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Star Wars Galaxies - Patch Woes? 101

Posted by simoniker from the whine-or-cheese? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Now that Sony has restricted their Star Wars Galaxies forums to players only, it is unlikely that any non-players would know about the major problems happening with this game. The largest patch in several months was planned for release yesterday. A scheduled 4 hour downtime to install the patch turned into a 16+ hour downtime for most players, sparking a huge outrage in the SWG community. Sony's forums quickly became overloaded, and instead of responding to issues, the moderators went to work deleting as many complaint posts as they could. To make matters worse, once the servers did come back online, it seems that the patch has caused more problems than it has solved." Are complaints about SWG down to a vocal (unrepresentative?) minority, or is there a more general level of dissatisfaction with the game?
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Star Wars Galaxies - Patch Woes? More

Star Wars Galaxies - Patch Woes?

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  • wouldn't know, I cancelled a month ago.
    • Hmm, I feel the need to elaborate slightly, and make the point that no intelligent player of SWG (of which there are surely a handful) would ever use the official forums, except maybe to check if their server was down. The signal to noise ratio was, well, if we're talking noise/signal, you'd get a division by zero error. Other fan sites, especially (for me, a crafter) the quite good SWG craft.com [swgcraft.com] site, offered a notably better community/resource.

      So -- take the complaints over how the official boards are mo

      • I just wanted to second this opinion, I did alot of research before I decided to try it, and the official forums were bland at best. Reading through them also did not give much insite.

        I also stopped playing it because it was to much like work to get anything done, it basically took to long to get anywhere and it drove me crazy, besides hurting my hand too

        The lack of any place interesting to go puts a real damper on the whole thing

      • I cancelled, too. Also wrote a review [netjak.com]. Pretty damn pissed off about the whole thing.

  • Deleted Posts? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YomikoReadman ( 678084 ) <jasonathelen&gmail,com> on Thursday October 09, 2003 @01:55PM (#7175100) Journal
    I don't know where this guy got his information from, but I was on the Development tracker forum yesterday, and the only posts that were deleted from the patch error thread started by Q-3PO, Kevin O'Hara, were either flames or trolls. Each and everyone of the posts that were good, constructive criticisms, or a report of something that was a bug in nature without flaming was left up, and still is. As far as this patch being pretty borked, yea it is. However, SOE has been exceptionally open and apologetic about this, and the fans that have access to the site can get all of that from the announcement forum. For those that can't get in the forums, I'd recommend a fansite, such as for any of the info from the user-only forums, as they have posted a great deal of it. [netswgalaxies.net]
    • whoops, fscked up the link. go here [swgalaxies.net]

    • Re:Deleted Posts? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Crockerboy ( 611431 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @02:27PM (#7175306)
      People crying about deleted posts on the SWG boards are usually not the brightest. The SWG boards have a peer moderation system sort of like here on slashdot

      All new posts start at 1 star, and the default viewing level is 1 star. If you post a whine or other useless thread, you'll usually get peer moderated down to 0 starts so in affect it appears your "valuable contribution to the community" was deleted by a mod when in reality your fellow players have deemed your post worthless. Of course, you can read at 0 starts if you want to see the "OMG I AM QUITTING AND TAKING MY 300 GUILD MEMBERS WITH ME!!!!" posts.

      Oh, I believe it's 1 star, might be two with the default threshold at two star as well..I stopped reading the official boards about 2 days after release because the people there made my brain bleed so I'm going by memory on the little details, but the system is as described..

      • Re:Deleted Posts? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Metal_Demon ( 694989 )
        I'm going by memory on the little details, but the system is as described

        Actually you are completely wrong. All post start at zero stars or blank. The system is a 1 to 5 star system where 1 means u r t3h sux0r and 5 means u r0x0r my w0rld. There has often been the misconception that 1 star means people agree a little bit when in reality it means they disagree enough to let you know about it.

        Obviously with all post starting at zero it does not work on a threshold system like /. posts are deleted they don't

        • as I stated, I was a little fuzzy on the actual post levels but the system is still as described and posts do drop below the default viewing level. I know this because I've seen Q answer over a dozen "OMG WTF YOU DELETED MY POST" posts with the explanation...I imagine he's probably sick of them now and he should just thow a "RTFM" in a post next time some mouth breath starts crying about his missing post.
    • I agree with your sentiments completely.

      I can only say that if the current state of the SW:G forums reflects an effort at censorship, the attempt is pathetic at best.

      The real problem from my side is that forums are the absolute least effective means of communicating to a community the size of SW:G and to try and use them for bug reporting and feature requests is cause to never visit them again.

      The fact is, SW:G has had many problems and also a lot of vocal users who do not like particular design aspects
    • This is exactly the kind of crap that has filled up the SWG forums: a small number of extremely vocal idiots who pretend that SWG is the only MMORPG that has ever experienced these problems.
      They are constantly making Bold Pronouncements of DOOM and drooling over the Next Big Thing which of course will not meet their stupidly high standards.
    • Well I always heard stories of censorship in the SWG forums and discounted them as silly. Then one day I replied to a message about Creature Handler and how everyone walking around with an animal pet was silly in a star wars game. In my post I dared to refer to the pet as a Pokemon. Well I guess a lot of people have used that term to talk about SWG pets as the automatic filter on the board edited out the word Pokemon.

      This type of censorship of a non-vulgar word is clear attempt to avoid negative referenc

  • Conspiracy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Metal_Demon ( 694989 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @01:57PM (#7175128)
    There has been big issues with the SW:G forums since the start. Perfectly valid posts in the GENERAL DISCUSSION area are getting closed left and right if they complain about bugs or the crappy CSRs or anything like that. They are obviously well aware that public knowledge of what is said in the forums would drastically hurt their game sales, thats why the blocked all non subscribers. The "monthly" updates that are supposed to be continuing the story content are happening far from monthly. It's been what 3 months now, and the first continuation of the original story just came out in that patch yesterday. At first, they were doing a great job, patching and what not, but now they are really slacking off. Once I get my hands on FFXI I'm not so sure I won't be dropping my account.
    • Dude, that's not a conspiracy, that's SOE policy. If you ask them enough, they'll probably point you to the FAQ that says so.

      They did the exact same kind of thing with PlanetSide when I was playing.
  • I played it for a few weeks straight and haven't really been back to my character. When I was playing there were huge issues with all of the rebel and imperials that were logging on at 3:00PM on the dot and being immature. I didn't find anywhere near enough roleplaying in the game for what it's title is. That said I'm almost scared to go back into it seeing the bug issues are still fairly high.

    Has anybody found the Key of the Twilight yet? I'm just sure it's on Tatooine somewhere
  • How is this really different than the other MMORPG's?

    It surely isn't different than my experiecnes with E&B, EQ, or even ToonTown

    Happily a non MMORPGer
  • It has been going on with Everquest for a while now and it is probably going to be what to expect from massivly multiplayer games in the future. As long as people keep coming back there is no reason for them to change. Plus it gives them (Sony) the opportunity to charge more money later for better service or more involvement with the players. You want better service? Upgrade to a $24.95 a month server/account and you can have it.

  • Not Star Wars, CREATURE WARS !!! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SWG started out with a lot of promise, but it has degenerated into Creature Wars instead of Star Wars. In order to compete in PVP you HAVE to have a pet. Creature handlers are godly, with pets that no one player has any hope of defeating. Then of course you have the Bounty Hunters who do nothing but spam Eye Shot, since it attacks a pool that is unhealable. Those are the two biggest problems right now, gamewise. Too many creatures which are over-powered and need to be nerfed, and the mind pool which is
    • I'm not sure if SOE or the devs behind SWG are going to take away creatures, but not all players require pets. I think what would be best is if the pets could/would be attacked using a scout's trapping ability. I also think droid engineers should be able to build single use or multi use droid pets that can counter creatures too. Right now, armor is borked, but Mind pool attacks can be defended if you wear a high resist helm (our PA has tested this, and pre-patch, our master swordmen and TKA's were able t
  • I played SWG at launch and this kind of stuff is why I cancelled. Poor customer support, buggy junk, mod nazi's in their fourms, boring gameplay, etc.

    Seriously, I know many people were looking foward to this game (I was) but if you don't like it cancel your account.

    I wanted to be bounty hunting, and PvPing like they promised in the interviews a year before the game came out. Instead I ended up in a cantina talking to smokebacca. I won't pay for that kind of experence.

  • Yeah, that patch has some problems ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09, 2003 @03:36PM (#7175940)

    I am an active SWG player/addict, so I felt the pain of yesterday's patch as a user:

    • Extended, and unexpected down-time.

      This is short-hand for, "the installation did not go very well". Most servers were up and down all day.

    • Once the servers came up, it was hit-or-miss on whether you could connect

      This is short-hand for, "instead of people logging in as they get home (trickling in), they were all waiting impatiently for the server to come on-line. The instant it did, the entire player-base tried to log in." This is a problem - it says that the login servers are underpowered. However, this is not what most complaints on the boards are about.

    • Game systems that I relied upon are not working the way I expected them to

      Armor appears to be non-functioning (which affects the Combat characters). Automated harvesters are acting strangely (which affects the non-combat characters). Bio Engineers can't sample without dying. All of these problems should have been detected in testing. Weapon damage appears to be broken.

      SoE blew it, here.

    • Non-responsiveness from the developers

      Also known as, "Waaaaaah! Why aren't you talking to me! Waaaaah! Fix now! Waaaaah!"

    I am going to address the last point. SHUT UP AND LET THEM DO THEIR JOB! It is patently obvious that things went wrong down SWG, way. The thing to remember is that their developers only have 24 hours in a day. If they spend any time at all talking to us (or posting on their forums), then they are not spending nearly enough time fixing the problems! Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara promised us a post-mortim, and we can hold him to that, but let's wait until *after* they get the things fixed.

    Yes, most of us have paid money to play this game.

    Yes, most of us wanted to play last night.

    Yes, every single character type that I can think of in SWG got hammered by some kind of bug from this patch.

    ... but SoE has a good track record, when compared to companies like Blizzard.I fully expect daily patches from SoE until the problems are resolved. Has Blizzard even put patch 1.10 for Diablo II out on Battle.net, yet? What is it, now, 14 months?

    • but SoE has a good track record, when compared to companies like Blizzard. Has Blizzard even put patch 1.10 for Diablo II out on Battle.net, yet? What is it, now, 14 months?

      Don't go after Blizzard because it just make you look stupid. Diablo 2 is soon four years old. Can't you cut them some slack for releasing a patch that's the size of an half expansion pack for free?
    • SWG players are paying a monthly fee. If the game is not playable because of developer incompetence then the player should get a refund. You don't see google working at 50%....if the player can't play their game 24 / 7 they're getting ripped off.
      • If I cant watch TV or use my phone, I get a credit for that day, even if its only a few bux. Sometimes I complain loudly enough to get a free month. Being ripped off in the name of an outage, upgrade or billing problem isnt the users issue. Refund is in order.
      • Apparently you've never read the EULA on an MMO game before have you? They don't promise 100% up-time. These things happen, and it's really not a big deal. So I didn't get to play SWG yesterday, oh well, guess I'll do something else for the day. It's only $15 per month, so if you can't play for a day what would you like? A check for $0.50? Rock on with that cash man! You can't even buy a candy-bar with it.
      • I agree. When Shadowbane was having similar patch problems, Ubisoft gave all players an extension to their subscriptions equal to the number of days that had been seriously hosed.

        So no one got any money back, but they did get more "free" time.

        Sony should do this. (And they yet may. Ubi took a couple of days to figure out that's what they were going to do.)

    • Don't fix it if it ain't broken. Diablo 2 is perfectly stable and has been since its release. People aren't paying a subscription for it. So I would hope people would think of the 1.10 patch, which adds features rather than improves stability, whould be a bonus rather than being expected. If I pay money for game, I want it to be stable. If they want to add features, fine, but please test the bloody thing first.
      • You mean to tell me that you don't think the devs test these huge patches before release -- there is an entire server dedicated to that process. Plain and simple -> crap happens!

        As a software developer, I have dealt with issues where my program works great on one system, but completely explodes on another - SAME CODE!

        Yea, I'm kinda upset that I didn't get to play last night, but you know what, it's not that big of a deal. It WILL get fixed.

        On another note, when WoW comes out, I'm sure Blizzard with

        • there is an entire server dedicated to that process. Plain and simple -> crap happens!

          No, crappy testing happens.

          I have dealt with issues where my program works great on one system, but completely explodes on another - SAME CODE!

          Of course, we've all faced these issues with a development project, but testing on different systems is part of testing. Their client code should be tested on many different systems, not just a couple.

          Yea, I'm kinda upset that I didn't get to play last night, but you kn

    • SOE has good track record. OMG this has got to be a fan boy. SOE has the worst track record of any MMORPG on the market. You have to be kidding me. I played EQ since the start and SOE sucks at putting out a game, a patch and worst of all CST. If it was not for the original VI team before they were bought out EQ would not be shitty and a real company would have made SWG with less issues.
      • This is complete FUD. SOE doesn't have the worst record. That would go to Anarchy Online's folks, for sure. Patches on EQ have been fine for a long long time. SWG's team and EQ's team have nothing to do with each other. They're not even in the same city.

        The real problem is SWG specifically, not all of SOE's products.

        SWG does have problems, mostly because of the way the game is designed, the number of bugs that exist in the game in the tradeskills, and the lack of things to do for the non-combat folks
    • What a great insightful post. It's too bad you posted anonymously though :/.

      Yes, every single character type that I can think of in SWG got hammered by some kind of bug from this patch.

      Some of our PA wanted to test our abilities by raiding Theed (only 5 of us (rebels) but our professions were: Squad Leader (not master though), Commando (w/ flamethrower), Creature Handler (w/ 3 pets), Bounty Hunter (master), Pistoleer (master), Riflemen (master)) and Combat Medic (yay me)). I believe most of the other

  • Sounds like a huge over reaction (Score:3, Insightful)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Thursday October 09, 2003 @05:00PM (#7176832) Homepage

    I used to be a hard core Everquest player, and I well remember the pain of sitting around waiting for the servers to come back off, fuming over "scheduled downtime" that went far over schedule.

    Now that I'm no longer playing, I realize our ridiculous this is, it makes much more sense to simply do other things on a patch day. If you're upset that you can't get online to play your MMO, maybe you are taking the game too seriously.

    I will say that I don't believe SOE's patching system is very well designed, it seems bizarre it takes them so long to patch the servers, I'm pretty sure I could design a better system for a new MMO game. I'm pretty sure upgrades without downtime are possible, and will in fact become an expected level of customer service in the future.

    I may play Star Wars Galaxies some day. I'm thinking maybe two years from now, when I can buy SWG and two or three expansions for the same price it's available for now. When most of the major bugs and play balance issues have been resolved. This is the world of the MMO, launch is a two year long beta, better to wait it out and try it later.
  • It's difficult to compare Blizzard's Diablo 2 and SOE's SWG. First off, you pay for it to be playable. with D2, it's not monthly charges so they are making little to know money off of battle.net. D2 was still playable when it first came out, unlike SWG where many things were not ready for it's launch. A player paying a monthly subscription fee should be getting those updates if the producers want them to continue paying. With D2 on the other hand, the player has already payed, and aren't shelling extra cash

  • Siphon Only Numbskulls' Yen.
  • But to buy a game for $50, and then have to pay another $15/month pisses me off. If I need to pay a monthly charge to use the game, then give it away for free. It's not like you get $50 worth of stuff in the box, that's for sure.

    When I buy a game like Warcraft III, if Battlenet is down, I can still play the game without a network. And if I'm paying a monthly fee to use a game, it had better be there when I want to play it, not at the convience of some programmers. In this respect it is directly analogous t
    • Until SWG, I don't think I played anything else but EQ since nearly the beginning. Very compelling game.

      Anyway, during that time, I can honestly say I've saved money, even with the monthly fee. I don't know about you, but before this, I would easily pick up five or six games a year that I would play for a short time and the get bored with them. That's $250 to $300 (or more, if I picked up more games) down the tubes on crappy games.
    • That's a bad analogy. When you sign up for telephone, cable, or most any other service you are charged a "connection fee." Exactly like buying the boxed game...
  • SWG is a weak example of a Star Wars based game.

    The main issue that killed the game for me was the animal pets. In SWG you can easily become a Creature Handler and with a few quick words train a pet to fight and die for you. A creature Handler can have three pets out at once and they will all fight to the death for him without question. This type of power makes the creature handler (the most non-star wars profession) the most powerful profession. The best part is you store your pets in a data pad and ca

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • People who get pissed off need to understand that things do happen which will extend patch downtime. Do the numbers ... 16 hours' downtime for something which you pay 12-15 dollars a month works out to around 25 cents. Go watch TV or spend some time with your friends and family.
  • I was on the forum last night and I saw a post where the title goes something like 'fixing bugs should be a priority not deleting posts'. Guess what it has a 5star rating when I was reading it, and I went ahead to give it a 5star rating because it expresses a lot of sentiments I had about the game. For those of you who dont know the SWG forum has a rating system where readers can apply 1 to 5 (best) stars on any given post except you cant rate posts by devs.

    Next thing you know the webpage refreshes and i
  • Don't count on it! I tried it. Turns out training was, and still is, broken. There's a 'bug' disallowing you to save your control setup, and oh, most people have trouble logging on.

    They have the same policy of deleting posts. I've sworn off MMORPG until someone else goes a decent one.
    • Planetside has lots of problems still, but it does seem to be getting better. Training is still busted, but it's pretty easy to figure out what's what without it.

      I like it because there seems to be less of the levelling treadmill and because i can play for 30 minutes or 8 hours and have fun either way.

      Of course, i never would have tried it at all if i hadn't gotten the game for free, so take that for what it's worth. I do still have to pay the sub fee though. When i find myself playing it for less than
  • Bioware have locked certain parts of their boards to players only who have the appropriate serial key.

    And they are one of the best companies in so far as developing patches, communicating with the player base as well (ie. Bioware Wednesday) and taking feedback, as well as juggling development issues and business decisions.

    This game pretty weak by all accounts (no I am not a player but I am interested in RPGs and MMORPGs). If there is no method of playing it without paying for the online subscription t
  • Yes I was playing SWG, my first MMORPG at that. I played for about 2 monthes but I was astonished by how many bugs there are in the game, and how the patches never seamed to help. Needless to say I have stoped playing the game and may never play a MMORPG again. Compair them to PC Games, on a normal game that you but it costs the same up front but you dont have any of the patches or bugs to deal with, and they are only a one time fee.

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