I've come to peace (soul crushingly) that we're just never going to see an AAA MMO like SWG again. In fact I don't think we'll ever see something as tight and well made anywhere—indie teams do not have the manpower or time for it (to date, every indie MMO I've found that promised to be the next SWG has failed in capturing even half of what made the game great, and/or has been shut down).
And if I'm going to be honest, I don't think modern devoplers have the talent to pull off SWG 2.0. When you look into the details of the original vision for SWG (most of which made it into the finished game), you see someone that was clearly a visionary and way ahead of the pack (even if many aspects did share foundations with the previous generation of sandboxing MMO's and other online multiplayer mediums). The fact that modern MMO's can't even get fucking housing down as good as SWG managed doesn't leave me with any hope for overall vision of any game attempting to capture the lightning in a bottle.
As an aside, why the fuck do these developers keep making the same fucking mistake with housing? When are they going to learn that having specific items only for housing is garbage—SWG is still the best because every one of the many thousands of items in the game had a world model that could be used in housing. When you only have a set few hundred things made just for housing you get cookie cutter clones in every other house. It's not fucking complicated, why did they understand it nearly two decades ago and none of the developers today are capable of doing the same? Ugh.
Anyways, the EMU scene is nice for nostalgia trips but too much of SWG was based around the community (even disregarding intentional aspects like the economy) and because of all the splinter teams and servers the whole EMU community is shattered and fragmented.
I get the implication he was making in the video about WoW and while I don't think it's the singular reason all MMO's are just meh nowadays, I'll maintain that it was the driving force in preventing an MMO like SWG from being made again. The MMO culture today doesn't seem to lend itself well to a return to that kind of gameplay in anycase. There's always a chunk of the population wanting it, but then you see the immense popularity of MMO's that are pretty cut and dry (FF/GW2/WoW/Etc) with little in the way of true sandboxing or complexity and it gives me the impression that the majority doesn't care about it. If most paying customers don't care then nor will the devs and that's reflected in the current MMO development culture.
I can only be happy I manged to experience SWG throughout its entire life (I don't even hate the NGE anymore, aside from the first year that was cancer) and even made some life-long friends that I still hang out with to this day.
It's funny, I remember their original idea for Jedi was that it'd take, statistically, over 5 years or thereabouts for the first one to appear in SWG because it was supposed to be such a challenge and mystery. Can you imagine [I]any[/I] MMO developer even [I]joking[/I] about attempting something like that with the most iconic aspect of their game? I laugh just thinking about it.
Really sucks most MMOs just want to ride off WoW's popularity, wish the sandbox MMO took off.
Does such a thing exist? An MMO that's open and violent and self-driven as Eve except in a fantasy setting and not crap like Wurm?
[QUOTE=Novangel;50616196]Really sucks most MMOs just want to ride off WoW's popularity, wish the sandbox MMO took off.[/QUOTE]
There are a few sandbox mmos such as Black Desert and Archeage but they still lack what a lot of old school sandbox MMO's had.
God, why did I have to watch this video. SWG was the BEST MMORPG I've played. I was able to create my character, create a story, and build his classes/professions around what I wanted. It was original, no one else was really like him. Some people had similar builds, but in the end almost every play was unique. Almost every player was unique in some shape or form.
SWG managed to also capture what most MMO's fail to do today, the world felt alive. I would constantly run into other people. Even off peak server hours felt alive, the world was doing its thing. Events were happening, battles were starting, something was always happening. If it wasn't events, it was guilds rallying and starting massive pvp battles with the opposite faction. Raiding the towns they were secured in and even raiding player cities.
The game had a sense of community, people built player cities. Guilds own entire areas dedicated to their own people. Had city centers, malls, medical facilities, ect. Some cities were lame looking, some actually had some proper planning and very good design. Most importantly each player city was alive and had its community in it. There were stores for everything - people played as tailors and sold clothing sets that looked like their from the SW movies or made other themed items. Some people made armor and weapons, medical supplies, food, other random stuff. Each player house was unique, you could fully customize it. I spent to much time doing my stuff...There were people who actually specialized as image designers you could pay them to give your character a facelift..there were people who WERE really good at it and made good money.
NPC cities were always packed with people - you could always find someone or something. Cantinas were always packed. Like, sometimes you had to look at the ground due to the lag at first. Near the end of the game you couldn't find a single person in one...
JTL came out and opened up another aspect of the game which people loved. Motherfucking space ships, spaceships which you could customize from the inside and out. I made my blacksun gunboat based off of Firefly's serenity. I did the best I could, but I spent hours in it. A lot of people enjoyed it and we would take full crews out.
SWG was a game that will be sorely missed, I know it is gone. But I wish someone would learn from that game and see the value in making an unique mmo in a sci-fi setting. Everyone is tired of the typical WoW fantasy clone.
[QUOTE=MR-X;50616524]There are a few sandbox mmos such as Black Desert and Archeage but they still lack what a lot of old school sandbox MMO's had.[/quote]
Nothing as of yet has even come close to having half of the systems SWG did. They get maybe one aspect of the game and focus on it, and usually it's not up to the standard already set. SWG set the bar so high that well over a decade later games are still struggling to even make crafting worth a shit let alone everything else it was doing.
[QUOTE]SWG managed to also capture what most MMO's fail to do today, the world felt alive. I would constantly run into other people. Even off peak server hours felt alive, the world was doing its thing. Events were happening, battles were starting, something was always happening. If it wasn't events, it was guilds rallying and starting massive pvp battles with the opposite faction. Raiding the towns they were secured in and even raiding player cities.[/QUOTE]
I will say that PvP was at its best at the end of SWG, when SoE finally started doing what players wanted and implemented a true Galactic Civil War system. Capturing cities and then planets actually had tangible results and meant something more than just bragging rights or changing the city guard to stormtroopers. It really made PvP worth a damn again and it should have been in the game since the beginning. Not to mention the atmospheric flight made fighting on the ground look pretty baller, baring the natural glitchyness of the game which could result in visual defects at times.
[QUOTE]Some people made armor and weapons, medical supplies, food, other random stuff. Each player house was unique, you could fully customize it.[/QUOTE]
The best crafters were known by name, since you could customize the naming of the items (in addition to the creators name being hardcoded into the item description). As the process of crafting was so involved (especially if you wanted to be server best) people could literally become a household name by virtue of half the server using their trademarked items. I knew people that never did anything else in the game but craft and it was their full time gameplay experience. I've not seen any MMO since that supported crafting to such a point that it could be the entire game for people (to such an extent some players I knew hadn't actually engaged in combat in years), it's always a side distraction at best.
One of our most known Entertainers had never engaged in combat since they started playing the game. Literally never fought anything that wasn't required by a tutorial. Many years into the game later she decided to try out PvP for the first time and word spread quickly. I swear half the server showed up to give her a true PvP experience, it was probably one of the largest battles on my server. Not like to see either one of those things in a modern MMO, least of all because it'd never have enough content outside of killing things to keep someone playing for that long.
[QUOTE]I spent to much time doing my stuff...There were people who actually specialized as image designers you could pay them to give your character a facelift..there were people who WERE really good at it and made good money.[/QUOTE]
I was a housing decorator and made billions getting paid for it. Being a house decorator wasn't a class or anything, anyone with a house could decorate—people like me just did it much better than everyone else, so players would pay us to do it for them and it became sort of a job for me during my downtime. A shining example of players creating content that you simply can't get in themepark MMO's—the mechanics aren't there to support it.
[QUOTE]NPC cities were always packed with people - you could always find someone or something. Cantinas were always packed. Like, sometimes you had to look at the ground due to the lag at first.[/QUOTE]
The social nature of the game (and perhaps the game attracting an older player base in general) gave way to people simply hanging out with no other scheme in mind. I'd often visit a cantina and just sit and talk to people, not to get buffs or to form a dungeon party or any of that shit.
I don't know, the social aspect is always hard to explain to people that don't have experience with it, especially in an era of gaming that's so focused on end-goals and getting something tangible for time invested. It's the kind of thing you just needed to be there to understand the appeal in literally making no personal progression and being fine with it.
[QUOTE]JTL came out and opened up another aspect of the game which people loved. Motherfucking space ships, spaceships which you could customize from the inside and out. I made my blacksun gunboat based off of Firefly's serenity. I did the best I could, but I spent hours in it. A lot of people enjoyed it and we would take full crews out. [/QUOTE]
JTL is my go-to for an example of a real expansion. JTL was so good, adding so much gameplay, that it could have been its own game. It's the expansion to which I judge all others by. It's as close as we'll probably ever get to a true sequel to X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
[QUOTE]SWG was a game that will be sorely missed, I know it is gone. But I wish someone would learn from that game and see the value in making an unique mmo in a sci-fi setting.[/QUOTE]
Not that I'd turn down anything that properly captured the gameplay of SWG, but as the years have gone by I'm starting to think that Star Wars itself was lending a large part of the success to that game. Maybe that's just my personal reflection on it, but as I imagine a game that's just like SWG but without the Star Wars aspect I feel much less inclined to play it.
[QUOTE=Axznma;50617234]
Not that I'd turn down anything that properly captured the gameplay of SWG, but as the years have gone by I'm starting to think that Star Wars itself was lending a large part of the success to that game. Maybe that's just my personal reflection on it, but as I imagine a game that's just like SWG but without the Star Wars aspect I feel much less inclined to play it.[/QUOTE]
This is kinda true, I have seen one or two attempts at replicating SWG but the fact they arent in Star Wars universe just takes so much from the game. SWGEmu is practically finished and playable now, but the issue is even though I remember SWG as an amazing game for the time, it has aged really awfully and still suffers a horribly clunky UI and its weird unintuitive special attack / attack queuing combat system.
I heavily agree with the social aspect of MMOs now. World of Warcraft had the same thing in vanilla; global chat channel where you always saw familiar faces. There was a real community feeling where you'd often run into people you have grouped with or spoken to before and there were local celebrities for whatever reason who everyone knew, most high pop questing areas would have people talking in chat, heck my old server even had its own forums that a ton of people were registered to and used. Now with realm merging/instancing, auto group tools and the fact that the game has become so much easier/faster at lower levels its just a blur of no contact with anyone.
It says something now that in 80% of low level dungeons you do, you will finish the entire dungeon without anyone actually saying anything in chat, and if they need to say something it will probably be abuse at another group member for doing something wrong.
All in all I think nothing will ever match up to what SWG was to a lot of people, after 10 years I have mostly given up hope of even getting anything that is both a good game and a replication of SWG with improvements.
God i miss SWG so so much, the city building was amazing, i remember our guild city being fucking huge and i built a mini AT-ST in my guild hall out of Sofa's and lights.
Teras Kasi / Fencer Masters represent!!!
And BH/ Rifleman!
and i loved running buff shops as a doctor in Corellia aswell, the community and atmosphere was really something else, running Sharnaff farming runs and Rancor runs was so epic, then having a full on guild vs guild fight outside the city.
Man so so many memories collecting holocrons to unlock jedi.......its still to this date my most beloved MMO experience ever.
Mortal Online is very much a sandbox AI. Sadly it is a bit janky but it is the best one I've tried. But you have total freedom in the crafting and everything. Like how nobody knows the perfect way to make a health potion, it is all trial and error when it comes to potions. Scamming is allowed too, just like EVE.
The thing about SWG (Pre CU) that separates it from the crowd even today is that it's a lot like EvE. The world is what the players make it. There's a few capitol cities from the movies and lore and shit, and the mechanics of the game are in place, and that's it. The rest is up to the players. If you want a house? Build it. You want to build it? Harvest the resources for it. You want to find the resources? Survey the land for deposits. You want to power your harvesters? Fuel it with a power source. You want a power source? Get it from the wind with other harvesters.
Everything relied on players crafting, and trading since you couldn't do everything yourself, and the players gathering the resources. Resources weren't static either, they spawned randomly and had different attributes and qualities for all of them. The higher quality the resource, the higher quality the crafted items. People would horde resources and they would be worth a lot. Every player house you saw was built by a player out of resources gathered by a player. Every player city was built by the players from scratch. Every weapon built by a weaponsmoth, every piece of armor (Aside faction armor if you decided to use that) built by an armorsmith, every droid and its benefits built by a droid engineer specifically to the customer's needs, every pet trained by a creature handler, every piece of clothing crafted by a tailor
And not only that, these crafters had return customers. Armor and weapons needed repairing. You could bring your weapon/armor to a slicer and have them sliced to be better in a way. You would go to a doctor to get your 6 attributes buffed. You'd go to an entertainer to get your mind stat buffed and your battle fatigue healed. You'd go to a chef to buy consumable buffs. All 32ish professions had a well thought out place. If you saw a Jedi it was RARE and one of the only ones on your server.
Then the NGE WIPED IT ALL. Crafting professions condensed, return customers not required, one weapon being clearly better than another rather than everything being viable. No slicing, no doctors buffing, entertainers don't do shit anymore, Jedi is a starter class. The only class that retained anything was the Bounty Hunter... But it was a static class. You couldn't go down JUST the carbine line of the Bounty Hunter tree, and then master all of the Carbineer profession along with it. The great mixing of professions to really customize your character was gone. Everyone was a clone now
So sad. I miss my Teras Kasi Master/Master Doctor, and cleaning out Wind Energy from my Wind Generators every morning before school when I was in high school
The Repopulation is very similar to SWG, but it's early access on steam and honestly doesn't look very promising in terms of ever being completed
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