SOE should be thrown into a bottomless pit for what they did to the game. First they take out ANY coustomization we once had, took away buffs and food, and simplified the stats system in an effort to balance. Now there are tons of different buffs in the game, the NGE is actually more buff based than it used to be. (hard to imagine but it is true). SOE than decided they wanted to bring customization back so they added expertise, (a copy of wow talents) and are now adding creature handler back into the game through expertise. They also made it so you can switch from any combat profession to another one and maintain your level (tired of your Commando after 80 levels, no problem go ahead and switch to a max level jedi, that makes sense.) The content they added made it so instead of people being spread out through out the galaxy they all congregate to a few places.
SWG went from a very open ended game, where you could be unique and jedi were still rare, to forcing players into templates and killing the feel of a Star Wars universe. All of the ideals of CU and NGE are being put aside as they slowly bring back the aspects of the game they so ruthlessly took away. SOE cares not about the game, only about how much they can make off of it. I guess tailoring the game to 11 year olds who want to play with a lightsaber is a good business model, but it doesnt actually make for a good game.
P.S. They also killed the visual look of the game, taking out the beautiful combat animations and adding a bunch of nonsensical partical effects. Ooh flashy lights and puffs of smoke, that will make up for the fact that my character makes one swinging motion regardless of what I do. Anyone who really likes the look, and style of combat now, obviously DID NOT play pre-cu, or is just some monkey who loves shiny objects and flashy lights.
I'll never forgive SOE for what they did for two simple reasons, Animations in the game were complex and you actually felt like you were in a fight instead of a boring alpha test when you were firing a rifle or swinging an axe and then there was the roleplaying community, the only game I had found with the quality of roleplaying and the interest is City of Heroes which I've decided to make my home in for now, as soon as you started roleplaying passers by would join in the roleplay, or heck they'd even start chatting in groups a little distance from you and from then on it could get even bigger where even the Imperial Stormtrooper characters would try to cause some conflict by trying to arrest a random citizen or some such, I miss roleplay like that and I doubt I'll ever find it again, City of Heroes gives at least a basic feel of that kind of roleplay though there is never the same eagerness for it that I felt with SWG it's just not the same anymore.
The NGE was never right, it wasn't because of the updates and combat revamps themselves, I bet if they were implemented properly and SOE didn't screw up their customer service badly I think that not as many gamers would be ticked off (for instance, offering experience and replacement items for the stuff they had lost, which they never did) what I personally am more angry about is the fact that they ripped apart the community that I loved to play with so much, these were really great people and the game has some of the most mature acting people ever, not only that, but even people who weren't intentionally roleplaying tended to act like they're characters because the game seriously ENCOURAGED them too in a way no other game has, even the ones that boast about offering proper lore and a roleplaying community.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
I tried to take this post serious, but Im sorry I cant. Its to much false/wrong assumptions from the OP.
"SWG was the perfect game, running great and well and out of nowhere SOE made the NGE and ruined the game. I contest this assumption - in every part of it. It is a myth."
Thats just ridiculous and a assumption. Did you ever read the "old" forums? The vets was screaming about game flaws and bugs in the pre-cu version. The wanted them to get fixed. But that doesnt nessesary mean that they hated the game and wanted the whole core to get replaced. They knew the game had potential, wanted all the best for it and trusted the devs to improve it. And thats a fact.
To say that most of the Vets where leaving anyway before the NGE, is just a assumption. I started to play the game the second day after launch and played until Feb 2006. The weeks before the NGE I was in a crafting guild with 100-150 players (many of them Vets, I known for years). A week after NGE it went down to about 20-30 players. 3 Months later it went down to 0 players and the guild was disbanded. I still keep in touch with some of them and they have no plans to return. And thats a fact.
The bottom line why I and many other Vets got so freaking mad is watching a 3 years old community tear apart, friends disappering, achivements just get nullifed in seconds, so much time in the game and on the forums going to waste. This may sound weird but the sorrow I felt, when it all was gone, is similar to the sorrow I felt when my Mom died 10 years ago. I had put so much love and time into my character, guild, friends and community that it just felt like some one I knew had died when it was gone. And please no assumptions that I dont have a RL now. I do.
I do question however the entire myth behind the NGE, as I said. NGE had some fatal flaws. But the direction was correct. Most vets already had dwindled out of the game. If you could perhaps support this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Be honest here. How many of you REALLY suddenly left when NGE came, and had played regularly until one day before NGE? I have seen it, the constant drop in players. Most of you already were on the move out of the game, and NGE was only like a final nail on the coffin to finally leave. I can only speak for myself and the players and friends that I have spoken with, but I can honestly say that we, as Star Wars fans, were willing to stick through almost anything. We stayed when a buggy, unfinished game was released with little-to-no warning for the Beta testers. We stayed when the "Monthly Story Arcs" ended after 2 months. We stayed after the JtL expansion had been pushed back from 6 months, to 12 months, and finally 15 months post launch. We stayed when Smugglers could never smuggle, and when the word "pokemon" was included in the forums's profanity filter (Because the game had, for a time, become nothing but pet-weilding pokemon masters).
We stayed through the nerfs, the bugs, the lag, the rubberbanding, the poor CSR's, the mythical "Combat Revamp", the broken/bugged quests and quest rewards from the Rage of the Wookies expansion, the "Rangers Revamp" that was promised right up until the NGE, which came just one day after the Trials of Obi-Wan was released, and they tried to say, "Sorry, No refunds!", even though the expansion advertised Profession-specific items that would immediately become useless, once their profession was taken away in just a matter of days.
So, yup... I am one of those many that "suddenly left when the NGE came", especially after the NGE went to test server, with less then 2 weeks before going live, and it was blatantly unfinished, and buggy as all-get-out. Call me crazy, but I refuse to hand over money to beta test their product. Julio Torres admitted they lost more players than they expected, and they had expected to lose a few. And of course, John Smedly was just quoted on the 17th, when talking about Vanguard, "We're not going to go in and make some broad-sweeping changes. We tried that with Star Wars Galaxies, we screwed it up, and we're not going to do it again."
But instead of leave quiet and leave it to a new generation you had to start a war. SWG even today is SO much better than 90% of all the current MMOs out there. Cutting the endless sea of possibilites did hurt, me included. But I dont let my personal loss overshadow my judgement to realize the necessity and reason behind it. They overdid many simplifications, no doubt here. But there was just no choice as the situation was. SWG would not be a single bit in better shape now without the NGE today. I lost my professions, which sucked. But so what? It was a game. Combat was different now, so what? I understand we all have our preferences, but I dont understand ppl who view a game as it were their personal religion. A lot of complains surely were understandable, some justified, but the entire emotional frenzy was and is FAR beyond anything justified and reasonable. Well put... However, I would have to say that our "unjustified and unreasonable" response is simply the predictable, the inevitable, opposite and equal reaction to their "unjustified and unreasonable" actions.
In the sage words of Will Smith, "Don't start none, won't be none."
I'll never forgive SOE for what they did for two simple reasons, Animations in the game were complex and you actually felt like you were in a fight instead of a boring alpha test when you were firing a rifle or swinging an axe and then there was the roleplaying community, the only game I had found with the quality of roleplaying and the interest is City of Heroes which I've decided to make my home in for now, as soon as you started roleplaying passers by would join in the roleplay, or heck they'd even start chatting in groups a little distance from you and from then on it could get even bigger where even the Imperial Stormtrooper characters would try to cause some conflict by trying to arrest a random citizen or some such, I miss roleplay like that and I doubt I'll ever find it again, City of Heroes gives at least a basic feel of that kind of roleplay though there is never the same eagerness for it that I felt with SWG it's just not the same anymore.
The NGE was never right, it wasn't because of the updates and combat revamps themselves, I bet if they were implemented properly and SOE didn't screw up their customer service badly I think that not as many gamers would be ticked off (for instance, offering experience and replacement items for the stuff they had lost, which they never did) what I personally am more angry about is the fact that they ripped apart the community that I loved to play with so much, these were really great people and the game has some of the most mature acting people ever, not only that, but even people who weren't intentionally roleplaying tended to act like they're characters because the game seriously ENCOURAGED them too in a way no other game has, even the ones that boast about offering proper lore and a roleplaying community.
QFT.
I'm wondering exactly why you truly believe that NGE is better in quality than Pre-CU, Elikal. In Pre-CU, we had fluid, lifelike animations. We had actual creature AI behavior that was astounding (remember when the Wrixes used to actually stalk their prey out on the Corellian plains?). Everything was designed to make that world as realistic as possible (no insta-shuttle teleporting. No targeted buffing for watching a performance). Sun reflected on the water.
You see, what made the launch era SWG so great for myself and countless others isn't that you could spend countless hours doing countless things. The great thing about SWG, and the thing that no other game has been able to duplicate, is that you could spend your entire time in a play session merely sitting in the starport, and not feel as if it was ever a waste of time.
You see, the early Pre-CU SWG had fun happening all around...and it was easy to find the fun. The early SWG (2003) was the easiest, most intuitive, and hassle-free fun game I had ever known.
I really don't think that the problems with Pre-CU were in its foundadtion. The problems with Pre-CU came about because of small, incremental, NGE style changes that took out all the innovative elements in SWG, replacing them with boilerplate MMO design solutions.
It started with buff enhancements back in late fall. Doc buff enhancements created the comp clone army problem with armor, since encumbrence issues were moot. Holocrons created a linear grind model paradigm, instead of a sandbox style. Targeted buffs for entertainers totally destroyed the intent of that profession. Quests and dungeons dropping ub0rloot created spawn campers, and turned a crafting based economy into a loot based economy. Professions like BH, CH, CM, TKA, Swordsman were boosted up, became overpowered, and nerfed quicker than players could keep up. Droids in starports started to replace hospitals. Call on demand destroyed any reason for camping. You see, Pre-CU may not have been perfect either, but the reason Pre-CU became so bad was because of all the "NGE-like" changes that bastardized Pre-CU starting as early as fall of 2003.
All the CU and NGE did, in my opinion, is take all of the remaining good things out of Pre-CU that the Pre-CU devs didn't already butcher; starting with the animations and art. Tell me Elikal, do you really think the choppy and "spritelike" animations today are better in quality than those early fluid movements that were so beautiful to see?
But I do have to say where you are right, Elikal. Pre-CU was bad shape in 2004-2005. So bad that people started to cancel. But it wasn't all the good things about the original game as launched that broke Pre-CU. It was all the boilerplate, everquesty changes that were made between late 2003 to 2005 that broke Pre-CU...the very things that constitute the core of NGE style gameplay today.
__________________________ "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
the things were best right after release of JTL and by that I mean we finally got everythin' devs promised us SWG will have.. space, player cities, mounts, vehicles etc..
then CU came.. but not the original one. ppl were leavin' in droves and WoW didn't make things better. instead of focusin' on bugs and addin' content SoE panniced and slapped NGE together in attempt to recover its player base. that's when things got really ugly and majority of vets quit or closed most of their accounts....
all they had to do is wait for WoW novelty to wear off and ppl come back to SWG.. alas, CU and NGE ruined the game and suddenly there was nowhere to come back to....
I myself had to take a several short breaks from SWG before CU.. but NGE made me quit for good >8<(
Originally posted by Ravanos
Originally posted by Elikal
SWG was NEVER perfect.
heres what most castaways will say Pre-NGE was not perfect ... but it was still better than the P-O-S we have now.
no it should read:
heres what most castaways will say Pre-NGE was not perfect ... but it was still FAR better than the P-O-S we have now
Here is a suggestion. If you are going to request that people take the opinion you put forth seriously, and do so in a non-flaming manner, it would do well if your entire work of demolishing false assumptions is not itself based on a false assumption. (I know, I'm late into this thread, but oh well lol.)
In short, nobody ever seriously argues that the SWG of before was perfect, or even anywhere near that. The main critque against SWG and SOE was forcing down the throats of their community changes nobody wanted. There's never really been a formal apology for that, though they are at least now admitting that the course taken with the NGE was a disaster.
You start out by ignoring something that is a staple of the criticism of the NGE: the fact that the CU had already dealt a crippling blow to player subscriptions. This is a fact. They gained back maybe half of their original playerbase in the end before the NGE, but part of what you describe as a dwindling friends list was a direct result of the CU. I belonged to the largest and most successful Imperial guild on my server (Eclipse). We also have chapters in every MMO out there, and we frequently leave one to another. The amount of people who left was tough, but not very problematic when WoW came out. When the CU originally came out, the numbers were devastating. Within one month, 75% of a 170 member guild was gone. Only 2 members of the original Elder Council remained. When the NGE came out, the devastation was numerically smaller, but proportionately worse. The guild which had been around since launch was finished less than 6 weeks after the NGE launched. The largest player city on Dantooine (and I will say the best done lol) is now currently a graveyard, as much of it still stands as condemned. One can say what they like, but simple market forces were not an explanation for what happened.
Yes "iconic" was the way many games were going, but here is where many don't understand the laws of the market. When Companies A-Y sell one thing, company Z can make a profit by selling something else many times. SWG during the heyday was 350k subscribes strong. Before WoW, that was a resounding success. SOE sure thought so, since before WoW, this was all they advertised, as to what a success SWG was. Such talk is not heard today, because the changes were not successful.
Furthermore, as I noted back in my (then) guest editorial for this website, catering to the needs of some mythical "silent majority" over your existing playerbase is why everyone should look upon SOE with a healthy degree of suspicion, until they formally renounce that marketing strategy. A business also rarely flourishes under such a mindset. The reason is because the future is tough to see. That "silent majority" more often than not never materializes. Especially with WoW. Those who like WoW are going to play WoW. The market trend someone can really capitalize on if they ever had the vision and prowess to do so is rather those MMO players who do not like WoW style gameplay. They are sick of linear games of elves and undead.
The problem with Jedi is that Jedi need to be an Alpha class. Yet you cannot have everyone be an Alpha class, and you cannot make an Alpha class into a weak class, since Jedis were not weak. The original solution to such a concept in theory worked. There were risks to being a Jedi, as well as rewards. Risks being it took hard work to begin the path of the Jedi. Risks in that in the majority of timtes as a Jedi, you were cannon fodder as you built your template, first to mobs, then to a BH. As a result, the rewards were (at the time) huge. Not only was there the prestige of being one of the few, the proud, the Jedi, but also the fact that you were strong, you could outdamage all but the most legendary of weapons, and could take on several regular people in PvP by yourself. Even in the days of the Jedis power waning, one of our guild Jedis could still take on 6 rebels. As my CM and a fellow Jedi, we bested 15 rebels.
In the end, this was devastated. Their soon became no risk to being a Jedi. When the NGE first hit, there was no reward either. Jedi became just as powerful as everyone else, which is not "iconic."
As has been documented numerous times, the input was almost entirely from SOE on the NGE. SOE has stated this numerous times. The problem with LucasArts appears to be that of not getting involved enough, just letting someone do with their intellectual property what they pleased, and rubber stamping it, which might actually be worse than SOE ruining it in the first place.
You also talk of the forums, and how negative things were. Surely you recognize this cuts both ways. The name Garva is all one has to say. If ever there existed a forum Nazi, Garva was it. Smedley begged people who were critical of the NGE to come to the forums. Many did. Some voiced like children. Others gave thoughtful and articulate critques of the NGE, and commented where to go from there. Garva deleted many of these threads the minute they appeared. There was also the moment in the CU where people who protested the change in game had the games own enviroment turned against them, as mobs stormed Coronet attacking players.
The truth does hurt, and the truth shall set you free. The big problem with this post is it lacks almost entirely in truth. It attempts to be respectful to the vets, and this much should be commended. But since the entire polemic rests on a patently false assumption (that of perfection and Camelot, which nobody was seriously arguing), many other things which are demonstrably false (i.e. LA was the brains behind the NGE, SOE was forced), and many other assumptions which I believe are flawed (but not false, since they are subjective, and open to debate), I don't see this really proving anything.
MY DEAR SWG VETS, stop wasting your time on the infidel and visit swgemu.com, soon we will have pre-cu back, with MORE players than we did in the old days. The SWGEmu alone has over 9000 members, not including those who are waiting on other forums or in the dark to spring upon the game they once loved and now miss. Worldwide the swgemu is spreading, people from all over who have played have friends that want to play the fabled game, or people just got caught up in all the hype are waiting. Not too long ago we did a stress test, and had 750 players log in JUST TO STRESS TEST. I will see all of you soon enough.
Comments
SWG went from a very open ended game, where you could be unique and jedi were still rare, to forcing players into templates and killing the feel of a Star Wars universe. All of the ideals of CU and NGE are being put aside as they slowly bring back the aspects of the game they so ruthlessly took away. SOE cares not about the game, only about how much they can make off of it. I guess tailoring the game to 11 year olds who want to play with a lightsaber is a good business model, but it doesnt actually make for a good game.
P.S. They also killed the visual look of the game, taking out the beautiful combat animations and adding a bunch of nonsensical partical effects. Ooh flashy lights and puffs of smoke, that will make up for the fact that my character makes one swinging motion regardless of what I do. Anyone who really likes the look, and style of combat now, obviously DID NOT play pre-cu, or is just some monkey who loves shiny objects and flashy lights.
The NGE was never right, it wasn't because of the updates and combat revamps themselves, I bet if they were implemented properly and SOE didn't screw up their customer service badly I think that not as many gamers would be ticked off (for instance, offering experience and replacement items for the stuff they had lost, which they never did) what I personally am more angry about is the fact that they ripped apart the community that I loved to play with so much, these were really great people and the game has some of the most mature acting people ever, not only that, but even people who weren't intentionally roleplaying tended to act like they're characters because the game seriously ENCOURAGED them too in a way no other game has, even the ones that boast about offering proper lore and a roleplaying community.
Quoting people doesn't make you clever, in fact, it makes you all the more stupid for not bothering to read the quotes you post in the first place.
"SWG was the perfect game, running great and well and out of nowhere SOE made the NGE and ruined the game. I contest this assumption - in every part of it. It is a myth."
Thats just ridiculous and a assumption. Did you ever read the "old" forums? The vets was screaming about game flaws and bugs in the pre-cu version. The wanted them to get fixed. But that doesnt nessesary mean that they hated the game and wanted the whole core to get replaced. They knew the game had potential, wanted all the best for it and trusted the devs to improve it. And thats a fact.
To say that most of the Vets where leaving anyway before the NGE, is just a assumption. I started to play the game the second day after launch and played until Feb 2006. The weeks before the NGE I was in a crafting guild with 100-150 players (many of them Vets, I known for years). A week after NGE it went down to about 20-30 players. 3 Months later it went down to 0 players and the guild was disbanded. I still keep in touch with some of them and they have no plans to return. And thats a fact.
The bottom line why I and many other Vets got so freaking mad is watching a 3 years old community tear apart, friends disappering, achivements just get nullifed in seconds, so much time in the game and on the forums going to waste. This may sound weird but the sorrow I felt, when it all was gone, is similar to the sorrow I felt when my Mom died 10 years ago. I had put so much love and time into my character, guild, friends and community that it just felt like some one I knew had died when it was gone. And please no assumptions that I dont have a RL now. I do.
The Second Day Vet
QFT.
I'm wondering exactly why you truly believe that NGE is better in quality than Pre-CU, Elikal. In Pre-CU, we had fluid, lifelike animations. We had actual creature AI behavior that was astounding (remember when the Wrixes used to actually stalk their prey out on the Corellian plains?). Everything was designed to make that world as realistic as possible (no insta-shuttle teleporting. No targeted buffing for watching a performance). Sun reflected on the water.
You see, what made the launch era SWG so great for myself and countless others isn't that you could spend countless hours doing countless things. The great thing about SWG, and the thing that no other game has been able to duplicate, is that you could spend your entire time in a play session merely sitting in the starport, and not feel as if it was ever a waste of time.
You see, the early Pre-CU SWG had fun happening all around...and it was easy to find the fun. The early SWG (2003) was the easiest, most intuitive, and hassle-free fun game I had ever known.
I really don't think that the problems with Pre-CU were in its foundadtion. The problems with Pre-CU came about because of small, incremental, NGE style changes that took out all the innovative elements in SWG, replacing them with boilerplate MMO design solutions.
It started with buff enhancements back in late fall. Doc buff enhancements created the comp clone army problem with armor, since encumbrence issues were moot. Holocrons created a linear grind model paradigm, instead of a sandbox style. Targeted buffs for entertainers totally destroyed the intent of that profession. Quests and dungeons dropping ub0rloot created spawn campers, and turned a crafting based economy into a loot based economy. Professions like BH, CH, CM, TKA, Swordsman were boosted up, became overpowered, and nerfed quicker than players could keep up. Droids in starports started to replace hospitals. Call on demand destroyed any reason for camping. You see, Pre-CU may not have been perfect either, but the reason Pre-CU became so bad was because of all the "NGE-like" changes that bastardized Pre-CU starting as early as fall of 2003.
All the CU and NGE did, in my opinion, is take all of the remaining good things out of Pre-CU that the Pre-CU devs didn't already butcher; starting with the animations and art. Tell me Elikal, do you really think the choppy and "spritelike" animations today are better in quality than those early fluid movements that were so beautiful to see?
But I do have to say where you are right, Elikal. Pre-CU was bad shape in 2004-2005. So bad that people started to cancel. But it wasn't all the good things about the original game as launched that broke Pre-CU. It was all the boilerplate, everquesty changes that were made between late 2003 to 2005 that broke Pre-CU...the very things that constitute the core of NGE style gameplay today.
__________________________
"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
the things were best right after release of JTL and by that I mean we finally got everythin' devs promised us SWG will have.. space, player cities, mounts, vehicles etc..
then CU came.. but not the original one. ppl were leavin' in droves and WoW didn't make things better. instead of focusin' on bugs and addin' content SoE panniced and slapped NGE together in attempt to recover its player base. that's when things got really ugly and majority of vets quit or closed most of their accounts....
all they had to do is wait for WoW novelty to wear off and ppl come back to SWG.. alas, CU and NGE ruined the game and suddenly there was nowhere to come back to....
I myself had to take a several short breaks from SWG before CU.. but NGE made me quit for good >8<(
heres what most castaways will say Pre-NGE was not perfect ... but it was still better than the P-O-S we have now.
no it should read:
heres what most castaways will say Pre-NGE was not perfect ... but it was still FAR better than the P-O-S we have now
In short, nobody ever seriously argues that the SWG of before was perfect, or even anywhere near that. The main critque against SWG and SOE was forcing down the throats of their community changes nobody wanted. There's never really been a formal apology for that, though they are at least now admitting that the course taken with the NGE was a disaster.
You start out by ignoring something that is a staple of the criticism of the NGE: the fact that the CU had already dealt a crippling blow to player subscriptions. This is a fact. They gained back maybe half of their original playerbase in the end before the NGE, but part of what you describe as a dwindling friends list was a direct result of the CU. I belonged to the largest and most successful Imperial guild on my server (Eclipse). We also have chapters in every MMO out there, and we frequently leave one to another. The amount of people who left was tough, but not very problematic when WoW came out. When the CU originally came out, the numbers were devastating. Within one month, 75% of a 170 member guild was gone. Only 2 members of the original Elder Council remained. When the NGE came out, the devastation was numerically smaller, but proportionately worse. The guild which had been around since launch was finished less than 6 weeks after the NGE launched. The largest player city on Dantooine (and I will say the best done lol) is now currently a graveyard, as much of it still stands as condemned. One can say what they like, but simple market forces were not an explanation for what happened.
Yes "iconic" was the way many games were going, but here is where many don't understand the laws of the market. When Companies A-Y sell one thing, company Z can make a profit by selling something else many times. SWG during the heyday was 350k subscribes strong. Before WoW, that was a resounding success. SOE sure thought so, since before WoW, this was all they advertised, as to what a success SWG was. Such talk is not heard today, because the changes were not successful.
Furthermore, as I noted back in my (then) guest editorial for this website, catering to the needs of some mythical "silent majority" over your existing playerbase is why everyone should look upon SOE with a healthy degree of suspicion, until they formally renounce that marketing strategy. A business also rarely flourishes under such a mindset. The reason is because the future is tough to see. That "silent majority" more often than not never materializes. Especially with WoW. Those who like WoW are going to play WoW. The market trend someone can really capitalize on if they ever had the vision and prowess to do so is rather those MMO players who do not like WoW style gameplay. They are sick of linear games of elves and undead.
The problem with Jedi is that Jedi need to be an Alpha class. Yet you cannot have everyone be an Alpha class, and you cannot make an Alpha class into a weak class, since Jedis were not weak. The original solution to such a concept in theory worked. There were risks to being a Jedi, as well as rewards. Risks being it took hard work to begin the path of the Jedi. Risks in that in the majority of timtes as a Jedi, you were cannon fodder as you built your template, first to mobs, then to a BH. As a result, the rewards were (at the time) huge. Not only was there the prestige of being one of the few, the proud, the Jedi, but also the fact that you were strong, you could outdamage all but the most legendary of weapons, and could take on several regular people in PvP by yourself. Even in the days of the Jedis power waning, one of our guild Jedis could still take on 6 rebels. As my CM and a fellow Jedi, we bested 15 rebels.
In the end, this was devastated. Their soon became no risk to being a Jedi. When the NGE first hit, there was no reward either. Jedi became just as powerful as everyone else, which is not "iconic."
As has been documented numerous times, the input was almost entirely from SOE on the NGE. SOE has stated this numerous times. The problem with LucasArts appears to be that of not getting involved enough, just letting someone do with their intellectual property what they pleased, and rubber stamping it, which might actually be worse than SOE ruining it in the first place.
You also talk of the forums, and how negative things were. Surely you recognize this cuts both ways. The name Garva is all one has to say. If ever there existed a forum Nazi, Garva was it. Smedley begged people who were critical of the NGE to come to the forums. Many did. Some voiced like children. Others gave thoughtful and articulate critques of the NGE, and commented where to go from there. Garva deleted many of these threads the minute they appeared. There was also the moment in the CU where people who protested the change in game had the games own enviroment turned against them, as mobs stormed Coronet attacking players.
The truth does hurt, and the truth shall set you free. The big problem with this post is it lacks almost entirely in truth. It attempts to be respectful to the vets, and this much should be commended. But since the entire polemic rests on a patently false assumption (that of perfection and Camelot, which nobody was seriously arguing), many other things which are demonstrably false (i.e. LA was the brains behind the NGE, SOE was forced), and many other assumptions which I believe are flawed (but not false, since they are subjective, and open to debate), I don't see this really proving anything.