The NGE – that is, Star Wars Galaxies’ New Game Enhancements, the patch that basically broke SWG, drove out most of the playerbase, and took years to recover from – turns 19 years old this fall. I apologize if that makes you groan inwardly because you were there and that’s a long time, but I swear I have a reason for pointing it out, and that reason is that we’re still using the term today.
If an MMORPG or multiplayer game does some sort of massive overhaul that is obviously bad and wrong and stupid and doomed, this genre still refers to it as an NGE moment, even people who never played SWG and barely know what the NGE was. (And those people do exist, bless their hearts; I saw somebody on Reddit asking what the CU and NGE meant just last week.)
We kinda need a new term; at this point, it’s super dated, and besides, I know there are some MMOs that screwed up way worse than SWG. Which MMO overhauls were actually worse than the NGE – and what would be a better term to describe them?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
