If you see a mob with a spear, leather jerkin and sandals, why are you not able to loot that spear, leather jerkin and sandals when you kill it?

And, if you could, in what game could you best do this?

Raph expounds on the highs and lows of WYSIWYG loot. I'm not sure I totally agree though that this can only effectively work in a wordly game, as he seems to imply.

I think bio-linked loot (a term Yivvits coined in the comments thread there) can work in Dikus, if they have a reason to break common loot down into sub-component crafting resources.

I'm thinking of AC2, later SWG, the Disenchanting skill in WoW and the new Jewelcrafting "Prospecting" skill coming to it. All allow items to be broken down into consumable resources others can use in crafting processes.

Granted, I consider neither AC2 nor SWG particularly diku in the EQ/WoW sense of the word. However, WoW Disenchanting is a very useful skill already, as the crafting skill (Enchanting) that uses the result (shards) have as their business the ability to add stats to both crafted and world-dropped items. The profession is so lucrative, most Enchanters do not even bother getting their stuff to disenchant by adventuring. They get it by buying the "junk" people sell on the Auction House.

A strong "crafting" economy is possible in a diku too. But one must assume:

• Most players are NOT there to pick flowers
• A thriving crafting economy can be based on just the few that are, and those that support them.

I often wonder if folks pushing crafter-centric games understand just how small a percentage of gamers actually want to craft. To me, it's great to build a real deep crafting engine. But in this age of obvious easy-to-see paths to revenue and headcount, crafting is a subset of a hunting game, where the percentage of time spent developing crafting should match to the percentage of players expected to bother.

The alternative is to expect fewer players and scale your business to match. There's enough room for both WoW and ATITD. It's just that when convincing folks to invest in your game, they're going to want to know why you're not chasing the big cash. If you ask anyone, they'll say they want a deeply engaging crafting system. If you see the resultant attempts to do so in diku-inspired games, you'll see the complaints that come with it, like "what, I have to actually pay attention while crafting?!" (from EQ2).

Usually in a diku you have a few dedicated crafters, more than that number dedicated to collecting resources and selling in bulk to them, and the rest consuming the end result as part of their equipment set while off killing mobs for the rest of it. 10 people can bang out enough swords to arm a server of thousands in a diku. And that's how it should be because those thousands are the primary reason that diku was inspired.

So in this system, getting a spear from a mob who was holding the spear can mean you either get the uncommon/rare/uber spear, or something you yourself could either break down to a component for crafting, or which can be sold to someone who has that skill.

Easy to say, incredibly tough to get right. I won't say WoW does it perfectly. But again, for the number of people interested in crafting, I think they do a pretty good job.

But I will close with this: the group that can achieve the vision for how UO was supposed to work initially are going to win in my opinion. Combat was deep there for reasons different from "because I killed Boss #12 the 37th time". And they were better. But to try this again is to risk quite a bit when it's so far been proven that strict linearity sells.

The Star Wars Galaxies Emulator hits Alpha

Here's a quote from CoffeeHedake:

"The SWGEMU (Star Wars Galaxies Emulator) Team has successfully run their first Alpha stage test of a reverse-engineered version of Sony Online Entertainment's Star Wars Galaxies server software. An announcement was made on the SWGEMU bulletin boards that something special would be shown in their IRC channel at 12:00AM EST Today. A hosted video montage of the successfully connecting the SWG client to an emulated server, loading a character, zoning from one area to another, and other huge leaps were shown in the clip."

First, I've got to get something out of the way:

I don't believe for a second this will be around for long. It's a great project. I can attest to just how many former SWG players would love a return to the pre-CU days of SWG. Heck, some of those would actually even like the game they think they're remembering. But I highly doubt the project team would be able to successfully face the combined legal teams from SOE and LA. And there's really no reason at all for either company to let this project see the light of day.

Now onto other thoughts:

Both groups have been relatively silent on this EMU, as far as I know, the first of it's kind. For example, on the same day Slashdot released this news, Stratics hosted a SWG House of Commons Chat with the SWG team. I have to imagine at least one of the various participants in the IRC chat session posed the question, and that it not being asked nor answered is perhaps a pre-instruction from SOE to Stratics to not talk about this at all.

There's also been the usual round of "insider info", like this gem over at the MMORPG forums, copy/pasted here for posterity that haven't been commented on. Basically, it includes a bunch of unsubstantiated stuffInsights into the SWG EMU project. It's an interesting read, even if it could be all lies. I cut some stuff out to try and make it shorter, so be sure to read the full link, which includes the poster's claimed role at SOE.

… 

Now on to a well known Emulator site regarding the above game.

Many of you have posted and replied to that site.  SOE and LEC indeed know about this site, and are actively monitoring it. 

I have read the updates section  and i feel i must say something. 

The main updates that the administrators have given to you are false.  Here are my reasons for you to browse.

The most recent updates that have been made available there are incorrect. 

The loading screen you see can easily be made and changed by anyone who has access to the .tre file that was included in the Jump to Lightspeed (JTL) major publish.  All it is is a simple background  that you can extract from the .tre file  using a program known as insideSWG or SWGExplorer.  You can then import it into a image editing program, edit it how you like, then recompile it back into the.tre file.   Evidence of this is a lack of a  full video going from login screen to main game on the Emulator site. All you see is a screenshot.

With reference to the "ingame zone" screenshots.  these are again false.   There is indeed a mod that replicates all aspects of the games original system  User Interface. However if you look closely  you will notice that there are no active "HAM" bars. this is because the code which we inserted into the core of the game is made to do this, thus making the mod useless and basically unuseable.  You may also notice the small unobtainable experience information module in one of the screenshots   This is a well known bug that occurs with an original system User interface Mod. This occurs because the mod  links to coding within the client  that has been commented out. therefore it was not able to be changed. 

…

Taken altogether, combined with the relative silence, it sounds like the respective parties are waiting to see if SWG EMU is actually successful in doing what they claim. That they're already claiming to work with assets they shouldn't be (per the SWG EULA) would make one think that's enough to get attorneys involved. However, with all coverage of SWG since November effectively being negative, they may want to not move on something with such strong fan support until they know if the thing actually works. There's a huge amount of complexity with emulating SWG, everything from the proprietary engine to the Oracle database backend. Just delivering a bunch of videos doesn't really prove anything, at least not enough to the companies behind the main game.

And then there's the other problem: the players.

Many ex-fans have wanted a SWG EMU server to give them the game they used to like. However, many of these ex-fans who've most loudly requested such quit well before the major changes came anyway. Would these players seriously spend time in the old game they accepted, warts and all, when there's so many higher-polished titles out there?

Loving Star Wars is only going to arm one with so much patience. Break down the old-skool SWG playerbase and you have a number of different sub-groups. Of these sub-groups, the people who played SWG because they absolutely loved the combat system of old are probably not a significant majority of that old playerbase.

Now imagine those old players returning. The moment they arrived, they'd be reminded of everything that used to aggravate them about the game anyway. In its heydey, players accepted the bugs because everyone accepted the bugs. But once people started divorcing themselves emotionally from the game, they saw just how much of a hodge-podge of broken and fixed it really was.

It's good to see the blood, sweat and tears efforts of ardent fans, and perhaps they wouldn't need any more than 1,000 people playing on the server. While that would feel pretty empty, given the combined 4,00 square kilometers of navigable worlds even on launch day, I think it would be fine if they restricted all building to maybe the main worlds of Tatooine, Corellia and Naboo. But such fundamental rules changes implies huge achievements for this team beyond just making the emulator work itself.

And that's the problem. If this works, that'll be when the companies probably have to serve a cease-and-desist notice. There's no good that an emulator server can bring the core game, and there's just too much money and brand equity tied to the latter to see it sullied even more. They probably just couldn't take the chance that SWG EMU would be successful at all.

Some links of note:

• Mirrors from which to download the video "showing" a "successful" connection between a SWG Client and the emulation server.
• Main site
• The team forum and current announcement

While the announcement does not yet compel me to return again to a Galaxy Far, Far Away, it is always great to read the progress they are making towards completing the goals they set when they unleashed Order 66, err, the New Game Experience upon the genre.

The update covers four main points:

• Everyone gets an instant travel vehicle. Looks like a modded shuttle craft. Call it up and in an instant travel to wherever you want to go, no matter where you are.
• Target locking. Useful in combat and to move furniture. Those two being in the same sentence is on purpose. After all these months, target locking is finally in place. This is the single most important feature to come to the game since the NGE in my book, and will be surpassed only by true collision detection. This also includes "Weapons Safety Mode" which basically changes the color of your cursor around an unintended target, ensuring shots only go to the intended one (unless you're using an AOE weapon).
• Veteran Reward. If you have a character that's been around since launch (39 months ago), you get an additional 200 storage unit slots on your house. Not sure of the details. Is it just one of your houses? Is it something applied to the house and therefore the deed and therefore lost if the structure is lost?
• The GCW picks up with the event at Restuss beginning.

More details can be found here, a link I wish they included in the advertisement. Here it goes into things like modified quests, mostly on Kashyyyk and in the newbie sequence on Tansarii Station and some class buffs.

As mentioned, target locking is the big one here. The area/heavy weapons I saw at E3 were cool and all, but it's really the completion of the combat system itself that will begin the measure of whether the NGE was a good idea in the first place.

I hope they can get CD in before the end of the summer. But regardless, I am continually impressed they are pushing forward with this vision. The pain of transition has long since past, and maybe the Galaxy can be brought back to the Light someday.

Will there be a single moment in time when this happens? Perhaps. I'd estimate it is whenever collision detection goes in plus one month. 

Until then, I'll be waiting. And watching. 

But it all ended and I was free once again. While I wanted to hit South Hall again to finish up with games I hadn't learned enough about yet, it was my duty to actually, you know, see the other 2/3 of the show. To Kentia and West I did go.

Kentia

Kentia had its usual hodge-podge of games, gear and assorted oddities. The focus down there seemed to be on active play (punching, driving, surfing accessories), mobile games (how does anyone seriously game on these things?!) and random utilities like development tools, testers and hardware. Most of this stuff I had just seen at GDC, but the floor felt more compressed. I can't be sure, but it feels like there was more private-viewing booths and meeting rooms both in Kentia and in West this year than when I last was here in 2004.

So to the West I went.

Concourse

Along the way I managed a detour into Lucasarts. Sworn to silence, I've got nothing to say except that anyone who's a gamer should pay particular attention to two things in early-part 2007: Euphoria and Digital Molecular Matter. By themselves they are "just another" behavior and physics engine respectively. You'll see why together they mean something though.

West Hall

This Hall had Nintendo, Sony and Miscellaneous. Those two booths were impossible to miss as they took up what appeared to be 2/3 of the available exhibition space. As I noted in Kentia, the whole back of the hall was private office areas, where things like Warhammer Online (awesome WoW-level CGI movie though) were tucked.

Nintendo

My first stop was to see about the line for the Nintendo Wii. As expected, it was far longer than I could justify standing on. I'll see the unit soon enough, so wasting half my available time on that line didn't seem worth it. Ah well.

The rest of the booth was dominated Nintendo DSes and various games. None particularly stuck out to me, but I'm nowhere near the target audience for their titles. I did get to see the relatively new DS Lite. This is a rather nice device, something I'm seriously considering buying. It looks sorta like an iPod when closed, is far less hefty than the chunky original, and of course has the benefit of the most creative software I've seen for any mobile platform, befitting the creative interface devices available on the system.

I'll probably buy the Wii because of the control system alone. Like the DS, there's true creative potential there.

Finally having my fill of Brain Age, I moved cross the aisle to Sony.

Sony

Another enormous booth, I was very surprised by the rather lackluster interest being shown the PS3 compared to that of the Wii. I figure this is based on two elements:

1. While the PS3 is a technical wonder of technology straight from a sci-fi novel, there just isn't much more to it than making games more immersive. Whoopie they added a motion sensor to the controller. The thing is just a silver dual shock controller from years ago. I don't care how much power the system have, if the control system is exactly the same, chances are the developers will continue to dip into the barrel of what they know.
2. They did have ample playable demos on the floor, probably around 30-35 stations of PS3s featuring multiple playable versions of things like Warhawk (modern flight combat sim), Gran Turismo HD (best graphics tech demo there), Resistance: Fall of Man (near-future combat), Heavenly Sword (fighting game). Meanwhile, the only way to play the Wii was to stand on line or somehow sneak in.

I didn't figure I'd be buying the PS3 this year or at all, and see no reason to change my mind. Making the games in HD format was a great idea, but they're still the same games I was playing a decade ago.

The PSP was another story. I have been somewhat disappointed with it since I bought it a year ago. I've got a laptop and two portable DVD players, so travel movies is not an issue and doesn't require I buy a new library. The games I had tried were mostly direct rips of console-based or console-like titles. My last console was the Nintendo 64 for a reason. I hate the controls and haven't been truly engaged by a game since the first Turok.

But this year I saw a number of titles that make me glad I haven't eBay'd the device. There seems to be an influx of puzzlers, which is exactly what I want to play on the device.

• Miami Vice was a surprise in that it isn't about the show nor upcoming movie. It probably has that sort of Jan Hammer type music, but I couldn't hear sounds on any of the scores of playable units they had around the booth. You have this ship which looks like something out of Asteroids, and the object seems to be to fly around exploding at the right time to make cubes explode. All pretty abstract. All just straight pretty. And intellectually stimulating.
• Tekken. Good. I need a fighter game.
• EEE. This had a name. I think it starts with "Endless". For the life of me though I cannot recall the name. It was fun though, a puzzler in the vein of Miami Vice.
• LocoRoco- puzzler. I saw this at GDC at the Sony booth there, and a good analog of the experience was shown as part of the Independent Games Festival as well. Rotate the world to move an amorphous object around it. Good times.

Still no word on a keyboard for the device though. To me, this continued lack is an insane oversight, something for which I have no explanation. I can't imagine it'd take even a halfway decent coder any more than 30 minutes to create a driver for it. And it's not like Logitech doesn't have enough keyboards kicking around. What keeps either company, or anyone else, from marketing a keyboard is just beyond me. If the device had a touchscreen, it'd be passable. This things cries out for a keyboard, and I'd die happy if it could support a mouse.

They also had some Guitar Hero 2 stations here. Fun game.

Funcom

Since a number of games are shown at a number of booths, it was no surprise to stumble upon Age of Conan at the Funcom booth, nor to learn some more new interesting info about it:

• Levels 1-20 only need to be done once. Players are not required to repeat them if they don't want to. This makes the archetype/sub-class choice for palpable to me, since done once, players can instantly choose another class if their first class didn't work out.
• These levels are free. No subscription fee is collected until one reaches 20 and makes a class choice.
• They target these levels to take about 10-15 hours of game play.
• The taverns in these levels are persistent, so players can mingle. They're not sure they're going to allow trade though, which makes sense. No sense building twinking in right at the start.

Further, another bit of news on cities: guild leaders can build a Town Hall somewhere and the town can grow around it. They really want towns to work with the landscape but to not blight it. They will carefully control where and how building happens.

Finally, the demos didn't feature any magic because their particles system wasn't done. They will, of course, have it though. It'll be elemental-based and powerful and all those glowing promises we always hear before launch.

Given how this game has progressed though, this could be the title that lets me forgive Funcom for the train wreck that was initial AO.

CCP

In the corner of the Hall was tucked the Eve booth. This was largely a meeting space, though they did have a guided demo up. The big feature here was the new graphics engine, which will come this summer, but not with the next content patch. They remodelled and re-textured every ship in the game, and will finalize the overhaul with brand new effects.

They also featured the upcoming integration of voicechat support, brought to them by Vivox. Yet another system at GDC, this suite comes from a company with a strong telecom background. Eve could, if they wanted, allow players to make phone calls right from the game, such is the level of Vivox integration with telecom. Right now, more pedestrian goals like spacial chat and seeing who's speaking are the goals.

Sony Online Entertainment

This booth is remarkably different from 2004. They are much more open with their games now, ringing the outside of their private-viewing area with presented demos of their library of titles. Having just played EQ2, knowing EQ1 pretty well, and seeing not much different with PS and Untold Legends, I focused on SWG.

Now, a word here first. I like playing dumb at these shows. It's not like I'm some fount of unique intelligence. It's just that I find people will open up to the ignorant more than they will to some know-it-all yutz who can't shut up about their own geekness. I've seen a number of these folks at the show, and they annoy me with their transparent questions having no other purpose than tripping up the hired presenters. I almost asked one idiot to move along when he started mocking the Vanguard presenter in the Microsoft games booth about why the game had no business being there. I decided on a simple "you know the announcement was about a three way relationship right?". Stupid kids.

Anyhoo, I had the pleasure of meeting Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl again. He wouldn't know me from Adam anyway, but he was the one I spoke to the last time I got a good run-down on SWG. This guy really does care. The most telling indicator of this was just how much he had to hold back on the impact the NGE had on the community. Here I was, some random E3 guy who professed to having just some basic awareness of this "online Star Wars game", and he had to struggle to hide his emotions when I asked about some new changes I heard about to the game. He cares about the players, truly. Makes sense given his role of course.

So with that, I got to hear some cool stuff:

• If you don't know by now, they're blowing up Restus on Rori this summer. There'll be a long server-wide quest that leads up to a final battle around the starport in Restus. The story itself is cool, so I won't spoil it. But the outcome of the battle is preordained anyway, so the ending isn't a spoil. And the impact is both huge and immediately rewarding. The entire city goes from alive to all ruins in a matter of seconds, resulting in a ragtag band of survivors giving out quests. Once this event ends, all of Restus becomes a "battleground", a full PvP zone. Really good stuff, even if it does sound like a certain other 'opening of' quest.
• Heavy weapons are in, and they are cool. In a nice nod, every player can use Scatter Pistols and Flamethrowers, though unlike Commandos that specialize in them, other combat classes will lose Action to use them. They still work though. Kurt demoed them on some content on Kashyyyk. Fun stuff, particularly the Flamethrower, which targets the ground.
• True collision detection is coming. As it has been for six months. No real word on when, but they think in a matter of months.
• They have some goodies coming for space too, but those I can't talk about.
• If a player who is flagged PvP gets killed by another player, a dialog box pops up asking if they want to put a bounty on that player. Each player can place up to a 1mil credit bounty on another, and each player can have up to twenty bounties on them.

All in all, they are not giving up on this game. There's a real energy about it from both SOE and Lucasarts. People are really interested in fulfilling the promise the NGE set out to start. I give them credit for maintaining this level of excitement about the game, and maybe in six months it'll finally be a complete package of relevant newness.

NC Soft and Tabula Rasa

At the end of the day, after hours on my feet seeing stuff relevant for my other notes more so than here, I decided to end with what has emerged as my favorite title of the show: Tabula Rasa. I'm glad I did. The fun I had yesterday was trumped.

I was invited to an open chair that turned out to have a different classification. Unlike the "Free Play" stations, this one was "Guided Demo" and included a walking tour/adventure with NCS Richard, playing from NC Soft headquarters. But this was no museum tour.

He starts me in the world as if I knew nothing (quite my purpose) and explains something I immediately realized I had wrong from yesterday. The Q key rotates weapons while the E key rotates alternate abilities. I thought they were for ammo. Some cool stuff here on this character, which was explained to me as being a "Specialist". Aside from normal weapons, I could "cast" Chain Lightning (jumps between enemies) and place Pulse Turrets on the ground, something very Planetside Engineer-esque.

Properly trained and equipped, he guided me through the first few quests which culminated in a romp through an instanced zone. The story here was these biomech warrior things just kept coming, and the humans wanted to know why. Working with their allies, they found the source and decided to go shut it down. That was our goal.

A solid 20 minutes of game play later, we were done, and I was hooked. The game is going to come out when it is done, but probably this year. It's fairly polished as is, but I can't speak for its level of content completeness.

Richard Garriot became the Creative Lead on the project around the time all these crazy changes happened, in addition to being the Executive Producer. This means the complete theme and play shift was his doing. I applaud the result. I also like that they kept the same language. No longer a fantasy title, at least all this means is I have to change what my Triskelion looks like.

Conclusion

Today has turned out to be my last day. Conference call in the morning and a 2pm flight back home. I think I've seen everything I've wanted to see though, and then some.

I set out to find innovation, and I feel like I found enough of it in Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa. They were quite unexpected, but pleasantly so. These will be the titles I follow for this year while enjoying the offerings already live, for different reason.

For Pirates, it's a game I see as potentially Eve-like in a more mass marketable theme and offering (since players do have avatars. For Conan it's the fantasy theme but the very unique and compelling control system. And for TR, it's the theme and control system together which, like Conan, together finally bring MMORPGs out of the morass of auto-lock dice rolling combat systems I'm so very tired of.

Will that mean I avoid WoW's Burning Crusade? No. By then the Mage Talent Respec will be finally balanced, and the Draenei interest me. They are a noble race (or could be) and new content is new content. WoW is still a very fun game. I just don't need to play it to the exclusion of truly innovative titles.

So that's my 2006. A few new MMORPGs that truly break the mold, the MMOFPS I wish I could have played while here, and the generally rising chaos of life itself.

It was a good show. Probably not the best, and I imagine some people will think it's subdued or on the downswing or just getting more legit and therefore more sanitized for the corporations. But everyone has their own way to deal with the smell of money and success, and eventually the general gamer will come around to the idea that yes, games are business.

• Age of Conan (and again here)
• Eve
• Exteel
• Huxley
• Mu
• Pirates of the Burning Sea
• Project Wiki
• Star Wars Galaxies
• SUN
• Tabula Rasa (and again here)
• Vanguard

My concern was enhanced by a relative silence from the SWG team about their plans. When would collision detection go in? When would crafted weapons and armor actually have meaningful benefits in combat? When would the system become more consistent between old and new?

They've now begun to give some insights.

Yesterday, Rogue_5 posted A look at the Publish Plan! in the SWG Development Discussion forum. A few strong caveats exist in the announcement, but for the first time since July 2004, the SWG team has laid out their long term plans for next seven Publishs (live updates).

I have copy/pasted the entirety of the post below. I have a few initial thoughts.

1. They give no specific time-table, but their Publish schedule does follow a bit of a pattern. Their Publish History page has been busted for awhile, but through reporting at various places, they average about one Publish a month. Since Publish 27 went live this month, this plan could be a roadmap through October.
2. I see nothing about Collision Detection mentioned anywhere. They may not have any idea when it will happen, or they may not want to give false hope as to when. Regardless, I, like many, consider this feature a critical component of any success the NGE hopes to have. Without collision detection, "twitch"-based combat is almost pointless, a nuisance at worst.
3. After Publish 28, each succeeding Publish focuses on a specific Profession. Smugglers are even mentioned, with some of the features listed as long being those desired. Perhaps at long last, Smugglers will actually be able to Smuggle.
4. The first Profession focused on is Bounty Hunters. It's very nice to see BH's finally being able to take out bounties in space.
5. They are reviewing their Death and Decay penalty system, considering options, and asking for feeback (direct link won't work, but it's in red type at the top of the main forum index). With 6,825 votes, I find it absolutely not surprising in the least that far and away, most players would prefer no death penalty at all, since death is an inconvenience. I am have two minds on this. On the one hand, death is an inconvenience by itself, an ego slam. On the other, so much of SWG is tied to crafted items (still) that having no item decay nor loss at all removes any need for repair nor replacement beyond simple upgrades. Since they also plan to remove restrictions on most armor types, and increase the drop rates, they either need to have a logical system of decay, or revamp the entire Trader profession and four sub-professions to give them purpose (they will be getting an all-new reverse engineering ability later on though, which is a promising start).

Rogue_5 posted the below on 2/17/06:

Hello!

As promised I have some information to share with you that outlines our plans for future publishes. Listed below you will find a publish by publish breakdown highlighting the high level features we are planning to add to the game.

You may notice that the information below gets less detailed in the later publishes. Our primary efforts are currently concentrated on refining the details for the next two publishes. As we get closer to each publish, the designs will become more detailed. Once they do I will be posting those details on the forums so they can be shared with the community.

The things listed here are not the only things we are working on though. In addition to these features, we will also be including publish gifts with each publish, additional content quests, additional bug fixes, and some other surprises as well.

It is important to remember that this just outlines our plans for the future, but plans can and do change. As we get into the detailed design and implementation phases, we may find it necessary to shift things around a bit between publishes. However, this should give you a good idea of the things we want to accomplish in the upcoming months.

And as always, please be sure to share your thoughts with us. Your feedback is important to us and we want to hear it.

I hope you all have a great weekend. May the Force be with you!

Grant “Rogue_5” McDaniel
SOE Producer, Star Wars Galaxies

Publish 28

Armor Enhancements

• We are removing armor certifications for all armor wearing classes. This means that any class that is able to wear armor will be able to use Battle , Assault, and Recon armor type, with the following exceptions:
  
  • Mandalorian Armor will still be restricted to Master Bounty Hunters and Master Commandos.
  • Jedi will continue to be restricted from wearing armor.
  • All armor hindrances will be removed. There will no longer be a penalty for wearing armor.

Armor Loot Drops

• We will be adding more armor loot drops to the game. The power of the armor that can be looted will be proportional to the Combat Level of the MOB.
• These new armor loot drops will use a wide variety of stats and protections.
• We will be adding a much larger variety of clothing armor for all players through loot drops throughout the game, including Jedi exclusive clothing.

PvP Enhancements

• A command will be added that can be used from the tool bar that will allow players to declare from “Combatant” to “Special Forces” in the field. This will take 30 seconds to execute.
• If you are killed in PvP combat by another player, they will be rewarded one of your items chosen at random. This could be either an equipped item or an item in your inventory. No-drop, bio linked, and no-trade items will be exempt from this. (NOTE: We want to hear your feedback on this. Please take a minute to vote on our PvP Death Penalty poll.)
• After you are killed you will have the option of placing a bounty on your attacker. This will deduct the specified amount from your bank account or from your cash on-hand and add the bounty to your killer. Bounties placed on a player will be cumulative, so if multiple bounties are placed on a player, their overall bounty will increase. The bounty can then be claimed by a Bounty Hunter as described below.

Bounty Hunter System

• If the /bountyCheck command fails it will now clear its cool down timer properly so that it can be used again immediately.
• Bounty Hunters will now be able to use the /bountyCheck command on other players. If the other player has a bounty on them, the Bounty Hunter will be notified of the bounty amount and will then have the option of attempting to claim the bounty. Claiming a bounty will flag both the Bounty Hunter and the target as PvP positive using the existing duel system. (Insuring one-on-one combat.) If the Bounty Hunter kills the target then they receive the bounty and it is cleared from the target. They will also receive the PvP item as described above.

Item Changes

• We will be removing the no-drop, no-trade, and bio-link items off a wide variety of items. These will be primarily quest reward items.

Entertainer Additions

• To allow entertainers the option of engaging in more of the content in the game, we have added combat abilities as part of the progression path. Entertainers will be able to advance through either combat or their normal activities. None of the existing entertainer abilities are being removed, though AI will no longer ignore entertainers.

Publish 29

Bounty Hunter Profession Enhancements

• Bounty Hunters will receive all new combinative commands. These will be commands that can either be executed alone as per normal commands, or can be layered together to strengthen and enhance the power of the attacks.
• We will be adding Limpet Droids. These tiny specialized Bounty Hunter droids can be attached to your target to apply all manner of detrimental effects.
• All current existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.

Space PvP

• The existing PVP declaration space stations will be flagged as attackable by opposing PVP+ enemy faction members. These can be destroyed, and will respawn some period of time later. This will give players a chance to truly fight over and control a space zone.
• Player bounties will be enabled in space. Bounty Hunters will be able to hunt down and kill their targets in space as well as the ground.

PvP Decay (NOTE: Under investigation. Please give us some feedback.)

• Some items will decay on death in PvP. Eventually this decay will cause the item to be non-functional.
• Traders will be able to make repair kits. They will also be able to offer replacements for sale.
• Certain hard to get or unique items will be exempted from this system.

Non-Combat Targeting

• We will be doing a pass on non-combat targeting to allow easier movement of items in your house and other areas.

Publish 30

Officer Profession Enhancements

• All new extensive Officer-specific abilities
• Fire Base – Create a small forward fire base with a respawn point to direct your attacks
• Muster the Troops – Direct the attacks of AI troopers under your control.
• Reinforcement/Retreat – Call allies to you from across the world, or pull your team back to safety
• All existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.
• Improve Supply Drop
• Improve group buffs
• Enhance combat variety and proficiency

New and Improved GCW Bases

• All new player-placed PvP Galactic Civil War bases
• Brand new heavy weapon emplacements that all players can use to defend the bases
• E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster
• Mortar Emplacements
• Various manned turrets
• And more!
• Exciting new interior puzzles and obstacles to overcome
• All new base destruction dynamic with Officer-specific activity sets

More Heavy Weapons

• Players will be able to place and man new fixed heavy weapon emplacements, such as the E-Web.
• Enhance grenades and other items to use the heavy weapon targeting system.

Publish 31

Smuggler Profession Enhancements

• All new Smuggler-specific abilities
• Deceive – Ability to appear non-PvP while being PvP enabled (see below)
• Rig – Retrofit and overpower your starship while in flight
• Stash - Ability to open your bank from anywhere in the galaxy
• All existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.

Smuggler System

• Smugglers will be able to smuggle items and information between factional bases on the ground and in space
• Smugglers earn XP, faction (both sides), and credit for smuggling
• Smugglers will be hunted by other players while smuggling
• Smugglers will be able to sell the faction they earn to other players

Publish 32

Commando Profession Enhancements

• All new extensive Commando-specific abilities
• New combat abilities that can be used with heavy weapons
• Enhance demolition abilities including destruction of factional bases
• New Commando exclusive heavy weapons
• All existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.

Item Differentiation System

• Customize your profession abilities based on specific item attributes (Example: Power-up your force lightning by using a Force-focus amulet)
• Mix and match these items to specialize your character and make it different from other members of your profession

Trader Profession Enhancements

• All new ground reverse engineering system. This will have direct tie-ins to the item differentiation system described above. ( NOTE : We will be posting the design for the community well in advance.) (More details will follow on these later publishes, as we get closer to their release.)

Publish 33

Medic Profession Enhancements

• All new extensive Medic-specific abilities
• All current existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.

Power-Up Ability System

• New power-up ability system for all professions. Power-ups are basically a way that players will gain points through everyday activities. You'll be able to spend the points towards activating brand new types of special abilities.

Publish 34

Spy Profession Enhancements

• All new extensive Spy-specific abilities
• All current existing abilities will be examined and polished as well.

Basically, I underestimated their willingness and ability to change.

It's easy to guess why such fundamental rethinks have been applied to what were established titles and operational doctrine. Some, of course, immediately point to WoW and GW, two games that both achieved worldwide subscriptions that far exceed the combined total of all subscriptions SOE has reported across all of their games. The immediate implication here is that this was a "wake up call" to SOE. I'm sure this had a big impact on their thinking, but I don't think it was only this.

There's another factor here to consider. SOE was on top of the genre at a time when the genre was fairly niche. EQ1 was the king of all Western MMOGs during a time when people compared it to two, maybe three, other MMORPGs. This began to change with the launch of Dark Age of Camelot, and did so more as new titles went live. But the growth was slow enough for most to assume that the rate of growth for the genre was going to be forever a slow and steady incline with a relative trickling in of new players.

2005 proved everyone wrong. WoW and, later, GW not only appealed to existing genre veterans, but through strong brands, large global reaches, and innovative tweaks to long-standing game play concepts, attracted a very large number of gamers who had been avoiding MMORPGs altogether. Everything about these games is faster: faster game play, faster advancement, faster acquisition, faster more involved combat. And, most importantly, the games were content rich right away.

All of these elements are expected in other genres, but MMORPGs had largely stuck to the more plodding nature of combat-by-the-numbers (with some exceptions of course, particularly City of Heroes which is often overlooked because it wasn't the smash hit it I think it should have been).

Was SOE caught off guard? Yes, but only because a lot of people were caught off guard, from gamers to pundits to folks doing the actual work. With the launch of GW, there seemed to be a clear delineation between developers who were making games for veterans, and those making games for gamers.

For example, EQ2 was billed as a casual gamer's haven, a place for those who didn't like the arduous time requirements of EQ1. Yet, it took WoW to actually show what sort of time requirements the general gamer (not the nightly Raider or Battlegrounder) wanted to put up with.

In the end, I don't really blame them for not being able to make EQ2 the casual game they promised. This wasn't because of a lack of skill or talent. Rather, it was due to a misunderstanding of what "casual" really needed to be. There's two ways to deliver "casual":

• For veterans of the genre: Make a game lighter in requirements than previous games.
• For folks new to the genre: Make a game with requirements analog to other genres.

What SOE delivered was for #1. How the genre grew in 2005 is #2. Without the newer entrants into the genre, I don't imagine it would have grown by so many players in such a short period of time. The genre probably would have continued to grow at a steady, but slow, pace. But the new entrants are here, have redefined the rules, and I think the most direct result is things like the changes to SWG and EQ2.

And I say it's all good. That they have the willingness to learn from their misunderstandings and spend serious time and money to change things is a testament to their continued interest in providing these experiences to players. Other companies have cut and run long since.

I just hope they continue learning from recent events as well.

Star Wars Galaxies meanwhile is set in a nebulous time between Episode IV and Episode V and has been locked largely at the same moment in history up until around November 12th when the NGE was pushed to the live servers. And even then, the biggest indication that the timeline had taken a baby-step forward was in seeing Han Solo on Tansarii Point Station rather than still sitting in Nym's Stronghold on Lok handing out missions.

This stasis seems to be ending.

Yesterday, a rumour began to circulate that the timeline may be advancing in February.

And Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl, Community Relations Manager, has confirmed the rumor to be true (and I've updated the link):

I just double checked and to my surprise, I think we are nudging the timeline forward  You can find some info in the upcoming Producer Letter (will be out in January).

I am ecstatic about this announcement.

As you can imagine from my opening statement, I have longed for the timeline to move forward a bit since beta. The timeline is on the cusp of greatness itself, with critical events happening to all of the main characters, and the continuing consolidation of the Emperor's iron grip on the galaxy. And best of all, moving the timeline forward towards Empire Strikes Back introduces all manner of new and interesting content additions.

I have no idea what they will be, but here is my short wish list:

• Hoth- Ground zone. Ice world with snow. It may crush the graphics cards of computers the world over, but having a completely different season sure would be nice. That they would restrict this season to a single world is not strange either, since every planet ever shown in any Star Wars movie has only ever had one anyway too (Naboo's perpetual spring, Tatooine's perpetual summer, Coruscant's perpetual anesceptic non-season, Hoth winter, and so on). Introducing Hoth also gives the opportunity to introduce:
  • Snow Speeders. Ground vehicles only, so sort of like a buffed Landspeeder with a forward and rear-facing seat.
  • AT-AT. I can wish.
  • AT-ST. I can wish even more
  • New creatures, like Wompa.
• Bespin- Space zone. Being a gas giant, there is a lot of creative latitude SOE could take with the space engine. They could allow people to fly with limited mobility, and then zone into one of the floating cities as they would Tansarii Point Station (which is based on the ground engine). There is a lot to interact with in Bespin too, with all sorts of platforms and Tibanna Gas pirates and so on.
  • Twin Pod Skycar. Not my favorite vehicle, but it is relevant.
  • Super Star Destroyers. Heck, give me any Star Destroyers.
• Outer Rim- Space zone. Rebels could learn, through a series of quests, the location of the Rebel Fleet, which at around this time is amassing above the galaxy in the Outer Rim. This could also be a great PvP encounter system, where Rebels must defend the fleet from marauding Imperials.

• Same as above: more capital ships, with missions either in them (in ground instances) or around them (escort, defense, assault, etc.)

All in all, I am hopeful for some truly new and interesting content to come to SWG. It is a good thing for a game otherwise lost in a miasma of static commerce.

These three games are, effectively, fairly far apart on the span of MMO titles list. But being so different, they've highlighted a long-standing issue I've had with a facet of the world itself.

Some game's towns are all but lifeless.

And this isn't about player population. It's about how the cities are built. I'll use SWG as an example, because it's most obvious there. First I'll mention what I think, then I'll get into what I think could be done about it.

Observation

SWG has absolutely beautiful, and presumably licensor-approved, cities throughout the game. Coronet, Mos Eisley, Theed, capitals of basic worlds are built with exacting detail, showing more than has ever been described in any single movie, TV spot, nor novella. Even the secondary sub-cities, like Bela Vistal or Deeja Peak, and the tertiaries like Lake Retreat and Anchorhead are gorgeous in their consistency with established lore. They are perfect examples of what a Star Wars location would like, matching and extending the style of the movies, I'm sure the result of close partnering with the original creators.

But they are also mostly devoid of life.

Most buildings are shells, surface objects with texture maps and details. I'm not saying anything that hasn't already said when I say they feel like sets in a stage production. There are so many non-useful buildings in fact, this highlights those relative few that are.

Unfortunately, a lot of those useful buildings are the same too. You've seen one cantina, you've seen many of them. Same with starports, shuttle ports, bank/bazaar areas, hospitals, and so on. This isn't an issue of course, since I'm sure they, too, were considered factual iterations of lore. But to me, this factor drives a wedge between the two functions of sets in a virtual world:

1. Background ambience. Stuff to make you feel like you're there.
2. Foreground function. Stuff you use to forward your agenda.

All of this wouldn't matter except for one thing:

There is really no attempt to drive players back to these cities. Someone reading this who's played SWG may immediately think of the old Battle Fatigue system that required a Musician or Dancer to heal, and which needed to be headed in a cantina/tavern building. Even when that system was in place though, the proliferation of such environments was such that players were too spread out for this system to bring them back together anyway.

But not driving players back to these cities isn't really the main problem. That actually breaks down into a few areas:

• Lack of directed content. For two years, players were not consistently directed to many major places throughout the game. There was no WoW-like order of events that would lead them from their starting city to a new place and new places beyond in an organized fashion. As such, cities become sort of springboard points, a center connected to players through so many bungie cords until that city no longer supported the player. And it was entirely up to the player to decide when to cut the cord. The NGE changes are addressing this problem, but 30 months into a game that's long proven to have a still-dedicated core of fans, the ingrained culture is heavily conditioned by self-direction. Only a critical mass of converts and new arrivals will change that.
• Number of game worlds. Players once could choose from any of about 20 different places to first enter the game as a new character. This, probably, was based on the desire to give players choice and calculating the density of concurrent logins per server, reaching a balance between that and player density. However, it was quickly obvious that this was simply too many. The game has since started all new arrivals in Mos Eisley, and nowadays they all start on Tansarii Point Station in the tutorial (landing in Mos Eisley thereafter).
• Size of the game worlds. Each original planet is about 20km by 20km (not sure about Kashyyyk and Mustafar). 400 square kilometers is a lot of space in a game world without directed content. While providing far more than enough places to build houses, factories, harvesters, generators and eventually cities, it also resulted in a vast amount of empty space, including veritable seas of harvesters without another soul in site. It was rare to run into another player without planning it, and with the changes to the game, and the further spreading of players, it's even worse.
• Size of the cities. In the vastness of a world, even the cities were enormous. Some NPC cities are almost 4 square miles in size, rolling streets of lifeless facades, serving no more purpose than to remind players where they are. This isn't to diminish the artistry of course. The cities were obviously hand crafted with a great deal of care. But considering the amount of space they take up in the game world, they seem over done.
• Location of critical areas. Care was given to create social centers after a fashion. Generally a Starport is somewhere on one side of a city while Shuttleports are on another, cantinas near-ish the middle, banks/bazaars around another middle-ish area, and various useful tools like terminals spread all over. Unfortunately, there are too many of most of these elements spread far too far apart to bring players together as they should be.

The lack of game-directed objectives, the conditioned base of veteran players, the sheer size of the worlds and the cities within them, and the dichotomy between pre-NGE and post all conspire to perpetuate a dispersal of players into sparsely-populated social centers. Rightly or wrongly, this gives individual players the impression that the game is "dead", since it's very hard to imagine areas other than the ones they frequent being any more dense.

That's probably even true too, but not because the game is dead. Rather, there are so many small pockets of density that no largish pocket can even form.

So what can be done about it?

Thoughts

Even with the rise of hand-crafted quests, SWG still has lot of formula-driven encounters. Missions terminals, older NPC quests, and the procedural methods used to generate the game world work together to provide a dynamic experience. Only spamming a mission terminal exposes the underlying formula to it all, but at its heart, there's nothing wrong with formula-driven objectives.

Further, what separates SWG from games like Anarchy Online or City of Heroes is that most of SWG's formula-driven quests keep players in the persistent world, interacting with persistent elements, highlighting the purpose of a persistent game everyone is sharing. Meanwhile, AO and CoH, use instancing to bring players into boutique environments both created by formula (or chosen by one) and separate from the main persistent game.

However, what SWG isn't doing is driving players back into cities enough. Oh, if you pick up Bounty Hunter (or progressed through the Investigation line in the Bounty Hunter advanced profession of old), you were first directed to a Spynet Operative, an NPC that gave you required information. Or, maybe you took a small quest from a local NPC and were directed to another one, or a delivery mission from a terminal. But these are start in a city and end in the outdoors of a city, or in the land surrounding. Very few send you into structures, and all of the structures they send you two are among the relatively few that are accessible anyway.

What I'd love to see is this:

1. Instead of Mission Terminals just sending players 1km-2km away from the city into the countryside, making them look for lairs between the houses, send them deeper into the city, into the back alleys, into the basements, into the empty rooms that have no other purpose than to remind people that there's a lot of empty space and even more inaccessible objects. Why couldn't a NPC target be cowering in a sub-basement of the Anchorhead cantina? Why isn't there a secret meeting of the Black Sun organization in the 2nd sub-level of that little house in the north corner of Mos Eisley? Why do these places exist at all? For nuts like me who like opening every door?
2. Instead of NPCs in the countryside sending players further away, why not have them send players back into the city? Sure there's a few Entertainer-type NPCs telling players to perform shows at empty cantinas. Build upon that more. A Rebel encampment needs new supplies but can't risk losing their position, so asks a passersby to run into town and pick up some stuff from NPCs in secret meeting rooms.
3. Why aren't there entire lairs in town? A lair is just a lair after all. Change the lair model from a nest/rock to a building that matches the local architecture. It needs to be destroyed for whatever reason. With a number of hooks placed around town near existing places built to bring people together (starports, cantinas), these buildings can be dynamically placed. And if this idea isn't approved for lore/aesthetic reasons, then make them pipes, or downed pods, or something else that breaths life back into cities.
4. Destroy some cities. What a wonderful Act-like event (heck, what ever happened to Acts anyway?!). The Empire didn't always have the ability to destroy entire worlds. There's a tech tree even they had to follow, from magnifying glasses on ants through the Sun Crusher. It's not like they blew all their resources on the Death Star 2 either. Dozens of Super Star Destroyers, hundreds of regular ones, scores of thousands of crews on each, millions of troops, billions of combatants, and quadrillions of people all combine to have quite an impressive array of firepower. Pick a less-known city on a Rebel-aligned world. What about Moenia? What if there was a three week event that was an ever escalating Battle of Moenia? Players could aid either side, saving the place for a time, but ultimately having it get bombarded from orbit (you don't tell them you're planning this of course). Boom! Gone city, but done in a very memorable way.

On the one hand, that last idea sounds very pie-in-sky. After all, a not-insignificant amount of time and money was spent making these places. However, I contend that all that time and money has long since been paid for. The value of any particular building in SWG at this point is far less than it is in other games because there's so many of them. This extends to entire cities. Moenia may not be empty, but I chose it because it was a traditional Rebel stronghold. Pick a perpetually empty place, apply some Long Tail strategy to it, craft a relevant event around its planned demise, and give something players will talk about for years on end.

Mainly because it brought them together in the first place.

That is key. At this point, the endgame world of Mustafar seems to be funneling players as all endgame zones generally do. Kashyyyk has become a good stepping point too, for folks who've finished the first 30 levels of directed content and are in that area of devoidness pending more quests.

But there's dozens of old world cities all but forgotten save for the occasional Bounty Hunter sent there by the Bio Signature they receive. And, given the changeover from formula-created quests to hand-crafted ones, I fear this problem will only perpetuate.

In the end, how much it cost to develop content eventually becomes less important than how often its being utilized. Unused content is a waste of time to keep supported. All games revise things on occasion, in the hopes of spending less to refine existing content than they would creating new.

I think there's a way to hedge that though. Adjusting how the formula works to send players back into the cities may provide a perpetual solution to entertain players while the changeover continues in the hand-crafted arena. Further, even hand-crafted quests can sometimes turn off players, who maybe just want a cathartic near-farming like activity for a 30 minute period they have available to play. Mission Terminals have long filled this need very well.

I just think they could be used for that and to bring people back together.