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LucasArts Says Star Wars Galaxies Isn't Going Anywhere
JestorRodo
Member UncommonPosts: 2,642
and I say that has been its problem for the past 3 years now - Its not going anywhere.
From: www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/86979-LucasArts-Says-Star-Wars-Galaxies-Isnt-Going-Anywhere
The excitement of the new baby has taken all the attention away from the firstborn, but not to worry: LucasArts says Star Wars Galaxies will continue to be fully supported.
Star Wars: The Old Republic, the upcoming MMOG set in the Knights of the Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe, is one of the most anticipated games in recent memory, leveraging both the Star Wars name and the reputation of developer BioWare for creating top-notch, epic RPGs. All but lost in the hullabaloo of the game's recent unveiling, however, is Star Wars Galaxies, the original Star Wars-based MMOG created by Sony Online Entertainment and launched in 2003.
Despite a rocky start, the turmoil of the New Game Enhancements (NGE) and reportedly low subscription numbers, Star Wars Galaxies continues to operate, and Tom Nichols of LucasArts says that won't be changing anytime soon. "We have many other features planned to support Star Wars Galaxies," he told Eurogamer. "We see no reason why the two games can't exist together."
He added that LucasArts has learned many lessons from its experience with Galaxies, particularly with regards to what players want from a Star Wars game. "We've learned how important it is to listen to your community and act on that feedback," he said. "We also realized what players expect from an online Star Wars game - they expect to be that iconic Star Wars hero as soon as possible. They don't want to play for hundreds of hours just to become a Jedi." As a result, unlike Star Wars Galaxies, players in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be able to begin the game as a full-fledged Jedi or Sith.
Nichols also said that Star Wars mastermind George Lucas is "very excited" about the new game. "He knows how important this project is for LucasArts and that it represents our re-entrance into the MMO space," he said. "He's very much involved with the project, obviously at a high level, but he's very enthusiastic about it."
Whether or not Lucas believes that Star Wars: The Old Republic will ever challenge MMOG behemoth World of Warcraft for dominance of the genre is impossible to say, however: Nichols revealed that George has never actually played it.
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Comments
Let's hope LA doesn't screw this one up and give Bioware a bad name like they did with SOE.
they should take each game in different directions. Revert SWG to the sandbox, living world game and make TOR the more "mainstream" game .... aka a WoW clone.
Um..
"We also realized what players expect from an online Star Wars game - they expect to be that iconic Star Wars hero as soon as possible. They don't want to play for hundreds of hours just to become a Jedi."
So much for having listened to the fans or learning anything from galaxies...
personally I never wanted to be an iconic hero or a jedi... to bad out of all the people who quit SWG. They still think it was because Jedi wasn't a starting profession...
Even if I wanted to be a Jedi.. For me actually working and figuring out how to get "something". Is what makes it rewarding or gives any sense of achievement. I guess the message just got lost in the mass exodus that their "changes" caused.
Not going anywhere in the sense that the "CU is here to stay" I reckon.
Frankly, its easy to say that there isn't a reason to run both right now. One game is online while the other is in development. It will be an entirely different story when SWTOR comes out.
Think about it. What if the numbers are not quite what LA expected? We've seen their reaction to that before. ANd on the flip side, if sub numbers are low or drop, whether it be their fault or not - Bioware can easily claim that the target audience is split between their shiny new game and the ruined carcass of SWG. This will put LA in a bind and one with an easily predictible outcome.
They may hohum around the subject of WoW but you know they are secretly gunning for its numbers. That cannot be acheived if you are fighting a war on two fronts. Who can actually argue about this strategy makes any sense? To quote Connery on SNL, "Dossey it up however want, Trebek. What matters is does it work?"
No.
tbh if I were actively playing SWG I'd be pretty pissed right now, nothing short of a definitive "SWG isn't going to be shutdown even after SWTOR is released" would do for me, so far all they've done is go on about chapters and content additions that we already know have been in the works for months already, there's no reason for swg subscribers not to feel like their game is effectively doomed.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Whatdya mean secretly.
www.eurogamer.net/article.php
"What is it that the gamers want from these games and why is it not given to them? We were playing these games ourselves, that's why we know it was not being done. So we moved in the opposite direction. We thought about what the users wanted, what we wanted, and why it wasn't happening and how it could happen." - Tasos Flambouras
SWG hasn't been going anywhere since 15 November 2005.
Travelling in a loop at Warp 1, going nowhere fast.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
SWG is definitely going somewhere. It's been circling the drain for 3 years.
I stand corrected.
/bow
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Whatdya mean secretly.
www.eurogamer.net/article.php
LOL, well, okay. Good point.
And good find. heheh
If SWTOR fails to the point that an argument can be made that the miniscule number of SWGNGE subs are "harming it's chances" then you are talking probably the largest catastrophe in the history of the industry in terms of cash burned to no return.
SWTOR will launch with at leat 300K subs if not many more, which is at least 30-40x more than the NGE has.
What did LucasArts learn from Galaxies? I didn't see anything in that post about what they learned, if they say they learned that we want to be instant iconic characters, they didn't learn anything.
This isn't going to determain that SWG will definitely stay, Sony has lost alot of money lately (find articles on movie/music industry) and lost more money on PS3 than they made on PS2 alone, think of how much they're losing keeping dead games like Matrix, Planetside and SWG (and PoTBS) alive.
I'm pretty sure the current hardcore SWG fans that can't really let it go are happy that it'll stay, but soon they'll hear even more *chirp chirp chirp chirp*.
Yeah, if LEC runs around for the next 1-2 years (whenever it's scheduled for release) saying crap like that they may not have quite the launch they expect. Indeed, the only reason why I'm willing at this point to give it a try when it opens isn't LEC. It's Bioware. I've bought every Bioware RPG ever made. Never been disappointed by any of them.
This is were they fail with me!
He added that LucasArts has learned many lessons from its experience with Galaxies, particularly with regards to what players want from a Star Wars game. "We've learned how important it is to listen to your community and act on that feedback," he said. "We also realized what players expect from an online Star Wars game - they expect to be that iconic Star Wars hero as soon as possible. They don't want to play for hundreds of hours just to become a Jedi." As a result, unlike Star Wars Galaxies, players in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be able to begin the game as a full-fledged Jedi or Sith.
I never made it to Jedi pre cu or cu. I dont want one click im Jedi! I want to spend hundreds of hours learning other things to be a Jedi. I dont want 9 Iconic prof either I want atleast 20 of them but 32 would be fine with me! His letter says to me that past and present SWG players have been nothing but Beta testers!
The NGE has made a game that was built for 32 prof feel barren with 9. My perdiction for this new game is its about to be headed down hill after the next release of info on it!
"We've learned how important it is to listen to your community and act on that feedback," If this was the case why then does SWG have empty servers and players are wanting free Free character transfers?
There's alot of water to go under the bridge before Galaxies and The Old Republic have to worry about co-existing. Still, while many here dislike the NGE and what it did to SWG, it's still going to be the only *official* thing closest to the game you did like.
Another thing to consider is that SWG will be the MMO that they can incorporate any new movie based stuff into (unless of course, Lucas breaks his pledge and they do a movie based around the old republic times...). They're not really going to get away with adding prequel stuff to a game that's set 3000 years in the past...
They always say they've learnt from their mistakes but if they have really learnt from them and listening to the community now then WHY THE FUCK ARN'T YOU MERGING THE CURRENT SERVERS AND RELEASING PRE NGE SERVERS?
There's no point playing SWG NGE any more , the clock is ticking , anything you achieve in game is a waste of time .
The best part of SWG was that it was immersive… I FELT like I was part of the time line. Sure at first I said I wanted to become a jedi, but franchise is so much more than just the jedi poster children. I found myself in love with the game and my toon that was just some smuck in a great big world.
Everquest 1, Star wars galaxies, City of heroes/villains, Eve, Lord of the rings, Age of Conan
I suspect most of the people who still play swg are more Star Wars fans than swg fans. The people that I know that still play are like that and most of them readily admit that the game isn't as good as it used to be, they're simply making due with what they have. If the new mmo is any good and provides these type of people with a satisfactory Star Wars experience, I can't see how swg will survive.
What I think will happen is that swg will go on as is until shortly before TOR is released. At that time one of two things will happen: either an announced shutdown of swg or swg will go for awhile longer but, after losing most of its players to TOR, it will shutdown. Either way, swg's days are numbered. To give the devil his due, though, staying up and running until around 2010 or so (which is roughly when TOR will most likely release) is impressive considering it was released in 2003, and sticking it through the nge debacle for 4-5 years.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid
it is just gonna be SWG again, glow bats everywhere.
i dunno about everyone else but i would rather work to become a jedi rather then just click a button and BAM im a jedi...so fracking pointless>_<
We also realized what players expect from an online Star Wars game - they expect to be that iconic Star Wars hero as soon as possible.
They learned NOTHING from SWG if they actually believe this.
They listened only to their preselected focus groups of non-players who gave them the answers they wanted to hear.
I don't think it's more possible for them to be any more stupid than this. However, I could be wrong.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Well SWTOR is not really a MMO, from what I read its going to be one long story. Didnt they say its like Kotor 3 4 5 6 7 all rolled up into one? The problem with SWG is that LA left the game after the NGE, and Smed has been running the show with a shoe string budget. LA never added a card game, that was done by Smeds people. The only problem I see is that SWG desperately needs a expansion to bring in people. The games been improved since the NGE most of the broken aspects have been addressd. If they wanted to really improve SWG they would add another 9 classes to the game and a few new aspects like more planets and adventure planets.
But I can see that LA has pulled the plugg on any expansions or real Development, they dont want a competitor for thier new hybrid mmo. SOE is the real reason this game hasnt been shut down 2 years ago. If it was up to LA they would have pulled the plug, thank god for iron clad contracts.
No. When they said it's like KOTOR 3,4,5,6,7,8,9, they were refering to the amount of content in game. A LOT of people keep greatly misinterpreting that. Not to mention it takes place 300 years after KOTOR so that's a huge gap difference and don't see a whole lot of continuing story lines from the original game except maybe a cameo from HK-47. Yes, it will be story driven and will most certainly be a MMO. They didn't say anything about "one long story." It will have multiple story lines starting with the class you choose and also with those you meet a long the way forming NPC companions you can start various types of relationships with. Every action you take with regard to NPC interaction will have permanent consequences.
MY GOD WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE WHO MAKE DECISIONS ???
find the logic
1) pre cu --- please fix bugs
conclusion according to them: players want to be a hero and iconic star wars legend
effect: mass exodus
2) NGE --- low player base, still the same bugs
lets make a new game with everything that we learned from the NGE
conclusion according to them: players want to be a hero and iconic star wars legend
effect: ... ______________ (i think you can fill in this blank)
this makes absolutely no sense... my little sister can figure out as much