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(The "Star Wars: Galaxies Syndrome") what Blizzard can learn from Sony

MMOExposedMMOExposed Member RarePosts: 7,400
in World of Warcraft
I notice that when it comes to video games, nobody ever learns from Sony's mistakes. For example, Nintendo made a new 3DS handheld system, but left off the right analog stick. Well didn't Sony before show the world why the right analog was needed. So now Nintendo wants to add a right analog to their handheld, when this issue could have been avoided from the start by learning from Sony's past mistakes. But when you follow in the footsteps of historic flaws, you are bound to run into flaws yourself. "History doesn't repeat History, People repeat History"






well how does this relate to MMORPG gaming and Blizzard?




There is something I call the "Star Wars: Galaxies Syndrome"




"The Star Wars: Galaxies Syndrome is when developers constantly trying to change their game to attract new players, which in turn upsets the current community - and a bunch of people leave...


...then they try to get those people back by radically changing the game play BACK to what it was, which in turn upsets the current community that stayed - and then those leave..



...and so on...



...and so on....."



We may know this as the NGE.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Sony made the mistake of trying to reach out to the players that hate their game, at the sacrifice of the players that been supporting them.
the people that like your game will be playing, while the people that don't, simply don't play it.( It's sort of like Tanking. People that like to tank in the trinity, will do it. Those that don't, will still not do it, no matter what you try to force on players)




well now Blizzard seem to want to follow in its grand parents footsteps.



Blizzard always tries to cater to the people that dont like WoW.
Any of you ever notice this?



it always seem like Blizzard is willing to sacrifice their own playerbase to change the mindset of a WoW Hater (The Star Wars: Galaxies Syndrome). no matter how much Blizzard tries to change WoW to make WoW haters like WoW, it never happens, because, WoW haters, simply HATE WoW!! pretty common sense, which isn't very common in Blizzard headquarters.



reminds me back in Vanilla WoW,,



WoW Hater say: I hate WoW. PvP is so unbalanced!! Guild Wars has Arenas, it way more balanced and better than WoW's PvP. Hey everybody,, come switch over to Guild Wars!! its FREE TO PLAY AS WELL... Way Better PVP THAN WoW!!!!



Blizzard say: hey everybody, we are adding Arena PvP to WoW in our upcoming X-pac,,, and we will be making it the main format of PvP. meaning, the best gear will come from it, making BG gear useless! Yay,,, Woot!!!!



Blizzard whispers to WoW Haters: Hey hope you like the new changes. I made it just for you.



WoW Hater say: fuck no I dont like it. Its still "WoW"... and I hate WoW!!



Blizzard say: :-(



Blizzard say: we made a huge mistake adding Arenas. we regret it. It caused more balance issues, and split apart our PvP playerbase, leaving half of them unhappy with the addition. But its soo far into the game's development, that we are unable to remove it. QQ



------------------------------------------



WoW Hater say: iam level 10 now!!! this game is Way too Easy!!!,,, looks like a fucking kiddy cartoon!!! why should I pay to play this shit when I can play F2P Guild Wars MMO that does this better with elite graphics to go with it?



Blizzard say: Hey everybody, we will focus most of our resources of the next x-pac into revamping the old world to make leveling better for you players that always seem to quit before reaching level 20. Also we are making all the PvE instances harder to make you all happy since you feel the game is too easy. yay,,,, Woot!!!!



Blizzard whispers to WoW Haters: Hey hope you like the new changes. I made it just for you.



WoW Hater say: fuck no I dont like it. Its still "WoW"... and I hate WoW!!Cause I am a ,,, u know,,,, a,,, WoW Hater. /facepalm.



Blizzard say: :-(



WoW Fan say: um wow, this x-pac wasted most of the resources revamping crap that that wont even be used for endgame.... smh. where are the brand new features? everything been done before. I quit.
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Philosophy of MMO Game Design

Comments

  • OcirusskdOcirusskd Member Posts: 212

    you cant really compare the two. swg was a niche game trying to go mainstream. wow is a mainstream game trying to broaden its player potential. pluss the north american market is shrinking and small compared to the billions of potential players in the asian market.

    wow just cant do a nge and change the most familiar aspects of the game in one fatal swoop like swg.

  • KiljaedenasKiljaedenas Member Posts: 468

    To parody a favorite line on some of those fucking dumb-shit ads for it: "I am a WoW hater, and I approve this message".

    Agree with you 100% on every single point you made!

    Where's the any key?

  • Zeal77Zeal77 Member Posts: 158

    WoW is a dead horse. There's only so many times you can keep beating it. 10 years from now people will still play WoW. Just like people still play UO, DAoC and EQ1. EQ1 just released a new expansion. Why must fanboys have WoW be forever number 1 triple A MMO topshit 12 million subscribers plus Chuck Norris!!

  • HomergdogHomergdog Member UncommonPosts: 95

    WoW is horrible, haven't played since WOTLK.

    Let me guess, every 6 months or so they release a couple new zones, raids, new grind, grab tokens, redeem for gear. Recycle. 

    I think WoW problem is it doesn't change enough... lol. SWG syndrome my ass.

  • SagasaintSagasaint Member UncommonPosts: 466

    Im still waiting for blizzard to say

     

    "hey everybody,  now we are designing our game to be challenging for anyone with an IQ above single digits, and we have stopped using brain damaged monkeys as our testing standard"

     

    of course that wouldnt happen because then:

     

    - the handful of WoW haters: oh well, might check it out

    -Blizzard's 10 million playerbase: OMG WHAT? CANCEL SUB!!!

     

     

     

    edit: on the other hand it could work, since WoW's playerbase is so used to be handholded and spoonfed that unless someone showed them where the cancel button is, they wouldnt find it out by themselves.

  • OcirusskdOcirusskd Member Posts: 212

    Originally posted by Sagasaint

    Im still waiting for blizzard to say

     

    "hey everybody,  now we are designing our game to be challenging for anyone with an IQ above single digits, and we have stopped using brain damaged monkeys as our testing standard"

     

    of course that wouldnt happen because then:

     

    - the handful of WoW haters: oh well, might check it out

    -Blizzard's 13 million playerbase: OMG WHAT? CANCEL SUB!!!

    first of all I am a wow HATER! lol. but 13 mill was wows peak its creeping around 10 mill now. but its also hard to say a 10 mill sub game is a dead horse. even if it becomes less of a force in the american market then it could get 40 mill subs in the asian market. its still a powerfull force and not dead or dying.

    If you look at the sub numbers then theres a huge spike down a few years back where it dipped as low as 4 mill subs but a year later wa back to 11 mill. people go back to wow. they have friends/ family and toons they love there and thats a powerfull draw

  • TorikTorik Member UncommonPosts: 2,342

    The OP seems to completely miss the fact that the changes he uses as examples were made to appeal to the WoW fans rather than haters

  • GadarethGadareth Member UncommonPosts: 310

    Originally posted by Zeal77

    WoW is a dead horse. There's only so many times you can keep beating it. 10 years from now people will still play WoW. Just like people still play UO, DAoC and EQ1. EQ1 just released a new expansion. Why must fanboys have WoW be forever number 1 triple A MMO topshit 12 million subscribers plus Chuck Norris!!

    Saying its a dead horse doesnt make it so. WOW is not dead its alive and kicking and so far its the Chuck Norris facing off against Pee Wee Herman in a cage deathmatch wielding chainsaw nunchakas. Only problem it has is the sheer number of Pee Wee Hermans that are facing off against it.

    WOW is probably never going to completely die off it may lose a sizeable percentage of its playerbase but as long as Blizzard keep it with a reasonable amount of updates people will keep returning to it.

     

  • VolkmarVolkmar Member UncommonPosts: 2,501

    Comparing WoW to SWG NGE is ridicolous.

    NGE was a TOTAL change of type of game! No small changes, no adding content, nope. A total change from sandbox open world, craft centered to Theme park.

    Last time I checked WoW is still a theme park and the general principles still apply. Yes, they add stuff to the game, yes they add ways to level up and end game possibilities.. but the core game is the same.

    Changing how classes works is NOT changing your whole game to be something else!

    As for Blizzard catering to Wow Hater... yeah right! that must exactly be the reason why until Cata, WoW subscriptions were constsntly on the RISE! must also be the reason why WoW expansion packs hold the record for fastest selling pc game of all time... So many WoW haters buying them!

    Yes, now WoW is losing subscriptions (mainly in Asia, says Blizzard) and oooh boy weren't the haters waiting for anything else even if most of them were saying the "wow is dying" mantra since 2004.

    "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"



  • n3verendRn3verendR Member UncommonPosts: 452

    People love to hate popular things. The same people that hate WoW would be the same people that would herald Twilight as the second coming of Tolkein if it weren't so popular.

    I'm not saying I like Twilight, but I am saying that it's the "popular thing to hate the popular thing".

    Been going on for years - there is nothing wrong with WoW, you may not like it - I may not even play it anymore - but that many million people that ARE playing it...

    Well...

    How many people play YOUR favorite MMO?

    People think it's fun to pretend your a monster. Me I spend my life pretending I'm not. - Dexter Morgan

  • azucarazucar Member Posts: 20

    The NGE was SOEs way of slaping a theme park on top of a sandbox and it proves it didnt work .. if you make a sandbox from the ground up you don't  slap  theme park mechanics on top of it.  now after the NGE and all the talk about how its was like warcraft i thought i would try wow.. and yes i was pissed that the NGE happened. and ended up play wow because of the NGE.

    and im sure alot of players when they left SWG because of the NGE went to wow to. so BLIZZ can thank lucas arts and SOE for

    handing over X amount of SUBS..  

    Good Show.

  • DarkPonyDarkPony Member Posts: 5,566

    Originally posted by Sukiyaki

    Oh look ... a WoW fanboi forged a heavily biased revision of some general arguments, trying to discredit any critic and any criticism about his favorite game WoW, by depicting them in the offworldly role of some"unreasonable hate driven WoW hater" placing twisted and fabricated "ignorant/unreasonable/emotional driven appearing arguments/claims/responses" into their mouths.... (once again, like in so many topics lately, building mainly on already won arguments against selfmade strawmen and twisted arguments as premises.)

    And lets not leave the bias end here: the "unreasonable hate" even comes "in response to" an overly delusional positive and infallible glory, offered in every overhyped feature/patch of the saint-like "Blizzard offering/improving/fixing everything for the better in its eternal optimism and perfectionism!" which of course those evil shrouds of WoW critics hater with their endless arguments hate could never accept/comprehend as unreasonable as they are. And its not like its simply not close as perfect and taintless or even close to positive as WoW fanbois want to sell it off.

    And because all better is three, we are even underhandedly trying to frame fans of the upcoming competitioner game "GuildWars 2" as being part of that imaginary "unreasonable/ignorant hatedriven WoW hater" picture he keeps attempting to fabricate and establish, by decisively planting some pro GW2 propaganda (of course overly emotionaly driven und unreasonably appearing) into the mouths of those so called "WoW hater" (which support his beyond reasonable WoW centric perspective of the community and genre where every matter is implied to be related to the omnipresent WoW),

    (Its so much easier to tackle fallacies your created yourself, when losing out at reasonable arguments and against common sense. PS.: Derailing any argument into unrelated highly subjective matters does not equal winning an argument.)

    All hiding under the thin cover of some superficial randomly picked up topic about "games not learning from the past mistakes" he obviously has no interest in either like the last 1000s topics.

     

    What a very meaningful topic.

    Not obviously driven by some PRO WoW/ANTI competition/ANTI WoW critique agenda at all.

    Or rather "PRO WoW/ANTI competition/ANTI WoW critique" propaganda poorly disguised under the pretext of another hardly relevant topic/dilemma.

    Certainly its better to randomly ninja delete/edit some responses reacting critically about WoW or towards WoW fanbois ignorant and malintended behavior, claims and rants..

    On topic; I think you might be on to something this time around, OP.

    I too subscribe to the notion that Blizzard has been doing a great job NOT listening to their own playerbase; taking the people they have for granted and giving them more of the same to keep them pacified but mainly focussing on their ultimate goal: RUTHLESS EXPANSIUN OF PLYRBASE. The panda addition might be the last drop that filled the bucket for many as it is such an obvious attempt to expand in the eastern market.

    I think people are getting fed up with their cookie cutter expansion strategy of adding a new race / class / a few dungeons / a battleground and an increase in level cap that renders everyone's gear obsolete

    The treadmill is showing more and more.

    image
    My brand new bloggity blog.

  • HexcaliberHexcaliber Member UncommonPosts: 171


    Dear god, really; the entire premise of your post is incorrect.


     


    You mistakenly believe, as do a disproportionately large number of SWG fans, that large scale changes were solely SOE's doing; they were not.


     


    Lucas arts placed huge pressure on SOE to change the game right after launch, when early reviews slated the game for not feeling like star wars. Many articles, and many more fans, pointed out it could be a sci fi mmo by any other name and not lose anything, and they were right. If you need further proof, look at the way Lucas continues to play around with the films, the man will never be happy with the way his Universe is portrayed.


     


    Where SOE failed, was in communicating with the games fans, and the way they stealthed sweeping changes by dropping them into players laps, and as we all know, that is down to one man, who quite rightly is seen as a pariah.


     


    Blizzards upcoming changes are aimed at maintaining interest in its eastern market, which has always been the largest consumer of WOW. Blizzard is astute, and knows the mmo community and market well enough to understand that customers in the west are growing bored after seven years.


     


    Not only do they have Bioware knocking at the door of gamers looking for subs, Blizzard themselves have a new mmo due out next year, and both are set to dilute wow's existing player base further. Releasing an update aimed at shoring its Eastern market is an incredibly smart move on their part; they, like many in the business, understand Star Wars has never held the same interest in the East. This latest move will secure revenue from the Eastern market for the next twelve months, supporting it against Bioware's assault until they are ready to release their own new product.


    My Colour Is Vomit green, I puke on the tards with stupid colour sigs. My symbol is ,,!, O ,!,, My enemies are any prat with a colour sig, a meaningless personality test, or a pointless list of games and classes.


    Regards Hexcaliber

  • JaggaSpikesJaggaSpikes Member UncommonPosts: 430

    this was old in 2007. actually, it was old the moment two people disagreed in pre-history. and it really isn't getting more interesting.

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