"Rising up the Imperial ranks.........wookie style"

Wow, Ray! Thanks for pointing out the MOST OBVIOUS REASON why this game is "Star Wars" in name only.

The Empire is full of bigots - they hates Wookies, just like all other alien races. They enslaved all of Kashyyyk, and think they're only good for whatever slave labor is deemed necessary.

One of VI's biggest mistakes ever: allowing non-humans to rise the ranks of the Empire.

mopic -
Couldn't find the post to which I orginally replied, so I don't know why I made the "not IT" statement. Probably because that acronym gets bandied around so much, it makes my head hurt.

The only place, in your example, that 1) and 2) should disconnect are at the subscription servers. I'm not sure, but I've been getting the feeling that they're done by a group external to development recently - so that's not in their control, and therefore the ONLY thing the developers can't be held directly responsible for (although, since it's their butts on the line, you'd figure that they'd be pretty damn insistant that it's a robust system).

I don't know how the technical departments at Verant are divided up, but I've always found it a big mistake to distance the software engineers and the DBAs. Generally speaking, since the programmers are the ones initiating database connections, they should be part of the database design process. At least, I've found that if the DBAs are free to design and optimize a system without input from the developers, you wind up with a middle-tier filled with bloated code and dead code trees - functions that are left in "just in case" the DBAs change things again - and other similar anti-patterns.

And again, though I'm not sure how Verant is set up, I imagine that the 1)s and 2)s sink and swim together - so I'd imagine they'd want to play nice, and work together to insure that neither 1) nor 2) fail.

While designers (not developers) at VI (Verant, VI is easier to type) might not have control of the subscription servers, it's such an important piece of Day 1 that you'd think they'd have their fingers in as much of it as possible. But they DO (AFAIK) have control over such things as the login servers and preparing backups for whatever fails on Day 1 - so you'd think they'd make it as robust as possible.

I don't see how you can pin ALL of the blame on SOE - yeah, they're responsible for pushing the game out of the door regardless of its state (as well as whatever part of the sign up/connection process they do), but VI is AT LEAST as responsible for whatever goes wrong.

You're right that most of the technical people shouldn't be shouldering the blame - IMHO, that is the primary responsibility of management. Management should be there to do their best to make the project succeed, but they're also supposed to shoulder the responsibility for failures (though I rarely see this - I generally see the developers being blamed for whatever happens).

But as a guy who does both the hardware and software side of things, I argue that they are not *totally* different skill sets

"I pretty much hated Shadowbane, though: not as much as AO, of course."
I'm probably ripping someone off by saying 'a challenge this big is not meant for everyone'
AO was deep hurting. I've got some great screenshots from being trapped behind invisible walls (wooo SUDs!), and another of my character equipping a bow that still had the default model / texture (pink cube, blue writing "default mesh" - was almost the size of my martial artist).

"Sloppy coding after 4 years of development = cancelling my account."
Huh, really? Gosh, you must cancel a lot of accounts. I can't think of a mainstream game yet that didn't have these sorts of problems. Guess you were never a Half-life / Quake 3 player either

"Not jumping onto Galaxies, either, though."
...yeah, i skipped it for now, and i was a raving looney in beta. luckily, i've got this big project at work and i've managed to stay strong in the face of wookie entertainers. next month, maybe... we'll see.

FLAME WAR!!!
/puts on asbestos underwear

/tosses a fireball

...ok you two, calm the F down =)
now kiss and make up

Vincent Murphy,
Wow, way to troll for two games at once. Nice one!

I play Shadowbane because I was sick to death of the insanely stupid rules most MOGs force on you. Play Nice Policy? Get outta my camp before I send you back to your bind point Got a problem with the way somebody's acting? Great, pull steel and have at you. Want revenge? Grab a tracker, do some hunting.

One day, many moons ago, I was trying to level a newbie troll in Innothule Swamp (back before those F*ING FROGS). Unfortunately, some halfling prick was camping MY guards - so any time I need to de-train a line of froggies, I was screwed.

I asked him to stop. His response? "stfu n00b". My response? I trained a line of guards on him while he was meditating. I took a screenshot of his corpse, and still have it to this day. And a GM had the balls to say *I* was griefing *HIM*. Pfft.

Oh! I almost forgot - THERE ARE NO GNOMES OR HALFLINGS IN SB! WHEEEE! ...sadly, no trolls either =/

As harsh as this sounds, one of my favorite memories from GS3 was visiting an area I had never been to as my 5th lv. Ranger.

I wandered across a rock troll. Nervous, I stepped into defensive stance, thinking that if it hit me too hard, I could just retreat.

What followed was something like this:
A Rock Troll hits YOU in the Chest! (+350)
Your chest obliterates into a fine mist, killing you instantly.

This poor guy was also disintegrated a couple months later. That, along with the slapstick kobolds (and rabid squirrels!) and the ribbon that loved to be hugged, will make GS3 stand out in my mind forever.

When in any game have you ever had to sit down for a full half hour to recover anything?

EQ, at mid levels with no extra regeneration. Yow.

I was a big fan of old school UO... I had my miner and his pack mule, and together we would gather ore until somebody came by and set us on fire =) One of the things I had learned from beta was to have a character that would "finance" the other... it was a lot of fun.

Just the same, I always had a couple yellow potions on me... I don't recall spending much, if any, time waiting around for my health to regen. /shrug.

Yeah, the only "down time" I remember in UO was when I died and had to run back to a shrine.

Everquest was *strictly* combat-oriented. And, for reasons unknown to me, V.I. felt the need to incorporate not only GIGANTIC amounts of experience earned to reach 50+, but drastic penalties for death and long recharge times for health and mana.

UO... /sigh. UO was sweet. I really miss advancing by used skills instead of static templates.

The Shock Wound/Battle Fatigue is one of the few things I like about SWG. Yeah, it's incorporated downtime, but it's meant to bring the community closer together by 'forcing' them to interact.

Back before the tragedy that is Everquest (concepts like "downtime" didn't exist back when there were reasons to do things other than fight, fight, fight constantly), there was the single best online RPG ever: Gemstone 3.

Gemstone 3 had two healing classes, similar to Entertainers & Medics - Empaths, which transferred wounds from you to themselves (as GS3 had severed limbs, there was nothing more funny that an Empath transferring a severed leg while standing. "Darksun falls down, screaming, clutching his ruined leg.") and Clerics, which healed hit points and resurrected the dead.

Most Empaths / Clerics would sit in Town Square Central, waiting for injured / dying / dead people to be dragged in. Then, it was a race to see who could transfer the wounds and heal him up the fastest. Of course, every once and a while an Empath would transfer too much and wind up dead himself... ;D

"...are basically IT issues..."
BS. Tell me which of the problems people are experience are issues that COULD NOT have been resolved by good programming / design:

1) FAILURE to account for the ***500k*** (claimed) Day 1 subscribers - thus all the troubles creating accounts and registering
This isn't a new problem. Hell, it's not even a new concept. They didn't examine their system to look for the least robust point of failure - as far as I can tell, they didn't even test it!

2) FAILURE to implement a robust connection/queueing system that doesn't disconnect the people you're trying to support.
Again, it's not a "we didn't know! /whine" issue, because they claimed they knew. Beta is there to test these things. HISTORY has shown EXACTLY what to expect, and they ignore it.

3) FAILURE to be ready for the inevitable - your sign up process will fail, your login process will fail, so BE READY WITH A BACK UP.
They weren't ready. Oh, unless by "ready" you mean "...it will be up tomorrow".

Who do I blame? SOE for pushing it out the door unprepared. Programmers for not insisting on robust development. Designers for not incorporating this SIMPLE CONCEPTS.

The artists, however, are not only let off the hook, I applaud them for doing a great job. The game may suck ass, but it's pretty ass.

Nim -
Yeah, I'm in your camp. Didn't find it very Star Wars, didn't find it very enjoyable.

I am, however, still enjoying Shadowbane... though being a melee is really the tough life.

Hey-poster-above-his -
What's your beef with Planetside? Was a blast in the beta - like a persistant BF1942.

So is anyone playing and posting here? I'd love to know how launch is going, but my web-based e-mail is down and my stratics account apparently expired (???).

I'd also like to chat with folks who did(are) enjoy(ing) SWG - I promise to keep it friendly.

Actually, I'd label both the "peanut crap" guy and the person to whom he responded as trolls.

No substance, just an opinionated view with nothing backing it up.

I was in beta, I found it distasteful and not at all Star Wars, and I'm willing to discuss it in a rational manner.

I also regenerate and have a weakness to fire - just to warn you.

GS3 rocked. Best.Text-basedRPG.Ever.

I didn't buy SWG either. I was a beta tester, and I'm currently playing ShadowBane... I really don't know why I would want to go back to a PvP- MMORPG. It's such a big step backwards, that it just makes me shake my head.

If they come out with a PvP server, I'll go back for a second look. Until then, I have dwarves to kill.

Raptor:
SWG servers are CAPPED at 3.5k people - there is NO WAY AT ALL that even a TENTH (6.5k) of what you claimed (65k) is possible.

At this people, everything about Jedi is speculation.

Bestine was *hell*. I had to look at the ground to keep ~15fps, and every time I tried to look up at the sky to see the fireworks going off at 11pm est, SWG would crash. As for 500+ people... well... I don't think that's accurate. I could try and count from screenshots, but ugh...

calamitycorpse wrote:
"I met a dwarf in Shadowbane last night. He said he thought Shadowbane was 'losing its charm'. I asked why. He said 'because I hate PVP'. So I killed him."

ROFL!!!

I love SB.

Okay, I watched the Vision Quest. I'll fire the SWG beta up again tonight, and see if it's really changed that much since the installation broke.

HOWEVER

Someone must tell me where I can go to find people to interact with. One of the biggest problems during beta was being completely unable to find people who knew what was going on and learn from them.

I don't care which server, planet, whatever. If I'm too late, oh well - if I'm not, I'll come at it with an open mind and someone can do their best to persuade me.

Redeemer:
See if you can find a map of Faerun (stupid ascii for not including 'u' with a '^' over it) anywhere. The Baldur's Gate series are pretty faithful to it.

As big as they are, the Sword Coast is just a tiny portion of the Forgotten Realms.

I find myself firing up Morrowind again for the expansions, but it's sort of a love/hate relationship. It's more system intensive than NWN (I'm really looking forward to Bloodmoon on my new bleeding-edge system)... I also found it to be a much, much deeper game. I've certainly played it *longer* than NWN.

Deeper even than BG2. In fact, I might consider it the deepest RPG I've played.

Because of this, it's easy to get lost. Also, there are sooo many possibilities, I'd strongly suggest you just pick something that sounds like fun. I wound up rolling a custom kajit fighter/thief, and she's now one of my most favorite characters in any game (similar to my Swashbuckler from BG2).

I'm not sure about the availability of character guides out there (check gamefaqs.com), but I've got a spreadsheet detailing all the character information, possible skills, which factions value which skills, how 'desired' the skills are, which factions play nice together, and a HUGE number of custom templates I put together that sound like fun. Drop me an e-mail if you'd like a copy or my opinion on essential skills.

Edit: you can get Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon from EBWorld for $70+s&h.

This comment was edited on Jun 10, 12:15.

LordSteev:
Well, there's at least one place I disagree with you: IWD. Icewind Dale is a dungeon crawl, with the focus more on interesting and challenging combat (hence, Heart of Fury mode).

IWD is also vastly superior for multiplayer; the Baldur's Gate series was focused on one character, leaving everyone else feeling like supporting actors (...which they are). This distinction is significant, especially when playing with more than two players.

Don't get me wrong; I'd be thrilled if BG3 came along, or a similar story-based type of game.

I think Neverwinter Nights, in some way, suffered from being too multiplayer oriented. By restricted each player to one henchman, you significantly narrow the choices they have in a single game. IMHO, the focus was for two or more humans to make the journey together - which may or may not be what you intend.

I tend to play these games at least three times through (sometimes four) - twice by myself (once good, once evil), once with a friend (and sometimes again with more friends or a different party), so that's where my opinions/view come from.