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Reasons listed why the end of the NGE is near.
MickeyMann
Member Posts: 66
Its laughable that even banned for months that The Clowned Prince of MMOs drawns laughter and attention to the Blight of the SWG Vets . He is even being stalked by an employee from here while being banned. Anyhow I would like to quote a list from his profile. http://www.myspace.com/lovethatjestor abiut why he thinks that the end of the NGE is near.
"The reasoning of why I think that this will happen –
1. The Free Fall of Customers from the game since the Combat Upgrade and the New Game Edition from about 300k to 50k. (From my sources – I estimate about 20k)
2. Low Server levels visa vie from the low number of players – I would like to use my Veteran trial to try the NGE again but since my home server, Kauri it’s the least populated server with players transferring to more populated servers. Server mergers would be the wise course of action but SOE refuses to make such an effort. The effort would be futile if the game would be shut down in the near future.
3. The nonexistence availability of the game. You cannot buy a copy of the game anywhere- only as a Digital download from SOE. They give away the game in the trial and then if you want the two expansions you can pay $30.00 to once again download from SOE as well. It will make it a lot easier I guess not to have a bunch of retail copies on the shelf for sale after the servers are shut down but there is not going to be any impulse purchases of the game. Considering its current condition, that may be a good thing.
4. The announcement or widely believed rumors of new Star War MMOs. Lucas Arts, the owners of the Star Wars franchise has witnessed a 300k users level and they would like to see a Star Wars MMO achieve and exceed that level in the future. Its not going to be the NGE of SWG. In fact, its said that Lucas Arts has forgiven SOE of a 1 million dollar annual royalty for the franchise rights for the past two years . It’s a good because with the estimated users, 1 million may be the annual profit for the game. It’s a sure thing that a replacement for SWG is in the works.
5. The recent change in parent companies for SOE. For years SOE parent company has been Sony Picture Entertainment, moviemakers not computer gamers. Just recently SOE now answers to its new Sony Computer Entertainment America. As I have mentioned in my recent Rodo Report, Its going to be a tough sell to explain the current existence and the amount of resources that are being wasted on the low to no profit NGE. "
He maybe right, its looks like he is betting on it.
Comments
It's hard to say what will happen, games that are "dead" from SOE just sits there on life support. This morning I noticed I still had SWG on my laptop and checked some accounts to see which were active or had vet trials waiting and I got lucky and logged into a friend's (but he deleted all the characters) and the server list showed 3 heavy and 4 medium, rest were light and just 1 very light- seems to be picking up at a slow pace. But I'm certain devs won't do anything about the 18 other servers.
If Bioware's anticipated MMO turns out to be Star Wars then it'll for sure kill SWG, and I'll pick that up in a heartbeat.
I don't think they will close SWG anytime soon. Even when a new game is announced, they will still offer it. SOE is the nursing home for MMO's. Have they ever actually turned off one of their subscription games? I know they have done that to a few of the filler games, but overall, what they were offering three years ago is still available. Folks seem to think that licensing is an issue. If it were, it would have killed the game long ago...
Akevv Ostone
No Longer SWG Free
The NGE is doomed because it's well under 20K paid subs now, and threatening to fall below 10K. Multiple sources on that...
Basically the NGE is doomed because no one except a tiny sliver of the former player base will tolerate it, and an even tinier minority of THAT actually prefers it over pre anything NGE.
The NGE will be doomed exactly for the same reason the CU was...
They are about to announce the release of a new revamp!!! :P
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Impossible.
A total blow it away and re-do everything couldn't be anything but GOOD at this point. They can't make the NGE any more simple and brainless than it already is. Basically the only way to take the NGE further in a NGE'ish and Crapp-Y direction would be to replace the combat system with two buttons labeled "KILL THIS" and "RUN AWAY!"
A more complex system would be far beyond the capability of Team Toilet Boy to handle, so unless they have a secret team of competent Devs hiding somewhere who are doing this revamp in secret, I don't see this happening.
The Redoing has been their undoing . Restarting in an option but that may be too late. I wonder how the review of the "game" is going with Kaz?
Unless Kaz has lost it, or Smed possesses the ability to perform Jedi mind tricks, I can't see the NGE, Planetside, MXO, and Vanguard surviving 2008.
The only one of those games I could make a case for keeping would be Vanguard, because it's only about a year old.
Even if those games are marginally making money, it's not worth it to commit even skeleton crew Devs to games that barely do more than pay for themselves when you could take that same investment in salaries and put them on a new game that had the potential to draw more subs than all of them combined.
It absolutely makes NO sense at all to keep the station pass cripples going.
SOE doesn't have anything not named "Everquest" that is worth keeping open at this point.
I'm hoping they are close to announcing free server transfers. That will be the final death knell of the game. The low-population servers will get emptier and the people who got tricked into paying $50 bucks a pop for a paid transfer will howl like banshees.
Then again they may just continue to do nothing about the population issue and the servers will just empty themselves over time.
Even the heavy servers would do good to have 150-200 people playing on them. Bria is such a ghost town with so many dead cities and unattended vendors, theres no way in hell it's heavily populated. Here's an idea though, maybe they're going to revamp space combat! Auto-Attack ship combat ftw!
They do something fantastically stupid every day. It's called keeping the NGE alive, and actually DEVELOPING for it.
this will be a slow death. no server merges for that would show how empty the servers really are.
Meh...merges would actually help the game because at least the two servers they had would be populated. It would be way more fun for them to announce free transfers.
SOE should admit the failed, just admit it, close down SWG and then free up the IP so that another company can come in and do it right - like Blizzard.
Unless Kaz has lost it, or Smed possesses the ability to perform Jedi mind tricks, I can't see the NGE, Planetside, MXO, and Vanguard surviving 2008.
The only one of those games I could make a case for keeping would be Vanguard, because it's only about a year old.
Even if those games are marginally making money, it's not worth it to commit even skeleton crew Devs to games that barely do more than pay for themselves when you could take that same investment in salaries and put them on a new game that had the potential to draw more subs than all of them combined.
It absolutely makes NO sense at all to keep the station pass cripples going.
SOE doesn't have anything not named "Everquest" that is worth keeping open at this point.
Obviously SoE has other views about resources deployment and they are not announcing any scraps or termination. For the 20k 50k or whatever number of subscribers, the games are worth keeping.Maybe SoE thinks that 20k or 50k paying customers are more important than the unknown number of grumbling non-customers who are not paying. Maybe SoE feels that the trivial costs of running the current batch of games are so small that its not worth the PR implications of folding them up. Maybe ... who knows, except Smed, and Smed is not going to tell us.
Fixed
The server levels are relative, so having any that are heavy or medium doesn't mean anything other than it has more players compared to the other servers. The ones currently showing heavy would barely be a light pre-CU.
The server levels are relative, so having any that are heavy or medium doesn't mean anything other than it has more players compared to the other servers. The ones currently showing heavy would barely be a light pre-CU.
I would have to agree, They must be using a relative scale . It use to be in the PreCU you would chose light servers to start a character so not to compete for resources and repops of spawns . Now with the NGE , One must choose heavy and medium just for companionship and to compete.
Its tought to PvP when there is noone to see.
You know, I was just thinking this morning that the official forums are filling up with quite a few dissatisfied customers again. It just sounds to me like one more act of stupidity is going to push many people over the edge.
Undoubtedly, it seems that every era of SWG has been an exercise in patience on the part of it's subscribers. Ultimately that patience wears out.
I hate to admit it but I have given up predicting when SWG will close down. SOE seems to want to keep this thing going despite how much of a black eye it is. I think they would keep it going even if the only person logging on is Smed. LA seems to be allowing it because they want a smooth transition into the next game. They would hate to have to say - "Remember SWG, our first game that got closed down? Well, here is its new and improved replacement."
I think thhey would rather say, "SWG provided entertainment for hundreds of thousands of players during its lifetime and now that its successor has arrived - its time to retire the game with much fanfare and honor. Yada Yada BS Starwarsy what fans want etc etc."
SOE and LA wont be pumping anymore money into this game so this will be it's future until it dies very much like Planetside and if you think otherwise then you're stupid.
The server levels are relative, so having any that are heavy or medium doesn't mean anything other than it has more players compared to the other servers. The ones currently showing heavy would barely be a light pre-CU.
My point is that in the NGE it's growing back slowly, a few months ago I posted screenshots of server population in comparison from pre-CU to the NGE (date Dec before my vet trial expired), and a few months ago there were 0 heavy and Bria was the only medium at the time. Now compare the results I post a few months ago to now, it's growing.
I even said before that the devs has tweaked the population status threashold, I know for a fact that servers I played on (Lowca & Tarquinas) were regularly "light" pre-CU but still had 3x more people than it does now with the same status "light".
Undoubtedly, it seems that every era of SWG has been an exercise in patience on the part of it's subscribers. Ultimately that patience wears out.
Yeah read the "Fun Stuff" part 1 and 2 posts, it shows how clueless Blixtev and Hanse are. SOE devs in the past has always had trouble or their constant excuse "miscommunication" for not properly addressing the top issues that customers post about.
For example, when NGE first came out, Jedi had 0 defense and 0 armor for the first 6 months, we kept requesting innate armor or player crafted clothes with armor on them and what do we get? Jedi robes with armor on them and loot clothes with craptastic armor stats. We asked for bounty hunter to get a stealth from radar ability and they give that to commando, they gave all the goodies to commando (which eventually got nerfed) and gave bounty hunter the ability to do everything (swiss army knife) over all other professions and do it up to 64m away. Helios was a fan of commando, go figure. When someone that's a fan of BH is given lead designer like Blixtev, that's what will happen.
I've found that the servers get a little busier after a publish, and the recent publish may have given hope to some people to try the game again.
We'll have to see what it's like again after 2-4 weeks when the excitement of "new content" wears thin.
Really at this point the only argument that can be made as to any benefit of keeping the NGE open is that LEC.
SOE doesn't. They don't own the IP, they really don't own the game, and it costs more to maintain with a similarly small player base as Planetside, and MXO (which they also don't own but got the rights cheap).
I don't think the desire to "keep SOMETHING live until the sequel (which if there is one at this time isn't being made by SOE) comes out" will affect new management's decision to prune it.
Indeed, getting rid of SWG would be in SOE's best interest right now.
I am sure they would shut it down if they were not making a profit.
Then again what do i know about business.
Account has been stolen, why would someone want to steal my account?