SWG to be cancelled... FINALLY

[Zadrian]

There is a playable emu server, but it's a tad buggy, so you'd have to put up with it until development is finished/picks up again

[Nytewind TP]

I played SWG the first month or so when it first came out, I loved the land & graphics (where cool back then) But after that month there was sort of a loss in content and it got boring. I went back to EQ lol

[Trademaster]

Beta'd SWG and my input was that there were too many bugs to be released, it really needed (imo at the time) 6 more months of testing before release. Lucas wanted it out though so out it went. At release the game lacked vehicles, space and most importantly, content.

We finally got "content" in the form of an instanced "Corvette" (My first run through the Vette was all kinds of fun, left completely black bar'd)

JTL introduced space and space combat (which was more thought out than the entirety of the rest of the game) but still lacked content.

Then as SOE/Lucas felt that there was a "best" skill build, the did the "Combat Upgrade" to balance the classes, the game lost droves of players as the "Combat Upgrade" broke entertainers and crafters as they were considered "non-combat" therefore "unaffected" by the combat upgrade. The combat upgrade introduced so many bugs it was in worse shape functionally than it was in beta. From here I get fuzzy as I unsubbed for a couple of years, but there were issues where a character could either get no experience from killing a mob or dead. There was virtually nothing in-between. Entertainers and crafters were no longer playing, so combat fatigue and equipment degredation was removed. And, as with any skill based system there was a "best" skill build that players gravitated toward. Before even working out the bugs from the CU, (8 months after the "CU" upgrade) SOE/Lucas did pushed out the "NGE" which made the combat upgrade seem like a smooth and polished change. removing the skill based design, making crafted items vastly inferior to drops, and allowing players to start a Jedi without having to unlock. Jedi also lost their "alpha" status in essence becoming simply a melee character that got to wield a glowing nerf bat. Server populations disappeared.

Over the past 5 years, SOE has cleaned up a number of the bugs they introduced with their game mechanic changes, but more importantly, they added content, and mechanics to make it easier for players to develop their own content.

It isn't the swg that was released, but it is entertaining to play if nothing else for the space combat. I was of the opinion that the combination of play styles that swg had to offer would be a good blueprint for future MMOs, It had flight combat, the ground game, crafting, (best crafting design released), a card game and even tools for some actual role playing. (not just kneeling at a private location cybering), but with the way it was forced upon their customers, incomplete, bug ridden and unpolished, as well as the success of WoW, pretty much ended that.

Personally, I thought combining many different game styles into a single MMO was a great idea, instead of changing to a different game, different games were all available to you in the one title.

[BrandeX]

I'm surprised they didn't just turn both the MMO and the card game into a F2P entity, like they did with EQ2, although there may have been licensing limitations involved from Lucasarts. I do believe SWG CCG is currently the only official Star Wars themed online CCG out atm though.

[Gadzooks]

SWGEmu

[Arclyte]

I dick around in the SWG emu server. There's a ton of critical abilities/items (even entire class trees) missing plus lots of bugs, and it looks like they're really understaffed.

It's cool that they've come pretty close to remaking old SWG, but a Project 1999 it is not.

[Engraverwilliam]

SWGemu is great...just make a char on CORE3 not Liberator (Lib is getting the wipe eventually)

... been enjoying running around punching things in the face :-) doing missions and such. nothing hard core

[Arclyte]

According to their forums the core3 server has been down for a few weeks now.

[Stumpes]

They have only a few developers and are not making much progress. I am not sure if it's because of the lack of funding or if it is just slow...

[BrandeX]

They might get more interest after the live servers shut down.