Drama anyone?Follow

So, while I was replying to someone's post about the game, I thought about why is it so hard to enjoy a game when there's so much negative sentiments about it.

Well, let me start out with the majority of the complaints. Credit Farmers.

Real Money Trade (RMT):

When I started playing SWG a little over a year ago, I have never noticed until lately, the problems with RMT. Now, in the open next to the Mos Eisley Starport, company representatives (my own term) are macro'ing an advertisement about their site and an example of the cost of their In-Game currency.

Now, I found out with the change with Trial Accounts early this year, the exploit of it was that no matter how many times people would report the 'spammers' a few minutes later and new one would replace the now banned one.

However, what concerned me the most was that prior to 2007, no one really cared. So I wondered why is it now that it feels MMO-'service' companies are now desperate for business? So, I contacted a friend of mine who plays the only other MMO I've enjoyed and asked how the RMT was still over there.

Apparently, Final Fantasy XI Online within the past eight months, implemented drastic countermeasures to the RMT routine. It ranges from making valuable 'drops' from a sellable product to a one time ownerships, in which is entitled Rare/Exclusive, 'No-Trade/Biolink' to SWG all they way to making the 'fiend/mob' drop utter crap and placing the items into a BCNM (Burning Circle Notorious Monster). An event in which a group of players must try to win the battle under certain restrictions, in which to enter this fight you must trade the number of Beastman/Kindred Seals (rare 'loot') to a NPC.

Recently included was that a NPC/mob at a severely high level would spawn near fishing spots and proceed to actually slaughter the fisherman. How fishing worked in that game was that the player would stay at a spot to raising their fishing level while trying to gather a stack of certain fish to sell. Highly profitable since Chefs could make great food from them. However, 'bots' hoarded the coastlines and ponds within cities. So, after a certain amount of time, the system would calcuate and Sic the mob into the area.

Then I found out the news that Bioware and players of the WoW community were now in a legal situation. Smart really.

So, how does this affect SWG? My theory is that after all the countermeasures in the more popular MMOs, why not invade the smaller communites of other games? Unfortunately and my own disgusting admittance is that SWG is one of them. How? The New Game Enhancements. With the NGE came a drastic change to the game content, making alot of players abandon their love of this MMO. From what I can tell and estimates was that about 60% of the population left shortly or immediately after the implementation of the NGE.

With such negative feedback about the game currently, hindered any real possible attraction and new players to the game. Is it not a tactic used by anyone to kick the 'injured' while they're down?

Now, while you're coming up with a flame on that one here's another one.

Self-Indulgence:

Self-Indulgence reflects on how a person plays the game. Is it not self satisfaction when one achieves an goal? A majority of people feel that they have to be the best. In the MMO community is the fact of feeling invincible or bragging rights.

Example. About two or three months ago on Starsider, a player who transferred had two complete sets of clothing that were not obtainable currently in the game. One that stood out the most was a replica of the Nightsister clothing the appears on the NPCs. How they got the clothing was that while SWG was available through Japanese servers, the company had a different looting table in which the pieces were available. When Japan shut their servers down, this person was fortunate enough to retain the clothing.

When someone found out and posted a picture to wonder where they got them, there was a uproar from the community. The majority was pretty much titled down to "Well, if I can't have it then they can't either." Unfortunately, due to this, the system removed their items from their inventory and housing. Making them lost forever.

Indulgence relates to RMT as well. Since SWG has one of the most unique economy all around since it's completely player driven. However, greed still haunts anyone's state of mind.

Example. I wanted to fly my B-Wing with all the overloads as possible. However, due to the nature of components only one Reactor would give me the power I needed, which was the RCT-Z in which ranged from 30k-50k Reactor Energy. The Trade-Off was that every now and then an RCT would have no Generation rate, meaning it was a useless 0. Pilots thinking this was a bug sent in numerous reports to the CSR and in which they would give it a Generation rate of the 30-50k. Seeing this as abuse, developers 'stealth nerf' of the RCT now made it no more then 20k.

Fortunately, I found one on sale at a Bazaar, however the price on it was outrageous, about 50 million credits. At the time I had no more the 3 million and knowing someone who was rich, could buy it out before I raised enough money. I contacted the person who was selling it flat out told me "Money on the spot or a no sale." Wanting it really badly, I actually contemplated on whether or not to buy the currency. Luckily, I didn't and decided to make the most out of whatever I can use. I'll add, it turns out quite nicely.

In conclusion aside alot of other things...I can only say this.

No one really notices how they're hurting other players because their feeling of ultimacy of their character (or loss.)

It ranges from negative feedback of the game I enjoy to game stability.

Take care and have fun. (I hope)

Edited, Jul 1st 2007 11:08pm by AayliahOfRemora

Very good posts, i thought the ffxi one was hillarious, though its a little late as the game has suffered the curse of the rmt'ers for far too long already and the damage has already been done, i tried the game once, fishing there is really dangerous too, sometimes you have to fight what you catch :D having an uber monster wade through a crowd of afk fishing bots though, really appeals to my sense of justice :D now if only they could do something about the afk'ers in swg, take cantina's for instance, all those afk entertainers, how about if every now and then the cantina gets raided by either stormtroopers or some other kind of hostile entities, and anyone not clearing out fast enough has a quick trip to the cloner :D
seriously though, companies need to take steps to protect their games from outside exploitation.

Yeah, except now they stand around in groups and share the character limit between them, Yay! Well at least SOE have managed to create some content for co-operative play ;p.

Best way to ignore them is to switch off 'allow chat from AFK players' in the chat options menu, saves a lot of time instead of constantly adding to your ignore list.