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It Wasn't The NGE That Ruined SWG!
MARTYB2K
Member Posts: 167
It was everyone leaving. Yes it's a paradox. Im sure if most people had stayed, and not threw they toys out of the pram, the game would be as good as it once was. Because the subscriptions are so low now, nothing is being invested in the game to make it great. People should have given them more chance instead of leaving after 24 hours.
Comments
Everyone left BECAUSE of the NGE. You cannot escape that fact.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
But most people today just mention the lack of players as the most negative thing. It's not a bad game, just lacking interaction with other real players. Im sure many would still be having a good time.
Well, the few remaining souls in SWG-NGE are the few that actually liked the NGE direction...
So... what this means,is that there are so few that liked the NGE(or stayed because it is the only Star Wars MMO) that they barely have anyone to play with.
So it's not our fault for leaving that the NGE sucks, it's the NGE's fault that it sucks... Had they rolled back, we would have stayed, had they moved back to a PRE-CU system or even the CURB.. More of us might have returned.... But alas, we got the NGE, and most of us are smart enough not to pay for crap with our $'s.
There is nothing the developers could add to, or tweak about, the NGE that could make the game worth playing. The NGE is not a fixable core for any game, let alone one that once offered much more freedom. The vast majority of the SWG playerbase left because there was nothing for them to stick around for. The game would never again offer the freedom that was available prior to the NGE.
Had everyone stuck around, most of what has been tweaked and changed about the NGE would never have happened. Development would have been focused on churning out expansion packs filled with kill-loot-rinse-repeat craptastic WoW knock off quests. The very few improvements that have occured to the post NGE game were a result of the massive collapse of the subscription numbers. No amount of development resourced could do more than add another coat of lipstick on the pig that is the NGE.
The NGE is, and was, the problem. It isn't the player's fault that they weren't willing to continue to pay for a horrible unfun product with the fantasy that it would somehow magically get better.
The developers are in an actual paradox now. The only way to improve the game would be a ground up revamp. A ground up revamp would cause most of what is left of the anemic playerbase to become upset and quit.
No, it really is a bad game. Even with the number of players WoW has, it would still be a bad game. Having more people around to share in the misery would just result in more misery, not better gameplay.
If it were a good game, people would play it.
If it was worth the money, people would play it.
They are not, and it isn't.
I left because I was pissed off. I returned the Trials of Obi-Wan. What else could I do as a subscriber? As far as I know the only way to say you're pissed off is by unsubscribing, so I did. I did come back a few months afterwards and found out that yes, it did suck.
Umm, yes it was the NGE and the CU that made most of us quit. They took and in depth skill based game and turned it into a level based, half baked game.
I agree with most everyone who left on the principle the NGE represented a betrayal by SOE on it's loyal subscriber base. Whose fault it is (LA or SOE) has been just another end of this bone-of-contention that is the NGE. It took us by suprise. There was no avoiding it. It's finality ranked with death and taxes.
The NGE made MMO history. It will always be remembered.
Lol is this for real?
Wow Envy and gross incompentence caused SWG's downfall, everyone leaving was the end result.
The players never even entered into the equation if Jeff Freeman is to be beleived. The 200k subs lost with the NGE were to be replaced with a "target audience". And had they succeeded you would have your wish. Fortunatly SOE incompentence was greater than it's greed in this case.
And as for giving them a chance didn't we do that with the CU?and the curb,and to get down to it didn't we give them a chance when they launched a unfinished game to begin with? And we still loved it?
SOELA drove the customers away in droves the whole history of the game and continue to do so to this day.
Please don't blame the players for corporate incompentence and a bad desicion making process at the top.
The player's do not even enter into the eqation.
"My business failed!"
"How?"
"My customers abandoned me. It's their fault!"
Try another excuse.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Let me give the OP a scenairo..
You have a resturant that you like to go to. The food is ok, but it has good atmosphere and a lot of your friends hang out there. So, after frequenting said resturant for 2 years or so, you go in and order your regular burger. Instead of your burger, you get a plate of cat food. Same price of course.
Now personally, I'm going to leave. I will then tell everyone I know how bad it is, along with all my friends that used to hang out there.
What do you think would happen to the resturant? I guess though you will have those few odd ones willing to settle and pay for cat food.
Me, I'll be across the street having a burger.
I sense bogus logic here.
The result of all leaving caused by $OE attitude not to listen to player suggestions but instead take away, nerf and lower quality.
They had their chance that was the 6 months of CU, enough time to remove CU and do what players really want , polish and add to pre cu.
6 months not 24 hours. My patience was colossal.
And its still on them, release classic pre cu server and i am sure subscription would go up.
The ball and the fault is still on $OE side.
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Seriously, please tell me you are being sarcastic here .......
The players left because the GAME SUCKS.
{ Mod Edit }
If the game is so fun then why aren't you in-game leveling up your Jedi? Spare us your lame attempt to justify this garbage of a game.
Tecmo Bowl.
or how about the game i actually bought? you know... the one that is explained in the game manual? with the screenies in the back of the box and that say, and i quote "experience....(box seal riped this part)... greatest starwars (box seal ripped this part)... ever lived- YOURS."
that contradicts the fact that the devs specifically said : the NGE is here to stay.
Its not even the NGE that suck most, but game its self.
Its so outdated now. They just old.
The game was way ahead of it's time, and the NGE was a step backwards in devolution. No subsequent games have come close to what SWG was; most are primitive WoW copies.
SWG was next gen, and nothing today is even near matching that.
fishermage.blogspot.com
SWG was one of the greatest sandbox games ever to be released, but that was only part of what made it great. The community added quite a lot to what made SWG.
The loss of one was regretable but the loss of both was pretty much the death knell.
I've only just logged in recently to the "vet trial" and to be honest it's a shadow of it's former self. The "cookie cutter" wow clone is a shadow of it's once famed glory. And without that the community is all but lost. There were a few players online last night but it was a shadow of the glory days a few years ago when you couldn't move in Coronet due to lag from the amount of players present.
Gone are the "hunting parties", Gone are the mission groups. if you are not in a guild in swg you will be hard pressed to find someone to group with. Although tbh there is no real reason, that I've found, to do so anymore.
Also, your point is partially right, the SWG team has been downsized due to budget cuts and "easier" management of each profession, before the NGE there was well around 75 members with at least 2 people per 32 profession and sometimes more (Jedi for eg) then the art team, bug team, JTL team. Now they have 15 members if not fewer, fewer people gets fewer things done.
The time interval between patches during the combat upgrade were incredibly fast, publishes went through the door at least every 3 weeks, most of the patches in the NGE took up to 4 months!
I've been playing SWG on and off the last few months..and I just uninstalled it for good. The new dev team is trying hard, it's a commendable effort, but, it's impossible to save. No collection will do it, no instance; the community and diversity of character is what would make me stay, both of which sadly lacks in SWG atm. I mean, some of the stuff missing in SWG is baseline for most games on the market now; only in SWG do you have to fight with the devs to get things like appearance tabs, or have professions that can't actually do what their profession says it does(smugglers who aren't allowed to smuggle, spys who do not have a spying mini-game/system in place). How in the name of god do jedi not have a force ranking system, or, at least, the ability to choose different colors for the robes?! colors are easy to implement, and they won't do it, damn, just for the illusion of diversity's sake. The GFX are from another era, the character movement, LOL..I played because I love star wars...but I have never seen a game so truly and thoroughly fucked up beyond all recognition as this one. Soon as I upgrade my rig, it's AOC for me, I'll just go without in the meantime.
Don't worry. You wont have to go without SWG for long as they'll keep giving you free time to try and entice you back.
Don't worry. You wont have to go without SWG for long as they'll keep giving you free time to try and entice you back.
Heh. I'll not sully my hard drive with this crap any longer, no matter what enticements are offered...this steaming piece of camel shit is gone from my life forever...
The CU and NGE were fiascos, there is no doubting that, but I have very little doubt that the game wouldn't have succeeded any better if they hadn't made those changes. It didn't have enough casual appeal to even outstrip EverQuest numbers, let alone ever reach second place after WoW. The game was too complex, too time consuming, too crafting oriented and riddled with all kinds of hardcore style time sinks in the form of battle wounds, battle fatigue, slow experience curve, high learning curve, general downtime and excessive travel requirements for quests, forcing the most popular iconic class to be rare, Jedi. These along with a myriad other things would have kept the game down in any shape or form.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
Yo genius, it was a virtual world simulator. It did indeed take thought to play it well, but it was not very difficult. Not difficult, but not super-easy either: what you got out of it scaled with the effort you were willing to put into it. And the more they dumbed it down, the faster they lost players.