As a beta tester i've gotta say living in america with probably one of the top rated connections for gaming, and supposedly a 50ish ping the game feels more like 200+ ping at times.
Also in regards to the company being greedy, I agree completely with that notion. They charged 10$ for sending out beta cds, something which most companies normally cover.
On top of that 15$ a month is a ridiculous amount which hopefully people will make sure to avoid to make sure other companies stop heading in that direction of jacking up prices for mmorpgs.
Also i would like to add that although i admit they made a lot of progress in the beta, i still feel the game needs a LOT of work. I've played a lot of other beta's for mmo games and have never found myself as bored as i am in SWG.
I think like all the other beta testers, i agree completely that this game needs another few months to be ready.
I think its important that beta testers even if they break the NDA should come out and tell people whats goin, and try and save people from blowing their money on a game that is definetely not ready and charging a premium. I dont think i would be as frustrated as i am now if they werent planning on ripping their customers off so badly with 15$ a month and a buggy products simply because its based off a very well known theme.

This comment was edited on Jun 18, 06:40.

I wanna play this game bad

I live in China

I don't wanna see connections like I had to Earth And Beyond

350ms (best) 3700ms (worst)... wide range of packet loss

so I'm hoping for some NON- North America servers, and a trial so I can see what my connection will be like, before shelling out 60-80 Canadian

sent an email to starwars@soe.sony.com

hoping

"let the dev's finish the game to the point where they can release it and say that it is stable, fun and people want more of it."

That is precisely what they did for Daikatana.

SOE announced to beta testers that in the 5 years of development, more than 185,000 changes were made to the game. Thats alot. Hell thats enough changes to make a couple games. They also stated that in the last 2 weeks, more than 3000 changes alone were made. When I started playing the game, I admit it was crap. But thats beta for you. In the last month alone, SOE was able to change and do so much to the game. Play it now and you'd say it could be ready for launch. Wait another 10 days and I think SOE has what it takes to bring it all together. I mean as of now, 99% of everything works with few very minor client side bugs. But only judge the game as a finished product. Judging it by beta and you might as well throw your review out the window to be eaten by a pack of rabbid dogs. I think SOE will pull it together. Im going to buy this game for sure. I mean, I do have hordes of cash anyways.

P.S. You musta missed the Jedi test there Creston. It was great. There were like 30 people with lightsabers all running around partieing doing varous things. Hell one Architect even built a HUGE mansion for us and we had alot of fun partieing in it. 3 story building. ahh the memories of beta. And in the words of the Crafter, If you need something built, build it yourself. Hell I can build just about anything. Just need to mine all the minerals first.

This comment was edited on Jun 18, 03:11.

I'll make a few more comments about this :

Creston, get some fresh air!

No!

Is it an insult to call this EQ in space

Well, I've never played EQ, but I think the best way to sum this up is a Star Wars Mod for Everquest. You have mobs, and they con. You cannot solo in this game. First of all it is exceedingly difficult to kill so much as a butterfly, even though it cons light blue (meaning you should be able to kill it easily). Second, they pretty much nerfed the few special attacks (think spells, they even cost mana mind pool) blaster users had, because the Medics were complaining that fighting characters got too few wounds, so they found themselves useless. Hey, can't have a useless class around, even though every class except the Artisan is useless, so let's get those guys hit more often, so the Medics have something to do!
Third, and finally, you somehow get nerfed for xp if you dare to fight a creature solo. That's right. If you fight critter A solo, and kill it, you get, say, 800 xp (which is an INSANELY HIGH AMOUNT for soloing, believe me, top of the barrel here.)
If you kill that same monster with 3 guys also shooting it, you get 900xp. If you kill that same monster with a group of 20 peeps, you get 3000xp.
Now, imagine that advancing to any kind of specialty class (which is when you actually start to BECOME somebody) takes around 250k xp, and you can see that soloing isn't very fun. If you then see that specialty classes talk in hundreds of thousands of xp for so much as a single skill advancement, and you can see how soloing becomes impossible. (The solution? Take 20 people with you, and go zerging on Endor. With 20 people shooting and fighting a monster, you really have no danger, but you can mass up 250+k xp in a matter of a few hours. Very challenging and innovative. I believe Everquest had the exact same problem?)

It's not pure PvP?

Not really. You can, after doing 25 mail delivery missions, decide to join the Imperial Faction, or the Rebel Faction (depending on whom you run the missions for). After you've declared for a faction, nothing much changes, except that you get some perks with your faction points. (If you wish to become a guy who shoots at stuff with a blaster, this is a MUST, since the ONLY way to get a decent weapon is through your faction. )
Once you've joined a faction, you can choose to become "overt", which means you'll get a Rebel or Imperial isignia next to your name. Overts from both factions can attack each other at any point.
Ofcourse, the fact that twenty rebel players can take over a town the size of Coronet City is perfectly logical in Star Wars, right? Or the fact that a Rebel Overt can simply use Imperial Shuttles? (Well, when the fucking things work anyways...)
In a way it's cool, but it lacks the fine nuances to make it work, stuff which had been advised upon in hundreds of posts, and which were mostly and unfortunately ignored.
But hey, there are battlefields now, outside of cities, where you can just fight each other for no real purpose!

Alls I can say about the game is that its innovating and the oportunities are unlimited.

Alak, you're entitled to your own opinion, ofcourse, but where exactly is the innovation that you speak of? In the fact that every item in the game that's worth anything must be crafted by players who refuse to do so unless you pay them 20k credits, which is impossible to get since the missions don't really work? Or the fact that there really is no high end content except Endor and Dathomir, and that even those planets are really nothing more than the same "get attacked by 10 mobs within two minutes of the city" style of outside travel as all the other planets are?
And where are the limitless opportunities? Half of the advanced classes haven't even been TESTED yet, Jedi's are not activated, the smuggler is nothing more than a drug dealer, and pretty much every class is dependant on the Artisan to make anything at all? Or the fact that except for...well, talking to other players, or going outside and fighting monsters, there is NOTHING else to do? I find that rather limited and not unlimited.

the graphics even on my Athlon 2100 w/ Ati Radeon 9700 Pro and 1 gig of system RAM are friggin slow as crap

Yup, I hadn't even mentioned that. Lowest resolution is 1024x768, and with medium levels of eye candy, my framerate was marginally between 10-30 outside of cities, < 10 in cities, and usually around 20+ in the wilderniss.
Also, it lags like hell. Any city that has more than 30 players in it will become a double digit seconds lag fest, lag which permeates far into the wilderness.

You had motivation to kill mobs...getting loot,

No loot in SWG. You can kill a Dark Jedi, and he will drop a Newbie Blaster. The reasoning for this is that Artisans MUST rule, so therefore, only Artisans can make anything worthwhile. Ofcourse, at last checking, the bazaar was still broken, so there is no real way to BUY anything from an Artisan, unless you are lucky enough to run into somebody.
Star Wars is a very high tech galaxy, but Star Wars Galaxies isn't. You haven't seen pathetic until you see four Wookiees in the local hospital begging people for a blaster rifle...

And finally,

How can they honestly charge us that to further beta test this game for them?

Because, D.Fox, if you've been there since Beta 1, you've seen the fanboys, the Star Wars Geeks, and the no life lamers, who have flatly stated on the forums that Hell Yes we will plunk down 15 bucks for this piece of shit!!!
So why wouldn't they release? The beta test now is for free, the beta test then will be paid, Win / Win situation for Sony, and the nerds who play this game to (and I quote) watch all the beautiful sunrises in the game are happy too.
I really can't wait for a character wipe to happen in the Final product.

Sounding off on a very touchy and yet ultimately disappointing subject, I remain ever pessimistic,

Creston

I'm a huge Star Wars fan and have been looking forward to this game. As one of the select few hundred to participate in the beta 1 I was understandably excited. I waited through all the lag, server outages, downtimes, bugs, fixes, patches, more bugs, tweaking, etc and waited and waited. And suddenly SOE announces the game is shipping?

I sighed.

Unfortunately, what most of these posts here are saying about the game not being ready is true. It needs probably 8 to 12 months more before the bugs and gameplay problems can be fixed and tuned. And $15 a month is simply crazy! How can they honestly charge us that to further beta test this game for them?

Being a huge Star Wars fan I buy pretty much everything, but I refuse to buy this when I know it isn't ready. Maybe in another year I'll pick it up.

LiGht13 -

Yes calling it EQ in space is an insult to EQ.
Everquest was fun. You had reasons to advance your character. You had motivation to kill mobs...getting loot, gaining noticeably more power regularly... stuff like that
keeps players wanting to log on and play the game. EQ has
a high 'fun' factor...sure I'm bored to heck with it now; but it kept my attention for 1 1/2 years, and thats hard to
beat. My sources in beta all say the same thing - basically the guy who said it was a glorified chatroom for star wars geeks hit the nail right on the head. Gameplay and 'fun' factor seem to have been left behind unfortunately. Perhaps when the space expansion comes out;
it will be worth playing.

Also I think I've come to realize that in games that use
guns, the 'hit the attack key and watch' approach is lame.
It works ok in fantasy mmogs because its fine with spells.
But if I'm using a gun, I want fps style combat dammit.
Playing Planetside now and having a blast.

This comment was edited on Jun 18, 00:52.

I've been in since beta 3, and I've got to say this POS isn't ready. The servers are laggy, the graphics even on my Athlon 2100 w/ Ati Radeon 9700 Pro and 1 gig of system RAM are friggin slow as crap. The music and sound effects are the only part of the game that is ready right now--sadly, that's the best part.

The environments look good, the trees and grass are fantastic! Hell, but I don't want to spend my time (and $15 a month!) staring at good looking trees and grass. The character avatar graphics are laughable--Camelot's are much better--the special effects are lacking--EVE Online's smoke SWG--and the mobs are strangely familar--EQ anyone?

If you want EQ in with Star Wars texturemaps and models, but with all the bugs and crappy gameplay of EQ 4 years ago, then SWG is your game! Knock yourself out. But if you want a solid product, with a compelling story, strong quest line, and an immersive experience, then you'd be best off waiting for a while... a long while.

'nuff said.

When I first heard of the game I thought to myself, self, this is the big one, the game you have been waiting for, finally a StarWars game where you can actually play as one of the many characters in the movies. Then I heard it wasn't going to be set in the traditional Starwars universe and I was disappointed, but still, I can be an R2 unit!! Then I heard that you won't be able to play as a droid and I again was disappointed, but alas I said at least I can fly spaceships from solar system to solar system, and alas I was disappointed yet again. Hmm.. I never was much for paying monthly fees on top of an outrageous 70-80 dollar game at launch (I am Canadian), and beta testing games like Asherons Call2 and DAOC was thrilling but IMO not worth 14-16 dollars (Canadian) a month for. Starwars on the other hand had me set and ready to change all that. I was going to break down and pay 12 of my hard dollars a month for being able to become a part of a universe that once I dreamed of. Screenshots of the game had me thinking the worlds seem a little bare, and the as for mentioned disappointments even more scepticle.. But now they also want almost 20 dollars a month to join? Bah.. and from what it sounds, it's not even that good. I think I will wait for a review of the game now intstead. Already cancelled my preorder and it looks like I will have to wait for Warcraft, which looks alot better then SWG does, before I decide to take the plunge into MMORPG's. Galaxies maybe a great game down the road, but if it's not great when it's released, then what's the point of paying so much for it now? They should charge less til it's a great game and then maybe people will be willing to pay more..

HAHAHA!!! I knew it! I was in the beta also and I'm amazed they could keep their servers up for more than 4 hours. Also you only get one character per server. And $15 a month?!?!?!? What a joke!

I'm going back to playing Eve.

This comment was edited on Jun 18, 00:09.

all i have to say is listen to your beta testers! whats with these companies have are they ignorant or do they just not care about the games they are making (which is more than likly) AC2, AO, and E&B all these beta testers yelling out that the game is broke and they arnt happy. and the companies release it to the public only to have it basicly die 2-4 months down the road.

these games are not likly to recover for over a year or more if ever.. take the extra time to listen to those you invited to play so that the game be great!

so far World of Warcraft is looking to be the game we all want as blizzard is actually communicating on its boards and talking to its community.

Im in the SWG Beta and have been for quite some time. Alls I can say about the game is that its innovating and the oportunities are unlimited. You can basically be anything and everything you want to be. And you can do just about everything. The game has limitless boundries. You dont even have to fight to succeed in the game. Get it if you want something extremely innovating. If your a counter-strike type fan, then only part of this game may be for you. The only way to find out is to try it. And the game is a hell of alot cheaper in the US compared to where I live, so I wouldn't complain about cost. Just my two cents.

beta'ed and played uo for a year.
beta'ed and played eq for a few years.
beta'ed and played daoc for a bit over a year.

beta'ed but ain't gonna play when release games:
ac.
ao.
ac2.
sb.
swg. <-

more fuel for the fire.

This is unscientific, since much of this is the same folks talking to each other over and over (Creston, get some fresh air!), but so far it looks like 75 to 1, with 2 agnostic, against buying the game.

Well, with the repeats it's probably 35 to 1. Still, y'all got me to cancel my preorder.

On the other hand, no MMO game has ever gotten good prerelease coverage on these boards, and it's usually the same guys slagging them. DAOC launched like a dream but it got trashed here due to the Bluesnews inherent shooter/strat bias.

But I'll hand EB my $50 for Republic, so I only get burned once, rather than on a month-to-month basis.

i was really excited about this game 2 years ago.

now i (will) have half-life 2.

Supporter of the "A happy fredster is a muted fredster" fanclub.

I am currently looking for a MMORPG to sign up for in the next 12 months. It looks like SWG isn't going to be it.

::turns attention back to City of Heros::

The sudden influx of MMORPG games reminds me of the lemming-like reality TVs shows. Both are completely devoid of originality, are usually pure crap, and will soon cause a crash that will result in very few produced.

Not enough originality (Reality TV, most games), too much "wiz-bang" tech (too much CGI; Star Wars anyone?), and commercialization makes this hombre a jaded consumer.

I suppose all these crappy products do have some benefit. For me, they help me appreciate the true gems.

Now, if I can remember right, SWG isn't even pure PvP right? Are Rebel forces actually able to go group hunting with Empire forces? Kinda like a Paladin and Shadow Knight are able to group in EQ (which I find extremely stupid btw). Just asking

LiGht13 -

I've successfully avoided playing EQ, but I can say this:

The problem with calling SWG "EQ in space" is that SWG isn't based in space at all. I hope I'm not breaking my beta agreement by saying that. I think with the space expansion announced (to be released sometime in the future) and all the videos/screenshots one could gather that you are never in space.

I absolutely concur that this game is not ready. Be prepared for hours of frustration trying to do what should be the most simplest of tasks (like connecting to the server!).