To Whom It May Concern:

As a vetern of many MMORPG’s and a Star Wars fan, I wanted to take this time to express my extreme dissatisfaction with Star Wars: Galaxies and Sony Online Entertainment. As a fan of MMORPG’s and Star Wars, I feel it is a total embarassment on behalf of LucasArts and SOE to release a game to the general public that after 3 months of release, is still clearly not ready for prime time.

My complaints are as follows, Content, bugs, balance issues and cost to fun ratio. First off and tops on my list is the simple lack of content. Granted, SOE has created a game in which the world of Star Wars comes to life on the computer screen. However, they failed to capture any of the rich scripting or story lines / quests that Lucas made famous in the movies or various books. The lack of any quests or content beyond a “story arc” is pathetic. It has made this game a boring, hack and slash or click and craft game for progression only.

Second is the bugs… Bugs plague any MMORPG but there has been a bastardization of what is a bug and what is a player exploit. From not listening to their player base, many of whom were beta testers (including myself) to calling a bug in which damage calculations were misentered a player exploit is downright upsetting. Lack of simple consistent patch notes, hotfixes to fix game balance issues, mis-representing “fixes” for nerfs, all are rookie mistakes that SOE should have known about.

Third is the balance issues and broken classes. It became very clear, after launch, that the developers of SWG and SOE were concerned with one thing and one thing only. Longevity. The player base that signed up for this game, out played, out guned and found every hole in this game within a matter of days, if not weeks. Characters where maxxed out on skill points in a matter of weeks, leaving them to push the boundaries of character classes. In response, the devs attempted to slow progression in classes down, but only weekened the most played classes, ie Creature Handler, stating that it wasn’t meant to be a fighting class. They implemented a “test server” environment, but failed to listen to the rare person who would pay for the priviledge of testing SOE’s nerfs.

Fourth, given the fact that for the last three months, this game has remained in beta stage, whether they want to call it that or not. This game is far closer to what they wanted to launch then what they launched 3 months ago. One could easily say that the last 3 months have been a public paid beta. Well, at 14.95/month and 49.99 for the game… That is too much to have to pay to suffer through the last 3 months. There is nothing fun about waiting to see what SOE and SWG will do in the next patch to make your gaming experience tougher, harder or less fun.

However, if you want to pay to continue to test and help nerf a game that has a ton of potential but fails miserably in listening to its paying customers demanding content, fun and consistent, accurate communications… Well, Star Wars Galaxies is for you.

But for this former Beta Tester and former player of SWG… I’m done. For now. Maybe in 3-6 months Star Wars: Galaxies will be worth playing, but for now, I’m cutting my losses and devoting my time to other fun diversions…