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 Post subject: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:20 pm 
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SWG closing its doors in Dec

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/24/exclusive-smedley-on-the-sunsetting-of-star-wars-galaxies/

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 5:02 pm 
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Wow, Doublespeak has completely taken over and isn't limited to just politicians anymore:

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What about the player population? Some readers will choose to believe that the game is being canceled because it's "dying."

Populations have stayed pretty steady for a long time now. In fact, we recently merged a bunch of servers to help the prime-time population. But gosh, the game's been running for a long time now, and it's been a great run. We're glad to have done it. There are going to be a lot of fans that are going to say, hey can't you give us the source code, or can't we run a server, and the answer is going to be, I'm sorry -- we have to decline that. It's just not possible.


You don't merge server so help prime-time population, unless there isn't any prime-time population. You split servers to help prime-time population.

I'm completely torn between a sorrowful farewell and an angry "good riddance."

Ah, SWG, alas, I knew thee well. May your memories grow fondly in my mind, may the friends I made there always be near to my heart, and may the money I spent on thee return to my wallet.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 9:27 pm 
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I always hoped it would go F2P, at least to tool around on a bit. Little nostalgic.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 9:59 pm 
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Yeah, if it went F2P, I'd play some, off and on.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 11:19 pm 
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[cynicism]

The first thought I had was, "Oh, ok...they're ousting the few remaining SWG players to help bump up the release numbers of ToR."

[/cynicism] :roll:

EDIT: Umm, whoops. Sony isn't involved with ToR, are they? :oops:

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Last edited by Rocklar on Fri Jun 24, 2011 11:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jun 24, 2011 11:22 pm 
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This is not a move due to population dying. LA has been looking for an excuse to close the doors for a while. When they say it isn't possible to provide the Source-code what they mean is LA won't ok it. The real test here will be what happens to SWGEMU. If they force it to shut down then we know this is all about TOR, and their concern that TOR won't do good if SWG is still around. They kept SWG going this long to keep the SWG bug going in fans, and that's it.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 12:24 pm 
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FYI You probably have 45 days of free game time and just don't know it.

Yup... looked at my old station account and:

Star Wars Galaxies™ : PENDING
CURRENT SUBSCRIPTION PLAN:
45 Day Non-Recurring

Looks like everyone recieved free game time for all of the games in their account history. This means +45 days of premium time on Pirates, and planetside and EQ and every other game you have no desire to play...or are just nostalgic enough to try out.

Quote:
PC WELCOME BACK DETAILS

We want to ensure that your experience is as positive as possible as you re-enter our games. To show our gratitude for your patience and support, Sony Online Entertainment is offering a Welcome Back Program, the details of which are outlined below.

Firstly, as a Station Account holder in good standing, you will receive 45 days of game time (30 days plus 1 day for each day of the outage) added to your Station Account. This game time applies to any game you have currently or previously activated on your Station Account.

For those customers on an active paying plan, this time has been added to the end of your current billing cycle. For all other customers, your time begins upon your first login to each of the relevant games. Customers must login by 11:59 pm PST August 31, 2011 to claim the game time.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 2:25 pm 
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lol I have 5 accounts with the 45 days pending but do I want to go through the trouble of installing and patching SWG?


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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 2:38 pm 
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Daktar wrote:
lol I have 5 accounts with the 45 days pending but do I want to go through the trouble of installing and patching SWG?

took 3 hours ish.

the question is do I click the Launch Game button...

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:58 pm 
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well patching now then I guess I'll see if Chilastra is still alive.


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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 8:39 pm 
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Daktar wrote:
well patching now then I guess I'll see if Chilastra is still alive.


not really...or at least based on the total lack of anything useful on the AH.

I popped a couple structures near old avian city, right by Mantison's house and went exploring... don't really plan on playing but meh..figured I would look around.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:34 pm 
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My house is still there?!?!

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 12:48 am 
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Mantison Tau'rus wrote:
My house is still there?!?!

The bunker one... yea.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 9:27 am 
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Wow. Thats funny. Guess i paid a lot of maintenance before i quit. Maybe i should log in before the end.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:45 pm 
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Well, I just activated my account with the 45 days free. Nothing works for me on Chilastra. None of my waypoints point to the correct places anymore, and it says my house is in the middle of a river, which doesn't seem accurate for some reason.

Is anyone interested in playing some? I'm up for starting a new character, or on a different server, or whatever, and just see what I can do. I also have a couple of characters from quite some time ago on Sunrunner, and can make some harvestors and buildings and a few ship parts. It has been a long time, so I'm not sure exactly what I have.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 1:38 pm 
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Yeah. I'll probably patch up next week and jump in for a few weeks at least.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:56 am 
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Tried it last year.

Found my old house. Even the blaster I tried to make into a walldecoration was still lying on the floor.

I went out piloting in my trusty X-wing, but everything was empty. Blasted a couple of NPC's top see the loot. But the loot was pure c**p unlike the pre NGE were most of my ship was built on Loot. (Except hull and engine, thanks to Antan and Obo respectively.)

I took a stroll trough Mos Eisley and then Coronet...
Had to cry a bit.

I ain't coming back to the SOE-hell.
Waiting to play EMU, if they are allowed to stay online by the time TOR gets here.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 4:22 pm 
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Raph Koster comments here:

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

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:57 pm 
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That's a good little write-up by Raph. It caused me to hunt down a few other stories too. Going into the game now, if it had launched this way, ultimately, I think I could have enjoyed it. The leveling system sucks, but a lot of the stuff seems to be back in the game. There were definitely things about the game that I didn't like at launch too.

I would probably play this game a lot if it went F2P. It isn't the same game, and while the crafting isn't quite as good as it used to be, it is still better than just about anyone else has ever done. I think I could enjoy my time playing again. Since it is shutting down, however, I'm a little cranky now that I'm discovering I'm liking it again.

The main thing to do is to just start completely over with a new character and see what you can do. Trying to make your old characters work with their stuff is just difficult, painful, and not fun. But starting completely over, I do enjoy it quite a bit.

Maybe the emu guys will eventually get their stuff finished, and we can get a server going for us oldbies again. I really think we need to find a good crafting game and get back in to something somewhere. That's a job for another day, however. We need to get our activity and membership back first.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 4:50 am 
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Smedley wrote:
Here’s what I would have done differently. I would have made sure the ground and space games were launched all at once. I would have given the game another year to develop and really polish it quite a bit. I think we created one of the most unique and amazing games ever created in the MMO space. It is the sandbox game. Nothing else even comes close to what we did there. I would have really taken our time and polished combat right so we never had to do the NGE


Polish - yep!

I remember our Avian SOE fanboys that swore that MMOs always should release early and fix as they go. That is the way EQ did it, those of us that did not understand that did not really understand the MMO market. It’s funny because one of those guys now sings a completely different tune. As a customer we should demand better... and we did… and SOE lost. SOE in all their arrogance went from being the kings of MMOs to the laughing stock.

Lack of polish and a premature release killed SWG. They had to redo too many huge systems after going live. We all were paying for a beta-ish product in those early years.

I remember getting into WoW beta thinking it was more polished than SWG many years later.


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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:14 am 
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Yeah, when I got into the WoW beta for a week or two, I was immensely impressed with the polish and completeness of the game. Blizzard has still made a lot of improvements, but at launch, WoW was still a better playable game than SWG probably has been at any point.

SWG had such potential, and such amazing systems. The player generated content still is my most favorite part of the game. Everything being craftable was a really great move, and allowing player housing and player cities to promote and solidify the in-game communities was brilliant. Had they not screwed things up, they would have had a very, very large core group of folks that would have never left.

The social stuff they put in to the game, not to do anything with, but just to express yourself, was much bigger, more fun, and more important than I ever thought it would be. At times, I would log on to SWG to use it basically as an instant message client. If they had ever managed to tie in an IM client externally to SWG, they would have really been big.

Maybe Raph will be able to make another game someday, or at least can design half of it, including in all the systems that truly made SWG great. SWG was fun in spite of the Star Wars content. I think it would have succeeded with a different license, or with no license at all, as a completely new world. Having it be Star Wars got all of us involved early on, and it was nice to be a tourist and "see the sites" but most of what made that game cool didn't have anything much to do with Star Wars.

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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 9:53 am 
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http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ang ... n-lawsuit/

Quote:
Upset Star Wars Galaxies fans are threatening to sue Sony for not listening to their pleas of protest about the game's December shut down.

What do you do when the hobby that occupied all of your time is taken away? You fire up a good ole’ class-action lawsuit, of course. A group of Star Wars Galaxies players, upset about the closure of the eight year-old MMORPG are claiming that Sony is silencing their many cries out for help on the SWG forum, deleting and locking posts that demand the game become free-to-play or stay open somehow. Due to the impending launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic, Sony and LucasArts have decided to shut the aging online RPG down.

“Dear Subscribers, We’ve decided to kill your kitten,” said one frustrated fan on the game’s Facebook page. “But Can we interest you in a Puppy, A Gerbil, a Parrot, And a Llama, all for one low subscription price?”

More than 2,500 players have signed a petition demanding that Sony keep Star Wars Galaxies up and running as a free-to-play game, reports VentureBeat. They claim that the game should be modified to be run off of microtransactions, or the sale of virtual goods within the game. On top of that, they’d like Sony to consolidate players onto a smaller number of servers and allow more character transfers to keep things running. Sadly, what they don’t realize is that converting a subscription-based MMORPG to a completely new style of play isn’t a switch Sony can pull. It would take months of effort and dozens of developers, all for a game that is essentially being replaced.

With a subscriber base that never breached 1,000,000 and a dwindling player base in the thousands, it’s difficult to see Star Wars Galaxies as more than a failure, even by pre-World of Warcraft standards, where few games exceeded 1-2 million subscribers. In today’s market, WoW is the new standard and even it is having some problems. Having said that, we do acknowledge some very great ideas that SWG boldly attempted to bring to the RPG world, including entirely human-made cities and houses, vehicles, giant cities, character customizations, and careers in crafting and smuggling that didn’t all involve doing nothing but killing animals over and over every day. Though many of these efforts fell short of their goals, they were fun nonetheless.

Sony, for its part, hasn’t handled the situation well. It’s moderators have been fighting the grieving players, who are obviously in denial of their favorite game’s upcoming death, on the game’s official help forums, locking and moving topics without officially commenting on the small uprising. Obviously it has not learn that fear of losing their game has led to anger from fans and anger could lead to hatred and hatred can only lead to the dark side.

Do you think players will get anywhere by suing Sony for shutting down the game?


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 Post subject: Re: SWG shutting down
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 1:27 pm 
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3 says untill shut down.

Is anyone spending energy on the SWG EMU?

If so, we could change the forum name to SWG:EMU

Alternatively, we would have to place this in graveyard and see the end of an era.
I suggest a full attendance at funeral with beer in hand and reminiscence...


(Planning to write cad-comic, GU-comic and Penny Arcade to make an honorable comic on the day.)

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