Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
SOE sued LA
Deewe
Member UncommonPosts: 1,980
Enjoy the ride:
| I couldn't believe it!
Lucas Arts had partnered with Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) in the production of one of the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (dubbed MMO's), released on late June 2003, and despite several issues of its release, was successful. With the successful melding of flight simulation space travel expansion, Jump to Lightspeed nearly a year later, only increased the already strong subscriber base. With fierce competition in the MMO market, that would not last long. In attempt to increase their subscriber base with release of a major update, the new game expansion, on November 2005, subscriber base dropped to low level from nearly several million to 10,000. Dubbed as one of the worst mistakes unanimously by the massively multiplayer online community and even generating main stream media articles, Sony Online Entertainment defended the radical changes to Star Wars Galaxies.
Lucas Arts announced in October of 2008 of development of a new MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, naming Bioware as the developer. While many sources and gamers in the MMO community has spread rumors that Lucas Arts was seeking to discreetly distance themselves from the "failed" (1) Star Wars Galaxy MMO, Lucas Arts has neither confirmed nor denied such rumors. Bioware was selected by Lucas Arts on the successes of its single player role playing genra (RPG) Starwars Knights of the Old Republic, named as 2003 Game of the Year and named one of the best games to come out of the Star Wars franchise, winning numerous awards for revolutionary game play and a rich, fascinating story line "that is like the original trilogy." (2) Already many have touted this as the much anticipated WOW-killer, the MMO that would beat out the Blizzard's popular 15 million subscriber World of Warcraft. Though Sony Online Entertainment has denied speculation of rivalry between Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic and Sony Entertainment and Verant's Star Wars Galaxies, many sources in the MMO gaming community think otherwise. Publishers from sites like Allakahazam (Allakhazam.com) , massively (www.massively.com) have reported a general cosensus on the move of SOE due to losing face and future Star Wars licensing should Bioware's MMO be successful.
John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment, known as "Smedley" in gaming circles, answered some of most common questions. IGN: Thanks Smedley, helping us clear things up in these confusing times. We'll jump right in. IGN: Why does the suit came so late after the Oct 08 announcement of Lucas Arts partnership with Bioware instead of SOE for the development of Lucas Art's new MMO? Smedley: Yeah, you're welcome. It was shock to us, that they would go behind our back. We wanted to make sure we had a good legal standing, and took our time, to made sure to cross our t's and dot our i's before we made the move. IGN: Did Lucas Arts select another developer due to the speculation of loss of fan base to Star Wars Galaxies'? Smedley: You know that ****** me off that rumor of 10,000 subscribers for the friday weekend gaming rush. It's just hog **** they pulled those numbers. We have sold over a million copies of the game. No. The reason by Lucas Arts went with Bioware is because of the time line, since Bioware did a RPG for it, they figured, why not. However it is a breech of contract for MMO's. They partnered with us for all their MMO needs and we delivered. IGN: Many are wondering what was the real reason for the case? And why did you not take the settlement from Lucas Arts? Smedley: We have many successful MMO's. Bioware has none. EA sports messed up one of the biggest IP's possible for an MMO, the SIMs. I feel that we are best MMO providers to represent the Star Wars franchise. But Lucas Arts broke the contract, they dismembered our partnership. It was an ultimate Betrayal to say the least. If you're girlfriend cheated on you would you take her back? No. That's why we didn't settle. Yes, they spit on the hand that fed them the great game . . . IGN: And what about the NGE betray of the SWG's fan base? What do you think of that? You don't have to answer that one, its just April Fools joke. Smedley: glad you guys have good sense of humor. Thanks for taking the time to let me explain our situation. And NGE did not betray SWG's fan base. I mean who wants be Owen Lars when they can be Luke Skywalker. When you think of Star Wars, you think Luke Skywalker, Jedi and star fighter battles. Not tending moisture farms. Beat up a Tusken, not dip droids in an oil bath. IGN: Thank you for your time and hope this works out well for all parties involved. Smedley: We're going to pwn them, despite your lack of faith . . .. IGN: Thanks, man.
George Lucas was quoted, "There is alot that goes on in Star Wars expanded universe, that includes games, I think. I only look at the films and TV series that I've planned. Lucas Arts handles the games and any issues stemming from there. I do have full confidence though, that Darrell will resolve this. The Force is strong in Lucas Arts."
Greg Zeschuk, Bioware's Vice-President commented: "Despite rumors of us stopping production, those are untrue. We are working on providing story driven content for Star Wars The Old Republic."
Electronics Arts has declined to comment and there are no official release. However they did offer us this: CEO John Riccitiello, "No official comment, but we are aware of the situation and are working on it. This will not effect EA's capacity to publish award winning sports games, and other games."
Ed note: he actually said LOL, pronouncing it like LAWL Frank Pearce, vice president and co-founder reiterated: "Yes they had a partnership, but I feel its broken once you don't live up to the expectations and make good games. Yeah if you suck, you just broke the partnership. We take time and develop good games. Like the Starcraft: Ghost, we felt it did not give Star Craft feel, it felt like all other FPS's out there. We have enough Doom, Half Life, Quake, Halo, clones out there. We were able to stop it and not publish broken games."
Chris Metzen, vice president of Creative Development, "I'm not going to candy coat it. Sucks the writer has to say this. Whats up with that? But we feel that Sony did screw up. You have half the ground work done. Star Wars is friggin House hold name. As Mace Windu would say house mutha whatta hold. You have a popular IP, and then you screw it up. Epic Fail guys. But thats what you get from EverGrind. Both on their writing team and development. But you know, its hard to be leet. Who's your daddy now Firiona Vie? Huh? Who's your daddy!"
Dude cracking up at the WYD Firiona. Good one one! Posted by: RickHunter on April 01, 2009 11:00 PDT
my thoughts exactly... Posted by: Wrrd_Gear on April 01, 2009 10:17 PDT
Posted by: iconoficons on April 01, 2009 10:16 PDT
Posted by: internettoughguy on April 01, 2009 10:13 PDT
Posted by: Prof.Chaos6550 on April 01, 2009 10:02 PDT
Posted by: yesleia on April 01, 2009 09:58 PDT
Posted by: RunnerKyle on April 01, 2009 09:34 PDT |
P.S: this is obviously a fake. I got it on TOR forums before it was deleted. Still funny
Comments
lololololo.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
SOE is garbage.
lol, would have been funny if it had happened. But think SOE will just silently shut down SWG after TOR launches, with no hard feelings since they got some new titles to take the place of SWG.
Hilarious! Especially:
'CEO John Riccitiello, "No official comment, but we are aware of the situation and are working on it. This will not effect EA's capacity to publish award winning sports games, and other games.'
My brand new bloggity blog.
I can just see Lucas sitting back and throwing balled up fists o' money at Smedley like a rapper at a strip club and saying "Step off, son."
"TO MICHAEL!"
"And NGE did not betray SWG's fan base."
And the fan base didn't betray SOE. We left out of loyalty to SOE!
"I mean who wants be Owen Lars when they can be Luke Skywalker."
Subtract from the number of peak subscriptions, the number of current subscriptions. That's who.
lol I thought this was real until all the grammar mistakes started popping up in the interview.
Playing - FFXIV, ESO
Played - FFXI, WoW, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Aion, SWToR, LotRO, GW2, TERA, Rift, ArcheAge, TSW
lol. What a load of utter hogwash from SoE.
Maybe they need to look at themselves at to why no just SWG is failing but all of their mmo's. The customers have lost faith in the company, its nobody else's doing but their own freekin fault but they still don't see it and rather than sort the problems out from their end, their looking to just pass the blame to someone else... i hope SoE do go RiP!
I soon as I saw "several million subscribers" I know some rabid ex-fanboi made it up.
The sad part is some kid made this up to get a laugh and make a stab at SOE; yet 5 years from now some ill informed forum poster will write about the time SOE sued LA when it never actually happened.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
haha dude I was thinking the same thing.
So here is the deal, I played EQ when it came out and basically every other SOE game since, and I hate SOE *like their games*. This actually freaked me out because it sounds like something SOE would do! I am not as "main-stream" as the basic gamer so I don't keep up with that kind of stuff. I think the OP gave me a heart attack. SW: TOR is the first MMO in a long time that I am really *EXCITED* about. BioWare has done no wrong for me. LA has done no wrong for me.... EA (not much experience). I am just excited. This was a wierd rush! Keep it up!
hahahaha that was a freakin blast reading that.
<a href="http://www.lolbase.net/us/Baneli"><img src="http://www.lolbase.net/us/Baneli/signature/626ffffff.png"; alt="Signature for Baneli (us)" /></a>
haha, that was entertaining. I still like SOE, but I believe at some point the company was put in bad leadership. Initially they were controlled by the movie studio branch of Sony, which lets face it, has no idea how to deal with games. They cant be treated the same way as films and film production, since online games can always be changed. Some movie exec probably thought that by altering the game completely after it was released was probably a good idea, since they wish they could do that with film releases. Sadly, it doesnt work that way. SOE has some great IPs under their belt, EQ, Vanguard, SWG... if only they were given the budget and the right people to make the big decisions, these franchises could make a huge come back, they just need to be fixed and upgraded. Games like LIneage 2, Second Life, EVE...ect have shown this can be done.
Yes we all know it's fake, but come on. It was VERY funny. Can someone honestly say SOE wouldn't try something along that line? I mean even to this day the NGE failure is blamed on negative comments by fans (by Smed's crew), and not that it just sucked.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Exactly.. plus..
SOE claims they sold well over 1 million copies of the game.. Hmmm If you are selling over a million in the first year and can only peak at 250,000 customers, what is that saying? It's saying people are leaving as fast as they are comming.( ALL before NGE too) . Like I've said before.. SOE manipulated ALL their numbers to show the public more then what was acctually there..
SOE are just being sore sports because they screwed up and need to blaim someone.. anyone.. Instead of excepting responsibilty they made a sh*tty game, period.. plain and simple..
the guy at SOE seems like such a pompus little bastard. SOE left the SWG community really pissed off and he knows it, he's just not saying either for pride or because he's just not allowed to. swg is just one of those games that's just barely staying a float... and only because it's the Star Wars Universe not because of NGE.
Glad you like it. I think i'ts a funny post.
I could have changed a few things to make it more realistic but hell the person who wrote it deserves credit so I didn't change a word.
Too bad I don't have the name of the original writer though.
Exactly.. plus..
SOE claims they sold well over 1 million copies of the game.. Hmmm If you are selling over a million in the first year and can only peak at 250,000 customers, what is that saying? It's saying people are leaving as fast as they are comming.
Just meant more 13 year olds on WoW and more room for my harvesters. SWG wasn't an easy game to pick up, at least not comparing them to WoW and her clones.
It was also pestered with bugs that never got fixed, but compared to what else was (and still is available) many people just played around them.
Exactly.. plus..
SOE claims they sold well over 1 million copies of the game.. Hmmm If you are selling over a million in the first year and can only peak at 250,000 customers, what is that saying? It's saying people are leaving as fast as they are comming.( ALL before NGE too) . Like I've said before.. SOE manipulated ALL their numbers to show the public more then what was acctually there..
SOE are just being sore sports because they screwed up and need to blaim someone.. anyone.. Instead of excepting responsibilty they made a sh*tty game, period.. plain and simple..
You forget that there are tons of collectors out there that buy star wars products just to own them. Its possible for SWG to have sold millions without actually having an equivelant subscriber number, since collectors will just buy the product, not use it.
Exactly.. plus..
SOE claims they sold well over 1 million copies of the game.. Hmmm If you are selling over a million in the first year and can only peak at 250,000 customers, what is that saying? It's saying people are leaving as fast as they are comming.( ALL before NGE too) . Like I've said before.. SOE manipulated ALL their numbers to show the public more then what was acctually there..
SOE are just being sore sports because they screwed up and need to blaim someone.. anyone.. Instead of excepting responsibilty they made a sh*tty game, period.. plain and simple..
You forget that there are tons of collectors out there that buy star wars products just to own them. Its possible for SWG to have sold millions without actually having an equivelant subscriber number, since collectors will just buy the product, not use it.
The highest report we got was 450k active subs some time after launch. At the time it was a huge number.
It's obviously fake and Smedley would never say Pissed me off and he never speaks like that in the interview.
Exactly.. plus..
SOE claims they sold well over 1 million copies of the game.. Hmmm If you are selling over a million in the first year and can only peak at 250,000 customers, what is that saying? It's saying people are leaving as fast as they are comming.( ALL before NGE too) . Like I've said before.. SOE manipulated ALL their numbers to show the public more then what was acctually there..
SOE are just being sore sports because they screwed up and need to blaim someone.. anyone.. Instead of excepting responsibilty they made a sh*tty game, period.. plain and simple..
You forget that there are tons of collectors out there that buy star wars products just to own them. Its possible for SWG to have sold millions without actually having an equivelant subscriber number, since collectors will just buy the product, not use it.
most people owned more than one account and some people owned like 10
I myself have 5 or 6 copies and two accounts, I bought so many copies cause I wanted those special items.
xD it's already happening
www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php
xD it's already happening
www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php
What do you expect thier a bunch of lemmings, fanboys that will eat up anything Bioware or LEC tells them. 90% of those posters have already made up thier minds; SWTOR is going to be the best game ever, laughable since its still a project in developement. Thier going to crash and burn harder than the AOC and Darkfall fanboys, when this game releases in 2010 or 2011.