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Classic-> NGE-> CU/RB
BlackWatch
Member UncommonPosts: 972
If SOE would've started off with the Classic SWG game then made the transition to the NGE and then ultimately ended up with the CU/RB... how would that have impacted the game?
Or, for the sake of a grand 'what if' scenario... what if the order were NGE-CU-Classic? Where would we be today?
I'n this scenario, we would keep expansions in place as well as 'content' that has rolled out for the game.
Comments
Had SWG launched with the NGE as the core game, it would likely be doing slightly better than it currently is, if it wasn't shut down in before now. The NGE is just a flat out bad game design, in both concept and implementation. The only benefit gained by launching with the NGE, as opposed to revamping the game into the NGE, would be that a whole lot less people would be pissed over having their game taken away for the NGE. Had the NGE been the core game at launch, I don't think the game would have lasted long enough to be revamped, nor do I think it would have had enough subscribers for SOE/LEC to feel a revamp would be worth the effort or expense.
The pre-CU to NGE to CU scenario would have ended the same as things are now. The game would be limping along with an anemic subscriber base and people would still be pissed off about the revamps. The CU was pretty bad on its own (it was slowly improving by the time the NGE was announced).
The only chance SWG had to be successful was for development to be focused on improving the launch version of the game. Bugs should have been fixed and content should have been added. Instead the developers focused on trying to balance the profession system (an impossible task and an unnecessary one), herd the playerbase into the Jedi grind, and secret revamps. Too much effort was put into screwing with the game mechanics and too little adding more things for the players to do.
This is kinda what they are doing now (or trying to do), and it is failng.
The mistake was EVER changing the game in a dramatic way that upset significant portions of the existing playerbase.
Thus, the CU was the wrong thing to do, the NGE was the wrong thing to do, the GCW revamp was the wrong thing to do, the Chapter Six Combat Downgrade was the wrong thing to do, and several other changes they have made were each, at the time of implementation, the wrong thing to do.
In a persistent world, customers have a right to expect a certain amount of persistence. They also need to expect change. It is up to the service provider to strike the perfect balance between the two, carefully considering each change, and how it will affect players. If they fail, the game fails.
SOE failed.
fishermage.blogspot.com
The game would have continue'd only with the 9 "ionic" professions, as far i know BM "sort of returning CH/Bio" was due to populair demand, but without the pre-cu version there was no CH so no demand, it might have gotten "pets" but probebly nothing like CH/Bio/BM, probebly a mix between EQ/Wow pets.
Crafting would be no more complicated as WOW sort of crafting, as pre-cu crafting was still only something for either the true hardcore or true niche mmorpg player.
Many thing where seen as bad due to it could be compared to what we had, if the NGE happend from beta/release, we either would be satisfied (doesn't mean we would not be criticel cause we still could) with the game or simply left the game. But it's the drastic change from one game to a different game which has cause'd this uproar and true dislike towards SWG/SOE by many people.
The remaining devs at SWG should watch the Seinfeld episode where George realizes his natural instinct is always wrong so he starts to do the opposite. That is their problem in a nutshell.
It does not matter which order you place the nge in, its wrong in any form of formula you can come up with, check the O boards for the latest train wreck changes!
If SWG had started out as NGE? At least it would be a whole lot easier to find a game that replaced it if the desire to play MMOs continued to exist after that experience. TSO hooked me on MMOs due in part to it's social aspect. When I started playing SWG, I thought I was playing a "traditional" style MMO. (I knew TSO was different as it didn't have combat and was based on a single-player sim.) I thought ALL other "traditional" MMOs would be designed like SWG. Then the levels were added with CU along with massive grouping but for the first time I heard the words "we have enough low level people in our group." What a change! The second combat character I created during pre-cu, I headed straight to AH on Bria. I had learned from my first combat toon that grouping in AH was the best way to get xp (I'd started as a noob getting xp on things outside Mos E which is the LONG way to noobie grind.) Someone was advertising for group members but no noobs please. Kept my mouth shut, joined the group, and was a successful member of the group with not much more than a starting profession unlocked box. There was no big flashing "NOOB LEVEL" sign over my head that allowed people to discriminate against me. Then came NGE and the crap that went with it (in CU people of various levels could still group, kill things of higher level as member of group, and get good xp from the group). The NGE started out unplayable but I will admit I returned a few times....with the time I stayed getting shorter and shorter and me usually ending up dancing in the empty guild city's cantina as I chatted with the few guild members left using SWG as an expensive chat room.
BUT, post NGE I went through several other MMOs in an attempt to find one like SWG....after all remember I thought SWG followed a "traditional" MMO model. After all, it turned a year old around a month after I started playing it so the language was in place and used like it was a common language (player cities, server cities, mission terminals, waypoints, skill boxes ...). How was a noob to MMO worlds with combat to know that the language was fairly unique to SWG (and perhaps a few other MMOs)? I thought it would be rather easy to find a replacement. How wrong I was!
IF NGE had been my original SWG experience, IF I had not been turned off of MMOs by the bugginess and style of playing that was NGE in the beginning (assume the game was playable after a year on the market and I was not totally turned off by the way the game was designed which is a big stretch for the second so let's go with maybe I would not have assumed that all MMOs had the same system or me being so hooked on MMOs from TSO that I was willing to give others a try), and IF the lack of need for community (AKA the "social aspect") had not turned me off MMOs, at least there would have been other, even better, games to play. BUT then we are assuming that I would have even picked up SWG to begin with since the description on the box that convinced me to buy it as I was standing in the store waivering back and forth was the ability to be a tailor or entertainer. In a game designed from the beginning as NGE, would those professions have existed? If looting starts out as the best way to get stuff, why have crafting professions at all? If kill, loot, repeat in a grindfest is the mode of a game, why have a profession based on actually taking time out of a grindfest to heal or buff? I know I wouldn't have needed a second account because traders are straight traders with all the skills they need for trading so I wouldn't have bought a second account based on a need for vendors as my master crafter/master tailor/master musician template didn't have any extra points for getting more vendors. And it was getting hooked on CH from the first CH/BE I met in game that caused me to turn that second account into a combat toon.