Words do really fail me. It is incrediable and horrondous at the same time what SOE/LA have done to this classic MMORPG
I started SWG in February and I joined the Bria server. The tutorial told me what to do exactly and I quickly got used to the controls. Left the space station and spawned on Kaadara where I was supposed to meet my real life friend and suddenly was set upon by a Thug. My friend did a nice pistol shot roll and killed the thug for me, I now knew I was going to love this game.
A few months later, with various factions and being especially hated by many forms of Thugs on each planet due to excessive err cleaning out :), I was nearly ready to buy the addons and a second account as I had saved up.
Combat Upgrade was something I had heard about and didn't really take into consideration how much it would change the game. I just heard it added new armour and weapons which was cool, I wanted that. When the day came, I was a BH and carbineer and a bit of chef. Found I couldn't have chef anymore the skill points had run out :( Went to equip my best carbine and found I couldnt.....it had turned into a rifle and was for commandos only no one else. Hmm okay.
Got my slug thrower carbine out and fired a few shots. This is where my heart just dropped and a sick feeling came over me. Instead of me firing with an animation of me getting kickback and some smoke and the cool boomboomboom! it was now a type writer clack clack clack and silly colourful circles whizzed around me brightly. Oh myyy god. Silly special effects ABOUND! in this game, they appear when merely getting on a blooming swoop bike!
As I walked around the Naboo cities, many people were naked and going wtf why has my armour fallen off?! Some crackpot at SOE decided to add Certs to armour instead of letting people mix and match their armour and clothes, so the effect is lots of people look exactly the same. Colour customising was removed too. Thing is, most armour gave a bad negative if you were not able to wear the armour and people liked to choose to wear the armour even if it did lower your mind pool and regen. No choice anymore Im afraid!
As I went to the Theed port, doctors were shouting angrily their buffs were worthless and not worth paying for. I asked for one and he gave it free, the buffs were indeed rubbish along with the animations when given. Doctors were now invalid and pointless. Never again would there be queues lining up to a doctor and paying 12k for great 3 hour buffs and having a chat with the players in line and the doctor himself. This was SUCH an important part of the game and it was removed. No one could be arsed to get a useless buff that lasts HALF AN HOUR.
At the cantina, dancers had the same story, battle fatigue had been removed which dancers healed and mind wounds healing/buffs were removed. All they had to give was a 10% exp buff which also was rubbish.
Dancer's were now invalid and pointless. Players would gather in the cantina and watch/tip dancers and chat. This was again SUCH an important part of the game and it was removed.
The revolutionary HAM bar was removed and was all about the healthpoints in combat now. Many animations and attack skills or general skills were removed by SOE/LA, which many players and I, considered rather cool and were upset about them being removed.
So, a over a week after CU going live I cancelled my account and deleted my character. Why did I do that? Because my guild of 26 was decimated by this "upgrade" and there was no friendship left to keep me in the guild. Even today I have no contact with any of them except msn because they can not bring themselves to trust any mmorpg games again.
A few months later I am bored and with some extra cash, I wonder if the CU has improved since then and reinstall. I join Bria and find the tutorial is bugged with the NPCs spamming ERROR and I can not get off the space station....okay I ll join an European one which was Infinity and the first thing to greet me? A graphics bug which turned out to be a fault on SOEs side, where whenever a Jedi ,Dancer used skills or someone put on their Personnal Shield Generator, lots of boxes of a painting would spam around that person. When I got JTL for free, this bug disappeared as it was missing a graphics file that could be only found in the JTL addon and SOE did not bother putting it in the SWG on it's own.
What a good start! So over the one month I played, and payed only for thank god, I found many of the bugs from the start were still there and MORE new ones! What the heck had SOE been working on if not the bugs and pushing out new add-ons totally unfinished?
The NGE. The day after many bought the TOOW addon, NGE was announced and there was an uproar. Instead of 30+ professions only 9. No profession mix and matching, just one. No giving up skill points and trying a new profession, you are STUCK with the one you choose. Creature Handler and Droid Engineer and many others like Pikeman were removed because it was not Star Warsy enough accoridng to SOE/LA. I think they do not watch Star Wars films at all lol! So many things that made the game what it was were removed and the end result?
A "for kids 5-10 years old game". An expensive one at that as its still $15 a month to play! CU killed the game by half I'd say. NGE merely finished it off.
Good luck SOE/LA in getting those kids with no wages in buying this pile of tripe. You have lost the adults with a payroll and several accounts, may it hit you hard I mean it deeply from my heart.
Ben Olson