Apart from the fact that the combat sucks, the UI is ugly, the animations are still broken and all the new content is recycled old art. The only actual new content is via TCG which is like gambling because you pay for booster packs at a chance you'll get the loot cards. I know idiots who play who have spent thousands on the loot cards and still haven't gotten them all. I mean seriously it's amazing at how much people actually spend on it.

The people left though want all this stuff because these are the people who were complaining pre NGE that getting Jedi was still too hard. They've dumbed the game down over the years and turned it into a cash shop and WoW where you have to grind instances and PVP for gear. Where you have to buy new buffs, pets, vehicles and buildings for real money instead of getting them as CONTENT which should be under the subscription.

Not to mention the crap things like the zombies, bat wings and LOVE DAY like wtf?

What I wanted out of SWG was dead many years ago and I can't believe some people put up with how it is today. I mean the combat has turned back into battle of the buffs, only now theres no skill you just stand there and spam the one attack you have and heal yourself.

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@Venekor: Boy are those gripes ever cherry-picked -- some of them are just flat out false.
- The UI is moddable if you don't like it. Try the Pre-NGE UI mod. It even comes with several dozen color sets and a zillion options to make it just like (or better than) the Old School interface. With a little effort you can set up the UI to look and feel exactly like classic SWG.
- All the new content is NOT recycled old art - that's simply not true. For examples, look at the chronicles system rewards, the craftables and lootables from the new themepark, not to mention all of the new stuff every holiday, and so on. No I'm not a big fan of wings and real world holidays either, but most players are, which is why most games have things equally silly.
- The TCG is optional. I don't like it either, but I can buy cards from fellow players with in-game money if there's an item I simply must have. If the card game is keeping SWG from shutting down, then so be it.
- Those in the SWG community know that most of the people still playing the game are pre-NGE die-hards and their opinions on Jedi tend towards "we'd rather not have them at all" not that Jedi was "too hard". NGE wasn't put in to appease people who wanted to be Jedi -- the path to Jedi in 2005 just prior to NGE was actually pretty simple. The NGE was put in because the LucasArts folks were morons.
- You do not have to grind instances or PvP for gear. The vast majority of gear in the game is still crafted by players, and slotted up with attachments made, again, by players. Weapons were similarly overhauled.
- The zombies content ties into a zombie-centered Star Wars book that came out a few months ago. It wasn't some random thing thrown into the game.
- While buffs do play a large role in the game, it's (obviously) gross exaggeration to say that all you do is stand there and spam one skill and heal. Combat isn't as smooth as say, WoW, but it's in line with the MMOs of its day.

There's a lot of hate toward SWG still out there -- obviously -- and you know what? A lot of it was deserved -- four years ago when the NGE went live. The game has come a long way since then. SWG has really been turned around and dragged up out of the NGE gutter over the last few years. Most of the crafting skills (including the long neglected droid engineers) have been overhauled. Old rangery skills have been reintroduced (beast mastery, milking, camps, etc). Most of the combat classes actually work now, contrary to classic SWG. Space is almost unrivaled. You won't find a better player city system, and very few equals to the housing system. Massively itself just had a nice feature on the millions of quests players had crafted in the new Chronicles system, which is a combination of SWG's original Storyteller system (unique to MMOs) and CoH's architect system. They are doing some really interesting things, and they're still one of only two truly persistent world MMOs out there -- but if you're still hung up on the past, you're going to miss out.

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All of what I've said is what I've experienced in the past month since I came back to try it again so I stand by it.

You say it ain't the same old art but all I see is the same old cave or the same old bunker. I see the same old NPCs with random clothes put on them and I see the same textures. They make a room put some boxes in it and maybe that red and black computer terminal we've seen for so long and an NPC based on what we can make with the character creation and call it a new heroic instance.

Hoth was a laugh cause it was a white texture, no weather and it had the same empty rooms and reused AT-AT models and no improvements to any graphical effects. What made me laugh is they took an existing Mob model and painted it white and stuck some things on it and passed it off as that Yeti thing in Episode five... looked nothing like the damn thing and they kept it the same giant size as the original mob lol.

Then you look at the quality of the content in WoW and the game was only released a year later and it's laughable. I mean run HK 47 and then run even The Dead Mines a level 20 instance from 2004 and the Dead Mines is miles ahead even though HK 47 was made in 2005. So frigging the quality of WoWs content is miles ahead now because Blizzard actually put effort into their games.

All SOE have done is focused all their attention and artists on TCG while the actual game gets sub par content.

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@Cinnamoon/Venekor:

You both have quite a few valid observations, and, in point of fact, both of you are correct. Yes, SWG has included a large variety of new content spread across the game at varying levels. Yes, SWG's devs have recycled a number of models both for mobs and locations. No, the thing most focused on is not the TCG; but, is the TCG of great importance? Yes, due in large part to the fact that it has helped the game generate a large deal of revenue, just like WoW and it's TCG for same reason, the loot cards.

I could quite easily go down the lists the two of you provided and check the marks where both of you are correct in certain assesments, but, I feel you two are missing the point of the post in trying to one up each other. The simple fact of the article is that people are going back to SWG to give it a try and see what's new, and what's not so new. Posting that you hate the game and that no one should play, or that the game is almost perfect is incredibly near-sighted. Has the game come along way, yes. Are some parts of it still a little buggy, yes.

However.

SWG has always been it's own beast, and one can compare it's bells and whistles, or lack-there-of, to the King on the Hill -WoW- or any number of other MMOs, but in the end, as I've said, it's really it's own thing doing...well...it's own thing. As such, if you're going to post about it don't over-hype or even try to decimate it's potential by comparing it to something else. Bottom line, SWG is an old game that has tried alot of new things; things which some people have liked, and some have not. In the end, I would *humbly* suggest that anyone interested in seeing this for themselves pick up the game's free trial and take it for a spin and decide for themselves. But! Please do NOT go into it wondering, "Will this be WoW, or will this be CoH, or will this be etc, etc..."
Download, play, give it a catagory if you must later. The point is, try to make your own judgement of it, and not just take someone else's.

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I played back pre-CU and I also went back a few months ago and played for a few months. The game is still pretty fun to play. Sure, it has it's negatives about it, but the worlds they have in the game also give me a feeling unlike any other. I've put a month on my account from time to time just to sit in a cantina, hear the music, and chat.

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That is a great pic and an example of what makes SWG unique and one of the top five MMORPG games of all time.

I'm still pretty bitter about a lot of things SOE did but I always find myself cheering for this underdog of a game.

It's not fair comparing it to WoW,even though their greatest mistake was trying to change it into WoW. SWG hasn't 1/1000 of the funds to put into the game. I would submit that the effort put forward but the small, dedicated band of developers for SWG is comparable, if not greater, than the juggernaught that is Blizzard.

I'm still not ready to come back - but if they do a graphical overhall of the game (like EVE did) I might be willing to give it another shot.

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I can tell that a lot of the complaints in this comment thread stem from those who came back to the game and stuck their finger in their mouth at the first thing they saw that they didn't like. Guess what? It isn't the pre-NGE. It isn't the pre-CU. Get over it. If you like/love the game, play it, if not, don't. It's your opinion, and whining about it isn't going to change anyone's mind but yours, but it might change everyone's opinion about you.

That said, I am also a pre-CU veteran. Do I miss it? Sure. Actually it's the OG to CU-era "sandbox" feel that I missed most, not the elements of them. Combat had always been very unbalanced in SWG. It still is, but not to the extent that it was back then. No longer is the game the incessant melee buff wars that it used to be. Now it's just..."buff wars." Granted, with the right group setup and team coordination, any team can bring down the most buffed Jedi or Commando group. However, the NGE was an imperfect solution to an already imperfect game. I'm not saying SWG is amazing, but I do believe the "haters" out there are embellishing the negatives of the game a bit much.

But here's a few facts to chew on: There's a UI mod that helps make the game look a lot better. There are animation mods (including a supplemental mod to slow all the animations down to the pre-CU era speed) that make the game look more fluid, and then there is my mod on which I've been working on modsource.org that does exactly what mpdivo suggested - rebuild the graphics from scratch. Doing it for ground wasn't the easiest thing to take away, but it was a blast to do for space.

Use your resources, make friends, and play the game longer than 5 minutes before you shoot something down. It isn't the greatest game out there, but it doesn't have to be if you want a good sci fi/Star Wars experience.

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As the current Roleplay Senator and long time resident of Starsider, I am very glad Massively took time to feature one of the best guilds in the game. And yay! They quoted Mandash!

If you are looking for great Stars War roleplay, this game is still it. Catch me on the SOE forums (handle: Tziena) if you are looking to join in the fun. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/forums/list.m

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