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Role Playing (Games) PC Games (Games)

Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches 262

Posted by Zonk from the ithorians-are-the-cutest-aliens dept.
If you already play the Massively Multiplayer Game Star Wars Galaxies, you're undoubtedly already aware that the Jump to Lightspeed space expansion officially launched today. For the rest of us, there are some details on the developer side regarding the ramp up to release available on the official site. Details on the experience of the new expansion is available at Gamespot and PC.IGN. More ... colourful analysis can be found on Grimwell's boards, and N3rfed has a post discussing the fact that the rest of the world has to wait until November 5th for their space-goodies.
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Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches More

Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed Launches

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  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:11PM (#10646223) Journal
    Does the game not suck now?

    • Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:26PM (#10646424)
      > Does the game not suck now?

      "I'm told by a very good source that SOE developers are currently working on, and very excited about the possibilities for the upcoming SWG:FTS - Failure To Suck - expansion pack, still in its design phase.

      Until then, we thank you for your business and hope that you continue to enjoy SWG and SWG:JTL!

      - SWG Slashbot Community Relationship Mangler."

      Sony Online Entertainment: When we say "service the account", we mean it's your fault that you didn't understand that "service" is something what a bull does to a cow.

    • It's good to see SOE sticks to their guns and follows the tried-and-true policy of "release now/fix later"...and in the case of SWG fix MUCH later.

      And of course, this policy is in full effect as they are about to release EQ2 almost a full year before they really should. Yes folks, this game needs at least 6-12 more months of development before they unleash it...but why do that when you have plenty of people willing to pay a monthly fee to beta-test it for you!

      Good luck to you all that try them...I wish yo
    • I'm trying to form the Church of the Coming Combat Upgrade (waiting 6 months or more for them to fix the incredibly unequal combat system which was promised, repeatedly, in early 2004 and, like the Second Coming of the Big J., has yet to materialize). I'll not consider JTL until they fix the first game. Hrm, I wonder if Microsoft and SOE hang together, they operate in some of the same ways.

  • Time difference (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:12PM (#10646228) Homepage Journal
    How long between when SWG was originally launched until now?

    I wanna know how long its been for SWG to become everything people EXPECTED out of the game before it was released.

    Seriously... how long have people played this 'StarWars' game without the main element?

    • Re:Time difference (Score:4, Informative)

      by JeffTL ( 667728 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:13PM (#10646249)
      Since July or August of 2003, longer if you include the beta.
    • I wanna know how long its been for SWG to become everything people EXPECTED out of the game before it was released.

      That is misleading. You are implying that the expansion meets the original expectations of the game, which is, sadly, still not true.

      Some people actually expected something enjoyable, balanced, and not bugridden... who knows when THAT will occur.

    • What I want to know is how it was launched "today", yet been "actually" out long enough for dozens of players to get sick of it already, and go back to the original game.

      I assume that people who actually play the game had access to the expansion earlier than everyone else.

  • Due to a genius marketing decision by Activision, the European distributors, players in the Old World don't get to see the expansion until November 5th at the earliest. The latest date predicted is November 19th.

    It's almost as if they WANT the players to move onto WoW.
    • It's almost as if they WANT the players to move onto WoW.

      Of course they do. Essentially, the first month of any MMORPG you have to pay up front for is $50+. That's a f'n racket if you ask me: Asking an up front cost and then expecting a monthly payment. What are they trying to sell, Windows?
      • Try everquest. You *need* a couple of the expansion packs if you expect to play. Like Plains of Power. I played without it for a few months, and the handicap I had was *incredible*. Everyone would say 'k, meet you at so and so in a minute' and run to the local book to get there really fast. I had to take about an hour to run across the bloody continent to get there. Talk about assrape.
    • Think of it as pay-back for the fact that the FFXI Chains of Promathia expansion came out 5 days earlier in Europe than it did in North America.

      Well... almost. In a sign of just how important Europe must be to the manufactorers, the version that came out there was a new "European version" and was incompatible with the version that Europeans who had imported the game had been using for months. So new European players could get an expansion they couldn't use since you needed to be basically level 20 or hi

    • It's almost as if they WANT the players to move onto WoW.

      No, because Vivendi is thinking the same thing.

      In other words, WoW might be ready around that time, but for USA only.

      So Euros will still, with this delay, get SW JTL before WoW.
      • Oh, and forget about getting around this by pre-ordering WoW since it seems the realm servers will be forced. You might not be able to order and play a US import version of WoW since you're not allowed to play on their servers...

  • Shipping and Stores (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bassakward ( 823721 ) * on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:13PM (#10646250)
    I can understand that publishing all over the world on the same day is a little rough. While it would be nice to just download the software and pay the developers the fee, there are stores to keep happy. There has been so much bad press about this game, and the expansion. I don't understand most of it. The game is pretty decent, and lots of people have fun with it.
    • The flight model sucks and JTL is like EQ in space...what more do you need?

      I've said it before and I'll say it again: had they just updated Tiefighter vs Xwing, plonked some RPG hooks in there, added bigass spacestations and a stardestroyer you could dock and walk around in (kinda like the aircraft carriers in Battlefield1942), they would have had a winner...hell, they'd have the flightsim crowd in there faster than something very fast, and have a game which anyone else just digs because it makes sense and

  • OMFG (Score:2, Funny)

    by Locdonan ( 804414 )

    OMFG! STAR WARS!

    Enough already. Star Wars was good. Lucas made a good movie. Then Lucas killed his own project.

    I wish I had the lyrics to the Ewok song though...

    • Re:OMFG (Score:5, Funny)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:17PM (#10646310) Journal
      From "http://tribute4tasha.50megs.com/ewok_song.html"

      Ewok Version

      Yub nub
      eee chop yub nub
      ah toe meet toe pee-chee keene
      g'noop dock fling oh ah
      Yah wah
      eee chop yah wah
      ah toe meet toe pee-chee keene
      g'noop dock fling oh ah
      Coatee chah tu yub nub
      coatee chah tu yahwah
      coatee chah tu glowah
      allay loo ta nuv
      Glowah
      eee chop glowah
      ya glowah pee chu nee foam
      ah toot dee awe goon daa
      Coatee cha tu goo (Yub nub!)
      coatee cha tu doo (Yahwah!)
      coatee cha tu too (Ya chaa!)
      allay loo ta nuv
      allay loo ta nuv
      allay loo ta nuv
      Glowah
      eee chop glowah
      ya glowah pee chu nee foam
      ah toot dee awe goon daa
      Allay loo ta nuv
      English Version

      Freedom
      we got freedom
      and now that we can be free
      come on and celebrate
      Power
      we got power
      and now that we can be free
      it's time to celebrate
      Celebrate the freedom
      celebrate the power
      celebrate the glory
      celebrate the love
      Power
      we got power
      and now that we can be free
      it's time to celebrate
      Celebrate the light (freedom!)
      celebrate the night (power!)
      celebrate the fight (glory!)
      celebrate the love
      celebrate the love
      celebrate the love
      Glory
      we found glory
      the power showed us the light
      and now we all live free
      Celebrate the love

  • One or the other (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:17PM (#10646303) Homepage Journal
    Expansion packs are bad enough when you're buying a game for $50, but why do people put up with it with MMORPGS where you're paying a monthly fee as well as the initial cost of the software?

    If it's about combining the social thing with your gaming, there's gotta be a good MUD out there somewhere. MMORPGS are basically MUDs with chrome and a billing system.

    • Re:One or the other (Score:5, Informative)

      by Elsebet ( 797203 ) <elsebet@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:33PM (#10646502) Homepage Journal
      The monthly fee is a fairly trivial ($10-15 normally, $40 for EQ Legends) for potentially a month's worth of entertainment. You could play 24/7 and never be billed more than your fee. When my boyfriend and I go out drinking it's at least $30-40, more if we go for dinner first.

      I used to play MuD's and enjoyed them back in 1996 or so. However now my opinion is, if I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time levelling up a character I'd prefer it have pretty textures all over it than be an @ or pile of text. :)
    • 1) It's their game. if they want to charge me $50, plus $30 for expansion packs, plus $10/month and I still want to play, it sounds like they're making money to me. And frankly, when I'm playing a game, such as Everquest, that I enjoy, it's a *small* price to pay.

      2) It's their game. If you want to play, you have to pay.

      3) It's their game.

    • Damn straight. That's why you should try SecondLife [secondlife.com]. One time fee unless you are actually using server space. The whole thing is much more of a social game than a game of pouring more money into a publisher's pocket.
  • I have never played the original release of SWG. I'm not a big fan of the online RPGs. But I understand why they are so popular. I have a couple of questions about this though.

    1) If the expansion allows you to move around in space, what the hell were people doing before this? Was the original game restricted to one planet?

    2) If you bought the first, do you have to buy the upgrade? If you don't have the upgrade can you still play?

    • 1. A starport system was used for planet hopping. Basically, a loading screen,

      2. Yes. Yes, but there are some limitations.

    • Re:What did you do in the original? (Score:5, Informative)

      by VGPowerlord ( 621254 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:33PM (#10646503)
      1) If the expansion allows you to move around in space, what the hell were people doing before this? Was the original game restricted to one planet?

      You were restricted to buying shuttle tickets to move between the game's 10 planets: Corellia, Naboo, Tatooine, Rori, Talus, Dantooine, Lok, Yavin IV, (the forest moon of) Endor, and Dathomir. Transitions were handled by annoying load screens. Of course, transitions to space are handled by annoying load screens too...

      2) If you bought the first, do you have to buy the upgrade? If you don't have the upgrade can you still play?

      You can still play, but you can't access the space areas or create Ithorian and Sulustan characters. Which is dumb, since the models for those character types are downloaded to your system anyway.

  • Does it matter? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by filtur ( 724994 )
    Does it matter with World of Warcraft coming out?

  • A disappointing game... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:24PM (#10646400)
    As a hardcore Star Wars fan, I gave this game a year to become fun. I tried many of the different professions, I did their content based stuff. This game is just a boring, grinding treadmill. Just sit there all day killing stuff or using macros to repeat crafting.

    The Jedi system was awful and clearly not well thought out. The new ship system is difficult to use without a joystick. This game really feels like EQ in space. The "Star Wars-y" feel isn't there. I was their target audience: a hardcore gamer who also is a Star Wars fan. Yet they failed miserably.

    When WoW and EQ2 come out, they'll lose a ton of subscribers. Maybe then they'll finally try to figure out what went wrong, but it will be too late.
    • If you're looking for a game that doesn't involve a level treadmill or involve doing the same thing over and over without anything fun, try Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com]. The name may sound odd at first, but I have played many MMORPGs and it is, by far, the best one I have ever played. The community is great (it's very rare to find the sorts of lamers that inhabit other games in YPP), the game is fun, the economy is entirely player run (and works in a sane manner that involves puzzling to craft things and automated labo
    • There are many things you can say about SWG and JTL but commeting that the game can't be played without a joystick is like bad mouthing Half-Life 2 because you need a keyboard wich you didn't need for wolfenstein.

      No fuck duh! JTL is finally creating some twitch element in the game that was before just hitting the right buttons to perform some moves. However most people made a macro so their toon would do a certain sequence of attacks all the time optomized for their style of play.

      JTL is different. It is

  • Jump to lightspeed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by neuro.slug ( 628600 ) <neuro__ AT hotmail DOT com> on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:25PM (#10646413)
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Star Wars spaceships supposedly go beyond the speed of light, thereby making this a rather silly marketing-induced name?

    I'm not a big enough Star Wars geek to know this...
    -- n

  • my thoughts (Score:5, Informative)

    by theMerovingian ( 722983 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:25PM (#10646417) Journal

    I've been playing SWG awhile, sometimes more than I probably should have been. The ground based game is pretty fun, although it can get a little repetitive.

    My biggest complaints:

    1) There aren't enough dungeons or cool things to do besides run around and kill stuff and hope for loot.

    2) The path to becoming a Jedi takes a filthy, sick amount of time. You pretty much don't have a girlfriend, wife, friends, or job if you can sit there for the required amount of time to make it all the way to jedi.

    I've played on the JTLS beta, and overall its pretty fun (but not very challenging). Once I figured out that you can target specific enemies by pressing the TAB key (this isn't immediately obvious), then it was a breeze to kill the enemy ships.

    I'm probably going to cancel my account soon, the game just doesn't have much to offer me after 3 or 4 months of playing. I made millions upon millions of credits, I've had most of the cool loot, and it just gets boring after awhile. The only thing I haven't done is make it to jedi, and I'm not about to invest 200+ more hours in the game.

    I think if you've been wanting to try out SWG, this is a good time to start. It's somewhat fun, but all the cliches about MMORPG's definitely apply. After my 3 month experiment, I just figured out that I play video games BECAUSE I'm antisocial - not because I want to be around people more often.

    • "After my 3 month experiment, I just figured out that I play video games BECAUSE I'm antisocial - not because I want to be around people more often."

      Truer words have seldom been spoken! Here's to hoping that dating will break the last ties that bind me to Everquest.

    • Cliches about MMORPG's? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think if you've been wanting to try out SWG, this is a good time to start. It's somewhat fun, but all the cliches about MMORPG's definitely apply.

      How do you want to make a good Star Wars game without cliches??

      Basically, I agree with you. But keep in mind that Star Wars games are a direct effect of Star Wars movies. For example, few days ago I saw The Phantom Menace with friends. This was actually the first time I watched Star Wars since I was a kid. And let me tell you, this was a one giant cliche! I m

    • Re:my thoughts (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xugumad ( 39311 )
      Y'see, I've always liked the idea of seperate limited-time servers for MMORPGs. Something in the region of 40 hours/month would suit me, but have characters on the server progress much faster.

      Those of you with time to burn can go play the slow servers, those of us trying to work, have a life, and play MMORPGs can play on the fast servers (and 40 hours/month is probably more time than I'd be able to easily free up, anyway).

      Unfortunately, the wanting to play continously group apparently hates this idea, and

    • Re:my thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @06:05PM (#10647491) Journal
      I'm probably going to cancel my account soon, the game just doesn't have much to offer me after 3 or 4 months of playing. I made millions upon millions of credits, I've had most of the cool loot, and it just gets boring after awhile. The only thing I haven't done is make it to jedi, and I'm not about to invest 200+ more hours in the game.

      I continue to keep my account simply because I have it run macros in the background to generate millions in credits, which on my server sells for approximately 5 dollars a month per million.

      I've expanded on this to provide even more services, now I have a hospital with a doctor inside buffing automatically throughout the day, I have another guy using a personal exploit to mine without a mining installation (must be logged in) and a third computer with a trial account killing meatlumps outside coronet for rug pieces and extremeley rare loot (one every four hours or so).

      I figure I'm probably making about a hundred a month off of this, of which, 30 goes to pay for my accounts, and another 15 or so goes to pay for electricity. A physically handicapped guy I know has been using this method to get about a thousand to fifteen hundred bucks a month playing MMORPGs. And it's funny too, cause players in the games he participates in call him "ruthless" and hate that he would "take advantage of poor Ebayers" by giving them what he wants.

      As you can imagine, he's a hardcore Libertarian now. Used to be a hardcore Democrat.
    • >There aren't enough dungeons or cool things to do besides run around and kill stuff and hope for loot.

      All MUD-based games are like this. Essentially you are putting yourself in a Skinner box. [uni-wuerzburg.de]

      Repetition and the lack of "cool loot" is a feature not a bug. With so many players, there will never be rare loot you can get, and if there is someone who has been playing 23 hours a day is hoarding it. Running around and killing stuff is basically the design.

      A lot of people complain about these things without

    • Re:my thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @08:37PM (#10648869) Journal
      Amen to this. I tried out the two-week trial they had a few months ago, and it was pretty interesting. Here's basically how it went (I'm not exaggerating, I did exactly what I said I did, no more, no less).

      Day 1: Started off, didn't know what to do. Went through the tutorial, then logged off. (took about an hour and a half since I did the tutorial twice with two characters)

      Day 2: Got a rifle, shot some stuff. Made a tent. Logged off after about two hours.

      Day 3: Shot some more stuff, talked to a friend that had switched to SWG from FFXI. Shot some stuff, used my tent. Watched a Jedi kill a lot of people.

      Friend invited me to go hunting, so he sent me some credits, and I flew off to the planet he was on. In the space of half an hour, I had gained 2 levels in most of my oft-used marksman skills, and I had more credits than I could hold (literally; I maxed out at 50k for the free trial).

      Day 4: On the way back to tatooine, I bought a wardrobe worth of clothes, got a set of armour, a few different weapons, a speeder-bike, and pretty much everything else I wanted that I could use. Went back to tatooine, shot some stuff. Went to Jabba's Palace. Took forever to get there. Shot some stuff.

      Day 6: Went back home from Jabba's Palace. Took forever. Shot some stuff.

      Got a quest from Imperials to clean out sand people from an outpost. Got my ass kicked. Logged off and never logged back on.

      A few things to note from my experience:

      1) My first MMOG was Final Fantasy XI, which has had two years of development and polish. The controls are tight and responsive, the worlds lush and inviting, and everything seems real. SWG feels like playing a game, but more importantly, the game has a sluggish interface, responds slowly, and lacks anything to make it stand out. Worlds are generally flat and uninviting.

      2) There is not much to SWG. I like the way it does things, with huge massive worlds that you can traverse without zoning, skill-based advancement instead of level-based, player cities, and so on, but when it all comes down to it, there's no compelling gameplay. I played it for a week, then realized I just don't care.

      In SWG, I can run around and kill things, but there's no motivation for me to do so. In FFXI, I want to gain levels, so I can do the Missions and advance the storyline, and then go and explore the higher-level areas. In SWG, I have no interest in exploration because the terrain is pretty much consistantly boring (but the water is nice).

      3) After I was done the 14-day trial, I had to go out and buy the boxed version, even though the only reason I'd want it is for the CD Key. There was no option provided to pay $10-20 less and just upgrade my trial key to a full-version key. And it's not like it was because I'd need the full version for content, I'd installed from a friend's full-version CDs.

      Basically they were telling me to go out and buy a boxed version just to open it up and read the CD key off the case, instead of just selling me one online (or letting me just pay the monthly fee from that point on).

      SWG is like a reference implentation for different skills and ways of making a game. It has excellent features, but no content, while FFXI has a lot of content and the features are great-but-not-excellent, but implemented well.

      SWG might be great if you don't like any of the other MMOGs, you have lots of friends who play it, and you like SW a lot, but if not, it's a waste of time after the first week.

      --Dan

  • WooHoo! (Score:3, Funny)

    by LilMikey ( 615759 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:28PM (#10646453) Homepage
    ... a little more polish on that turd!

  • So how about another X-Wing? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The engine certainly looks beautiful. Would it be too much to ask them to take it and make another game in the X-Wing series?

  • Too busy doing San Andreas missions (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:44PM (#10646621) Journal
    I'm too busy jacking fucking cars and picking up crack hos with my fucking homeboys in GTA:SA. Gimme a fucking machine gun over a pansy-ass, phallic symbol light saber.

    I wouldn't find popping a fucking cap in the ass of some cocksucking dancing wookie, though. Or maybe I can pimp that bitch out to some fucking Star Wars fanboy. You know they'd fucking pay for that shit.

    Man I love being a fucking adult. These vulgar games have no gadamnned effect on me whatsofuckingever.

  • No thanks! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:45PM (#10646634) Homepage
    I'll wait for the super-special-edition box set of the game to come out! This time my character gets to shoot first!

    Hyuk! Hyuk! Hyuk! ....sigh.

  • It sucks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sheepdot ( 211478 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:46PM (#10646652) Journal
    As a beta tester, I can tell you right now, I don't know what the reviewers were smoking when they said this game was so cool. I'm sorry, but the fact that you can use a joystick does not impress me. The fact that it *looks* pretty does not impress me. The fact that I can't do anything of even the slightest importance in space *does* effect me. It makes me not want to enter space with my character, and thus I did not.

    For those of you who purchased the Planetside "underground" expansion (you can tell what kind of an effect it had on me based upon the fact that I cannot remember its name) you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. JtL introduces a new area that everyone will enjoy for 48 hours, and then they'll go back to the real economy of the game.

    Speaking of which, "2500+ buffs! 3.0 hours! 15k!".

  • I love this game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deathcloset ( 626704 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:47PM (#10646661) Journal
    I played the beta and was very impressed.

    The times I ran into lag it turned out to be client-side.

    the netcode is very impressive. I think the whole design of the SWG enterprise was based around scalability. Early in the beta I was flying towards the tatooine space station and I estimated that I was rendering around 100 spacecraft flying about the station (i have a screenshot, need to corraborate that)- the netcode "view distance" was then scaled down, since this undoubtedly caused processor lag (and the netcode was likely maxxed out), nevertheless I was very impressed by that many clients being rendered in realtime.

    The graphics engine is great, it's huge. it's expansive. eventually they will make an FPS with it (planetside seems to use a scaled-down version of this engine). I bought this game for the graphics engine - sometimes I just turn off the lights - turn off the games HUD and zoom in to first-person view, just to suspend my disbelief and pretend that I am actually standing in coronet on corellia.

    The sounds are wonderful as well :)

    I'm not a big RPGer, but I've had lots of fun playing this game. Now, I AM a big simmer - so JTL is just wonderful :)

    All in all I think this game is great. Of course, that's an opinion and as we all know, it's pointless to argue tastes.

  • Dialogue from the new DVD set... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dabigpaybackski ( 772131 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:48PM (#10646670) Homepage
    "Luke...Luke..."

    "Ben?"

    "You must go the the Dagobah System. There you will meet Master Yoda. But first you must buy the new Jump to Lightspeed Expansion Pack. Preorder it now and save! Be the first in line..."

  • The end of the end (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:50PM (#10646687)
    Alright, to my understanding, the space aspect of SWG is like any other MMPORG but worse - to get better guns/ships/etc you have to gain experience. Ok, there's nothing wrong with that - if there were 1500 models of the Tie Fighter. Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of being in a ship was that it took SKILL TO KILL THINGS and not time.

    This is the downfall of any MMPORG that attempts a standard system for space flight. I want some schmuck that logs on with godly pilot skills to start killing people with their pretty super ships they spent weeks getting, but of course that'll never happen because then the long-term degenerates that spent 90% of their life getting ShieldXII SuperMart Booster Plus will whine.

    The gaming community needs a massively online space spim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent. I want descent or X-wing vs Tie Fighter with 500+ people - the day that happens is the day I become a truly happy gamer.

    • Re:The end of the end (Score:2, Informative)

      by WoBIX ( 819410 )
      Remember SubSpace? It was only 2D but it was great fun. Especially when as a lowly newbie you managed to take out someone with an extremely high bounty value. It would be cool if someone took the Edgar Rice Burroughs book "Beyond the Farthest Star" and turned the massive air battles into a game. How they'd add depth in order to keep subscribers would be an interesting challenge.

    • Re:The end of the end (Score:3, Informative)

      by Unoti ( 731964 )
      Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of being in a ship was that it took SKILL TO KILL THINGS and not time.

      You make a great point here. I played for a while and liked it, here's my take on it.

      It does take skill. If you try JTL, you'll probably find that the game is much more difficult than other MMO's-- what you do actually makes all the difference. If you blindly go in with guns blazing, you're going to get owned. You have to actually work at this game.

      It takes time, too. Not just a m

    • It is a bit like that. It's not like there are 6 ships and you just get a new one each time you level up. You can buy/loot upgrades for your ship and get droids to help you fight.

      You can also teach the droids new tricks to fire better and stuff. It's really neat.
    • you may want to check out Free Worlds [help2go.com], a multiplayer Star Wars Total conversion mod for Freelancer [microsoft.com].
    • The gaming community needs a massively online space spim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent. When I started with SWG, I was expecting Planetside-style combat, i.e. you buy a weapon to your taste, and your skill points increase the accuracy of your aim, but you still have to aim and fire the weapon yourself/

      How disappointed I was to find that SWG, a game with guns rather than swords, still uses freaking dice rolls in what

  • Overheard in an SOE boardroom, circa Summer 2003 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Myrk ( 634072 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @04:53PM (#10646718)

    Board of Directors: How long before you can make the "Jump To Lightspeed"?

    Developers: It'll take a few months to get the code from the navi-computer.

    Marketing: Are you kidding? At the rate World of Warcraft is gaining??

    Developers: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like coding dancers, boy! Without precise error-handling we could fly right through a release date or bounce too close to a complete rewrite and that'd end your little trip real quick, woudn't it?

    Marketing: What's that flashing?

    Developers: We're losing another thousand subscribers! Go strap yourselves in I'm going to have to delay the "Jump to Lightspeed"!

  • JTL is fun (Score:5, Informative)

    by Unoti ( 731964 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @05:13PM (#10646916) Journal
    I played JTL during JTL beta, and enjoyed it immensely. If you've tried JTL and think it sucks, you need to read this.

    At first, I hated it. I thought it was difficult to control and an utter bore. Then I poked around, and saw that many other people really enjoyed. So I thought I'd give it another chance.

    Two key things you need to know if you're not enjoying JTL yet:

    1. You can't just attack and win, or go straight after your opponent and win. You actually need to practice, think, and use some tactics. It's much harder to play than you might expect at first. You need to stay behind your opponents so they can't shoot back at you, and you need to match your speed to theirs. If a ship is in front of you shooting at you, you need to high tail it behind them immediately. This "actually needing to play" and having what buttons you push actually make a difference is a bit of a shock to most SWG players at first.

    2. The design of the ship modules and ship crafting is incredible. It gets a lot more exciting when you get your first ship upgrade, which took me a couple of nights of play.

    The first non-free ship you can use has something like 13 different components on it (guns, missles, armor front, armor rear, shields, engine, booster, etc.). But there's a mass limit on the ship that's fairly restrictive. So that leaves it up to the player to decide how he's going to outfit his ship. These choices are non-trivial, and very interesting.

    For example, Initially I just threw whatever components into my ship that I could scare up. I was doing OK in battle, but began to suspect I could do better with a different configuration on my ship.

    The way the ship crafting system works, you can use all kinds of different strategies in equiping your ship. For example, I really wanted some bigger guns on my ship, but the big guns put it way over the weight limit. I decided to build some shields for my ship that had strong defense in the back, weak defense in the front, and lower mass. I completely took the armor out of the ship, reasoning that hopefully my shields would hold long enough for me to quickly kill the enemy. I essentially gutted my ship to make room for a big fat fun. The strategy worked! I had a great time tinkering with my ship for hours on end, trying all kinds of different things.

    The crafting system for the ships lends itself to all kinds of different cooperative strategies, too. For example, you can use blaster that eat through shields but are weaker against armor, or vice versa. You and your friends might get together with a couple of shield-eater ships to soften up the opponents, and group with one ship that specializes in destroying the armor after the shields are gone. And then have another guy with you who acts like a rodeo clown: he uses all the mass on his ship for shields and armor, and carries a light, slow engine and no guns. This guy would talk a lot of smack to draw enemy fire, and even though he wouldn't have much offensive cpability he'd be very difficult to kill.

    The crafting system in SWG always had a lot of promise, but it's finally showing its original promise in JTL. Not only are there lots of ship components, but every one of them can be experimented in several meaningful ways. Most items in the game have only a couple of useful ways to experiment on them. In JTL, components have 5 or more ways to experiments, each of which will be useful for various situations.

    This kind of complexity where equipment can be tailored to special strategies is going to make JTL a lot of fun. Perhaps this level of thinking isn't for everyone, but many people are going to have a great time with this-- even people that aren't just Star Wars nuts.

    • Mileage definitely varies greatly with the challenge of JTL. Personally, I found the AI very lacking and the combat an absolute snoozefest. Sure, the upgrade system is neat and gives you something to do, but for what? There's nothing there. And I'm not going to sit through hours upon hours of trivial gameplay to work up to something that I've been told might be challenging. No thanks, I've already had enough of that with the ground game.

      So, while there are a lot of people that can and do enjoy JTL, I have
      • Sure, the upgrade system is neat and gives you something to do, but for what? There's nothing there. And I'm not going to sit through hours upon hours of trivial gameplay to work up to something that I've been told might be challenging.

        I understand what you're saying, and essentially agree. The problem is that as far as I know, you could say that about any massively multiplayer game. It's all lame and boring in the final analysis without a good group of friends to have fun with and goof around with. I d

    • But there's a mass limit on the ship that's fairly restrictive

      ...which makes a lot of sense in a frictionless, effectively gravity-less environment like outer freaking space. I'd expect decreased turning/accelerating capabilities with increased mass, but Mechwarrior-style weight limits on starships? Just another example (IMHO, naturally) of SOE's utterly horrid shortcut-style design surrounding the entire project.

      My roommate and I are both ex-SWGers. He was in the JTL beta before he quit (I quit long be

  • Turn Offs for JtL (Score:2, Informative)

    by Mr_Engrish ( 705356 )
    I have a friend who was in the beta. The things that turned me off are:

    - TIE Fighters are pretty durable - they can take more than a few hits

    - Because of the way the PvP system works, rebel starships (X-wings, A-wings, etc) and imperial starships (TIE fighters) can encounter each other without being hostile to each other - which is wierd given that it is the Star Wars universe...

    - No control of the deflector shield system - you can't route all power to the front/rear shields as you can in X-Wing/TIE Fig
    • I was disappointed that you couldn't dynamically alter the shields back and forth too. I did, however, get shields custom crafted for me that were stronger in back than in the front.

  • Ob Galaxies quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shut_up_man ( 450725 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @05:54PM (#10647377) Homepage
    This isn't my quote, but it seemed to sum up the game pretty well:

    I don't know, Galaxies always seemed like the mmo for people who wanted to play those two guys in the background in mos eisley while obi wan and luke drove through on their speeder. The two shoveling bantha shit.

    From the Shacknews forums [shacknews.com]
  • My apologies if this is redundant, but in the movies it seemed pretty damned easy to get blown to bits and killed - TIE Fighters, X-Wings, etc. In the movies where the life of people like Porkins isn't important, this isn't a biggie. However, if your Jedi character you've been paying tons of money and time to level up gets blown to smithereens by some kid, you're gonna be pissed. Is it hard to get killed in this expansion? Is it just an accepted risk? How do they balance the "X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter" dogfigh
  • too bad I cant load the page in Safari i get caught in an infinite loop where it keep reloading...

  • A short review of SWG and the JTL Beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday October 27, 2004 @07:33PM (#10648359) Journal
    SWG is an Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game set in the Star Wars universe and extended universe. Right? Well no.

    It ain't really all that massive. Perhaps it would have been if SOE had managed the 1 million subscribers they had aimed for, although how their hardware and software would have coped is beyond me. The few people that are playing are further devided over a dozen different server clusters meaning they will never meet each other. So if you start on a server you will play with perhaps a total of 1000 other players if your lucky. Or rather more accurate, 1000 other accounts. Many hardcore players operate more then one account. The number of total players must therefore be lower then what sony claims.

    Is any of this important? Well yeah. SWG has a complex economy that is based on there being enough players to keep the economy balanced. Supply and demand and scale of economy. However because of the few number of players and SOE hopless balancing the player class of Image Designer can be very very very hard to find. Doctors are essential because they buff the stats and without them the fights become impossible very quickly. At times on my server the entire game grinds to a halt because no doctors are buffing the stats of players. This is ultimate the death of a lot of online games. To few people playing and to many advanced players so far ahead that many newbies are instantly turned off.

    But lets say you persist. You now create a character on one of the servers hoping to find the server with the most fun community. Selecting sex is pure cosmetic but race is not. Sadly because of some stupid decisions by SOE (you will see a lot of these but nothing compared to your stupidity to pay them each and every month) humans are the best class. Armour was absent for along time for wookies making them useless in the thougher fights.

    But you persist and choose a race. Now you gotta choose your starting job. Well actually don't bother. It costs 100 credits to train in a new job so any newbie can easily get basic training in every job out there (except politician I will come to this one). A smart newbie does this as early on it is really really helpfull to be able to help yourselve.

    The early jobs are melee (hit things with a stick), ranger (shoot at things), medic (poke players with needles), artisan (make things to hit or shoot thing with), entertainer (stand in boring cantina listening to a 10 second music sample being played over and over again watching the same motion captured animation that is fun once twice or a hundreth times but wich you will have to watch a gazillion times) and finally scout (walk faster up hills and get resources from critters).

    Well you can start as an artisan but artisan need resources to make things wich you don't have or any money to buy them with. There are crafting missions that pay you but they pay so low that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the most brafe.

    So we are going to be involved in some way with combat. Choosing melee means you will be running after everything running away from you while shooting at you. Ranged means you will be trying to snipe things biting your arm off.

    Your character has 3 main bars. Strenght, action and mind. They could have named them anything as strength does not make you stronger and action does not make you faster. The whole deal is that you have an X number of strenght but also a value Y indicating how much strenght something will cost and a value Z indicating how much strenght you recover. Same for action and mind. For instance when a medic heals someone he uses up a certain amount of mind points. How many exactly depends on how high Y is. If Z is high enough he will recover the lost points without the main bar ever dropping. If not then the act of constantly healing will slowly deplete the bar until you no longer can take an action.

    Weapon use deplets all bars but varies per weapon wich is used more. The smart people will have thought of something. The value of the main bar is of no imp

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