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Raph Koster - Tired of NGE
mindspat
Member Posts: 1,367
(I am willing to bet we all can agree on this...)
http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/06/12/tired-of-hearing-about-the-nge/#comments
So, here it is, a few years later, and we’re still seeing articles on the NGE. And honestly, I’m getting a little tired of it. In this case, I actually declined to comment for the article, but there’s nonetheless a giant inset quote from me dug up from ages ago (which irritates me, honestly). I had declined because I just didn’t want to perpetuate the discussion.
Why? Well, for one, it does feel a bit like the whole thing has turned into a bit of a punching bag. For example, the article claims that SOE has not apologized. But John Smedley has gone on record with saying it was an error several times now. All sorts of motives get ascribed to all sorts of people that just don’t fit with what I know of them.
Julio Torres is not the devil — in fact, he was a hardcore Entertainer in SWG, not an RP-hater. Jeff Freeman is a smart talented designer — he did the SWG pet system, so it’s not like he was out to remove it — and NGE wasn’t his initiative anyway. Smed is a guy who cares deeply about customers, whom I have personally seen spend hours on the phone talking to just one in order to try to resolve their issues. And yet all these guys regularly get vilified in forums regardless of what their actual roles were or what they feel about the subject, in large part because their names happen to be public. In the end, it all just feels a bit unfair, in large part because only fragments of the story are even available. And the story is going to stay unavailable because of confidentiality agreements.
I know this is likely going to prove unpopular with a lot of folks who read this blog. And I am not out to defend the NGE. Rather, I’m saying that until the subject can be discussed a bit more dispassionately, it’s difficult to discuss at all. And I am as guilty as anyone of speaking provocatively about it. But I feel burned out on the whole discussion, because so little of it seems productive.
Knowing the author of the article, I’m sure that it wasn’t his intent to merely fan flames. And I know that anything I said in the past is always out there on the Net, ready to come back to haunt me. I also know that anyone whose name is publicly associated with something, like mine, or Smed’s, or Jeff’s or Julio’s, is going to be fair game. But my personal take on the issue is more nuanced than what I see in the discussions and articles, which have uncomfortable tones of pitchforks and fires. I’m thrilled that something I worked on aroused such passion in people. I’ve also had to move on.
So yeah, I’m kinda tired of reading articles about the NGE, particularly ones that paint these adversarial relationships with people I still talk to regularly and whom I know to be good people. I doubt that anyone will simply stop talking about it, but as for me, I’m staying out of it, because regardless of how I feel about the NGE itself, I think that the real lessons of it are mostly stuff that isn’t even visible to the public. (For example, IMHO the real lesson is about data mining, and not about any of the stuff that gets talked about).
The flaming of me may now commence.
Comments
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
How about yourself?
After all, without us you're only you.
When Raph left SOE he should have taken SWG with him and made it a nice game again
Bet LA would have agreed at the end when seeing millions of people playing SWG.. millions that are at WoW right now..
WoW has millions of players now because it was ready to play at launch, not hurried by LA. WoW continues to be successful because the game works really well, SWG never has.
You can have the greatest development concpet on the planet but it is going to fail if you implement it as poorly as LA/SOE did. You can have a simple developmental concept like WoW and if you market/implement it properly then it can be wildly successful.
It's too bad Koster wasn't given another 6 months to a year to do the game right.
QF squared E
SWG's failures have a great deal to do with LA's insatiable greed, which has damaged more than one of their products.
We cannot teach them; the boys do not have patience.
The game always had fantastic potential that was never realized because they were not willing to make it truly ready for the market.
WoW has very little of the potential that SWG had, but because it wasn't pushed out the door before its own potential was realized, it's wildly successful.
The demands of corporate America that ROI be delivered this quarter, not next year, is one of the reasons why SWG failed to fulfll its potential.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
SWG could easily gain thousands if not millions of subscribers if SOE decided to launch the game in a new country every few months, countries where SOE's reputation is not tainted and where no one knows of past actions of SOE involving SWG.
I think you're glossing over the fact that Blizzard is reaping the rewards of more than 10 years of careful cultivation of their brands. Miilions of subs are possible for them because they've released product after product that is so universally adored that both western and eastern gamers are part of their fanbase. What they've accomplished goes far beyond simple "brand recognition" and market saturation.
SWG wouldn't gain anything from being released in a new country every few months. Lest you forget, SWG completely bombed in Japan. Star Wars isn't as universally adored among gamers as any of the Blizzard brands, and Star Wars video games are just another niche in the world of the Star Wars fan community, not the vital core of it. For its millions-strong legion of fanboys in the States (I count myself as one of them), SWG couldn't break 300K subs at its peak.
As for Raph's comments, I have a lot of respect for him and for his original vision of SWG. I firmly believe that if he had been given another six months to launch SWG and had been kept in charge of its post-launch development for an extended period of time that the need for this forum and the "refuge" would be nonexistant.
I think you're glossing over the fact that Blizzard is reaping the rewards of more than 10 years of careful cultivation of their brands. Miilions of subs are possible for them because they've released product after product that is so universally adored that both western and eastern gamers are part of their fanbase. What they've accomplished goes far beyond simple "brand recognition" and market saturation.
SWG wouldn't gain anything from being released in a new country every few months. Lest you forget, SWG completely bombed in Japan. Star Wars isn't as universally adored among gamers as any of the Blizzard brands, and Star Wars video games are just another niche in the world of the Star Wars fan community, not the vital core of it. For its millions-strong legion of fanboys in the States (I count myself as one of them), SWG couldn't break 300K subs at its peak.
As for Raph's comments, I have a lot of respect for him and for his original vision of SWG. I firmly believe that if he had been given another six months to launch SWG and had been kept in charge of its post-launch development for an extended period of time that the need for this forum and the "refuge" would be nonexistant.
/Agree 100%.
I think you're glossing over the fact that Blizzard is reaping the rewards of more than 10 years of careful cultivation of their brands. Miilions of subs are possible for them because they've released product after product that is so universally adored that both western and eastern gamers are part of their fanbase. What they've accomplished goes far beyond simple "brand recognition" and market saturation.
SWG wouldn't gain anything from being released in a new country every few months. Lest you forget, SWG completely bombed in Japan. Star Wars isn't as universally adored among gamers as any of the Blizzard brands, and Star Wars video games are just another niche in the world of the Star Wars fan community, not the vital core of it. For its millions-strong legion of fanboys in the States (I count myself as one of them), SWG couldn't break 300K subs at its peak.
As for Raph's comments, I have a lot of respect for him and for his original vision of SWG. I firmly believe that if he had been given another six months to launch SWG and had been kept in charge of its post-launch development for an extended period of time that the need for this forum and the "refuge" would be nonexistant.
Japan is console territory. PC games,historically, have never really sold all that well in Japan. Even The Sims, the best-selling PC game of all time, never managed to make 6 digits in terms of unit sales in Japan.
warcraft series has been existant since 1994 as the starwars universe since 1977.
so its not about the name, but about the userfriendly gameplay.
and as some one else said. japanese are more console oriented.
Bren
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warcraft series has been existant since 1994 as the starwars universe since 1977.
so its not about the name, but about the userfriendly gameplay.
and as some one else said. japanese are more console oriented.
"Star Wars" is obviously a more recognized topic/name than Warcraft. The difference is that everyone who knows about Warcraft associates it with video games. Star Wars is a series of movies to most. Not all Star Wars fans are gamers, so one can't assume a title associated with movies should out weigh a title associated with a video game series, regardless of its popularity.
Kind of makes one think even less of SOE (is that even possible?) that they'd release an MMORPG into console territory.
Perhaps the same marketing department was responsible for the NGE.
This particular quote continues to prove that these guys, this designer particularly, just doesn't get it.
Let me use an example - perhaps a somewhat inflammatory one, but intended to prove a point. Several years back, the United States got into a war in Afghanistan. Media coverage ran rampant. We continue to fight that war in Afghanistan to this day, yet there's very very little media coverage. Why? Because not enough people care about what goes on over there.
Two years after the release of NGE, the media continues to churn out articles on the fiasco that was NGE. Why? Because people still care. The media doesn't drive the story, Raph, the public drives the story here. Your pissed off subscribers drive the story. The thousands upon thousaands of people betrayed continue to feel shafted two years later. That's what drives the story. It doesn't help that every time someone over there changes anything in the game, it just makes the game that much worse.
So it irks me - as I'm sure it irks all the other betrayed folks - that he, and they, remain so clueless as to think that we're ever going to be able to discuss wholesale larceny on the part of $OE and LA "dispassionately." Sure, some ten or twenty years down the road, maybe. But the story continues to generate headlines because of chronic mismanagement and constant ripping off of the scabs just barely formed.
For example, $OE recently held a "come back and check us out fortnight" for vets. They suckered a few of us into signing back up, and then two week later went and radically changed the nature of the game yet again. When a company tricks you into giving them money, then kicks you in the balls, AGAIN, and laughs in your face, you get kinda sore. Even two years after the third betrayal (NGE. CU was the second, and the early release the first).
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. The general audience has had it with $OE and we're never going to let the issue die because we don't want anyone else to get fooled again. Getting kicked in the balls isn't fun. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Frankly, $OE has kicked us all in the Jimmies so darn often that I'm impressed they still have any subscribers whatsoever. EQ "expansions," SWG's "do it yourself release," Vanguard: Saga of "One Man's Incredibly Myopic Vision," SWG's "New Game Experience," the list goes on and on. It's high time we made it not only clear to other users just how fed up we are, but to $OE.
Then again, $OE hasn't shown much of a penchant for learning from their mistakes in the past. Why should another thread on their disconnect with reality and with the players change their opinion today?
........so Helios is the devil?
haha, just kidding Raph.
Every change makes the game "worse"? That is clearly your opinion. Albeit, one that is guided by NGE-hate, but your opinion none-the-less. I view that chapter 6 was a step in the right direction. And, as a lot of the other current players have said, this game has developed quite well since NGE's disastrous inception.
Skipping the paragraph after that, as it's just full of hate. I'm curious when this "fortnight" took place? And, the "radical changes" that you eluded too... when was this at? If you are referring to chapter 6 and the difficulty changes (that some NGE-haters have eluded to as being a horrible change) that was a step in the right direction. It promotes grouping, and gives the game more challenge. Thus, refuting some claims of NGE being the same as WoW (WoW = easy mode solo for majority of the game. Not that easy in SWG now... at least vs. more than one mob of equal level or above).
"The general audience has had it with $OE and we're never going to let the issue die because we don't want anyone else to get fooled again." I disagree with this. The NGE-haters are not the general audience. The NGE-hating vets spread their rage through the forums, message boards, game reviews when NGE came out. I still believe that was justified based on the poor implementation that occured. However, the same vets continue to spout the same rage through the same channels. Yet, the game has a new group of developers, and the people who made NGE happen, are either fired or are working on other products. The only one who is still around is Smed, and he's not totally to blame for the NGE fiasco (SOE board of directors and LA share the blame). Therefore, the NGE-haters keep on spouting, hoping to infect more people with their rage. All with the ulterior motive of ruining SOE. Yeah, sounds to me like you all have a different motive than the motive you state in your quote.
Oh, and the rest of this is full of hate. Personally, you need to take your rage back over to the NGE-vets forum. They thrive on that sort of thing, while we abhor it here. Besides, the hate is against the rules.
I honestly can't blame Raph that much for what happened to SWG after launch, because he was pretty much removed from the game only a month or two after launch.
The guy actually came onto the CH forum and told us that there was a nerf afoot in early August 2003, and there was, and it really wasn't that much of a nerf as much as a necessary correction to the profession. Certifications were necessary for calling pets, there were novice without a box beyond the first one CHs calling rancors that they couldn't hope to tame in the wild (bought off of MCHs), there were the "three rancors out" guys all over the place. CH was everywhere because it mostly worked, unlike nearly every other combat profession in the game, so players flocked to it for just that reason.
Then he was kicked upstairs and out of the way, so that others with no vision and no idea of what to do were put in charge and immediately commenced to muck things up with ill-considered nerfs, stealth nerfs, repeated protestations of "working as intended" followed within a week or two of a stealth nerf...
I could go on and on all night and bore everyone to tears. We all know the litany of broken promises, deceptions, arrogant dismissal of player concerns and suggestions, and outright lies that followed.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi