Originally Posted by
Armourboy
When it comes to SWG, it had some things about it that you still can't in an MMO today and those things are what people want so much in a modern MMO.
Customization out the ying yang. One of the best things they did do was give you an insane amount of freedom with how you chose to play. Yes it created an unsolveable balance nightmare, but people love playing as a tailor pistoleer, or a Pikeman chef, or heck even the TKM/Fencer builds. You could be all out combat one day, and more of a money maker the next, it was just a matter of what you wanted to do.
The crafting system. Why on earth someone hasn't duplicated it is beyond me, it just blows my mind that in todays MMO's we are still stuck doing the same basic crafting thats been around for the last 20 years. Its boring and unless it has something super OP its completely worthless. I would bet if you talked to most people that played it the first thing that would come out of their mouth is something about the crafting system or economy.
The other biggy is the social system. You were required to interact and depend on others. Whether it was healing, bulk mats for crafters, a guy to repair that gear, or just your favorite dancer in the cantina you interacted with people. While SWG did have its share of asses, they generally were on a short leash. At some point they were going to need something from someone, and if your name was mud then good luck. Everyone had their short list of other players they relied on for something, and it brought the server together. No other MMO has managed to do that so well.
Just for me, the perfect MMO would be Pre-CU SWG with the bugs fixed, things balanced out a bit better, and Jedi turned into basically its own mini game ( basically you fight other jedi and maybe BH's, and can interact in PvE with other players but thats about it). Added to that would have been things like quests, not just for leveling but to be updated to give the game a direction and flow. Things like raids could be added for awesome stuff that didn't give you a massive advantage ( Jet pack is still probably the most epic thing I've ever seen crafted in an MMO) and were fun.
Its obviously just my opinion, but to me you really can't say the Sandbox games just have a smaller base. Why? Cause name the last really well done Sandbox game. TBH I don't really think anyone truely knows just how good they could do because we haven't truely had a good one.
I've said it for years though, the company that figures out how to combine sandbox and theme park into one game and it work well, will make the numbers WoW has seen seem small.
---------- Post added 2012-11-12 at 12:22 PM ----------
Actually we don't, we more than anyone else knows just how bad the game was. The problem is so many people try to throw the entire thing out like every single aspect of it was bad. The stuff they got right is what people talk about today fondly. Trust me, we remember just how bad the rubberbanding was, or how stupid it was that you could buff up and solo anything, or that you could pretty much build and untouchable fighter. We remember that they had to remove corpse running because it was so buggy they could never get it to work and we remember the servers going down 40 times a week because they were a mess.
We don't overlook that stuff, we just don't point it out because by now everyone should know how bad it was because they game is now gone.