Saturday, January 9, 2010

I will not get over it...just yet.

I've had some ideas for topics for blogging just sitting in my head and percolating for probably a month or so. One of those ideas came from a comment on the MMO Voices podcast I was listening to a few weeks ago.

Some how the topic turned to how SOE added a map to EQ and there was some outrage from the player base at the time. I don't know that from personal experience, but the host Jeremy seems pretty knowledgeable about EQ, so I will take his word on it. The co-host Cindy makes a comment that when something new happens in games, gamers will freak out, and wouldn't you know it the NGE for Star Wars Galaxies comes up briefly.

The comment in question comes from the co-host Cindy; she says that in everything in life there is a time to grieve and a time to move the hell on, and that we should just get over it. I just want to know why I have to get over it, and what is it that I am having to get over?

The answer to that question is simple really, it's the NGE. The NGE came, Galaxies is never going to go back to the pre-NGE days, so that is what I have to get over and why. But I don't really want to. It's not a matter of being angry anymore, those days are long gone. Now when ever I think of SWG, I have a strange combination of sadness, pity and indigestion.

I won't lie, I do hope that The Old Republic crushes the life out of SWG. But just as much as a current SWG player is tired of hearing the complaints about the old days, I am just as tired of being told to get over it.

6 comments:

Yeebo said...

Setting a fan base of two or three hundred thousand players on fire in the hopes of attracting a different and larger audience remains the biggest MMO blunder to date...at least that I know of. I tried it in between the "combat upgrade" and the NGE. I didn't take to it, but if it was a game I dug I would have been pissed as hell that they trashed it.

Hell, I'm still pissed about Trials of Atlantis.

Marty Runyon said...

I never played SWG. Or DAoC or any other MMO that went terribly wrong for that matter. But I think there is at least a tiny case to be made for getting over it. If you are still having a strong emotional reaction to something that happened several years, that could be troubling.

My guess is that most people, yourself and Yeebo included, have moved beyond strong emotion but still use those terms the way a Red Sox fan hates the Yankees. It's not real hate, but the terms are convenient.

Of course, I also suspect that most people who tell you to get over it do so just to be jerks.

Jayedub said...

@Anjin
Red Sox/Yankee hate, I like the comparison. But I don't like either of those teams!

@Yeebo
I was playing when Trials came out but I never got to the content, nor was I high enough level to know what changed.

I remember reading that Mythic was going to do a classic server of some sorts that was up to but not including Trials, wonder if that ever came about.

Yeebo said...

@Jaydub: they did actually. The server not only disabled ToA but also disabled buffbots. Buffers had to be within a certain range to affect you. It led to a brief renaissance of the game a year or two before WAR came out, the Classic servers were very popular for a while.

Unfortunately, word on the street is that the population of the game has dwindled so much that the one of the regular server clusters (with ToA and buffbots that have unlimited range) is only viable option these days. I guess the hardcore players that dug having to raid and have two accounts to be competitive in PvP won out in the end.

Blue Kae said...

I agree that the combat upgrade and NGE are pretty unique events in MMO history, I can't think of any other game where it was re-designed mid-stream and with little to no warning to the player community. I was a SWG up until slightly before that whole thing happened, but since I quit before hand I don't have the same depth of feelings about the whole debacle.

I think the thing to keep in mind is, at some point you have to let it go. It isn't healthy to hang on to strong negative emotions like that. I was surprised about Petter's review of SWG recently where he mentioned there are still people in the game complaining about the NGE. That boggles the mind, if I hated a game I certainly would stop playing it.

Jayedub said...

I hope I didn't give the impression that I lose sleep over this, or that I have developed a bad drinking habit to cope, lol. But I agree, if there are active players complaining in-game, then that is bad and they should just quit.