Really good sum up. I only play MMORPGs when they first come up like i did SWG so that i can we a veteran and then help out all ther beginner people. I gave stuff to people all the time for free and i even saved SWG a canceling of a account. The guy told me he was going to quit the game (pre-cu and all the other crap) and i convinced him to stay and told him some things and i offered to give him some credits too. And a couple of weeks later i saw that he was still playing and that made me very happy. Another thing about SWG i like to PvP alot and that and the fact of being of veteran kinda went along for me. I want to build the best template and get the best weapons and then just own in PvP. When i quit SWG i acually went to WoW but not because of WoW came out , but because they just ruined the game. Then i quit WoW after about 3 months because it isn't as good as everyone makes it out to be.
I haven't seen a better article than this to sum up what is going on with SWG. I wish every SOE employee would takea good hard look at this article, and give a long thought abot what they have put there community through... Because this is utterly rediculous.
Fundamental Problems SOE ignored when deciding on the NGE:
Don't take away power/items from players they have earned.
a. Gave away jedi after many players worked hard to earn it
b. Dropped any bonuses that were given in the process of getting jedi.
c. All previous uber-loot items had no value.
d. All weapons including the looted "epic" ones were all the same.
e. Kits used to make weapons permanent/non-degradable became furniture.
Don't make them re-roll their characters.
a. Everyone had to reclass, from a complex and interesting set of choices to 7 "iconic" types.
b. Of those that could reclass, if you reclassed FROM entertainer or artisan, you lost all XP. (didn't fix this bug until 6 months later).
c. Dropped all pet control types (Droid engineer and Creature Handler), the thing they were interested in is gone. Anyone who wants to say CH wasn't star warsey must have forgotten about dewbacks and pack animals, trained rancor and assorted creatures throughout the entire series of movies and books.
d. Fundamental feature of being able to change your character slowly to another class, was removed. If you didn't like your choice, you had to redo the whole thing (loot and all).
Well said my friend now all we have to do is get SOE to actually read the article and act on it. Hopefully SOe will realize what ahuge mistake they made and try to fix it before the game is completely lost.
It`s true they didin`t care what we VETERANS have to say, I was planing to give it a try once more but that`s is like giving them the reason for their arrogancy with all the SWG comunity, their lack of respect with the veterans is huge.
Originally posted by RPGF2002 Well said my friend now all we have to do is get SOE to actually read the article and act on it. Hopefully SOe will realize what ahuge mistake they made and try to fix it before the game is completely lost.
Actually, they already admitted they made a mistake.
"I would have done it a lot differently, and I think that's what's really been driving a lot of this," said Blakely, SOE's vice president of development, regarding the SWG changes known collectively as the New Game Enhancements, or NGE. Those changes, rolled out shortly after the previous year's AGC, resulted in several departures of development employees, and a significant portion of the customer population by some estimates cutting it in half. (article)
As for acting on it? Well.... *shrugs* It took them close to a year, admitting the mistake in the first place....
[EDIT] Sorry... I forgot to check the date on your post *blush*
"So I contend that the player stories will always be more powerful than the scripted stories that we try to tell the players."
the only thing he failed to mention is the fact that SOE deliberately abused it's customer base in order to maintain the monthly income, face the reality people Sony doesn't give a hoot about it's customers any more than you care about the ants outside in your garden.They never have and doubt they ever will.... it's just another market to try and corner.... just another idea to steal and use.... let the legal staff handle the public relations.
I found this article by accident, but I did enjoy it. I, too, have played SWG from the early days and have been disgusted with the way the game has "evolved," if that's the right word.
But I created an account here to say this. I have no idea who Kevin Tierney (sp?) is, so I don't have an axe to grind. But honesty, could someone from this website contact me about freelance writing? Because industry knowledge aside, you simply cannot have people publishing on your website if they do not know the difference between "it's" (as used in the opening passage of this article) and "its." If this is professional copy, it needs to be professional. I am assuming that Mr. Tierney was paid for his contribution (again, forgive my ignorance, I don't read this website regularly), and thus cannot understand why such an egregious mistake of simple, basic English was allowed into the copy. Perhaps it was the editor's fault, I don't know. But it is more than a little off putting when such an obvious mistake occurs at the beginning of an article. One wonders why one should spend the time to read the article, because even the best sentiments (and here I hasten to add, once again, that the subject matter of the article is excellent and his opinion is my own as well) lose their power if expressed in broken or incorrect English.
It is slightly distressing that no one else has noticed this. However, the author was (I assume) paid to notice these things, and that he did not, is a real problem. Thanks.
I just can not get that they actually believed this to turn out well, the people who made this decision should not be allowed to run a "one hour photo" booth.
The logis is as stupid as sleeping with your bosses wife hopeing she will convince him to give you a raise because you are "so good in bed".
That would not even work in a Jim Carrey movie, let alone in real life.
Quite frankly, the above analogy has a bigger chance of turning out ok then this disaster ever had.
The ignorance and the arrogance displayed here is to my knowledge unrivaled in the history of bussiness.
They should not be fired, they should have the bloody decency to realise they need to resign never again to set foot in the gaming world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What makes it worse is that if there ever was a game that needed to stick to its guns, it was SWG. I played the game a couple of months after release and, barring the inevitable problems caused by releasing about six months early, the vast majority of the complaints were from people who just didn't get it. I remember the rallying cry of "please don't let this game be Everquest in space!" It wasn't, it was something completely different and I don't think anyone could have done a better job of recreating an existing setting.
It seems to me that there are two distinct types of MMO out there. Massively multiplayer online games and massively multiplayer online worlds. WoW is very much a MMOG, it is designed to be played in a certain way and everything is geared to creating a fun playing experience. It's probably why this style of game has so many endgame problems, but that's another topic. SWG was very much an online world. There was no particular goal, you were given the Star Wars universe and could live in it however you liked. The reliance on other players (outside of the normal grouping context) was very indicitive of this. The people who were complaining were those who wanted a game and not a world. They were the ones maxing out their characters and wondering what they were supposed to do next. Unfortunately they were a very vocal group and I think that SWG's downfall is a result of that group being listened to too closely.
Why was this post dug up? Old news.. water under the bridge etc etc..
I'll go on hating SOE because of this and their constant lousy customer service.. but I don't need to beat the dead horse to death.. thats what the SWG veteran forums are for.. ranting about this stuff :P Keeps all us old bitter ex-SWG players happy. and still gets lots of traffic :P
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Originally posted by BigJonno "please don't let this game be Everquest in space!"
there are two distinct types of MMO out there. Massively multiplayer online games and massively multiplayer online worlds.SWG was very much an online world. The people who were complaining were those who wanted a game and not a world. Unfortunately they were a very vocal group and I think that SWG's downfall is a result of that group being listened to too closely.
It took some time for me to understand the profession tree, from a noobs point of view the original SWG would appear complicated... and it was, but the endless options were brilliant, no where have I ever played a game that would let your char travel ANYWHERE in the game, never got stuck by objects, rarely would you run into an invisible wall.... marshes ..ocean...buildings all accessible. The fluid movement of the chars was so realistic (prior to the "snappy" upgrade) you could lose yourself in fantasy for hours. Even now the game still has much of those things that other games don't offer....
I don't care what the "formula" for a good MMO is, there was no need to transform Star Wars Galaxies, they should have just introduced Star Wars Universe (NGE) as a new game with a different style of play.... had a MMOW and a MMOG , any business person can see this would have brought more profits and kept their Vets happy ..... but like one of you said ...it's water under the bridge now.... I just wonder when they will actually finish the beta version and present the world with a finished product....
Like with every mmo I say give us the option to only hv to use our bank debit card (not a cc version), time card, or paypal .... not every person out there has or wants to use a cc .... so many times I have picked up the box for Star Wars Galaxies and said hey I want to play this but no I can't cuz I don't have a cc ...
I play World of Warcraft and did use a cc to register originally for that but would not do so again for another game. You hv to make it easy for people to play and I say do it by giving more payment options ...
What makes it worse is that if there ever was a game that needed to stick to its guns, it was SWG. I played the game a couple of months after release and, barring the inevitable problems caused by releasing about six months early, the vast majority of the complaints were from people who just didn't get it. I remember the rallying cry of "please don't let this game be Everquest in space!" It wasn't, it was something completely different and I don't think anyone could have done a better job of recreating an existing setting.
It seems to me that there are two distinct types of MMO out there. Massively multiplayer online games and massively multiplayer online worlds. WoW is very much a MMOG, it is designed to be played in a certain way and everything is geared to creating a fun playing experience. It's probably why this style of game has so many endgame problems, but that's another topic. SWG was very much an online world. There was no particular goal, you were given the Star Wars universe and could live in it however you liked. The reliance on other players (outside of the normal grouping context) was very indicitive of this. The people who were complaining were those who wanted a game and not a world. They were the ones maxing out their characters and wondering what they were supposed to do next. Unfortunately they were a very vocal group and I think that SWG's downfall is a result of that group being listened to too closely.
Well SWG basically had its own star war-ess style life. It started out fairly nicely and grew to a respectable number of people playing it around 300k. Then the big WoW force came along so SOE looked at this "force" and thought of ways to beat it. However in their persuite of trying to beat the WoW side of the force they became the WoW side of the force. Making their interface and lvling wow like and all.
All SOE has to do to have the vader style revival is make a server pre-NGE. How much would it really set them back to make just 1 server this way? I would think they would make so much more on that one server then all their NGE server combined.
The old swg was good before the dark times, before the wow-pire.
The smedly has disolved the swg council, the last remenence of the old swg have been swept away. But how will the smedly maintain control without the berrocricy? Fear! Fear of the NGE will keep the local systems in line.
In all seriousness SOE has admitted to the NGE being a mistake yet do nothing to fix it. They would have hundreds of thousands of people willing to forgive you and go back to SWG if they just went pre-NGE, or at least made just 1 server pre-NGE. Yet they won't because you keep thinking some magical star wars fans are going to come and play it. If it hasn't happened yet its not going to happen. I wish they at SOE would relize this and correct your mistake instead of just admitting to it, admitting to it is nothing more then lip service. SOE made sweeping changes in EQ in its early days but wised up and made changes to it to keep the majority of its base happy. Yet now they are basically telling us we don't know what we are talking about and can't possible know whats good for your bottom line. They just need to look at their bottom line now and compare it to their bottom line pre-NGE that is all the facts they will need.
Comments
nice write up and well said in defence for the swg vets. hopefully no one has to go through this type of action again.
Really good sum up. I only play MMORPGs when they first come up like i did SWG so that i can we a veteran and then help out all ther beginner people. I gave stuff to people all the time for free and i even saved SWG a canceling of a account. The guy told me he was going to quit the game (pre-cu and all the other crap) and i convinced him to stay and told him some things and i offered to give him some credits too. And a couple of weeks later i saw that he was still playing and that made me very happy. Another thing about SWG i like to PvP alot and that and the fact of being of veteran kinda went along for me. I want to build the best template and get the best weapons and then just own in PvP. When i quit SWG i acually went to WoW but not because of WoW came out , but because they just ruined the game. Then i quit WoW after about 3 months because it isn't as good as everyone makes it out to be.
I am proud to be a SWG refugee.
Fundamental Problems SOE ignored when deciding on the NGE:
Don't take away power/items from players they have earned.
a. Gave away jedi after many players worked hard to earn it
b. Dropped any bonuses that were given in the process of getting jedi.
c. All previous uber-loot items had no value.
d. All weapons including the looted "epic" ones were all the same.
e. Kits used to make weapons permanent/non-degradable became furniture.
Don't make them re-roll their characters.
a. Everyone had to reclass, from a complex and interesting set of choices to 7 "iconic" types.
b. Of those that could reclass, if you reclassed FROM entertainer or artisan, you lost all XP. (didn't fix this bug until 6 months later).
c. Dropped all pet control types (Droid engineer and Creature Handler), the thing they were interested in is gone. Anyone who wants to say CH wasn't star warsey must have forgotten about dewbacks and pack animals, trained rancor and assorted creatures throughout the entire series of movies and books.
d. Fundamental feature of being able to change your character slowly to another class, was removed. If you didn't like your choice, you had to redo the whole thing (loot and all).
"I would have done it a lot differently, and I think that's what's really been driving a lot of this," said Blakely, SOE's vice president of development, regarding the SWG changes known collectively as the New Game Enhancements, or NGE. Those changes, rolled out shortly after the previous year's AGC, resulted in several departures of development employees, and a significant portion of the customer population by some estimates cutting it in half. (article)
As for acting on it? Well.... *shrugs* It took them close to a year, admitting the mistake in the first place....
[EDIT] Sorry... I forgot to check the date on your post *blush*
"So I contend that the player stories will always be more powerful than the scripted stories that we try to tell the players."
- Will Wright
the only thing he failed to mention is the fact that SOE deliberately abused it's customer base in order to maintain the monthly income, face the reality people Sony doesn't give a hoot about it's customers any more than you care about the ants outside in your garden.They never have and doubt they ever will.... it's just another market to try and corner.... just another idea to steal and use.... let the legal staff handle the public relations.
Love Conquers All
You took everyone's thoughts who were veterans together, and weaved it together into a very well written analogy. Bravo!
Which FF Character Are You?
I found this article by accident, but I did enjoy it. I, too, have played SWG from the early days and have been disgusted with the way the game has "evolved," if that's the right word.
But I created an account here to say this. I have no idea who Kevin Tierney (sp?) is, so I don't have an axe to grind. But honesty, could someone from this website contact me about freelance writing? Because industry knowledge aside, you simply cannot have people publishing on your website if they do not know the difference between "it's" (as used in the opening passage of this article) and "its." If this is professional copy, it needs to be professional. I am assuming that Mr. Tierney was paid for his contribution (again, forgive my ignorance, I don't read this website regularly), and thus cannot understand why such an egregious mistake of simple, basic English was allowed into the copy. Perhaps it was the editor's fault, I don't know. But it is more than a little off putting when such an obvious mistake occurs at the beginning of an article. One wonders why one should spend the time to read the article, because even the best sentiments (and here I hasten to add, once again, that the subject matter of the article is excellent and his opinion is my own as well) lose their power if expressed in broken or incorrect English.
It is slightly distressing that no one else has noticed this. However, the author was (I assume) paid to notice these things, and that he did not, is a real problem. Thanks.
I just can not get that they actually believed this to turn out well, the people who made this decision should not be allowed to run a "one hour photo" booth.
The logis is as stupid as sleeping with your bosses wife hopeing she will convince him to give you a raise because you are "so good in bed".
That would not even work in a Jim Carrey movie, let alone in real life.
Quite frankly, the above analogy has a bigger chance of turning out ok then this disaster ever had.
The ignorance and the arrogance displayed here is to my knowledge unrivaled in the history of bussiness.
They should not be fired, they should have the bloody decency to realise they need to resign never again to set foot in the gaming world.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Same here
Why was this post dug up? Old news.. water under the bridge etc etc..
I'll go on hating SOE because of this and their constant lousy customer service.. but I don't need to beat the dead horse to death.. thats what the SWG veteran forums are for.. ranting about this stuff :P Keeps all us old bitter ex-SWG players happy. and still gets lots of traffic :P
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
It took some time for me to understand the profession tree, from a noobs point of view the original SWG would appear complicated... and it was, but the endless options were brilliant, no where have I ever played a game that would let your char travel ANYWHERE in the game, never got stuck by objects, rarely would you run into an invisible wall.... marshes ..ocean...buildings all accessible. The fluid movement of the chars was so realistic (prior to the "snappy" upgrade) you could lose yourself in fantasy for hours. Even now the game still has much of those things that other games don't offer....
I don't care what the "formula" for a good MMO is, there was no need to transform Star Wars Galaxies, they should have just introduced Star Wars Universe (NGE) as a new game with a different style of play.... had a MMOW and a MMOG , any business person can see this would have brought more profits and kept their Vets happy ..... but like one of you said ...it's water under the bridge now.... I just wonder when they will actually finish the beta version and present the world with a finished product....
Love Conquers All
I play SWG for almost 3 years and i just want to say... i will ever play again any other game from those dumbass SOE boys. Thats right. ever!
The original poster got it 100% SPOT ON well done son!!!
Best post i've read in a long time,
If only $OE understood that most people feel that way about them,
they may one day learn from their mistakes...
...then again pigs may fly
www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi
The Deathstar destroyed planets...SOE destroyed Galaxies
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
SWG | EVE | WOW | VG | LOTRO | WAR | FML | STO | APB | AOC | MORTAL | WOT
http://www.convergenceculture.org/weblog/2006/07/so_what_happened_to_star_wars.php
Totally agree... If SOE/LA gave us some classic servers, or just one, I would start my supscription NOW !
Like with every mmo I say give us the option to only hv to use our bank debit card (not a cc version), time card, or paypal .... not every person out there has or wants to use a cc .... so many times I have picked up the box for Star Wars Galaxies and said hey I want to play this but no I can't cuz I don't have a cc ...
I play World of Warcraft and did use a cc to register originally for that but would not do so again for another game. You hv to make it easy for people to play and I say do it by giving more payment options ...
Money is the root of all evil.
Same here
Good saying
Well SWG basically had its own star war-ess style life. It started out fairly nicely and grew to a respectable number of people playing it around 300k. Then the big WoW force came along so SOE looked at this "force" and thought of ways to beat it. However in their persuite of trying to beat the WoW side of the force they became the WoW side of the force. Making their interface and lvling wow like and all.
All SOE has to do to have the vader style revival is make a server pre-NGE. How much would it really set them back to make just 1 server this way? I would think they would make so much more on that one server then all their NGE server combined.
The old swg was good before the dark times, before the wow-pire.
The smedly has disolved the swg council, the last remenence of the old swg have been swept away. But how will the smedly maintain control without the berrocricy? Fear! Fear of the NGE will keep the local systems in line.
In all seriousness SOE has admitted to the NGE being a mistake yet do nothing to fix it. They would have hundreds of thousands of people willing to forgive you and go back to SWG if they just went pre-NGE, or at least made just 1 server pre-NGE. Yet they won't because you keep thinking some magical star wars fans are going to come and play it. If it hasn't happened yet its not going to happen. I wish they at SOE would relize this and correct your mistake instead of just admitting to it, admitting to it is nothing more then lip service. SOE made sweeping changes in EQ in its early days but wised up and made changes to it to keep the majority of its base happy. Yet now they are basically telling us we don't know what we are talking about and can't possible know whats good for your bottom line. They just need to look at their bottom line now and compare it to their bottom line pre-NGE that is all the facts they will need.