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Star Wars Galaxies: Last of the Retrospective Series Published
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The last in a series of articles by Raph Koster shedding a retrospective light on Star Wars Galaxies has been published. Titled "Did Star Wars Galaxies Fail?", Koster answers the question with "Well yes, of course. And also, no."
The game wasn’t doing as badly as people seem to think. It didn’t fail in the market. It did just fine, even by the standards pre-WoW. But there were huge expectations that we didn’t push against, it launched with serious problems, and the team wasn’t really equipped to fix them. This resulted in a series of errors that damaged the game’s ongoing viability, which resulted in more hurried changes.
Plenty of the choices made, or the omissions, were my decision; in that sense, SWG didn’t fail. I failed it. Certainly its impacts on me personally were that it drove me to explore both plain old “fun,” something that I felt I had failed at — I got a book out of that; and it drove me to keep looking at ways in which players could own their own spaces, which eventually became Metaplace. Oh, and it made me try to be way more practical, and also made me reluctant to just manage, something which actually hurt Metaplace badly because I spent too much time on raw implementation and getting my hands dirty.
Be sure to head over to Raph Koster's blog for a great, and very personal, read about Star Wars Galaxies.
Comments
Being one of those that always understood why NGE came to life and what it was trying to do. I will always in some little way mourn my Zabrak Image Designer/Entertainer/Cantina owner... HE never saw combat any other way but with his wits and he sure as heck never slayed any Krayt dragons for their pearls. But he was a very important cog in the machinery in a way that i think no other game will ever bother to try and replicate... Perhaps for the best...
I fully enjoyed my time in SWG... But it also never really became what it was supposed to be. (Like entertainer missions or any form of PvE content for ID´s)
Heck.. If i become rich some day i might build another game like that...
This have been a good conversation
SWG released half Alpha, mistake #1 but it was fun.
Then tried to turn it into a WOW clone when it was a sandbox, mistake #2.
Add blatant lying and shwoing disrespect to your customers to the recepy, mistake #3.
Result....it got nuked.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
Realities aside, it would be so nice if Daybreak was able to bring back SWG. *hint hint* That would be a great way to make friends. You know, cuz everyone knows the best way to make friends is to give them stuff.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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they can bring back the game... as in systems and such... They can not bring back the license since it is given to EA for the next 10:ish years... And i am pretty sure that EA would see it as a competitor to SW:ToR...
So the question is... Would people still play it if it was Space Wars: the saga... I am not all that sure.
This have been a good conversation
A very interesting last instalment.
It almost sounds like most of SWG's problems resulted from the inability of the team to do proper datamining. They were asking the wrong questions and therefore their metrics tools were delivering the wrong answers. Subsequent "fixes" were totally inappropriate and sometimes compounded the problems.
I suppose you can't really blame anyone for that. There weren't any MMORPG data analysis experts in 2004, everyone was learning as they went along. Mistakes were bound to happen.
Raph also repeatedly mentions the "unrealistic expectations" that surrounded the game. I can only imagine that LucasArts and SOE both thought the IP would be enough to produce mega-success. When it didn't, they blamed the game implementation without considering the possibility that they may have overestimated the potential.
Well, The Repopulation might answer that question.
There's definitely some reliance on Star Wars. Even with SWTOR. Despite how amazing the game is, when I was in my first SWTOR Raid, I think I literally had a smile the entire Rancor fight. I think I actually had to just look up a couple times and say to myself, "Holy eff! I'm fighting a rancor!" Can that "awesomeness" be reproduced by just scaling bosses? I don't think so.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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