This is why:
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Heres the thing Nancy missed.
75% of the 2003 to 10/30/05 player base LIKED being the Supporting Cast member and didn't have any desire to be Luke or Han or Leia or Lando or Vader or Palpy or Tarken or Thrawn et al.
We wanted to Sit in Camps and chat for hours while grinding out Camping Xp for Scout or Ranger. We liked crafting Swoops to sell on Vendors to get Merchant XP. We loved running for Election to get new abilities for our cities as a Politican.
I liked Spin Groups at the Dant MO or Dath Smug Outpost while I was grinding through Carbineer and Rifleman and BH.
I didn't mind working my butt off in the Village during phase the Build Phase or the Sith Invasion Phase. I didn't even whine over the Double Incap to increase Decay in PvP crap that people pulled while grinding their PvP Rating.
I loved the RIS Armor Quest.
I didn't mind grinding my butt off in Space for a Black Sun Helmet...or on Yavin for a Jet Pack Base...or the DWB for Liquids...or the Avatar Platform just because.
The NGE screwed a lot of things up.
The NGE also Fixed a few things...
PvP was Unbalanced....and there would never be True Balance in PvP unless you removed the majority of the combat professions and limited Customization. Multiple Template options introduced too many variables that the developers could not balance out. Plus Legendary weapons with EPIC DOT's that you only ever saw come out in PvP. Plus people Buying up every ADK they could so that their weapon and 95% resist armor and epic CA's and AA's and WA's would NEVER Break.
Heck...I sold an ADK on one of my alt accounts 3 months before it was Due for 25m on Intrepid and on another account on Lowca for 30 m....3 weeks before the NGE announcement.
Decay had problems with Implementation and with how Buggy the Repair Kits were.
Space was the Only thing Post Publish 9 and Post NGE that the Developers didn't change or screw up.
I didn't like Losing as many professions as we lost in 2005. But there were so many Non-Combat Professions that they should have left alone...Merchant and Bio Engineer and CH and Doctor and Scout and my beloved Ranger....
There are things I would have done differently....and I would have started the discussion in 2004 with LA about the CU with a hearty "do it your own darn self." comment.
As I have said countless time, the moment it all went wrong was NOT the NGE or CU but the doc buff.
SWG was rather unique game in that you had three "mana" bars. Health, Action, Mind. The HAM bar, if any of them reached zero, you fell down and could be killed (not all PvE enemies dealt death blows).
You could to a slight degree set how fast you wanted each of your stats to generate and your race also had an influence.
Each skill use cost a number of points from any of the three bars, sometimes more then one. This had a unique effect in gaming, you could knock yourself out by casting to hard.
In combat, damange from enemies would also be directed to one or more bars. So the entire trick was to keep all your bars above zero. If you used mind based attacks and faced an enemy who targetted the mind bar, you could go down very fast.
Now here is the final piece of SWG fundemental original design. Armour would provice a defense BUT also hamper your regeneration. This allowed the game to make EVERY type of armour viable, my Terra Kassi did very well in regular clothing with no armour value and instead focussing on regeneration lost HAM points...
BUT there was a flaw, many a kiddy could not life with the fact that donning heavy Bobba Fett style armour did NOT turn them into instoppable fighting machines... in fact, very much not so. The whole idea about heavy armour is that it would protect you, for a whole but any damage you did take lasted because you did not regenerate anymore. So two fighting choices, risk a lot of damage but hope you outheal it OR take less damage but if the fight lasts to long you die a slow inevitable dead...
And the heavy armour wearers did not accept this, the game HAD to be changed so they could wear heavy armour all the time... existing food buffs were not good enough for them, the demanded SOE "fix" the game...
And so, we got the doc buff...
It was a massive buff to your regeneration that doctors could create and when I say massive, I mean massive. And thanks to SWG unique crafting methods with random quality matierials it wasn't long before doc buffs became truly insane.
It soon became possible for ANY player no matter what they were wearing to walk up to a Rancor nest and go AoE mad on it forcing all the enemies to spawn and die as they simply could not damage you fast enough to be healed. If a enemy mob does 300 dps and you heal 2000 dps, you just can't go down. Ever...
It saw the rise of the solo group, people grouping to qualify for the highest missions then completing them solo... it KILLED group play. The SWG that is fondly remembered is the pre-doc buff MMO. Rancor hunts? Pre doc buff. Dathomir was a place politicians/dancer classes went to slap Rancors post doc buff.
New players could not find any groups for low level content and often relied on a high level player funding their first dose of doc buff to get them started. It also totally ruined the economy, use a 2 hour doc buff to quest and you would get more then enough money to buy a dozen more shots... all that money had to go somewhere leading to an insanely inflated market.
And all this because SOE listened to whiners who wanted their cake and eat it to... SWG was designed to make heavy armour a very distinct play style choice, remember that in the movies, very few wear heavy armour and those that do, DIE. But kiddies love Boba Fett and so they wanted the heavy armour and they got it, and the game died.
Age of Conan was designed to not have significant stats on items to make the game less depended on loot... and the players moanded and groaned until Items became bing on equip so that rare items could be sold for lots of money and nost just passed down and stats on loot became the primary motivator for questing just like every other game...
And the same people complain that every game is a WoW clone...
Players killed SWG because SOE listened to them. The CU and the NGE are just the aftermath of the clusterfuck that was the Doc Buff when SOE stopped believing in their own design and tried to satisfy a vocal minority.
This game is dead. Let it stay dead. Move the hell on with your life.
No, not until it either comes back or there is another game that is very similar to it, as SWG is the only game I got stuck into and did not get bored with in my whole 30+ years of gaming, but considering I have lost a load of stuff with SWG, I very much doubt I will spend loads of time on this new game. SWG coming back is the only answer.
I also would have moved on if SWG shut down when it was dead, but it was shut down when it was having a population boom, and populations were rising - It makes no sense to me.
If they announced the shut down in April instead of doing the free CTS or if all servers became dead AFTER SWTOR released, then SWG shutting down would have made more sense. SWG was too much on a high, and there is more chances of it getting resurrected than any other MMO that got shut down.
If anybody can make SWG into F2P then they will have a hit on their hands.
Anyway, I am doing other RL things now, so have moved on, but also got a few minutes each day to discuss SWG still, and keep it alive, and SWG is the only MMORPG that I will put all my gaming effort into. I will not move on to another one MMORPG now, but loads of others and Xbox 360 games where most of them will still be playable in 8 years guaranteed, even if you lose any offlline elements. The shutting down of SWG has killed my enthisiasm and security for playing online only games / MMOs - Get in and play as much as you can and then quit before it closes / changes. WOW should be safe though until at least Titan comes along, either it will get shut down like SWG did for SWTOR even though populations are high or shut down instead of going F2P when populations dwindle - Blizzard said that WOW would go F2P if populations dwindle but if Titan is P2P and millions are playing that instead of WOW, then I doubt they will make WOW F2P then, but instead just shut it down.
If SWG returns and does not shut down until it is totally dead, then it will restore my faith in MMORPGS again, so it is not just SWG for me, but all MMORPGs
SWG ultimately failed due to business decisions, contracts and licences which caused it to shut down, and lack of marketing to push past the stigma of NGE. A lot of people bashing SWG are ones who mainly played pre-NGE and never put in enough time with the NGE over the 6 year period. SWG when it shut down, was the most fullest MMO to exist - to attract plenty of players with loads of varying interests, but as it got no marketing and all the bad reviews from 2006 all over the place, it kept people away. The unintended marketing from the hacking and the free CTS brought loads of players back to SWG, but other MMOs like Vanguard still did not get a population boom. Players did not just come back and check it out for a week or less and thenlog out, they stayed and played sustaining high populations for the whole 45 days. The only thing that stopped people playing then was the shutdown announcement, it came before people had the chance to sub to it.
If the NGE ultimately failed SWG then it would have shut down in 2006 or 2007, not the end of 2011
With Swg Lucas and Sony took a complex type game and attempted to dumb it down to be more wow like. Completly disregarding there niche market base they had built up.
Now swtor was built from the ground up to be the game lucas wanted soe to deliver with the nge patch there is no reason to think that lucas is suddenly gonna say after launch hey lets make this a sandbox game now.
As I have said countless time, the moment it all went wrong was NOT the NGE or CU but the doc buff.
SWG was rather unique game in that you had three "mana" bars. Health, Action, Mind. The HAM bar, if any of them reached zero, you fell down and could be killed (not all PvE enemies dealt death blows).
You could to a slight degree set how fast you wanted each of your stats to generate and your race also had an influence.
Each skill use cost a number of points from any of the three bars, sometimes more then one. This had a unique effect in gaming, you could knock yourself out by casting to hard.
In combat, damange from enemies would also be directed to one or more bars. So the entire trick was to keep all your bars above zero. If you used mind based attacks and faced an enemy who targetted the mind bar, you could go down very fast.
Now here is the final piece of SWG fundemental original design. Armour would provice a defense BUT also hamper your regeneration. This allowed the game to make EVERY type of armour viable, my Terra Kassi did very well in regular clothing with no armour value and instead focussing on regeneration lost HAM points...
BUT there was a flaw, many a kiddy could not life with the fact that donning heavy Bobba Fett style armour did NOT turn them into instoppable fighting machines... in fact, very much not so. The whole idea about heavy armour is that it would protect you, for a whole but any damage you did take lasted because you did not regenerate anymore. So two fighting choices, risk a lot of damage but hope you outheal it OR take less damage but if the fight lasts to long you die a slow inevitable dead...
And the heavy armour wearers did not accept this, the game HAD to be changed so they could wear heavy armour all the time... existing food buffs were not good enough for them, the demanded SOE "fix" the game...
And so, we got the doc buff...
It was a massive buff to your regeneration that doctors could create and when I say massive, I mean massive. And thanks to SWG unique crafting methods with random quality matierials it wasn't long before doc buffs became truly insane.
It soon became possible for ANY player no matter what they were wearing to walk up to a Rancor nest and go AoE mad on it forcing all the enemies to spawn and die as they simply could not damage you fast enough to be healed. If a enemy mob does 300 dps and you heal 2000 dps, you just can't go down. Ever...
It saw the rise of the solo group, people grouping to qualify for the highest missions then completing them solo... it KILLED group play. The SWG that is fondly remembered is the pre-doc buff MMO. Rancor hunts? Pre doc buff. Dathomir was a place politicians/dancer classes went to slap Rancors post doc buff.
New players could not find any groups for low level content and often relied on a high level player funding their first dose of doc buff to get them started. It also totally ruined the economy, use a 2 hour doc buff to quest and you would get more then enough money to buy a dozen more shots... all that money had to go somewhere leading to an insanely inflated market.
And all this because SOE listened to whiners who wanted their cake and eat it to... SWG was designed to make heavy armour a very distinct play style choice, remember that in the movies, very few wear heavy armour and those that do, DIE. But kiddies love Boba Fett and so they wanted the heavy armour and they got it, and the game died.
Age of Conan was designed to not have significant stats on items to make the game less depended on loot... and the players moanded and groaned until Items became bing on equip so that rare items could be sold for lots of money and nost just passed down and stats on loot became the primary motivator for questing just like every other game...
And the same people complain that every game is a WoW clone...
Players killed SWG because SOE listened to them. The CU and the NGE are just the aftermath of the clusterfuck that was the Doc Buff when SOE stopped believing in their own design and tried to satisfy a vocal minority.
Very good point. I also remember jedi getting dilluted because SOE moved away from their original concept of keeping jedi rare and this destroyed PVP. At first the jedi would be permanently deleted if he died three times. So even though they were alpha class, they knew better than to flash their sabers in Theed because players and stormtroopers would be all over them like white on rice. Even if they lived past that encounter, they would have to deal with bounty hunters like me who would hunt them in packs. That was actually the most fun I ever had in the game, because even with three of us we had to really be on our toes, especially if it was a full temp jedi. This was actually a very good concept that worked, but like many things were destroyed because SOE decided to listen to the whiners and make it easier with every patch. Next thing you know, everyone is off grinding jedi and PVP becomes a force sensitive war. Not to mention the many classes that had skills nerfed because they were too successful in bringing jedi down.
SOE instead of IMPROVING current game design (working out bugs, add content ,etc ) CHANGED game design and concept.
That's why it ultimatelly failed.
Original pre-NGE concept was very good - it just was unfinished ,unpolished and bug ridden - it just needed more work.
Instead it got trashed and changed at it's core - this caused player's leaving and game failing.
^^^
The original design was brilliant but needed some work. What they did to destroy what could have been a great game borderlines on criminal, especially how they deceptively rolled out NGE after charging for an expansion.
That's what happens when you have a bunch of incompetent blowhards dictating a company.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
SOE instead of IMPROVING current game design (working out bugs, add content ,etc ) CHANGED game design and concept.
That's why it ultimatelly failed.
Original pre-NGE concept was very good - it just was unfinished ,unpolished and bug ridden - it just needed more work.
Instead it got trashed and changed at it's core - this caused player's leaving and game failing.
^^^
The original design was brilliant but needed some work. What they did to destroy what could have been a great game borderlines on criminal, especially how they deceptively rolled out NGE after charging for an expansion.
That's what happens when you have a bunch of incompetent blowhards dictating a company.
Yeppers. Forcing theme park game elements of the NGE into SWG marginalized (or entirely removed) the very exceptioanl and innovative systems SWG had. No matter what was added the last six years, the NGE was the cancer that ended SWG.
SWG went wrong the moment Lucas Arts signed over the license to SOE for development.
TOR may be under the shadow of EA. But at least it isn't SOE.
/agree
SOE is not involved in ToR and it is WAY better off for it, EA is not going to do what SOE did and kill a game mid flow.
No, they just killed it from the off
Anyway EA does nothing to the game, only market it. LA tells Bioware what to do, like they told SOE what to do.
LA is what went wrong with SWG, and what went wrong with SWTOR. Why do people keep forgetting LA? SW games would not exist without LA
SOE / LA created a masterpiece, and then dumbed it down further with the NGE
Bioware / LA then dumbed down the NGE further and created SWTOR
On 16 March 2000, LucasArts Entertainment announced a partnership with Verant Interactive Inc. and Sony Online Entertainment to create the first massively multiplayer Star Wars online role-playing game.[2][3] The then unnamed game would be developed by Verant with online play supported by SOE. This was the same team responsible for creating and supporting the popular EverQuest multiplayer online game. LucasArts would be responsible for all distribution of the Star Wars online game.
nothing about them having anything to do with the way the game progressed
Lucas had final say on all the Star Wars properties but did not have anything to do with the CU or NGE, he just signed off on it as ok by him.
This was all SOE.
And I really dont find that SWTOR is a dumbed down version of SWG, the two games are nothing alike, and were never ment to be, the only thing they hold in common is that they are both set in the Star Wars Galaxy
SWG went wrong the moment Lucas Arts signed over the license to SOE for development.
TOR may be under the shadow of EA. But at least it isn't SOE.
/agree
SOE is not involved in ToR and it is WAY better off for it, EA is not going to do what SOE did and kill a game mid flow.
No, they just killed it from the off
Anyway EA does nothing to the game, only market it. LA tells Bioware what to do, like they told SOE what to do.
LA is what went wrong with SWG, and what went wrong with SWTOR. Why do people keep forgetting LA? SW games would not exist without LA
SOE / LA created a masterpiece, and then dumbed it down further with the NGE
Bioware / LA then dumbed down the NGE further and created SWTOR
On 16 March 2000, LucasArts Entertainment announced a partnership with Verant Interactive Inc. and Sony Online Entertainment to create the first massively multiplayer Star Wars online role-playing game.[2][3] The then unnamed game would be developed by Verant with online play supported by SOE. This was the same team responsible for creating and supporting the popular EverQuest multiplayer online game. LucasArts would be responsible for all distribution of the Star Wars online game.
nothing about them having anything to do with the way the game progressed
Lucas had final say on all the Star Wars properties but did not have anything to do with the CU or NGE, he just signed off on it as ok by him.
This was all SOE.
And I really dont find that SWTOR is a dumbed down version of SWG, the two games are nothing alike, and were never ment to be, the only thing they hold in common is that they are both set in the Star Wars Galaxy
Actually what you wrote says LA was responsible for it it all. Nothing there says that SOE has anything to do with it either except online play supported by SOE. It does not say it will be created and suppoted by SOE, like it says they do for EQ. The bit in red states LA would be responsible for it it all
AH but Verant is now part of SOE, Bioware is like Verant - EA acquired Bioware, SOE acquired Verant. LA tell what SOE and EA (or Bioware) what to do.
Look at this video, Julio Torres of LA who was also producer for KOTOR, Obi-Wan, SWG and Force Unleased, explains the NGE. It was not Smedley or anyone from SOE.
Also when the CU and NGE were done, LA came to the forums to explain.
SWTORs crafting is dumbed down, the space is dumbed down, and everything SWG had (like BM or CH/BE and Player Cities and the Chronicles system etc etc) and other MMOs have, SWTOR does not have. All SWTOR has is questing and nothing else, and from what Bioware says SWTOR will get none of it. You can not even reanme your companions. The game is just restrictive that it makes it virtually unplayable as a MMO. It works great as a single player game like Mass Effect but it is not very customisable, as restricted by the story that Bioware put out.
At the end of the day, the NGE was just a mistake and a bad business decision, and so to blame it all on SOE is just misguided, especially when LA were clearly involved. Julio Torees knew people would quit but then come back when realised the NGE was for the better - he says so in that above video. When the NGE was not the success they hoped, LA abandoned SWG, and it was mostly done by SOE from then on, and LA never visited the SWG forums at all from 2006.
I bet if LA were still in full controil of SWG after the NGE, SWG would not have had things like camps or BM brought back. SOE did the best they could to bring back SWG of old with the NGE coding.
SWTOR is only a more polished product because LA gave them over 3 years to develop it. LA only allowed SOE to do the NGE with only a few months, and was done as fast as possible to try and boost subs to WOW levels before it was too late, and to change a game.
Bait and switch (which SOE later offered refunds, etc), secretly developing a new game while running the existing one, and arguably the dumbest business decision in the history of video gaming, and here are a select few SOE fanboys defending it... LOL...
Both SOE and LEC were involved, both were wrong, both paid the price, to the tune of over 250,000 cancelled subscriptions in a few short months.
I would say they got what they deserved.
You need to read Dan Rubenfeld's blog, it has a more in depth account of how it happened.
"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts. "There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."
Heres the thing Nancy missed.
75% of the 2003 to 10/30/05 player base LIKED being the Supporting Cast member and didn't have any desire to be Luke or Han or Leia or Lando or Vader or Palpy or Tarken or Thrawn et al.
We wanted to Sit in Camps and chat for hours while grinding out Camping Xp for Scout or Ranger. We liked crafting Swoops to sell on Vendors to get Merchant XP. We loved running for Election to get new abilities for our cities as a Politican.
I liked Spin Groups at the Dant MO or Dath Smug Outpost while I was grinding through Carbineer and Rifleman and BH.
I didn't mind working my butt off in the Village during phase the Build Phase or the Sith Invasion Phase. I didn't even whine over the Double Incap to increase Decay in PvP crap that people pulled while grinding their PvP Rating.
I loved the RIS Armor Quest.
I didn't mind grinding my butt off in Space for a Black Sun Helmet...or on Yavin for a Jet Pack Base...or the DWB for Liquids...or the Avatar Platform just because.
The NGE screwed a lot of things up.
The NGE also Fixed a few things...
PvP was Unbalanced....and there would never be True Balance in PvP unless you removed the majority of the combat professions and limited Customization. Multiple Template options introduced too many variables that the developers could not balance out. Plus Legendary weapons with EPIC DOT's that you only ever saw come out in PvP. Plus people Buying up every ADK they could so that their weapon and 95% resist armor and epic CA's and AA's and WA's would NEVER Break.
Heck...I sold an ADK on one of my alt accounts 3 months before it was Due for 25m on Intrepid and on another account on Lowca for 30 m....3 weeks before the NGE announcement.
Decay had problems with Implementation and with how Buggy the Repair Kits were.
Space was the Only thing Post Publish 9 and Post NGE that the Developers didn't change or screw up.
I didn't like Losing as many professions as we lost in 2005. But there were so many Non-Combat Professions that they should have left alone...Merchant and Bio Engineer and CH and Doctor and Scout and my beloved Ranger....
There are things I would have done differently....and I would have started the discussion in 2004 with LA about the CU with a hearty "do it your own darn self." comment.
This is actually the best, and most reasonable, post I've ever read of yours. Good summary actually.
It's also a sad reminder that makes you wonder where the game would have gone had the NGE/CU never been developed and instead they had focused on the issues the game had. I have to think that between NGE and CU, we lost close to 3 development years as well as 300-400k players...that's impossible to recover from.
We may disagree on who is at fault, but I'm very impressed with your post.
Comments
Heres the thing Nancy missed.
75% of the 2003 to 10/30/05 player base LIKED being the Supporting Cast member and didn't have any desire to be Luke or Han or Leia or Lando or Vader or Palpy or Tarken or Thrawn et al.
We wanted to Sit in Camps and chat for hours while grinding out Camping Xp for Scout or Ranger. We liked crafting Swoops to sell on Vendors to get Merchant XP. We loved running for Election to get new abilities for our cities as a Politican.
I liked Spin Groups at the Dant MO or Dath Smug Outpost while I was grinding through Carbineer and Rifleman and BH.
I didn't mind working my butt off in the Village during phase the Build Phase or the Sith Invasion Phase. I didn't even whine over the Double Incap to increase Decay in PvP crap that people pulled while grinding their PvP Rating.
I loved the RIS Armor Quest.
I didn't mind grinding my butt off in Space for a Black Sun Helmet...or on Yavin for a Jet Pack Base...or the DWB for Liquids...or the Avatar Platform just because.
The NGE screwed a lot of things up.
The NGE also Fixed a few things...
PvP was Unbalanced....and there would never be True Balance in PvP unless you removed the majority of the combat professions and limited Customization. Multiple Template options introduced too many variables that the developers could not balance out. Plus Legendary weapons with EPIC DOT's that you only ever saw come out in PvP. Plus people Buying up every ADK they could so that their weapon and 95% resist armor and epic CA's and AA's and WA's would NEVER Break.
Heck...I sold an ADK on one of my alt accounts 3 months before it was Due for 25m on Intrepid and on another account on Lowca for 30 m....3 weeks before the NGE announcement.
Decay had problems with Implementation and with how Buggy the Repair Kits were.
Space was the Only thing Post Publish 9 and Post NGE that the Developers didn't change or screw up.
I didn't like Losing as many professions as we lost in 2005. But there were so many Non-Combat Professions that they should have left alone...Merchant and Bio Engineer and CH and Doctor and Scout and my beloved Ranger....
There are things I would have done differently....and I would have started the discussion in 2004 with LA about the CU with a hearty "do it your own darn self." comment.
MMO History: 2528 days in SW:G
As I have said countless time, the moment it all went wrong was NOT the NGE or CU but the doc buff.
SWG was rather unique game in that you had three "mana" bars. Health, Action, Mind. The HAM bar, if any of them reached zero, you fell down and could be killed (not all PvE enemies dealt death blows).
You could to a slight degree set how fast you wanted each of your stats to generate and your race also had an influence.
Each skill use cost a number of points from any of the three bars, sometimes more then one. This had a unique effect in gaming, you could knock yourself out by casting to hard.
In combat, damange from enemies would also be directed to one or more bars. So the entire trick was to keep all your bars above zero. If you used mind based attacks and faced an enemy who targetted the mind bar, you could go down very fast.
Now here is the final piece of SWG fundemental original design. Armour would provice a defense BUT also hamper your regeneration. This allowed the game to make EVERY type of armour viable, my Terra Kassi did very well in regular clothing with no armour value and instead focussing on regeneration lost HAM points...
BUT there was a flaw, many a kiddy could not life with the fact that donning heavy Bobba Fett style armour did NOT turn them into instoppable fighting machines... in fact, very much not so. The whole idea about heavy armour is that it would protect you, for a whole but any damage you did take lasted because you did not regenerate anymore. So two fighting choices, risk a lot of damage but hope you outheal it OR take less damage but if the fight lasts to long you die a slow inevitable dead...
And the heavy armour wearers did not accept this, the game HAD to be changed so they could wear heavy armour all the time... existing food buffs were not good enough for them, the demanded SOE "fix" the game...
And so, we got the doc buff...
It was a massive buff to your regeneration that doctors could create and when I say massive, I mean massive. And thanks to SWG unique crafting methods with random quality matierials it wasn't long before doc buffs became truly insane.
It soon became possible for ANY player no matter what they were wearing to walk up to a Rancor nest and go AoE mad on it forcing all the enemies to spawn and die as they simply could not damage you fast enough to be healed. If a enemy mob does 300 dps and you heal 2000 dps, you just can't go down. Ever...
It saw the rise of the solo group, people grouping to qualify for the highest missions then completing them solo... it KILLED group play. The SWG that is fondly remembered is the pre-doc buff MMO. Rancor hunts? Pre doc buff. Dathomir was a place politicians/dancer classes went to slap Rancors post doc buff.
New players could not find any groups for low level content and often relied on a high level player funding their first dose of doc buff to get them started. It also totally ruined the economy, use a 2 hour doc buff to quest and you would get more then enough money to buy a dozen more shots... all that money had to go somewhere leading to an insanely inflated market.
And all this because SOE listened to whiners who wanted their cake and eat it to... SWG was designed to make heavy armour a very distinct play style choice, remember that in the movies, very few wear heavy armour and those that do, DIE. But kiddies love Boba Fett and so they wanted the heavy armour and they got it, and the game died.
Age of Conan was designed to not have significant stats on items to make the game less depended on loot... and the players moanded and groaned until Items became bing on equip so that rare items could be sold for lots of money and nost just passed down and stats on loot became the primary motivator for questing just like every other game...
And the same people complain that every game is a WoW clone...
Players killed SWG because SOE listened to them. The CU and the NGE are just the aftermath of the clusterfuck that was the Doc Buff when SOE stopped believing in their own design and tried to satisfy a vocal minority.
This game is dead. Let it stay dead. Move the hell on with your life.
No, not until it either comes back or there is another game that is very similar to it, as SWG is the only game I got stuck into and did not get bored with in my whole 30+ years of gaming, but considering I have lost a load of stuff with SWG, I very much doubt I will spend loads of time on this new game. SWG coming back is the only answer.
I also would have moved on if SWG shut down when it was dead, but it was shut down when it was having a population boom, and populations were rising - It makes no sense to me.
If they announced the shut down in April instead of doing the free CTS or if all servers became dead AFTER SWTOR released, then SWG shutting down would have made more sense. SWG was too much on a high, and there is more chances of it getting resurrected than any other MMO that got shut down.
If anybody can make SWG into F2P then they will have a hit on their hands.
Anyway, I am doing other RL things now, so have moved on, but also got a few minutes each day to discuss SWG still, and keep it alive, and SWG is the only MMORPG that I will put all my gaming effort into. I will not move on to another one MMORPG now, but loads of others and Xbox 360 games where most of them will still be playable in 8 years guaranteed, even if you lose any offlline elements. The shutting down of SWG has killed my enthisiasm and security for playing online only games / MMOs - Get in and play as much as you can and then quit before it closes / changes. WOW should be safe though until at least Titan comes along, either it will get shut down like SWG did for SWTOR even though populations are high or shut down instead of going F2P when populations dwindle - Blizzard said that WOW would go F2P if populations dwindle but if Titan is P2P and millions are playing that instead of WOW, then I doubt they will make WOW F2P then, but instead just shut it down.
If SWG returns and does not shut down until it is totally dead, then it will restore my faith in MMORPGS again, so it is not just SWG for me, but all MMORPGs
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Short story :
SOE instead of IMPROVING current game design (working out bugs, add content ,etc ) CHANGED game design and concept.
That's why it ultimatelly failed.
Original pre-NGE concept was very good - it just was unfinished ,unpolished and bug ridden - it just needed more work.
Instead it got trashed and changed at it's core - this caused player's leaving and game failing.
SWG ultimately failed due to business decisions, contracts and licences which caused it to shut down, and lack of marketing to push past the stigma of NGE. A lot of people bashing SWG are ones who mainly played pre-NGE and never put in enough time with the NGE over the 6 year period. SWG when it shut down, was the most fullest MMO to exist - to attract plenty of players with loads of varying interests, but as it got no marketing and all the bad reviews from 2006 all over the place, it kept people away. The unintended marketing from the hacking and the free CTS brought loads of players back to SWG, but other MMOs like Vanguard still did not get a population boom. Players did not just come back and check it out for a week or less and thenlog out, they stayed and played sustaining high populations for the whole 45 days. The only thing that stopped people playing then was the shutdown announcement, it came before people had the chance to sub to it.
If the NGE ultimately failed SWG then it would have shut down in 2006 or 2007, not the end of 2011
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Be funny if he did though.
I think an easier question to answer would be "where did SWG go RIGHT..."
Tecmo Bowl.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
^^^
The original design was brilliant but needed some work. What they did to destroy what could have been a great game borderlines on criminal, especially how they deceptively rolled out NGE after charging for an expansion.
That's what happens when you have a bunch of incompetent blowhards dictating a company.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Yeppers. Forcing theme park game elements of the NGE into SWG marginalized (or entirely removed) the very exceptioanl and innovative systems SWG had. No matter what was added the last six years, the NGE was the cancer that ended SWG.
/agree
SOE is not involved in ToR and it is WAY better off for it, EA is not going to do what SOE did and kill a game mid flow.
No, they just killed it from the off
Anyway EA does nothing to the game, only market it. LA tells Bioware what to do, like they told SOE what to do.
LA is what went wrong with SWG, and what went wrong with SWTOR. Why do people keep forgetting LA? SW games would not exist without LA
SOE / LA created a masterpiece, and then dumbed it down further with the NGE
Bioware / LA then dumbed down the NGE further and created SWTOR
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On 16 March 2000, LucasArts Entertainment announced a partnership with Verant Interactive Inc. and Sony Online Entertainment to create the first massively multiplayer Star Wars online role-playing game.[2][3] The then unnamed game would be developed by Verant with online play supported by SOE. This was the same team responsible for creating and supporting the popular EverQuest multiplayer online game. LucasArts would be responsible for all distribution of the Star Wars online game.
nothing about them having anything to do with the way the game progressed
Lucas had final say on all the Star Wars properties but did not have anything to do with the CU or NGE, he just signed off on it as ok by him.
This was all SOE.
And I really dont find that SWTOR is a dumbed down version of SWG, the two games are nothing alike, and were never ment to be, the only thing they hold in common is that they are both set in the Star Wars Galaxy
Actually what you wrote says LA was responsible for it it all. Nothing there says that SOE has anything to do with it either except online play supported by SOE. It does not say it will be created and suppoted by SOE, like it says they do for EQ. The bit in red states LA would be responsible for it it all
AH but Verant is now part of SOE, Bioware is like Verant - EA acquired Bioware, SOE acquired Verant. LA tell what SOE and EA (or Bioware) what to do.
Look at this video, Julio Torres of LA who was also producer for KOTOR, Obi-Wan, SWG and Force Unleased, explains the NGE. It was not Smedley or anyone from SOE.
Julio Torres NGE interview
So LA got nothing to do with it eh?
Julio Torres instructed the SOE devs what to do.
Also when the CU and NGE were done, LA came to the forums to explain.
SWTORs crafting is dumbed down, the space is dumbed down, and everything SWG had (like BM or CH/BE and Player Cities and the Chronicles system etc etc) and other MMOs have, SWTOR does not have. All SWTOR has is questing and nothing else, and from what Bioware says SWTOR will get none of it. You can not even reanme your companions. The game is just restrictive that it makes it virtually unplayable as a MMO. It works great as a single player game like Mass Effect but it is not very customisable, as restricted by the story that Bioware put out.
At the end of the day, the NGE was just a mistake and a bad business decision, and so to blame it all on SOE is just misguided, especially when LA were clearly involved. Julio Torees knew people would quit but then come back when realised the NGE was for the better - he says so in that above video. When the NGE was not the success they hoped, LA abandoned SWG, and it was mostly done by SOE from then on, and LA never visited the SWG forums at all from 2006.
I bet if LA were still in full controil of SWG after the NGE, SWG would not have had things like camps or BM brought back. SOE did the best they could to bring back SWG of old with the NGE coding.
SWTOR is only a more polished product because LA gave them over 3 years to develop it. LA only allowed SOE to do the NGE with only a few months, and was done as fast as possible to try and boost subs to WOW levels before it was too late, and to change a game.
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Bait and switch (which SOE later offered refunds, etc), secretly developing a new game while running the existing one, and arguably the dumbest business decision in the history of video gaming, and here are a select few SOE fanboys defending it... LOL...
Both SOE and LEC were involved, both were wrong, both paid the price, to the tune of over 250,000 cancelled subscriptions in a few short months.
I would say they got what they deserved.
You need to read Dan Rubenfeld's blog, it has a more in depth account of how it happened.
Tecmo Bowl.
This is actually the best, and most reasonable, post I've ever read of yours. Good summary actually.
It's also a sad reminder that makes you wonder where the game would have gone had the NGE/CU never been developed and instead they had focused on the issues the game had. I have to think that between NGE and CU, we lost close to 3 development years as well as 300-400k players...that's impossible to recover from.
We may disagree on who is at fault, but I'm very impressed with your post.