I don't understand why we need so much fiction in all of this.
Nothing in the OP is backed by empirical evidence. Nothing ever suggested by sub numbers is backed by empirical evidence. In fact.....SOE is very tight-lipped about everything SWG in general...and so is LA.
That said.......
The existence OF this desire to be tight-lipped suggests a far different outcome than what is being suggested. Also, while they has=ve always been a headache partner to work with, LA has not shown this level of "Iron-Fist" control over other outside developers regarding game MECHANICS. Oh sure, they iron-fist the lore....even what section of lore history is being used. Never mechanics.....LA is a design outlet, after all. When they contract others to create their ideals they have shown more often than not to allow most of the system control in the hands of the team in question. They DO have a certain way they want the IP portrayed.
But none of this is factual in ANY shape, and I do not see the intelligence in anyone suggesting we approach this as though it were. The OP has opinion he formed based on how he read some things. I'm not sure when it was that he forgot that said opinion could never be fact (an ideal which is supported by both SOE and LA's continued silence) but it happened. All we have to go on factually is that SOE HAS accepted responsibility on multiple occasions for the NGE. I'm no mind-reader...but I don't know of many companies which take a PR shot like that just to save some BS dictator IP lord. In fact.....corporate history tells me that, when given the choice, major corporations will pass that buck as hard and fast as they can.
The public, after all, is what gives them an existence at all. Very literally....if the public stop believing in them, they cease to exist. I fully believe SOE did what they did, and I think they tried to own up to it and admit a wrong. Granted, they still haven't QUITE figured out just what that wrong was....but I think they knew they did something bad and chose to accept full blame. No major company does that for another one....not unless they are about to be bought out by the other company in question, thus rendering any former public opinion of them null and void.
Do you think SOE or LEC care about what has happened to their game. No they don't, because they made money on it for sure. Got back the development cost and some. All they need to do now is make the min to pay for servers and limited staff to look after it.
Are they going to listen to the fan base, maybe if they wanted the best for their product. We all know they don't listen, as you can see how SWG has turned out. 250k+ popluation down to maybe 50k what a kick in the ass that is.
Who is too blame for it, who will put their hand up and say it was all my idea.....no one will
All they are interested in is making money for thier company.
How to hurt them, as others have done stop buying their products and cancelling accounts to their games. I'm sure that will get someone's attention sooner or later.
Oh well, when the game gets canned then this long war between the two $OE love and HATE will end finally end. Which I really hope is soon since it seem no communication is taking place at the SWG forums about pretty much anything the communication between the community and the devs as I have dug thru has been getting less so it seems something is going on there insidiously.....
a war that we the vets have already won.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
Oh well, when the game gets canned then this long war between the two $OE love and HATE will end finally end. Which I really hope is soon since it seem no communication is taking place at the SWG forums about pretty much anything the communication between the community and the devs as I have dug thru has been getting less so it seems something is going on there insidiously.....
a war that we the vets have already won.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
I don't care who is responsible for it, I'm boycotting both of them. They both suck. Niether could give a rats ass about their products or their customers; only the $$$. Screw em both is all I gotta say about it.
Hate to break it to you...all companies only care about the money.
Funny mine doesn't. My small indie dev company is about developing a community of players and a family of developers. I know, I know, ideas completely unheard of in today's day and age.
And this small indie dev company does not want to make a profit?Yes, we do want to make a profit, but it's not all about profits. You know it is possible to actually listen to your communities concerns and keep on developing with your initial goals.
Look, I'll be honest, we're not a convential "indie" game developer either. We have a different business model than most. Unlike most developers, we don't want to pink slip half the employees once the major project is done. I've just gone out and spent $12K on servers because we got tired of dealing with hosting issues, not to mention hiring someone full time to run the servers. I wouldn't have spent all the money I have if I didn't hope to make some of it back, but it takes time, patience, and a little luck.
At least our company isn't like half of them out there at the moment trying to start building an MMO from scratch, without any prior experience. Look at the Developer section on the site here once and a while and you'll see everyone and their brother thinks they have the next, newest, and best thing in the MMO genre. While we do want to make an MMO eventually, I'd rather concentrate on building quality games, a good community and a family of developers. After that, the rest should hopefully take care of itself.
I think companies like CCP are the future of the MMORPG, not bloated corporate behemoths like SOE, EA, or even Blizzard.
EVE started small, and what they have done for the past 4 years is continually add to the sandbox, more ships, more stuff, more space, more gameplay systems, and the ultimate goal is to add avatars and a ground game (planetary control).
As a consequence, their player base has also continually grown, even as other games of it's age and even newer have been declining.
In the long run, a virtual world game, by it's persistence is going to be a viable, money making enterprise far longer than level gear grind treadmill type games.
The industry is currently in the midst of a crash, something akin to the video game crash of 1983, which was caused by too many crappy games chasing a customer base that was increasingly tired of crappy games. The 1983 crash cleared out many publishers and console makers, some of which had been major players (such as Atari) , and the same thing is happening now. SOE, like Atari, was once THE dominant player in the market, and suddenly, found itself in a state of collapse. Right now world+dog is in the process of developing and/or releasing their very own spin on a WOW clone, and I believe all of them will fail at it, which will mean a massive exit of capital from the industry.
Ultimately I think SOE will end up doing what Atari did, exiting the business or grabbing onto a niche. I'd be surprised if 5 years from now SOE was even in the PC MMO business, I expect if they remain at all (Sony could elect to sell them) they will only be publishing stuff for Sony consoles. The recent move to merge them with SCEI is the first step in that.
Oh well, when the game gets canned then this long war between the two $OE love and HATE will end finally end. Which I really hope is soon since it seem no communication is taking place at the SWG forums about pretty much anything the communication between the community and the devs as I have dug thru has been getting less so it seems something is going on there insidiously.....
a war that we the vets have already won.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO:
Who killed SWG?
In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game?
And all fingers point to...
Nancy Macintyre.
Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example.
In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.
We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...".
We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post.
As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say?
So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence?
Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way?
SOE screwed up swg.... no its Lucas arts that did... no its .... WHO CARES game is dead now and trying to blame SOE or LA will not bring life back in this dead mmo let it R.I.P !
Originally posted by Darean002 I didn't know this before, but after talking to some people who went to the latest fan fest, I was told that it was actually Lucas Arts that pushed through the CU and NGE. SOE employees can't talk about it because of confidentiality agreements and clauses, but through not saying certain things, and reading between the lines, its pretty obvious what happened. Basically, some brain trust at Lucas Arts saw WoW and said "ZOMG! Why isn't SWG making as much money! Change it! Change it all!" Obviously Lucas Arts controls their Intellectual Property with an iron first, so whatever they say goes. LA knows nothing about mmo's but still forced soe to go ahead and make the changes. This isn't the first time this has happened either. LA has a long standing history of pissing off its business partners by pulling stupid stunts like this. Just look at KOTOR 1 and 2. Apparently LA is widely mistrusted by the industry but if you want the IP, you gotta play by their rules. Literally nothing can change in SWG unless the devs get LA's stamp of approval. Now don't get me wrong, I still hate soe for its terrible customer service, lying to the community, etc, but what really caught my attention here is that the devs are on our side. Truthfully they want for the game the same things we do. They loved the game they created pre-CU and hated implementing the changes. Hence, why so many people left. They were literally destroying their own work of art. Anyways, LA claims to have learned their lesson, although they'll never admit any of this publicly. They want to keep an "untarnished" reputation with consumers and let soe take the blame. The point is further whining, crying and flaming of SWG isn't going to make things better or worse. The game is not going to be shut down. Its still too profitable for LA and SOE. LA will keep the game running as it wants a MMO for its IP. What can change is LA is finally listening to the devs and players. The future direction of the game is literally in the players hands - which makes sense. LA has learned that if they want to make money, they should give the customers what they want (what a novel idea). NOT what LA thinks the customers want. See the difference? My point is this: unhappy with SWG? Fine, tell them what you want. You can be part of the solution or part of the cry babies who just can't let the CU and NGE go. Whether they admit it or not though, no one listens to the cry babies anymore (except themselves). Everyone knows the "upgrades" were a colossal error. People who keep crying just look like sad individuals with nothing else going on in their lives.
False. Soe failed with the original game, and never fixed the problems of that game. This led to sales and subscriptions being well below SOE's projections. This led to LEC being very disappointed. They demanded that SOE do something about it.
That was the CU. All ideas concepts and notions came from SOE, and they promised it would make the game better and get sales and subs up. It didn't. The fact is, SOE lied to LEC and gave them a false assessment of what was wrong: while the reason people were not staying with the game was poor management and a lack of fixing what was broken with the game, they blamed the original design and tried to re-invent the wheel, making the game with the CU, a game much more like EQ and other level based games.
That failed to increase subs, angered players, and still WoW grew. This annoyed LEC who then demanded something be done. SOE then came up with the NGE. LEC approved of this plan, which SOE said would get them higher numbers. It failed.
I hope BOTH have learned their lesson, but the original cause of the problems came from SOE, the false information about what was wrong came from SOE, and thus the bad decisions made by LEC came from trusting SOE to know what they were doing.
It was a combination of faults, but by far, the more guilty part is SOE on this.
Originally posted by Daffid011 SOE has a long history or redesigning all their games post launch with broad sweeping changes that upset their playerbase. Unless you want to blame Lucas Arts for what SOE did to all their other games, you are mistaken. There is also the devs from SOE that admitted they came up with the concepts and how hard they had to work to sell it to their superiors.
Tell your "friend" who went to the fanfair and "heard from a dev who couldn't break contracts by talking but did so to your special friend through some cryptic silent form of communication" that he is full of shit. Yes SOE would love to publically put the blame on someone else, but that just isn't the case.
It gets old hearing the SOE appologists tripping over each other to make excuses for SOE no matter what is brought to light. There is always someone else to blame except for SOE no matter what scandal or epic screwup is being discussed.
One thing to keep in mind. It doesn't matter who you want to blame if you continue to stick your head in the sand and keep paying them money. You are infact empowering them to continue with such behaviors.
It's pretty easy to understand why SOE employees would quietly spread the "it came from LA" myth. Company loyalty. One must look at all arguments, all available evidence, and come up with as unbiased a conclusion as one can. I have spoken with many people involved, and pretty much know exactly what happened, and who did what to whom.
I feel both were responsible, with SOE getting the lion's share of actual blame. LEC however messed up by trusting SOE to know what they were doing, as well as not doing their own homework.
SOE DOES have a history of changing live MMO's in ways that anger their current playerbase. I know people who will not play another SOE game because of what they did you EQ1! We now can witness the debacle of Vanguard vans asking for classic servers.
SOE seems to be the one who keeps making these mistakes, NOT LEC.
Originally posted by hubertgrove Originally posted by Dracis Originally posted by salvaje Originally posted by iwantmyswg Originally posted by firefly2003 Oh well, when the game gets canned then this long war between the two $OE love and HATE will end finally end. Which I really hope is soon since it seem no communication is taking place at the SWG forums about pretty much anything the communication between the community and the devs as I have dug thru has been getting less so it seems something is going on there insidiously.....
a war that we the vets have already won.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive. I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO: Who killed SWG? In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game? And all fingers point to... Nancy Macintyre. Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example. In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing. We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...". We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post. As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say? So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence? Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way? Nancy was just a sales person, a marketing person. She had nothing to do with the CU or the NGE, except she did a bad job selling it.
She attempted to put some perfume on a pig, nothing more.
Yay! Another fanboi shill posts the old "It wasn't SOE, even though they admitted it was their idea and convinced LEC to agree to it, it was all LEC!" lie for the thousandth time! Another thousand or so times and you might even start to believe it yourself!
And of course you have links to this admission? Oh that's right we don't provide proof on these forums, because then we might actually have to know what we were talking about before we opened our mouths.
To the OP:
Give it up man. No one here wants to admit that George Lucas is anything but the second coming of Christ. It doesn't matter how much you show them that proves he's the biggest turd muncher to walk the planet, it doesn't matter how many times LucasArts screws over the developers and screws things up, they just don't want to see it. SOE is satan and LA is goodly and pure. I used to argue the same thing. My favorite line from those days: "The only proof you have is the credits in the book!" as if the credits in the book were somehow forged or not really proof. Just goes to show you the mentality.
Originally posted by Jodokai Originally posted by Obee Yay! Another fanboi shill posts the old "It wasn't SOE, even though they admitted it was their idea and convinced LEC to agree to it, it was all LEC!" lie for the thousandth time! Another thousand or so times and you might even start to believe it yourself!
And of course you have links to this admission? Oh that's right we don't provide proof on these forums, because then we might actually have to know what we were talking about before we opened our mouths.
To the OP: Give it up man. No one here wants to admit that George Lucas is anything but the second coming of Christ. It doesn't matter how much you show them that proves he's the biggest turd muncher to walk the planet, it doesn't matter how many times LucasArts screws over the developers and screws things up, they just don't want to see it. SOE is satan and LA is goodly and pure. I used to argue the same thing. My favorite line from those days: "The only proof you have is the credits in the book!" as if the credits in the book were somehow forged or not really proof. Just goes to show you the mentality.
Actually, lots of evidence for this has been provided on these forums, but one key piece came from Brenlo (head of SWG communications) on the SWG forums when he said, in the midst of just this very argument on those forums.:
"So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, To try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed.
We can, and I am sure manyof us will, debate for years on end whether this was agood idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.
Where did we go wrong? delivery, we failed in our timing and communication> That is where we let you down the most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize."
Note that at the time Brenlo STILL thinks the NGE was a good idea.
The Jeff mentioned is Jeff Freeman, who, along with the design team, came up with and pushed for the clicky combat system part of the NGE.
Now, is this proof? I submit it is better evidence than anything the "it came from LA" crowd can muster up.
Originally posted by hubertgrove Originally posted by Fishermage Nancy was just a sales person, a marketing person. She had nothing to do with the CU or the NGE, except she did a bad job selling it.
She attempted to put some perfume on a pig, nothing more.
Interesting perspective - can I ask why and how you come to hold that view?
Direct knowledge from having spoken with many of the participants, in person and on line.
Nancy didn't just promote the NGE, she poured gasoline onto everyone who played the game and followed that up by lighting it with a flamethrower. Nancy took what was already a very bad situation and actually made it 10x worse because she more or less told everyone who was a customer, "screw you, we don't want you, we want nimrods who are easily amused".
Lest we forget:
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at Lucas Arts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
"There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game."
Originally posted by Gishgeron I don't understand why we need so much fiction in all of this.
Nothing in the OP is backed by empirical evidence. Nothing ever suggested by sub numbers is backed by empirical evidence. In fact.....SOE is very tight-lipped about everything SWG in general...and so is LA.
That said.......
The existence OF this desire to be tight-lipped suggests a far different outcome than what is being suggested. Also, while they has=ve always been a headache partner to work with, LA has not shown this level of "Iron-Fist" control over other outside developers regarding game MECHANICS. Oh sure, they iron-fist the lore....even what section of lore history is being used. Never mechanics.....LA is a design outlet, after all. When they contract others to create their ideals they have shown more often than not to allow most of the system control in the hands of the team in question. They DO have a certain way they want the IP portrayed.
But none of this is factual in ANY shape, and I do not see the intelligence in anyone suggesting we approach this as though it were. The OP has opinion he formed based on how he read some things. I'm not sure when it was that he forgot that said opinion could never be fact (an ideal which is supported by both SOE and LA's continued silence) but it happened. All we have to go on factually is that SOE HAS accepted responsibility on multiple occasions for the NGE. I'm no mind-reader...but I don't know of many companies which take a PR shot like that just to save some BS dictator IP lord. In fact.....corporate history tells me that, when given the choice, major corporations will pass that buck as hard and fast as they can.
The public, after all, is what gives them an existence at all. Very literally....if the public stop believing in them, they cease to exist. I fully believe SOE did what they did, and I think they tried to own up to it and admit a wrong. Granted, they still haven't QUITE figured out just what that wrong was....but I think they knew they did something bad and chose to accept full blame. No major company does that for another one....not unless they are about to be bought out by the other company in question, thus rendering any former public opinion of them null and void.
Originally posted by salvaje Nancy didn't just promote the NGE, she poured gasoline onto everyone who played the game and followed that up by lighting it with a flamethrower. Nancy took what was already a very bad situation and actually made it 10x worse because she more or less told everyone who was a customer, "screw you, we don't want you, we want nimrods who are easily amused". Lest we forget: "We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at Lucas Arts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves." "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game."
Oh definitely, but from all evidence, she had little or nothing to do with the NGE itself. just the "Failure of communication" that Brenlo spoke of.
Plus the NGE didn't DO anything Nancy McIntyre claimed.
It DIDN'T make the game accessable to a broader player base, in fact, it narrowed things by REMOVING things. It didn't make the game more intuitive (which would make it require less reading), it made it less so. It didn't give people the experience of "being" a "Han Solo" or a "Luke Skywalker," it made you feel like a disconnected nothing in a disjointed world that was broken. It didn't provide more instant gratification, it increased fustration, and still does. It didn't give people more of an opportunity to take part in what they saw in the movies; by removing and breaking the core game, and not replacing it with anything, it gave people less opportunities to do anything, much less an opportunity to take part in what they saw in the movies.
Not only was the focus wrong, it failed to deliver what they supposedly wanted. It was collossal failure at all levels.
Interesting perspective - can I ask why and how you come to hold that view?
Direct knowledge from having spoken with many of the participants, in person and on line.
Aaah, in that case, we have a problem because my knowldge comes from having spoken with all the participants, not only in person but over many months, in both professional and, in many cases, strikingly intimate situations.
My lie therefore beats yours. Unless of course you can verify a single word of yours, amingo?
I apportion the blame equally between SOE and LA. LA had to green light whatever harebrained schemes that SOE came up with, which made no gaming sense, made no business sense, and were destined to be an unrecoverable PR disaster from the moment they were conceived.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Oh well, when the game gets canned then this long war between the two $OE love and HATE will end finally end. Which I really hope is soon since it seem no communication is taking place at the SWG forums about pretty much anything the communication between the community and the devs as I have dug thru has been getting less so it seems something is going on there insidiously.....
a war that we the vets have already won.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO:
Who killed SWG?
In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game?
And all fingers point to...
Nancy Macintyre.
Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example.
In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.
We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...".
We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post.
As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say?
So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence?
Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way?
About the only qualification I can see that Nancy has is as an affirmative action hire. By having a sr executive who is female, she's probably saving them more than that in EEOC hassles.
She certainly proved with her NGE statements that she has no clue how to handle PR. Now, that said, I have no idea what she did or does, except for the botched NGE PR. She may or may not be good at the stuff we don't know of, but she is absolutely the most abysmal PR rep, EVER. The stuff she said in interviews should be in textbooks in every school (including the one she graduated from) teaching people how NOT to handle PR!
But there is a positive to everything. Nancy having gone into PR for gaming companies instead of into diplomacy (PR for countries) probably prevented a war or two.
Comments
I don't understand why we need so much fiction in all of this.
Nothing in the OP is backed by empirical evidence. Nothing ever suggested by sub numbers is backed by empirical evidence. In fact.....SOE is very tight-lipped about everything SWG in general...and so is LA.
That said.......
The existence OF this desire to be tight-lipped suggests a far different outcome than what is being suggested. Also, while they has=ve always been a headache partner to work with, LA has not shown this level of "Iron-Fist" control over other outside developers regarding game MECHANICS. Oh sure, they iron-fist the lore....even what section of lore history is being used. Never mechanics.....LA is a design outlet, after all. When they contract others to create their ideals they have shown more often than not to allow most of the system control in the hands of the team in question. They DO have a certain way they want the IP portrayed.
But none of this is factual in ANY shape, and I do not see the intelligence in anyone suggesting we approach this as though it were. The OP has opinion he formed based on how he read some things. I'm not sure when it was that he forgot that said opinion could never be fact (an ideal which is supported by both SOE and LA's continued silence) but it happened. All we have to go on factually is that SOE HAS accepted responsibility on multiple occasions for the NGE. I'm no mind-reader...but I don't know of many companies which take a PR shot like that just to save some BS dictator IP lord. In fact.....corporate history tells me that, when given the choice, major corporations will pass that buck as hard and fast as they can.
The public, after all, is what gives them an existence at all. Very literally....if the public stop believing in them, they cease to exist. I fully believe SOE did what they did, and I think they tried to own up to it and admit a wrong. Granted, they still haven't QUITE figured out just what that wrong was....but I think they knew they did something bad and chose to accept full blame. No major company does that for another one....not unless they are about to be bought out by the other company in question, thus rendering any former public opinion of them null and void.
Do you think SOE or LEC care about what has happened to their game. No they don't, because they made money on it for sure. Got back the development cost and some. All they need to do now is make the min to pay for servers and limited staff to look after it.
Are they going to listen to the fan base, maybe if they wanted the best for their product. We all know they don't listen, as you can see how SWG has turned out. 250k+ popluation down to maybe 50k what a kick in the ass that is.
Who is too blame for it, who will put their hand up and say it was all my idea.....no one will
All they are interested in is making money for thier company.
How to hurt them, as others have done stop buying their products and cancelling accounts to their games. I'm sure that will get someone's attention sooner or later.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Funny mine doesn't. My small indie dev company is about developing a community of players and a family of developers. I know, I know, ideas completely unheard of in today's day and age.
And this small indie dev company does not want to make a profit?Yes, we do want to make a profit, but it's not all about profits. You know it is possible to actually listen to your communities concerns and keep on developing with your initial goals.
Look, I'll be honest, we're not a convential "indie" game developer either. We have a different business model than most. Unlike most developers, we don't want to pink slip half the employees once the major project is done. I've just gone out and spent $12K on servers because we got tired of dealing with hosting issues, not to mention hiring someone full time to run the servers. I wouldn't have spent all the money I have if I didn't hope to make some of it back, but it takes time, patience, and a little luck.
At least our company isn't like half of them out there at the moment trying to start building an MMO from scratch, without any prior experience. Look at the Developer section on the site here once and a while and you'll see everyone and their brother thinks they have the next, newest, and best thing in the MMO genre. While we do want to make an MMO eventually, I'd rather concentrate on building quality games, a good community and a family of developers. After that, the rest should hopefully take care of itself.
I think companies like CCP are the future of the MMORPG, not bloated corporate behemoths like SOE, EA, or even Blizzard.
EVE started small, and what they have done for the past 4 years is continually add to the sandbox, more ships, more stuff, more space, more gameplay systems, and the ultimate goal is to add avatars and a ground game (planetary control).
As a consequence, their player base has also continually grown, even as other games of it's age and even newer have been declining.
In the long run, a virtual world game, by it's persistence is going to be a viable, money making enterprise far longer than level gear grind treadmill type games.
The industry is currently in the midst of a crash, something akin to the video game crash of 1983, which was caused by too many crappy games chasing a customer base that was increasingly tired of crappy games. The 1983 crash cleared out many publishers and console makers, some of which had been major players (such as Atari) , and the same thing is happening now. SOE, like Atari, was once THE dominant player in the market, and suddenly, found itself in a state of collapse. Right now world+dog is in the process of developing and/or releasing their very own spin on a WOW clone, and I believe all of them will fail at it, which will mean a massive exit of capital from the industry.
Ultimately I think SOE will end up doing what Atari did, exiting the business or grabbing onto a niche. I'd be surprised if 5 years from now SOE was even in the PC MMO business, I expect if they remain at all (Sony could elect to sell them) they will only be publishing stuff for Sony consoles. The recent move to merge them with SCEI is the first step in that.
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO:
Who killed SWG?
In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game?
And all fingers point to...
Nancy Macintyre.
Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example.
In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.
We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...".
We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post.
As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say?
So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence?
Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way?
To the OP,
What's really, really sad is not the sad individuals crying, but the sad individuals crying about the sad individuals crying.
Stop whining about the whiners. It just makes you a hypocrite.
SOE screwed up swg.... no its Lucas arts that did... no its .... WHO CARES game is dead now and trying to blame SOE or LA will not bring life back in this dead mmo let it R.I.P !
That was the CU. All ideas concepts and notions came from SOE, and they promised it would make the game better and get sales and subs up. It didn't. The fact is, SOE lied to LEC and gave them a false assessment of what was wrong: while the reason people were not staying with the game was poor management and a lack of fixing what was broken with the game, they blamed the original design and tried to re-invent the wheel, making the game with the CU, a game much more like EQ and other level based games.
That failed to increase subs, angered players, and still WoW grew. This annoyed LEC who then demanded something be done. SOE then came up with the NGE. LEC approved of this plan, which SOE said would get them higher numbers. It failed.
I hope BOTH have learned their lesson, but the original cause of the problems came from SOE, the false information about what was wrong came from SOE, and thus the bad decisions made by LEC came from trusting SOE to know what they were doing.
It was a combination of faults, but by far, the more guilty part is SOE on this.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I feel both were responsible, with SOE getting the lion's share of actual blame. LEC however messed up by trusting SOE to know what they were doing, as well as not doing their own homework.
SOE DOES have a history of changing live MMO's in ways that anger their current playerbase. I know people who will not play another SOE game because of what they did you EQ1! We now can witness the debacle of Vanguard vans asking for classic servers.
SOE seems to be the one who keeps making these mistakes, NOT LEC.
fishermage.blogspot.com
and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO:
Who killed SWG?
In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game?
And all fingers point to...
Nancy Macintyre.
Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example.
In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.
We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...".
We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post.
As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say?
So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence?
Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way?
Nancy was just a sales person, a marketing person. She had nothing to do with the CU or the NGE, except she did a bad job selling it.
She attempted to put some perfume on a pig, nothing more.
fishermage.blogspot.com
To the OP:
Give it up man. No one here wants to admit that George Lucas is anything but the second coming of Christ. It doesn't matter how much you show them that proves he's the biggest turd muncher to walk the planet, it doesn't matter how many times LucasArts screws over the developers and screws things up, they just don't want to see it. SOE is satan and LA is goodly and pure. I used to argue the same thing. My favorite line from those days: "The only proof you have is the credits in the book!" as if the credits in the book were somehow forged or not really proof. Just goes to show you the mentality.
To the OP:
Give it up man. No one here wants to admit that George Lucas is anything but the second coming of Christ. It doesn't matter how much you show them that proves he's the biggest turd muncher to walk the planet, it doesn't matter how many times LucasArts screws over the developers and screws things up, they just don't want to see it. SOE is satan and LA is goodly and pure. I used to argue the same thing. My favorite line from those days: "The only proof you have is the credits in the book!" as if the credits in the book were somehow forged or not really proof. Just goes to show you the mentality.
Actually, lots of evidence for this has been provided on these forums, but one key piece came from Brenlo (head of SWG communications) on the SWG forums when he said, in the midst of just this very argument on those forums.:
"So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, To try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed.
We can, and I am sure manyof us will, debate for years on end whether this was agood idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.
Where did we go wrong? delivery, we failed in our timing and communication> That is where we let you down the most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize."
Note that at the time Brenlo STILL thinks the NGE was a good idea.
The Jeff mentioned is Jeff Freeman, who, along with the design team, came up with and pushed for the clicky combat system part of the NGE.
Now, is this proof? I submit it is better evidence than anything the "it came from LA" crowd can muster up.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Interesting perspective - can I ask why and how you come to hold that view?
Interesting perspective - can I ask why and how you come to hold that view?
Direct knowledge from having spoken with many of the participants, in person and on line.
fishermage.blogspot.com
as for more evidence og SOE being at fault 9although BOTh are partly responsible), I found this link quoting Jeff Freeman:
http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm?thread=119968&bhjs=0
fishermage.blogspot.com
If you want to know Jeff's feelings on it, read that thread and visit WildcatMMO where there is a nice discussion on it with him as well.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Nancy didn't just promote the NGE, she poured gasoline onto everyone who played the game and followed that up by lighting it with a flamethrower. Nancy took what was already a very bad situation and actually made it 10x worse because she more or less told everyone who was a customer, "screw you, we don't want you, we want nimrods who are easily amused".
Lest we forget:
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at Lucas Arts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
"There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game."
Well reasoned and intelligent post Gish...
Akevv Ostone
No Longer SWG Free
Oh definitely, but from all evidence, she had little or nothing to do with the NGE itself. just the "Failure of communication" that Brenlo spoke of.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Plus the NGE didn't DO anything Nancy McIntyre claimed.
It DIDN'T make the game accessable to a broader player base, in fact, it narrowed things by REMOVING things. It didn't make the game more intuitive (which would make it require less reading), it made it less so. It didn't give people the experience of "being" a "Han Solo" or a "Luke Skywalker," it made you feel like a disconnected nothing in a disjointed world that was broken. It didn't provide more instant gratification, it increased fustration, and still does. It didn't give people more of an opportunity to take part in what they saw in the movies; by removing and breaking the core game, and not replacing it with anything, it gave people less opportunities to do anything, much less an opportunity to take part in what they saw in the movies.
Not only was the focus wrong, it failed to deliver what they supposedly wanted. It was collossal failure at all levels.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Aaah, in that case, we have a problem because my knowldge comes from having spoken with all the participants, not only in person but over many months, in both professional and, in many cases, strikingly intimate situations.
My lie therefore beats yours. Unless of course you can verify a single word of yours, amingo?
I apportion the blame equally between SOE and LA. LA had to green light whatever harebrained schemes that SOE came up with, which made no gaming sense, made no business sense, and were destined to be an unrecoverable PR disaster from the moment they were conceived.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
a war that we the vets have already won.and this war will go on. no game or mmo should be anything like the nge.
And no company that does something like the NGE should be allowed up off the mat and to survive.
I've always said that I blame SOE and LEC both, though I throw more of my blame at SOE. Even if LEC handed them the design document for the NGE and told them to do it (which is not true), SOE still implimented it in a piss poor manner. Even today, 2 years on, the thing isn't even stable enough to call a beta.
You know this question keeps coming up about who suggested the NGE and I swear that Smedly stated in an interview that he went to the head of LEC and suggested it. I know it's been posted here(in this forum) before, I just can't find it at the moment.
Yes, that is an interesting question, one worthy of CLUEDO:
Who killed SWG?
In other words, who was it, high up in SOE or LA, who had a senior authority over SWG but was not actually likely to play or even like the game, who saw WoW only in terms of its commercial revenues and who had the clout to demand that SWG be changed to make it happen but not the insight to see it would effectively destroy the game?
And all fingers point to...
Nancy Macintyre.
Ok, here was a woman without any formal training in programming or a history in gaming. Her received degree is in finance and accounting from Drexel University. After that she held exclusively sales and marketing jobs in gaming companies that make products for a young, primarily child audience - Hasbro and Atari, for example.
In 2005, having headed up the marketing for Lucas Arts online gaming dvision, she was formally made Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing.
We do know that, on taking the job, she already did not like SWG: "...There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat...".
We know that the NGE, launched at the end of September, was apparently six months in the making according to a post on the Station forums by one of the very few senior players allowed to review the new NGE days before it came out. That takes us back to May 2005, the very month Nancy took over her post.
As we all know now, the NGE failed. What this meant to Nancy we cannot now know - however, she has not been promoted to the upper echelons of Lucas Arts' management and in fact, in January 2007, she left to become VP at Leapfrog, a company that makes 'educational gaming' software for a younger audience. Did she jump or was she pushed? Who can say?
So, if she was responsible for this massive screwing of a game once played and loved by hundreds of thousands of people, was she justly punished in the end? Did karma finally catch up with her? Did fate punish her for Admiral Akbar-levels of incompetence?
Of course not. In January 2008, Leapfrog raised her salary to $300k pa and paid her a bonus of $150k. Isn't that always the way?
About the only qualification I can see that Nancy has is as an affirmative action hire. By having a sr executive who is female, she's probably saving them more than that in EEOC hassles.
She certainly proved with her NGE statements that she has no clue how to handle PR. Now, that said, I have no idea what she did or does, except for the botched NGE PR. She may or may not be good at the stuff we don't know of, but she is absolutely the most abysmal PR rep, EVER. The stuff she said in interviews should be in textbooks in every school (including the one she graduated from) teaching people how NOT to handle PR!
But there is a positive to everything. Nancy having gone into PR for gaming companies instead of into diplomacy (PR for countries) probably prevented a war or two.