MoreCooler.com: It's more cooler with the thing

Hey folks!

Here's a slashdot story with a few tidbits about SWG
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/16/...

The real meat is the gamespy article, listed here:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/march04/galaxies/0...

It's an interesting story about the game I play entirely too much. Aside from that, I'm also quoted a few times, but my name was not spelled correctly for some reason. I even went back and checked what I had sent in to them, I had my name spelled correctly there...

Anyhow, when you see a quote from 'Jef' the Tempest Jedi, that would be me. I'm the only Tempest Jedi quoted. (For those that don't know, Tempest is the galaxy/server I play on)

Since when is "Jef" a more likely spelling than "Jeff"?

... why it was spelled like that...

I didn't expect to do so, not being a MMORG player much less a SW:G player, but I ended up reading all 10 pages. Interesting stuff. I'm curious what you, as one of the exalted Jedis, think about the fairly negative view it paints of the whole affair. Is it as mindlessly repetetive and soul-stealingly boring as it appears?

The game started out very entertaining. It had some great ideas:
- Profession based instead of class based (freedom to choose professions, switch at will)
- Player driven economy (loot driven now)
- No 'uber loot' or camping
- A Galactic Civil War for PvP action (many problems)

Of course, people 'did what they wanted to do and had fun' for a long time, but a mounting pressure built up: where are the Jedi? Additionally, power gamers wanted EQ style (think Diablo 2) loot.

So, the devs released those 'holocrons'. Loosely translated, they tell you to mindlessly grind professions to get a Jedi. Being as this is Star Wars, guess what people did? Yep, mindlessly grind professions. I even did it as well, but I held out for a while, about a month, out of sheer disbelief of such an absurd system.

Now those great ideas I bulleted at the top started to crumble. Holocrons were loot items. Finding them required camping, they sold for millions of credits and the economy started to rock. In addition, the developers have been adding more and more loot to the game. Much of this loot is near impossible to obtain without using some 'tricks' (won't discuss those here).

Now to the Jedi themselves. First off, they *require* these rare loot items for the only weapon they can gain experience with. Demand > Supply, those items (crystals and pearls referenced from the article) go for hundreds of thousands to several million credits each (most money I've ever had was about 8M). Oh, and a Jedi needs 4 of them for a saber worth anything.

Now to move over to the grind fest that is Jedi. They require weeks/months of work before they are even half as effective as the 'ordinary' combat classes. Additionally, with a recent patch, Bounty Hunters will now track a Jedi down and kill him for money/XP (while the Jedi gets nothing for fighting them off).

Add in that Jedi have no 'state' defenses (most professions have them), the boring grinding, and the various special ability bugs Jedi have, why keep playing one?

For me, I'm hoping to unite the rebellion together on my server in the future. I think people respond to the Jedi Knight better than the Commando or Squad Leader. There is already a Dark Jedi on my server who has been flaunting his powers (and he is only slightly stronger than myself, but has lots of support). In the next few months, the Jedi will come out of hiding, and the conflict will come to a head (IMO). Now THAT will be fun...