have to have a way that I can tinker with items in game, and an intuitive way to learn to craft new items. Simply getting a recipe and putting all the pieces together is boring. I don’t know that SWG was trying for this, but I just got quickly bored with crafting items there – the same as I have with every other MOG out there. I had hoped for much better.
5. Jedis. I love how the “Legend of the Jedis” became an actual thing in the game lore – there were hot debates whether or not they truly existed, if they could exist, had they ever existed, etc. I imagine this very accurately reflected the legend of the Jedi in the fictional universe of Star Wars around the time the game is set. However, if I may be so bold as to just bite off of Kaigon – it’s a Star Wars game. I may not have wanted to play a Jedi myself, but it was insane to me to imagine that this game was shipped without Jedis in it. That’s like saying Middle Earth Online is going to ship without Hobbits in it.
4. Bugginess. Do I really need to go into more details with this? I guess it is the nature of the MOG Beast that it has become acceptable to ship games terribly early. I don’t know that games should be allowed as long as, say, Horizons to percolate, but come on – I can’t believe the developers signed off on this. The sad thing is, of course, that they probably didn’t – no doubt they were all tranquilized and locked up while their project was boxed and shipped against their protests. Now they’re locked in their cages, taking all this flak from the loyal fans who are outraged at ‘their’ mistakes…
3. Nose-thumbing at the broader community. I understand that you don’t want to put up with flames from Joe Schmoe non-subscriber, but that’s part of the pain of publishing a MOG, imho. You have to be prepared for detractors to pop up all over the place – even your own boards. Although 99.99999% of them might rant with stupid, inane comments (present company included), there’s going to be some good in there. Careful moderation of your boards – yes, I think that really needs to be someone’s job – will cut down on some of the pure flames, but you have to be able to put up your baby and say, “Tell me how ugly it is” to the public. And all the resources available to current players should be available to future players. That’s how you have to think about it.
2. Consequences. Whatever I was doing in the world didn’t feel important. Sure, Lord Vader, I’ll go kill that Rebel for you. But come on – not that I would question the big guy’s reasons, but if I see about fifty people a day doing that same thing, and nothing changing…why should I do it? There’s no progression of story, nothing in the world changes, no plot line getting moved further ahead…did you ever think that maybe Vader’s just sitting around, watching this non-stop stream of idiots come into his chambers and being like, “Erm…quest, right… There’s this guy, right, and he’s on… uh… Naboo. I sensed him, man. He’s a Rebel, obviously. Go kill him!”
1. Tutorial. Yes, of course there was the start-up tutorial going into the game. But after that, I was dropped in the middle of a town and I had no one there greeting me, no idea of what I was to do, where I was to go, what I was to work towards. Yes, I could find that information from websites or from sifting through the volumnous help guide, but why on earth should I do that? I dunno, did I miss something there? There should’ve been a person waiting to start me on one easy quest. Which leads to a second, more complex quest. Which leads to a third, etc, etc. Each of the quests could’ve taught me a different thing about the AMAZINGLY complex gameplay and interface. If you didn’t need that info, you could’ve skipped them easily. But if you needed the help, you could’ve spent the first part of your gaming existence doing nothing but actually learning how to play the game. As it was, I spent hours reading up on how to play the game from fansites. Now I love and support fan sites – but you shouldn’t have to go to one to learn how to play a game. Asheron’s Call might not have the flashy graphics of SW:G, but you can take someone of the lowest ability – let’s just call our make-believe simpleton “Anson,” drop them in that game, and Anson would have a TON of starter missions, right THERE, in his FACE, waiting to show him how to play the game.
So yeah, I don’t think I’m saying anything revolutionary when I say that SW:G shouldn’t have shipped for another 6 months at least. Hopefully they’ll be able to recover and implement a lot of the promised content and make it an actual fun game to play.
