Star Wars Galaxies ending Dec. 15, 2011

[Blackjack]

I was gonna wake up a dead SWG thread, but nothing quite seemed to suit a farewell situation...

As mentioned in the SWTOR thread...

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/news_archive.vm?id=69184

This is the producer note that I never wanted to write. As was announced today, the Star Wars Galaxies service will come to an end on December 15th, 2011.

fwiw, with 6 months left, they are still planning to finish some updates and stuff.

imho, they should retro-patch the game to "pre-NGE status" and see if that re-excited any of the angry hordes of early adopters who got pissed off and left at that time.

I never much enjoyed SWG when I tried it (and it was from the NGE stage and later that I tried it), but 8 years -- launched in June 2003 in North America -- is not that bad of a run.

And of course this has everything to do with SWTOR no matter what the corporate-ese may say. I just don't understand literally years of explanations how SWTOR and SWG were going to co-exist only for this to happen.  

[CeeKay]

man, I wonder if I should finally install it on Steam.  they should just make the game free until the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYt-g8kODM&feature=player_detailpage#t=9s

[Arclight]

One of my favorite MMO's. Up until the biggest blunder in gaming history.
I never understood why they felt SWG needed such a radical, simplistic change to the whole game...A quandry to be sure.

[rshetts2]

It had a good run but Im sure they feel that with the pending release of SW:TOR, that an aging 8 year old mmo, that disenfranchised the majority of its subscriber base had no chance of remaining financially viable.  No matter how they spin it, there is no way those two events are not connected.

[Razgon]

Seems like it was Lucasart's decision, which makes sense

http://www.raphkoster.com/2011/06/24/swg-is-shutting-down/

[Blackjack]

This might be of interest, though I don't know if anyone around here still subscribed at this point (from an e-mail I received; I only played a little but of a free trial around the time NGE was introduced, but I guess they consider me an "SWG community member" because of it):

Fan Appreciation Offers
We welcome those active SWG subscribers in good standing to play one or all of the below SOE massively-multiplayer online PC games at a fully-paid subscriber status (or “membership” status where relevant) at no cost between October 15, 2011 and December 31, 2011 (subject to the terms and conditions described below).

To activate these special offers, use the same Station Account you use now to subscribe to SWG** and simply click on the game you would like to try to download the game software.

We are offering the following SOE games: Free Realms®, Star Wars®: Clone Wars Adventures™, EverQuest®, EverQuest® II and DC Universe™ Online. The game software will all be made available for download on a link accessible from the StarWarsGalaxies.com web site beginning on October 15, 2011.

[Teggy]

SWTOR release date confirmed?

[CeeKay]

SWTOR release date confirmed?

naw, you wait a month to get the Galaxies players really jonesing and then you release it.

[TheEgoWhip]

I used to love SWG way back when.  It was actually the first MMO that I played with the Wanderers, and the crafting system was my favorite even now.  I even enjoyed the Jump to LightSpeed expansion.  Was pretty bummed when the entire thing imploded for stupiditys sake.  Luckily EQ2 and then WoW came out soon afterwards and my pain was short lived.

[cheeba]

They imploded SWG because of WoW. Stupid WoW ruins everything.

[The Grue]

They imploded SWG because of WoW. Stupid WoW ruins everything.

No, I think it imploded on its own.  They never should have moved from the game mechanic that Jedi were rare.  Once the whole holocron thing came out and then the new combat thing, the game went south.  It was awesome (especially because of crafting) before then.

[cheeba]

Yeah the holocron thing was bad and that was well before WoW. I was specifically talking about the NGE implosion which utterly destroyed their own game, not the dumb decisions like the CU they made before.

The jedi thing was interesting and I wish they hadn't screwed it up so badly with the holocrons. It would have been fun to see how an elite but risky (perma-death, or maybe even just a loss of all skills would have done it, considering the huge amount of grinding jedi required) class would have played out if it had been kept rare, rather than informing the entire public of the secret way to become a jedi and even giving them hints to shorten their path to doing so.

There was just a huge list of things they screwed up in that game, it really is an awesome case study that every developer should look at when making an MMO. Defense stacking was awful, allowing for indestructible characters. They could have just put in caps for defense but they chose to go with the awful Combat Upgrade.

Combat Medics became totally broken.

The customization was awesome in the game, but they actually had too much. It made the servers run like crap. It was excellent that no 2 people looked alike, but it brought the game to its knees and we could never have a large battle as a result.

The sandbox nature of the game was another double-edged sword. It was great that there was so much freedom to do our own things, but they badly, badly needed content. I think the lack of content is why they couldn't hold onto customers, and that led to all the awful decisions they made to fix things.

And for all its problems, to me it was still a far better MMO experience than WoW. I'll never forget attacking a guild's base over 3 days. It was like a siege it lasted so long. I'd log on the next day and find out my guildmates were still there fighting. We had European members who would fight during the morning and North Americans who would take on the fighting at night. We finally took it down.

[Blackjack]

SWTOR release date confirmed?

I wouldn't read too much into the precise date. Bioware's sticking with the "sometime in the remainder of the 2011 calendar year" (my language  ) SWTOR release date and I suspect Lucasarts just felt unplugging SWG at the end of a calendar year made things simpler.

The sad thing about NGE is that SOE posited it as an attempt to broaden SWG's appeal and bring more players into the mix. I tried the game shortly after NGE went in and it really didn't do anything for me, and it looked cruder than I expected, keeping in mind it was a June 2003 North American release.

So it's like they made this drastic change to try to draw new players (which it didn't seem to do in the numbers expected), mostly failing, while at the same time mostly just ticking off the hardcore heart 'n' soul players if you will.

And I have played other big MMOs that did that. They make a major change either because they say "it's good for you" or "we want to stop being a niche MMO and draw in a wider audience," and most of the time what they mostly accomplish is driving off their most passionate, early fans. They just don't think it through. To me, once you've pushed your MMO through the birth canal, so to speak, it's probably already too late to try to turn it into something it wasn't at launch.

[CeeKay]

how it will all end.

If you’ve been away from SWG and you’re looking to return for the final chapter and the galaxy-ending event please log into your Station Account and purchase a 30-day SWG Game Pass to reactivate your account.  You will only be charged once and you will be able to play SWG through to the end of the game in December.  If you have a non-recurring SWG Game Pass (for example, if you’re playing on a pre-paid game card) please log into your Station Account and click on GAME PASS INO to confirm whether your SWG Game Pass will still be active on September 15, 2011.  If not, and you wish to play through to the galaxy-ending event, please purchase additional game time so that your account will be active on September 15, 2011.

Recurring SWG Game Passes will not be billed after September 15, 2011.  Recurring SOE All Access Game Passes will continue to be billed after that date.

I think I'll sub up for a month to so I can see the ending,

[Blackjack]

I remember reading about Asheron Call 2's last day (somewhat inexplicably, Asheron's Call continues to survive to this day). There were some touching blog items about people gathering to watch the sun rise one last time in the game and the like.