Right... yeah, a single place in the game is an accurate measure of the population. Get real.
I stopped reading your post around there. Educate me? LOL.
It's not about getting a total count for the population from one spot, it's about recoginizing that in any social game there are going to be hotspots. Pre-CU had the Dantooing mining outpost, for example. It wasn't the only one, but if the server was busy you could be the MO was busy.
You're telling me that you can't log onto one of these "heavy" servers (which in your opinion are just as "heavy" as pre-CU standards) and find a single place where there are a large number of people, large enough where you won't get laughed off of the forums by people who remember the pre-CU mining outpost on a "light" server?
You're telling me that somehow SOE has created a social game which, if I'm to believe the hype on Chapter 6, encourages grouping
yet there are no social hotspots in the game? And you're telling me I'm the one coming up with conspiracy theories?
It just shows that you are unable to directly refute my logic, therefore you use round-a-bout arguments. You have yet to refute one point that I posted. Therefore, you fail. Please try again when you can put down your rage and actually think logically rather than use your rage to fuel your posts.
Trust. How would past players feel if Lucas Arts established direct control over the new "historic" servers and leave the NGE in Sony's hands? They may have the same tech support, but establish control over fixes and other aspects as they do over creative control of the Star Wars licence? Second topic that was brought up (and totally off topic mind you) is the server levels once again. There maybe those that are labeled heavy, but without actual counts being established both before and after the changed, there is no way to certify what the terms mean, either before or after. And with the way things have been handled, we have no way to guarentee that the level before that is tracked as "heavy" is the same amount as now. Without Sony actually listing subscriber details to the public, and the fact that IF subscriber base was hiugher now than before they would say so tells me that the numbers have probably changed. Seeing that it is also common practice on other games to do so. Thank you again for your time
First off, LA is just as much to blame as SOE (both Smed and the board of directors) for NGE. Anyone who says otherwise is ignoring all the issues at hand, and blatantly directing their hate against SOE. LA has direct control of anything that falls within Star Wars franchise. Heck, LA IS the Star Wars franchise. Therefore, they give out contracts to other companys to develop games that LA themselves do not want to develop. Thus, if LA wants something changed, they have full authority to do so or revoke the contract (which would kill SWG) at the end of such contract. Therefore, LA has a TON of leverage, and if SOE wants to continue with SWG, they will do what LA demands. Thus, I believe more that LA demanded that SWG wasn't "Star Warsy" enough, therefore demanded a change with some "recommendations". Therefore, I believe LA is more to blame than SOE.
So, on that note, LA has to give the OK for the "historic" servers to ever appear. And, if LA thought pre-CU was not "Star Warsy" enough back then, then I seriously doubt they would change their mind now.
And, your population comment... I agree with everything until the very end. A company does not have to give out population information. It is strictly up to them if they want to or not. If a company suddenly decides that they do not want to provide that information, then it is their right. To say that they are not posting such information shows that "the game has lower population" is just blatant speculation without real proof to back it up. It means absolutely nothing, but the NGE-haters use this information to try and further their goals to destroy SOE.
Well, the last bit is about how buisnesses run in general with the following ideal.
If it is good news, spread the word loudly, often and as wide as you can. If it is bad news, stay silent.
And I look at the MMO world in general.
If the subscriber base is going up, they usually mention it in news to help drive popularity (by the "everyone else is doing it, so should you" advertising canmpaign aka WoW right now with the 8 million and going subscriber base). If it starts to fall, it goes silent on it's population base and focus on other styles of advertisements in order to drive subscribers. I have also seen the previous mentioned "hot fix" happen on other MMOs where without any noticible change in player base, it goes from all light servers to some heavy, medium and light overnight without cause except for the possibility of a change on how they count that. Yes, speculation, but I believe it fits. The higher the pop rating (perferably in the high medium to low High) the more people will go there to play with other people.
Example being when I first started to play MMO X, each area, on medium population, would spawn "copy" areas if it got too crowded in one particular area. At medium, it would be generally 1-4 areas on the server with copies. Said MMO X had double XP weekend. Even though the population was medium to high, I did not see a sigle area "copy" itself. This leads me to believe what they have concidered "medium" and "high" population has changed, in order to help drive the perception of popularity.
Now, with all that has happened with SWG, I think it is in the "highly probable" catagory that the population rating has also changed here.
Now, back to the SOE/LA responcibility debate that has been brought up. As an outsider looking in as I am, I can honestly say the perception of who is responcible for NGE, as well as historically details (not hard facts to be honest) points the blame, from the fan base perspective, into SOE's lap conciderably more than LA. I also note most of those who are vowing not to return until X happens, usually state that SOE has to change, not LA. Both companies didn't remember the coke rule of changing things. (insert clever comment of New Coke here). With that being said, the fan base, as a whole, feels that SOE is responcible for the deception and mismanagement, because they are the ones who writes the game and the code, while LA is in charge of approving/disapproving concepts. LA probably approved a shift from the old game into NGE, but I bet how it was handled, including the bait and switch, was in SOE's hands. The coders/developers (and I guess the people dispensing info about the game) all are SOE. I don't think I recall any of the bad info ever directly coming from a LA personel, just SOE. If I am wrong, I would love to hear and see where.
I hope this clears a few things up and inspires some new, constructive thought on the subject.
It just shows that you are unable to directly refute my logic, therefore you use round-a-bout arguments. You have yet to refute one point that I posted. Therefore, you fail. Please try again when you can put down your rage and actually think logically rather than use your rage to fuel your posts.
Your "logic"?
You refuse to provide any evidence to back your point. If anyone is using "round-a-bout" arguments, it's you. All you need to do to provide a basis for your assertion is to snap one screenshot of a social hotspot, but you won't. Instead, you come up with hypotheticals describing how the game has changed so dramatically that no such social hotspots exist, a first for MMOG's. Good grief, even when I played Motor City Online with all of it's 600 peak concurrent users per server, there were social hotspots.
No one here is buying what you're selling. Post the screenshot, provide other concrete evidence to refute what others are saying, or accept the fact that we're all dealing in assumptions grounded in experience (in the abscence of hard numbers from SOE) and quit acting as if somehow your assumptions are themselves fact.
Oh, I forgot to mention one other factor in the server player level equasion that's an honest factor. Coding.
The more coding each player requires to play on a server, the fewer players per server that can be handled before chronic lag sets in. This too is a honest adjustment that comes naturally with the more content that is added to a game, without upgrading the servers of course.
Concidering NGE is a game built on a game, I think that probably affected how many players/server that can be handled conciderably and can be a contributing factor to the heavy now being nowhere near what heavy was at launch.
PS......look at the number of servers that are "heavy"!!
PS..... SOE changed the criteria for the number of players that defines a "heavy" server years ago. A post-NGE "heavy" server doesn't hold a candle to a pre-CU "light" server. Have fun in your ghost town.
I hear this argument by the NGE-haters a lot, yet I see no proof to back it up. Sounds to me like you are grasping at straws with your conspiracy theories. The "proof" you demand is subscription numbers from SOE, which they will never give. Back in May 2005, my main server Corbantis went from being "Light" to "Medium" or "Heavy" literally overnight with a hot-fix. There was NO visible change in the number of people playing. Not only were server load ratings altered on at least one occasion, but a red name also confirmed it on the official forums shortly after - even going so far as to specify which numbers gave which ratings. This debate comes up a lot, and I always feel like kicking myself for not having screen captured that dev post.
Right... yeah, a single place in the game is an accurate measure of the population. Get real.
I stopped reading your post around there. Educate me? LOL.
It's not about getting a total count for the population from one spot, it's about recoginizing that in any social game there are going to be hotspots. Pre-CU had the Dantooing mining outpost, for example. It wasn't the only one, but if the server was busy you could be the MO was busy.
You're telling me that you can't log onto one of these "heavy" servers (which in your opinion are just as "heavy" as pre-CU standards) and find a single place where there are a large number of people, large enough where you won't get laughed off of the forums by people who remember the pre-CU mining outpost on a "light" server?
You're telling me that somehow SOE has created a social game which, if I'm to believe the hype on Chapter 6, encourages grouping
yet there are no social hotspots in the game? And you're telling me I'm the one coming up with conspiracy theories?
It just shows that you are unable to directly refute my logic, therefore you use round-a-bout arguments. You have yet to refute one point that I posted. Therefore, you fail. Please try again when you can put down your rage and actually think logically rather than use your rage to fuel your posts.
Here's logic.
Smedley admits the NGE is a mistake and people "voted with their feet."
Even using a conservative business model (i.e. what ownedyou said) Torres states 20% left. ONE-FIFTH of a population is gone. Yet ownedyou clearly misread it simply in that of those who remain, 80% were vets, and only 20% were new customers. The already anemic SWG subscriptions were not pulled in by the newcomers that they thought they would get. Hence it was a mistake.
If server loads were really "heavy" compared to the good old days, there would be no reason to claim the NGE is a mistake. In the business world, it's not a mistake if it is an improvement.
Concurrently, two things occurred: (1) SOE admitted the population was down, and (2) the server load estimates at the character creation window went UP on many servers (from light to medium; medium to heavy). These two facts cannot possibly be reconciled if one assumes that "heavy" has had a fixed cutoff of a certain number of active accounts for a given server. However, they CAN be reconciled if (and only if) one assumes that SOE has changed that cutoff. For example (making up numbers), if 5,000 accounts/server was heavy before NGE, and 2,000 is heavy now, then what used to be called "Light" might well be called "heavy." This only changes what you call it -- not how many people are logged in.
There's no other way to reconcile the fact that at a time when they admitted server loads were going down, the login window had them going up. So, they had to be changing the definition of light, heavy, moderate, etc.
In a previous post, I talked about a lot of the reasons why vets were so pissed off. Now, I want to suggest a few things SOE could do that would go a long way. There will always be those who are either so jaded by something, or just love to start fights that they will always bash SOE. (The former because of injustice, the latter just because he likes to fight.) Nor do I (being realistic) think SOE will do this. However there is at least a chance. Smedley and the devs have stated they want to reach out to the vets, do a real effort on bringing them back to this game. Here's one way they can do it. 1.) Apologize for your "mistake." Smedley has admitted the NGE was a mistake. In whatever way is for the moment irrelevant. What happened with the NGE Smed admits was wrong. There's no longer any debating this. Yet if something is a mistake, you admit that what you did was wrong. The only logical conclusion is to apologize for committing that wrong. Otherwise, you are even more repugnant. At least before the admission, you were not admitting guilt, hence you had no need of atonement. Now you are admitting guilt, and without atonement, there is no chance at redemption. This doesn't imply Smed needs to get on his knees before the vets and cry mea cupla, begging for their mercy and absolution. That's absurd. What Smedley can say is that: "at the time, we thought the sweeping changes were the right thing to do, to reverse the trend in the game that was heading downhill. We were wrong, and I apologize to the veterans who cancelled as a result of this." For good measure, he can even throw in that one cannot "turn back the clock" and magically roll back to (insert favorite publish here). 2.) reach out to vets on how to improve the game. Announce a real olive branch to vets. Announce that they wish to assemble a group of vets from the pre-cu days who are not with the game to offer advice on how to bring back vets. In order to prevent this from clashing with those currently enjoying the game (at least most the clashing) bring together those current players. Have them send an email with a ceertain word amount of why they belong on this panel. 3.)addition to this, offer those veterans willing to return a real free trial. None of this 14 day crap. Vets who can demonstrate they played before, and are willing to work extensively on offering suggestions once this trial has ended should be offered at least one month of free playing time, to really play the game and come up with proposals. 4.)Invite the vets to a seat at a table. After this free trial period has expired, announce a live IRC chat between Smedley, SOE Devs, and the players who went through this trial and those selected to discuss ways to improve the game. I don't care how much you need to control it by only allowing certain opinions, time limits and such, just find some public way to have this discussion. I'm sure MMORPG.com's chat room will be available. (end shameless promo for the site I have worked for lol) That's four things mentioned, without making one change. I do think a good amount of vets would be willing to come forth (especially the intelligent articulate vets who want nothing but the best for SWG). Of course they will have to say your proposals are no gaurentees. But if they want to woo the vets back, they can start by LISTENING to them. Here's a great first step down that path I believe.
There are three things it would take to bring me back. Smedley's head on a pike, a spear up Torres' backside, and a 6 month free subscription as part of an offical apology package to include at least restoring the game to a CU environment (PRE-CU preferred).
We know that the last one for SOE is clearly impossible so I guess I am out of luck; however if the first two would increase subscription levels in widowed female gamers between the ages of 80 and 90 I am sure SOE would jump right on it.
In a previous post, I talked about a lot of the reasons why vets were so pissed off. Now, I want to suggest a few things SOE could do that would go a long way. There will always be those who are either so jaded by something, or just love to start fights that they will always bash SOE. (The former because of injustice, the latter just because he likes to fight.) Nor do I (being realistic) think SOE will do this. However there is at least a chance. Smedley and the devs have stated they want to reach out to the vets, do a real effort on bringing them back to this game. Here's one way they can do it. 1.) Apologize for your "mistake." Smedley has admitted the NGE was a mistake. In whatever way is for the moment irrelevant. What happened with the NGE Smed admits was wrong. There's no longer any debating this. Yet if something is a mistake, you admit that what you did was wrong. The only logical conclusion is to apologize for committing that wrong. Otherwise, you are even more repugnant. At least before the admission, you were not admitting guilt, hence you had no need of atonement. Now you are admitting guilt, and without atonement, there is no chance at redemption. This doesn't imply Smed needs to get on his knees before the vets and cry mea cupla, begging for their mercy and absolution. That's absurd. What Smedley can say is that: "at the time, we thought the sweeping changes were the right thing to do, to reverse the trend in the game that was heading downhill. We were wrong, and I apologize to the veterans who cancelled as a result of this." For good measure, he can even throw in that one cannot "turn back the clock" and magically roll back to (insert favorite publish here). An apology would go a long way to healing old wounds. In addition, SOE would need to state that never again would they implement such radical changes to core design of any mmo. The vets left because their hard work invested in their toons was destroyed. It will be difficult after two major revamps to trust SOE not to do so again. The one cardinal rule of MMO's is never change the core essence of the game. Hopefully SOE has learned this. An apology wont be enough for some vets though and SOE should understand why. It was bad enough that SOE lied to us but LA and SOE went on national television and made fun of the vet community. Poking fun at your player base because theyre so passionate isnt something easily forgiven.
2.) reach out to vets on how to improve the game. Announce a real olive branch to vets. Announce that they wish to assemble a group of vets from the pre-cu days who are not with the game to offer advice on how to bring back vets. In order to prevent this from clashing with those currently enjoying the game (at least most the clashing) bring together those current players. Have them send an email with a ceertain word amount of why they belong on this panel. 3.)addition to this, offer those veterans willing to return a real free trial. None of this 14 day crap. Vets who can demonstrate they played before, and are willing to work extensively on offering suggestions once this trial has ended should be offered at least one month of free playing time, to really play the game and come up with proposals. 4.)Invite the vets to a seat at a table. After this free trial period has expired, announce a live IRC chat between Smedley, SOE Devs, and the players who went through this trial and those selected to discuss ways to improve the game. I don't care how much you need to control it by only allowing certain opinions, time limits and such, just find some public way to have this discussion. I'm sure MMORPG.com's chat room will be available. (end shameless promo for the site I have worked for lol) That's four things mentioned, without making one change. I do think a good amount of vets would be willing to come forth (especially the intelligent articulate vets who want nothing but the best for SWG). Of course they will have to say your proposals are no gaurentees. But if they want to woo the vets back, they can start by LISTENING to them. Here's a great first step down that path I believe. The problem with inviting us to voice our opinions and offer suggestions on bringing back the vets is we've done this several times in the past. I was personally invited to many summits, to test the CURB, to offer my input on CU fixes, asked about other issues, etc. Take a look at the smuggler forums when we were asked for our input. It was a slap in the face. I spent a lot of money to attend the Celebration 3 SWG breakfast in Indianapolis. My input did nothing to stop the CU. My opinions werent valued regardless of my devotion to the game I had played since Beta 2. I have tried expressing my opinions on SWG forums. I got a lifetime ban for my troubles. I spent 2.5 years offering my money, passion, love, and devotion to Star Wars Galaxies and in the end SOE told me they didnt care about me. They were after a different target market...one that wanted an easier game, one that wanted levels and such similiar to World of Warcraft. If SOE wants me back, only one thing will really work....CLASSIC SERVERS. I will settle for nothing else. I dont want an NGE+CU version. I dont want to try and figure out how to tweak the UI and other things so its similiar to the old game. And these classic servers must not allow character transfers. I want clean fresh new servers where we are all equal. Allowing transfers will only corrupt the economy. The time for talk is over, no more summits, no more fanfests, no more breakfast+meet the dev garbage. Give us what we want if you want us back SOE...fresh classic servers. I will settle for nothing less.
1. A serious, sincere apology for the NGE. 2. 90 days free for all returning vets (accounts that were activated pre NGE) 3. Free expansions for the returning vets, if they don't already own all of them 4. Classic servers for us to play on, along with a promise that what is there will never be fundamentally altered again.
NOTHING short of that stands a snowball's chance in hell of being even slightly effective.
Comments
I stopped reading your post around there. Educate me? LOL.
It's not about getting a total count for the population from one spot, it's about recoginizing that in any social game there are going to be hotspots. Pre-CU had the Dantooing mining outpost, for example. It wasn't the only one, but if the server was busy you could be the MO was busy.
You're telling me that you can't log onto one of these "heavy" servers (which in your opinion are just as "heavy" as pre-CU standards) and find a single place where there are a large number of people, large enough where you won't get laughed off of the forums by people who remember the pre-CU mining outpost on a "light" server?
You're telling me that somehow SOE has created a social game which, if I'm to believe the hype on Chapter 6, encourages grouping
It just shows that you are unable to directly refute my logic, therefore you use round-a-bout arguments. You have yet to refute one point that I posted. Therefore, you fail. Please try again when you can put down your rage and actually think logically rather than use your rage to fuel your posts.yet there are no social hotspots in the game? And you're telling me I'm the one coming up with conspiracy theories?
So, on that note, LA has to give the OK for the "historic" servers to ever appear. And, if LA thought pre-CU was not "Star Warsy" enough back then, then I seriously doubt they would change their mind now.
And, your population comment... I agree with everything until the very end. A company does not have to give out population information. It is strictly up to them if they want to or not. If a company suddenly decides that they do not want to provide that information, then it is their right. To say that they are not posting such information shows that "the game has lower population" is just blatant speculation without real proof to back it up. It means absolutely nothing, but the NGE-haters use this information to try and further their goals to destroy SOE.
Well, the last bit is about how buisnesses run in general with the following ideal.
If it is good news, spread the word loudly, often and as wide as you can. If it is bad news, stay silent.
And I look at the MMO world in general.
If the subscriber base is going up, they usually mention it in news to help drive popularity (by the "everyone else is doing it, so should you" advertising canmpaign aka WoW right now with the 8 million and going subscriber base). If it starts to fall, it goes silent on it's population base and focus on other styles of advertisements in order to drive subscribers. I have also seen the previous mentioned "hot fix" happen on other MMOs where without any noticible change in player base, it goes from all light servers to some heavy, medium and light overnight without cause except for the possibility of a change on how they count that. Yes, speculation, but I believe it fits. The higher the pop rating (perferably in the high medium to low High) the more people will go there to play with other people.
Example being when I first started to play MMO X, each area, on medium population, would spawn "copy" areas if it got too crowded in one particular area. At medium, it would be generally 1-4 areas on the server with copies. Said MMO X had double XP weekend. Even though the population was medium to high, I did not see a sigle area "copy" itself. This leads me to believe what they have concidered "medium" and "high" population has changed, in order to help drive the perception of popularity.
Now, with all that has happened with SWG, I think it is in the "highly probable" catagory that the population rating has also changed here.
Now, back to the SOE/LA responcibility debate that has been brought up. As an outsider looking in as I am, I can honestly say the perception of who is responcible for NGE, as well as historically details (not hard facts to be honest) points the blame, from the fan base perspective, into SOE's lap conciderably more than LA. I also note most of those who are vowing not to return until X happens, usually state that SOE has to change, not LA. Both companies didn't remember the coke rule of changing things. (insert clever comment of New Coke here). With that being said, the fan base, as a whole, feels that SOE is responcible for the deception and mismanagement, because they are the ones who writes the game and the code, while LA is in charge of approving/disapproving concepts. LA probably approved a shift from the old game into NGE, but I bet how it was handled, including the bait and switch, was in SOE's hands. The coders/developers (and I guess the people dispensing info about the game) all are SOE. I don't think I recall any of the bad info ever directly coming from a LA personel, just SOE. If I am wrong, I would love to hear and see where.
I hope this clears a few things up and inspires some new, constructive thought on the subject.
Thank you once again for your time.
Your "logic"?
You refuse to provide any evidence to back your point. If anyone is using "round-a-bout" arguments, it's you. All you need to do to provide a basis for your assertion is to snap one screenshot of a social hotspot, but you won't. Instead, you come up with hypotheticals describing how the game has changed so dramatically that no such social hotspots exist, a first for MMOG's. Good grief, even when I played Motor City Online with all of it's 600 peak concurrent users per server, there were social hotspots.
No one here is buying what you're selling. Post the screenshot, provide other concrete evidence to refute what others are saying, or accept the fact that we're all dealing in assumptions grounded in experience (in the abscence of hard numbers from SOE) and quit acting as if somehow your assumptions are themselves fact.
Oh, I forgot to mention one other factor in the server player level equasion that's an honest factor. Coding.
The more coding each player requires to play on a server, the fewer players per server that can be handled before chronic lag sets in. This too is a honest adjustment that comes naturally with the more content that is added to a game, without upgrading the servers of course.
Concidering NGE is a game built on a game, I think that probably affected how many players/server that can be handled conciderably and can be a contributing factor to the heavy now being nowhere near what heavy was at launch.
Thank you for your time once again.
I hear this argument by the NGE-haters a lot, yet I see no proof to back it up. Sounds to me like you are grasping at straws with your conspiracy theories. The "proof" you demand is subscription numbers from SOE, which they will never give. Back in May 2005, my main server Corbantis went from being "Light" to "Medium" or "Heavy" literally overnight with a hot-fix. There was NO visible change in the number of people playing. Not only were server load ratings altered on at least one occasion, but a red name also confirmed it on the official forums shortly after - even going so far as to specify which numbers gave which ratings. This debate comes up a lot, and I always feel like kicking myself for not having screen captured that dev post.PS..... SOE changed the criteria for the number of players that defines a "heavy" server years ago. A post-NGE "heavy" server doesn't hold a candle to a pre-CU "light" server. Have fun in your ghost town.
SWG Team Mtg.
I stopped reading your post around there. Educate me? LOL.
It's not about getting a total count for the population from one spot, it's about recoginizing that in any social game there are going to be hotspots. Pre-CU had the Dantooing mining outpost, for example. It wasn't the only one, but if the server was busy you could be the MO was busy.
You're telling me that you can't log onto one of these "heavy" servers (which in your opinion are just as "heavy" as pre-CU standards) and find a single place where there are a large number of people, large enough where you won't get laughed off of the forums by people who remember the pre-CU mining outpost on a "light" server?
You're telling me that somehow SOE has created a social game which, if I'm to believe the hype on Chapter 6, encourages grouping
It just shows that you are unable to directly refute my logic, therefore you use round-a-bout arguments. You have yet to refute one point that I posted. Therefore, you fail. Please try again when you can put down your rage and actually think logically rather than use your rage to fuel your posts.yet there are no social hotspots in the game? And you're telling me I'm the one coming up with conspiracy theories?
Here's logic.
Smedley admits the NGE is a mistake and people "voted with their feet."
Even using a conservative business model (i.e. what ownedyou said) Torres states 20% left. ONE-FIFTH of a population is gone. Yet ownedyou clearly misread it simply in that of those who remain, 80% were vets, and only 20% were new customers. The already anemic SWG subscriptions were not pulled in by the newcomers that they thought they would get. Hence it was a mistake.
If server loads were really "heavy" compared to the good old days, there would be no reason to claim the NGE is a mistake. In the business world, it's not a mistake if it is an improvement.
Concurrently, two things occurred: (1) SOE admitted the population was down, and (2) the server load estimates at the character creation window went UP on many servers (from light to medium; medium to heavy). These two facts cannot possibly be reconciled if one assumes that "heavy" has had a fixed cutoff of a certain number of active accounts for a given server. However, they CAN be reconciled if (and only if) one assumes that SOE has changed that cutoff. For example (making up numbers), if 5,000 accounts/server was heavy before NGE, and 2,000 is heavy now, then what used to be called "Light" might well be called "heavy." This only changes what you call it -- not how many people are logged in.
There's no other way to reconcile the fact that at a time when they admitted server loads were going down, the login window had them going up. So, they had to be changing the definition of light, heavy, moderate, etc.
C
<imgsrc="http://files1.guildlaunch.net/guild/library/86975/Black_Fire.jpg">;
<ahref="http://profile.xfire.com/aetiuslonginus"><img src="http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/sh/type/2/aetiuslonginus.png"; width="450" height="34" /></a>
There are three things it would take to bring me back. Smedley's head on a pike, a spear up Torres' backside, and a 6 month free subscription as part of an offical apology package to include at least restoring the game to a CU environment (PRE-CU preferred).
We know that the last one for SOE is clearly impossible so I guess I am out of luck; however if the first two would increase subscription levels in widowed female gamers between the ages of 80 and 90 I am sure SOE would jump right on it.
<imgsrc="http://files1.guildlaunch.net/guild/library/86975/Black_Fire.jpg">;
<ahref="http://profile.xfire.com/aetiuslonginus"><img src="http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/sh/type/2/aetiuslonginus.png"; width="450" height="34" /></a>
What will bring back the vets:
1. A serious, sincere apology for the NGE.
2. 90 days free for all returning vets (accounts that were activated pre NGE)
3. Free expansions for the returning vets, if they don't already own all of them
4. Classic servers for us to play on, along with a promise that what is there will never be fundamentally altered again.
NOTHING short of that stands a snowball's chance in hell of being even slightly effective.