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I'm setting up an account again to play it.

Is anyone playing it? Have there been any big changes since the initial release of JTLS? Also, how do start my path to becoming a sith?

Yes, I play.
They recently changed the entire Combat System. They completely scrapped the old sysytem and started from scratch. It is a vast improvment over the old system. Its like playing a whole new game.

I am actually planning on picking up the total experince bundle (with all the expansions, plus the main game) this weekend. Don't know if it will be any good on my 56k though Recently, they completely redesigned the combat system, and changed a boat load of crap. Not sure on the details though.

What should I do about wanting to become a Sith? How can I start a path to learn the force?

Also, is that wookie expansion worth buying?

You can't be a Sith. You can be a Jedi, or a Dark Jedi. All becoming a Jedi involves, is a bunch of running around, and a shit load of grinding, then even more grinding. Being a Jedi sucks though. Half the player base hates you, the other half wants you to constantly wave your saber around infront of them. Being a Jedi in SWG is not worth the hassle, I know, I was one.

I quit playing before the Combat Revamp happened, and I wouldn't start playing again even if you paid me. So many bugs, so many exploits, the ecomony is a joke, the Galactic Civil War is a joke. The Jump to Lightspeed expansion is good, but pointless, there's no Content to it, at all. You can master a pilot profession in a day, then you can either hunt NPC ships, or try to PvP, which is also a joke, because it takes one, or two shots to destroy the other guy. Literaly.

My advice: Don't bother with SWG, the are better MMOs out there, like WoW, CoH, or something.

EDIT: Panzer, I was playing on 56k, and I only ever had a problem in the Geno Caves, when the spawn was borken.

I'm back in on Tarquinas. I haven't really 'jumped' back in like the rest of the guilde, but I will after the RoW hits store shelves.

Tarquinas is rather barren at the moment, not enough players on the sever.

You dont have to buy it in the store. RoW can be downloaded if you order it online and you can play almost immediatly (depending on your internet connection and how fast you can download it).

The version of ROW in the stores contains the original game, JTL, and RoW and you would probably have to set up another account.

Macross wrote:Yes, I play.
They recently changed the entire Combat System. They completely scrapped the old sysytem and started from scratch. It is a vast improvment over the old system. Its like playing a whole new game.

You should be warned that opinions on this vary *widely* ... for many, the game has really never been less playable, particularly because of the imbalance in PvP caused by the massive overpopulation of Jedi.

It's supposed to be set between Ep. III and IV, but Jedi are more common than cockroaches now .... the designers have abandoned the cardinal rule of MMORPG's -- never have an uber-class ... with predictable results.

Tarquinas is a ghost-town for a reason.

Between III and IV? I thought it was set between IV and V.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Between III and IV? I thought it was set between IV and V.

You're right, my bad.

Chmee wrote:

Macross wrote:Yes, I play.
They recently changed the entire Combat System. They completely scrapped the old sysytem and started from scratch. It is a vast improvment over the old system. Its like playing a whole new game.

You should be warned that opinions on this vary *widely* ... for many, the game has really never been less playable, particularly because of the imbalance in PvP caused by the massive overpopulation of Jedi.

It's supposed to be set between Ep. III and IV, but Jedi are more common than cockroaches now .... the designers have abandoned the cardinal rule of MMORPG's -- never have an uber-class ... with predictable results.

Tarquinas is a ghost-town for a reason.

Other servers are doing well. It just seams that Tarquinas is one of the least populated servers. But people have been coming back to the game since the CU.

You are right about Jedi, it annoys me to see Jedi walking through cities with lightsabers and in full Jedi robes... It just ruins the atmosphere of the game. It wouldnt be so bad if Jedi were balanced with the rest of the professions, with there own set of strengths and weaknesses. But some players seem to think that just because they are a Jedi they should automatically be "Uber", "Leet" and able to "pwn" every other combat profession. They dont seem to understand the concept of game balance.

Macross wrote:

Chmee wrote:

Macross wrote:Yes, I play.
They recently changed the entire Combat System. They completely scrapped the old sysytem and started from scratch. It is a vast improvment over the old system. Its like playing a whole new game.

You should be warned that opinions on this vary *widely* ... for many, the game has really never been less playable, particularly because of the imbalance in PvP caused by the massive overpopulation of Jedi.

It's supposed to be set between Ep. III and IV, but Jedi are more common than cockroaches now .... the designers have abandoned the cardinal rule of MMORPG's -- never have an uber-class ... with predictable results.

Tarquinas is a ghost-town for a reason.

Other servers are doing well. It just seams that Tarquinas is one of the least populated servers. But people have been coming back to the game since the CU.

You are right about Jedi, it annoys me to see Jedi walking through cities with lightsabers and in full Jedi robes... It just ruins the atmosphere of the game. It wouldnt be so bad if Jedi were balanced with the rest of the professions, with there own set of strengths and weaknesses. But some players seem to think that just because they are a Jedi they should automatically be "Uber", "Leet" and able to "pwn" every other combat profession. They dont seem to understand the concept of game balance.

In the original game design, Jedi were powerful, but there were strong mechanisms to control population (primarily perma-death for upper level Jedi) ... unfortunately the management caved to marketing pressures and tried to make Galaxies a mutant KOTOR, with Jedi still being powerful but without meaningful population controls .... which is, as you said, just killing game balance. Ultimately they'll probably adopt your approach and nerf Jedi down to just another character class, but that is SUCH a shame.

Chmee wrote:In the original game design, Jedi were powerful, but there were strong mechanisms to control population (primarily perma-death for upper level Jedi)

No Vader hunting you down?

MKSheppard wrote:

Chmee wrote:In the original game design, Jedi were powerful, but there were strong mechanisms to control population (primarily perma-death for upper level Jedi)

No Vader hunting you down?

Jedi freely wander the streets of Coronet and Theed and Mos Eisley waving their sabers around and talking smack .... Vader sits in a room somewhere doing jack.

Chmee wrote:Jedi freely wander the streets of Coronet and Theed and Mos Eisley waving their sabers around and talking smack .... Vader sits in a room somewhere doing jack.

That's just fucking bullshit! Where's the jedi kill squads?

MKSheppard wrote:

Chmee wrote:Jedi freely wander the streets of Coronet and Theed and Mos Eisley waving their sabers around and talking smack .... Vader sits in a room somewhere doing jack.

That's just fucking bullshit! Where's the jedi kill squads?

You think that's bad, you should check out the Rebels overtly hanging out at most spaceports, farming Stormtroopers for faction points. And AT-STs.

MKSheppard wrote:

Chmee wrote:Jedi freely wander the streets of Coronet and Theed and Mos Eisley waving their sabers around and talking smack .... Vader sits in a room somewhere doing jack.

That's just fucking bullshit! Where's the jedi kill squads?

Oh there are Jedi Kill squads...

As a Jedi uses Force Poweres or a Light Saber he becomes more "visible". Once a Jedi reaches a certain level of Visability, the name of Jedi will appear on the Bountry Hunter Mission terminals. A Bounty Hunter Player can then track the Jedi Player, and initiate combat. if he Kills the Jedi, he earns a large monetary reward, much larger then the normal non-player bounties. The higher level the Jedi, the higher the reward.

People would gather large groups and go out and hunt Jedi, but the Jedi complained and I think they changed, or are planning to change the system so that only a Bounty Hunter can fight a Jedi with no help from others.

A jedi should not be able to OPENLY CARRY OR DISPLAY THE TRAPPINGS OF A JEDI on any imperial world.

If he does he should immediately register as hostile for Imperial AI and appear on those mission terminals...

And Jedi players whining? Fuck them. They have to have some drawbacks.

Adding Jedi at all was a horrible idea, in my opinion.

If they have to be in the game at all, there should have been only a set number based on a very high ratio with the server population.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Adding Jedi at all was a horrible idea, in my opinion.

If they have to be in the game at all, there should have been only a set number based on a very high ratio with the server population.

They probably should have made Force Sensitivity (or rather the ability to become a Jedi) obtainable through randomly-aquired quests, dropped much in the same way as items. Now if Holocrons did more back in the day than simply tell you what profession you needed to get and weren't tradeable you could have a system where players would need to personally come across 10-12 rare items/quest initiators and complete their subsequent quest, with time sinks and long/complex objectives. Each would probably take dozens of hours over several weeks.

That way, not only is Jedi difficult to obtain (like a very rare armor set, plus the amount of time involved) but it's still technically obtainable by everyone (provided they're either lucky enough or spend massive amounts of time playing). It'd probably encourage grinding, but only in playing the game normally. The problem with hologrinding was it encouraged dropping skills and being constant new, which meant less master crafters around to build good items but more people burning through equipment while leveling and therefore higher demand for said items. It wrecked the economy.

And everything I've read of the combant revamp indicates they've mostly gutted the system, taking away the essentials of the game's core functions. The live development team has made it clear they don't know how to fix or add to the game, only how to break and remove functionality. Just look at how they 'fixed' the bug of mounts/vehicles randomly recalling: rather than fix the problem itself, they create a kludge by simply removing the restriction of calling a vehicle out of town. Convenient, but as expected it serriously took away the purpose of Scout tents allowing vehicle calling.

Some days I wish I could play whatever game the original designers had in mind, and that they actually wrote it down in more detail before going to beta.

I will agree with you that the Jedi were mishandeled from the begining, but I must disagree with your assesment of the Combat Upgrade. The people that tend to complain about the Combat Upgrade are the same people that were "Defense Stackers," the type could single-handedly single handedly solo a Krayt Dragon or any of the High-Level content.

During the original Beta for the game, they didnt fully test the Elite Professions. This is what gave us the Uber-Attribute Buffs, and 80% effective Composite Armor. That, coupled with certain profession and skill combinations, pretty much made players invinicble. Soon, everyone was the same profession, with the same skills, with the same Attribute Buffs, and all wearing the same armor.

I remember a time in PVP combat, I was a Rifleman/Commando facing off with one of these "Defense Stackers." We had the same level buffs, were wearing the same armor, and all I could do was helpless spam shot my most powerful weapon attack as he approached, I barely scratrched him, but he was able to incappacitated me and killed me in just a few hits. As a master of ranged combat, I couldnt touch this master of melee combat.

It was this sort of imbalance that lead to the Combat Upgrade, which rebuilt the system to give all elite professions an equal number of advantages and disadvantages.

You can no longer solo a Krayt-Dragon, you can no longer "Defense Stack" which is the way it should be. This new system alows for both engaging and interesting Single Player and Group experiance. This is the way it should be. Yeah, I will admit that the new sytem still has some bugs and kinks in the system to work out, but what new game doesn't? Thats what people should view the Combat Upgrade as, an entirly new game.

Macross wrote:I will agree with you that the Jedi were mishandeled from the begining, but I must disagree with your assesment of the Combat Upgrade. The people that tend to complain about the Combat Upgrade are the same people that were "Defense Stackers," the type could single-handedly single handedly solo a Krayt Dragon or any of the High-Level content.

During the original Beta for the game, they didnt fully test the Elite Professions. This is what gave us the Uber-Attribute Buffs, and 80% effective Composite Armor. That, coupled with certain profession and skill combinations, pretty much made players invinicble. Soon, everyone was the same profession, with the same skills, with the same Attribute Buffs, and all wearing the same armor.

I remember a time in PVP combat, I was a Rifleman/Commando facing off with one of these "Defense Stackers." We had the same level buffs, were wearing the same armor, and all I could do was helpless spam shot my most powerful weapon attack as he approached, I barely scratrched him, but he was able to incappacitated me and killed me in just a few hits. As a master of ranged combat, I couldnt touch this master of melee combat.

It was this sort of imbalance that lead to the Combat Upgrade, which rebuilt the system to give all elite professions an equal number of advantages and disadvantages.

You can no longer solo a Krayt-Dragon, you can no longer "Defense Stack" which is the way it should be. This new system alows for both engaging and interesting Single Player and Group experiance. This is the way it should be. Yeah, I will admit that the new sytem still has some bugs and kinks in the system to work out, but what new game doesn't? Thats what people should view the Combat Upgrade as, an entirly new game.

It's an entirely new game that's just as broken (if not moreso) than the old game. You can't seriously be telling me that combat professions are currently 'balanced' ... they're imbalanced in a new system.

Squad Leader, Smuggler, Bio-Engineer, Creature Handler, Commando ... those professions weren't helped a BIT by the C.U., they still have skill trees that 50%-75% useless and fundamentally bugged systems that cripple their playability. PvP and the Civil War ... it's a shambles that they don't seem to have a clue how to rescue.

The solution to defense stacking was always obvious and involved a few minor system tweaks, not scrapping and dumbing-down the entire combat system to make it more easily ported to consoles. Defense stacking has nothing to do with instituting ridiculous particle-effect cartoon animations to accompany combat actions, or putting little comic-book EQ-II graphics on the toolbar to replace perfectly functional SWG graphics.

I was never a defense-stacker and never sought an uber template ... hell, I was mostly Pistoleer-Creature Handler, that says it all! Most of the professions are more broken now than they were two years ago, but now the developers don't have 2 years of experience to use dealing with their bugged system, they basically are starting from scratch with a system that's more buggy than ever, meaning we're probably *another* two years away from having code that anybody would dare put on their resume.

Customers provided literally thousands of valid suggestions for tweaking the old system and improving it gradually over time ... instead, they did almost nothing to fix bugs for two years, then dumped an entire new game on customers that not only didn't resolve the old issues, but created new ones. Sorry, but for most of the people I know who braved it out and stuck with Galaxies to see what the C.U. delivered, they think it's more P.U. The one time they dared put up a public poll on the forums to gauge customer reaction, it was over 5-to-1 against the C.U. That one sure disappeared in a hurry.

Well, I'm really only playing this game as a break from CoH (which is a better and more stable game, IMO), and because I have a free month before I start my new job. This game is really buggy though...

Is the Wookie expansion worth buying?

I guess it depends on who you ask. I know that the people in my guild are more then thrilled with the CU. Yes, there are things that still need fixing, but overall my opinion is that the CU is a vast improvement over the old system.

I cant speak for the other professions, but I am currently a Commando, and I must say that the CU has vastly improved that particular profession. Most of the major issues with Commando were addressed with the CU. The only professions that I can see that were hurt by the CU were the entertainers which now have a few useless skill trees. But I do believe that those will be fixed in time.

The old system simply didnt work. It was unneccesairly complicated and probably would have required those thousands of fixes to become playable.

Is Squad Leader still useless?

And please tell me no one can solo AT-STs anymore?

And, most importantly, CAN YOU WEAR THE FUCKING IMPERIAL HAT?