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What did RK really do for SWG?
Reklaw
Member UncommonPosts: 6,495
Raph Koster: "I was not involved directly with SWG from about four months after launch. People seem to think that as [Chief Creative Officer] I was somehow in control of all the design being done at SOE. That's not really the case at all; I had some influence, but I spent most of my time doing pitches, R&D, publicity stuff and that sort of thing. It's been well over two years since I did anything significant on the title. The last things really finished under my tenure were player cities, mounts and the Warren - and by cities, actually, I was barely involved. I had philosophical disagreements with a lot of the direction taken after that." read the whole articel here
Thought it might be intresting to read even tho it's pretty old (25 Jul 2006) 
Comments
one thing Raph Koster said about the NGE stuck with me:
"Changing things out from under them isn't fair in my mind, especially given how they have been loyal to you in times of trouble. It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
thats all you need to know to understand what SOE did to their paying customers..
SOE and NGE-Star Wars Galalaxies:
Raph Koster: "It's like dumping the girlfriend who has always been patient and loving to chase after the supermodel who probably won't love you back."
heh which pretty much says, what we all thought happened. the comany made it a WoW clone to try to get money.
This article was published in 2006 - I have not seen it before and am surprised it hasn't been given more publicity, especially by those of us who actively dislike the NGE and wishn for the return of a pre-CU SWG.
an oldie but a goodie, that's for sure.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Word of mouth is how these sorts of things take off, and bad word of mouth will ground you every bit as muchas good word of mouth will enable you take flight.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Koster was big into forum involvement and gamer input. Once he was gone the forums went downhill in a hurry.
He was also a big reason we had a sandbox to play in.
If only the game wasn't pushed ahead of schedule we wouldn't be sitting here discussing this, we would be in-game playing Pre-CU.
Tecmo Bowl.
So in other words he saying he didnt have much to do with SWG at all?.. the mind boggles
So in other words he saying he didnt have much to do with SWG at all?.. the mind boggles
He didn't have anything to do with SWG after he was promoted off the project, four months after launch. That was the point when development shifted away from adding the things that we were promised prior to launch (such as cities, mounts, and vehicles), and began focusing on the game mechanics. He was very much a part of the game that launched, but wasn't a part of most of what it was turned into.
That doesn't mean he wouldn't have been part of what the game turned into had he not been promoted. He was a part of the Trammel change while still working on UO after all, so he didn't have any serious moral objections to changes that completely change an existing game, his lipservice to such things since the NGE not withstanding.
I remember reading in another interview that one of the features that he wanted in the game was giving player cities the ability to control the surrounding area. So if you made a town you could set the area around it to open PvP if you wanted. That would of been very interesting to play in.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Yes, I remember those quotes from RK back when the interview was first done. It was when the smoke was still hanging on the horizon from the NGE, and was one of his first comments on it, if I remember correctly. It was copied and pasted onto the SOE boards (the ones that have now been deleted) and discussed at length.
It felt good to have someone who worked on some of the original game concepts make the supermodel comment. That really sums up what happened on one level very well. You could add that SOE made promises to the loyal girlfriend, then broke them, and coaxed her into buying herself a necklace that shortly thereafter turned to crap.
Anyways, as I understand it a lot of the community building game mechanics were his concepts, the sand-box if you will: player economy, interdependent professions, the tools to make our own StarWars universe, and tell our own story. I had a really good time while that lasted.
It would have been nice to see it in a polished state. I was enjoying the original game, and heard that players and devs were working on bugs and balances. Then, as we know, all of that was scrapped, WoW envy set in, and the failed attempts at replacing the original game with a broken copy of WoW began. What a shame.
More recently, he hasn't wanted to comment on the NGE, and really I don't blame him. He's heard it all, and has agreed with the concerns, and probably doesn't feel a need or desire to hear it all again. If his former colleagues at SOE listened as well as him, and were responsive, he probably would have stopped hearing about it years ago. SOE has continued a pattern of interacting with players, however, that leaves much to be desired.
So, when I see another SOE disaster (the latest in my mind being the early release of a bugged Vanguard, and it's subsequent gutting and transformation into a more WoW-like experience), I feel inclined to say, "buyer beware" once again. I'm also still waiting to see if they ever keep their word and fix collision detection in SWG. They did say that would be done within 6 months of the NGE's release though, so I guess they blew that already. So I guess I'm waiting to see Smed fast track server mergers like he said he would at the last player summits. Was that a year ago now, or more? Well...you get the picture.
At this point, I guess I'm really just waiting for a new StarWars MMO to come out, and for SOE's unethical management team to stop doing harm to the genre and its players, and go somewhere else to rethink their lives.
In fairness all SOE did to VG was give Sigil the money to try and finsh the prject..now they could have given them a £100 million pounds and the dipsticks there couldnt have coded a playable game,so in rather ruthless fashion SOE took over.
Now i logged back into VG the other day and i will say its got a hell of a lot better,more stable and generally more fun to play "hardcore" MMOs are a thing of the past its time to deal with that and get over it.
But to solely blame SOE for VG's ills is just plain wrong,it was the man with the "vision" who mucked that game up from the start which is a shame becuase the handful of devs working on it now are doing a fine job and you can see it has potential but sadly its far too late.
I wouldn't solely blame SOE for the issues at Vanguard. My concerns with SOE were pushing an early release (again) and removing working features of the original game concept to once again make something more like WoW.
If it's bugged to crap, don't push it out the door. If it's gonna be a bad experience, put the project on hold until you can do it right. If you advertise a game that's designed to appeal to the pre-cu audience (as many SOE marketters posted on these boards), then don't change those game mechanics to copy WoW again. It's just too much of an SWG deja vu for people that SOE already burned.
Also, this idea of trying to decide that anyone is "solely" to blame is a bit of a dead end street in my view. I don't think in such all or nothing terms generally. I try to look at the roles played by various stake-holders, and see how a number of factors contribute to a particular outcome. Over and over again though, I've seen SOE management decisions negatively impact their own games and customers. Something really needs to change over there.
Having said that, yes Sigil had a role to play in the state of Vanguard at release' and in the SWG case, LA had a role to play in approving the NGE. None of that dimishes, however, SOE's role, pattern of unethical behaviour and poor management.
Back to Raph though (bit of a tangent there), I'd like to see what the guy can do when management shares his philosophy when it comes to MMO's and how to treat players, or when he IS the management
Yeah, that'd be cool I think.