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In all seriousness (Dont turn this into a flame please)
Sharkypal
Member Posts: 1,137
So, is this game dead or will it attract a new crowd? I tried the NGE tonight and I have to say that it isn't that bad. Let me be very clear. I understand why so many people are angry! I started playing SWG in 2003 and it is a completely different game now. I just wanted to get some objective opinions about the future of this game.
I know some of you hate it. I was there once myself but I am trying to accept it for what it is as opposed to wishing it was something it will never be again. If you want to spew hate, please don't do it in this thread. If you don't like it, by all means voice your objective opinions.
Rumours abound that SWG is going "tits up" and nothing can save it. There has definitely been an exodus of thousands of people and it has definitely hurt the game. However, I am on the Chimaera server and there are quite a few people playing.
Anyways, opinions please!
S
Comments
It's not damn good, it's a mess. Every one of my characters over two accounts now is currently gated except ONE, and he is getting no XP hunting bounties.
Secondly, the manner in which a sledgehammer was used to present it to the community is causing people to reconsider buying into this.
Lastly, the MASSIVE outcry, like never before seen, has the word spread so far a wide, people just won't buy it. It's an unstable element. Nobody knows if they will get what they paid for, whether it will be rolled back, or just shut down entirely. These things are all adding up to people just not coming in like they did during the CU.
Why pay the money...if there's no guarantee the game will be what you bought, or even exist?
Of course you know my opinion, it has potential. But then again, so did every other version of SWG, and they never bothered to finish those. What makes this so different? (besides the fact that every server save ONE is in light status during prime time)
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
It's toast, most people are now looking forard to SWG2 in a few years from someone (anyone) but Sony.
- There is no game past level 30, in a 90 level game
- Buggier than a BETA, 'nuff said
- Servers are ghost towns, and they're going to stay that way for several reasons:
1. Pretty much everyone that was ever going to try this game already has at some point (1.3 million over the years)
2. It may be a newly re-made game but it's still not a NEW game and new games are it's competition.
3. Populations have dropped so much as to become a self-fullfilling prophesy. A huge part of SWG is sheer scale. The same # of people in a smaller environment would still look/feel like an empty game but not to the same extent. Player city ghost towns and harvester fields will really drive this home as the structure maint runs out. I remember being struck by how empty the game seemed when I started after the exodus to WoW. Populations are now only a small fraction of what they were then. I liked the suggestion to add tumbleweeds to the game.
- A big part of the game was the player economy, watch for most vendors to not get their montly re-list in the next couple weeks. No reason for crafters to play now. With no decay crafting is dead as people buy things once (if they don't loot a better item which has become much more common) and never replace them. Quality of crafted items is going to start dropping as well. Not just becuase of reduced resource availablility but because quality crafting stations can no longer be made. The 'structures traders' that make them have architect and shipwright master level experimentation points but crafting stations use artisan experimentation points. You used to be able to get close to a 45 point station with uber resources, components and 12 points of experimentation. Now it's capped at 7 points of experimentation. Master crafters can't even re-spec to a master combat prof if they want to stay in the game. Their years of contribution to the game get rewarded with combat level 1.
- An absolutely insane amount of bad publicity, negative word of mouth to disuade anyone that does even minimal research before purchasing. Most games (MMO or otherwise) get lots of positive posts (of varying degrees of enthusiasm) and a few that didn't like it. I have never seen any other game that received such overwhelmingly negative reviews.
- I could go on, there's lots of other problems but they've been expounded on well by myself and others here and elsewhere. The biggest thing though is people won't put up with the way SOE treats their customers.
I've been reading up on how this game has been going, and all i have read of about it in forums is how horrible it is.
Then I spot in the forums like where Anarchyart posts how he is having a good time with it, and he even gave a good story, I find that a little more beleivable. But, you never know what to beleive, as i am not the biggest soe fan... anywho, I went to walmart yesterday and grabbed this game, comming to my surprise at only 20$!!
I start it up after patching and whatnot, and i must say, I had a Really good time. I made myself a Rodian Bounty Hunter and have been enjoying these quests, and the space missions.. Omg they are fun (cept for the traveling part). Anywho from what i have seen so far, and from leaving the first station finally, this is a very good and entertaining game!
I plan to keep with this game, but I am worried as I read there is no more content after level 30? well I really hope thats not true.. but i really have no idea what to beleive, after hearing how bad and terrable this game is, and having such a good time playing it.. who knows what will come.
Anywho thats just my input so far, and i want to thank ppl like Anarchyart for making a different stand and pulling my interest, leading me to try it for myself.
-VolEs
Careful man lol you'll get a slew of 18 paragraph reasons why you shouldn't be playing it. It all comes down to how long you've been playing it really. Most veterans hate the new changes and most newcomers enjoy the game. And they will tell you even if you are enjoying it you will run out of content at level 30 and it's grind only from there on up.
I just changed servers last night to join Obraik's PA so I'll be leveling up again so it will be another few weeks before I hit level 30 and then I will find out for myself. I have a certain Tusken Raider quest I want to try at level 30 and see if it's broken like everyone says all the quests are. Glad you tried it for yourself though. Score one for people who think for themselves.
Yeah, have to agree for the most part. I am enjoying myself. The whole Lvl 30 thing worries me a bit but hopefully this will be a case of SOE not dropping the ball for a change!
S
I hope you guys are having fun. It's cool that you enjoy this game. It really propably isn't that bad if you didn't play pre-NGE. But, for those who saw the potential it had before the NGE, its unbearable to play this disaster they have created.
NGE Refugee.
For starters, if you enjoy the game, you need not worry about SWG being dead. It's hard to shut down an MMORPG and there's been only a few titles that actually did shut down. Some games with a far worse number of subscriptions and financial trouble (like Horizons) are still up and running.
Considering that it's not easy for an online game to increase its number of subscriptions a year or two after release ("that game's old", "I also have to buy # expansions, no way", etc. are frequent reasons why it's not easy), as well as the fact that they effectively alienated their existant customer base (and causing a general bad hype), I highly doubt whether the NGE will achieve its business goals. In my opinion, in the long term, this change will make SWG a very enjoyable game, as long as they've learnt their mistakes and stick to it. However, I'd estimate that in the best of cases they'll stay in the 200k-300k customers range or drop to 100k-150k if NGE fails miserably.
I cannot see a valid reason why this product, with all its reputation and age, can attract a number of new customers large enough to actually justify this change...
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
"tits up"
Well put.
It doesn't matter that a few people like it, I'd say about 10% from every poll I've seen. Sure.. noobs might just like it too, since that demo is so decieving.
But they're losing 90% of their players. There's no coming back from this.
With the horrible way they treated the vets.. even if they rolled it back, more than half would stay away.
Remember.. you can't compare it to a low-population game. They have a MUCH higher overhead than other games, because they...
1. Split the profit with Lucasarts
2. Have a ton of servers compared to 90% of the MMORPGS
3. Supposingly have a 70 person dev team... I hear that is a lot.
4. The expectations from Lucasarts not being met would kill the game.
SWG won't "survive" with 100k. They're already doing every foolish thing they can to save the game,and they had 200k pre nge.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I am finding the control scheme annoying. I cant add new chat tabs. The windows wont lock and I cant have more than one toolbar as far as I can tell.
Still enjoying it for the most part though!!
S
PS : If anyone knows the answers to my above dilemmas, DO TELL!
To add new chat tabs, right click the top right of the chat box and click "Add New Tab". To modify the tab and change what shows on it, double click the tab. You have 6 different tool bars which you can access by using CTRL + TAB. You can also assign each toolbar its own keystroke in the keymap (CTRL + F1, etc used to be the default and thats how I have mine set. Should be under the UI tab and Toolbar Pane 1, etc) so you can get directly to the toobar you want. Not exactly sure what you mean on window lock? If you mean releasing the mouse, press Alt and you have free movement of it.
As for content past lvl 30, my assumption is that Publish 26 will address this. My guess is they'll make the Kashyyyk quests also give XP, and they start at around lvl 30ish right up to 80.
90% is a fairly large estimate, I would think it'd be much lower then that, probably more closer to 50% if not lower based on what I've seen on my server
They can survive with 100k, they just need to limit expenses accordingly, which means a server merge (4-5 servers remaining) and a smaller number of customer service (GMs, event organisers), probably a smaller development team, though I assume they've already done changes there during the NGE. They did have 70 people in the development team at one time, but the way Smedley put it made it be a little obvious that this number has been reduced accordingly.
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
They can survive with 100k, they just need to limit expenses accordingly, which means a server merge (4-5 servers remaining) and a smaller number of customer service (GMs, event organisers), probably a smaller development team, though I assume they've already done changes there during the NGE. They did have 70 people in the development team at one time, but the way Smedley put it made it be a little obvious that this number has been reduced accordingly.
Why do you think they chose an NGE style game to pervert it into?
The most expensive part of the SWG operation is the tons of developers. With a dummy game in place, they can get rid of most of them and they get paid 80-120k.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
They can survive with 100k, they just need to limit expenses accordingly, which means a server merge (4-5 servers remaining) and a smaller number of customer service (GMs, event organisers), probably a smaller development team, though I assume they've already done changes there during the NGE. They did have 70 people in the development team at one time, but the way Smedley put it made it be a little obvious that this number has been reduced accordingly.
Why do you think they chose an NGE style game to pervert it into?
The most expensive part of the SWG operation is the tons of developers. With a dummy game in place, they can get rid of most of them and they get paid 80-120k.
That would be possible, if they didn't have to split their profits in two. That, and server consolidation will shoo off many players too.
Lucas would probably wnt to fold it and make a new game before they allowed it to stumble along on life support...that, and I'm sure $OE wouldn't bother. They just pulled the plug on Japan, remember?
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
If you think about it, they can drop 50 developers easy. That's roughly $5 million a year in salaries and benefits. At least.
So they lose half the playerbase.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
If they had 200k subscribers, at $13.50 average per month, and you lose half those, that's a loss of $16.2 million per year, so it's not necessarily good business sense unless you intend to make those back through a different type of playerbase.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Babe.. the 70-90 game is borked too. "Buy mustifarce then do one mission.. oops, we nerfed that!"
Everything over 30 is abyssmal.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I think I would hav to agree with the indivudual that stated even with a rollback they would only regain 50% of the customer base they lost. They main problem is we have now been playing other games for a month and having fun as opposed to digesting the usual excuses broken promises etc. that sony likes to send your way as a player of one of their games. My wife still maintains one account and on occasion I look over at her screen. Populations in areas were 50-150 usually congregated on corbantis now number 5-10. Defintly a 90% loss at least of players. To the new players that keep reminding us that we should get off of sony's back. They betrayed a trust and now they will pay that price for a long time to come. You should be thankful for our response. It shows the gaming community that players will not sit idly by and have two years of playing wiped away without taking the game down with 'em.
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As has been said here before, there are good things about the NGE, and of course the vets are upset, they invested in a game that no longer exist and it is human nature to feel the way they do. Having said that, anyone new, and not having experienced either the customer service or game changing that vets have gone through can not and will not understand what is being said, nor belive most of it until it happens to them. This game will attract a new crowd, but you must understand that SOE is gambling that the new crowd will be bigger then the one they left, and I dont think that will happen, not for a long while anyway. As I said in my review of the new game, it has more content for noobs however there is an active effort within SOE to force people into the quest system in order to advance in the game. If you enjoy that type of gameplay then set back and enjoy the game and 2 years when you actually Master a prof and have reached where I am, tell me if it was worth the ride:). I still play and am a vet of 2 years, but it is becuasue of friends and what little new content is in the game, however, the few new things they have added with Mustafar are so lagged/bugged that it is hard to either see if you like the NGE or enjoy the game. I hope all the noobs that buy this game and like Star Wars enjoy it, and Im glad to see those that enjoy it step up and say so on forums all over, but stop discounting what vets have said simply because they just dont like the game. Most all what has been said on both sides of this issue are correct, just depends on your point of view whether you like the game or not.
BlackWatch