The game was released late and unfinished, and full of bugs. We were promised that the unfinished content would be added soon, and our concerns were being addressed. The promised contents and addressing of concerns never materialized, for the most part. A quarterly storyline was initiated, and lasted three quarters, until development ceased to even consider content, for the most part, in favor of taking a sledgehammer to the game mechanics, when a screwdriver was required. The players were a bit slow to unlock their Jedi characters, and the developers got antsy, so we were given holocrons, with explicit instructions on what we needed to do to unlock Jedi, as the Life Day event. This resulted in the vast majority of the playerbase ceasing to play the game, and instead mindlessly grinding out professions in order to unlock Jedi. In the aftermath of the Holocron holiday, more and more complaints about unblanaced PvP were appearing on the forums, as PvPers were trying whatever build was the flavor of the month. Unfortunately, the compliaints were mainly focused on 1 on 1 duels, and the dev team set about trying to balance the professions. This was done by ignoring most of what was causing the imbalance, and the fact that 1 on 1 duels should never be considered when attempting to balance professions that can be mixed and matches, and nerfing everything that wasn't causing the problems. This lead to the idea of a "Combat Update Rebalance", or CURB. The CURB was being developed with the input of the playerbase, and focused on addressing the major problems the combat system had since the game was released. Things were progressing well, which lead the folks in charge to scrap the CURB and slap together the "Combat Upgrade", or CU, in about two weeks. The CU was based on WoW's combat system and introduced a level based system to the game. It also lead to the departure of a few key development team members, due to the way the CU was implemented. The CU was horrible when released, and broke many game features. The development team focused on stringing along the playerbase with promises of content, whilt they focused on fixing the CU system. During this time the president of SOE, John Smedley, popped up on the official forums to say the 'CU was here to stay', in response to a growing number of posts about rumors of another revamp, and pleas by players to roll back the CU to the pre-CU system. At one point, a rumor was posted by a player that described a brand new Star Wars MMO, that was supposed to replace SWG. The poster of the rumor was flamed by most of the posters, and even the folks from SOE claimed the new rumor was false. Soon, a new SWG box began popping up on retail sites called the "Starter Kit". The description of the new box was strangely similar to the rumored new MMO. When brought to the attention of the folks at SOE, they quickly claimed it was a false listing and that the description was likely from BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic game. A few months later, the LucasArts producer of SWG posts a message on the OBoard explaining that it was decided that SWG needed a complete revamp, one that exactly matched the supposedly debunked rumored MMO meant to replace SWG. A new version of SWG was revealed, one that had a psuedo-FPS combat system, a horribly implemented on at that, and a class based character system that replaced the former profession system. The reasoning behind the changes was that MMO players are idiots and needed fewer choices to prevent being overwhelmed. The new system was called the "New Game Enhancement", or NGE. The NGE was an attempt to replace the existing playerbase with an entirely new playerbase, on that was thought to be larger, but turned out to not actually exist. WoW's success was a major catalyst, according to the president of SOE, John Smedley. The NGE was poorly coded, poorly implemented, and, in the words of John Smedley, president of SOe, 'nowhere near fun'. The development team jumped right in to address these problems, mainly by ignoring them and focusing on screwing with other things. When the vast majority of the playerbase quit, they quickly chainged focus and decided what was needed was to add more content to the game, while ignoring the fact that everyone left because the core game was what had made SWG the single worst MMO on the market. Eventually, the playrbase continued to dwindle, so the dev team decided to focus on changes to improve the PvP aspect of the game. These changes included adding WoW's talent system and WoW's original Honor System, after the folks at Blizzard had decided their original Honor System wasn't very fun and needed to be replaced. The new direction was so successful that the game continued to stagnate and eventually the lead designer and lead producer were promoted to leading the DCU team, even though their success didn't translate into an increase in subscriptions or a better reputation for the game. The new dev team leadership quickly set about doing the things the former lead designer had posted about on the OBoards, before he left, but likely after he knew about being promoted. The new additions to the game included instanced dungeons that required a group to complete, and gave rewards for those who were willing to repeat them until they completed the full sets. They also included EQ2's collection system, which is a mindless grind to get certian rare drops by killing the same MOBs over and over. Unfortunately, considering the core game was left unchanged since it was declared 'nowhere near fun', nothing was actually done that had any chance of improving the game. The net result of the past, almost three years worth of, development is that they added more ways to engage in experienceing SWG current core game, which is just flat out awful, even more than before the changes. On top of that, they also nerfed everyone to make even the regular game take longer to do anything. I assume it is due to the fact that the folks at SOE hate gamers, and hate gamers who are Star Wars fans even more. During the post NGE era, the folks from SOE regularly attacked, insulted, and degraded their players. The hostility from the folks at SOE fluxuates between being outright, and just slipped into otherwise begnin posts. Basically, the history of SWG is one where the developers decided they knew better what the players wanted than the players themselves, but what the developers thought the players wanted was the opposite of what the players actually wanted. When the developers realized this, they decided to replace their current players with a new group of players who wanted what the developers wanted to give them. Unfortunately the number of players who wanted that was many times smaller than the players they already had.
I had a very interesting experience today, and was going to start a thread on it, but I think it fits in perfectly here.
I'm a college professor, and two of my students were talking about MMO's. I chimed in saying, "I'm looking forward to the Star Trek game."
One student thought I said "StarWars game." He then began to explain the entire history of SWG from launch until present. He wanted to spare me a bad experience. I can't help thinking, "it's too late for me my son." lol.
Anyways, I found this to be an interesting experience. Here was a nice kid, with no corporate interest, and no reason to spin anything. He wasn't trying to talk me into playing his game either. He just told me the truth from his perspective about a nasty MMO. His story matches the chronology that Obee shared.
If you add Obee's list of events, and Admriker's list of lies, and the stuff about the expansion, you have a really good idea of why people avoid this mess.
I have had the exact same occurance happen to me with clients.
The irony is that when I first picked the game up in 2004, the guys at my local EB actually tried to warn me off of it, over stuff they'd done to it THAT year.
Almost wish I had put it back on the shelf. But then I wouldn't have experienced 6 wonderful months of the Pre-CU.
These days I have fun bringing up the NGE when I go to software stores. Almost without fail I get a diatribe about how horrible it was, how bad the game is, and how you don't want to go anywhere near SOE.
Comments
Tiggs NEVER lied to us knowingly. She did so because she was given bad information.
When she learned the truth and saw how shitty the NGE was she spoke frankly to us.
And was fired for it.
More info please?
More info please?
Sorry, but that subject can't be discussed on this site. There is a sticky about it.
I had a very interesting experience today, and was going to start a thread on it, but I think it fits in perfectly here.
I'm a college professor, and two of my students were talking about MMO's. I chimed in saying, "I'm looking forward to the Star Trek game."
One student thought I said "StarWars game." He then began to explain the entire history of SWG from launch until present. He wanted to spare me a bad experience. I can't help thinking, "it's too late for me my son." lol.
Anyways, I found this to be an interesting experience. Here was a nice kid, with no corporate interest, and no reason to spin anything. He wasn't trying to talk me into playing his game either. He just told me the truth from his perspective about a nasty MMO. His story matches the chronology that Obee shared.
If you add Obee's list of events, and Admriker's list of lies, and the stuff about the expansion, you have a really good idea of why people avoid this mess.
I have had the exact same occurance happen to me with clients.
And nice job, Obee.
The irony is that when I first picked the game up in 2004, the guys at my local EB actually tried to warn me off of it, over stuff they'd done to it THAT year.
Almost wish I had put it back on the shelf. But then I wouldn't have experienced 6 wonderful months of the Pre-CU.
These days I have fun bringing up the NGE when I go to software stores. Almost without fail I get a diatribe about how horrible it was, how bad the game is, and how you don't want to go anywhere near SOE.
The only part of SWG history I care about anymore is:
"Oct 21, 2008: The End"