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Raph Koster and SWG's end
Warmaker
Member UncommonPosts: 2,246
I actually got the email from SOE about SWG's pending demise. Can't say I'm sad at all, since the game that's closing is nothing at all like the one I once loved to play. Anyways, Massively had news about it and referred me to a post in Raph Koster's site
Of particular note is Koster also references an interview by Smed (Executive Smedley on the sunsetting of SWG), and a quote from him:
This must be affecting you personally as well. If you could do the whole Star Wars experience over again, what would you do?
Here's what I would have done differently. I would have made sure the ground and space games were launched all at once. I would have given the game another year to develop and really polish it quite a bit. I think we created one of the most unique and amazing games ever created in the MMO space. It is the sandbox game. Nothing else even comes close to what we did there. I would have really taken our time and polished combat right so we never had to do the NGE. At some point the only thing to do is acknowledge the mistakes you made. But we can also look and fix them in the future. Since then, the projects that the team has worked on -- like the Chronicles system -- it's pretty amazing. I want to make sure that we really learn from that stuff. And I think we have. We're actually starting to put some of that stuff into our other games.
(Edited thread due to misspelling of Koster's name)
"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)
Comments
Well... it's refreshing that Smed seems to actually 'get it' now... shame it took so long.
Frankly, Smed can /stfu with that stuff. He seems to be claiming success for creating a "sandbox" game and yet did his very best to remove every single sandbox element over time and dumb down and marginalize all that were left in SWG.
Everything ended up being removed, simplified, or marginalized right out of sandbox mode.
That is the legacy of Smed.
The question should have been put to Smed's boss, along with the expected reply of 'never put Smedley in charge in the first place'.
What I dont get is people have been telling them for 5 fucking years to go back to basics, to revert the crap NGE and put up some classic servers but instead they just let the game slowly fester away until noone gives a toss about it. Maybe its best it closes, god forbid they allow this team to work on another mmo.
It's a weird feeling, that it's finally going to be over. The idiots just never understood what they had. I mean... my guilds ran off to COH/COV back when it hit the fan in 2005, and I've been subbed there ever since, despite playing other MMOs for extended periods. I kept the COH sub because it is a good game, and I wanted to keep supporting it (and frankly, it's been worth it, it's only gotten better, well, apart from the PVP that is). And that's EXACTLY what I'd have done with SWG, if LA and SOE hadn't mutilated it beyond all recognition.
We all felt so strongly about the game that was... and the very fact this veteran forum is still there proves we still do.
I miss Bloodfin. I always will.
Linna
Here is what Mr. Koster wrote at the end of his blog today and I think it sums up how I feel about this game.
No, he doesn't.
Just go look at DCUO.
It's the same song and dance he's been spouting off on since 2006 in interviews.
I chatted with John at 2008's Fan Faire....got him to admit that they bent over for LA for the Launch and NGE...and they have been paying for it ever since.
Only took 10 shots to get him drunk enough to admit it.
MMO History: 2528 days in SW:G
SOE would have milked this POS till the last sucker left the servers. In my opinion the only reason they are shutting down is because SW:TOR is releasing soon. I think LA pulled the plug not SOE.
totally agree. if anything DCUO highlighted the fact that in all this time.. SOE still, havent learned from their mistakes... we'll never know what might have been with SWG.. although it sure as anything couldnt have been any worse than what the NGE turned the game into.. as for the collections and the chronicles.. utterly meaningless..
It's not just SOE either... I've just heard about what's going on in EVE, and all I can say is wow... apparently there's a mass exodus going on there as of june 11. Cause: extremely impopular changes involving e.g. cash shops and buy-to-win, leaked emails from CCP management calling the players dumb and laughing in their faces.... The community is protesting: occupying hubs, destroying developer placed monuments, writing long letters on the forums. The devs retaliate by banning people and sending kill squads (with Eve ship costs, that's just... ugh). It all sounds so very familiar...
Linna
Ahh well well well.... Ya know... that news has made so many people happy one has to really wonder how the current player base that is left feels.
I think seeing the interview with good ole Smed says so much... and being one that has had direct emails with that man I can safely say... he earned the shutdown thats for sure.
Now for a quote...
"I would have really taken our time and polished combat right so we never had to do the NGE."
Thanks... that pretty much defines what alot of us ranted about back in the day... told the current playerbase not to buy into it and warned against everything we could.
In some ways I feel pretty happy to see things work the way they did. KARMA wins this time folks, as a huge loss to SOE and LA for allowing this mess to happen like it did.
As the NGE ruined this game, it is good to see SOE and LA pretty much agree, OBVIOUSLY based on fact not opinion by killing it off.
I will miss my pre 9 earned Jedi, learning all the profs... my houses my credits all the stuff we left behind but the NGE did the most damage as we all know. SO with that said -- good show SWG... for a year or so you were a wonderful game.. until the mistakes were made...
I haven't been back to these forums in forever but I can honestly say "Hell yeah!" Finally however I think the only reason the servers are going bye bye is because of the new game.
I don't think SWG could have competed with TOR anyway. They would have had completely dead servers instead of "Life support" servers.
It's been a longtime belief of mind that SWG in its original vision could have existed alongside BioWare's SWTOR. They both may share the "Star Wars" name and lightsabers and blasters exist in both, but that is where any similiarity would have ended.
SWG would have been more sandboxy, the original Skillpoint / Template System, and crafted items + player driven economy would have differentiated it easily from SWTOR's themeparkish features. Not to mention SWG being set in the classic Original Trilogy timeframe while SWTOR uses BioWare's Old Republic setting. Both eras in Star Wars are completely different.
If SOE had stuck to the core of the original vision of SWG, fixed it (that's what, IMO, most of the players really wanted), and just kept on adding more to it, especially space, then the game would not have collapsed in '05 like it did.
Fixing it... that's what I really wanted them to do. A very simple idea but SOE never got into that mood. They only wanted to drastically alter the game (CU then NGE).
"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)
Well I been saying for a really long tome if they went back to a classic server, like your are talking about. Pre-CU with the skill system and the sandbox type of game then yes I would have played it. However SOE would never do that, and instead of trying to make it right they and LA just decided to pull the plug on the monstrosity that exist now. SWG I hate to say it been needing the plug pulled for a long time.
I don't remember any bugs at launch. I didn't mind the imbalanced stuff, premature launch.
I didn't mind the fact that my big ranger camp was almost useless, entertainers couldn't even do their thing in the camp, but it was still fun.
Did SOE ever get around to making the ranger camp useful?
dude... come on now. Ive been playing SWG since beta and love the shit outta that game. But even I know that game had hundreds of bugs at launch.
yeah i went back for the 45 day thing. you craft camps with modules like entertainer area shuttle beacons junk dealer and imp/reb recruiters. i thought i would hate it but it was ok crafting wise. Nothing beats the orginal but it seemd they had been trying to make NGE work better. Those guys on the forums are hurtin bad. i wanted to tell them just let it go man. but meh hehe
How does smedley have a job? Anyone had this been chevrolet or any other company this guy would be at the unemployment office.Yet hes acting like he did some huge achievement? What should be remembered is how they were given the star wars franchise on a golden platter and shot themselves in the foot. He should do the fwd for how destroy a franchise mmo lol. The other person not bieng mentioned much is julio torres thats the idiot who said the problem with swg was the players. Hes since made nothing but fail games force unleashd 1 was decent ill give him that but fu2 was bugged mess. If i see his name on any product i will put it back on the shelf.
Btw there still making money on that trading card game last i heard lolz on that.
the only real issue with pre-cu swg was questing it was just a mob grindfest had they just put in questing actual questing it wouldnt been so bad. Anyways it will be nice to be in a soe free star wars mmo i wish it was lucasarts free but cant have everything i guess.
The one thing swg got was right was the space. The space was kick ass and still is. They really nailed the space thats one of my gripes with tor is the bieng on rails crap.
I would love to know what george lucas thinks about this? lol hed probably says whats swg lmao
I don't think we'll ever truly know who's idea it was to push NGE... SOE or LA... but whoever made that dreadful mistake crippled the best sandbox game ever. I'm sad that it's finally coming to an end but in all reality, I expected them to shoot this horse a long time ago.
I hope that LA learned a valuable lesson from SWG... don't fix what isn't broken. I hope they don't try to strongball Bioware and SWTOR into making changes that piss off an entire community of players. Let the game developers and designers make the rules. The NGE and it's quest to make a more popular and above all, profitable game... did just the opposite.
No bitchers.
I didn't do any missions, I hear that's where the bugs were.
From my professional experience, I'm convinced both LA and SOE were involved. If you're using an intellectual property under license, you cannot just go and change it whenever and however you will. And reading between the lines from interviews with high ranking LA people, I am fairly certain LA felt the product was not living up to its potential, and that they were pushing for a change that would make it reach WoW sub numbers. SOE in turn came up with the brainfart that was the CU/NGE.
I was so very angry when the changes were made... but I only got truly furious because of the statements from both SOE and LA (newspapers, magazines, even TV) that basically called us dumb children who were just stomping our feet because they were denied their lollipop (Smedley himself on TV), who disliked reading and wanted 'kill, loot, rinse & repeat' from games (this female dog from LA in the NY Times).
From people who tried to get into the focus groups, I heard people over 18 and women were not wanted. From people who actually had direct contact with SOE employees, I heard that most of them played WoW, and not SWG. That and statements like the above just go to show how very little they knew about their own game and its players. Most of us were over 18. A lot of us were women. Most of us were well-educated and didn't mind reading... and a surprising number of us didn't ever engage in combat, let alone looting. So many people just loved crafting, or entertaining, or selling things to players. No game since has made a home for such very different playstyles.
Linna
Lol. Oh my.... you were playing with your eyes closed? Let's see...
- there was a 'hole' in the player placed vendors, making items disappear without a trace. It was eventually fixed by a patch, that put all lost items into the owner's inventory. The results were hilarious, since virtually everyone got overloaded... and having more stuff in your inventory than allowed meant you could not move. Hundreds of people were stuck wherever they had logged out. Architects made big money of selling storage houses and delivering them to the victims.
- it was possible to earn xp by making items in a factory (which was a bug). Many crafters used this to get to full template long before honest players could ever hope to get there. The cheats made a fortune selling stuff no one else could make yet. This tended to be a guild effort, causing some guilds to be WAY ahead of the curve.
- there were several money duping exploits in game, allowing people to max out their money. Many of these people were later traced and banned, but not before the money had gotten into circulation and ruined entire economies for a while (as any economy, things adjusted eventually).
- people were able to place 'ghost harvesters': a player would create a toon, and this toon would place harvesters, and give another toon admin privileges on the harvesters, The toon would then be deleted, the harvesters would stay in the world. A new toon would be made, would place harvesters, give admin, etc. Some people wound up controlling over 300 harvesters.
Then we have the horrible lag, the crashes, the BH missions that didn't work, the jedi that were promised but which were not in game yet... the bug list goes on and the above is only a small example of some of the worst ones. Once jedi were actually added, we got a whole slew of brand new bugs, like the ones that allowed BH to serial kill jedi into losing all skills they had earned to that point.
But despite all this, we had a lot of fun. And gradually, most bugs did get removed. The months before the CU happened, things were nearly bug free. If they'd just contented themselves with adding a quest system for the quest junkies, and if they'd somehow managed to neutralise the jedi for normal pvp (there were many ideas, including a jedi-only high reward PVP planet), the game would still be going strong today I think.
Linna
It is called selective memory, it is rather common. Many guys have it about ex girlfriends (kladies seems on the other hand to have very good memory about problems with ther ex).
Sounds like exploits to me, not bugs, which can only be discovered in a fully released and populated game......of cheating assholes.