What really made it worse, was Smed saying sandbox games don't work. Was more than the nge of swg, it was an Industry wide NGE. They dont even view mmo's as games or worlds..just business models. That business model failed. In reality, SoE killed it. Twice. each time was a surprise announcement, exactly when the game started getting fun and people started coming back. Makes sence huh?
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
As far as I am concerned SWG failed cause the nerf bat running rampant while the economy went to hell. If you weren't farming something to make credits then you were never going to buy anything cause missions just didn't pay enough for them to be worth while as a money making function. The constant we will nerf everything so you don't see the bugs got out of hand as well, it took more than 3 months for nge but it was pretty much not the same swg by the third month
No. It wasn't. The NGE was still in full effect as of it's launch three months later. A few months after that you got your Jedi and BH expertise, *several* months after that you got a few others...
I hate to tell you this, they didnt even acknowledge that all weapons did the same damage given level until the February following the NGE. So, three months and it was the "same swg"!?
You played right?
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
I always liked the comment ripping on camps. It is funny how someone who is supposed to be close to the game they are developing didn't play their own games. They never seemed to realize that community building and immersion comes from players interacting in many different ways not just hunting together. Nothing better than having a stranger running into your camp for asylum because they were near dead....CAMPS EFFING RULED!
"Hurray, finally a game where I can fulfill my lifelong dream of taking emotionally dead women and finding the most financially viable means to exploit their bodies with the ultimate goal of making them Hugh Hefner's personal furniture."
Responding to this comment: "Originally posted by kb056: Personally, I loved being a "moisture farmer", hell, I made my first million creds milking Pickets on Dantoine." Exactly. If you ask SWG players what one of the best features was, ever; probably many would say, "The skill system." Even the guy who created the NGE said it was a big mistake to flush that down the toilet, and yet people still quote NGE press releases as a valid source of insight about SWG. Here's the quote from MMORPG.com staffer btw: "If the main Star Wars Galaxies complaint was "I wanted to be Luke or Han running around killing bad guys, not Uncle Owen farming moisture," they seem to have taken it to heart and all the classes we've seen seem to map to recognizable figures from the movies." With respect, I don't think actual players of the game saw this as the main complaint. I think this comes from some very bad marketting research conducted by LucasArts or SOE. The very marketting research that suggested NGE was a good idea. This is my take on the situation at any rate. I'd like to hear what other actual players of SWG think.
I could not agree more, nor could I have said it so well. Great post ArcAngel3.
Yeah, great post...the point being...I never, *ever* played a moisture farmer. I hated the crafting side of swg (tried as a doctor and just found better stuff was available on the market).
So, this was a reason to move to the NGE, accept...The crafters were the *leaders* of our great imperial guild. The crafters knew how to track the Hero of Tatooine badge and ring...The crafters led us through the Death Watch Bunker, the moisture farmers...
Good times...
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
The initial game failed because it was released in a sorry state, core bugs were never fixed -- promised content never added. Then came WoW.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
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.
I'd have to agree with that quote in a way. An iconic/starwarsy swg (done right) would be more popular than an uncle owen swg (done right). That said, they didn't do the uncle owen version right in many ways, and they obviously couldn't copy wow's popularity with their attempt at the iconic/starwarsy version.
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
I'd have to agree with that quote in a way. An iconic/starwarsy swg (done right) would be more popular than an uncle owen swg (done right). That said, they didn't do the uncle owen version right in many ways, and they obviously couldn't copy wow's popularity with their attempt at the iconic/starwarsy version.
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
This parallels my experience in SWG. However, I have to add that the devs at SWG never understood the Star Wars universe on fundamental levels, the vast military-industrial complex for one example. SWG also didn't provide enough toys for their sandbox at launch (part of being released too soon). The random mission generator was an adlibs failure.
Ideally, if they had provided for that character experience many of us had in a world developed by BioWare (a company who 'gets' Star Wars), it might have been far more successful. But, of course, that's an armchair developer perspective.
_____________________________ Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Originally posted by trophic Originally posted by PreCU I'd have to agree with that quote in a way. An iconic/starwarsy swg (done right) would be more popular than an uncle owen swg (done right). That said, they didn't do the uncle owen version right in many ways, and they obviously couldn't copy wow's popularity with their attempt at the iconic/starwarsy version.
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
that's true, but that is the gaming experience of a power gamer and most of the player base were just casual. And although they eventually mastered professions and became high ranking soldiers, they never attained a position that could be described as explicitly iconic. But the thing about the game was that it left that part up to your imagination. I'm sure many imagined their character on a path that was uniquely important to the good vs evil battles of the galaxy. That was the real gem of the game imo. It allowed you to make it what you wanted it to be. Others were perfectly comfortable in a permanent support role, but everyone was important. Not because the game told you so, but because you told the game so.
In that sense it was never really an uncle owen experience as that implies insignificance and everyone was important from their own perspective.
I laughed when I read that part of the review as well. Some people are just oblivious...
The simple fact is this: we will never ever play a game that allows us to truly feel part of the Star Wars realm again. I myself played as a Pistoleer. I enjoyed PvP, combat, decorating my home in the corner of Tatooine, and being part of one of our local malls. This will never happen again.
The initial game failed because it was released in a sorry state, core bugs were never fixed -- promised content never added. Then came WoW.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
That's exactly what I experienced. I was having fun just being in a StarWars cantina, but others who were trying to do more in the game were frustrated with the bugs and issues and the lack of actual content. All of this speaks to the early release imo. Then my friends would try WoW.
We were all on ventrilo as well, and people were like, "Hey this game actually works, and there's stuff to do!" People started switching games in bunches at that point. Not once did anyone on vent (anyone, ever, even one time) say, "Man I'm sick and tired of playing a moisture farmer."
What they said was, "Why should I pay to play a busted, unfinished game when I could be playing WoW?" I think all Smed got from this was that he should copy their format; but man, he tried to do this in 3 months. Totally impossible. Wow spent years in development and probably more time in the polish shop than NGE spent from concept to implementation.
Imo, Nancy's stuff was just some crazy spin to try to get people to take another look at the game. I think she was totally off the mark.
What they said was, "Why should I pay to play a busted, unfinished game when I could be playing WoW?" I think all Smed got from this was that he should copy their format; but man, he tried to do this in 3 months. Totally impossible. Wow spent years in development and probably more time in the polish shop than NGE spent from concept to implementation. Imo, Nancy's stuff was just some crazy spin to try to get people to take another look at the game. I think she was totally off the mark.
Well, what was offered by the NGE was a busted, unfinished Star Wars skinned knockoff of WoW with 1/100th of the content, pathetic combat play, broken animations, and instead of doing a flip when you jump, it screwed up your chat.
Besides, Smedley's crew doesn't do polish or relatively bug-free. It gets in the way of profit.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
The initial game failed because it was released in a sorry state, core bugs were never fixed -- promised content never added. Then came WoW.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
I was in beta3, and the testers, almost without exception, told the developers that the game was NOT ready to be released, there the entire high end of the professions had not been tested adequately yet, and the game still needed a lot of polish.
But SOE and LA don't do polish, they don't do relatively bug free. Blizzard does. So WoW, the game that works, is the one that broke the million mark, and went beyond. Which drove LA and Smedley absolutely insane with envy that the greatest IP in the known universe got beaten by something that didn't have a movie franchise and mass marketed toys, and furthermore the King of MMOs had been dethroned unceremoniously by an upstart gaming outfit publishing their very first MMO.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
The initial game failed because it was released in a sorry state, core bugs were never fixed -- promised content never added. Then came WoW.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
I was in beta3, and the testers, almost without exception, told the developers that the game was NOT ready to be released, there the entire high end of the professions had not been tested adequately yet, and the game still needed a lot of polish.
But SOE and LA don't do polish, they don't do relatively bug free. Blizzard does. So WoW, the game that works, is the one that broke the million mark, and went beyond. Which drove LA and Smedley absolutely insane with envy that the greatest IP in the known universe got beaten by something that didn't have a movie franchise and mass marketed toys, and furthermore the King of MMOs had been dethroned unceremoniously by an upstart gaming outfit publishing their very first MMO.
To give Blizzard credit before WoW, they DID have a great reputation among the PC gaming community even before WoW. Blizzard essentially has 3 franchise universes: Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft, all of which still carry weight in their names, especially among longtime PC gamers.
Blizzard wasn't necessarily known to release a polished, relatively stable product. Diablo II was horribly bugged on release. I never dived into WoW, but I recall the early problems it had.
But one of the things Blizzard IS known for among longtime gamers is that they patch, patch, and patch like motherf**kers. Even long after a product was past it's "glory days." I recall that when Diablo II, which came out 1999/2000, was finally stable and making a killing, Blizzard still kept on patching the first Diablo game... which came out in 1996!
They have had projects set in the Starcraft and Warcraft universes before WoW came out, but they got canned when they weren't turning out right, and didn't shovel it out for release. Quality.
There was a time when Diablo II was still in the works that people were complaining about how long Blizzard took to release games. After Diablo II, nobody ever made that complaint again about them. They don't frequently put out games, but whatever they do is usually pretty good.
When Blizzard put word out that they were doing a Warcraft MMO, I was surprised. The fact that they beat "the best" in the MMO business when WoW came out didn't surprise me. They are one of only 2 developers out there that I still have blind loyalty to, the other being BioWare. But they earned it over the course of years as good developers... even though I never tried WoW.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
By the time WoW was released SWG already in the toilet. The fact it was as popular as it was with so many horrible bugs, missing content, broken content, and no customer support what so ever is mind boggling. The the few months after launch just were filled with so many great gameplay ideas. From factions, to missions, to crafting, to skills, I could go on of course. The sad thing is how much better it could have been.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
Comments
What really made it worse, was Smed saying sandbox games don't work. Was more than the nge of swg, it was an Industry wide NGE. They dont even view mmo's as games or worlds..just business models. That business model failed. In reality, SoE killed it. Twice. each time was a surprise announcement, exactly when the game started getting fun and people started coming back. Makes sence huh?
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
No. It wasn't. The NGE was still in full effect as of it's launch three months later. A few months after that you got your Jedi and BH expertise, *several* months after that you got a few others...
I hate to tell you this, they didnt even acknowledge that all weapons did the same damage given level until the February following the NGE. So, three months and it was the "same swg"!?
You played right?
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
I always liked the comment ripping on camps. It is funny how someone who is supposed to be close to the game they are developing didn't play their own games. They never seemed to realize that community building and immersion comes from players interacting in many different ways not just hunting together. Nothing better than having a stranger running into your camp for asylum because they were near dead....CAMPS EFFING RULED!
"Hurray, finally a game where I can fulfill my lifelong dream of taking emotionally dead women and finding the most financially viable means to exploit their bodies with the ultimate goal of making them Hugh Hefner's personal furniture."
I could not agree more, nor could I have said it so well. Great post ArcAngel3.
Yeah, great post...the point being...I never, *ever* played a moisture farmer. I hated the crafting side of swg (tried as a doctor and just found better stuff was available on the market).
So, this was a reason to move to the NGE, accept...The crafters were the *leaders* of our great imperial guild. The crafters knew how to track the Hero of Tatooine badge and ring...The crafters led us through the Death Watch Bunker, the moisture farmers...
Good times...
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
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.
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
This parallels my experience in SWG. However, I have to add that the devs at SWG never understood the Star Wars universe on fundamental levels, the vast military-industrial complex for one example. SWG also didn't provide enough toys for their sandbox at launch (part of being released too soon). The random mission generator was an adlibs failure.
Ideally, if they had provided for that character experience many of us had in a world developed by BioWare (a company who 'gets' Star Wars), it might have been far more successful. But, of course, that's an armchair developer perspective.
_____________________________
Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO
Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Find the Truth: http://www.factcheck.org/
The thing that SOE didn't get was that their game started the player out as an 'Uncle Owen' but, through different experiences and environments, allowed them to turn themselves into 'Luke Skywalker'. My guy started off selling little bits of energy from his personal windfarm with a one bedroom house outside Bestine; by the end he was a Jedi Knight, an Imperial Colonel, an Inquisition fighter ace with a Jedi Starfight, a Greivous fighter and an Imperial multi-person ship, and a three guildhall compound outside a player city in the the north of Tattoine. He was 'iconic' and 'starwarsy' all right - but not in any way Nancy Macintyre could understand.
that's true, but that is the gaming experience of a power gamer and most of the player base were just casual. And although they eventually mastered professions and became high ranking soldiers, they never attained a position that could be described as explicitly iconic. But the thing about the game was that it left that part up to your imagination. I'm sure many imagined their character on a path that was uniquely important to the good vs evil battles of the galaxy. That was the real gem of the game imo. It allowed you to make it what you wanted it to be. Others were perfectly comfortable in a permanent support role, but everyone was important. Not because the game told you so, but because you told the game so.
In that sense it was never really an uncle owen experience as that implies insignificance and everyone was important from their own perspective.
I laughed when I read that part of the review as well. Some people are just oblivious...
The simple fact is this: we will never ever play a game that allows us to truly feel part of the Star Wars realm again. I myself played as a Pistoleer. I enjoyed PvP, combat, decorating my home in the corner of Tatooine, and being part of one of our local malls. This will never happen again.
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
That's exactly what I experienced. I was having fun just being in a StarWars cantina, but others who were trying to do more in the game were frustrated with the bugs and issues and the lack of actual content. All of this speaks to the early release imo. Then my friends would try WoW.
We were all on ventrilo as well, and people were like, "Hey this game actually works, and there's stuff to do!" People started switching games in bunches at that point. Not once did anyone on vent (anyone, ever, even one time) say, "Man I'm sick and tired of playing a moisture farmer."
What they said was, "Why should I pay to play a busted, unfinished game when I could be playing WoW?" I think all Smed got from this was that he should copy their format; but man, he tried to do this in 3 months. Totally impossible. Wow spent years in development and probably more time in the polish shop than NGE spent from concept to implementation.
Imo, Nancy's stuff was just some crazy spin to try to get people to take another look at the game. I think she was totally off the mark.
Well, what was offered by the NGE was a busted, unfinished Star Wars skinned knockoff of WoW with 1/100th of the content, pathetic combat play, broken animations, and instead of doing a flip when you jump, it screwed up your chat.
Besides, Smedley's crew doesn't do polish or relatively bug-free. It gets in the way of profit.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
I was in beta3, and the testers, almost without exception, told the developers that the game was NOT ready to be released, there the entire high end of the professions had not been tested adequately yet, and the game still needed a lot of polish.
But SOE and LA don't do polish, they don't do relatively bug free. Blizzard does. So WoW, the game that works, is the one that broke the million mark, and went beyond. Which drove LA and Smedley absolutely insane with envy that the greatest IP in the known universe got beaten by something that didn't have a movie franchise and mass marketed toys, and furthermore the King of MMOs had been dethroned unceremoniously by an upstart gaming outfit publishing their very first MMO.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
This is what I believe. While I had more fun in swg than in any other game, it was because I found my own little niche (playing my BH). I was well aware of all the bugs and problems with the rest of the game but I put up with them because they rarely effected my narrow playstyle. The same couldn't be said of others and I knew many people that left when WoW was released. In fact, I was often on ventrilo with a few of them while they played the WoW beta and the almost constant "This is so much better than swg!" made me give it a try as well. So yeah, WoW was probably the biggest nail that was put into swg's coffin, with the nge being the final one.
I was in beta3, and the testers, almost without exception, told the developers that the game was NOT ready to be released, there the entire high end of the professions had not been tested adequately yet, and the game still needed a lot of polish.
But SOE and LA don't do polish, they don't do relatively bug free. Blizzard does. So WoW, the game that works, is the one that broke the million mark, and went beyond. Which drove LA and Smedley absolutely insane with envy that the greatest IP in the known universe got beaten by something that didn't have a movie franchise and mass marketed toys, and furthermore the King of MMOs had been dethroned unceremoniously by an upstart gaming outfit publishing their very first MMO.
To give Blizzard credit before WoW, they DID have a great reputation among the PC gaming community even before WoW. Blizzard essentially has 3 franchise universes: Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft, all of which still carry weight in their names, especially among longtime PC gamers.
Blizzard wasn't necessarily known to release a polished, relatively stable product. Diablo II was horribly bugged on release. I never dived into WoW, but I recall the early problems it had.
But one of the things Blizzard IS known for among longtime gamers is that they patch, patch, and patch like motherf**kers. Even long after a product was past it's "glory days." I recall that when Diablo II, which came out 1999/2000, was finally stable and making a killing, Blizzard still kept on patching the first Diablo game... which came out in 1996!
They have had projects set in the Starcraft and Warcraft universes before WoW came out, but they got canned when they weren't turning out right, and didn't shovel it out for release. Quality.
There was a time when Diablo II was still in the works that people were complaining about how long Blizzard took to release games. After Diablo II, nobody ever made that complaint again about them. They don't frequently put out games, but whatever they do is usually pretty good.
When Blizzard put word out that they were doing a Warcraft MMO, I was surprised. The fact that they beat "the best" in the MMO business when WoW came out didn't surprise me. They are one of only 2 developers out there that I still have blind loyalty to, the other being BioWare. But they earned it over the course of years as good developers... even though I never tried WoW.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
By the time WoW was released SWG already in the toilet. The fact it was as popular as it was with so many horrible bugs, missing content, broken content, and no customer support what so ever is mind boggling. The the few months after launch just were filled with so many great gameplay ideas. From factions, to missions, to crafting, to skills, I could go on of course. The sad thing is how much better it could have been.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.