Don't pay to be a beta tester
Written: Jul 03 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: graphics, excellent crafting, you can own a house in game
Cons: buggy, poor customer service, different worlds feature same creatures with different names
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend playing this MMORPG - once they have finished beta testing and implemented the promised features. They can use a little better customer service too.
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| patrickwest's Full Review: Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided for Windows |
When I was invited to be a beta tester on May 8, 2003 for Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) I felt like I had won the lottery. I had been waiting for my pre-paid copy of the game to arrive well before the original "fall 2002" promised date. I was looking forward to the extremely hyped game that included player controlled cities and a much better focus on in game economy and crafting, as apposed to "hack and slash" advancement. Beta 3 kept me busy with lots and lots of bugs to report. When Sony Online Entertainment (SoE) and Lucas Arts said they would release the game on June 25th I was shocked, but I hoped for the best.
I received my SWG on the 26th and was extremely disappointed. I can't say who (Lucas Arts, SoE, or anyone) is responsible for the debacle that was launch day as their customer service acts as a barrier to support, instead of providing solutions or addressing issues. I received more, "we have no idea" and "just try again" after hours of "trying" and "thank you for calling *click*" than I ever thought was possible. They (whoever they are) promised to credit our free 30 days for the initial day that thousands and thousands of us spent trying simply to register and login.
Once in, I the disappointment continued. Bugs in the system remained. There was even a return of bugs that had seemingly been solved in beta like the user interface (UI) not saving - causing players to reset all their F-key preferences, and relocating their heads up controls every time they logged in. Several of the missions are still spawning their targets in walls, rendering them unable to be completed - or not spawning their targets at all. Some of the in-game help text that attempts to show what different interfaces do still come up as programming code.
These minor bugs were not as disheartening as when everyone was kicked off a server for an apparently planned outage without any in-game warning. All thousands of players saw was a large bubble saying "Connection to SWG lost" ... a now familiar and common sight. When we returned hours and hours later we found our character about three hours younger - complete with the loss of credits, experience, materials, and items that we had spent hours trying to accumulate. The Customer Service Representatives (CSR) in the chat room for the game had a lot of "they this" and "they that" ... but nothing of comfort or assistance. It was basically, "hey, sorry, live with it" with a real nice customer service smile.
One of the biggest features I was looking forward to was the rich in-game economy. However, as I had learned earlier in beta 3, there was a heavy reliance on having to go out and 'hunt'. As it turns out, this boring part of the game is made all the more mundane by the fact that several creatures you would hunt on one planet are the same creatures on other planets with different names and maybe some stat changes. It is particularly more painful because "they" have decided to make non-destroy missions pay very little, forcing those who would not like "hack & slash" out in the bush.
Unfortunately, the largest disappointment was the "delay" of promised features which make this MMORPG different than others, namely player controlled cities, mountable animals and player vehicles. SoE/Lucas says these things will be added later, some estimate a few months, but some estimate 6 months to a year. If "they" live up to their history it will take significantly longer than "they" estimate.
I felt so bad about being in "beta 4" and having the honor of paying $14.95 a month for the privilege that I decided to pass up the opportunity. I was unable to cancel my account on the "account" feature of the installed software as described in the user's guide as it was not operational. I called the long distance number provided in the book and was told to call a different long distance number for SWG support. I waited about 5 minutes before my call was answered. I found out that the promised one day credit for the initial horrible day had not been credited to my account - something the CSR on the line apparently was unable to fix. I explained that I wanted to cancel my account, which he did quickly. I asked if they were at all interested in knowing why I wanted to cancel and he curtly said, "no - that's all we need".
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
patrickwest
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Reviews written: 1
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