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NGE not an isolated event
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
In reading GreyPawn's comments about SWG vets (cynical dissidents I believe he called us), I got the impression that he thinks the NGE was an uncharacteristic, isolated incident that cynical people simply refuse to get over. In my view, he's either grossly uninformed or misinformed about the history of his company's customer service, or this is more spin-doctoring.
I'd like to point out that the NGE was not an isolated incident. It is in fact part of a pattern of behaviour on the part of GreyPawn's employer that a number of people (thousands) frankly grew sick and tired of. Here are a few examples of players' experiences to support this:
Example 1 Originally posted by Mastaccolli
"Ok, my 2 cents:
Played SWG as hardcore as anyone. Had multiple accounts, created a guild, a city and it became part of everyday. Hell, I still talk to people I met in the game years ago and we game together still (in other games).
The game had bugs, the game needed fixes. SOE stated they would fix this, balance that, but it never happened; to this day there are still things in game that are broken and never got fixed. Well, we can all live with a few bugs or glitches if the game is fun, right?
Well, SOE took the fun out of the game by changing everything and snubbing their noses at the people that made the game what it was. They replaced the fun with some god-awful thing that was no longer the game we had all come to know and love. So now you have bugs, glitches and no fun (at least no fun to the people that were playing the original game-so flamers dont start with how wonderful it is now).
So, like most people, I cancelled my accounts. Time to move on, find another game and have fun. Well, game is cancelled, got the cancellation e-mails and all is good. Next month's credit card bill comes in and there is a charge for the game. I'm thinking that its just a mistake and contact SOE. Well, I get the blah, blah, blah, we are sorry, we will fix it, please forward the e-mails.........basic stuff.
Next month comes, no credit to the account and yet another charge. I call SOE again, same thing. Sorry for the confusion, we are on top of it, blah, blah, blah. I give it another 2 weeks and still no credit to the charge card. I call the credit card company, explain the situation and do a charge back. I dont think of it again. Im out that first month's charge, but, what can ya do. I should have done the charge back earlier, silly me for thinking that SOE would hold up to their end of the bargain.
Jump ahead to about 2 months ago. A few friends say, 'hey lets re-activate our old SWG toons on the free trial thing and give it a go'. SO we do. I got called out to an out of state job so I really didnt get a chance to use the 14 day trial thing and decide to just up for a month. I cant re-sub my old toons.....odd, I think. The other guys didnt have any trouble activating the old toons, why am I?
I call SOE, they tell me they cant do anything over the phone that all of those types of customer service and billing related inquiries are handled through e-mail only. So, off goes the e-mail about my problem. 3 day later, I get the reply asking me about 15-20 questions regarding the old account-things like what card did I use, what was the account number, when was the last time I played-I mean are you kidding me? Like I remember what card, what account blah blah blah. Anyhow, I answer it as best I can and reply to the e-mail. This time it takes a week to get a reply and I was told that I can not open my accounts because there was a charge back to that particular account, (actually both toons), and in order to re-sub I have to pay that charge back. SOOOO $OE is going to get that damn second month out of me yet that I should not have been charged for in the first place. So I send yet another e-mail asking how much is the charge back. now here is the kicker---------the reply was $149.99!
My reply was WTF are you people smoking? (well, not exactly that but you get the drift). The reply back, again 3 days later was; the account was originally set up on a one year sub and in order to reactivate, I would have to pay $149.99 to bring the account current, then what ever I wanted to pay AFTER THAT to play the game again. I reply that the last 6 months (not including the 2 months they should not have charged me for), were on a month to month basis, not a full year sub. The reply I got was basically, too bad, so sad, pay us $149.99 or dont play the game. My reply was simply, "good job, you have now lost me for a second and final time. Have a wonderful day, dumbass".
So, does that answer you question on why $OE lost me?
Forget what they did to the game I loved, its the back end office, the supposed customer care, billing and player support that is so lacking. "
Example 2
"Folks tend to have short memories and some werent around for all the lies. So here's a list of lies SOE has told us. Also please consider sticking this 
1. SWG wont launch until its ready - SOE repeatedly told us this game wont launch until its ready to go. This early on was to include space, JTL wasnt ever supposed to be an expansion. Lets also not forget key components not included at launch like player cities, vehicles, and jedi. As a beta player, I still remember the notice in beta forum that the game was going gold in 2 weeks. Everyone agreed it was a huge mistake but SOE ignored us.
2. Jedi - We all know that jedi was NEVER possible at launch. Yet SOE made post after post dangling that carrot and offering encouragement. They told us to get married, explore every world, build a home, etc. It made some think that jedi was some random amazing quest to be discovered. Soon though we learned the truth when SOE patched in several .tre files with obvious jedi implications 5 months after launch. Then the day after a patch several unlocked all at once.
3. Rebel Theme Park - Sorta ties into # 1 as it wasnt ready either. However SOE repeatedly lied about the theme park. If you recall, it was broken after Han's quests. Han tells us to seek out Lt. Lance on Dantooine, but there isnt any Lt. Lance anywhere. SOE tells us its working as intended despite nobody having found Lt. Lance after months and month of looking (my guild personally had several major expedition searches done over many weekends looking for him). Suddenly we learn the truth after a patch...Han now tells us to seek out Ackbar on Dantooine and the once empty abandoned rebel base now has several rebel nps in there. My guild who had followed the game for years in development was soooo pissed off they immediately disbanded and quit.
4. two part lie -
A. The Combat upgrade (curb) was top priority - Remember how SOE told us over and over again that the CURB was its number 1 focus. It would be first to get completed over the JTL expansion.
B. There were two separate teams working on JTL and the CURB.
We later learn both are lies. JTL gets pushed over the combat fixes AND we find out the CURB team has been merged with the JTL team. Whats really insulting is SOE goes on a PR campaign and tells the public that we players demanded JTL first. Another fat lie as every poll posted strongly stated we wanted the CURB first.
5. Combat Revamp - whatever you want to call it, this was meant as a reward for the vets who stayed around and played a broken game. Talk about a slap in the face when SOE announces the CU...a system as the devs told me at Celebration 3 was meant to "have a more broad appeal". This was SOE's 1st attempt at screwing over its current community for the wow crowd. All the promised fixes never happened. The armorsmith rep quit and was banned after he started a massive protest over changes they never asked for. In fact the CU brings in many more bugs than it fixes and never balanced anything.
6. The CU is here to stay - Smedley comes and makes his first post on swg forums asking for calm and patience. He states that in 6 months the cu will be working as intended so give them time to make things right. FAT LIE...during that time the NGE is either in design stages or already being worked on.
7. FRS - CU disables the end-game for jedi, our force ranking system. SOE tells us its being worked on. Later they state its al most done and just awaits final approval from LA. Of course we learn there wont ever be a FRS system and the nerfs we've been getting oover the past 6 months were done on purpose to weaken jedi into a regular class. For me personally, this is one of the more disgusting lies as it was obviously done to keep us jedi players paying.
8. Jabba Palace disappears - The last patch before the NGE garbage makes Jabba's palace completely disappear. SOE acts surprised and promises a fix is coming..another fat lie as we learn why after the nge hits. Jabba's palace was taken out to implement th new nge quests.
9. village breaks - Same patch breaks the village and the old man stops visiting people. SOE again lies to cover its tracks and tells us its being looked at. Of course it was just a cover for the nge.
10. Expansion - SOE presells an expansion with several promised features. One desired item is a creature handler necklace that will allow for the taming of higher lvl pets. Im not sure if that necklace was ever found but it didnt matter because 1 stinkin day after the nge launched Torres of LA announces the revamp of the game and removal of over 24 professions.
11. starter kit - SOE tells us the starter kit is an eroneous listing and will be removed. They deny the rumors of impending changes.
12. SOE tells us fixes will be faster. SOE says the whole reason behind the nge was to make balancing the game easier and would allow for faster publish fixes. In fact, it has slowed the game down to a crawl as publishes now seem to come every 4 months as opposed to almost monthly before the nge.
13. smuggler revamp - this one could have its own page on broken promises and lies.
14. Capitol ships - a dev at a fanfest shows the players capitol ships he has been working on. Later on SOE tells (months and months later) that it was just a dev fooling around with his laptop and this was never being considered. Of course SOE could have tol the players this months earlier rather than ignore the posts asking for more information. To flyboys, the capitol ship dream was their FRS system...ie end-game content they so very much wanted. It didnt hurt SOE to once again lie a little and let people keep paying while they waited for features that would never ever happen.
15. profession revamps - ranger comes to my mind foremost because my alt was a master ranger for years. It was painful to see rangers slowly dwindling in numbers as the profession remained broken forever. I still recall one of the camo kits (i think it was for Lok) required a type of meat to contruct, only problem was that meat didnt even exist ! And the final tease, SOE says ranger is the next revamp coming in the next publish...oops the next publish turned out to be the NGE.
Then there were the professions that got sorely needed revamps weeks before the nge hit. Why did SOE even bother to revamp squad leader if they were going to turn around and remove the profession entirely a few weeks later ? Maybe it was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.
16. Broken quests - How many times did SOE tell us a fix was in the works and it either never came or it took a year to do. And even when they finally did fix something like the Hermit quests, they turn right around and re-break them weeks later. My personal pet peeve for broken quests was the ones at the gungan sacred place. It pissed me off that not only were the quests incomplete, one of the npc's chat bubble was blank ! How tough would it have been to code in some simple words ? These quests were broken in beta, remained busted through launch right up to the nge.
The NGE broke several old quests as well. When I tried the 21 day free trial I started the krayt skull quests, some of my favorites with a great storyline. I got to the last part where I needed to talk to Darklighter only to my surprise he has no chat option. The NGE is 1 year old and Im assuming this quest remains broken, pathetic.
17. 6 month promises - Smedley has repeatedly made the 6 month promise for fixes. His very 1st post following the CU debacle asked the players to give SOE 6 months to get things fully working. He then makes the same promise after the NGE launches, needing 6 more months. Ironically, the post after nge is almost identical to the cu one (asking for time to fix things) and yet somehow the gullible desperate players buy into it AGAIN. Later SOE promises major revamps to each profession each coming within a month or two o each other. Later after MONTHS of no publishes and silence (the swg forums were literally rioting), SOE announces yet ANOTHER series of profession revamps. Typically, the pathetic player base thanks SOE devs in posts for answering their concerns. A year into the NGE, it remains broken, unfinished, with no end in site.
18. Item Conversion - Recall that the players were very concerned over losing their gear with the coming CU. We were repeatedly told that everything would convert properly. If you had an exceptional weapon with amazing stats, it would convert to an equal type of weapon for the CU. They were full of crap though and not only did our exceptional weapons and armor NOT convert properly, in many cases we now couldnt even equip them anymore !!!
CA's and AA's didnt convert because SOE took out several stats like dizzy, knockdown, the poison and disease resists, etc. Players that spent years and millions of credits to collect were overnight ruined. The final insult in classic SOE fashion, SOE adds in melee def and ranged def clothing that tailors can craft. They didnt even bother to take into account the thousands of players who spent their credits by the millions to get these things as ca/aa drops. A +12 melee def tape would possibly sell for 15-20 million, 1 day after the cu and a player now can buy a shirt with +17 melee AND ranged defense !!! So much for really being concerned with ca/aa conversions.
RIS Armor - Not only did the conversion for this armor become crap, it also got very common. I and some friends of mine were the few around who had even had any ris armor. Before the revamps, RIS armor was something one could try and get as a trophy to their hard work and dedication. Plus it took real skill to get. You had to know where the components dropped. You had to know spawn rates. You had to know where to find the giant dune kimos. You had to find addon components like shards to boost the completed armor's stats. In essence, it was a lot of hard work for players that yet again was totally tossed out the door. My ris helmet once had offers of 15 million credits, suddenly its for sale on vendors for 15k bleh.
BE Tissues - nge takes out bio-engineers and their tissues that make chef foods better. Now something that was once extremely common is the rarest most sought after item by crafters. And since food is a consumable, eventually there will be no more bio tissues around.
The theme here of course is SOE didnt give a damn about how their revamps would hurt or help their CURRENT community. I seriously doubt based on the evidence that they even looked at the changes, much less tried to ensure the conversion wouldnt screw us.
19. pearl drops - sometime into the cu pearl drops got really messed up. At first, over a weekend flawless and premium pearls are dropping like crazy and not just off krayts. Soon SOE hotpatches a "fix" in to correct whatever they were trying to fix before and the pearls stop dropping. Now premiums and flawless dont drop anymore. SOE responds to player concerns by telling them its working as intended. Later they admit there "might" be a problem but there were other things more important to fix. SOE lies and promises its being looked into.
According to my source, the pearl drops were broken or gated on purpose. This was done to remove the elite power items so jedi could be better balanced for the nge. I hear sometime after the nge the premium pearls were added back in but flawless never came back.
20. Gating content - According to a source who wrote a letter to CBS newsbag, SOE purposely gates its content to finish it. In other words, SOE breaks something to hide the fact that it remains unfinished. Why would SOE do this ? Well according to this person, it was done to basically use player subscription fees to pay for the finished development of that content. This source reported that this was done repeatedly for EQ1 expansions. Devs would then lie on the forums claiming that a fix was being worked on when in fact it was busted on purpose.
This of course is outrageous but not unexpected by SOE. To take subscriber money and finish something that the money from the expansion was already supposed to have paid for is unforgivable. Smedley responded on some other site he posts on that this was a fabrication and SOE had (allow me to quote) never once released an unfinished product to the public LOL. This same person later admits the nge is unfinished...oh and the CU is unfinished...my oh my how the lies grow.
Feel free to add your own and i'll edit them in."
For example number two, I experienced many of the items on the list personally, and so I can identify with these. As for things like "gating" unfinished content. I don't have any inside information to substantiate this, so people would have to address that with the original poster. See the post entitled "a complete list of lies told by SOE." What I'm highlighting here is that the NGE misdirection, bugs etc. fit into a long-standing problem of extremely poor customer service. This is meant as a history lesson for GreyPawn and like-minded others. If he wants to reach a hand out to veteran former players, he has a lot of reaching to do to make up for this litany of garbage.
Comments
If everyone who cancelled did a charge back... Hmm
great post. i wonder how soe will fare going to a free-to-play model with a item shop considering nobody will want to give them credit card info!
We were asked not to teleport into the expansion area back in EQ1, when i did i found massive boxes everywhere with exclamasion marks on aswell as purple and black ones (Non textured objects), They released that without actually completing it.
Doesn't really bother me though.
Really? SOE defrauding their customers doesn't bother you? Why heck, they never even should have done those TOOW refunds, 2 weeks with all the stuff that it was marketed to have was enough wasn't it?
Well, you surely must work for them. I don't see any other point to your incessant trolling.
I agree with your message overall. I mean, most of those points are very much in line with what most vet's have experienced.
Customer Service experience has been bad. To me, it goes beyond the day to day issues. They need to learn how to deal with their long term shortcoming's. They need to learn how to handle issues and bugs that have been in the game for 'years'.
In short, SOE's customer support does not know how to fix their customers.
Change control and quality management measures also need to be put into place. I realize that the changes the CU and NGE brought were supposed to be 'groundbreaking' via SOE's standards and they didn't want the industry to get wind of them beforehand, but they had a customer base to consider. They failed to really take into account what the customers would think and then failed to take action when the customer's spoke out against the changes.
Most of the changes seemed to be added by SOE in a very dishonest fashion.
All in all, SOE fails to understand the customers. They read messages and seem to zone in on the wrong points.
SOE also failed to deliver the Star Wars feel that games like Jedi Knight and KOTOR brought. Now, we are all aware of the Force Unleashed that's coming up. We're still stuck playing Star Wars in the fashion that SOE feeds us.
As other franchizes advance and launch new content... SOE is still struggling to revamp and bring back things they took away from us 2 years ago. They tell us 'it's new code'... it's really just the old prof's ported from preCU to the CU to the NGE. That's not 'new code'... it's not 'new development'.
Off topic warning: There is a troll who is reporting the posts of anyone on this forum who refutes him. He seems to be going unpunished with impunity (big surprise). I suspect that SOE is involved, or it's MMORPG being underhanded (again).
Watch out for it.
Par for the course. When your image needs "managing" like SOE's does you really are at the point where nothing can fix your image.
Why is it that SOE will send out their little minions to try to accomplish this, when all they have to do is to apologize to their victims and offer classic servers? What is so hard about that?
He'd do better in the reaching out department if he acknowledged the poor treatment of players and said something like, "Sorry, it won't happen again, and the people responsible are no longer making decisions regarding the direction of this game." Yeah that'd be at least one step in the right direction, and there'd be a lot fewer "set the record straight" posts too likely.
Yep, all those are very valid arguments that show us SOE as it regards to SWG is a complete farce.
BUT, look at what all this has cost them... SWG is a joke, probably the most negatively viewed MMO in the world. Most people won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
People are now cautious about doing business with SOE in general, read other forums to see this.
SOE has lost a LOT of money with this game. They deserved to lose a lot of money with this game. The game was too advanced for what platforms allowed in 2002-2003. It was never going to work in Pre-CU in the long run. SOE had years to get the game together and had a very large development team working to do so, and failed. They lied, manipulated, stole, and baited paying customers into staying the course in hopes the money would carry SWG through the drastic changes.
Fast forward to now, SWG sucks. The development team is tiny and largely ineffective. The names SWG, NGE, and SOE are taboo to most gamers. Nobody plays the game in its current state outside of 20,000 or so diehard pushovers. There is a new crop of MMO games hitting the market that will further re-inforce what most all of us know... SWG sucks, no one plays it, and no one is going to play it.
SWG won't be around THAT much longer. LAE won't sit by and watch this market flourish without the Star Wars IP getting a better product representation.
I guess what I am saying is this... We the veterans lost. SOE lost. LAE lost. Star Wars lost. However, we did a damn good job of making sure SOE lost a lot more than we did. Vets were vocal, vets were proactive, vets were determined to make sure SOE paid for the screwjob. SOE lost millions and lost even more in credibility.
SWG, SOE, LA, and the NGE all have 1 thing in common... THEY SUCK.
He'd do better in the reaching out department if he acknowledged the poor treatment of players and said something like, "Sorry, it won't happen again, and the people responsible are no longer making decisions regarding the direction of this game." Yeah that'd be at least one step in the right direction, and there'd be a lot fewer "set the record straight" posts too likely.
He can't say that. Those responsible for making such decisions are still in charge, John Smedley and Jim Ward. Sure, their minions have been shuffled off to other duties or have left the fold, but the ultimate decision makers are still there.
Which is why, consequently, you continue to see mistakes made... Smed and Ward have no need to learn from their mistakes since they've not suffered any consequences.
Well to be honest, I'd prefer to log in here to just shoot the breeze with vets, but when I read comments like those made by greypawn that suggest vets can't get over one problem that happened over two years ago, I feel compelled to set the record straight.He'd do better in the reaching out department if he acknowledged the poor treatment of players and said something like, "Sorry, it won't happen again, and the people responsible are no longer making decisions regarding the direction of this game." Yeah that'd be at least one step in the right direction, and there'd be a lot fewer "set the record straight" posts too likely.
He can't say that. Those responsible for making such decisions are still in charge, John Smedley and Jim Ward. Sure, their minions have been shuffled off to other duties or have left the fold, but the ultimate decision makers are still there.
Which is why, consequently, you continue to see mistakes made... Smed and Ward have no need to learn from their mistakes since they've not suffered any consequences.
Yeah, I think you've got a point with the head decision makers still being the same. I was just daydreaming
. It would be a step in the right direction if GreyPawn could say something like that genuinely and accurately. That would do a lot more good than his basic message as I heard it: cynical dissidents are being welcomed home, if only they could get over something that happened 2 years ago. There's just so much reality twist in that statement, it's hard to know where to start describing it. Here's an attempt anyways tho:
-Cynical dissidents: doesn't come across as a flattering description,
-welcome home: the virtual home he refers to was deleted and replaced with something unpleasant,
-get over something that happened 2 years ago: like it was an isolated event, like it was an insignificant slight that unreasonable people refuse to forget. Oi
If that's the way folks at SOE really think about their conduct and its impact on their hundreds of thousands of former players, they really do seem to be experiencing a bad case of group think that keeps them disconnected from others' experience of reality. As long as that disconnect continues, and as long as rationalizations, minimizations, denials and blaming the victim continue, this whole ugly business is likely to be perpetuated.
Great Post
Ahh, the memories! Good post!
Customer Service has always been good to me however what i didn't like was the constant lies from SOE/LA and how they totally ruined the game with the CU or even as far back as Jedi and then the final blow with the NGE.
I removed the rest as it was just, plain absurdity.
<laughs at the absurdity being spewed forth by AveBethos>
<walks away still laughing>
Ya know reading that.. it really makes you wonder why anyone would pay SOE money again for anything.
People's memories are short.. sometimes they shouldn't be. SOE is not a good company and how they treat their playerbase is atrocious on a good day.
Too bad most people won't read that because its too "wordy"
Good post though and thanks for the reminder
I guess something important to consider is the fact that 'some' players do like the NGE. The population is made up of new players who never knew the old system as well as old players who simply grew to like it. If SOE made changes now, they would really upset the NGE fans.
It's easy for me to sit here and type/bash SOE and ask for changes, because I'm not amongst the population of players that would be considered 'NGE fans'. I continue to ask SOE to take their game away from them and give me back the old SWG that I really enjoyed. So I can certainly see where there might be some 'hostility' of SWG Vets vs the NGE Gen SWG players.
If there was another Star Wars based MMO, I would play it. There isn't. So I continue to watch SWG and circle back in/out of the game... hoping for roll-backs or major changes.
At this point, I hate the game. I hate the fact that I don't have any real say in how the game changes, but I hate even more that I don't have an option for another Star Wars MMO.
If players hate a certain fantasy based game... they can simply move to another system. There are dozens of fantasy based MMO's out there. There's only one Star Wars game, though.
Of course, there is a simple, obvious and proven way to have to both ways: classic servers.
I really think that a classic servers should be allowed and I have played since beta. Make just one. I also think that there will never be a star wars mmo ever again. If there will be I think SOE should retire this game.
see ^ that is alot of happy classic gamers don't ya agree?
If you do not stand-up for what you believe in... No one else will.
BBB=Useless see why:
http://www.sandiego.bbb.org/sponsors/major.html
If they had 'classic' servers... I'd probably play again and be fairly happy with that.
I loved the way you could really customize your character in SWG.
Expertise, Talent, etc.,... nothing that I've seen in another game today holds a candle to the old SWG 'levelling' / character builder model for player progression and customization.
...
Anyway, if SOE did provide some 'classic' servers... do you think that would earn them some credibility in the overall MMO gaming community? Or do you think they are too far gone to really 'save face' at this point?
I know a lot of vets said they wouldn't come back even if SOE made the 'roll back', because they just don't trust SOE.
They won't do it. At this point, it's not so much because they can't do it or they wouldn't make money, it's because (according to my sources) that it's become as personal with SOE management as it has become with many of we disgruntled vets.
Simply put: they hate us. As a matter of fact, it was a MAJOR kick in the teeth to them when they realized that they'd HAVE to do some even minimal pro-forma sucking up to the former players to try to get them back. Of course, they say this while at the same time keeping OFF the table the only thing that would bring back anyone in significant numbers.
Simply put, SOE feels "dissed". They don't like it. They hate us, but want our money, but won't move one inch in order to get it. They honestly DO blame us for the failure of their brilliant NGE. They still think the NGE is the best SWG ever, and that it was the right move, and that 2 million would be playing it right now had we just shut up (or been shut up). They resent this and resent us... Every now and then, the nice guy mask of "we want you back" falls off and you see what they REALLY think, see Chris Cao and Noob's recent necro incident as evidence.
Of course, there is a simple, obvious and proven way to have to both ways: classic servers.
This is EXACTLY what needs to be done and I never played pre-CU or CU and even I can see it.
They are changing the game, now, on the NGE player base making moves back to what was before but are severlly limited in what they do and probably what they can do. They are now alienating another player base because of these moves to try and entice vets back. There has been posts on their forums of players stating that SOE is not interested in "new players" anylonger, just getting vets to return.
They have several (SEVERAL) servers with almost NO population on them. It should be a fairly easy job to move what is left of the population of these servers to the 3 decent population servers thereby freeing up at least 10 existing servers for classic servers. The low population servers are screaming for free transfers and would empty out fairly quickly. But SOE is milking the paid server transfer system and will not put out free transfers as this is 1 of the sure fire ways they can maximise their profits from what little player base they have left.
From what I understand, They could empty 10 servers, install classic code, and double their base almost overnight. Makes no sence to me why they don't.
We almost had a SWG convention last night on Entropia Universe. 14 recent former/currant subscribers running around the noob area in EU, with more coming tonight. If this keeps up, Kauri will empty even if they don't do free server transfers. What I think is the big draw / reasoning for the holding on of SWG is the community, not the game. It was nice to run with all those people again.
Of course, there is a simple, obvious and proven way to have to both ways: classic servers.
This is EXACTLY what needs to be done and I never played pre-CU or CU and even I can see it.
They are changing the game, now, on the NGE player base making moves back to what was before but are severlly limited in what they do and probably what they can do. They are now alienating another player base because of these moves to try and entice vets back. There has been posts on their forums of players stating that SOE is not interested in "new players" anylonger, just getting vets to return.
They have several (SEVERAL) servers with almost NO population on them. It should be a fairly easy job to move what is left of the population of these servers to the 3 decent population servers thereby freeing up at least 10 existing servers for classic servers. The low population servers are screaming for free transfers and would empty out fairly quickly. But SOE is milking the paid server transfer system and will not put out free transfers as this is 1 of the sure fire ways they can maximise their profits from what little player base they have left.
From what I understand, They could empty 10 servers, install classic code, and double their base almost overnight. Makes no sence to me why they don't.
We almost had a SWG convention last night on Entropia Universe. 14 recent former/currant subscribers running around the noob area in EU, with more coming tonight. If this keeps up, Kauri will empty even if they don't do free server transfers. What I think is the big draw / reasoning for the holding on of SWG is the community, not the game. It was nice to run with all those people again.
I've always wanted to see classic servers, once I saw that a new group of gamers had started investing in the NGE. I don't want new gamers to lose their progress and what makes things fun for them, but I've always wanted to see others have their game/community/fun restored via classics.
I understand the stated rationale for not doing this (not enough resources to support 2 versions of the game), but I've often wondered if there's more to that story that can't be shared publicly. Also regarding cost issues, you might even get volunteers to maintain the classic servers--so many people are so passionate about the original game.
Anyways I "get" that SOE/LA took a different approach, trying to keep the simplified mechanics of the NGE, fewer professions etc., and at the same time, trying to win back some vets by restoring things that were removed. I get it, but I've always thought it's a shaky solution. Too much NGEness and you lose the vets, too much oldschool and you lose the NGE crowd. Also, a lot of vets aren't all too excited about waiting for stuff to be brought back piece-meal over the course of years, and the game modifications to try to cater to both target audiences can come across as a never ending beta session. For others, the restored things like creature handling just don't compare to what they once knew and loved.
So, I think I understand the rationale behind the current approach, and some of my friends are glad to have some of the old things back in some form, but I would have preferred a classic server option.
Wow.... just simply wow. I can't remember the last time someone has jumped to soooooo many conclusions without a shred of evidence. You certainly need a reality check and a break from the SOE hate, because it's warping your fragile mind. Seriously, I would offer you some tinfoil for your hat, but apparently you are past that point.