Avian Gamers Network

The last time I was in SWG was during the JtL beta. I cancel my account in an effort to send the message that the CU and broken profession specials were more important to me than the developers realized.

Now at SWG’s half-life, it seems to be trying to move in the right direction. I have started to follow the posts Obo and Moge have been leaving for us here in Avian, and today I actually tried to read the official SWG forums.

However after being away I find myself lost. I have two problems.

1) I don’t comprehend how the game will change for my character. (Pistoleer/BH with a passion for mining on the side)

2) What is the game like now with JtL? How do you spend you time, what do you enjoy doing now that you have the ground and space games? When my account expired I could not beta test anymore. My last memories of JtL were: pretty, but buggy. The mobs would not fight back, and flight control was BAD.

Well just for myself, who hasnt been back in SWG long, I am enjoying SWG a bit again. I am liking the JtL, like you I was very buggy in the Beta and couldnt really do much of anything in it, especially if I was on dialup which I sometimes have to resort to if I play from work. I am enjoying flying around in my Tie Fighter now, I am not overt so I dont go after any rebels just working on some Imp Faction Points with missions for Imp Armor after the CU. I havent really played Shwir'a my TKM yet, just havent had time but the CU looks like it will change ALOT around, no more Soloing anything in the game. Armorsmithing is getting torn inside out, more craftable armors but the resources in the TC are currently pointing to big changes in what is required to make them so they are up in arms about it. And I am ejoying the move to TB, love being off Talus.

Not much of a write up, only have been back in a week and havent had alot of play8time lately but I am enjoying it. The thing I miss most of all is the guildchat, with not many Avian's still in game it can get awfully quiet at times.

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Section 6

My impression off of TC now, if you haven't read elsewhere is that it is a change for the better, but how much yet remains to be seen. It is quite difficult to level a new low lvl combat toon, unless of course you join a group. I think I read that all group members now get full xp on a kill, even if they only landed 1 shot.

I am still trying to grind up to a novice elite prof to see how tough/fun more advanced creatures are. The GCW is also heating up a little bit (lotsa firefights in cantinas now between STs and rebels getting buffs).

All in all, I am still in high hopes for the CU. However, personally it will only be fun if enough Avians resubscribe/hold their accounts to make grouping worthwhile (I relly dislike most pickup groups).

Look out for the killer durnis...

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"I built me a bomb and dropped it on every MFer who got in my way!"

The primary change in the CU is obviously balance. The game will be more Ranged Combat centric it seems, which is a good thing. WIth the balance comes profession skills, meaning a healer (medic, doc, CM) now heal in combat, Carbs are crowd control and debuffers, TKA are tanks etc.

Grouping will be a must it seems for mid-high level stuff. I only hope that Soloing isn't gone all together. Example: People should be able to kill Black Suns and selected Nightsisters but should be able to solo NS Elders, dragons etc.

As far as JTL. Honestly I dont play it much. I like it but I just play on the ground more than anything.

The Devs seems to be making great effort to allowing no downtime ingame. Text Searchable Galaxy wide private vendors, no more buffs, no more ent Mind buffs just log in and kill away. I will not be able to tell the balance really until we are allowed double combat masteries in TC/CU. With that we will be the maximum strength allowed ingame and will have a better judge of our abilities.

I am thinking Rifleman/Combat Medic post CU for Moge. Rifleman to do good damage solo and CM for helping out Raid groups. CMs also have very nice debuffs, they are the Druids of SWG now.

We are lucky in that MC the PA in Tusk'ens Bane is big on doing large group raids and they are all very nice and easy to tag along. I look forward to grouping with them Post CU.

...and I agree Guild Chat is far to quiet these days.

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Moge

I'll add a bit more on the new professions.
Lets say I am a rifleman. My main job is heavy damage with medium armor and light 'crowd control'. If I also master Carbineer which is a primarily Crowd Control profession I as use the specials given to me with the Carbineer profession WITH my rifle. So no more switching weapons to use X attack. Just fire away.

This allows a double mastery combat player a wider range of options in choosing what he wants to do. Also, instead of each profession havign say 12-15 specials he only has a few and those few go through improvments. Sniper Shot, improved Sniper Shot, Advanced Sniper shot.

Most skills go through the 3 increments.

Also, most professions are give 'Stat Recovery' skills. Recover from Dizzy, Recover from KD (which is given at both novice MArks and Novice Brawler) and stuff like that. They cost a bit in 'Action Points' but can really save your butt in combat.

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Moge

yes Avian guild chat is pretty desolate at times. ive been off on my own grinding jedi xp and aquiring as many boxes as i can until CU comes live and changes things. also involved in the new GCW system which is pretty fun at times. its like vietnam out there lol without the pvp forced on us anymore, we are free to fight within the guidelines of our Avian charter. ive gave up my merchant life for a combat role while i grind out jedi and fight in the GCW for loots and xp. if CU makes the grind impossible or just not worth it i may return to my low key merchant life in swg hehe

ive aquired some force vehicular control bonuses. i havnt tested these new skills with a spacefighter though.

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S'erolf Bros. SWG Aug 03- Nov 05

Hey guys, I see you're missing guild chat. We do have a Tusken's Bane City chat channel that I'd like to revive. We used to have a lot of people use it in the past. Hopefully, post-CU, it'll be a good tool to form up city hunt groups. I *think* it's /chatchanneljoin TB? I'll have to look into it more when I get home. If Argyle/Lexxa/Kalandra is online, he can set you up since he set up the channel.

I haven't tried out the CU for over a week now (hopefully some of the bugs in there last time I played have been removed) It should be a vast improvement and I think I'll be playing a lot more once it's in. It would be nice to do some good grouping with Avians like we used to (do you remember those good ol' times?).

JTL is fun, but there's not that much to do. Most of the POIs are location only and simply have some interesting artifact there which you know nothing about! Grouping for missions is fun, it would be great to do some large scale JTL grouping (though Obbo seems to beat everything with two shots!). By far the most useful aspect of JTL for me is the ability to travel anywhere in one jump and no hassle with buying interplanetary tickets.

All in all, the thing that made SWG for me was all the other Avians being in game. If CU encourages people back, which I hope it does, all the better.

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X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

See here is my dilemma. I am one of the biggest Star Wars fans… and I want to come back. However SoE’s practices forced me to try a game I had no intention of playing. They forced me to look into WoW and in the process I discovered that it is 100 times better than SWG ever was.

• WoW visually is one of the best games I have played. The graphics and MUSIC are more immersing than any game I have ever played. Single handily the art teams work in the cities are a testament to how much effort and pride Blizzard has in their work. Add to that the dungeons that are huge, beautiful, and vastly unique…. And one can only wonder why other game’s zones are not this well done.
  
• The stories/missions/quests in WoW are excellent. I would almost bet that WoW has more content and storyline than SWG + all the movies + all the Star Wars Books. Now don’t get we wrong, I am a Star Wars fan through and through. I love my Star Wars books and movies…. And I’m really no WarCraft Lore nut…. But the WoW stories are so complex, vast, and far-reaching that I want to buy a book that details all the stories in WoW. I would pay $200 for such a book… that is just how great WoW stories are.
  
• Every spell/ability my WoW character has actually works. Some are better than others, but I have absolutely no broken spells like /pistolmeleedefence2. And I have no worthless spells like /bodyshot3. Plus my spells can work tactically… so no spamming…. Each move has a reason and there are spells that work together in combo. No mindless key pressing… real choices to be made that affect the outcome of each battle.

Music, graphics, stories, and abilities make me love WoW even though I never wanted to.

Will JtL and the CU add any of the bulleted game components being used by WoW that cause it to be so much better than SWG? Will JtL and the CU make my character fun to play? Or will it be like work. I have read all that I can find, but I see no CU information regarding the professions my SWG character currently has. The CU graphic is all I can find, and while very nice looking, it does not tell me if I will need to change professions or stay the current course.

I guess my point is: There is nothing about WoW that will make me come back to SWG. WoW ownes SWG hands down… it is not even close. I need to see SWG information that indicates the game will be fun for me. So far I am not finding very much information relating to how SWG will be different for me should I come back. I will need info to come back to SWG and right now I am not finding enough to justify the switch.

I really must write a "Don't blame SoE, blame LucasArts" post. This is not it though as I'm just about to have lunch, may edit it in later though. The synopsis is that, having read through the KotOR2 forums, the blame (well for SWG's early release, at least) is in LucasArts hands rather than SoE's. I'm beginning to form the suspision that it's LucasArts pulling the strings here.

More to come later....


EDIT:
From what I've read on the KotOR2 forums, it was released far earlier than expected, most likely due to pressure from LucasArts. As a result the game is very buggy and the ending, well ....... as I've read (haven't finished it yet) leaves a fair bit to be desired.

It is my feeling that the early release of SWG was due to pressure from LucasArts rather than the suits at SoE. I remember playing beta and suddenly getting the message "Live starts in two weeks". I seem to remember the devs themselves almost appologising for this fact as if there was nothing that they could do about it. That in itself suggests to me LucasArts rather than SoE (If it were SoE, I would've expected the devs to be somewhat more aware of it).

I can't explain away why the bugs weren't fixed quickly (in fact why they still aren't fixed). My thoughts relate to a lack of resources. There was a sudden change of direction in the improvements when people started leaving and I think that caused them to reconsider the resource placements. Whether this is SoE's fault or LA, I don't know but I suspect LA had a fair say in the resource allocation.

On a final point, you compare SWG to WoW. I haven't played WoW, so I don't know what its potential is. With SWG, it's plus point has always been its potential. There is a huge scope to it and that scope has caused the fun factor to fall short. But my feeling is that it'll just keep getting better and better, gradually forfilling that scope. The only factor is time. Do you come back now (or when CU is released) and see the improvements as and when they come in or do you wait, 6mths, a year, two years when it'll be a much better game.

As I've said before, what makes the game for me is the people in it. The people who have left may be waiting for a better game, but if they come back now, the quality of the experience for those who are currently playing is very much increased.

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X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Yeah I like how open-ended SWG is. I like how I had the potential to be a regular guy in the galaxy far far away. Open-ended turned Danyale away because there wasn’t any kind of direction, but I liked it because I was free to imagine my character the way I wanted and have him do what he wanted. WoW is nice because it has more structure, I wish SWG had a bit more structure, but I still liked how open-ended it could be.

Last night I could not sleep, and I found myself thinking about SWG. One of the features I miss the most are my aliases. I went beyond making simple shortcuts, I made them look and act like programs on my datapad where they would display lists of information in-game rather than me look the info up in a notebook. I had a ticket purchasing alias that would list all the corridors for a planet, or destination options for any city on the planet. It even had help functions for when I could not remember the syntax. I also has a Bounty Hunter alias that would list contacts and informants cords for each planet, each city, for each BH level.


I can do aliases in WoW, but they don’t seem meld well with the setting. In SWG it felt like it was a program running on my datapad. I felt like I was slicing into shuttle terminals or accessing encrypted Bounty Hunter data… and this worked so well because of the great setting Star Wars gives the game. I really miss that part of the game. I would spend days getting the alias to echo the information onto my chat window in the most RP fashion possible.

I guess I felt it was easier to RP in SWG than it is in WoW. The aliases RP better, the key movie phrases RP better. I really liked that stuff…even if I was the only one able to enjoy them.

Yes, SWG had way more potential than WoW ever aspired to have. However, potential is a terrible thing to waste. Seeing all that unrealized potential that now, after many players have left the game, is slowly awakening is almost painful.
Anyway, with me not having to pay for my WoW subscription I am almost tempted to restart SWG again.

Edward

What? Is Blizzard in the habit of giving Ex-Employees a full lifetimes subscription of something???

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"Loose with Dignity"
Robert
Second President, Avian Gamers

DDO - Cannith - AlistairItor - Rogue/Ranger (5/3) - Main
DDO - Cannith - Guijanitor - Paladin/Rogue (4/1)
DDO - Cannith - RicochetItor - Rogue (5)

Well not quite. Employees do get a free subscription, or rather three free accounts for friends and family. And mine have not been reverted to pay accounts yet.
With the billing people being as busy as they are I suppose they will not get around to doing it for some time...

Edward

Unless someone reports you...

/me whistles

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Flyoc,
Farm with attitude.

Looks like we may have to go to Shadownmoon to make us some alliance characters.

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Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

/trout