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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Star Wars Galaxies NDA Lifted 46

Posted by simoniker from the is-it-neato-or-watto? dept.
Thanks to several readers for pointing out that, according to a post on the official Star Wars Galaxies messageboards, the NDA has been lifted, so Beta testers are free to talk about their experiences playing this PC MMORPG, which ships on June 26th. Naturally, the official messageboards are filling up with many and varied viewpoints, and sites such as SWG Warcry, SWG Vault, and many other fan sites are posting a multitude of screenshots and opinions of this much anticipated title.
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Star Wars Galaxies NDA Lifted More

Star Wars Galaxies NDA Lifted

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  • Does anyone know what the latest estimated release day is?

  • Games' good but still a few bugs (Score:5, Informative)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @02:55AM (#6251435) Journal
    I've been beta for about a month

    The game isn't finished but that doesn't stop it being fun. It's not a shoddy product but it doesn't shine like the first day I played EQ (admittedly in June 1999 which was about 3 months after launch).

    The AI can be dumb with NPCs standing there clapping as you pummel their friends. [proweb.co.uk]

    Here's me killing a very red MOB by getting it stuck behind a small rock [proweb.co.uk]

    Having seen the changes from the last few (no doubt panic stricken) weeks I'm pretty confident this game will matrure into something pretty good. I don't think it raises the benchmark that much. Some of the grind has been removed but not all of it. Best thing is that you are not stuck with your initial choices (important on a one character per server game). You can surrender skills and try new ones and adjust your base stats.

    And you you look for it there is certainly plenty of action with groups of up to twenty [proweb.co.uk]

    Many people will like it on it's own merit but I'm sure for many people it will be a welcome stop-over on the way to EQ2.

    • It seems (taken from a comment from one of the screenshots), that when you die you'll have to run to your stuff in undies... is this true? Doesn't this mean that you have a very real chance of loosing everything you own if you die?

      I would hate using several weeks to obtain a new gun only to die in battle and be ownzed every time I try to get it back...

      • not quite 8) (Score:5, Informative)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @04:49AM (#6251760) Journal
        nah, there are two forms of "death"

        Incapacitated - this is generally what happens to you, MOB takes you down and you fall over until your hits/action.mind points recover (typically about 60 secs but I've had 128 & 4)

        Sometimes a MOB will come in and give you a death blow and it's back to town.

        Even then you can insure your belongings so that you wake up in town with everything you've insured and the stuff you collected since insuring yourself will be on your corpse with your money.

        There is a galactic bank (but you have to return to your bank's planet to get to your items [you can move banks]. Cash transactions are available at all banks.

        As for the underpants - the reliance on fancy armor has been removed. You start with some clothes but I took them off for fun.

        I look much like this atm. [proweb.co.uk] although last night I found a new hat but I don't have any good screenies of it.

        I'm not very powerful atm. because we had to start again this week because Sony wiped the server ready for the start! [without warning just "Oh. we've wiped the servers, could you start again please". Nuff ppl were getting mardy in the forums but thats the life of a tester]

        As well as that most of the MOBS are random spawn so if you come back tomorrow chances are they will be gone.

        hehe twice now I've been trying to do a good post and different family members want my taxi services !

        • hehe twice now I've been trying to do a good post and different family members want my taxi services !

          You succeeded well enough in writing a good post this time :)

          And now that I have the attention of a beta tester: how does the skill system work exactly? is it learning by doing (as in if you take a hammer and beat a rock for 5 hours then you grow strong) or xp based or something in between?

          I have my personal preferences, but hopefully we won't be seeing a lot of macroing people mining to gain streng

          • skills (Score:5, Informative)

            by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @05:44AM (#6251872) Journal
            It's "do something over and over for XP"
            & yes, you can macro your way to the top /sample /sleep 500 /stand /sleep 500 /sample /sleep 500 /stand /sleep 500
            etc.

            The client kicks you out after about 30 mins afk (although I've never timed it but I have been kicked)

            You can buy machines to do the harvesting for you but it can be a bit of a grind fest making 500 pointless items for the XP and then destroying them.

            After 10,000 or so XP you have to go to a trainer or PCs can train each other in all but Master & Novice and for this the PC gets 20ish Apprentice Points (APs). For some disciplines you need 600 or so APs to become a master.

            I'm sure you'll see the skill tree on the fan boards soon, it's not that complicated.

            You are given 250 skill points to spend at the start of the game & each discipline takes 64 skill points to Master all 4 branches. There are about 20 disciplines. You can surrender a skill at any time and recover your skill points so if you're fed up of something you can switch.

            They've done a great job at trying to appeal to all types of MMORPG players from chatters to fighters. I think the game is a success already despite the minor flaws I've seen.

            I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.

            I think I will be moving from tester to player.
            I played EQ for 3+ years, I'm pretty sure SWG will grow enough to accommodate long term players.

            The game is more fun and dying isn't such a pain.
            Navigation is easy and so is finding your group. (open you datapad, click "create waypoint" and everyone in the group can see it on their maps)

            Advancing seems steady and you can group with players of all abilities and still participate (you need to do at least 5% of the damage to a MOB to get any XP)

            They've tried to take the pain out of the game and I think, on the most part, they've suceeded.

            Is $15 too steep? We'll see.

            At launch Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided will offer four subscription plan options: Month-to-month - $14.99;
            three months - $14.00 per month;
            six months - $13.00 per month;
            and 12 months - $12.00 per month.

            I really hope that when EQ2 comes out they'll say "$20 a month for SWG & EQ & EQ2"

            • Re:skills (Score:4, Informative)

              by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Friday June 20, 2003 @06:40AM (#6252042) Homepage
              I really hope that when EQ2 comes out they'll say "$20 a month for SWG & EQ & EQ2"

              It's already been announced that they aren't going to do that. They have the all-you-can-eat deal that applies to the other SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) games (including EQ, EQ2, EQOA and Planetside) but they specifically stated that it will not apply to SWG. I figure it's partially because they have a specific amount per subscriber that they have to kick back to LucasArts and partially because they know that people are going to be willing to pay extra for a Star Wars MMOG.

              • Sounds reasonable, I guess the Lucas deal precludes such arrangements to save arguing about the split.

                The do have a problem in that many of the subscribers are hoping that EQ2 will be their next stop. SWG is positioned nicely for those players. I reckon about 6 months of SWG will do then it's back to Guk 8)
            • Why does LucasArts feel that if it says Star Wars on it it's worth 10-20% more than other similar things?

    • My beta experience..... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I got in at the end of beta 2, I had pre-ordered my copy 1/15, and I'm a huge SW fan. I loved this game...at first.

      I made a Wookie and got him up to creature handler, playing every night for 3-4 hours. Then my interest started to fade. Is this all there is? Then one of the devs posted a list of "10 things to do in SWG" because people in the beta had started asking (bad sign?). I read the list and realized that everything on the list except the last 2 items sounded boring *to me*.

      The last 2 items? Unlock t

      • If I had to choose an emote to sum up my SWG beta

        /disappointed

        When they told us the release date I was shocked and I was a beta tester for AO, EQ, and SB. If you buy this game you are paying $15 a month to beta test, plain and simple. It is too bad I really wanted this game to be good.

        Give it 4-6 months of good patching, economy balancing (player based), a complete revamping of pvp combat, and ughh...content other than endless wastelands once you run out of town.

        I hope they turn it around.

  • Nice screens? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by E1v!$ ( 267945 )
    Hm,

    So it's supposed to be starwars? Great. Endor looks like it's been logged to death!

    And the bar scene with one guy sticking through another; is that some sort of alien sex?!

    One of the things that makes the starwars universe so great is the fantastic locations. I'm thinking they could have done a better job with the sets, JKII quality @ LEAST.
    • There's some really nice scenery. I often find myself wandering round with the HUD turned off just admiring the views.

      The indoor stuff is admittedly dank but you spend most of your time outside. Mind you I've not been to Jabbas Palace that might excite.

  • My biggest concern was that this would be a bad product with some familiar names and logos on it. After playing beta for a month I was happy to see this this is just as good as any other "Lucas Arts" product, with rich detail that makes you feel like you are playing in the Star Wars universe. Yes, there are bugs. Yes, there is missing content one week before release. No, there has never been a product that was flawless at release. Yes, I have already pre-ordered it.
    • I was happy to see this this is just as good as any other "Lucas Arts" product

      AIIEEEE!!! RUN AWAYYY!!!!

      (remembering Star Wars: Battle For Naboo, Star Wars: Episode I Racer, Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Rebellion, Star Wars: StarFighter, Star Wars:Force Commander...)

      • All of which were reasonable translations of the StarWars universe into video games. They may have had bad interfaces, lacked plots or just weren't fun, but they all had the "StarWars" feel to them. Compare this to any of the Dune games. They were basically C&C with the units named like things from the books. I guess this is all a matter of what you are looking for. There may be better massively multiplayer games out there, but I enjoy the StarWars universe so I am going to play Galaxies.
        • I'm sorry, but C&C was dune, with things named differently... Dune was out WELLLLL before C&C ever hit the market; dune 2000 was a re-do of Dune II, with cutscenes, and AFAIR - It even used the same shitty sound effects..
    • Bah. The last really good star wars based game was tie fighter. Jedi Knight 2 was entertaining but not as good as tie fighter as far as universe tie in.

      Ever since then (including the movies) its been "milk the franchise for as much money as possible forgetting about quality products".

  • Not ready for prime time (Score:4, Informative)

    by ccarter ( 15555 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:41AM (#6254334)
    I'm told that EQ was pretty much the same at this stage of development.

    Of course the era's are different but EQ was definitely no anywhere near as lacking in content and other such things at its release as SWG will be. In other words EQ was basically finished at launch, SWG is no where near so.

    The game will undoubtedly succeed to some degree simply due to the fact it is Star Wars but there is still a lot missing and a lot left to do development wise (How about at least fixing the character sync problems that currently require a server reset to clean up before launching guys????)

    In my estimation SWG is a good 6 to 12 months of development from being something a seasoned EQ player would find to be an acceptable game (I know, I know, we've been mindlessly soaking up unfinished expansions since Velious came out). I've spent a decent bit of time with Beta 3 and I am not so sure that this launch won't end up making the Anarchy Online launch look good. ^..^!

    My recommendation is do not buy it at launch, wait 3 months or so and see what the buzz is saying about it then. Or maybe even wait to the first expansion hits and check the various boards to see what the buzz about the game is then.

  • Wasted Potential (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Farscry ( 674981 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @11:54AM (#6254472)
    I've been rather negative regarding Star Wars Galaxies due to my experiences in the beta testing since November. Not because I want the game to fail: far from it. I wish the game would actually live up to the hype and be a solid, revolutionary online title. That's what it was originally intended to be, after all.

    Unfortunately, as of now, 7 of the 10 planets have yet to be beta tested. The in-game help and reference files are incomplete. Many objects and items in the game don't even have any descriptive text beyond "cha_tabl_2_1_acc" and such. Vast areas of emptiness permeate the game world with nothing to do (or even battle). I've gone literally minutes running across Tatooine without so much as a gundark appearing on long-range sensors.

    The game isn't ready for release. June 26th as a release date means that the gold master was pressed as little as a week ago, possible further in the past. The game is not content-ready for release, and with the gold master being that old, prepare for people having a massive patch to download on release day. There will likely be a good amount of initial content for very low level characters, but I anticipate that there will be more problems plaguing this release than we saw with WWII Online and Anarchy Online⦠combined.

    • I agree. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      I played this in beta a couple of weeks ago for one night. Frustrated, I put it away. Essentially, I logged in and spent an hour running around. No vehicles were available, and all the obvious quest boxes gave quests which were too hard to complete within a reasonable amount of time. Any time my character was close to destroying something, for example, I would have to run to avoid defenders. Then the health would shoot back up, and I'd be stuck with low health and a fresh, alerted enemy.

      NPCs were insi
    • I'm not saying the game is ready but most of the code_strings have gone.

      This last week has seen many, many changes being comitted and released (which tbh is not a great sign 6 days from launch).

      I suspect that the Jun 20th patches were the the Gold standard.

      We've had quite a bit of patches since then.

  • SWG... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Chaotician ( 656075 )
    The game has tremendous potential, but in its current state is a far cry from ready. Content is lacking, there are still some pretty serious bugs. 90% of the resources required to craft objects have not even been introduced to the game yet. Lag is an issue as is rubberbanding (most people reporting 2-5 FPS in the cities). Problems with being able to shoot through solid rock...

    I canceled my pre-order, however that does not mean that I wont play the game... eventually. It just needs time to mature and I refu

    • Re:SWG... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Farscry ( 674981 )

      I refuse to pay to continue to be a beta tester

      That's just it, and it's a large part of why my comments about the game appear to be so vitriolic. For a long time, I was patient with the shortcomings of SWG, because it was early Beta.

      As time went on, however, I began to realize that they were preparing to release an incomplete game on the public. Despite that knowledge, I was taken aback by the announcement this week that the game would go live on June 26th, fully 3 months before I figured they'd be an

  • Unless I want to look at the pretty flowers all damn day the game is worthless to my time.

  • IGN Star Wars Vault (Score:3, Informative)

    by TalMaximus ( 681873 ) on Friday June 20, 2003 @03:40PM (#6256882) Journal
    If anyone wants a one stop place to go and read various reviews and comments about the beta test. Head over to IGN's Star Wars Vault [ign.com]. This place is loaded with reviews, screenshots...and so forth.
  • Check out the pics of this game: http://www.ittc.ku.edu/~ccarson/swgbeta
  • The conventional wisdom still holds. Because the video game has a movie license, the money, or rather, the people fronting the cash to develop the game, will automatically be unwilling to let the game operate under a standard, reasonable development cycle. They don't expect the game to make money. They expect the name to make money. The impressions of beta testers support this. You can be assured that SWG will have one of the shortest lifespans of any MMORPG. The movie license almost guarantees that u

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