Everybody’s favorite MMO game to love or hate is still around folks and it doesn’t look like its slowing down any time soon. I’ve been an on and off gamer of SWG which is now a totally different beast from when it first started. If you want to start a flaming frenzy on a SWG forum, just post ‘SWG RAWKS’ and watch former players (and current ones…go figure) whip themselves into a rabid frenzy of hate and madness.
Despite all the supporters and the legion of nay sayers, the game is still around and people are still playing it. Once again I found myself drawn to some of the changes they made and I think it’s time for this game to be reviewed again. So without further ado…
"Where did you dig up that old fossil?"
That’s right. SWG of today is a totally different animal from when it started. For you folks who are actually new to the MMOG, SWG was once a ‘SandBox’ type game where players roamed where they will, featuring a ‘Skill Based’ system allowing great character flexibility, as well as horrible grinding gaming moments. After so many bugs, sparse content, Jedi profession complaints and probably a dwindling profit margin, the folks at SOE regrouped and totally revamped the gaming system, making it very similar to your typical MMOG’s today.
This little change, called the New Game Enhancements, spawned a firestorm among players resulting in legions of disgruntled customers crying for SOE blood and the death of SWG. Now, let me tell you what SWG07 has today.
“She may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts kid.”
One of the most obvious of the drastic overhaul for SWG is the classes. Before SWG was a skill based system; repetitive use of a skill increased the skill. Though skill based systems offer the most flexibility in character design, they’re prone to cause players to endlessy ‘grind’ an action over and over again just to raise the skill. Boredom ensues! SWG old had an amazing amount of skills, some with it’s own unique experience point system while others fell under a certain type of experience. All in all, you had a lot of skills with a lot of different experience point systems making for a nice lesson in needless complexity. ‘Grinding’ was par for the course, hence the label for the game ‘The Greatest Grind Ever told!’
Enter the classes! The ‘NGE’ update did away with the entire skill based system and experience point system. In its stead they created 9 classes with only one type of experience point system to worry about. Kill things, complete quests, earn XP and level. Yeah it’s the old standby formula of many MMOG’s to date but it works and for SWG it works just as well. Each of the classes are based on some of the character archetypes from the movies like The Smuggler
(Han Solo), Officer (Leia), Commando (Stormtroopers) and of course Jedi (Skywalkers all of em!) Yes you can become a jedi right out the gate which made many gamers happy (and unhappy but more on that later). The classes are typical of any other game, each having a few unique skills and abilities, plus an ‘Expertise’ system (AKA Talents) to help specialize your character further based on their play style (I.E. A fast talking Smuggler, a sneaky Spy, a Dark Jedi etc). SOE just recently introduced the ‘Beastmaster’ expertise line that’s available to all the classes. It looks like an attempt to revive the nixed talents and pets of the Creature Handler profession they did away with before the NGE. It’s a very involved process ‘incubating’ your pet, requiring several types of ‘enzymes’ harvested from creatures in the wild, plus a few other details that help you define your pet’s stats. Far from easy, but shows promising rewards to future pet owners who missed siccing their Wrixes on some Stormtroopers. If you’re a ‘crafting’ type you’ll have no problem with the detail or resource gathering.
Another example of the drastic overhaul the game received is combat. To try and foster a more action oriented feel, SWG 07 has a pseudo twitch based control system. This new system requires the player to aim and fire at the target of choice. It works similar to a first person shooter where your attack lands where you aim the crosshair with your mouse. For those of you non twitch fans, you can toggle an auto aim/auto attack feature that’s works just like every MMOG out there. Whatever shooting preference you choose, combat in SWG 07 is a fast & furious affair. To keep up with the action theme, the developers ramped up the combat speed in game. On one quest I was doing, my smuggler and a Jedi player character went into a cave where we had to fight it out with a bunch of creatures called Squills. Blaster shots were flying everywhere while the Jedi was swinging away with a sword and using force lighting on those that got past him. Dead squills were everywhere. It was the most fun I have had with this game yet!
Did I mention that the SWG folks have also incorporated their ‘Jump to Light speed’ expansion pack into the main client, giving all their players the ability to fly spaceships? Players can choose an affiliation (Rebels, Empire, Smugglers) and can go perform missions for their cause such as a bombing run on an Imperial Star Destroyer or simply blast away at each other in PvP combat. Based on their affiliation, players can fly the X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, or the famous YT 1300 model made famous by the Millennium Falcon. Being a starship pilot is like a subclass where players can accrue experience and level to earn special pilot tricks and skills. If you don’t want to bother with the combat then you can simply use your ship to fly you or your friends to other planets. The graphical detail for the space portion of the game is excellent and the star systems to fly around in are very large. It’s a whole other game itself and a good one.
In addition to the ‘Theme Parks’ of old (the Rebel hideout, Jabba’s palace) and the expansion packs (Rage of the Wookies, Trials of Obi Wan), SWG now has a slew of quests for their players; Class quests, Legacy storyline Quests, Pilot Missions, you name it!. Yet there is still enough of a ‘sandbox’ feel to go around for fans of that play style. The old mission terminals are still there so if you have that nostalgic urge for a cookie cutter quest it’s there for you! SWG 07 strikes a decent balance between the play styles.
What looks to be promising in SWG 07 is the new Storyteller system. Through purchasing special tokens, players running player events can place props, effects, NPCs and aggressive NPC’s for their stories. Once the host invites the players, they can then take part in what the host/storyteller has set up for them. This gives players a HUGE amount of content potential to work with. Just imagine what they could do with tools like this? The player community in SWG is sizable and strong consisting of veterans of the early days and new players, including role players from both camps. Regardless of which group they come from, players will be sure to take advantage of the new tools offered to them.
What truly is SWG’s greatest strength as a game is the depth of gaming they offer to their players. When SWG first came out, there were no vehicles or spaceships . There were plenty of bugs in the game (especially the PvP), the game quests were few in number and there were endless amounts of open, empty terrain. Now in 2007, player run cities are widespread on every planet each with their own goods and services & political offices available to other players. There are a whole slew of vehicles, starships, armor, and weapons from all the films to choose from or create with the detailed crafting system. If that’s not enough to grab you, look at it this way…what other MMORPG allows a player to do all this; Fight Stormtroopers on the ground, take off in a X-Wing, dodge and shoot down Tie Fighters and then jump to Hyperspace to land on Endor and party with Ewoks? OK forget the Ewok part but you get the idea right?
“What an interesting Smell you’ve discovered!”
No MMO game is perfect and SWG 07 has enough imperfections to support that statement. The graphics engine is getting long in the tooth and still has bugs dating back from the very beginning: Clipping issues, Slow Rendering of Objects that make them appear around a player instantaneously, LOS problems, out of sync animation and range issues with combat to name a few. In their defense, you can only do so much to the engine without having to replace it entirely (at that point it’s a whole new game) but some of these things should have been locked down by now.
Another issue I have with SWG 07 is the depth of their content. A problem plaguing many MMORPG’s, a large portion of their content is very shallow, being nothing more than poorly dolled up kill quests or fed ex quests. Many of the specialized skills that the new player classes have aren’t all that special, most of them nothing more that variants of damaging attacks or heals with no special animations or cool moves to show for it. The classes need a greater variety of specialized skills to distinguish themselves from the other classes besides the amount of damage they dish out.
The strongest issue that SWG 07 has going against it is its revision history. The development team changed hands quite a few times altering the ‘The Vision’ of the game. The radical makeover changed the entire game, the way it is played and the characters the players spent a lot of time and effort on. Droves of players quit in anger and disgust, feeling betrayed & cheated by SOE for the drastic alteration.
While many of these players were content to bitch to no end, others set up web sites and petitions to at least have a ‘Classic’ server for players wanting to play the original version. Still no classic server so far. I wonder how many players (AKA profits) that SOE could bring back if they just set up one ‘classic’ server. After Mythic’s Dark Age of Camelot, Trials of Atlantis blunder, even they wised up and made a classic server for their players who were not happy with the changes in that expansion. What’s SOE’s excuse? I don’t think there’s a feasible one they could produce and to ignore their customer base like that, and a potential customer base, is just bad business. What’s that saying, something about cutting your nose off to spite your face?
"The Force Will be With You. Always"
Despite all the changes and history, good and bad, SWG is a game worth playing and subscribing to. There’s so much a player can do in SWG and get the ‘Star Wars experience’ to go with it. If you’re tired of the sword and sorcery MMO’s, a jilted former player, or an avid Star Wars fan, give this incarnation of SWG a try. A 15 day free trial from their website is all you need
Score 3/5
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Darke