Originally Posted by
Stumplicker
Nothing wrong with SWTOR, but SWG was the closest you'll ever get to a graphical MUD. They had player housing, everything was a giant sandbox, the story and economy were driven entirely by the players, and that was awesome. Having talked with a few of the original devs, they can see where it all went wrong. The company panicked when the big theme parks released and tried to change directions about 85% of the way through development. So they've got the sandbox almost done and were forced to try to shoehorn linear progression into it instead of being a skill based open world sandbox. Then they just kept going down that route when WoW started dominating, just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole until the servers went down.
The engine also couldn't handle the eventual number of player buildings in range, which newer games now know and limit things like draw distance and number of pieces visible at any given time, et cetera. You still even with great internet connections all around get rubberbanding as a result in SWG.
The one I coded for was and is a Pre-NGE deal, that true sandbox experience. When I left we were right on the cusp of having the Jump to lightspeed space stuff implemented. It's probably there now. I'm gonna have to check it out again.