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What would it take?
JaydinBane
Member Posts: 18
It's obvious that we all at one point loved SWG, so here's the million dollar question:
Would you even ever consider going back and if you would, what would be the required changes?
Comments
Well it's been asked before, but I don't mind answering again:
Smed would have to resign or get the boot at this point. Can't trust anything the guy says, so I can't justify giving him my money for anything in advance.
Everyone who paid subscription money because they were promised a profession revamp, and then saw that same profession instead deleted with the NGE, should get all sub money back that was paid beyond Nov. 15/05 (note this refund isn't because the game was changed, it would be restitution for alleged false advertising).
Everyone who paid subscription money beyond Nov. 15 to play the new game expansion, should also get that money back, since the NGE (which gutted the expansion) wasn't mentioned at all in either of the two dev chats prior to its release (once again restitution for alleged false advertising).
Serious bugs and issues that have persisted for years would have to be actually fixed. Especially the ones SOE said they would address.
An official apology from Lucasarts and SOE for misleading their customers regarding the profession revamps and the expansion, and for attempting to exchange one target audience for another, AFTER release.
All of that would have to happen before I even looked at the game again. However, I'd still be wary that new RMT buffs and loot might render ingame buffs and loot obsolete, and that game mechanics might be systematically manipulated by SOE to increase demand for RMT items.
You'll notice that most of these items have to do with ethical business practices and treating customers with basic respect. In my experience, SOE is frankly abusive towards those that play their games. That needs to stop, and SOE needs to take important steps to make amends for past actions.
I've alredy gone back and tried it a few times and regret each time that I did. The game is just boring... it would take an entire new game to have me stay a lengthy amount of time.
For me it would be:
1. Pre CU Combat - queuing up attacks, no over the should camera, no constant clicking to attack
2. Designated build areas so that every planet doesn't look like over grown abandon housing complex. Buildings are haphazard even when the best attempts are made to place them in an organized fasion. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that there are no 'roads' or tiled ground connecting the buildings so everything is dug into a hill and all the buildings are uneven, with grass, trees, or rocks jutting out between them. It makes the best town look like a demilitarized zone.
2. Quest lines for professions and diversified quest lines, not singular quests that lead all players to A to accomplish B and then go on to quest line C. Most decent MMO's have several quests and places to pickup quest lines so that not everyone is at the same place at the same time
3. Older crafting model (but I here tell they are actually going to do that!)
1. Smedley's head on a pike. Non-negotiable
2. Bring back all the old professions, bring back the skill system. This means, very definitely, CH the way it was. I want three greater sludge panthers out following me across the plains of Naboo back again. I want persistent mounts again. I want full sized rancors, tortons, fambaa, grauls in combat again. I want /pet /scold animations again.
3. Commitment to restoration of the virtual world; death to levels, and the artificiality of levels
4. Return of decay
5. Restoration of wounds, battle fatigue, and medical crafting for all medical heals and buffs. No more magic healing spells, except for Jedi. Oh, and if Jedi use their healing spells on others, yes, viz hit.
6. I can live with post NGE Jedi being grandfathered into their flashlighthood. But I want visiblity back, and, yes, I want back some means of controlling the population of maxed out Jedi. It can be a loss of skill boxes on death system or something similar, but asshats with sabers in Theed dueling has to go. In fact, some method of severely punishing dueling with sabers asshats in Theed has to be part of the deal.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
1. Pre CU Combat - queuing up attacks, no over the should camera, no constant clicking to attack
_________________________________________________________________________________
You should note that it's a checkbox to click on once to get rid of the over the shoulder camera angle, and you don't have to keep clicking to shoot.
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Unaware of the Jestor?
http://about.me/JestorRodo/
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I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Failcom should be given the SWG IP so they can remake the game into a 30GB piece of crap.
Nge (or CU) can never be a blip on my radar, have never been. It´s Pre CU or nothing. At first i was thinking Pre CU with some fixes, but after watching what happens when the amateurs at SOE start "fix" things, I prefer if they dont touch anything. Just Pre CU please, as it was, and I´m happy.
oooh only a few things.....like rollback to a time before the NGE, give us the content that was promised not the fiasco that was given.
On another note, i just found this while doing a little surfing, brings back memories
www.ugo.com/channels/games/features/starwars_galaxies/raphkoster.asp
Honestly I have to ask. As I see this written often. Would you actually pay them money and remain subscribed for say a year minimum, making it worth their while and play the game? Honestly since this happened now 3 years ago and most people refusing to play are refusing to pay them money due to "being lied to" and "fraud" and "broken promises" among the other things stated. I have to wonder with this much distrust in a company would you actually pony up 15 bucks a month and remain in the game for a decent amount of time to make it worth this companies while? Its a valid request, but with the amount of distaste many have who are asking this it makes me wonder if they would actually or could actualy bring themselves to play this game again no matter what state is was in even if it magically became 100% bug free, pre-cu 32 proffs and all requests filled. I personally when I don't like what is happening with something that much no matter what they do never return.
I am an old pre-cu vet and could care less what they do.I play a game for me and if I enjoy it I continue to play it. If they do something I do not like I cancel simple as that and go play another game.This buisness about what would they have to do is getting old. Whats done is done and there is nothing that will bring players back unless they are bored and looking for something different to do. I am one that decided to come back to swg because I got sick of playing wow. I have found it to be enjoyable again(Not Pre-CU or CU mind you) but it is still fun in its own way now. It will tied me over until Warhammer releases.
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Personally, I feel that by not changing their ways over the time since the NGE, by contunuing to erase past efforts of players without a care, by continuing to make wholesale changes to combat forcing players to learn a new game time and again, by continuing their dishonest development process, they have destroyed any possible opportunity to rebuild credibility since the NGE.
That being said, if I were in their shoes, as a show of good faith, in an attempt to rebuild a destroyed reputation they would have to: publically fire Smed; announce that their old methods were wrong and a issue a sincere apology; open up classic servers that were fully operational, and had all the bugs people already complained about already fixed, classic servers that were complete with all the new content that has been added. Essentially it would be launching an entirely new game in the old pre-CU skin --- the game as it always should have bee -- a working, smooth sandbox FULL of toys.
It would be no bigger than the task it was to make EQ2, so I know they are fully up to it, they just don't, under Smedley, have the will to fix their tarnished reputation; because, quite frankly, he CAN'T do this because the current course is what keeps him IN his job. Only the current course enables him to shift blame to others.
Will any of this sver happen? Nope, not with SOE.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Because that would be untrue. They had very little to do with the NGE as such. They had everything to do with wanting the game to be successful; for wanting SOE to fix it; for believing that SOE knew what they were doing and were acting in good faith and being honest about WHY the game was not as successful as it should have been (instead of blaming bugs and mismanagement, they blamed the complexity if the game vs WoW's simplicity); and for trusting SOE in that the NGE, a completely 100% SOE plan, would work.
Perhaps they should apologise for trusting SOE, but that wouldn't amount to much.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Because that would be untrue. They had very little to do with the NGE as such. They had everything to do with wanting the game to be successful; for wanting SOE to fix it; for believing that SOE knew what they were doing and were acting in good faith and being honest about WHY the game was not as successful as it should have been (instead of blaming bugs and mismanagement, they blamed the complexity if the game vs WoW's simplicity); and for trusting SOE in that the NGE, a completely 100% SOE plan, would work.
Perhaps they should apologise for trusting SOE, but that wouldn't amount to much.
Post your proof here that Lucas Arts had nothing to do with the NGE here.Last I heard everything that SOE does to SWG had to 1st be approved by Lucas Arts. I could be wrong,but since Lucas Arts is the owner of the Star Wars IP,it makes sense. I am not defending SOE,I just hate that everyone pins the entire blame on them,when you have Lucas Arts allowing things like the NGE to happen. So do not come on here saying Lucas Arts had nothing to do with it,when they most certainly had a hand in it.
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Because that would be untrue. They had very little to do with the NGE as such. They had everything to do with wanting the game to be successful; for wanting SOE to fix it; for believing that SOE knew what they were doing and were acting in good faith and being honest about WHY the game was not as successful as it should have been (instead of blaming bugs and mismanagement, they blamed the complexity if the game vs WoW's simplicity); and for trusting SOE in that the NGE, a completely 100% SOE plan, would work.
Perhaps they should apologise for trusting SOE, but that wouldn't amount to much.
Post your proof here that Lucas Arts had nothing to do with the NGE here.Last I heard everything that SOE does to SWG had to 1st be approved by Lucas Arts. I could be wrong,but since Lucas Arts is the owner of the Star Wars IP,it makes sense. I am not defending SOE,I just hate that everyone pins the entire blame on them,when you have Lucas Arts allowing things like the NGE to happen. So do not come on here saying Lucas Arts had nothing to do with it,when they most certainly had a hand in it.
This has been admitted by Brenlo, communications dirtector of SOE, by Jeff Freeman, former lead gameplay designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE, and by Dan Rubenfeld, Lead Designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE.
We know that LA approved of ot and allowed it to happen, but the question is: were they in a position to know better? No, they were not the person that was a game developer in general and an MMORPG developer in particular. The proof is all over these forums; but let me switch computers and have saved most of everything; and for the 474856585994904003003003049484747849292th time, share it with you.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Because that would be untrue. They had very little to do with the NGE as such. They had everything to do with wanting the game to be successful; for wanting SOE to fix it; for believing that SOE knew what they were doing and were acting in good faith and being honest about WHY the game was not as successful as it should have been (instead of blaming bugs and mismanagement, they blamed the complexity if the game vs WoW's simplicity); and for trusting SOE in that the NGE, a completely 100% SOE plan, would work.
Perhaps they should apologise for trusting SOE, but that wouldn't amount to much.
Post your proof here that Lucas Arts had nothing to do with the NGE here.Last I heard everything that SOE does to SWG had to 1st be approved by Lucas Arts. I could be wrong,but since Lucas Arts is the owner of the Star Wars IP,it makes sense. I am not defending SOE,I just hate that everyone pins the entire blame on them,when you have Lucas Arts allowing things like the NGE to happen. So do not come on here saying Lucas Arts had nothing to do with it,when they most certainly had a hand in it.
This has been admitted by Brenlo, communications dirtector of SOE, by Jeff Freeman, former lead gameplay designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE, and by Dan Rubenfeld, Lead Designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE.
We know that LA approved of ot and allowed it to happen, but the question is: were they in a position to know better? No, they were not the person that was a game developer in general and an MMORPG developer in particular. The proof is all over these forums; but let me switch computers and have saved most of everything; and for the 474856585994904003003003049484747849292th time, share it with you.
Thats like saying we at Lucas Arts have no clue about our games. You need to rethink your reply.SOE and Lucas Arts brought about the NGE.
It is also my Opinion that the constant whining in the forums about the state the game was in brought about the Combat Upgrade.Then if memory serves me right I remember all the protetsts about the CU and that we all needed to bombard Lucas Arts about our (The Communities Dissatisfaction to what SOE did with the CU) It was not long after CU the NGE came and was dumped on the players. Its my opinion that Lucas Arts saw the dis content and then made SOE come up with something fast and that somthing was the NGE. Thats my opinion.
Okay here we go. Once we were having just such an argument as to who was responsible for the NGE -- this being in response to Smed seemingly trying to shift blame as he does onto LEC, and people were having a rather vicious forum fight, with all the available evidence on the side that blamed mostly SOE for doing it, and LEC for allowing it to happen and for trusting SOE.
In response to this, Brenlo of SOE came forward and said the following:
"First a request, to those of you using this thread as your personal battleground, please take it to PM's.
So, I wanted to clarify that we did, here at SOE conceive and develop the NGE. We did so with the best of intentions, to try and make a better game. No blame or buck is being passed.
We can, and I am sure many of us will, debate for years on end whether this was a good idea. Personally, I believe the concept of the NGE was sound. Some smart guys had some good ideas to make the game better, Jeff being one of them, and they went for it. A bold move and honestly, I am happy to be a part of a company that is not afraid to try something different.
Where did we go wrong? Delivery, we failed in our timing and communication. That is where we let you down most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize. "
Now note carefully he takes all blame for the NGE, and in fact, says he was PROUD of it and the company that did it, which is/was SOE. Okay, that's the first piece, a blanket admission and a denial that it was LEC's doing. He is taking FULL credit for it and assuming a mantle of pride here.
fishermage.blogspot.com
That may be your opinion, but it contradicts all the facts.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I approve off all of your reasons but iIwould like to see SOE give up control of SWG all together as well.
Why not add Lucas Arts to the give up statement as well since how they had a great deal to do with the NGE as well.
Because that would be untrue. They had very little to do with the NGE as such. They had everything to do with wanting the game to be successful; for wanting SOE to fix it; for believing that SOE knew what they were doing and were acting in good faith and being honest about WHY the game was not as successful as it should have been (instead of blaming bugs and mismanagement, they blamed the complexity if the game vs WoW's simplicity); and for trusting SOE in that the NGE, a completely 100% SOE plan, would work.
Perhaps they should apologise for trusting SOE, but that wouldn't amount to much.
Post your proof here that Lucas Arts had nothing to do with the NGE here.Last I heard everything that SOE does to SWG had to 1st be approved by Lucas Arts. I could be wrong,but since Lucas Arts is the owner of the Star Wars IP,it makes sense. I am not defending SOE,I just hate that everyone pins the entire blame on them,when you have Lucas Arts allowing things like the NGE to happen. So do not come on here saying Lucas Arts had nothing to do with it,when they most certainly had a hand in it.
This has been admitted by Brenlo, communications dirtector of SOE, by Jeff Freeman, former lead gameplay designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE, and by Dan Rubenfeld, Lead Designer of SWG and co-creator of the NGE.
We know that LA approved of ot and allowed it to happen, but the question is: were they in a position to know better? No, they were not the person that was a game developer in general and an MMORPG developer in particular. The proof is all over these forums; but let me switch computers and have saved most of everything; and for the 474856585994904003003003049484747849292th time, share it with you.
Thats like saying we at Lucas Arts have no clue about our games. You need to rethink your reply.SOE and Lucas Arts brought about the NGE.
No that's like saying when I hire a builderto build my house, and he builds me a bad house, that's the builders fault. I am a guy with money, not a builder. Then when I ask him to fix it, and he breaks it some more, sure, I am sort of at fault, because it IS my money and I DID trust him, but that's about how much it is my fault.
LEC has shown time and again that when they work with good developers we get good games when they work with bad developers we get bad games. That shows they are guilty of sometimes choosing the wrong people to make their games, and for that they are certainly responsible, but not in the way you are implying.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I agree with you here,but in the end Lucas Arts allowed it to happen.They have full control over what SOE does to the game.Its still my opinion that alot of the changes came because of the constant Forum whining and complaining. Lucas Arts had the authority to stop the NGE and new very well how the vets would feel about it. It does not take a rocket scientist to know when you drop a bomb on sombody there would be massive retaliation,in this case your core vets and rightfully so.I guess I pretty much blame both of them.Oh well the game now is ok and will get me thru until Warhammer:P
Okay now for the second piece of evidence, Jeff Freeman's blog which he posted shortly after the NGE. Here we go. This one is pretty long, but please read it very carefully, looking soecifically ay who did what:
"SWG was my first job in the game industry. I had played UO for a couple of years or so and knew Raph Koster in that internet sort of way: everyone that visited or posted on any message board anywhere on the internet knew Raph Koster.
Played EQ to level 35, got killed by the same frickin' sand giant three times in a row trying to recover my corpse two weeks after a bug caused me to lose all my gear before EQ CS had the tech to undelete items and man that was it for me.
So I made a "grey shard" using POL (written by Eric Swanson, who also works at SOE now how weird is that?) and did that for a few years.
Those were Good Times. Friday I'd post a "Wishlist" thread and people would reply with a hundred things they wanted added to the game. And Saturday and Sunday I'd add hundreds of things to the game. Production on a single small server is pretty nice. None of this "Oh, that'll take 2 months to deliver and will require two programmers, a designer and three artists."
A lot of .broadcast "Hey everyone, brace yourselves, I'm going to replace the magic system in 3 2 1"-sorts of moments. Frequently doing development on the server that people were actually playing on, while they are playing on it, and only using a local server for really significant changes.
In terms of administration, the people were a lot harder to manage than the game. Not just the players either, but the co-admin's: the folk that hosted the server, gm "staff", and whatnot. Janey emailed Raph describing a pretty ugly situation, and he'd responded with just some no-nonsense advice on how-to-run-a-mud, which she forwarded to me, and to which I replied, directly to him.
That led directly to establishing, in writing, just what exactly the scope of everyone's responsibilities were, what the rules were, how they would be enforced, and so on. Simple stuff, right? We had none of that and, duh, we ran into a lot of problems 'til we did.
This had nothing to do with his position in the game industry and everything to do with his experience with MUDs, and my lack of it, and his willingness to share info with a fellow enthusiast. Great learning experience, should I ever run a MUD again: Sony hires professionals to do that stuff.
But it also opened a dialog between the two of us and I s'pose put my crazyass game design ideas on his radar.
Anyway, hadn't talked to Raph in a while (because, well, things had been running pretty smoothly) so one day I emailed him and asked how he'd been. He said if I sent him a resume then he could tell me what he was working on.
So I sent him a resume. And they flew me down to Austin to meet the whole SWG team and interview for a systems design position, which I didn't get. Heh.
Couple months later they flew me back again for a worldbuilding position, which I did get.
Within a few months or so I was scripting systems. Then within a couple years, lead content designer for JtL. Then a few months ago, "live lead systems designer". My titles were growing and growing!
As of last week or so, now it's "Lead Game Play Designer". A step backwards in terms of character-count, but not actually a demotion, or even that big a change in responsibilities.
Mind, we have a Creative Director and that isn't me, and a Lead Designer and that isn't me either. They're both my bosses, even though my title's longer. And there's a whole plethora of producers and executives and executive producers above that.
So don't get the crazy notion that I'm "in charge" here. "The Man" is a many-headed beast called Management. I just try to help it make good decisions. With regard to game mechanics, it even lets me decide, sometimes.
So a few months ago The Man comes along and says "What can we do to make this the most fun game it can possibly be?"
It was the lead designer who holed-up in his office for a few days and then said, "Hey, come look at this."
There's no way we can do that.
There's no way we should do that.
Man that's fun.
The Man will never let us get away with doing that.
We can't do it.
We shouldn't do it.
Oh man that is fun.
When an executive producer sees something that is impossible to do, but which is too fun not to do, he makes a noise like "Hoooooooooph".
My job was to be the guy to say, "Yes we can do that." I had to say this about forty times a day for two months. Lead Designer said it too, of course, but no one believed him, because he's crazy. Obviously.
And they would only believe me for a few minutes at a time.
It's frustrating to see the posts about Raph rolling over in his grave, crying himself to sleep, seeing all his design thrown out the window, etc. The notion seems to be that Raph's game is slow-paced, deliberate, social, "worldy", and in no case ever "fun" vs. this change which tosses-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Specifically, that 'removing the Raph' is what makes it fun.
First off, Star Wars Galaxies is already a whole lot of fun for a whole lot of people. And it was very successful.
And Fast Action Combat and the introduction of classes based on iconic Star Wars character archtypes doesn't toss-out everything Koster-esque about Galaxies. Far from it.
The social elements of Galaxies' design remain, and for good reason. MMOs must be MMOs and not just big single-player games that everyone just happens to play all at once. We wouldn't have gotten things like player cities, entertainers and so on without Raph, and I wouldn't want Galaxies to be without them. Simply removing them wouldn't make the game more fun anyway.
There's a lot of cool in Galaxies. We're making all of it easier to see, easier to get to.
Honestly, I doubt I even have the capacity to design a game that is completely un-Raph like. Who do you think taught me this stuff? Over the course of years. Here's how you get X. Here's why you want X.
Yeh, I think I'm good 'nuff to see the 'why' and come up with 'Well if that's why, then we could do Z instead', but at that point it's a quibble over implementation detail, not design philosophy. I don't agree with Raph on every point about every thing, we're pretty much aligned in terms of high level game design.
For example 'Socialization requires downtime' is something Raph might say that I might not agree with. But 'MMO's require socialization, otherwise what's the point?' is not something we'd disagree about.
Many people have been influential in my personal development as a game designer and I've learned an awful lot on my own, but nothing and no other single person comes anywhere close the influence that Raph Koster has had on, in terms of game design from soup-to-nuts, what things I think about, if not in fact what I think about those things.
So I think these sorts of remarks are a little inaccurate, a tiny bit irksome, pretty unfair. "
now, please note, even if we assume that LEC is "the man," what we have is "the man" saying, make the game more fun. Now, isn't that reasonable? We have a game that is failing, largely because of SOE mismanagement, as well as a botched CU, also botched due to SOE mismanagement. This "man" comes along and says, fix it.
Jeff and his people come up with the NGE, and they have to SELL IT TO THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS. Now, even assuming that is LECm it shows that once again LEC is guilty, but primarily of TRUSTING SOE. WE have here Jeff admitting taht he and his people came up with it, thought it was amazing and fun, pushed for it, and made it happen.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Step one: numbers are pretty good, not great, when SWG launches. Predicitons of it being the first North American MMORPG to break the one million barrier fail to materialize. Game is broken and incomplete at launch, but they launch it anyway.
Fast forward to Blizzard opening up the gates of Azeroth, and subscription numbers of WoW skyrocket.
Lucas Arts is outraged that this box of banthapoodoo in a box labled "Star Wars" is getting its ass kicked by this Blizzard outfit they've never even heard of with an IP that it like totally made up and isn't based on a very lucrative motion picture IP and is causing the baby George Lucas to cry.
Lucas Arts tells SOE they need to make this game more like WoW, most importantly in the huge rivers of cash drowning accountants sense, which is in fact the only thing that Lucas Arts cares about.
SOE, also hurting because their rep as the King of the MMORPG has been eviscerated by those upstarts at Blizzard who are kicking John Smedley's white, pasty ass all over the playgroudn with their first MMO effort, desperately tries to convert SWG into WoW with a Star Wars skin thinking that if they're more like WoW they'll get WoW's numbers. Unfortunately, what SOE doesn't get is that WoW is a phenomenon because, unlike SOE products, it works and it's polished, and SOE doesn't do working software or polish, and LA is so used to selling crap in a box labled "Star Wars" that they don't care about bug free software or polish.
So, we have the CU, which is a stopgap measure before the new, improved, somthing like a shitty cross between Jedi Academy and WoW NGE is foisted on an unsuspecting public.
The rest is history, as it turns out the WoW audience isn't interested in a bad copy of WoW with a Star Wars skin.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I agree with you here,but in the end Lucas Arts allowed it to happen.They have full control over what SOE does to the game.Its still my opinion that alot of the changes came because of the constant Forum whining and complaining. Lucas Arts had the authority to stop the NGE and new very well how the vets would feel about it. It does not take a rocket scientist to know when you drop a bomb on sombody there would be massive retaliation,in this case your core vets and rightfully so.I guess I pretty much blame both of them.Oh well the game now is ok and will get me thru until Warhammer:P
yes and if I hire a known expert builder, and they build me a bad house, sure, I allowed it to happen, but I am not to BLAME. I am only to blame for trusting the bad, unscrupulous builder. That is what I am saying but not what you are implying. Sure, LEC could NOT developed the game and shut it down, I guess -- because THAT is the position YOU are putting them in.
They certainly SHOULD have known better, and maybe it would have been better to shut the game down, hire another developer, and start over again, but they chose to trust SOE, and yes, that was a mistake.
They chose to accept the best efforts of the bad guys they hired and went with it.
fishermage.blogspot.com