Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
It does not make my point moot since my point is that you don't know what you are talking about, which you once again make readily apparent. I comprehend your nonsense just fine, as I've read the same post a dozen times before, under different forum names. You offer nothing original and continue a tradition of fact-free ranting. You seem to be topping me in this category though. Your summary was as follows: "The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars." Even if you meant "subscription income," as you clumsily retcon upon being called out, once again that number is useless without knowing cost outlays. You would understand this, but likely would require too much reading on your part. How is it useless? If a game that would have made 100 million dollars instead only made 30 million, I don't really care how much cost you cut in production, you made a bad business move. I guess I'm really just missing your point. I explained it. Twice now. Clearly it's beyond your ability to grasp.
My point was you had no point. Get it now? Should I spell it out further? Your concluding statement was "An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley." Do we assume you mean "astonishing BRILLIANT business move?" I tend to doubt it. Your intent to denigrade the NGE based on your 5th grade math is an odd choice given there are far more logically solid avenues to denigrade the NGE. But, by all means, continue, if displaying your ignorance on a public forum is how you like to spend your spare time. What was brilliant about destroying a game and losing millions of dollars doing it? I think you need to learn how to spell big words before you use them big guy, it's "denigrate". The best you can do is point out I misspelled "denigrate?" I guess you win.
After completely ignoring my first sentence? Please comment on it, you seem to be incorrectly trying to fix my statements. Please though, tell me what other areas of the decision to implement the NGE are easier to degrade than the large loss of money and players that it brought on? Oh, so you are looking for "easy." I never said "easier." I said "more logically solid." Hint: Someone with a tendancy for thought mentioned it (I believe Suvroc). Try quantifying SOE's loss of status in the industry. Warning: That would take more effort than simply pulling figures out of your ass.
First page. Go read it again. I already touched on it big guy. If I wanted the thread to focus on another aspect of the failings of the NGE then I would have made it focus on that. But I didn't, because I didn't want to. Is that ok with you?
Moot.
Whatever, junior.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
Smed himself commented on how many players voted with their feet. He also commented on how the NGE was not enjoyable and was a mistake. Other SOE devs (former) have commented on the massive loss of subscriptions related to the NGE. The lead on the NGE said that it risked losing most of the entire playerbase, and he was right.
After the mass exodus that is acknowledged by Smed himself, and the two lead devs on NGE, SOE had to layoff employees, and it seems they were unable to follow through on plans for additional content. I believe they now have junior developers or interns working on the game. The senior devs didn't even understand the code for JTL and took months to reverse engineer it. Most of the new content is the card game that is designed to fleece the few remaining players of their cash before another StarWars MMO hits the market.
Most if not all of this is independently verifiable information. Believe what you want, but the 100 thousand (plus) of us that left the game because they mutiliated it and gave us the shaft know what happened; we were there. Emphasis on were.
Also, the hacked concurrent player population in the aftermath of the NGE was 7000 players. That's also verifiable. Feel free to google. When asked to comment, Smed had a tantrum but didn't deny the numbers.
The real minority when it comes to SWG are the people that are willing to put up with Smed's crap and pay for a broken, ever changing MMO. If you don't believe me, go to any gamestore on the planet, and ask what the people think of SWG and SOE. When you're done there, ask people in any other MMO what they think. While you're at it, go check SOE's own forums to read all the scathing criticism they still receive not only for the NGE but for all the other crap they pulled on their customers. Don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself...or just continue to believe what you want; makes no difference to my world.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Exactly, Smed said it was wrong, and even apologized; the lead NGE dev said it was an "epoch level f*ckup" (his words) if I remember correctly. He said it was a mistake on all levels of the organization from marketting to management to development. Everyone acknowledges it was a disaster...except maybe two people who make a hobby (or career) of posting marketting disinformation on this and other forums.
You'll also notice that once the disinformation is shot down with facts that everyone's brother is now aware of, they'll resort to condescension and insults. I guess that's all that's left when your b.s. container is empty.
Oh and NGE only lost them about 50k subscribers and they actually made alot of that up in new subscribers shortly afterwards. The mass exodus never happened no matter what your forum buddies said. The game just died out like every other MMO from that time.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Exactly, Smed said it was wrong, and even apologized; the lead NGE dev said it was an "epoch level f*ckup" (his words) if I remember correctly. He said it was a mistake on all levels of the organization from marketting to management to development. Everyone acknowledges it was a disaster...except maybe two people who make a hobby (or career) of posting marketting disinformation on this and other forums.
You'll also notice that once the disinformation is shot down with facts that everyone's brother is now aware of, they'll resort to condescension and insults. I guess that's all that's left when your b.s. container is empty.
I'm not saying NGE wasn't a bad idea, I'm saying it had nothing to do with the state the game is in now.
and you are the biggest moron alive.
Misinformation?
Something I know little about?
How about you do some research instead of pulling facts out of your ass and going by what you saw in the game. Their are plenty of sites that keep track of estimated subscriptions and while they aren't completely accurate they all lead to the same conclusion.. SWG was in a decline long before NGE was introduced.
You can stay in denial all you want if it makes things easier. I know after spewing out that bull for the last 4 years you must have started believing it yourself.
SWG was a subpar game that peaked after a few months (like most MMOs) and dwindled after that. SOE tried to make it more accessable to the average user and it back fired, that doesn't make them bad it makes them human.
It's still a profitable game no matter what you may think, otherwise it wouldn't still be around and this whole NGE was the downfall of SWG has snowballed into the biggest lie on the internet that everyone seems to believe now.
Why am I posting in this topic? The same reason you SOE trolls feel the need to post in every single post that relates to the company. The only difference is I am trying to educate you with some truth instead of the mound of crap you guys try to force feed everyone.
If you don't want to believe me, then don't. You can continue to believe that you are right and SWG was a god send and the world loved it until Smed and SOE destroyed it for everyone. You can also believe that Jesus is your lord and savior but that doesn't make it true.
Originally posted by zymurgeist There are no safe asumptions. So you're "guessing" NGE caused SOE to lose money in a specific amount? Gee that's some rigorous accounting methodology. I should use that technique on my taxes.
Hey it worked for Tim Geithner. Maybe you could get a job in the messiah's cabinet.
I'm not saying NGE wasn't a bad idea, I'm saying it had nothing to do with the state the game is in now. and you are the biggest moron alive. Misinformation? Something I know little about? How about you do some research instead of pulling facts out of your ass and going by what you saw in the game. Their are plenty of sites that keep track of estimated subscriptions and while they aren't completely accurate they all lead to the same conclusion.. SWG was in a decline long before NGE was introduced. You can stay in denial all you want if it makes things easier. I know after spewing out that bull for the last 4 years you must have started believing it yourself. SWG was a subpar game that peaked after a few months (like most MMOs) and dwindled after that. SOE tried to make it more accessable to the average user and it back fired, that doesn't make them bad it makes them human. It's still a profitable game no matter what you may think, otherwise it wouldn't still be around and this whole NGE was the downfall of SWG has snowballed into the biggest lie on the internet that everyone seems to believe now. Why am I posting in this topic? The same reason you SOE trolls feel the need to post in every single post that relates to the company. The only difference is I am trying to educate you with some truth instead of the mound of crap you guys try to force feed everyone. If you don't want to believe me, then don't. You can continue to believe that you are right and SWG was a god send and the world loved it until Smed and SOE destroyed it for everyone. You can also believe that Jesus is your lord and savior but that doesn't make it true.
Is this some sort of new type of viral marketing or does this guy actually believe what he is typing?
Just to be clear--you are saying that the game would be in the same shape it is now if the NGE had not happened?
If that is what you are saying you have no room to be calling anybody else in this forum a moron.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. THIS IS ONLY ESTIMATING LOST MONEY FROM SUBSCRIPTION INCOME ONLY Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
you also have to take into account (if it remained the old game) population migrations. Players would come and go, SWG may not have been able to keep up with the current crop of MMO's or may have become stale and boring.
Who really knows, all i know is SOE lost at least 20 million (just from subs) and in MMO terms thats 15 million too much.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds -Solid non level based game -Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
I'm not saying NGE wasn't a bad idea, I'm saying it had nothing to do with the state the game is in now. and you are the biggest moron alive. Misinformation? Something I know little about? How about you do some research instead of pulling facts out of your ass and going by what you saw in the game. Their are plenty of sites that keep track of estimated subscriptions and while they aren't completely accurate they all lead to the same conclusion.. SWG was in a decline long before NGE was introduced. You can stay in denial all you want if it makes things easier. I know after spewing out that bull for the last 4 years you must have started believing it yourself. SWG was a subpar game that peaked after a few months (like most MMOs) and dwindled after that. SOE tried to make it more accessable to the average user and it back fired, that doesn't make them bad it makes them human. It's still a profitable game no matter what you may think, otherwise it wouldn't still be around and this whole NGE was the downfall of SWG has snowballed into the biggest lie on the internet that everyone seems to believe now. Why am I posting in this topic? The same reason you SOE trolls feel the need to post in every single post that relates to the company. The only difference is I am trying to educate you with some truth instead of the mound of crap you guys try to force feed everyone. If you don't want to believe me, then don't. You can continue to believe that you are right and SWG was a god send and the world loved it until Smed and SOE destroyed it for everyone. You can also believe that Jesus is your lord and savior but that doesn't make it true.
Is this some sort of new type of viral marketing or does this guy actually believe what he is typing?
Just to be clear--you are saying that the game would be in the same shape it is now if the NGE had not happened?
If that is what you are saying you have no room to be calling anybody else in this forum a moron.
Yeah. This guy is something else. But since he likes to claim that the "Sites that track this stuff" showed SWG was declining before the NGE, I guess I'll just throw this at him.
Now, Lets take a look at that chart shall we? Ok. Early 2005, SWG takes a 50k subscription hit because of the CU. Yes, The CU caused a 50k subscription hit. Now take a look where it bottoms out, around MID 2005. That would be roughly July. Now look what it does after July, before the NGE. The population INCREASES. Yes, even though you claim SWG was in a drastic decline before the NGE, the charts you love to reference show the population was actually increasing. Now look at the chart just past the NGE date(November 14, 2005). SWG takes a 100k subscription nose dive over the next few months(and contrary to what you made up, it didn't recover any of it).
So, since the information you claimed to be sourcing actually proves you wrong, how about you do some research instead of just pulling crap out of your ass?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
At the time of the end of the CU era SWG was bleeding 10,000 subs a month (quoted by various dev sources), so you will have to lower your estimate quite a bit. It is hard to say what the bottom figure would be if the devs had kept the CU code as the game code. And you have to keep in mind that SONY is a 88.7 billion a year company, SWG is but a very small part of Sony.
Firstly, I don't believe that 10,000 a month bleeding one bit. The "dev blog" that claimed that also claimed "everyone quit right after launch", which clearly wasn't the case. Secondly, I made some compensations for accounts lost by lowering the amount of subs with the CU, and giving a high estimation of the amount of subs for the NGE. Third, if SOE hadn't spent so much time re-writing the game, the CU(or pre-CU) would have probably been in much better shape then it was, which would have likely lessened any bleeding that was occurring.
And I didn't even factor in money lost from the reputation SOE got with the NGE. I know lots of people stopped playing, or refused to play any SOE games after the NGE happened. So I think my assessment is quite fair.
And lastly, Sony is forcasting a net loss of $1.6 billion dollars on the year.
There seriously needs to be a rule enacted to the guys who make these games. The rule being "Someone from the team has to actaully go into the game and examine the community and how active sutomers are liking it"
The reason they went along with the NGE is because they wherent even noticing the cries of the players, they where completely oblivious, and any forum rant just go tossed aside by forum staff, or locked/deleted. I mean seriously how fucking hard is it to log into the game you created and get some incite.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Dude doesn't sound shrill to me, or embarassed. Also, why can you decide that the debate is over and you win? lol Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
He makes a very straightforward case that SOE's bad management decisions cost them revenue. That's it, very simple, and very accurate.
They may try to recover this loss by laying off staff, using interns, spending next to nothing on development or QA. They may also try to recover it by getting people to do free marketting for them, and by fleecing people with their loot item gamble in the TCG.
All of this, however, is damage control. Why do they have to work so hard to cut costs, cut staff etc.? Because their poor management decisions lost them a substantial amount of revenue. This is revenue that was handed back to people with the expansion refund. This was revenue that even you told me was handed back to people in the form of subscription refunds. This was revenue that they would have earned if the game's reputation wasn't in the toilet.
His logic is fine, you just don't seem to want to acknowledge what he's actually saying. Ask anyone in management or accounting if driving away customers and reducing revenue is good for business. By your logic, Home Depot could lose most of their customers by being idiots, and then claim a victory by opening a lemonade stand and making a small profit.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
I personally closed down three accounts in January 2006, one of them a Jedi Knight with a three guildhall-compound including a Museum of Blue Holocrons. I was actually quite lucky in the previous September, I sold off a nearly-ground Powers Jedi account for something like £500. A few weeks later it was, of course, worthless. The buyer made no complaint to me - he knew that that this little act of wanton and short-sighted destruction was typical of SOE.
Lets do a little bit of math just for fun and see how much the NGE has really cost SOE over the years. THIS IS ONLY ESTIMATING LOST MONEY FROM SUBSCRIPTION INCOME ONLY Now, the magic number floating around is 200k subscribers at the time of the NGE. We will take a low ball estimate of 175k for the calculations sake(to account for loss of subscribers over time, ect) Now, 175k x $15 a month x 38 months(for the roughly 3 years since the NGE ) = $99,750,000 of subscription money over 3 years had the CU stayed in the game. Now, lets take a rather high estimation for the NGE population of 50k subscribers over the course of it's existence.(Judging by the fact that less than 1/4 of the old servers actually have a decent population, and the vets have been able to play for free for like half the year for the last 3 years, it's probably less then this but whatever). 50k x $15 x 38 months = $28,500,000.
Subtract $28,500,000 from $99,750,000 and....
The NGE has cost SOE a total of $71,250,000. Yes, according to my estimations, the NGE has cost SOE over 71 million dollars. An astonishing business move by Mr. Smedley. Well, that was fun.
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
Players come and players go. SWG had been over 200k subs since it's inception. If the devs had continually fixed bugs and added content instead of re-writing the game, I have full confidence that they not only would have kept a stable population(which it had done the whole time), but possibly could have increased. I can remember the Mos Eisley and the new player quests being packed even during the CU.
So, once again, I DON'T KNOW what WOULD have happened, and simply made the estimations of what HAD happened. Not complicated people.
But there you go. It is assumption built on assumption. If they did this, if they did that. Your scenario is just one of many other possible scenarios.
To give you one example. Current engine doesnt even have a real Z-axis. Which means the tiniest rock that blocks a toon on the ground will also block any speeder higher above it. To deal with this, they would have to replace the engine. The line of sight issues are a similar problem, which are not just bugs, but inherent to the used engine.
To assume that they would fix these things by replacing the engine, is really a wild (and costly) one.
Im confident that the most likely scenario is where players would feel SWG is outdated after the release of other MMO's that are out now. So one way or the other, subs would drop.
Originally posted by someforumguy But there you go. It is assumption built on assumption. If they did this, if they did that. Your scenario is just one of many other possible scenarios. To give you one example. Current engine doesnt even have a real Z-axis. Which means the tiniest rock that blocks a toon on the ground will also block any speeder higher above it. To deal with this, they would have to replace the engine. The line of sight issues are a similar problem, which are not just bugs, but inherent to the used engine. To assume that they would fix these things by replacing the engine, is really a wild (and costly) one. Im confident that the most likely scenario is where players would feel SWG is outdated after the release of other MMO's that are out now. So one way or the other, subs would drop.
It is easy to speculate what might have worked since it is fairly obvious that just about everything soe attempted did not work.
He was not suggesting changing the game engine or rewriting the game. In fact that is something Abrahmm says was part of the problem. Most of the games problems were small in nature, but the volume of problems was rather large.
It is possible that nothing would have made swg more succesfull. It is pretty clear that rewriting the game and changing core mechanics was not the path to success. Swg had a very long history of changing focus even beyond the massive revamps. For example: players wanted the combat rebalance and soe promised to work on that first based on customer feedback. Instead they pulled almost the entire live team to work on an expansion pack. That is just one example of how the game was run right from the start and rarely had a consistant direction for more than a few months at a time.
Had soe worked in a manner that built up customer trust, fixed issues that players saw as gamebreaking and added content to keep players entertained then is it more than likely things would have turned out better. Instead of soe taking almost every chance they could to break trust bonds (even beyond the nge/cu) and drive customers away at every turn. They opereate their business with the mindset that they know what customers want more than the customers themself do.
Soe treats their customers with a level of disrespect unequaled in the industry and it is fairly safe to say that nothing would change the course of swg (or any of their games) as long as they follow this current mindset. In order to grow a company needs the support of its playerbase.
Dude doesn't sound shrill to me, or embarassed. Also, why can you decide that the debate is over and you win? lol Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
He makes a very straightforward case that SOE's bad management decisions cost them revenue. That's it, very simple, and very accurate.
They may try to recover this loss by laying off staff, using interns, spending next to nothing on development or QA. They may also try to recover it by getting people to do free marketting for them, and by fleecing people with their loot item gamble in the TCG.
All of this, however, is damage control. Why do they have to work so hard to cut costs, cut staff etc.? Because their poor management decisions lost them a substantial amount of revenue. This is revenue that was handed back to people with the expansion refund. This was revenue that even you told me was handed back to people in the form of subscription refunds. This was revenue that they would have earned if the game's reputation wasn't in the toilet.
His logic is fine, you just don't seem to want to acknowledge what he's actually saying. Ask anyone in management or accounting if driving away customers and reducing revenue is good for business. By your logic, Home Depot could lose most of their customers by being idiots, and then claim a victory by opening a lemonade stand and making a small profit.
ArchAngel, you are one of the more intelligent and original thinkers here. I'm surprised you do not see the OP is offering nothing new to this tired discussion, using incomplete, simplistic logic and lazy reasoning, to support a conclusion that is already codified in this venue. My goal was only to point out the weakness of the position in hopes he'll do some real thinking and add something new and original to strengthen his lacking argument. This is why SWG vets are increasingly viewed as whiny 12 year olds. But I guess lazy is perfectly acceptable as long as it results in more venom at SOE.
I highlighted in your post what I think is the salient point to be pursued. We can speculate until vampires return to the world about how much money SOE lost and never be able to settle anything. What should be shown is how the NGE damaged SOEs reputation and how that will affect them going forward. I've read posts were you begin those discussions. That's the avenue any honest, insightful person interested in the future of MMOs and preventing another NGE would take, not grabbing the same speculative numbers out of the air and running them through the 5th grade math machine. We've already done that.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
Great post, and really reinforces what I was trying to say above. I would assume that SWG is still a shade above profitable simply because it hasn't been shut down yet. But, your analogy comparing Home Depot to a Lemonade stand is pretty good. With a lemonade stand, your running costs are very cheap, but your profit is small, which is the same for the NGE now.
Good point.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike Loved: Star Wars Galaxies Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
Great post, and really reinforces what I was trying to say above. I would assume that SWG is still a shade above profitable simply because it hasn't been shut down yet. But, your analogy comparing Home Depot to a Lemonade stand is pretty good. With a lemonade stand, your running costs are very cheap, but your profit is small, which is the same for the NGE now.
Good point.
The only reason it's still "profitible" is because there is a skeleton crew working on the game. There's no new content other than collections and cookie-cutter instances all built from templates. The game will never see another expansion (but the card game will lol) so by cutting expenses to the bone they can limp along with a few thousand subscribers added to the suckers who pay for the station pass life support system to keep the game going until LA shuts it down before KotORO goes live.
Originally posted by someforumguy But there you go. It is assumption built on assumption. If they did this, if they did that. Your scenario is just one of many other possible scenarios. To give you one example. Current engine doesnt even have a real Z-axis. Which means the tiniest rock that blocks a toon on the ground will also block any speeder higher above it. To deal with this, they would have to replace the engine. The line of sight issues are a similar problem, which are not just bugs, but inherent to the used engine. To assume that they would fix these things by replacing the engine, is really a wild (and costly) one. Im confident that the most likely scenario is where players would feel SWG is outdated after the release of other MMO's that are out now. So one way or the other, subs would drop.
It is easy to speculate what might have worked since it is fairly obvious that just about everything soe attempted did not work.
He was not suggesting changing the game engine or rewriting the game. In fact that is something Abrahmm says was part of the problem. Most of the games problems were small in nature, but the volume of problems was rather large.
It is possible that nothing would have made swg more succesfull. It is pretty clear that rewriting the game and changing core mechanics was not the path to success. Swg had a very long history of changing focus even beyond the massive revamps. For example: players wanted the combat rebalance and soe promised to work on that first based on customer feedback. Instead they pulled almost the entire live team to work on an expansion pack. That is just one example of how the game was run right from the start and rarely had a consistant direction for more than a few months at a time.
Had soe worked in a manner that built up customer trust, fixed issues that players saw as gamebreaking and added content to keep players entertained then is it more than likely things would have turned out better. Instead of soe taking almost every chance they could to break trust bonds (even beyond the nge/cu) and drive customers away at every turn. They opereate their business with the mindset that they know what customers want more than the customers themself do.
Soe treats their customers with a level of disrespect unequaled in the industry and it is fairly safe to say that nothing would change the course of swg (or any of their games) as long as they follow this current mindset. In order to grow a company needs the support of its playerbase.
So you are basically agreeing with me. My examples were only to show that the OP's figures were a wild guess in the case of an unchanged preNGE SWG. SOE obviously lost money with NGE, but how much is just impossible to determine by only looking at SWG.
And about the SOE disrespecting customers. You talk as if its deliberate. No commercial company scares customers away deliberately. It was just a very stupid mistake. Its ignorant to think in terms of respect when dealing with a commercial company.
Comments
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
Moot.
Whatever, junior.
Try reading the whole thread before you come in and make smart ass, unfounded comments. Thanks
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
Smed himself commented on how many players voted with their feet. He also commented on how the NGE was not enjoyable and was a mistake. Other SOE devs (former) have commented on the massive loss of subscriptions related to the NGE. The lead on the NGE said that it risked losing most of the entire playerbase, and he was right.
After the mass exodus that is acknowledged by Smed himself, and the two lead devs on NGE, SOE had to layoff employees, and it seems they were unable to follow through on plans for additional content. I believe they now have junior developers or interns working on the game. The senior devs didn't even understand the code for JTL and took months to reverse engineer it. Most of the new content is the card game that is designed to fleece the few remaining players of their cash before another StarWars MMO hits the market.
Most if not all of this is independently verifiable information. Believe what you want, but the 100 thousand (plus) of us that left the game because they mutiliated it and gave us the shaft know what happened; we were there. Emphasis on were.
Also, the hacked concurrent player population in the aftermath of the NGE was 7000 players. That's also verifiable. Feel free to google. When asked to comment, Smed had a tantrum but didn't deny the numbers.
The real minority when it comes to SWG are the people that are willing to put up with Smed's crap and pay for a broken, ever changing MMO. If you don't believe me, go to any gamestore on the planet, and ask what the people think of SWG and SOE. When you're done there, ask people in any other MMO what they think. While you're at it, go check SOE's own forums to read all the scathing criticism they still receive not only for the NGE but for all the other crap they pulled on their customers. Don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself...or just continue to believe what you want; makes no difference to my world.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Exactly, Smed said it was wrong, and even apologized; the lead NGE dev said it was an "epoch level f*ckup" (his words) if I remember correctly. He said it was a mistake on all levels of the organization from marketting to management to development. Everyone acknowledges it was a disaster...except maybe two people who make a hobby (or career) of posting marketting disinformation on this and other forums.
You'll also notice that once the disinformation is shot down with facts that everyone's brother is now aware of, they'll resort to condescension and insults. I guess that's all that's left when your b.s. container is empty.
Are you kidding? Take it from somebody who actually played the game when the NGE hit. They lost a lot more than 50k and despite what some of the more, um, colorful SOE defenders might have to say about it the game never recovered.
First in response to the original post I never liked starwars before or after NGE and I think most of SOEs games are pretty bad except for one or two that are only decent if that. I just hate morons who think they know everything.
Then why are you posting or reading this thread?
If you look at the decline in subs from before and after NGE the rate is steady except for a slight decrease right after NGE where they lost about 50k subs. This was then followed by an increase of about 20-25k subs before the steady decrease continued until today.
This is completely, 100% not true in any way shape or form. The population took a nose dive after the NGE, and no matter what the NGE fanbois will tell you, it NEVER recovered.
Keep in mind that they were losing about 10k subs a month as it was after hitting their peak of about 250k subs a year before, so 50k in a span of a couple of months is not a huge decrease.
Firstly, I don't believe for one second that they were losing 10k subs a month as I didn't notice any server population decreases. Second, the NGE lost a lot more then 50k subs. Plain and simple.
NGE didn't kill SWG, time did. All NGE did was make a bunch of fanboys angry.
Completely untrue. While SWG got 3 expansions in it's life, one right before the NGE, they haven't made a single expansion since then. Which really says something.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the trolls that make the forum rounds are not the majority, no matter how much you tell yourself they are. The real majority doesn't spend its days on these or any forums and have probably found a new game already and forgot all about SWG.
Go into ANY game and mention SWG and you will see a bunch of people say how they left because of the NGE.
Get a life and realize just because you and your little buddies left in a huff after NGE doesn't mean everyone followed your lead.
Says the guy posting on a forum about a topic he knows little to nothing about, claims not to care about, yet continues to spread misinformation about it. Any more life advice sir? The majority of the playerbase quit because of the NGE.
There is more to the world then the little box you call your universe.
I've never seen a more consolidated pile of false drivel in my life.
It's funny, 3 years later I really didn't think there would be anyone dumb enough to argue that the NGE wasn't a massive failure(you all remember the arguments right after the NGE though). Sad really.
Exactly, Smed said it was wrong, and even apologized; the lead NGE dev said it was an "epoch level f*ckup" (his words) if I remember correctly. He said it was a mistake on all levels of the organization from marketting to management to development. Everyone acknowledges it was a disaster...except maybe two people who make a hobby (or career) of posting marketting disinformation on this and other forums.
You'll also notice that once the disinformation is shot down with facts that everyone's brother is now aware of, they'll resort to condescension and insults. I guess that's all that's left when your b.s. container is empty.
I'm not saying NGE wasn't a bad idea, I'm saying it had nothing to do with the state the game is in now.
and you are the biggest moron alive.
Misinformation?
Something I know little about?
How about you do some research instead of pulling facts out of your ass and going by what you saw in the game. Their are plenty of sites that keep track of estimated subscriptions and while they aren't completely accurate they all lead to the same conclusion.. SWG was in a decline long before NGE was introduced.
You can stay in denial all you want if it makes things easier. I know after spewing out that bull for the last 4 years you must have started believing it yourself.
SWG was a subpar game that peaked after a few months (like most MMOs) and dwindled after that. SOE tried to make it more accessable to the average user and it back fired, that doesn't make them bad it makes them human.
It's still a profitable game no matter what you may think, otherwise it wouldn't still be around and this whole NGE was the downfall of SWG has snowballed into the biggest lie on the internet that everyone seems to believe now.
Why am I posting in this topic? The same reason you SOE trolls feel the need to post in every single post that relates to the company. The only difference is I am trying to educate you with some truth instead of the mound of crap you guys try to force feed everyone.
If you don't want to believe me, then don't. You can continue to believe that you are right and SWG was a god send and the world loved it until Smed and SOE destroyed it for everyone. You can also believe that Jesus is your lord and savior but that doesn't make it true.
Out of curiosity, might I ask who you are calling the biggest moron alive? Your quote has ArcAngel at the top.
Hey it worked for Tim Geithner. Maybe you could get a job in the messiah's cabinet.
Is this some sort of new type of viral marketing or does this guy actually believe what he is typing?
Just to be clear--you are saying that the game would be in the same shape it is now if the NGE had not happened?
If that is what you are saying you have no room to be calling anybody else in this forum a moron.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
FFS get over the pre NGE crap already, you act like whiny 10 year olds. Its not comming back nor does it go away, face facts and move on
I see what you did there!
You work for Fox News, don't you?
Evil will always win, because Good is dumb.
you also have to take into account (if it remained the old game) population migrations. Players would come and go, SWG may not have been able to keep up with the current crop of MMO's or may have become stale and boring.
Who really knows, all i know is SOE lost at least 20 million (just from subs) and in MMO terms thats 15 million too much.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Is this some sort of new type of viral marketing or does this guy actually believe what he is typing?
Just to be clear--you are saying that the game would be in the same shape it is now if the NGE had not happened?
If that is what you are saying you have no room to be calling anybody else in this forum a moron.
Yeah. This guy is something else. But since he likes to claim that the "Sites that track this stuff" showed SWG was declining before the NGE, I guess I'll just throw this at him.
www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html
Now, Lets take a look at that chart shall we? Ok. Early 2005, SWG takes a 50k subscription hit because of the CU. Yes, The CU caused a 50k subscription hit. Now take a look where it bottoms out, around MID 2005. That would be roughly July. Now look what it does after July, before the NGE. The population INCREASES. Yes, even though you claim SWG was in a drastic decline before the NGE, the charts you love to reference show the population was actually increasing. Now look at the chart just past the NGE date(November 14, 2005). SWG takes a 100k subscription nose dive over the next few months(and contrary to what you made up, it didn't recover any of it).
So, since the information you claimed to be sourcing actually proves you wrong, how about you do some research instead of just pulling crap out of your ass?
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
Firstly, I don't believe that 10,000 a month bleeding one bit. The "dev blog" that claimed that also claimed "everyone quit right after launch", which clearly wasn't the case. Secondly, I made some compensations for accounts lost by lowering the amount of subs with the CU, and giving a high estimation of the amount of subs for the NGE. Third, if SOE hadn't spent so much time re-writing the game, the CU(or pre-CU) would have probably been in much better shape then it was, which would have likely lessened any bleeding that was occurring.
And I didn't even factor in money lost from the reputation SOE got with the NGE. I know lots of people stopped playing, or refused to play any SOE games after the NGE happened. So I think my assessment is quite fair.
And lastly, Sony is forcasting a net loss of $1.6 billion dollars on the year.
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHqEoLle79Wp7nEztgSq6Hy8yHQAD960Q0MG1
There seriously needs to be a rule enacted to the guys who make these games. The rule being "Someone from the team has to actaully go into the game and examine the community and how active sutomers are liking it"
The reason they went along with the NGE is because they wherent even noticing the cries of the players, they where completely oblivious, and any forum rant just go tossed aside by forum staff, or locked/deleted. I mean seriously how fucking hard is it to log into the game you created and get some incite.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Dude doesn't sound shrill to me, or embarassed. Also, why can you decide that the debate is over and you win? lol Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
He makes a very straightforward case that SOE's bad management decisions cost them revenue. That's it, very simple, and very accurate.
They may try to recover this loss by laying off staff, using interns, spending next to nothing on development or QA. They may also try to recover it by getting people to do free marketting for them, and by fleecing people with their loot item gamble in the TCG.
All of this, however, is damage control. Why do they have to work so hard to cut costs, cut staff etc.? Because their poor management decisions lost them a substantial amount of revenue. This is revenue that was handed back to people with the expansion refund. This was revenue that even you told me was handed back to people in the form of subscription refunds. This was revenue that they would have earned if the game's reputation wasn't in the toilet.
His logic is fine, you just don't seem to want to acknowledge what he's actually saying. Ask anyone in management or accounting if driving away customers and reducing revenue is good for business. By your logic, Home Depot could lose most of their customers by being idiots, and then claim a victory by opening a lemonade stand and making a small profit.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
I personally closed down three accounts in January 2006, one of them a Jedi Knight with a three guildhall-compound including a Museum of Blue Holocrons. I was actually quite lucky in the previous September, I sold off a nearly-ground Powers Jedi account for something like £500. A few weeks later it was, of course, worthless. The buyer made no complaint to me - he knew that that this little act of wanton and short-sighted destruction was typical of SOE.
A very obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you dont take other MMO's into consideration. Players rarely keep playing a MMO for that long. Actually, if the game was still exactly the same as in preNGE, you would have to be very ignorant to believe that it still would have the same subs.
I also expect that they lost money because of the NGE, but your estimations are silly.
I think you will do better by reading tealeaves or something.
Players come and players go. SWG had been over 200k subs since it's inception. If the devs had continually fixed bugs and added content instead of re-writing the game, I have full confidence that they not only would have kept a stable population(which it had done the whole time), but possibly could have increased. I can remember the Mos Eisley and the new player quests being packed even during the CU.
So, once again, I DON'T KNOW what WOULD have happened, and simply made the estimations of what HAD happened. Not complicated people.
But there you go. It is assumption built on assumption. If they did this, if they did that. Your scenario is just one of many other possible scenarios.
To give you one example. Current engine doesnt even have a real Z-axis. Which means the tiniest rock that blocks a toon on the ground will also block any speeder higher above it. To deal with this, they would have to replace the engine. The line of sight issues are a similar problem, which are not just bugs, but inherent to the used engine.
To assume that they would fix these things by replacing the engine, is really a wild (and costly) one.
Im confident that the most likely scenario is where players would feel SWG is outdated after the release of other MMO's that are out now. So one way or the other, subs would drop.
It is easy to speculate what might have worked since it is fairly obvious that just about everything soe attempted did not work.
He was not suggesting changing the game engine or rewriting the game. In fact that is something Abrahmm says was part of the problem. Most of the games problems were small in nature, but the volume of problems was rather large.
It is possible that nothing would have made swg more succesfull. It is pretty clear that rewriting the game and changing core mechanics was not the path to success. Swg had a very long history of changing focus even beyond the massive revamps. For example: players wanted the combat rebalance and soe promised to work on that first based on customer feedback. Instead they pulled almost the entire live team to work on an expansion pack. That is just one example of how the game was run right from the start and rarely had a consistant direction for more than a few months at a time.
Had soe worked in a manner that built up customer trust, fixed issues that players saw as gamebreaking and added content to keep players entertained then is it more than likely things would have turned out better. Instead of soe taking almost every chance they could to break trust bonds (even beyond the nge/cu) and drive customers away at every turn. They opereate their business with the mindset that they know what customers want more than the customers themself do.
Soe treats their customers with a level of disrespect unequaled in the industry and it is fairly safe to say that nothing would change the course of swg (or any of their games) as long as they follow this current mindset. In order to grow a company needs the support of its playerbase.
Dude doesn't sound shrill to me, or embarassed. Also, why can you decide that the debate is over and you win? lol Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
He makes a very straightforward case that SOE's bad management decisions cost them revenue. That's it, very simple, and very accurate.
They may try to recover this loss by laying off staff, using interns, spending next to nothing on development or QA. They may also try to recover it by getting people to do free marketting for them, and by fleecing people with their loot item gamble in the TCG.
All of this, however, is damage control. Why do they have to work so hard to cut costs, cut staff etc.? Because their poor management decisions lost them a substantial amount of revenue. This is revenue that was handed back to people with the expansion refund. This was revenue that even you told me was handed back to people in the form of subscription refunds. This was revenue that they would have earned if the game's reputation wasn't in the toilet.
His logic is fine, you just don't seem to want to acknowledge what he's actually saying. Ask anyone in management or accounting if driving away customers and reducing revenue is good for business. By your logic, Home Depot could lose most of their customers by being idiots, and then claim a victory by opening a lemonade stand and making a small profit.
ArchAngel, you are one of the more intelligent and original thinkers here. I'm surprised you do not see the OP is offering nothing new to this tired discussion, using incomplete, simplistic logic and lazy reasoning, to support a conclusion that is already codified in this venue. My goal was only to point out the weakness of the position in hopes he'll do some real thinking and add something new and original to strengthen his lacking argument. This is why SWG vets are increasingly viewed as whiny 12 year olds. But I guess lazy is perfectly acceptable as long as it results in more venom at SOE.
I highlighted in your post what I think is the salient point to be pursued. We can speculate until vampires return to the world about how much money SOE lost and never be able to settle anything. What should be shown is how the NGE damaged SOEs reputation and how that will affect them going forward. I've read posts were you begin those discussions. That's the avenue any honest, insightful person interested in the future of MMOs and preventing another NGE would take, not grabbing the same speculative numbers out of the air and running them through the 5th grade math machine. We've already done that.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
Great post, and really reinforces what I was trying to say above. I would assume that SWG is still a shade above profitable simply because it hasn't been shut down yet. But, your analogy comparing Home Depot to a Lemonade stand is pretty good. With a lemonade stand, your running costs are very cheap, but your profit is small, which is the same for the NGE now.
Good point.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
I read the whole thread. I see where you retconned your post into "Oh, I was only talking about loss of subscriptions." Fine. It still does not matter because subscription numbers. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Therefore, any conclusion drawn from them. Alone. Mean. Nothing.
Your argument is SOE lost Z amount of dollars by losing X amount of subscriptions, which paid Y amount of money per month. Ergo, the NGE was a bad decision. How do you make this jump?
You assume the entire $15 subscription is profit. This is very simplistic thinking. Can you show SOE made any profit at all on SWG before NGE? What if preNGE actually cost SOE $16 per subscription to run the game, meaning SOE faced a $1 loss per month on every subscription? What if SOE now makes a profit of $1on each subscription? Since you do not acknowledge or account for this possibility, your argument has a huge hole in it.
Instinctively, you are aware of this weakness, given how shrill you become when one points it out.
It does not matter whether your conclusion is correct (or generally agreed with.) Your logic in getting there is flawed. Your logic is flawed, your argument is incomplete, your conclusion unsupported. That is all I'm saying here.
Since you are clearly unhinged by this embarrassing realization, the debate is over. You lose. Start a new thread when you have something original to say. I'd be glad to hear it.
Common sense would say that an MMORPG will cost roughly the same to run no matter what version it is when strictly talking about aspects that didn't change such as Hardware, bandwidth, electricity. Nothing physical about the game changed.
Now, when looking at manpower, it can get a little hairy. I won't deny that pre-NGE most likely cost more developer wise as it actually had a full team working on it. But what this does tell us is that the game could obviously fund such development. They had a full staff of developers working on it because they could afford to do it. When the NGE hit, and everybody left, they could no longer afford to do it and they cut nearly everyone from the team.
Now with this basic observation, we can estimate that they make more money per subscriber from the NGE as human costs are most likely down and hardware costs are still the same(not for long though). But it is unlikely that they make 10x as much per subscription as they did before the NGE.
But it's only speculation, as was everything in my post. I never intended to prove anything. Just speculation you took too seriously.
You make another good point here. Also, consider what a 1% profit increase is if the scope of your operation is massive. E.G. Home Depot's quarterly profits go up by 1%. That probably equals millions of dollars. If the operation shrinks (like SWG), a 1% profit increase becomes less significant. A lemonade stand's profits going up by 1% for example might be about 10 cents on a good day. Over a business quarter that's no more than a few bucks.
The idea is to increase the size of your operation so that doing just a shade better than breaking even makes you a millionaire. If the NGE is doing a shade better than breaking even, which is probably true, it still isn't making nearly what SWG could have if it wasn't half-ass revamped, and if the players weren't all misled.
I really believe that this is just too painful for some people to acknowledge. A mistake of the magnitude that you're highlighting is far too tempting to minimize or deny. Also, if it can't be denied, then plan B usually resorts to attempting to blame shift. Some of the posts above have done that already.
Deny, minimize, rationalize, shift blame. Yup, it's all here in one package, just like it usually is when someone seduces the proverbial canine.
Great post, and really reinforces what I was trying to say above. I would assume that SWG is still a shade above profitable simply because it hasn't been shut down yet. But, your analogy comparing Home Depot to a Lemonade stand is pretty good. With a lemonade stand, your running costs are very cheap, but your profit is small, which is the same for the NGE now.
Good point.
The only reason it's still "profitible" is because there is a skeleton crew working on the game. There's no new content other than collections and cookie-cutter instances all built from templates. The game will never see another expansion (but the card game will lol) so by cutting expenses to the bone they can limp along with a few thousand subscribers added to the suckers who pay for the station pass life support system to keep the game going until LA shuts it down before KotORO goes live.
It is easy to speculate what might have worked since it is fairly obvious that just about everything soe attempted did not work.
He was not suggesting changing the game engine or rewriting the game. In fact that is something Abrahmm says was part of the problem. Most of the games problems were small in nature, but the volume of problems was rather large.
It is possible that nothing would have made swg more succesfull. It is pretty clear that rewriting the game and changing core mechanics was not the path to success. Swg had a very long history of changing focus even beyond the massive revamps. For example: players wanted the combat rebalance and soe promised to work on that first based on customer feedback. Instead they pulled almost the entire live team to work on an expansion pack. That is just one example of how the game was run right from the start and rarely had a consistant direction for more than a few months at a time.
Had soe worked in a manner that built up customer trust, fixed issues that players saw as gamebreaking and added content to keep players entertained then is it more than likely things would have turned out better. Instead of soe taking almost every chance they could to break trust bonds (even beyond the nge/cu) and drive customers away at every turn. They opereate their business with the mindset that they know what customers want more than the customers themself do.
Soe treats their customers with a level of disrespect unequaled in the industry and it is fairly safe to say that nothing would change the course of swg (or any of their games) as long as they follow this current mindset. In order to grow a company needs the support of its playerbase.
So you are basically agreeing with me. My examples were only to show that the OP's figures were a wild guess in the case of an unchanged preNGE SWG. SOE obviously lost money with NGE, but how much is just impossible to determine by only looking at SWG.
And about the SOE disrespecting customers. You talk as if its deliberate. No commercial company scares customers away deliberately. It was just a very stupid mistake. Its ignorant to think in terms of respect when dealing with a commercial company.