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.
I don't think anyone in this thread is solely blaming SOE, let alone giving Lucas Arts a free pass. Part of the problem is people like the Original Poster coming to the forums and trying to lay ALL the blame on one company by saying things like "Lucas Arts forced the NGE on SOE." As if SOE has zero say in what or how things get made.
To sum up, Yes Lucas Arts is just as much to blame for allowing the NGE to happen. However the staff at SOE was the creative force behind it.
Personally I enjoyed the first 3 movies George Lucas made, but think just about everything else Star Wars has been crap. That is why I don't own episodes 1-3 and stopped buying Lucas Arts software after getting completely screwed with the release of battlefronts. Frankly I've not been impressed with either company in a long time, but at least Lucas Arts has released some games to high praise like the KOTOR series, Lego star wars, etc. I can't say the same for SOE.
The OP is right. It was Lucas Arts that made the changes.
I seem to remember Jeff Freeman saying it was SOE.
Friday, November 4
Shenanigans
SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now ? how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3?2?1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair.
I feel bad that I might have forced you to explain this or something.
Yer my favorite dev, but I only give you credit for what I know you've done, which isn't much with SWG, but I don't really want to know more about that anyways, that's just distracting and awkward.
And I was actually trying to promote him a little on Halloween 'cause I felt like he slipped off the face of the earth, which means he's prolly working on something interesting.
Seriously I figgered pointing people to him would make them smarter, even if they feel like arguing with him or something.
And Halloweed was two days before I heard about the new SWG stuff.
If you ain't yelling at me, then I'm sorry for blabbering and maybe making things worse or something, please delete.
And if I did something horrible let me know more specifically so I can do something better about it than this.
I don't make fun of people I don't like, it ain't funny when I don't like someone.
And I give Raph credit for way the heck more in games than I give you, actually, if that makes you feel better.
By Ole Bald Angus the Monk, at 10:04 PM
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Heh. Nope, I aint yellin' at you.
By Jeff, at 2:39 AM
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I dont think its anything personal about Raph, but people like a figurehead to blame when things go wrong. You have to admit things went *very* wrong where SWG was concerned.
Players saw a game launched 18 months before it was ready. Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with such iconic professions as fencer, swordsman, pikeman, combat medic etc. The majority of the skill trees were poorly constructed or 90% useless (smuggler anyone?) Who could they blame?
Players saw a SW game with a complicated Health bar system which made no logical sense whatsoever. They saw a skill tree system that let them effectively boost their health by over 200 times by walking around with 3 Rancors. They had a world devoid of content. A game where getting buffs and travelling anywhere could take an hour etc etc.
Raphs world failed and im sorry he has to shoulder some of the blame. Obviously lots of other people deserve blame also, its just Raph is the most visible target.
You cannot make an argument that SWG was successful. It didnt come close to meeting its projected subscription targets. Not a failure on the size of Sims Online I admit, but a failure still. Thats basically the reason for these changes isnt it? Seems to me it was this or switching off the lights...
I really do hope this new version is a success, but after how badly SWG subscribers were treated, how bad the word of mouth is, how many of those 900,000 accounts are going to come back?
By Anonymous, at 6:10 AM
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Well, I'm one of those he is yelling to ;p
I've read your point of view and I don't have much to argue or criticize, but at the same time my own opinion didn't change, mostly because I wasn't really ranting, just expressing my perplexity.
On the other side I still believe that Raph should never have left the game, mostly because I believe in authorship and I wanted him to take the responsibility of the game and remain committed to it. I wanted and still want to see him discussing specific games instead of just dabbing on the high level theory. And I believe it's fair to admit that the game would be *nowhere* where it is right now if he was still at the lead. Good or bad.
Ubiq wrote:
"New blood coming onto a project bring their own ideas and ideologies."
This is undeniable. It's not "wrong" but it's a trait that cannot be dismissed. This is why I believe that Raph's SWG would be *very* different from today's SWG. And this also means that the scope and aim undoubtedly changed. The game had a rather high churn rate of developers and I'm sure it suffered because of this. It's the consequence of this.
What I believe is that after Raph left, he and the game splitted directions. It's a fact that most of the changes to the CU, professions, mechanics, PvP and this new last remodel are attempts to drag the game somewhere else. I'm not judging if better or worse, but undeniably different. I was the first to strongly criticize his ideas like I did on the thread on Grimwell and the following discussions so it's not like I'm trying to side with him. But I recognize this difference of opinions.
It's true that many elements of Raph's design remain, but what is also true is that the game didn't really try to build and improve them. We can say that some important ideas are still there, but many other were actually progressively eroded. Not expanded or made stronger. The game didn't move to bet even more on those points that made it unique, instead it was changed to move away from those positions and acquire more traditional elements (levels, simpler classes, more traditional combat etc..). Again this process was also excused because that design was being strongly criticized as "not fun". Hence the endless tries to simplify and streamline those parts that were perceived as too clunky and problematic.
It's not my intention to criticize this approach. It's like the father with the son. He taught you things, what you will do will be always influenced by what he did as also many others will feel that influence, me included. But this also fuels another personal point of view that is your own and must impose itself at some point.
And I really do hope this will go well, because if it doesn't we'll see the developers find yet another excuse to leave these game stagnate while all the work and resources are spent on stupid sequels. I wish they would keep the discussions and the development alive and vibrant, maybe without the need to change type of game and discard most of the work that was already being done...
By Abalieno, at 8:07 AM
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I usually try to restrain myself when I come here because I am not an insider or even someone like Abal that is really so seriously into this. Design review is just another small piece of entertainment I can drag out of the money I'm already spending.
That said, I can absolutely see the producers point of view on this. The game would never have really made any headway gaining ground without something radical. Skewing towards the core demographic makes perfect sense. I just wish that the emphasis wasn't pushed up in our face quite so much.
Finally to you personally, I don't understand how you guys do it. This like the third crunch this year? I appreciate your efforts.
Here's hoping you get time for a Thanksgiving dinner with your family.
By Nyght, at 10:16 AM
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I'll say that I'm not into the new changes at all. I liked the complexity that SWG provided.. it was (emphasis on was) a game like no other.
I'm ok with the idea of change however. There are a multitude of reasons that I'm not privy to that a game like SWG does change.
As a programmer of 13 years, I am disghusted with the lack of BA/QA and CMM that SWG exibits. In over a year of playing, my interest in the game has slowly declined due to a few things. Mainly, bug reports from TC being ignored, faulty QA allowing one patch to break other game mechanics, etc...
My hope with this NGE is that the players who test (for free I might add) on TC be listened to, and that this is not just another hurried to production release.
That being said, my opinions are probably fairly useless at this point, as I'm more interested in stable games.
Haha, christ. I am an SWG Veteran who doesn't play the game any longer. I think the game is a steaming heap of, ya know... It was more fun before the game was changed, yes, but it was still a lemon even then. They just made it worse. What SWG Veterans should unite behind, instead of hating the infamous changes, is getting LucasArts to make a new Star Wars MMO. Let the old one go. Make a push for a new one.
I agree but the problem will be that Lucas Arts will make another lemon because they ignore message boards.
Originally posted by hubertgrove Originally posted by Fishermage
Originally posted by hubertgrove 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? the difference is, I am not lying, amigo. I never do on these forums. I take the truth too seriously for that. You can choose not to believe me but I am not affected by that one iota.
1. Designed the Pre CU.., It was Koster and SOE... 2. Designed the CURB... It was Walton and SOE... 3. Designed the CU... It was Greenmarine and Blixtev and SOE... 4. Designed the NGE... It was Freeman and Cao... Whatever mandate they gave, SOE implimented it. The NGE, therefore, is still the stupid and piss poor effort of SOE.
I'm pretty sure Greenmarine designed the CURB and quit over the CU.
The NGE was Freeman, Lord Pall (Dan Rubenfeld) and their team. I'm not sure what Cao actually did as Creative Director.
But yeah, it was all done by SOE. All ideas, notions, and implementations were them. LA DID ask for changes because they were not happy at every step of the way, but the changes were thought up and sold to LA by SOE.
Then LA (Julio and McIntyre in terms of the NGE) tried rather horribly to sell those ideas to us. So, when Brenlo claims they failed in communication, he is trying to shift blame in yet another way.
1. Designed the Pre CU.., It was Koster and SOE...
2. Designed the CURB... It was Walton and SOE...
3. Designed the CU... It was Greenmarine and Blixtev and SOE...
4. Designed the NGE... It was Freeman and Cao...
Whatever mandate they gave, SOE implimented it. The NGE, therefore, is still the stupid and piss poor effort of SOE.
I'm pretty sure Greenmarine designed the CURB and quit over the CU.
The NGE was Freeman, Lord Pall (Dan Rubenfeld) and their team. I'm not sure what Cao actually did as Creative Director.
But yeah, it was all done by SOE. All ideas, notions, and implementations were them. LA DID ask for changes because they were not happy at every step of the way, but the changes were thought up and sold to LA by SOE.
Then LA (Julio and McIntyre in terms of the NGE) tried rather horribly to sell those ideas to us. So, when Brenlo claims they failed in communication, he is trying to shift blame in yet another way.
They actually NEVER tried to sell the NGE to us.
We were irrelevant.. We were to slink away quietly back into our basement lairs and never be heard from again.
Ironically, I got a ban for pointing this out when they shoved the CU down our throats, that it would be great if they tried to SELL us on it, by explaining what was GOOD about it instead of "this is it, take it or go fuck yourselves".
The CU was NGE #1. They didn't even want to keep us. They wanted WOW even then. Which is why they didn't listen, they banned and deleted.
Same thing but 100X worse happened with the NGE because they convinced themselves that we didn't matter because their shitty WOW clone with lightsabers would replace us with 10X our numbers as we quit.
I think that justice truly is done that they never have had Pre CU sub numbers SINCE Pre CU, and that the NGE, never, at any point, has had CU numbers.
The game we loved was the most profitable SWG. And it's the SWG they refuse to bring back.
Ah, but Salvaje, LEC was every bit as mesmerized by WoW as SOE was. I dare say they were even more pissed than SOE that their greatest IP in the history of the universe got totally pwned by those...upstarts...at Blizzard.
So they told SOE to make it more like WoW, which SOE, which was being kicked all over the virtual map by those...upstarts...at Blizz were all to happy to comply with LEC's wishes on this matter.
The rot was there in the CU, with the damn cartoon icons, the overt levels, the cooldowns, all the other concepts ripped directly from the systems of WoW.
The NGE just made it even more obvious, with the very clear exception of the pseudo FPS combat UI that sucked bantha heinie...totally inappropriate for anyone who was not an actor in a Ballpark Franks commercial (that is, did not have three hands).
Which is why I apportion blame equally between the two. LEC had to greenlight every change SOE made.
Those two organizations are in it together.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many
former SWG players play WoW then? IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't
stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh. Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO
without LA haveing too much to say.
Why play the badly coded copy (which is sad since SoE had the original formula for it...) or the clean, strong and populated original? I think that is why so many went to WoW.
I'll be honest, I have split feelings on WoW. The game can be fun, but the graphics are iffy at best.
We've told them what we want. Our game back. We've told them the NGE is not acceptable. And we've proven that this is the view of the vast majority of players by voting with our feet. The number of people who have quit and quit for good far exceed 200,000 subscribers. I don't give a rat's rear end if the CUNGE was SOE's fault OR LEC's fault. Both are EQUALLY to blame. I won't patronize either company. I patronize CCP and EVE because that company and that product is FAR closer to what would be appropriate for a Star Wars game than the scavenger hunt, starter Jedi, "Foozle" instanced NGE. This is just more nuanced "we didn't communicate well, we'll communicate better now" crap, that is all rhetoric without substance. if LEC really cared about what their customers want (because that means making more money) we'd have had Pre-Cu back long ago. Far too little, MUCH too late. At this point, not only will I never play SWG again, I likely will never play the sequel either. In addition, since the NGE I've not: 1. Bought any new copies of Star Wars movies, even the special editions. 2. Bought any of the Star Wars novels. 3. Bought any Star Wars collectibles And I frankly could care less about the upcoming animated movie or TV show. The NGE and the cavalier disregard for us from LEC and SOE has pretty much destroyed my loyalty and fandom to Star Wars itself. They can keep applying more lipstick to the NGE pig, and all the polish in the world to the NGE turd, but it's still the NGE, and it still is losing customers. I'd not play Star Wars galaxies again even if Lucas himself PAID me to play it. As for not listening to us "crybabies", they've NEVER listened to anyone who didn't tell them what they wanted to hear! But they do fear us, which is why they still send shills to try to out shout us. Fact of the matter is that if LEC didn't "force" the CUNGE (as you claim) they'd not be in their current predicament. Their only way OUT of the current situation is to do something about that. As I've said over and over, any solution that ignores the fact that the NGE is the core PROBLEM is doomed to fail and isn't worth even trying.
I am sorry but this post is worthy of praise - Nicely done!
Originally posted by SioBabble Ah, but Salvaje, LEC was every bit as mesmerized by WoW as SOE was. I dare say they were even more pissed than SOE that their greatest IP in the history of the universe got totally pwned by those...upstarts...at Blizzard. So they told SOE to make it more like WoW, which SOE, which was being kicked all over the virtual map by those...upstarts...at Blizz were all to happy to comply with LEC's wishes on this matter. The rot was there in the CU, with the damn cartoon icons, the overt levels, the cooldowns, all the other concepts ripped directly from the systems of WoW. The NGE just made it even more obvious, with the very clear exception of the pseudo FPS combat UI that sucked bantha heinie...totally inappropriate for anyone who was not an actor in a Ballpark Franks commercial (that is, did not have three hands). Which is why I apportion blame equally between the two. LEC had to greenlight every change SOE made. Those two organizations are in it together.
The problem is they copied what sucks about WoW, and didn't emulate WHY WoW is successful. Thus, they failed.
Once again, SOE made that call. had they copied what was good about WoW (it actually WORKS and is not a broken piece of crap -- they have real quality control over there), SWG would have stellar figures. Instead, they added ONE quest line, copied levels, copied classes, not realizing those things are NOT why WoW succeeds.
You can't copy someone who already spends more money than you by cutting the budget. Dumb.
Originally posted by Bobbey I don't get one thing...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many former SWG players play WoW then? IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh. Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO without LA haveing too much to say.
You may not like the way WoW looks, but it is a far better, bigger, and smarter game than the current SWG. It also is not a broken piece of garbage, which unfortunately is what SWG always was, which is why it suffered in the first place.
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
Originally posted by Raston Originally posted by Bobbey I don't get one thing...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many former SWG players play WoW then? IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh. Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO without LA haveing too much to say.
Why play the badly coded copy (which is sad since SoE had the original formula for it...) or the clean, strong and populated original? I think that is why so many went to WoW. I'll be honest, I have split feelings on WoW. The game can be fun, but the graphics are iffy at best. yeah I'm not crazy about the graphics either, but it is a quality product, as oppose dto any shabby second rate piece of work from SOE.
The day they start caring about their work and their customers is the day they begin to succeed.
never touched W0W myself and even before W0W was released had the feelin' it's gonna destroy SWG .. yup. I was right.. still hate W0W and what $0E done to SWG for whatever reasons...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many
former SWG players play WoW then?
IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't
stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh.
Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO
without LA haveing too much to say.
You may not like the way WoW looks, but it is a far better, bigger, and smarter game than the current SWG. It also is not a broken piece of garbage, which unfortunately is what SWG always was, which is why it suffered in the first place.
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
Ah, but Salvaje, LEC was every bit as mesmerized by WoW as SOE was. I dare say they were even more pissed than SOE that their greatest IP in the history of the universe got totally pwned by those...upstarts...at Blizzard.
So they told SOE to make it more like WoW, which SOE, which was being kicked all over the virtual map by those...upstarts...at Blizz were all to happy to comply with LEC's wishes on this matter.
The rot was there in the CU, with the damn cartoon icons, the overt levels, the cooldowns, all the other concepts ripped directly from the systems of WoW.
The NGE just made it even more obvious, with the very clear exception of the pseudo FPS combat UI that sucked bantha heinie...totally inappropriate for anyone who was not an actor in a Ballpark Franks commercial (that is, did not have three hands).
Which is why I apportion blame equally between the two. LEC had to greenlight every change SOE made.
Those two organizations are in it together.
The problem is they copied what sucks about WoW, and didn't emulate WHY WoW is successful. Thus, they failed.
Once again, SOE made that call. had they copied what was good about WoW (it actually WORKS and is not a broken piece of crap -- they have real quality control over there), SWG would have stellar figures. Instead, they added ONE quest line, copied levels, copied classes, not realizing those things are NOT why WoW succeeds.
You can't copy someone who already spends more money than you by cutting the budget. Dumb.
Fishermage, all too true.
SOE doesn't do polish. They don't do complete games at launch. SOE is run by MBAs and marketing/sales asshats, who only care about money, not about a quality product, which ironically would actually pay off for them spectacularly. They are tremendously short sighted and small minded. Blizzard has PROVEN this. Still, these greedly little gnomes are so miserly that they refuse to give up any money to those damn nerds who make their business possible.
LEC doesn't know enough about gaming (they are all MBAs and marketing asshats) to be able to properly supervise and exploit their own IP as mangled by SOE. This is why just about every decent game that's got "STAR WARS" on it is actually developed somewhere other than LEC.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
SOE doesn't do polish. They don't do complete games at launch. SOE is run by MBAs and marketing/sales asshats, who only care about money, not about a quality product, which ironically would actually pay off for them spectacularly. They are tremendously short sighted and small minded. Blizzard has PROVEN this. Still, these greedly little gnomes are so miserly that they refuse to give up any money to those damn nerds who make their business possible. LEC doesn't know enough about gaming (they are all MBAs and marketing asshats) to be able to properly supervise and exploit their own IP as mangled by SOE. This is why just about every decent game that's got "STAR WARS" on it is actually developed somewhere other than LEC.
That's absolutely true. SOE will not do anything that does not provide a recordable revenue within a business quarter - even if it means cannibalising longer term profit potential. That's why it will never produce a game like Blizzard which, it seems to me, plans yeares in advance and therefore, quite rightly, accrues ever higher levels of profit year on year,
Sometimes I wonder why people enjoy beating dead horses. It never accomplishes anything and tends to bring out the worst in many. But upon reflection, I suppose it's important to remember mistakes made so the goobers of the future don't repeat history.
To echo a previous post someone made, the game was a disaster from the very beginning. Released way too early with not enough playable content true to it's original timeline accompanied by an endless array of broken systems in combat, skills, and crafting. It seemed to me the only thing that was sound within the game was it's social aspects (ie starport waits, housing, player towns, etc.) and variety in player choice.
Compiled upon the premature launch was a community with very different views on what was wrong and right with the game in respect to the "star wars" experience. Some expressed it was more like a second job than a game. Others wondered where the content was. Many argued about the combat systems. Almost everyone had differing ideas on Jedi. I'd be going out on a limb here, but I think there was a large generational gap in the community that fueled alot of discontent in game, on forums, and perhaps even within it's own internal development.
The ball was dropped so many times by time constraints, IP pressures, developer competentcy, turnover, and poor decision making that I find it suprising the game is still running. For every fix, something broke (sometimes twicefold). For almost every patch, a new universal problem arose. Every new content addition (if you could call it content) took the game farther away from its intended timeline. This leads me to believe that even some of the core designers that were around after release clearly didn't quite know how to make the puzzle fit together properly when LA was staring over their shoulders.
The fabled greenmarine CURB might have fixed alot of core issues in combat, and had they chose to utilize, implement, and instance the empty battlefields that were scattered around the various in-game planets to create a dynamic war-game within the game itself to add the feel of "an empire divided" SWG would have been better off.
Instead, SOE and LA let the boat sail away while they fiddle-farted around with Japanese servers, whiney Jedi, and piss poor publishes. Then came the reconstructed, dumbed-down, WoW'd GUI interface and combat. The marketing of the Kash and Must expansions appeared like induced cash cows for movie releases and personally I viewed them as dubious distractions from core game issues.
And then along came the final curtain drop. In the end, the dark side won. Much to the disadvantage of all those involved and quite unlike what I would have expected from two companies that are in the entertainment industry.
The IP owners and the licensed are equally responsible for the outrage. The question I have is with all the previous mistakes/adjustments made prior to the Mustafar/NGE incident, if had they gone ahead and implemented the NGE in a slower, smoother process over time would the game even still be around now?
Originally posted by hubertgrove Originally posted by Fishermage
Originally posted by Bobbey I don't get one thing...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many former SWG players play WoW then? IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh. Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO without LA haveing too much to say.
You may not like the way WoW looks, but it is a far better, bigger, and smarter game than the current SWG. It also is not a broken piece of garbage, which unfortunately is what SWG always was, which is why it suffered in the first place.
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE. Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now.
The Past is Past, but something I really loved from PreCU SWG was it Skill Tree non-level based, combat system....After I quitted SWG, I started to try new MMORPGs, but eventually got tired of the LVLing systems....
Does anyone know of any other MMORPG that is skill based, rather than lvl based, excluding EntropiaUniverse?
Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now.
no! some ppl don't get it still.. the reason SWG failed is not because of its shape early on.. it's because the devs failed to develop the game 'round its core by fixin'/balancin' things and addin' content.. instead they focused their energy on CU/NGE which what had killed the game.
Originally posted by Fishermage Originally posted by hubertgrove Originally posted by Fishermage
Originally posted by Bobbey I don't get one thing...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many former SWG players play WoW then? IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh. Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO without LA haveing too much to say.
You may not like the way WoW looks, but it is a far better, bigger, and smarter game than the current SWG. It also is not a broken piece of garbage, which unfortunately is what SWG always was, which is why it suffered in the first place.
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE. Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now. I could go on with a list of bugs (but none really affected me except one) like disappearing items which usually came back on a relog, server boundries causing odd behavior on structures, lightsaber stuffing, double slicing, repeative exceptional/legendary loot exploit, rubberbanding, such and such and not surprisingly over half those STILL exists in the NGE. But the pre-CU gameplay and character development was supirior to what we see in most MMOs today, plain and simple.
Originally posted by redriver Originally posted by Fishermage Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now.
no! some ppl don't get it still.. the reason SWG failed is not because of its shape early on.. it's because the devs failed to develop the game 'round its core by fixin'/balancin' things and addin' content.. instead they focused their energy on CU/NGE which what had killed the game.
Comments
I don't think anyone in this thread is solely blaming SOE, let alone giving Lucas Arts a free pass. Part of the problem is people like the Original Poster coming to the forums and trying to lay ALL the blame on one company by saying things like "Lucas Arts forced the NGE on SOE." As if SOE has zero say in what or how things get made.
To sum up, Yes Lucas Arts is just as much to blame for allowing the NGE to happen. However the staff at SOE was the creative force behind it.
Personally I enjoyed the first 3 movies George Lucas made, but think just about everything else Star Wars has been crap. That is why I don't own episodes 1-3 and stopped buying Lucas Arts software after getting completely screwed with the release of battlefronts. Frankly I've not been impressed with either company in a long time, but at least Lucas Arts has released some games to high praise like the KOTOR series, Lego star wars, etc. I can't say the same for SOE.
I seem to remember Jeff Freeman saying it was SOE.
I agree but the problem will be that Lucas Arts will make another lemon because they ignore message boards.
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?
the difference is, I am not lying, amigo. I never do on these forums. I take the truth too seriously for that. You can choose not to believe me but I am not affected by that one iota.
fishermage.blogspot.com
LEC never:
1. Designed the Pre CU.., It was Koster and SOE...
2. Designed the CURB... It was Walton and SOE...
3. Designed the CU... It was Greenmarine and Blixtev and SOE...
4. Designed the NGE... It was Freeman and Cao...
Whatever mandate they gave, SOE implimented it. The NGE, therefore, is still the stupid and piss poor effort of SOE.
The NGE was Freeman, Lord Pall (Dan Rubenfeld) and their team. I'm not sure what Cao actually did as Creative Director.
But yeah, it was all done by SOE. All ideas, notions, and implementations were them. LA DID ask for changes because they were not happy at every step of the way, but the changes were thought up and sold to LA by SOE.
Then LA (Julio and McIntyre in terms of the NGE) tried rather horribly to sell those ideas to us. So, when Brenlo claims they failed in communication, he is trying to shift blame in yet another way.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I'm pretty sure Greenmarine designed the CURB and quit over the CU.The NGE was Freeman, Lord Pall (Dan Rubenfeld) and their team. I'm not sure what Cao actually did as Creative Director.
But yeah, it was all done by SOE. All ideas, notions, and implementations were them. LA DID ask for changes because they were not happy at every step of the way, but the changes were thought up and sold to LA by SOE.
Then LA (Julio and McIntyre in terms of the NGE) tried rather horribly to sell those ideas to us. So, when Brenlo claims they failed in communication, he is trying to shift blame in yet another way.
They actually NEVER tried to sell the NGE to us.
We were irrelevant.. We were to slink away quietly back into our basement lairs and never be heard from again.
Ironically, I got a ban for pointing this out when they shoved the CU down our throats, that it would be great if they tried to SELL us on it, by explaining what was GOOD about it instead of "this is it, take it or go fuck yourselves".
The CU was NGE #1. They didn't even want to keep us. They wanted WOW even then. Which is why they didn't listen, they banned and deleted.
Same thing but 100X worse happened with the NGE because they convinced themselves that we didn't matter because their shitty WOW clone with lightsabers would replace us with 10X our numbers as we quit.
I think that justice truly is done that they never have had Pre CU sub numbers SINCE Pre CU, and that the NGE, never, at any point, has had CU numbers.
The game we loved was the most profitable SWG. And it's the SWG they refuse to bring back.
That is the very definition of stupidity.
Ah, but Salvaje, LEC was every bit as mesmerized by WoW as SOE was. I dare say they were even more pissed than SOE that their greatest IP in the history of the universe got totally pwned by those...upstarts...at Blizzard.
So they told SOE to make it more like WoW, which SOE, which was being kicked all over the virtual map by those...upstarts...at Blizz were all to happy to comply with LEC's wishes on this matter.
The rot was there in the CU, with the damn cartoon icons, the overt levels, the cooldowns, all the other concepts ripped directly from the systems of WoW.
The NGE just made it even more obvious, with the very clear exception of the pseudo FPS combat UI that sucked bantha heinie...totally inappropriate for anyone who was not an actor in a Ballpark Franks commercial (that is, did not have three hands).
Which is why I apportion blame equally between the two. LEC had to greenlight every change SOE made.
Those two organizations are in it together.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I don't get one thing...
If the game mas made looking to much like World of Warcraft, why the hell do really many
former SWG players play WoW then?
IMO WoW is far worse than NGE, and that does not make me play SWG but I wouldn't
stick my limbs into blizzards disney crappy toonish version of a fantasy world... geesh.
Sure hope AoC lives up to the expectations now... or someone else make a SW MMO
without LA haveing too much to say.
I'll be honest, I have split feelings on WoW. The game can be fun, but the graphics are iffy at best.
I am sorry but this post is worthy of praise - Nicely done!
The problem is they copied what sucks about WoW, and didn't emulate WHY WoW is successful. Thus, they failed.
Once again, SOE made that call. had they copied what was good about WoW (it actually WORKS and is not a broken piece of crap -- they have real quality control over there), SWG would have stellar figures. Instead, they added ONE quest line, copied levels, copied classes, not realizing those things are NOT why WoW succeeds.
You can't copy someone who already spends more money than you by cutting the budget. Dumb.
fishermage.blogspot.com
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I'll be honest, I have split feelings on WoW. The game can be fun, but the graphics are iffy at best.
yeah I'm not crazy about the graphics either, but it is a quality product, as oppose dto any shabby second rate piece of work from SOE.
The day they start caring about their work and their customers is the day they begin to succeed.
fishermage.blogspot.com
never touched W0W myself and even before W0W was released had the feelin' it's gonna destroy SWG .. yup. I was right.. still hate W0W and what $0E done to SWG for whatever reasons...
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
The problem is they copied what sucks about WoW, and didn't emulate WHY WoW is successful. Thus, they failed.
Once again, SOE made that call. had they copied what was good about WoW (it actually WORKS and is not a broken piece of crap -- they have real quality control over there), SWG would have stellar figures. Instead, they added ONE quest line, copied levels, copied classes, not realizing those things are NOT why WoW succeeds.
You can't copy someone who already spends more money than you by cutting the budget. Dumb.
Fishermage, all too true.
SOE doesn't do polish. They don't do complete games at launch. SOE is run by MBAs and marketing/sales asshats, who only care about money, not about a quality product, which ironically would actually pay off for them spectacularly. They are tremendously short sighted and small minded. Blizzard has PROVEN this. Still, these greedly little gnomes are so miserly that they refuse to give up any money to those damn nerds who make their business possible.
LEC doesn't know enough about gaming (they are all MBAs and marketing asshats) to be able to properly supervise and exploit their own IP as mangled by SOE. This is why just about every decent game that's got "STAR WARS" on it is actually developed somewhere other than LEC.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
That's absolutely true. SOE will not do anything that does not provide a recordable revenue within a business quarter - even if it means cannibalising longer term profit potential. That's why it will never produce a game like Blizzard which, it seems to me, plans yeares in advance and therefore, quite rightly, accrues ever higher levels of profit year on year,
Stop with the gibberish....George Lucas told me himself that SWG is going in to a slow transition to turn the game into Indiana Jones Online !!!
Sometimes I wonder why people enjoy beating dead horses. It never accomplishes anything and tends to bring out the worst in many. But upon reflection, I suppose it's important to remember mistakes made so the goobers of the future don't repeat history.
To echo a previous post someone made, the game was a disaster from the very beginning. Released way too early with not enough playable content true to it's original timeline accompanied by an endless array of broken systems in combat, skills, and crafting. It seemed to me the only thing that was sound within the game was it's social aspects (ie starport waits, housing, player towns, etc.) and variety in player choice.
Compiled upon the premature launch was a community with very different views on what was wrong and right with the game in respect to the "star wars" experience. Some expressed it was more like a second job than a game. Others wondered where the content was. Many argued about the combat systems. Almost everyone had differing ideas on Jedi. I'd be going out on a limb here, but I think there was a large generational gap in the community that fueled alot of discontent in game, on forums, and perhaps even within it's own internal development.
The ball was dropped so many times by time constraints, IP pressures, developer competentcy, turnover, and poor decision making that I find it suprising the game is still running. For every fix, something broke (sometimes twicefold). For almost every patch, a new universal problem arose. Every new content addition (if you could call it content) took the game farther away from its intended timeline. This leads me to believe that even some of the core designers that were around after release clearly didn't quite know how to make the puzzle fit together properly when LA was staring over their shoulders.
The fabled greenmarine CURB might have fixed alot of core issues in combat, and had they chose to utilize, implement, and instance the empty battlefields that were scattered around the various in-game planets to create a dynamic war-game within the game itself to add the feel of "an empire divided" SWG would have been better off.
Instead, SOE and LA let the boat sail away while they fiddle-farted around with Japanese servers, whiney Jedi, and piss poor publishes. Then came the reconstructed, dumbed-down, WoW'd GUI interface and combat. The marketing of the Kash and Must expansions appeared like induced cash cows for movie releases and personally I viewed them as dubious distractions from core game issues.
And then along came the final curtain drop. In the end, the dark side won. Much to the disadvantage of all those involved and quite unlike what I would have expected from two companies that are in the entertainment industry.
The IP owners and the licensed are equally responsible for the outrage. The question I have is with all the previous mistakes/adjustments made prior to the Mustafar/NGE incident, if had they gone ahead and implemented the NGE in a slower, smoother process over time would the game even still be around now?
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now.
fishermage.blogspot.com
The Past is Past, but something I really loved from PreCU SWG was it Skill Tree non-level based, combat system....After I quitted SWG, I started to try new MMORPGs, but eventually got tired of the LVLing systems....
Does anyone know of any other MMORPG that is skill based, rather than lvl based, excluding EntropiaUniverse?
no! some ppl don't get it still.. the reason SWG failed is not because of its shape early on.. it's because the devs failed to develop the game 'round its core by fixin'/balancin' things and addin' content.. instead they focused their energy on CU/NGE which what had killed the game.
They NEVER fixed that, which is one more reason why it failed epically with the NGE.
Plus. ALL evidence from statements of the participants show that all ideas and implementations came from SOE, NOT LA.
i am sorry but pre-CU was not a 'broken piece of garbage'. It did suffer very badly from severe bugs, unbalanced professions and a total lack of marketing - but it was playable and, even in its poor state, most veterans would agree it was still superior to most other MMORPGs out there now. I personally believe that if SOE had invested the resources it ploughed into the bugged and limited Kash and Mustaphar expansions into fixing the game, balancing it and marketing it, then SWG would currently have a million subscribers and, as they added more planets, one every six months say and new features to the space game, subscriptions would have risen incrementally. But they didn't. Those cretins.
Sorry, it was the coolest game ever made, but it was still a broken piece of garbage. Those are not mutually exclusive things. Had it not been it would probably be the number two game on the market now.
I could go on with a list of bugs (but none really affected me except one) like disappearing items which usually came back on a relog, server boundries causing odd behavior on structures, lightsaber stuffing, double slicing, repeative exceptional/legendary loot exploit, rubberbanding, such and such and not surprisingly over half those STILL exists in the NGE. But the pre-CU gameplay and character development was supirior to what we see in most MMOs today, plain and simple.
no! some ppl don't get it still.. the reason SWG failed is not because of its shape early on.. it's because the devs failed to develop the game 'round its core by fixin'/balancin' things and addin' content.. instead they focused their energy on CU/NGE which what had killed the game.
Exactly my point.
fishermage.blogspot.com