R.I.D BASE OF OPERATIONS

Five Reasons Galaxies is not Worth Your Time
by Tom Night

1. Customer Support is understaffed, unfamiliar with the Game Mechanics, and unwilling to assist in many matters. While you may at some point find a knowledgeable CSR, willing to work with you, it is the exception.

2. Without an existing group of friends in the game, it will be very difficult for you to advance. Because grouping is now required, even and especially as a Jedi – it will mostly likely be difficult to find a group you can trust and who share your interests right away. It may be possible, but that should be the first thing you start looking for if you do decide to play.

3. Non-combat professions are becoming more and more marginalized. With the introduction of anti-decay kits, better-than-craftable weapons as rewards of quests, and marginalized entertainer buffs, crafters are left trying to learn a profession that changed for them greatly in the Combat Upgrade, that now limits artificially what they can produce while rewarding players for not contributing to the economy, and entertainers are left struggling to find a role as something other than an AFK bot.

4. Every patch brings with it as many if not more major bugs, as it does fixes or features. A major User Interface bug (resetting chat channels at login) went an entire month without being corrected, and some bugs have persisted since beta, two years ago, without being corrected.

5. The Developers have shown a surprising lack of concern for the playerbase, with an emphasis on meeting deadlines instead of ensuring quality work.

These are bold statements. The first, about CS, is a recognized complaint by the majority of players. It is a well known fact that the in-chat CSR’s have made statements directly contradictory to each other, and Developers, within a one-day period. Further more, the number of tickets I have sent in and gotten a response that displays either no reading comprehension, or no knowledge of what I was talking about, number in the dozens.

The second, is an aftereffect of the Combat Upgrade. In trying to abolish Soloing – which was very possible pre-CU on nearly any enemy in the game – they went to the other end, and ensured that if you were to try and solo something, and if you were able to keep yourself alive – killing it would take much longer than say, two people finding and killing two of the same enemy. Soloing for XP is so inefficient it’s laughable. You have to have a group, and while there are pickup groups, especially at Nym’s Stronghold, they are not often reliable, efficient, or available. A group of friends make the game bearable (for some).

The third statement has most of the supporting evidence in it. Crafters, especially Weaponsmiths, have always been hurting a little bit from very powerful loot weapons. Now, with the ADK (or Anti-Decay Kit), you simply don’t ever need another weapon of that type. Before the CU most combat professions have 2 or 3 viable weapons – now, after the CU, any combat profession needs only a single weapon. Since Weapons now have capped stats – once you have a single, capped weapon, you don’t need another, ever again. Armorsmiths got a brief reprieve with the introduction of craftable faction armor, but those costs are so high many players cannot afford them. Also, since armor now only protes you from a maximum of about 50% of damage, it’s not as necessary. And since Teras Kasi is a melee profession of choice for any Melee Stacker – they have innate armor and don’t need it. Droid Engineer and Tailor are simply and irrevocably bugged at the time of this writing, and cannot produce their most valuable or in-demand wares. Chef was hit hard by the new requirement that says you cannot eat or drink two things that give the same bonus, reducing what players eat and drink. Entertainers no longer heal wounds, or battle fatigue. They give a 10% buff to XP and Factional Gain, as well as increase crafting successes. There is no requirement to interact with an Entertainer, and doing so is left strictly for Roleplayers or People acting Social.

My last two points tie together. The last publish broke crafting experimentation. This in and of itself is forgivable – there are bugs, they’re accidents. But when the Developers decided to push the patch to live, instead of fixing a game-stopping bug which was reported, and acknowledged and they were begged not to push it to Live, and they did anyway to meet the “publish deadline” – my faith was shattered for the last time. Major User Interface bugs were pushed to live, and still haven’t been fixed, 2 or 3 months later. For over two years I believed that Sony was working for the betterment of the game, and actually cared. From the evidence I have seen – I was wrong, and now think they consider it nothing more than a job, and allow such horrendous slip-ups because they don’t care that some of us cared about playing an enjoyable game.

In conclusion – if you are thinking about playing Galaxies, starting a new character – I would recommend against it. If you have an account now and don’t enjoy the game anymore – cancel it, and send a message to Sony that we’re tired of this type of business service. We pay them for a product, and if we are dissatisfied with the product – either ask them to improve it, or stop paying.

If you wish to comment on this article (preferably maturely) you can e-mail the author at night4554@theforce.net. If we receive enough feedback, we may do a follow-up story.

Xan wrote:Heres an interesting bit of info:

SWG has reached about the amount of 250,000 subsribers, and has been around for 2 years, and owned by a company that is proficient in making RPG MMO's and is currently the MMO giant, company wise, they have had many years of experience in creating MMO's before they created SWG. Also, they have an extremely popular subject to base the game on.

On the other hand:

World Of Warcraft, has not even been around for 1 full year, and has already bloated up to 3.5 MILLION subscribers, making it, the most popular and most subscribed to MMO in gaming History. This is Blizzards first MMO, and while based on an extremely popular subject, like SWG, does not have such a large fan base as Star Wars. Its customer service manages well especially considering how many subsribers they must attend to compared to SWG. Also add the fact that WoW does not have any expansion packs as of yet while SWG has 2.

Leviathen wrote:Combat system is better yes, its more interactive. But I always used to be one combat prof, one noncombat prof. i got the best of both worlds that way, and I liked it, no point in doing that anymore