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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Star Wars Galaxies - 300,000 Subscribers, No Jedi... Yet 125

Posted by simoniker from the wookie-popularity-101 dept.
Thanks to IGN PC for their interview with the creators of PC MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, in which it's announced the title has "surpassed 300K registered accounts", despite what they describe as "some teething problems at the initial launch", and is still "...the fastest growing MMO ever - in the Western world at least." They say they're now trying to "get players away from mission terminals and directed towards more in-depth content", with new quests being designed and implemented in-game, and as for the question of becoming a Jedi, they confirm: "We've yet to see any Jedi in the game, though there are some players that are close to unlocking that Force-sensitive slot", and hint that "ancient historical artifacts known as Jedi holocrons" are part of the path to becoming a SWG Jedi.
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Star Wars Galaxies - 300,000 Subscribers, No Jedi... Yet More

Star Wars Galaxies - 300,000 Subscribers, No Jedi... Yet

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  • The force is strong with you young Skywalker.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Abraxis ( 180472 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:22PM (#7117881)
    ...but you are not a Jedi yet...

  • Other platforms (Score:1, Insightful)

    by krisbrowne42 ( 549049 )
    Someday they'll release it for a platform I'll use... At which point, maybe I'll care.
    • Someday they'll release it for a platform I'll use... At which point, maybe I'll care.

      My thoughts exactly.

      I'm not gonna hold my breath, though.

    • Someday they'll release it for a continent I live on. Ironically, I have 3 CDs with "SWG" on them from the beta test - but I can't play in the production game, as the client is not for sale here.

      Mind you - little wonder no one's a Jedi - from what I can remember, the game is about shooting small furry animals, delivering parcels and making clothes - not "learning about da force"

  • Impressive... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WinnipegDragon ( 655456 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:33PM (#7117980)
    I must admit, knowing the issues that the game had, I am sort of surprised that they are not, for lack of a better term, whoring out the 'You can be a Jedi!' or 'You can be a Sith!' aspect of the game just to sell copies. It adds some integrity to their vision of the Star Wars universe. Kudos.
    • Oh they WERE whoring it out thusly. Lots of people in their forums whined (whiners in a game forum??! *gasp*) that they were paying money and never being able to properly achieve their ultimate goal. Well too bad. How boring would it be if EVERYONE was a Jedi in SWG?
    • Actually, because of their rather unique "1 account = 1 player character" rule, they are potentially making even more money. People who want to be a Jedi really have to get more than one account, and they are probably a much higher percentage of the population than the 'normal' gamers who would get multiple accounts.
      • No they don't. You get one character per server, up to ten servers. If you unlock the force sensitive slot, you get the additional slot on the server that you earned it on.
    • Of course they mentioned it. But they're down-playing it now, since it's patently obvious that the code isn't really there.
      There's so little support and balance for the existing character options, that slapping in the Jedi code would be premature to say the least.
      Probably be better to get Bounty Hunters and MasterCarbiners working correctly - not to mention content for the rest of their players to muck around with, before they start letting wanna-be-darths wander around unchecked and unbalanced.

  • Closed community (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:38PM (#7118026) Homepage
    Kinda hard to tell on SWG's official community how the real player reactions are given the fact that they closed the official forums off to the public. Before anyone takes this propaganda as a clear indicator they should run out to buy the game it's probably a good idea to take a gander at some fan-run forums for some real opinions on the good and bad of the game.

    • Kinda hard to tell on SWG's official community how the real player reactions are given the fact that they closed the official forums off to the public.

      Ironically, that's precisley the reason they closed the forums to the public: they didn't feel that somebody reading the forums would get a correct feel for how the majority of people who play the game feel about it.

      Instead, they're doing a great thing with the forums: they're inviting players to log in and tell them what's wrong with the game. Not only

      • Oh I definitely agree with you, they're VERY right. But I consider myself a "seasoned" mmorpg player, and even though there's the regular beta whines and other such noise there are the extremely constructive cricisisms that I look for in forums. Sometimes you run across something that say reminds you of why you stopped playing game x, or why you LOVED game y. That's usually what I look for, the positive AND negative flavor of a game, from the players' perspective.

        Filtering out the fanboy and naysayer n

  • ... to this problem is that people have to learn how to use the Schwartz. Just like Lone Star did in that movie that came out a few years back. You know, the one with Dark Helmet, etc. Oh, wait a sec....

  • just another ever crack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sknja ( 196640 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:39PM (#7118036)
    all 3 of my roomemates play it and I have to say.. I think I would rather have them be crack heads. All lives they once had are now brushed aside for this game, and as for school work lets just say they are on the 8 year bachelors plan at the moment.

    I dont know if its just me or do most people (students) who play this game have priority issures.

    • Obligatory Tommy Boy... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@@@gmail...com> on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:53PM (#7118200) Homepage Journal

      > Lots of people go to school for 7 years!
      > Yeah, they're called *doctors*.
    • MMORPG's are the best reasons I have ever got to go do my doctorate :)... all I want to do for christmas is to force crush my stepmom's cat (also known as the beast from hell) and laugh ominously when PETA comes to my door!!!! Although I do need to get myself a new helmet, wearing an old raiders helmet just makes me look like pee wee herman with a bad case of hemoroids.
    • A lot of mmorpgs are like that for one reason or another. Many of us have horror stories we can relate about how some guy lost his wife to Everquest or how people flunked out of college because they were too busy playing a MUD to do their homework.

      Is this your friends' first MMORPG? If so, I hope it passes. Many people do in fact play MMORPGs to the extreme at first and then back off later when the "OMG WTF am I doing?" hits... then again, many people don't.

  • How many in a year from now? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by meanfriend ( 704312 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:47PM (#7118135)
    Obviously MMORPGS rely on monthly fees as a stream of revenue so I wonder what sort of staying power this game will have? What will the user base be like in a year from now, when the novelty has worn off for a lot of players?

    I also find it interesting that Blizzard recently axed 400,000 battle.net accounts for cheating [battle.net]

    If Battle.net charged a MMORPG-type $10 monthly fees like SWG, then they would be throwing away $4 million a month in revenue (I realize that the user base for Blizzard games would not be nearly as large with monthly fees). But if a widespread exploit took hold of SWG and started ruining the game for others, would they have the guts to close thousands of accounts and throw away potentially millions of dollars a month to combat it?
  • In general, games with a "ton" of content do not see a lot of player generated content because the players are busy with the content already in the game. So does SWG have a ton of content or not?

    Quote: "There is a ton of content in the game."

    Quote: "We're seeing awesome player run events every day. They include large scale Player Versus Player Battles, player weddings, fishing tournaments, beauty pageants, Big Game Hunts, Raves, Newbie Orientations, Medic parties (where medics heal everyone for free), sca

    • Re:Content? (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrBigInThePants ( 624986 )
      Actually the game has almost no content to speak of. (realtive to other MMOG games) In fact, the devlopers ADMITTED as much on their message boards. (unfortunately you have to be a sucker like me and fork out the money first) They even admitted that they lacked DEVELOPER CONTENT TOOLS. No wonder they closed their boards. Apparently the idea WAS for "player content", but the SWG team thought that that meant they invent a broken PVP system and a barely working crafting system and the players would invent th

      • Re:Content? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sirkidd ( 713125 )
        There is little content in the game. There are repetitive missions which get real boring after first month. The game looks good but plays poorly. The official boards where at first open to all, then as the majority of the post became very negative they restricted them to game owners only. While they boast of 300,000 subscriptions the active game population has greatly decreased. I paid for 3 month in advance along with many others and on October 27th when our subscriptions expire, I would like to know

        • Re:Content? (Score:2, Informative)

          by yellowjacket03 ( 470997 )
          Most of the missions are working, but you get no real reward for completing them. Also, the boards were public all through the dev stage and beta and then were closed when the game went live. There was no insidious change to prevent people from posting negative.
          • Your view of board history is a bit off.
            The boards were open for reading in early months after release, you had to logon if you wanted to post a message. It wasn't till after the majority of posts started turning negitive did they lock out the reading of the boards to paying players only.

  • 300,000 Accounts != 300,000 Subscribers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rebill ( 87977 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @04:52PM (#7118196) Journal
    Many SWG players have two or more accounts in the game, now - I, for, example have a combat character and a crafting character. Of course, I paid for the game twice, but that is my perogative.

    That, and many many people have left the game for other things - they still have the year's worth of dues paid, but their accounts are inactive.

    So, I would estimate that the actual subscriber count is closer to 250,000, and the Active subscriber count is more like 100,000.
  • Does anyone else agree that this game should have been based in the time period and gameplay that Kotor has? instead of this old trilogy wannabe? there are no ships and no jedis, is this really star wars ? I bet they are working on some kind of jedi system (and some vehicles I hope) this game has no chance of surviving long without them.

    • I bet they are working on some kind of jedi system (and some vehicles I hope) this game has no chance of surviving long without them.

      According to the devs (caveat emptor)...vehicles/mounts are due "real soon", and are apparently on the testing server. Spaceships will appear in the first expansion pack, imaginitively titled "Space" and due next year. And the jedi stuff is allegedly already in, but requires you to complete a list of tasks that are specific for each character - Presumably at least a partial

      • According to the SWG page on their site, Vehicles and mounts are slated to hit TestCenter in November, and are going to be in development for the month of October. There used to be a gameplay video, but I can't remember the link to it.

  • 300,000 users?? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Stalyx ( 633692 )
    Well I hope they can maintain their user base considering that their are some excellent MMORPG's on the horizon. For example,

    World of Warcraft

    Final Fantasy XI

    Horizons

    Everquest 2

    Therefore, they could expect to see a their user base peak by early 2004. Its my belief that a lot of people who switched to Star Wars Galaxies were from other online games, and considering that SWG could not be considered a breakthrough game, its safe to assume that the those people will move on to other games.

    Now, s

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I liked the idea of getting people away from the mission terms. Too Many mmorpg's have fallen out of the social aspect of the game and just mutated into power gaming.*side note* was there really a small man inside R2-D2?
  • Why don't I see anything about midichlorians?

  • SWG First Jedi: MastahOfDaP00n (Score:4, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @10:29PM (#7120795) Journal
    March 7th, 2004: Today, in the popular online game Star Wars: Galaxies, a player has achieved the level of Jedi for the first time ever in the game.

    The character, "MastahOfDaP00n", has been logged in an average of 21 hours a day, according to server log figures provided to us by Verant.

    The player behind the character, Timmy Gravis, was interviewed by GameSpy earlier today, shortly after accomplishing his feat. However, GameSpy was unable to use the interview in an article, as - according to them - it consisted of nothing more than incoherent babbling and the occasional semi-understandable phrase such as "pwned j00 all! I a/\/\ j00r fathah!!!!111 Wh00da MaN? Say it, 'y0da man!!' Say it p30nz!"

    Verant representatives could not be reached for further comment.

    (karma whoring from the future)

  • Maybe I'm being too pie-in-the-sky, but it would be cool if as part of the quest to become a jedi, but nearing the end of the quest, there would be some GM involvement that would basically make completing it an individual thing. Either by coding NPCs to react a certain way based on the character's individual ID in the database, or actual GM intervention.
  • I started the game on the opening day, with a 3 month pre-paid subscription. The game looked cool and seemed to rock for about a week. Then the class called Creature Handlers started to take over the game. I exited the space shuttle in a town and met a guy with the two-story tall monster/pet. Its health and damage were worth 5 of my character and he had control over it. That was when it first came clear that this game might have some problems. The ideas that nearly every one in a Star Wars game wou
  • Every account thats ever been active.

    Their servers are mostly empty compared to release. Everyone flocks around only a few major cities. You can go to most of the cities and see no one in them.

    They've had no need to bring online any new servers lately.

    They are using spintronics to come up with that 300K subscribers number. Probably about 1/2 of those don't have an active account. They are still living off of their pre-sales numbers which were hige because most people didn't know (or believe) that t
  • Now there's a compromise!

    If Star Wars Kid [petitiononline.com] can't get a character/cameo in episode 3, then maybe Lucas can get him a Jedi on SWG!
  • The whole Jedi thing is probably one of the few things SOE got anywhere close to right with this game. At least a jedi character could solo, most likely, and overcome the problems with the chaotic grouping and experience systems. But then why even try when you can just be an entertainer and get exp by being afk with your character in a tavern playing some choppy, glitched 6 second midi loop over and over?

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