The original concept was great, but there were implementation problems from the very beggining. Remember, ranger, scout, carbiner, pikeman and others? How many bugs, completely not working abilities, specials they had? Remember bikes, disappering after dismount? Remember, lies about jedi system being turned on whilst it was turned off till autumn?
yes, again the original concept itself was unbelieveably great, but all those things I mentioned above made a lot of ppl leave even before CU and the numbers was not growing enough not because gamers didn't want to live in Star Wars Universe, but because game day-by-day managment including PR crew and CSR were deaf, lazy and doing nothing to get implemantation of the concept better. In the case of CSR it was so harsh like they hired them at local Correction Centre
The original concept was great, but there were implementation problems from the very beggining. Remember, ranger, scout, carbiner, pikeman and others? How many bugs, completely not working abilities, specials they had? Remember bikes, disappering after dismount? Remember, lies about jedi system being turned on whilst it was turned off till autumn? yes, again the original concept itself was unbelieveably great, but all those things I mentioned above made a lot of ppl leave even before CU and the numbers was not growing enough not because gamers didn't want to live in Star Wars Universe, but because game day-by-day managment including PR crew and CSR were deaf, lazy and doing nothing to get implemantation of the concept better. In the case of CSR it was so harsh like they hired them at local Correction Centre
name me 1 bug in pikeman, carbiner, ranger and other professions you posted about..
what bugs? when ?
bikes dissapearing? they fixed that with a little update called:"
"fixed bikes dissapearing when unmounting" so ?
and you think they implemented the NGE because they lost more and more subscriptions?
no my friend, they implemented the NGE because of world of warcrafts customer numbers of 5 million subscriptions in 2005.
5 million customers for WoW and only 250.000 - 350.000 in star wars galaxies? what the hell? if WoW can do it, then so can we at SOE !!!
and we did it, didnt we ?
congratulations SOE
damn and they really thought they could reach WoW's subscriptions numbers with the NGE, rolfmao
The original concept was great, but there were implementation problems from the very beggining. Remember, ranger, scout, carbiner, pikeman and others? How many bugs, completely not working abilities, specials they had? Remember bikes, disappering after dismount? Remember, lies about jedi system being turned on whilst it was turned off till autumn? yes, again the original concept itself was unbelieveably great, but all those things I mentioned above made a lot of ppl leave even before CU and the numbers was not growing enough not because gamers didn't want to live in Star Wars Universe, but because game day-by-day managment including PR crew and CSR were deaf, lazy and doing nothing to get implemantation of the concept better. In the case of CSR it was so harsh like they hired them at local Correction Centre
name me 1 bug in pikeman, carbiner, ranger and other professions you posted about..
what bugs? when ?
bikes dissapearing? they fixed that with a little update called:"
"fixed bikes dissapearing when unmounting" so ?
and you think they implemented the NGE because they lost more and more subscriptions?
no my friend, they implemented the NGE because of world of warcrafts customer numbers of 5 million subscriptions in 2005.
5 million customers for WoW and only 250.000 - 350.000 in star wars galaxies? what the hell? if WoW can do it, then so can we at SOE !!!
and we did it, didnt we ?
congratulations SOE
damn and they really thought they could reach WoW's subscriptions numbers with the NGE, rolfmao
rangers: not working all "specials" I can't remember names, 4 years, but all they were there not working, as well as traps and planet cammo kits completely useless.(never fixed)
carbiner: almost all specials were broken, resulting in missing 90% of the shots (got some fixes at CU)
pikeman: each prof as you remember had it's defense named somehow - like evade, block or whatever. Pikeman defense named somehow this way was never working (never fixed)
I can continue...
Yes, bikes were fixed.... after 5-6 months.
and about NGE - I'm not NGE supporter I quited same day it hitted live servers and the reasons it went live you've mentioned are probably correct. It just doesnt't mean implemantation of pre-CU game was brilliant.
ummm... because it's true??? I was there pre-CU (but not the beginning, when they first instituted the village) and the populations was booming, there were times I HAD to avoid Coronet because I knew my PC would lag from that many players in the star port/cantina, Theed was no different, a lot of planets were well populated with players. If the population was going downhill, it was doing so at a crawl. Yes, I do agree with you that, for a SW IP it should've been at the millions not thousands. That being said, pulling off the CU and the NGE the way they did it was very unethical from a business stand point, yes it's their game they can do whatever they want, but just because they CAN do it, doesn't mean they SHOULD'VE done it. SWG was in a much healthier state back then than it is now, I should know considering I've played Pre CU, CU, NGE and what the SOE fanbois love to call "Post NGE" up to chapter 4(which by the way is an oxymoron considering the changes don't justify it having a new name) and I know for a fact that it is still nowhere near what SWG was.
Ummm, no. I was there, near the beginning (about 30 days after launch). The 250k-300K number did not exist at the time of the CU or the NGE. Those were peak subscriptions. Populations were trailing off by the time of CUNGE. I think we were down to about 100k at best. Yes, there was a surge, but these were not new subscriptions, just folks returning to see what the CUNGE was all about.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
ummm... because it's true??? I was there pre-CU (but not the beginning, when they first instituted the village) and the populations was booming, there were times I HAD to avoid Coronet because I knew my PC would lag from that many players in the star port/cantina, Theed was no different, a lot of planets were well populated with players. If the population was going downhill, it was doing so at a crawl. Yes, I do agree with you that, for a SW IP it should've been at the millions not thousands. That being said, pulling off the CU and the NGE the way they did it was very unethical from a business stand point, yes it's their game they can do whatever they want, but just because they CAN do it, doesn't mean they SHOULD'VE done it. SWG was in a much healthier state back then than it is now, I should know considering I've played Pre CU, CU, NGE and what the SOE fanbois love to call "Post NGE" up to chapter 4(which by the way is an oxymoron considering the changes don't justify it having a new name) and I know for a fact that it is still nowhere near what SWG was.
Ummm, no. I was there, near the beginning (about 30 days after launch). The 250k-300K number did not exist at the time of the CU or the NGE. Those were peak subscriptions. Populations were trailing off by the time of CUNGE. I think we were down to about 100k at best. Yes, there was a surge, but these were not new subscriptions, just folks returning to see what the CUNGE was all about.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
Remember Torres' post some time ago where he used the MMO chart to show subscription numbers?
If that chart was accurate then at the time of the CU SWG had 200K subs. If Julio uses the MMO chart data as an example then I'd have to assume that it was fairly accurate at least for SWG's numbers.
ummm... because it's true??? I was there pre-CU (but not the beginning, when they first instituted the village) and the populations was booming, there were times I HAD to avoid Coronet because I knew my PC would lag from that many players in the star port/cantina, Theed was no different, a lot of planets were well populated with players. If the population was going downhill, it was doing so at a crawl. Yes, I do agree with you that, for a SW IP it should've been at the millions not thousands. That being said, pulling off the CU and the NGE the way they did it was very unethical from a business stand point, yes it's their game they can do whatever they want, but just because they CAN do it, doesn't mean they SHOULD'VE done it. SWG was in a much healthier state back then than it is now, I should know considering I've played Pre CU, CU, NGE and what the SOE fanbois love to call "Post NGE" up to chapter 4(which by the way is an oxymoron considering the changes don't justify it having a new name) and I know for a fact that it is still nowhere near what SWG was.
Ummm, no. I was there, near the beginning (about 30 days after launch). The 250k-300K number did not exist at the time of the CU or the NGE. Those were peak subscriptions. Populations were trailing off by the time of CUNGE. I think we were down to about 100k at best. Yes, there was a surge, but these were not new subscriptions, just folks returning to see what the CUNGE was all about.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
Remember Torres' post some time ago where he used the MMO chart to show subscription numbers?
If that chart was accurate then at the time of the CU SWG had 200K subs. If Julio uses the MMO chart data as an example then I'd have to assume that it was fairly accurate at least for SWG's numbers.
That chart was a guess, SOE does not publish sub numbers so any 3rd party charts are pure speculation.
I feel bad for the guy losing his job. But I disagree on his view of SOE having to implement the NGE despite any inside knowledge. Business models are very misleading. What works for one company may not work for the next one due to the consumer or existing product.
The funny thing is Lateris is that Torres' used that chart to prove that the NGE had to happen because of declining subs, but inadvertantly it showed that the decline of subs actually stopped when the CU came out.
Now don't get me wrong, I hated the CU almost as much as the NGE. Regardless, the chart showed that subs actually leveled out at that time.
The funny thing is Lateris is that Torres' used that chart to prove that the NGE had to happen because of declining subs, but inadvertantly it showed that the decline of subs actually stopped when the CU came out. Now don't get me wrong, I hated the CU almost as much as the NGE. Regardless, the chart showed that subs actually leveled out at that time.
Uhm... are you looking at the same chart? The one I'm looking at shows a steep decline starting May 2005 (CU). In my personal experience, people left en masse during the CU (although not as many and not as FAST as when the NGE was implemented), especially those with one account who enjoyed playeing crafter/fighter hybrids and the crafters. The forums were full of guilds trying to gather those who were left behind under their own wings. During the CU, the suburbs of Theed, Coronet and Dantooine Mining, the once lagtastic vendor cities, died.
I played on Bloodfin, which was always one of the 2 busiest servers (behind Bria), and I feel safe to say we were doing just fine, population wise, before the CU. Population showed as Very High every night. We had regular server wide guild wars (500+ participants EACH SIDE), player cities flourished, people who had gone to WoW for a while usually turned back up within months... We may have been at a lower stable subscription number than SOE/LA would have liked, but we were still doing pretty well for a non-WoW MMO.
(Incidentally: don't forget how a lot of SOE devs and Smedley himself admitted THEY played WoW, not SWG, those bloody fanbois)
What are your thoughts on SOE (Sony Online Entertainment)?
I could write a book on this, and anybody who knows me or has read my editorials would expect me to write some scathing, angry piece here.
Let me share this. I was a hardcore Star Wars Galaxies player, “was” being the key word. I stopped playing that game about two years ago, a few weeks after the Trials of Obi-wan expansion came out. I’m sure you all can guess why I stopped playing.
SOE was Gods & Heroes publisher and partner and in my time spent there I learned a lot about the nature of the business and about SOE. I think they are a wonderful company who really wants to make great games. They have the experience and business sense to know what really is best for the games under their belt.
So yes, I still am bitter and want my old Star Wars Galaxies back, however I know that if SOE didn’t do what they did, we might not even have a Star Wars Galaxies today. They have learned from what happened in the past and I think we see that happening with Vanguard today. Vanguard has improved ten fold since SOE came into the picture and I see them really working hard to support that game,
The funny thing is Lateris is that Torres' used that chart to prove that the NGE had to happen because of declining subs, but inadvertantly it showed that the decline of subs actually stopped when the CU came out. Now don't get me wrong, I hated the CU almost as much as the NGE. Regardless, the chart showed that subs actually leveled out at that time.
I don't know the numbers. What I do know is my player city was a ghost town by the time of CU (in fact, I was the last active player for the city, voted myself in as mayor and looted the treasury ). Most of my online friends had departed. I had gone on hiatus waiting for the CU. When it released, I came back, as did some of my friends. We were unimpressed, as were most, but felt we could get used to it.
The funny thing is Lateris is that Torres' used that chart to prove that the NGE had to happen because of declining subs, but inadvertantly it showed that the decline of subs actually stopped when the CU came out. Now don't get me wrong, I hated the CU almost as much as the NGE. Regardless, the chart showed that subs actually leveled out at that time.
Uhm... are you looking at the same chart? The one I'm looking at shows a steep decline starting May 2005 (CU). In my personal experience, people left en masse during the CU (although not as many and not as FAST as when the NGE was implemented), especially those with one account who enjoyed playeing crafter/fighter hybrids and the crafters. The forums were full of guilds trying to gather those who were left behind under their own wings. During the CU, the suburbs of Theed, Coronet and Dantooine Mining, the once lagtastic vendor cities, died.
I played on Bloodfin, which was always one of the 2 busiest servers (behind Bria), and I feel safe to say we were doing just fine, population wise, before the CU. Population showed as Very High every night. We had regular server wide guild wars (500+ participants EACH SIDE), player cities flourished, people who had gone to WoW for a while usually turned back up within months... We may have been at a lower stable subscription number than SOE/LA would have liked, but we were still doing pretty well for a non-WoW MMO.
(Incidentally: don't forget how a lot of SOE devs and Smedley himself admitted THEY played WoW, not SWG, those bloody fanbois)
Linna
Dammit, I was looking at the wrong line again....
My Mistake : )
Subs evened out between Jan '05 and approx. April '05, just prior to the CU.
I always hear lots of people saying how great pre-cu was. I was there and it was a good time but it was a flawed, buggy, unfinished mess. This is simply the truth. If that game didnt have the SW IP it wouldnt have had anywhere near the subs it did back then. If the game was released today in the same condition it would be bashed even worse than VG on these forums. The game wasn't all that good in the begining and really to this day not much has changed in the way of quality.
What the game did have at launch was tons of potential. What does potential bring in todays market..well once again look at the warm welcome VG got. The difference is back then people seemed willing to give the game a chance. When you got through the massive amount of bugs you could have a good time..if you had patience enough to endure. Should we all have had to have the patience to deal with that? I didn't spend money to learn a lesson of patience and understanding. When I think of Pre-CU SWG I dont miss what was but what could have been.
Pre-CU and even CU to a lesser extent had a lot of potential. It was just never realized.. It was easier I guess to just try and take the game in a new direction. The only problem with that is you never really make any progress when you just keep starting over. IMO did SWG need CU or NGE to stay alive? My answer would have to be no. Could SWG have survived as it was PRE-CU? My answer would have to be no to that as well. If they launched SWG PRE-CU on some classic servers exactly as it was then today it would fail.
Try to imagine though if SWG Pre-CU had progressed instead of getting those drastic changes. If the bugs had been fixed, content added...etc. It would be an amazing game today. No one knows if the numbers would rival WoW's or not. Im pretty sure they would be better than they are today at any rate. While pre-cu was good it never even came close to living up to its potential. For that you can only blame SOE. I really doubt LA was behind the scenes telling them not to fix the bugs or add content. SOE has always had a really hard time implimenting anything correctly when it comes to SWG. I really never wanted a pre-cu server. I always just wanted the game to be what it should have been.
I play SWG.I went back a few months ago. It is what it is. You can not compare it to pre-cu or even cu. Its a different game in the same package. Its not as bad as some people say nor is it anywhere near as good as it could have been in "what if" land. This latest chapter brings us closer and closer to being WoW in space. I dont even try to fool myself. Im pretty sure this game is on borrowed time. I will be shocked and pleased if it goes another year. Although there is a part of me that prays for this thing to finally die. Its been a strange love hate relationship. Its just kind of sad to think of what could have been as compared to what is and even what was.
As someone who works for an MMO company, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the third party subscription charts are all completely useless. Sure some figures are accurate, like NCSoft games, but on the whole the majority are way off base and even the NCSoft figures are only done yearly, no monthly or any other updates at all.
They get their figures from speculation and sources within the companies, now I don't know about employees at SOE, but I will always say my companies games are doing better than they really are, but working inside I also appreciate that players have no idea at all about the real numbers. What appears to be extremely health and in the tens of thousands, is in realty probably only about a third of what the players think it is, this of course being how the market has changed since WoW came out but the players not realising the habits of the majority of gamers have also changed with the inclusion of WoW.
In the old days you could say with some confidence that concurrent users was a third of the total servers userbase, so if the server has 3000 players on it at peak times then the number of active players on that server is closer to 9000 (assuming an international MMO). This was the case on Everquest and Ultima Online.
Then along came WoW and a proper global market. On the one hand you got casual gamers who messed up your figures by not playing on any kind of regular basis (it's so random you can't judge it without months of data to work with and usually after six months half of them have quit and been replaced by new casuals), and then on the other hand you had your hardcore gamer who never left the bloody server. So the games started to break apart, a userbase analysis that worked for one game in the genre didn't work for another. Casual friendly games found themselves with more users per server but less concurrent users and hardcore friendly games found themselves with less users per server but a higher concerrent user figure.
From the outside though both games looked to be well populated, but the casual friendly game would have significantly more people per server and thus more subscriptions than the hardcore friendly game.
Now I wouldn't care to classify other companies games, but like I said, the third party charts just rely on speculation and insider gossip, and no one is going to say their game is failing. A successful MMO is one where after development costs are paid there is enough players to support each server. SWG in my opinion has those kind of numbers, I also think since the NGE went live it's turned into something of a niche game, it's probably in reality about 5,000 people who just have SWG subs (hardcore ppl, doubt many casuals remain in it), with additional income coming from the Station Pass, but that is ample to cost the server costs.
You have valid arguments, but there is still a common misconception between the NGE defenders and the Pre CU defenders. We all know that the game was buggy and laggy as hell pre-CU. We're not denying this, heck I had to sometimes avoid certain planets or starports because I knew they would be very crowded and force me to lag to a crawl. So we do have an understanding about this. That's not the problem. The problem is that, rather than SOE do its job and fix the countless bugs and lag as we had told them countless times, rather than listening to us and bring the CURB instead of the CU (the one the players had chosen) SOE decided to simply ignore what the players had to say and simply pull the game from under the rug. If SOE had doen its job, fix the bugs, fix the quests, fix the lag AND added more content, SWG would've been in much better shape (IMO anyway). Many of us (myself included) loved the skill tree system, why? because you were no longer tied down to stupid levels, no more "oh you have to be level X to come with us" for once, what really mattered was what skills you had in your arsenal instead of levels and I have yet to see another MMO implement this as succesfully as SWG did (again, we know that the skill tree system had its flaws too, but they could've worked on it instead of ripping away 20+ professions.)
What Greenhill says is 100% spot on. The original SWG was awesome, but it was so incomplete. The Star wars name and the potential is what kept people interested. Even then interest started to waver within the first 3-6 months and SOE took notice. The game was on a steady decline and there was a very plausable chance of shutdown or at least massive losses.
The problem has always been the upper management making decisions based on revenue instead of releasing quality or listening to their customers. All of the SOE games share the same mistakes if you look real close. Multiple "combat upgrades", terrible premature launches, rushed unfinished expansions, etc, etc.
You can even see how they have to spin PR in their major titles with the "we have learned from our mistakes and will listen to the players". The guild summit in EQ1 from june 2004, twice in 2005 for SWG and I don't know when for EQ2, but they had to promise to slow down expansions so they could release finished, right up to a few weeks ago when Smed admitting the NGE was a mistake and how they learned thier lesson. Vanguard is a strong indicator that they didn't.
Not aware of how Vanguard is any indicator of how they've failed to learn from their mistakes. It was well into development by the time the NGE happened, and none of it's devs were ex-SWG. Since release they dumbed the item equipping expertise to just be level required like other MMOs, but no other nerfs of any kind, just bug and performance fixes and the odd bit of new content. Vanguard is in an okay state at the moment and if their new plans for it are even half decent it's likely to get better and be more fun.
EQ2 is a good example of them learning from their mistakes, they rushed it out in a terrible state where it really wasn't very good fun and now three years down the line it's the best game on their books and is pretty good after their revamps to it.
SWG's combat was crap in beta, crap at release, crap after the CU and crap after the NGE. Though each time they made it worse. What was good about the combat pre-NGE? The good thing was the idea behind it, it has possibilities and depth, yet it failed to deliver regardless of what they did to it.
The lesson that SOE learnt is, you can't rip out a core system and replace it with something completely different, that's the ultimate game killer. If you don't get the core systems right from the start, then don't even bother pushing it live. There is no other lesson to be learnt from SWG.
Read the quote above about Smedley cutting funds and forcing Vanguard to release in the state it did so they could "see some revenues". There is plenty of debate open to what happened behind the scenes, but seeing that SOE controlled the funding 100% it was their choice and their choice alone as to when Vanguard shipped.
Read his interview about the upcoming game The Agency. Smed talks plenty about the velvet rope and the revenue model they are using, but very little about why the game will be fun. That is also why I don't think they have learned.
Also I wouldn't call EQ2 an example of them learning. Same rushed release, same over expanding with rushed unfinished expansions followed by the same apologies, same combat upgrade, ripping out core concepts, etc etc. Pretty much all the same mistakes to lesser degree, but simply put the WoW model was less painful to implement in EQ2 than it was to slap onto SWG. I do agree that they seem to try to listen to players more some years after launch and avoided more
Read the quote above about Smedley cutting funds and forcing Vanguard to release in the state it did so they could "see some revenues". There is plenty of debate open to what happened behind the scenes, but seeing that SOE controlled the funding 100% it was their choice and their choice alone as to when Vanguard shipped.
Read his interview about the upcoming game The Agency. Smed talks plenty about the velvet rope and the revenue model they are using, but very little about why the game will be fun. That is also why I don't think they have learned.
Also I wouldn't call EQ2 an example of them learning. Same rushed release, same over expanding with rushed unfinished expansions followed by the same apologies, same combat upgrade, ripping out core concepts, etc etc. Pretty much all the same mistakes to lesser degree, but simply put the WoW model was less painful to implement in EQ2 than it was to slap onto SWG. I do agree that they seem to try to listen to players more some years after launch and avoided more
This shows the ass backwardness of SOE, and why they fail and will continue to fail until they completely change their management philosophy (which means getting rid of Smed).
When you are selling entertainment in general and entertainment SERVICE in particular, you START with what is fun and entertaining, then figure out if the revenue will justify it, not with a revenue model then try to bolt entertainment onto it. In the movies, for example, you START with a story you think is good and entertaining, then figure out how to budget it, who to get, etc. You don't start out with how many theaters you are going to show it in, then figure out what the movie will be afterwards...
Unless the upcoming SOE games are flawless, and I do mean FLAWLESS and absolutely the best MMOs ever made, they are going to fail, mainly because they won't be able to overcome the anti-SOE inertia out there. Even if they achieve that level of quality (which is an impossibility given past performance) their games will still underperform their potential because of it.
Read the quote above about Smedley cutting funds and forcing Vanguard to release in the state it did so they could "see some revenues". There is plenty of debate open to what happened behind the scenes, but seeing that SOE controlled the funding 100% it was their choice and their choice alone as to when Vanguard shipped.
Read his interview about the upcoming game The Agency. Smed talks plenty about the velvet rope and the revenue model they are using, but very little about why the game will be fun. That is also why I don't think they have learned.
Also I wouldn't call EQ2 an example of them learning. Same rushed release, same over expanding with rushed unfinished expansions followed by the same apologies, same combat upgrade, ripping out core concepts, etc etc. Pretty much all the same mistakes to lesser degree, but simply put the WoW model was less painful to implement in EQ2 than it was to slap onto SWG. I do agree that they seem to try to listen to players more some years after launch and avoided more
Did you actually follow Vanguard and talk to the Sigil employees?
They threw away on four years of wasted development an estimated $25mil from Microsoft. SOE gave them enough to work for a further six months and a clause in the contract that if the game failed to make the estimated returns of Sigil that Sigil would declare themselves bankrupt and SOE would get the game with no debts.
So you tell me, would you give money to people who you knew wasted $25mil without forcing them to provide results in a certain timeframe? I sure as hell wouldn't.
And again, Smedley doesn't actually make the games, so do you really think he knows anything about the details of the games? He's not a game developer, he never has been, he's the man who came from a financial background and ensured the company was profitable.
Also how can EQ2 be an example of them not learning from the NGE, when all the EQ2 mistakes happend before the NGE? Are SOE now a group of time travellers too?
Geez, if you are going to hate people, at least hate with facts.
This shows the ass backwardness of SOE, and why they fail and will continue to fail until they completely change their management philosophy (which means getting rid of Smed). When you are selling entertainment in general and entertainment SERVICE in particular, you START with what is fun and entertaining, then figure out if the revenue will justify it, not with a revenue model then try to bolt entertainment onto it. In the movies, for example, you START with a story you think is good and entertaining, then figure out how to budget it, who to get, etc. You don't start out with how many theaters you are going to show it in, then figure out what the movie will be afterwards... Unless the upcoming SOE games are flawless, and I do mean FLAWLESS and absolutely the best MMOs ever made, they are going to fail, mainly because they won't be able to overcome the anti-SOE inertia out there. Even if they achieve that level of quality (which is an impossibility given past performance) their games will still underperform their potential because of it.
Smed can only talk about what he knows about, let the developer sell the fun side of it and let the businessman sell the boring side of it.
And the anti-SOE group is less than a million people (as SOE products combined never broke that figure) out of a market that is estimated to be around 100mil people worldwide now.
Did you actually follow Vanguard and talk to the Sigil employees?
They threw away on four years of wasted development an estimated $25mil from Microsoft. SOE gave them enough to work for a further six months and a clause in the contract that if the game failed to make the estimated returns of Sigil that Sigil would declare themselves bankrupt and SOE would get the game with no debts. So you tell me, would you give money to people who you knew wasted $25mil without forcing them to provide results in a certain timeframe? I sure as hell wouldn't. And again, Smedley doesn't actually make the games, so do you really think he knows anything about the details of the games? He's not a game developer, he never has been, he's the man who came from a financial background and ensured the company was profitable. Also how can EQ2 be an example of them not learning from the NGE, when all the EQ2 mistakes happend before the NGE? Are SOE now a group of time travellers too? Geez, if you are going to hate people, at least hate with facts.
Would I have given Sigil money, no way. However SOE gave Sigil money in the first place knowing how poorly the game was managed in its Microsoft days, so that question doesn't really apply to SOE? So why did they only go half way (much like all their titles on launch). SOE had ALL the bargaining power and Sigil had none. Seeing that SOE had the money to purchase the game, the Sigil headquarters and the staff, I don't see why that money couldn't be used to extend time again (renegotiate contracts as needed). SOE could have used a real WIN from a good game release to offset some negative revues. I think that is what a lot of "haters" are waiting for. Instead it is another mess of he said she saids pay to play beta.
Like you said and I agree whole heartedly, Smed is a money guy and not a game maker. All the decisions from the top are based on revenues first and everything else second. Almost of of SOEs problems can be traced back to that line of thinking. Imagine if you will that SWG had another year to get properly finished before release. Or that they didn't keep moving EQ2 launch date up to beat WoW to market. Say it had a good number of months to see what came out of things. The same for Vanguard if it had say another 6-9 months. I can only speculate that the outcomes would have been drastically different in each case and most likely people would be singing their praises.
In response to the time travel comment, I don't think they learned from ANY of their mistakes which also includes the NGE. SOE was apologizing for not listening to their customers long before the NGE all the way back to Everquest during the guild summit fiasco in early 2004. How many times can a company cry wolf about changing their ways only to turn around and repeat the same mistakes with the next game or even in the same game. The damage was already done in EQ2 long after they went on their apology sprees. When I look at EQ2 I don't really see any evidence of what they have "learned".
When they release a game based on its gameplay readiness and stability and not a corporate schedule, don't combat revamp it, don't rush expansions, etc etc then I can understand people saying they have changed their ways.
Vanguard was a chance for some SOE redemption IMHO and it didn't work out that way and it looks like it was yet another of smedley revenuecentric management choices.
Originally posted by salvaje Originally posted by Daffid011 Read the quote above about Smedley cutting funds and forcing Vanguard to release in the state it did so they could "see some revenues". There is plenty of debate open to what happened behind the scenes, but seeing that SOE controlled the funding 100% it was their choice and their choice alone as to when Vanguard shipped.
Read his interview about the upcoming game The Agency. Smed talks plenty about the velvet rope and the revenue model they are using, but very little about why the game will be fun. That is also why I don't think they have learned.
Also I wouldn't call EQ2 an example of them learning. Same rushed release, same over expanding with rushed unfinished expansions followed by the same apologies, same combat upgrade, ripping out core concepts, etc etc. Pretty much all the same mistakes to lesser degree, but simply put the WoW model was less painful to implement in EQ2 than it was to slap onto SWG. I do agree that they seem to try to listen to players more some years after launch and avoided more
This shows the ass backwardness of SOE, and why they fail and will continue to fail until they completely change their management philosophy (which means getting rid of Smed). When you are selling entertainment in general and entertainment SERVICE in particular, you START with what is fun and entertaining, then figure out if the revenue will justify it, not with a revenue model then try to bolt entertainment onto it. In the movies, for example, you START with a story you think is good and entertaining, then figure out how to budget it, who to get, etc. You don't start out with how many theaters you are going to show it in, then figure out what the movie will be afterwards... Unless the upcoming SOE games are flawless, and I do mean FLAWLESS and absolutely the best MMOs ever made, they are going to fail, mainly because they won't be able to overcome the anti-SOE inertia out there. Even if they achieve that level of quality (which is an impossibility given past performance) their games will still underperform their potential because of it.
Read the quote above as it speaks truth. I myself have done a couple of independent film projects and the first thing we do is the script (story) then figure out how we can do it and if the budget allows for it (in my case... $0.00 since I'm poor lol! but there's ways around it) and towards the end we figure out who to sell it to. But first we always do work keeping in mind that it has to be an entertaining movie.
Remember the old saying "Don't worry about money... worry about whether you're having fun with what you're doing, the money will come afterwards" words of wisdom to listen too.
Comments
The original concept was great, but there were implementation problems from the very beggining. Remember, ranger, scout, carbiner, pikeman and others? How many bugs, completely not working abilities, specials they had? Remember bikes, disappering after dismount? Remember, lies about jedi system being turned on whilst it was turned off till autumn?
yes, again the original concept itself was unbelieveably great, but all those things I mentioned above made a lot of ppl leave even before CU and the numbers was not growing enough not because gamers didn't want to live in Star Wars Universe, but because game day-by-day managment including PR crew and CSR were deaf, lazy and doing nothing to get implemantation of the concept better. In the case of CSR it was so harsh like they hired them at local Correction Centre
name me 1 bug in pikeman, carbiner, ranger and other professions you posted about..
what bugs? when ?
bikes dissapearing? they fixed that with a little update called:"
"fixed bikes dissapearing when unmounting" so ?
and you think they implemented the NGE because they lost more and more subscriptions?
no my friend, they implemented the NGE because of world of warcrafts customer numbers of 5 million subscriptions in 2005.
5 million customers for WoW and only 250.000 - 350.000 in star wars galaxies? what the hell? if WoW can do it, then so can we at SOE !!!
and we did it, didnt we ?
congratulations SOE
damn and they really thought they could reach WoW's subscriptions numbers with the NGE, rolfmao
"You must be either retarded or a fanboi..."
name me 1 bug in pikeman, carbiner, ranger and other professions you posted about..
what bugs? when ?
bikes dissapearing? they fixed that with a little update called:"
"fixed bikes dissapearing when unmounting" so ?
and you think they implemented the NGE because they lost more and more subscriptions?
no my friend, they implemented the NGE because of world of warcrafts customer numbers of 5 million subscriptions in 2005.
5 million customers for WoW and only 250.000 - 350.000 in star wars galaxies? what the hell? if WoW can do it, then so can we at SOE !!!
and we did it, didnt we ?
congratulations SOE
damn and they really thought they could reach WoW's subscriptions numbers with the NGE, rolfmao
rangers: not working all "specials" I can't remember names, 4 years, but all they were there not working, as well as traps and planet cammo kits completely useless.(never fixed)carbiner: almost all specials were broken, resulting in missing 90% of the shots (got some fixes at CU)
pikeman: each prof as you remember had it's defense named somehow - like evade, block or whatever. Pikeman defense named somehow this way was never working (never fixed)
I can continue...
Yes, bikes were fixed.... after 5-6 months.
and about NGE - I'm not NGE supporter I quited same day it hitted live servers and the reasons it went live you've mentioned are probably correct. It just doesnt't mean implemantation of pre-CU game was brilliant.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
Remember Torres' post some time ago where he used the MMO chart to show subscription numbers?
If that chart was accurate then at the time of the CU SWG had 200K subs. If Julio uses the MMO chart data as an example then I'd have to assume that it was fairly accurate at least for SWG's numbers.
SWG was on the decline. It was obvious to anyone playing at the time. Now, whether that meant the inevitible death of SWG, I can't say. But SOE felt they had to do something and something drastic. Maybe too drastic.
I never bought the popular notion that Smed woke up one day and said "I hate my customers and want to really screw them over. MUAHAHAHA!" No, I've always believed SOE was looking at data with the best intentions but reached the wrong conclusion and made a bad call. A really bad, irreversable call, one that will haunt them forever- or at least until some of you discover girls. The article cited here reinforces that notion. You don't get to be a dominant company like SOE with the business plan to screw your customers.
Unless their customers are complete morons. That would include all of us. I, for one, don't believe I'm a moron.
Remember Torres' post some time ago where he used the MMO chart to show subscription numbers?
If that chart was accurate then at the time of the CU SWG had 200K subs. If Julio uses the MMO chart data as an example then I'd have to assume that it was fairly accurate at least for SWG's numbers.
That chart was a guess, SOE does not publish sub numbers so any 3rd party charts are pure speculation.
But as an insider I think Torres' let on to just how accurate that info was.
I feel bad for the guy losing his job. But I disagree on his view of SOE having to implement the NGE despite any inside knowledge. Business models are very misleading. What works for one company may not work for the next one due to the consumer or existing product.
The funny thing is Lateris is that Torres' used that chart to prove that the NGE had to happen because of declining subs, but inadvertantly it showed that the decline of subs actually stopped when the CU came out.
Now don't get me wrong, I hated the CU almost as much as the NGE. Regardless, the chart showed that subs actually leveled out at that time.
What were the results after the NGE? I actually liked the CU- lol. The NGE....disaster.
Uhm... are you looking at the same chart? The one I'm looking at shows a steep decline starting May 2005 (CU). In my personal experience, people left en masse during the CU (although not as many and not as FAST as when the NGE was implemented), especially those with one account who enjoyed playeing crafter/fighter hybrids and the crafters. The forums were full of guilds trying to gather those who were left behind under their own wings. During the CU, the suburbs of Theed, Coronet and Dantooine Mining, the once lagtastic vendor cities, died.
I played on Bloodfin, which was always one of the 2 busiest servers (behind Bria), and I feel safe to say we were doing just fine, population wise, before the CU. Population showed as Very High every night. We had regular server wide guild wars (500+ participants EACH SIDE), player cities flourished, people who had gone to WoW for a while usually turned back up within months... We may have been at a lower stable subscription number than SOE/LA would have liked, but we were still doing pretty well for a non-WoW MMO.
(Incidentally: don't forget how a lot of SOE devs and Smedley himself admitted THEY played WoW, not SWG, those bloody fanbois)
Linna
What the heck? what planet is this guy from?
I don't know the numbers. What I do know is my player city was a ghost town by the time of CU (in fact, I was the last active player for the city, voted myself in as mayor and looted the treasury
Then the NGE hit. That was all.
Uhm... are you looking at the same chart? The one I'm looking at shows a steep decline starting May 2005 (CU). In my personal experience, people left en masse during the CU (although not as many and not as FAST as when the NGE was implemented), especially those with one account who enjoyed playeing crafter/fighter hybrids and the crafters. The forums were full of guilds trying to gather those who were left behind under their own wings. During the CU, the suburbs of Theed, Coronet and Dantooine Mining, the once lagtastic vendor cities, died.
I played on Bloodfin, which was always one of the 2 busiest servers (behind Bria), and I feel safe to say we were doing just fine, population wise, before the CU. Population showed as Very High every night. We had regular server wide guild wars (500+ participants EACH SIDE), player cities flourished, people who had gone to WoW for a while usually turned back up within months... We may have been at a lower stable subscription number than SOE/LA would have liked, but we were still doing pretty well for a non-WoW MMO.
(Incidentally: don't forget how a lot of SOE devs and Smedley himself admitted THEY played WoW, not SWG, those bloody fanbois)
Linna
Dammit, I was looking at the wrong line again....
My Mistake : )
Subs evened out between Jan '05 and approx. April '05, just prior to the CU.
I always hear lots of people saying how great pre-cu was. I was there and it was a good time but it was a flawed, buggy, unfinished mess. This is simply the truth. If that game didnt have the SW IP it wouldnt have had anywhere near the subs it did back then. If the game was released today in the same condition it would be bashed even worse than VG on these forums. The game wasn't all that good in the begining and really to this day not much has changed in the way of quality.
What the game did have at launch was tons of potential. What does potential bring in todays market..well once again look at the warm welcome VG got. The difference is back then people seemed willing to give the game a chance. When you got through the massive amount of bugs you could have a good time..if you had patience enough to endure. Should we all have had to have the patience to deal with that? I didn't spend money to learn a lesson of patience and understanding. When I think of Pre-CU SWG I dont miss what was but what could have been.
Pre-CU and even CU to a lesser extent had a lot of potential. It was just never realized.. It was easier I guess to just try and take the game in a new direction. The only problem with that is you never really make any progress when you just keep starting over. IMO did SWG need CU or NGE to stay alive? My answer would have to be no. Could SWG have survived as it was PRE-CU? My answer would have to be no to that as well. If they launched SWG PRE-CU on some classic servers exactly as it was then today it would fail.
Try to imagine though if SWG Pre-CU had progressed instead of getting those drastic changes. If the bugs had been fixed, content added...etc. It would be an amazing game today. No one knows if the numbers would rival WoW's or not. Im pretty sure they would be better than they are today at any rate. While pre-cu was good it never even came close to living up to its potential. For that you can only blame SOE. I really doubt LA was behind the scenes telling them not to fix the bugs or add content. SOE has always had a really hard time implimenting anything correctly when it comes to SWG. I really never wanted a pre-cu server. I always just wanted the game to be what it should have been.
I play SWG.I went back a few months ago. It is what it is. You can not compare it to pre-cu or even cu. Its a different game in the same package. Its not as bad as some people say nor is it anywhere near as good as it could have been in "what if" land. This latest chapter brings us closer and closer to being WoW in space. I dont even try to fool myself. Im pretty sure this game is on borrowed time. I will be shocked and pleased if it goes another year. Although there is a part of me that prays for this thing to finally die. Its been a strange love hate relationship. Its just kind of sad to think of what could have been as compared to what is and even what was.
As someone who works for an MMO company, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the third party subscription charts are all completely useless. Sure some figures are accurate, like NCSoft games, but on the whole the majority are way off base and even the NCSoft figures are only done yearly, no monthly or any other updates at all.
They get their figures from speculation and sources within the companies, now I don't know about employees at SOE, but I will always say my companies games are doing better than they really are, but working inside I also appreciate that players have no idea at all about the real numbers. What appears to be extremely health and in the tens of thousands, is in realty probably only about a third of what the players think it is, this of course being how the market has changed since WoW came out but the players not realising the habits of the majority of gamers have also changed with the inclusion of WoW.
In the old days you could say with some confidence that concurrent users was a third of the total servers userbase, so if the server has 3000 players on it at peak times then the number of active players on that server is closer to 9000 (assuming an international MMO). This was the case on Everquest and Ultima Online.
Then along came WoW and a proper global market. On the one hand you got casual gamers who messed up your figures by not playing on any kind of regular basis (it's so random you can't judge it without months of data to work with and usually after six months half of them have quit and been replaced by new casuals), and then on the other hand you had your hardcore gamer who never left the bloody server. So the games started to break apart, a userbase analysis that worked for one game in the genre didn't work for another. Casual friendly games found themselves with more users per server but less concurrent users and hardcore friendly games found themselves with less users per server but a higher concerrent user figure.
From the outside though both games looked to be well populated, but the casual friendly game would have significantly more people per server and thus more subscriptions than the hardcore friendly game.
Now I wouldn't care to classify other companies games, but like I said, the third party charts just rely on speculation and insider gossip, and no one is going to say their game is failing. A successful MMO is one where after development costs are paid there is enough players to support each server. SWG in my opinion has those kind of numbers, I also think since the NGE went live it's turned into something of a niche game, it's probably in reality about 5,000 people who just have SWG subs (hardcore ppl, doubt many casuals remain in it), with additional income coming from the Station Pass, but that is ample to cost the server costs.
To GreenHell:
You have valid arguments, but there is still a common misconception between the NGE defenders and the Pre CU defenders. We all know that the game was buggy and laggy as hell pre-CU. We're not denying this, heck I had to sometimes avoid certain planets or starports because I knew they would be very crowded and force me to lag to a crawl. So we do have an understanding about this. That's not the problem. The problem is that, rather than SOE do its job and fix the countless bugs and lag as we had told them countless times, rather than listening to us and bring the CURB instead of the CU (the one the players had chosen) SOE decided to simply ignore what the players had to say and simply pull the game from under the rug. If SOE had doen its job, fix the bugs, fix the quests, fix the lag AND added more content, SWG would've been in much better shape (IMO anyway). Many of us (myself included) loved the skill tree system, why? because you were no longer tied down to stupid levels, no more "oh you have to be level X to come with us" for once, what really mattered was what skills you had in your arsenal instead of levels and I have yet to see another MMO implement this as succesfully as SWG did (again, we know that the skill tree system had its flaws too, but they could've worked on it instead of ripping away 20+ professions.)
What Greenhill says is 100% spot on. The original SWG was awesome, but it was so incomplete. The Star wars name and the potential is what kept people interested. Even then interest started to waver within the first 3-6 months and SOE took notice. The game was on a steady decline and there was a very plausable chance of shutdown or at least massive losses.
The problem has always been the upper management making decisions based on revenue instead of releasing quality or listening to their customers. All of the SOE games share the same mistakes if you look real close. Multiple "combat upgrades", terrible premature launches, rushed unfinished expansions, etc, etc.
You can even see how they have to spin PR in their major titles with the "we have learned from our mistakes and will listen to the players". The guild summit in EQ1 from june 2004, twice in 2005 for SWG and I don't know when for EQ2, but they had to promise to slow down expansions so they could release finished, right up to a few weeks ago when Smed admitting the NGE was a mistake and how they learned thier lesson. Vanguard is a strong indicator that they didn't.
Not aware of how Vanguard is any indicator of how they've failed to learn from their mistakes. It was well into development by the time the NGE happened, and none of it's devs were ex-SWG. Since release they dumbed the item equipping expertise to just be level required like other MMOs, but no other nerfs of any kind, just bug and performance fixes and the odd bit of new content. Vanguard is in an okay state at the moment and if their new plans for it are even half decent it's likely to get better and be more fun.
EQ2 is a good example of them learning from their mistakes, they rushed it out in a terrible state where it really wasn't very good fun and now three years down the line it's the best game on their books and is pretty good after their revamps to it.
SWG's combat was crap in beta, crap at release, crap after the CU and crap after the NGE. Though each time they made it worse. What was good about the combat pre-NGE? The good thing was the idea behind it, it has possibilities and depth, yet it failed to deliver regardless of what they did to it.
The lesson that SOE learnt is, you can't rip out a core system and replace it with something completely different, that's the ultimate game killer. If you don't get the core systems right from the start, then don't even bother pushing it live. There is no other lesson to be learnt from SWG.
Read the quote above about Smedley cutting funds and forcing Vanguard to release in the state it did so they could "see some revenues". There is plenty of debate open to what happened behind the scenes, but seeing that SOE controlled the funding 100% it was their choice and their choice alone as to when Vanguard shipped.
Read his interview about the upcoming game The Agency. Smed talks plenty about the velvet rope and the revenue model they are using, but very little about why the game will be fun. That is also why I don't think they have learned.
Also I wouldn't call EQ2 an example of them learning. Same rushed release, same over expanding with rushed unfinished expansions followed by the same apologies, same combat upgrade, ripping out core concepts, etc etc. Pretty much all the same mistakes to lesser degree, but simply put the WoW model was less painful to implement in EQ2 than it was to slap onto SWG. I do agree that they seem to try to listen to players more some years after launch and avoided more
This shows the ass backwardness of SOE, and why they fail and will continue to fail until they completely change their management philosophy (which means getting rid of Smed).
When you are selling entertainment in general and entertainment SERVICE in particular, you START with what is fun and entertaining, then figure out if the revenue will justify it, not with a revenue model then try to bolt entertainment onto it. In the movies, for example, you START with a story you think is good and entertaining, then figure out how to budget it, who to get, etc. You don't start out with how many theaters you are going to show it in, then figure out what the movie will be afterwards...
Unless the upcoming SOE games are flawless, and I do mean FLAWLESS and absolutely the best MMOs ever made, they are going to fail, mainly because they won't be able to overcome the anti-SOE inertia out there. Even if they achieve that level of quality (which is an impossibility given past performance) their games will still underperform their potential because of it.
They threw away on four years of wasted development an estimated $25mil from Microsoft. SOE gave them enough to work for a further six months and a clause in the contract that if the game failed to make the estimated returns of Sigil that Sigil would declare themselves bankrupt and SOE would get the game with no debts.
So you tell me, would you give money to people who you knew wasted $25mil without forcing them to provide results in a certain timeframe? I sure as hell wouldn't.
And again, Smedley doesn't actually make the games, so do you really think he knows anything about the details of the games? He's not a game developer, he never has been, he's the man who came from a financial background and ensured the company was profitable.
Also how can EQ2 be an example of them not learning from the NGE, when all the EQ2 mistakes happend before the NGE? Are SOE now a group of time travellers too?
Geez, if you are going to hate people, at least hate with facts.
And the anti-SOE group is less than a million people (as SOE products combined never broke that figure) out of a market that is estimated to be around 100mil people worldwide now.
Would I have given Sigil money, no way. However SOE gave Sigil money in the first place knowing how poorly the game was managed in its Microsoft days, so that question doesn't really apply to SOE? So why did they only go half way (much like all their titles on launch). SOE had ALL the bargaining power and Sigil had none. Seeing that SOE had the money to purchase the game, the Sigil headquarters and the staff, I don't see why that money couldn't be used to extend time again (renegotiate contracts as needed). SOE could have used a real WIN from a good game release to offset some negative revues. I think that is what a lot of "haters" are waiting for. Instead it is another mess of he said she saids pay to play beta.
Like you said and I agree whole heartedly, Smed is a money guy and not a game maker. All the decisions from the top are based on revenues first and everything else second. Almost of of SOEs problems can be traced back to that line of thinking. Imagine if you will that SWG had another year to get properly finished before release. Or that they didn't keep moving EQ2 launch date up to beat WoW to market. Say it had a good number of months to see what came out of things. The same for Vanguard if it had say another 6-9 months. I can only speculate that the outcomes would have been drastically different in each case and most likely people would be singing their praises.
In response to the time travel comment, I don't think they learned from ANY of their mistakes which also includes the NGE. SOE was apologizing for not listening to their customers long before the NGE all the way back to Everquest during the guild summit fiasco in early 2004. How many times can a company cry wolf about changing their ways only to turn around and repeat the same mistakes with the next game or even in the same game. The damage was already done in EQ2 long after they went on their apology sprees. When I look at EQ2 I don't really see any evidence of what they have "learned".
When they release a game based on its gameplay readiness and stability and not a corporate schedule, don't combat revamp it, don't rush expansions, etc etc then I can understand people saying they have changed their ways.
Vanguard was a chance for some SOE redemption IMHO and it didn't work out that way and it looks like it was yet another of smedley revenuecentric management choices.
This shows the ass backwardness of SOE, and why they fail and will continue to fail until they completely change their management philosophy (which means getting rid of Smed).
When you are selling entertainment in general and entertainment SERVICE in particular, you START with what is fun and entertaining, then figure out if the revenue will justify it, not with a revenue model then try to bolt entertainment onto it. In the movies, for example, you START with a story you think is good and entertaining, then figure out how to budget it, who to get, etc. You don't start out with how many theaters you are going to show it in, then figure out what the movie will be afterwards...
Unless the upcoming SOE games are flawless, and I do mean FLAWLESS and absolutely the best MMOs ever made, they are going to fail, mainly because they won't be able to overcome the anti-SOE inertia out there. Even if they achieve that level of quality (which is an impossibility given past performance) their games will still underperform their potential because of it.
Read the quote above as it speaks truth. I myself have done a couple of independent film projects and the first thing we do is the script (story) then figure out how we can do it and if the budget allows for it (in my case... $0.00 since I'm poor lol! but there's ways around it) and towards the end we figure out who to sell it to. But first we always do work keeping in mind that it has to be an entertaining movie.
Remember the old saying "Don't worry about money... worry about whether you're having fun with what you're doing, the money will come afterwards" words of wisdom to listen too.