While I'm not going to defend SOE's actions here (I think they mishandled the situation to a large degree), I do disagree with some of the points about MMOGs in general, that were raised by the article.
Namely, the issue of churn. In an MMOG, the vast majority of the playerbase does not stick with a game for more than 3-6 months, regardless. Certainly there are players who become ingrained into end-game guilds that don't move from the game, and thusly stick with it for years, but most players simply don't stay that long.
Because of this, an MMOG needs to be constantly attracting newbie players, just to keep their subscription numbers flat. If they start making all of their decisions based around what's best for the players that have been with the game for 6 months or more, they will quickly lose their playerbase, because people just move on regardless. For this reason, Sony's motivation of changing SWG to attract more players was justified.
Obviously they did not go about it in the right manner, and it's the first time (that I know of) that such changes were so far-reaching, but I wouldn't disagree with their (stated) reasoning.
100% agreed. I'll had 3 accaunts untill CU2, after it played week and rerolled to WoW. Ya, was really pissed to Soe's policy and bored to see that all my work turned into crap.
In the last week of CU, i think i was the greatest FS looser. I grinded for 4 months to fill up that famous 6 branches in the village, and on the last week, when i was about to unlock the Jedi Padawan title, they announced that next week everyone can be.
I mourned and Flamed on the forums day by day, but it was worthless. Until on a strange Sunday Starsider first got laggy, then fully went down. When it came village was in the next phase, and i could start finishing my Jedi. I waited for the Old Man, and did the Padawan trials day and night and on Tuesday morning, half an hour before NGE was launched i made it to Jedi. That is where this game was complete for me. The other is forgiveable.
This is by far the best article have I have read In a long time about star wars. The problems that soe faces are immense, and they should be pitied for thier sad state of business affairs. This game was by far more than a game to people. The struggles and trials now mimic the veterans and soe.. the force and the rebels.. and so forth.
They saw the run away train of the warcraft and tried to follow in blizzards footsteps, rather than standing tall and fixing the problems and trying to keep on track with development. This game was meant for more, and yet soe, lec decided to throw the bathwater out with the baby...
The problem it faces is crippling and not many will return, there is to many hurt feelings... Smeddly unfortunately has hit the epicenter of Peter Panism.. he will not leave his neverland and face realitry.... the game sucks major bantha poodoo.
Very well written! The NGE drove me to try WoW, something i had'nt even thought of earlier. WoW was/is not what i'm looking for and i've cancelled there too. I want Star Wars MMORPG, sadly there are no longer a game like that available.
It's always weird to read others' take on the history of something that you lived pretty intimately, but this was a mostly accurate retelling. Thanks for the read, Kevin.
The only thing that isn't clear from the write up is the huge shift in thinking that happened during the CU early stages. It's true that from the get go, it was overwhelming how much it felt like the core playerbase was viewed as "the enemy", the ones to work around, not for or with. Though, I think taking on a community manager that seemed to be down right terrified of and resentful of the fans he was meant to liaise with had a huge hand in furthering this perception.
Never the less, the CU's original intention was noble. It was meant to include new combat elements that had been sorely lacking from beta. What they showed us at the Corr Summit a couple of years ago wouldn't have excluded anyone, it would have added on a totally new element without destroying any existing playstyles.
Then the weirdness started - the CU testing felt more like being part of a government cover up than beta testing, lol. It's like they forgot what they were doing in the first place. Then when GW left, there was no one left to say "hey wait, we still need to keep these people we do have happy." So it wasn't a huge shock a year later when I heard at the Austin GDC that the "NGE" was being launched not only with no concern for the existing playerbase, but that it was actually openly being said it was ok if all legacy players quit.
Such a bold and normally shocking stance just seemed to be a logical end to the flawed mindset set in motion by taking comfort in the "silent majority" silently being pleased. Oh well, it was a really neat experience for a while.
I played SWG from launch to WoW's release, I had done everything I wanted too in SWG and wanted to try WoW because I played other Warcraft games. I came back to SWG before the CU happened because WoW did not give me what I liked, that was Pre-CU SWG. I loved that game and never really liked any other MMO's as much.
I agree that SOE and Lucas Arts handled SWG the wrong way and should offer people a choice, they have enough servers to have pre cu, cu and nge. I bet that would show them what people liked the most and people would come back to play. No other MMO was like the original SWG and thats why people played, we stayed because we could remake our characters anytime we wanted or mix up their skills, player made weapons and armor were better then drops because people actually had to think about what materials to use. I traveld to LOK all the time just to buy weapons from one guys shop. That personnel touch has been yanked from the game to make it more star wars like. I say they are so wrong, we acted more like a society in a star wars universe then. Now its just point click and move on to the next target and mission. I am really dissapointed in Lucas Arts for not seeing what we had and thinking that SOE had our best intrests at heart. Sorry GL but I will not buy any more Star Wars games because of the handling of SWG.
Considering "Silent Majority" term coming from Raph Koster's terminology as he claimed, SOE's mistake was giving too much credits to his myth...
Sadly, we have seen biggest fall in SWG with this terminology. Lucas Arts failed to understand MMO players are not one-time buyers like rest of their games.
Article is greatly showing a fact that is harsh for many players of SWG.
What is left in SOE's hands.. Everquest II ... Heading towards SWG's way, especially thinking their player base "want to raid all the time" and investing majority of development time towards that feature while actual playing base is towards solo and small groups.
Everyone tend to forget meaning of MMO is not the meaning of to group and to massive groups to be able to accomplish something to get somewhat worthwhile. MMO worlds are virtual worlds that you have chance to see other player characters...
Now we will see SOE's next strategy about this. Turning EQ2 into more hardcore gamers heaven would only loose them while they have EQ1 for that as same as turning SWG into console like game. I guess they only need to stay away from extreme edges...
Originally posted by HavokRainer This is one of the best articles i've read about SOE. Your analogy is one of the best ones i've read too. This goes out to SOE "If it aint broke, don't fix it".
I guess I had a different take on all of this. I am a vet MMORPG player, and have, more or less, played just about all the big MMOs. I joined SWG several months before NGE and guess what? It wasn't fun. There were very few people around the early areas, and those who were there were not inclined to group. Most were obvious alts.
I pretty much stopped playing, but kept my subscription. I really WANTED it to be fun.
Then NGE came along, and that wasn't fun either. I've since cancelled my account, but clearly, the game wasn't that interesting before NGE (for newer players anyway) and it wasn't fun after NGE either.
No big loss for me, anyway. I suppose I understand the angst and anger of the vet players, and how disruptive major reworks can be, but frankly, something had to be done. Better graphics and a more functional combat system would have bee substantial improvements, but something had to be done to bring in more new players. The game seemd to be dying before NGE.
Big changes are always dangerous, but if SoE did nothing, the game would have died anyway.
And in the end, it's just a game. Get over it already.
What SWG had above all other games that I've played is the community, housing, crafting, hunting parties, cantinas. I liked the fact that I could search for hours for a Kimogila on Loc and not find one. I loved the fact that you had to go to a cantina to relieve battle fatigue. I loved driving (or running) my tired butt back to my own house before logging because it just "Felt right to be in your own house".
There was so much to love about the game outside of combat, and when SoE decided that "Uncle Owen" didn't belong in the game, all the uncle owens quit. What a loss.
I guess I had a different take on all of this. I am a vet MMORPG player, and have, more or less, played just about all the big MMOs. I joined SWG several months before NGE and guess what? It wasn't fun. There were very few people around the early areas, and those who were there were not inclined to group. Most were obvious alts.
That's because the NGE wasn't the first body blow SOE delivered to Galaxies - the CU was. A pointless redesign of the UI that destroyed the immersive Star Wars feeling, without support or feedback from the playerbase, and that was delivered INSTEAD of the long awaited fixes and rebalances that people had been begging for. By the time you showed up, many vets were already disgusted and out the door or on their way. Galaxies hadn't been killed yet, but it had been dragged behind a truck for a couple of miles.
Big changes are always dangerous, but if SoE did nothing, the game would have died anyway.
This is what they mean by a false dichotomy. The choices were not limited to doing the NGE (or CU) or do ing nothing. The other choice they had - and rejected - was to fix the game they had written, released and sold to us, so that it worked as promised, as described, and as requested by players since the days of Beta. But the suits never really believed in the game that Koster and company wrote. So they opted for rewrite after rewrite while basic game mechanisms crumbled and the playerbase turned away.
And in the end, it's just a game. Get over it already.
Learning from the mistakes is HOW we get over it. But thanks for the empty slogan nonetheless.
Great editorial iceman00 (Kevin Tierney). You put words to the many feelings about SOE and Ethics I have inside of me. Thanks mate.
(And on a side not... I love how the fanboys goes bashing the article and dont even got their facts right. Did they even read the article or are they all on "auto defence mode"?)
I have to say for the most part I very much agree. I think however the problem is deeper than this. SOE and apparently Lucas seem to have little respect for the customer. I think the reverse can now be said and that is that the customer has little respect for them. Anyone notice how dramatic the attitude changes were toward Vanguard were when SOE became involved. My guild actually has given up the idea of trying it completely and moved toward LOTR or back to WOW. SOE / Lucas have constantly misread their audience. The decision to only allow one character per account broke away from what the MMO audience expected. Sure they had weak excuses but everyone was smart enough to look at the rest of the industry and say "yeh right" We were not able to get a substantial number of people to come to SWG because of this one issue. Then they released with almost every quest being broken at some stage. Then in yet another clear sign that SOW/Lucas were too self absorbed to actually deserve the audience they did get, they made every quest reward not just something useless but something that almost always had broken in it's name. Did no one at SOE or Lucas ever take a class that discussed Human Motivation and Rewards and Punishment? So they have a game that by design only appeals to a small number of players, with only 1 character per account and they add a Jedi path that forces you to break the only character you have. Then they tie an extra character slot to it so that even the people who don't want to be Jedi have to do it. Did anyone actually think about this? You have people angry because there are too many Jedi. You have people who want and extra character but like what they have. This created a huge rift and very unhappy player base. Psychology 101 would have been all anyone needed to take to know this was a bad idea. So amid piles of complaints SOE/Lucas constantly tweaked the game. Contrary to the way Blizzard or any smart company would do, SOE nerfed or changed classes regularly. In almost every case it was in a way that broke classes completely. Then they simply stopped looking at the class accepting that it was broken and would eventually be fixed. Did no one at SOE/Lucas not ever stop at think, everyone has just one character and if we break it they have to start over which will make them very unhappy or they will just leave? I'm not thinking they ever did. So after players have endured countless levels of developer misconduct from Lucas/SOE they finally reached the point they seemed completely lost. Players were not playing and still it didn't register that the game was mostly broken. That everything the devs did broke something else and there was no effort to fix the broken pieces. Since they had no clue what to do they just tried to start over. A huge slap in the face to all the fans who suffered through one of the worst managed games in the history of MMOs. It certainly has always felt to me like SOE/Lucas had complete incompetents or more likely devs who simply don't like or care if people play their game. SWG does not feel like an honest to God MMO. Like DDO too many of it's core pieces are broken or missing. Unlike DDO there isn't anything it can say it does well. Crafting used to be good, almost great - they broke it. Entertainment was good, almost great - they broke it. Content has almost always been broken, targeted at uberclasses and seldom rewarding. Developement was very shallow, it was fixed by becoming even more shallow. I could go on. The sad thing is that there were originally only a few things SOE/Lucas needed to do to have WOW like success. * Allow more than 1 character, perhaps 4 or 5 with only 1 that could become a Jedi. * Allot more content with real rewards. * A balance between crafting and Adventure that punished neither for playing. * Make Entertainment and Crafting alternate development lines ( like Piloting ). Entertainment in SWG was great, why keep it so isolated and further to isolate the people who pursued it. This opens up parties and enjoyment options previously not found in SWG. Play WOW or COV and see how often players stand around dancing or playing music. SWG does this better than anyone but it is so restricted. * More droids, even droid player classes would be huge, perhaps even the ability to upgrade your character from one kind of droid to another. There were allot more Droids in Starwars than Jedi but very few in SWG. In the beginning there were tons and they were fun. * PvP is not the most important element of SWG. The game world / Universe is and it hasn't gotten much respect. Someone who loves the Starwars Universe and respects the customers need to become involved. * rework the system to something that has more Depth and complexity and do the things above and I believe the game will quickly start recovering it's population. It was better at release but did need some fine tuning to make it a game that could take WOW out of the top spot. It is SWG and thousands, possibly millions are still out there waiting for the Starwars game they wanted. Perhaps Lucas and SOE can never make this happen. If they don't have the customer care, talent, desire whatever to make the game work then close it and let someone else do it. You could be making hundreds of millions perhaps a billion plus per year and not creating hate and antifans if someone who cared and knew something about the MMO marketplace and the fans in it was making the decisions. No one can be happy with a 6.5 and that the only customers you have being the die hard fans that hate you but stay because it's Starwars.
"Learning from the mistakes is HOW we get over it. But thanks for the empty slogan nonetheless. "
I think this is why Vanguard took a hit the minute SOE became involved. It's why EQ2 failed to become what it should have been.
A company can not abuse it's customers on one product and expect them to embrace another. I can name 25 or 30 people by name who are likely never going to ever purchase another SOE product, 5 or 6 who say the same about Lucas products. I don't know anyone eagerly awaiting the next SOE product.
In the end it means SOE didn't just screw up SWG, they screwed up everything after to some degree. Players were invested in Starwars and they were cheated, robbed and abused at a mental level by 2 companies that clear don't seem to value their product or it's costomers.
I meself was once one of the core, at the start SWG was a game everyone could enjoy and seeing alott of none RPG players move over to SWG and got hooked right away, they did indeed a very good job a recreating the star wars universe (worlds) and thats how it felt more a virtual world then a game, since i went ingame with alott of friends we mostly got ride of msn and hooked up in one of the cantina's in SWG untill Jump to Lightspeed was introduced the game was really nice apart from the bugs we all seemed happy but then they started to add stuff wich resulted in removed stuff later on, stuff that made use go sorry to the girlfriend again for all the ingame grinding we had to do and just to see all that time go to waist because they decided to change a few things, i think it took about 3 months after the release of JTL before we all started to think why still play this game while the work isn't really appriciatted by the designers and they do what they like.
I do miss the time that a Doc ment something or the good old fun with creature handlers.Jedi was something mystirious and should be hard to get, afcourse everyone wanted to become a Jedi but i don't think the vets ment like the way it is now
If ever they decide to a some pre-cu servers i'd be happy to get back to the game but what it has became is just a regular online game with a Star Wars look, or like someone earlyer said Battlefront for Jedi's
Excellent article, I couldn't agree more with the analysis provided here.
I used to be a SWG fan, I started playing 1 month after release, even through the hard times of Combat Upgrade when a lot of playerswere starting to get angry, I kept trusting the devs for giving us the best MMO out there. After CU, I was very satisfied with the status of the game, I liked the new combat system, the main thing that was disturbing me was the stupid amount of Jedi in the game. But I kept thinking they would find a way out this problem and would eventually manage to bring back the GCW into the game. Then came the announcement of the "Trials of Obi-Wan" expansion ; I realized I got it all wrong : all they cared about now was the Jedi crowd, Jedi items, Jedi stories, all Jedi stuff. However I kept playing, and then came the NGE. A new direction for the game : more quests, less professions, less player economy... More linearity, more single-player stuff. The things I didnt like in other games, like WoW, were being brought into SWG. This was enough. I tried NGE on test center to make sure it really sucked. Then I cancelled my account. Since then I haven't replayed. I'm keeping informed about what's going on, by reading SWG Stratics, MMORPG.com and so on. Maybe I'm secretly hoping that they are going to actually save this game I used to love. But the truth is that they can not save SWG anymore. Too much bad press, too many disappointed people. The only thing they can do is officially announce they are giving up, do what they want with the game, why not make it a subscription free game with no more new contents, just a few bug fixes, and actually start working on a brand new SWG2 game, from scratch. Taking lessons of all the mistakes they made on SWG1.
Big Corperations don't listen to the ppl they just look at numbers and speculate on how much money they can milk from them. This is one reason I have abandoned Electronic Arts (EA) products! for instance Maddens Football every year a new product. Same game with grafix's of different football players. PFFT !!!
well stated...now if SOE/LA would listen to the customers and critics there might be a hope in hell of saving the game, but they won't so SWG will die in a year or so unfortunately all because they refused to admit they made a mistake and change things.
Comments
Namely, the issue of churn. In an MMOG, the vast majority of the playerbase does not stick with a game for more than 3-6 months, regardless. Certainly there are players who become ingrained into end-game guilds that don't move from the game, and thusly stick with it for years, but most players simply don't stay that long.
Because of this, an MMOG needs to be constantly attracting newbie players, just to keep their subscription numbers flat. If they start making all of their decisions based around what's best for the players that have been with the game for 6 months or more, they will quickly lose their playerbase, because people just move on regardless. For this reason, Sony's motivation of changing SWG to attract more players was justified.
Obviously they did not go about it in the right manner, and it's the first time (that I know of) that such changes were so far-reaching, but I wouldn't disagree with their (stated) reasoning.
rerolled to WoW. Ya, was really pissed to Soe's policy and bored to see
that all my work turned into crap.
In the last week of CU, i think i was the greatest FS looser. I grinded for 4 months to fill up that famous 6 branches in the village, and on the last week, when i was about to unlock the Jedi Padawan title, they announced that next week everyone can be.
I mourned and Flamed on the forums day by day, but it was worthless. Until on a strange Sunday Starsider first got laggy, then fully went down. When it came village was in the next phase, and i could start finishing my Jedi. I waited for the Old Man, and did the Padawan trials day and night and on Tuesday morning, half an hour before NGE was launched i made it to Jedi. That is where this game was complete for me. The other is forgiveable.
i
This is by far the best article have I have read In a long time about star wars. The problems that soe faces are immense, and they should be pitied for thier sad state of business affairs. This game was by far more than a game to people. The struggles and trials now mimic the veterans and soe.. the force and the rebels.. and so forth.
They saw the run away train of the warcraft and tried to follow in blizzards footsteps, rather than standing tall and fixing the problems and trying to keep on track with development. This game was meant for more, and yet soe, lec decided to throw the bathwater out with the baby...
The problem it faces is crippling and not many will return, there is to many hurt feelings... Smeddly unfortunately has hit the epicenter of Peter Panism.. he will not leave his neverland and face realitry.... the game sucks major bantha poodoo.
Very well written!
The NGE drove me to try WoW, something i had'nt even thought of earlier. WoW was/is not what i'm looking for and i've cancelled there too.
I want Star Wars MMORPG, sadly there are no longer a game like that available.
It's always weird to read others' take on the history of something that you lived pretty intimately, but this was a mostly accurate retelling. Thanks for the read, Kevin.
The only thing that isn't clear from the write up is the huge shift in thinking that happened during the CU early stages. It's true that from the get go, it was overwhelming how much it felt like the core playerbase was viewed as "the enemy", the ones to work around, not for or with. Though, I think taking on a community manager that seemed to be down right terrified of and resentful of the fans he was meant to liaise with had a huge hand in furthering this perception.
Never the less, the CU's original intention was noble. It was meant to include new combat elements that had been sorely lacking from beta. What they showed us at the Corr Summit a couple of years ago wouldn't have excluded anyone, it would have added on a totally new element without destroying any existing playstyles.
Then the weirdness started - the CU testing felt more like being part of a government cover up than beta testing, lol. It's like they forgot what they were doing in the first place. Then when GW left, there was no one left to say "hey wait, we still need to keep these people we do have happy." So it wasn't a huge shock a year later when I heard at the Austin GDC that the "NGE" was being launched not only with no concern for the existing playerbase, but that it was actually openly being said it was ok if all legacy players quit.
Such a bold and normally shocking stance just seemed to be a logical end to the flawed mindset set in motion by taking comfort in the "silent majority" silently being pleased. Oh well, it was a really neat experience for a while.
I played SWG from launch to WoW's release, I had done everything I wanted too in SWG and wanted to try WoW because I played other Warcraft games. I came back to SWG before the CU happened because WoW did not give me what I liked, that was Pre-CU SWG. I loved that game and never really liked any other MMO's as much.
I agree that SOE and Lucas Arts handled SWG the wrong way and should offer people a choice, they have enough servers to have pre cu, cu and nge. I bet that would show them what people liked the most and people would come back to play. No other MMO was like the original SWG and thats why people played, we stayed because we could remake our characters anytime we wanted or mix up their skills, player made weapons and armor were better then drops because people actually had to think about what materials to use. I traveld to LOK all the time just to buy weapons from one guys shop. That personnel touch has been yanked from the game to make it more star wars like. I say they are so wrong, we acted more like a society in a star wars universe then. Now its just point click and move on to the next target and mission. I am really dissapointed in Lucas Arts for not seeing what we had and thinking that SOE had our best intrests at heart. Sorry GL but I will not buy any more Star Wars games because of the handling of SWG.
Considering "Silent Majority" term coming from Raph Koster's terminology as he claimed, SOE's mistake was giving too much credits to his myth...
Sadly, we have seen biggest fall in SWG with this terminology. Lucas Arts failed to understand MMO players are not one-time buyers like rest of their games.
Article is greatly showing a fact that is harsh for many players of SWG.
What is left in SOE's hands.. Everquest II ... Heading towards SWG's way, especially thinking their player base "want to raid all the time" and investing majority of development time towards that feature while actual playing base is towards solo and small groups.
Everyone tend to forget meaning of MMO is not the meaning of to group and to massive groups to be able to accomplish something to get somewhat worthwhile. MMO worlds are virtual worlds that you have chance to see other player characters...
Now we will see SOE's next strategy about this. Turning EQ2 into more hardcore gamers heaven would only loose them while they have EQ1 for that as same as turning SWG into console like game. I guess they only need to stay away from extreme edges...
I guess I had a different take on all of this. I am a vet MMORPG player, and have, more or less, played just about all the big MMOs. I joined SWG several months before NGE and guess what? It wasn't fun. There were very few people around the early areas, and those who were there were not inclined to group. Most were obvious alts.
I pretty much stopped playing, but kept my subscription. I really WANTED it to be fun.
Then NGE came along, and that wasn't fun either. I've since cancelled my account, but clearly, the game wasn't that interesting before NGE (for newer players anyway) and it wasn't fun after NGE either.
No big loss for me, anyway. I suppose I understand the angst and anger of the vet players, and how disruptive major reworks can be, but frankly, something had to be done. Better graphics and a more functional combat system would have bee substantial improvements, but something had to be done to bring in more new players. The game seemd to be dying before NGE.
Big changes are always dangerous, but if SoE did nothing, the game would have died anyway.
And in the end, it's just a game. Get over it already.
There was so much to love about the game outside of combat, and when SoE decided that "Uncle Owen" didn't belong in the game, all the uncle owens quit. What a loss.
(And on a side not... I love how the fanboys goes bashing the article and dont even got their facts right. Did they even read the article or are they all on "auto defence mode"?)
The Second Day Vet
I have to say for the most part I very much agree. I think however the problem is deeper than this. SOE and apparently Lucas seem to have little respect for the customer. I think the reverse can now be said and that is that the customer has little respect for them. Anyone notice how dramatic the attitude changes were toward Vanguard were when SOE became involved. My guild actually has given up the idea of trying it completely and moved toward LOTR or back to WOW.
SOE / Lucas have constantly misread their audience. The decision to only allow one character per account broke away from what the MMO audience expected. Sure they had weak excuses but everyone was smart enough to look at the rest of the industry and say "yeh right" We were not able to get a substantial number of people to come to SWG because of this one issue. Then they released with almost every quest being broken at some stage. Then in yet another clear sign that SOW/Lucas were too self absorbed to actually deserve the audience they did get, they made every quest reward not just something useless but something that almost always had broken in it's name. Did no one at SOE or Lucas ever take a class that discussed Human Motivation and Rewards and Punishment?
So they have a game that by design only appeals to a small number of players, with only 1 character per account and they add a Jedi path that forces you to break the only character you have. Then they tie an extra character slot to it so that even the people who don't want to be Jedi have to do it. Did anyone actually think about this? You have people angry because there are too many Jedi. You have people who want and extra character but like what they have. This created a huge rift and very unhappy player base. Psychology 101 would have been all anyone needed to take to know this was a bad idea.
So amid piles of complaints SOE/Lucas constantly tweaked the game. Contrary to the way Blizzard or any smart company would do, SOE nerfed or changed classes regularly. In almost every case it was in a way that broke classes completely. Then they simply stopped looking at the class accepting that it was broken and would eventually be fixed. Did no one at SOE/Lucas not ever stop at think, everyone has just one character and if we break it they have to start over which will make them very unhappy or they will just leave? I'm not thinking they ever did.
So after players have endured countless levels of developer misconduct from Lucas/SOE they finally reached the point they seemed completely lost. Players were not playing and still it didn't register that the game was mostly broken. That everything the devs did broke something else and there was no effort to fix the broken pieces. Since they had no clue what to do they just tried to start over. A huge slap in the face to all the fans who suffered through one of the worst managed games in the history of MMOs. It certainly has always felt to me like SOE/Lucas had complete incompetents or more likely devs who simply don't like or care if people play their game.
SWG does not feel like an honest to God MMO. Like DDO too many of it's core pieces are broken or missing. Unlike DDO there isn't anything it can say it does well.
Crafting used to be good, almost great - they broke it.
Entertainment was good, almost great - they broke it.
Content has almost always been broken, targeted at uberclasses and seldom rewarding.
Developement was very shallow, it was fixed by becoming even more shallow.
I could go on.
The sad thing is that there were originally only a few things SOE/Lucas needed to do to have WOW like success.
* Allow more than 1 character, perhaps 4 or 5 with only 1 that could become a Jedi.
* Allot more content with real rewards.
* A balance between crafting and Adventure that punished neither for playing.
* Make Entertainment and Crafting alternate development lines ( like Piloting ). Entertainment in SWG was great, why keep it so isolated and further to isolate the people who pursued it. This opens up parties and enjoyment options previously not found in SWG. Play WOW or COV and see how often players stand around dancing or playing music. SWG does this better than anyone but it is so restricted.
* More droids, even droid player classes would be huge, perhaps even the ability to upgrade your character from one kind of droid to another. There were allot more Droids in Starwars than Jedi but very few in SWG. In the beginning there were tons and they were fun.
* PvP is not the most important element of SWG. The game world / Universe is and it hasn't gotten much respect. Someone who loves the Starwars Universe and respects the customers need to become involved.
* rework the system to something that has more Depth and complexity and do the things above and I believe the game will quickly start recovering it's population. It was better at release but did need some fine tuning to make it a game that could take WOW out of the top spot. It is SWG and thousands, possibly millions are still out there waiting for the Starwars game they wanted. Perhaps Lucas and SOE can never make this happen. If they don't have the customer care, talent, desire whatever to make the game work then close it and let someone else do it. You could be making hundreds of millions perhaps a billion plus per year and not creating hate and antifans if someone who cared and knew something about the MMO marketplace and the fans in it was making the decisions. No one can be happy with a 6.5 and that the only customers you have being the die hard fans that hate you but stay because it's Starwars.
"Learning from the mistakes is HOW we get over it. But thanks for the empty slogan nonetheless.
"
I think this is why Vanguard took a hit the minute SOE became involved. It's why EQ2 failed to become what it should have been.
A company can not abuse it's customers on one product and expect them to embrace another. I can name 25 or 30 people by name who are likely never going to ever purchase another SOE product, 5 or 6 who say the same about Lucas products. I don't know anyone eagerly awaiting the next SOE product.
In the end it means SOE didn't just screw up SWG, they screwed up everything after to some degree. Players were invested in Starwars and they were cheated, robbed and abused at a mental level by 2 companies that clear don't seem to value their product or it's costomers.
excelent artical
I meself was once one of the core, at the start SWG was a game everyone could enjoy and seeing alott of none RPG players move over to SWG and got hooked right away, they did indeed a very good job a recreating the star wars universe (worlds) and thats how it felt more a virtual world then a game, since i went ingame with alott of friends we mostly got ride of msn and hooked up in one of the cantina's in SWG
untill Jump to Lightspeed was introduced the game was really nice apart from the bugs we all seemed happy but then they started to add stuff wich resulted in removed stuff later on, stuff that made use go sorry to the girlfriend again for all the ingame grinding we had to do and just to see all that time go to waist because they decided to change a few things, i think it took about 3 months after the release of JTL before we all started to think why still play this game while the work isn't really appriciatted by the designers and they do what they like.
I do miss the time that a Doc ment something or the good old fun with creature handlers.Jedi was something mystirious and should be hard to get, afcourse everyone wanted to become a Jedi but i don't think the vets ment like the way it is now
If ever they decide to a some pre-cu servers i'd be happy to get back to the game but what it has became is just a regular online game with a Star Wars look, or like someone earlyer said Battlefront for Jedi's
I used to be a SWG fan, I started playing 1 month after release, even through the hard times of Combat Upgrade when a lot of playerswere starting to get angry, I kept trusting the devs for giving us the best MMO out there. After CU, I was very satisfied with the status of the game, I liked the new combat system, the main thing that was disturbing me was the stupid amount of Jedi in the game. But I kept thinking they would find a way out this problem and would eventually manage to bring back the GCW into the game. Then came the announcement of the "Trials of Obi-Wan" expansion ; I realized I got it all wrong : all they cared about now was the Jedi crowd, Jedi items, Jedi stories, all Jedi stuff. However I kept playing, and then came the NGE. A new direction for the game : more quests, less professions, less player economy... More linearity, more single-player stuff. The things I didnt like in other games, like WoW, were being brought into SWG. This was enough. I tried NGE on test center to make sure it really sucked. Then I cancelled my account. Since then I haven't replayed. I'm keeping informed about what's going on, by reading SWG Stratics, MMORPG.com and so on. Maybe I'm secretly hoping that they are going to actually save this game I used to love. But the truth is that they can not save SWG anymore. Too much bad press, too many disappointed people. The only thing they can do is officially announce they are giving up, do what they want with the game, why not make it a subscription free game with no more new contents, just a few bug fixes, and actually start working on a brand new SWG2 game, from scratch. Taking lessons of all the mistakes they made on SWG1.
I feel so sad to see the state of SWG now.
Sony is Pulling the same CRAP with EQ2.
Big Corperations don't listen to the ppl they just look at numbers and speculate on how much money they can milk from them. This is one reason I have abandoned Electronic Arts (EA) products! for instance Maddens Football every year a new product. Same game with grafix's of different football players. PFFT !!!
They'll never learn!!!
The article can be summed up in two sentances:
1 - Don't piss off current customers in a bid to get new customers.
2 - (Potential) new customers are greatly influenced by the words of old customers. (both currently subscribed and not)
These are not new ideas. They form the basis of any business' relationship with it's customers.