Originally posted by Feneant

Rumors are also appearing that there is no free month (in another thread here or another forum I saw that) unless you buy collectors edition.

Originally posted by Spooky
Just got confirmation from Amazon that my order has shipped!

This game is not Star Wars. It completely fails on every level to work as anything more than a warmed over Everquest clone with Star Wars skins and blaster sound effects. Galaxies somehow managed to avoid capturing the most basic look or feel of the Star Wars universe.

I wanted to be a Jedi - I mean it's Star freakin' Wars! Who DOESN'T want to be a Jedi? I mean I recognize that I wouldn't be a very good Jedi, and that it would take me a long, long time to work up to an ass-kicker - but I was willing to throw in for the long haul.

Fine, I'll go with my next best choice: Bounty Hunter. And thus my Wookiee marksman started working it's way up the long and ardous climb up skill tree towards the Bounty Hunter goal. This of course didn't involve ANY hunting of bounties - just the hours and hours hunting butterflies on corellia and sand flea looking things on Tatooine. No, check that. There was very little hunting involved - it was hours and hours of me mostly getting my ass kicked by fleas and butterflies.

Where are the landspeeders and pod racers? Where are the stormtroopers - the cannonfodder of the Star Wars universe - waiting to be mowed down like the pawns they are?

In between poking fleas with a stick, I get the pleasure of making money by playing Fed-Ex delivery man. Most missions were "take X to person Y, who will give you item Z. Bring Z back here" or variants of. And so I get to haul ass over the jundland wastes, never seeing Jawas or Sandpeople (you know the scourge of Tatooine? The folks who make it too dangerous to go out at night?) or other life forms. Saw plenty of Sand-Fleas, tho. Thusly get to point Y, drop off the goods, head back for town and make a bit of money (and some faction points, if I did it for the right people).

Anyway even after you reach a higher level, a point where you can take on the bigger and badder adversaries, the game still isn't any fun. It's not like Jedi Knight where skill and strategy is key to gameplay. No, here you simply line up the cursor on the target, choose the best attack from a menu and wait until your guy shoots the target. If your target attacks back, you run away until it stops chasing you. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Originally posted by El-Kabong
Gee, I'm sorry to hear that. This game sucks on so many levels it's not even funny. . . .

This game is not Star Wars. It completely fails on every level to work as anything more than a warmed over Everquest clone with Star Wars skins and blaster sound effects. Galaxies somehow managed to avoid capturing the most basic look or feel of the Star Wars universe.

I wanted to be a Jedi - I mean it's Star freakin' Wars! Who DOESN'T want to be a Jedi? I mean I recognize that I wouldn't be a very good Jedi, and that it would take me a long, long time to work up to an ass-kicker - but I was willing to throw in for the long haul.

Oh, look at that. No PC Jedi anywhere to be had.

Fine, I'll go with my next best choice: Bounty Hunter. And thus my Wookiee marksman started working it's way up the long and ardous climb up skill tree towards the Bounty Hunter goal. This of course didn't involve ANY hunting of bounties - just the hours and hours hunting butterflies on corellia and sand flea looking things on Tatooine. No, check that. There was very little hunting involved - it was hours and hours of me mostly getting my ass kicked by fleas and butterflies.

Me - 8 foot tall Wookiee. You know, throws stormtroopers around, pulls the arms off droids when they lose - that sort of thing. And I get my ass kicked on a regular basis by butterflies?!? What's wrong with this picture?

Where are the landspeeders and pod racers? Where are the stormtroopers - the cannonfodder of the Star Wars universe - waiting to be mowed down like the pawns they are? Where is the action-adventure thrill that wowed us when we were kids? I want to fly a tramp freighter while smuggling spice and outrunning Imperial starcruisers. I want to do battle with storm troopers. I want to run afoul of crime lords and mix it up with rival smugglers. I want to save the princess from the citadel of Ultimate Evil.

No, all I get to do is poke Turbo-Charged Super sand-fleas with a stick for hours on end.

In between poking fleas with a stick, I get the pleasure of making money by playing Fed-Ex delivery man. Most missions were "take X to person Y, who will give you item Z. Bring Z back here" or variants of. And so I get to haul ass over the jundland wastes, never seeing Jawas or Sandpeople (you know the scourge of Tatooine? The folks who make it too dangerous to go out at night?) or other life forms. Saw plenty of Sand-Fleas, tho. Thusly get to point Y, drop off the goods, head back for town and make a bit of money (and some faction points, if I did it for the right people).

Woo hoo - who needs the excitement of stealing plans to the Death Star when I have an action packed day like this!

Anyway even after you reach a higher level, a point where you can take on the bigger and badder adversaries, the game still isn't any fun. It's not like Jedi Knight where skill and strategy is key to gameplay. No, here you simply line up the cursor on the target, choose the best attack from a menu and wait until your guy shoots the target. If your target attacks back, you run away until it stops chasing you. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Oh yeah - all of the above is of course assuming that you know what you are doing in game. I figured all this out through trial and error because the tutorial is the most sloppy and incomplete "get to know the game" level that I have ever seen in my 20 years of gaming. Even further burdening the player is that the interface is horrible, clunky and unwieldy. The game - which has the promise of attracting a whole bunch of non-Everquest, MMORPG virgins to the genre - totally drops the ball. If I didn’t live with two Everquest junkies, I would have been so lost, so confused that I would have given up by the end of the first day.

And of course there are all kinds of server issues, game balance issues and technical problems. I have no doubt that most of this will get ironed out within a few months of launch. However - I hate the idea that I have to PAY 50 bucks (and the monthly fee) to beta test this stupid thing. The five bucks for the real beta? No big deal - but this is a product off the shelf, and it is not ready for launch AT ALL. But the shareholders must be appeased, and Sony pushed it out the door. We're paying good money for a game that doesn't work - on a very basic level. And that game publishers can get away with this is madness.

If you want a true Star Wars experience, you'd be much better off with Jedi Knight, X-Wing or TIE fighter or Rogue Squadron. Hell - you'd be better off with Masters of Teras Kasi - at least in that game you don’t have to spend hours poking sand fleas with sticks.

Another Tester:
Well, it's down to about 2 days to launch. It will be a VERY bumpy ride. The game is not ready in most respects.

Don't get me wrong, it is fun to play at times. The RP posibilities are enormous! But for the gammer it's just not there.

Let me first say I preordered the game. 3 copies infact! I do like the game and I just pray to got it works right after a couple of months.

They have been messing around with the /consider and basic mob levels and they aren't getting it right for some reason. If you take a mission from the mission terminals and try to do it solo or with a small group, most likely you'll die. It's not supposed to be this way. I would think it would be an easy fix, but they seem to be having problems with it.

There is/was an annoying rubberbanding effect going on in cities and whie trying to cross water. I've experienced it mostly with the water crossing. You would keep bouncing back to shore over and over and it might take awhile to make it across.

There are some professions that are incomplete. For instance, the Creature Handler. I've not played one but there are MANY issues not yet resolved. Not minor inconvieniences either. From what I can tell they are'n even getting EXP in Creature Handling when they use pets.

There are TONS of balance issues. There are already known combinations that just work well together. For instance if you want to be mostly independant take up Marksman/Scout/Medic. The only thing you would ever have to go to town for is to /watch or /listen to an entertainer to cure Battle Fatigue. Brawlers and Tera Kasa have been messed with so much I have no idea where they stand now. One day they were overpowered, next they were underpowered. Not to mention the whole Mele aspect of the game. You see, with people using blaster there are times the Mele's never even reach the mob to attack which means they never get mele experience.

The Artisan has VERY few things he can make and must "grind" things and destroy them to get to a point where he can make something people would want to buy. As far as I know (2 days from release) factories, harvestors and some times even thier own crafting tools don't work. Some examples are Chance cubes, fire works, bofa treats and CDEF weapons. All of wich do not have a big market for. Which brings me to the Bazaar.

There isn't much I can say good about the bazaar because most of the times I've tried it it hasn't worked. When it did work it was REAL slow. This is a very importaint aspect of the game because other then people shouting for stuff to sell or buy and player owned vendors out in the middle of no where that I've never seen becuase I don't think they work, this is the main way to sell stuff. I tried using the bazaar once when it was working and put some stuff up for sale. Half the time people would buy things but I would never get the money. As far as I know this hasn't been fixed. It does work sometimes but last I heard it was completely down.

There is no Z axis in the game at all, aside from the emote /jump. You cannot jump off or on anything.

The medic profession has it's share of problems also. It is a crafting profession in SWG. You must make all your meds. Let me give you some pointers if you are deciding to make this your profession. START AS AN ARTISAN. If you start as a medic you only get a generic crafting tool and nothing to make meds with (resources). The fastest way to get these resources from the start is with surveying devices. Artisans start with surveying devices and a generic crafting tool. You start with a Flora surveyor and mineral surveyor. Both of these will be used to make meds (Organics and Inorganics). When you start your artisan you just have to spend the 100cr to train in Novice Medic and you're all set. Odd that you would have to start as an Artisan to make a medic, but like I said. Medics in SWG are crafters, so save yourself some times and start as one. You get the /medicalforrage command, but it's useless. It only harvests 1 organic if succesful. You need 8 organic and 8 inorganic to make a Stim pack.

Medics have their share of problems also. You have to grind to get EXP in Medical Crafting becuse each stim has more charges and you get more EXP from using them then you do from making them, so you fall way behind in the meds you can make. Also the MAIN function of a medic is to heal Wounds. These wounds are not easily found or received. Not to mention wounds are "magicly healed" in a scout camp. After hunting for several hours I didn't have hardly any wounds and just made a scout camp to heal them. Also it takes about 20 minutes for ANYONE to be able to heal their own wounds by getting novice medic and Organic chemestry 1. This will enable you to make the basic Medical Wound Pack and have no need for a medic. If medics have no one to heal then medics don't get EXP.

The problem I found with a marksman was just it's not interesting. Get yourself a decent gun and shoot a mob. Then you just run around in circles hitting Body shot 1 or what ever level you have. This was called kiting in EQ. But at least in EQ you have to have some skill to stop and cast on your mob without getting an interuption. It doesn't happen in SWG, you just keep on shooting over your shoulder while running around. If you have the medic skill it's even easier. Your health get's low, just pop yourself with a stim pack. Even while you are running. There is only a 10 or 15 second timer before you can do it again. If you've played EQ just imagine being a catster and nuking the mob while running and healing yourself on the run. It doesn't get much easier. Mob AI BTW is not very good when it comes to fighting. They will just stop chasing you sometimes and you can just blast away.

Running. Get used to it. That's all you have and the planets are big. There are no other forms of transportation yet. Well, you do have burst run. You loose some health and action and get a boost in run speed for awhile.

Swimming. You have no Z axis so you can't swim up or down, just along the surface.

Oh, forgot this about combat. Most of the time you'll fight non agressive mobs. They are yellow dots on your radar. They don't kill you. They incapacitate you. So with the example of the fight above if something does go wrong you won't get killed. You get knocked out for about a minute then just get up again. Hit yoursef with a couple stims and your good to go. Have this happen 3 times in a short period though and you die.

Death. There is nothing bad about death inless you didn't clone (bind) at the closest cloning center. If you are insured you get all you stuff without having to go to your corpse. It cost 1000cr to clone and insurance is variable depending on what you are carrying. If you die though and you are not cloned at the nearest cloning center but want to clone at the nearest cloning center anyway you will get 2/3 of your stat bars wounded. This could take A LOT of time to get fixed. It could take an hour or more sitting in the medical building if the only medic available is low level. This will get better once medics have a chance to gain some skill, but refer back to what I said about the medic. The above problem also causes medics to no be in the medical building and out doing other things because no one to heal. This leaves you in the med building with a few hundred wounds and only healing at the slow rate that just being in the med building heals you. Something like 10 points ever 10 minutes.


There are MANY more problems with the game then I've mentioned here. Some are just minor balances but some are major systems not working at all some some professions are incomplete. This is what you will see in 2 more days. I've seen them and I will see them again in 2 days. I just want you all to have some idea of what to expect. This is in no way a completely working game. I didn't say it wasn't a finished game because no MMO is truly ever finished. There are a lot of parts to this game that just do not work. So be prepaired.

The stability test of the servers went completly hawire after 48 hours under light load when they tested it. Chat systems are having problems including basic functions like /tell.

Just be prepaired to have many crashes, lockups, characters getting stuck, crashes to desktop, horrid frame rates (I get 1 or 2 FPS in low populated cities with graphix turned down, we're talking EQ Bazaar here) and all the other fun stuff you get in a BETA product. Because that's what this will be and I can't see much changing in 2 days except for the fact that me and you will be paying to continue to beta it.

Oh! I can't wait to see what happens with the login cap. Only 3500 people can be on a server or it will tell you to get lost. That means with 10 servers on release only 35000 people can play. I think they are releasing 75000 copies and they have something like 200,000 preorders (or was it 400,000?). They are gonna have to kick out servers daily. There's also a cap on the amount of characters per server, loged in or not. Hope your buddies aren't playing on that capped server.

Originally posted by al_bundy

The jedi don't become powerful overnight, but with years of training.