The Downward Spiral

So I got it all installed, reupped my subscription, got in the game, and was instantly irritated… here’s what I told Al

From: Nick Mossie 
Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 09:51:16 -0500
To: Al Harris 
Subject: Re: SWG

so ya.. I dunno..

Bounty Hunter still has only 4 shots and 2 traps a heal and something
about 'gift of the elders' that we get cuz we are old.

I got all my rewards for the past 2 years of not playing, decked out my
yact ship some more (all the old decorations were still there), realized
how totally out of space I was, and then took about 10 minutes trying to
figure out how to get back in the pilot so I could grab the joystick and
land. (/pilot .. total guess.. sitting back in the pilot's chair is not
good enough.. which I tried to do for another 10 minutes before that)

When I landed I realized that Theed was totally fucking empty.  I
checked the galatic civil war status from the recruiter and he said it
was 0 to 0 on that planet.. so .. nobody was there.. I think I saw 2
people total.. ghost town.

I checked my imperial rank, and I'm a private... wtf?  I should be WAY
higher than that.. but I wasn't.  But I did check my accomplishments and
everything looked pretty ok there... still I thought I should have some
more in there tho... but maybe not.

All the new screens look like total crap BTW.. all the stats pages...
just ugly...  

So I took a mission from an imp terminal.... I went out to kill some
stuff.. it was 2000m away... took forever to remember that my vehicles
where in my datapad, which are in the same thing as waypoints (K)...
almost quit right there cuz no way was I gonna walk that far... but I do
have like 13 million credits.. so I could have just bought shit.

So I hopped on my bike and head out... got to the destination... killed
2 of the 3 people there with the assistance of my almost totally
worthless droids (I'd send them in to attack, while prone, and out of
range, and the guys would run at LIGHTNING SPEED up to me and shoot me),
and then got incap'd 3 times and cloned back to Theed by the captain.

Overall I felt like I had no idea what was going on.

I didn't know if my shit was still as good as it was or not.

I was very turned off by the combat.  There's no auto attack (by
default).. you right click on the guy (furiously!!) to shoot your base
shot.. it's like a FPS, only shitty..  really shitty.  You can shoot
your power shots like 4 times and then you are out of stamina.. and if
you are only auto-attacking you are totally dead.. cuz somehow the bad
guys will just dominate you... these were yellows.  We are level 80 and
there's up to level 90.

I didn't have ANY expertise in there tho.. I just opted to not spend
those points yet.. so that might make a (huge) difference... there are
mods for

I did just find this... turning on auto attack  

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/guides.vm?id=80115

so.. I'll have to try again later.. basically I thought I should have
been able to totally destroy those guys I fought.. if my droids just
suck now, then I guess I can deal with that... and if I have to get new
shit I can deal with that too.

I'm still worried about the lack of players.. but maybe everyone is just
somewhere else.. I dunno.

I turned off auto-renew for next month... let me know how it goes for
ya.

I canceled my subscription right after that… the next day I thought maybe I was a little hasty.. so I tried again.. it got a little better. Again.. to Al…

ok.. so.. SIGNIFICANT different with all your expertise in there  

controls are a little fucked up still... you can't click to target and
then click and hold to bring up the radial... everything triggers on
only 1 click, no double clicks.. kinda sucks from how it was, but you
can work around it.

I tried space… my joystick was spinning in infinity.. probably broken.. so that sucked. And then it took me forever to find out how to put shit back on the skill bar. So my previously totally awesome ship was now getting me owned by a single A-Wing… and I was still all alone in space.. literally no one there.

I did some Bounter Hunter missions.. I knocked out those in my backpack (the ones they give you per level).. they were really easy cuz I was so much higher. I tried the regular bounty hunter missions from the terminal and I got fucking owned.. after traveling to Dathomir, getting a probe droid, and going 5k out in to NOTHING… and he was in the water… he incapped my twice…

so I quit.. went back to the Science Outpost, and saw a Master Jedi there. I checked out his stats.. he was totally awesome.. done so much.. and all that.. so.. some people out there really like this game still… since after it became terrible.

Kludgy. That’s how I think of the entire game now. One big cluster fuck.

So the next day I got back in to Guild Wars and I was reminded of how games should be. I love you GW.