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Star Wars Galaxies: LucasArts Denies SOE Split Plans
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Everyone has heard the rumors circulating that Star Wars Galaxies will soon leave Sony Online Entertainment at the request of LucasArts. Not true says LucasArts Community Manager Casey Keefe. Their voice for SWG issued this release to clear things up:
| Several websites are passing along spurious internet rumors regarding Star Wars Galaxies. Rest assured, these rumors are completely untrue.
LucasArts and SOE have no plans to sunset Star Wars Galaxies. The two companies will continue to work together as partners in making Star Wars Galaxies the ultimate online Star Wars experience. As has been announced several times previously, LucasArts and SOE are 100% committed and determined to continue to support Star Wars Galaxies together, especially with our renewed focus on improving the game for existing players through robust publish and content offerings in 2006. On our forums, we have shared early plans for game updates through Publish 34, which can be found: here. Additionally, LucasArts and SOE will be hitting the road this April and visiting several cities across the US with a series of Community Summits in an open town hall format where players can meet face-to-face with development team members, ask their questions, voice their concerns, as well as meet and hang out with fellow Star Wars Galaxies players. |
Thanks to Casey for passing this along.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Very, very sorry to hear that these rumors are NOT true. I don't know a single person who plays who is content with the game. SOE has caused a train wreck with this and now is simply sitting back and watching it smoke and burn.
Truely dissapointing.
Crap...that is really disappointing...
No longer visiting MMORPG.com.
I'll believe it after E3.
They denied the nge before it hit too. They're not denying any involvement with Bioware either.
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
As long as LA continues to stand behind the mess of SWG/SOE, they will continue to allow the bad word-of-mouth
advertising to continue. That results in lost sales both in terms of SWG and non-swg offerings from both companies.
LA it is time for a change in direction and to cut SOE loose. Frankly, unless that is done, SWG/LA will continue
to suffer from an angry fan base. The only way to quell the customer base is by disolving the SOE-LA link
utterly and completely. Until then, SWG, SOE and LA deserve all the bad publicity they get both through
commercial outlets as well as the word-of-mouth, speculation and rummors. The more you fight the customer base,
the more money you loose.
By the way, this is a very Star Warsy and Iconic opinion to have since the market has rejected "kill, get treasure, repeat" as the end-all to getting Cool New Loot. And by the way, it is not technically impossible to do a rollback.
SWG is the Titanic, and the devs are playing the Violins on deck.
let me fix this for you:
SWG is the Titanic, and the ship alrdy sank.. everyone just does relize there dead alrdy.
Dana,
With no disrespect intended, it is Julio Torres that posted this message to the offical SWG boards.
So, apparenly Casey didn't say this.
Thanks,
Clackamas
They would have been better saying nothing.
They denied enough things that finally happened that it's not even funny.
It's indie, sandbox and free! http://www.golemizer.com
Its interesting because 1/3 of the orignal rummor which was coupled with this has been confirmed (Ralph Koster leaving).
The other 1/3, Cindy Armstrong leaving for webzen, I believe is a pending rumor to be confirmed.
The most recent license rumor "LA is not extending SOE the license" were coupled to the above departures.
Alas, "not extending" doesn't mean lost... yet.
Also note that the Dev Town Meeting/Trail thing was stated here and that is includes
both Lucas Arts and SOE. The original Thunderheart announcemnt failed to explicitly
state Lucas Arts role in this.
This much is clear: LA is taking on a much more visible role in the SWG fiasco.
Maybe SOE is on super secret probation that will result in License loss if they
don't do certain things.
Anyway, I think it is Iconic that all that is Star Warsy is coming back full circle.
How awful!
There is no hope now for SWG.
All is now lost. SOE now can completely destroy this game with LA's approval.
Time to remove SWG from my hard drive to go along with my cancelled accounts.
I don't know why LA thinks SOE will make something of this mess they have created.
If they ever do get it to work, no one will be left to play it.
WOO HOO, for them to come out and say that its not happening, means that there is a 100% chance that it IS happening.
But seriously if nobody sees that Lucasarts is the real reason for the downfall of the game, then you're just blind.
Sony makes a crappy game, but initially they had some really good minds that put together the game in the first place. But once those people started getting the royal scepter treatment from King George, they got out quick. So its puppet smedley, thunderheart and crew left holding the bag.
Once again I'll say this game had more promise but was a bigger failure than any game I've encountered. And NOW you're gonna get public feedback??? Hey, knuckleheads, You had 2 years of that already and you did squat with it.
Uninstall, burn the servers and give the license to a great company with a big payroll. You may not make as much money George, but you just might make a great long lasting game.
Lightsaber OFF
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
George, your movies are crappy now and so are your games. Not to mention your politics. You suck.
Sincerely,
Me.
too bad. im playing till i accomplish everything i wanted..should take about 2months and them im out for good..again
game is so dumbed down and easy to play i think i'll go back to playing FF1 or something more interesting. we all want a roll back or drastic change to the game, something similar to what it was with the devs focused on making the game stable first then expansions and content. once again..im paying to beta test.
Thank so much! Now I wont have to worry about coming back. I was getting
tired of all the rumors flying around this game. But since LA said that them and SOE
are still going to be joined at the hip.
Thank God my subscription has been dead for over a year now.
heh i dont know what to believe.....
they lied about the NGE and about the ranger revamp and soooooo many countless other things that theres no way to say whether theyre telling the truth or not.....
heh and that list of publishes was a load of crap i dont think that the game will last that long to stay on that plan.... i know i wont be back ever even if there is an swg2 or whatever because LA is just as much to blame as SOE is IMO
Can you honestly be suprised by what is said? I don't know much about common business practices and it will probably show but after this huge catastrophe with SWG, it leaves both SOE and LA with the following options:
Do a server rollback:
This in terms of short term financial gain, is probably the most lucrative and it would bound to bring back some of the old players and i'm sure the majority of people who play it now are die hard star wars fans who will always be around anyway. On the bad side with this move is that it would be deemed as extremely unprofessional and with all the crap being said at the moment, that is the last thing SOE or LA want. Something like this to my knowledge, has never been done before and the media would criticise both companies even more. Also a large portian of the SOE/LA haters left, are people who are not even that into the game and are simply hopping onto the "cool" bandwagon and lets face it, coming up with new conspiracy theories about SOE/LA is the in thing. These people would be shocked by such a move and instead of opening their loving arms, they would be like "haha SOE/LA admit defeat, they suck!!111!!11!!" kind of metality.
Terminate the contract:
This could be potentially a good or a bad move but it would still be considered somewhat unprofessional. The gains for this would be pure credability and as someone already pointed out in this thread, the longer SWG is out, the more damaging it's doing to both SOE and LA's reputations in the long run. I can honestly see SOE wanting to keep the contract as they have a big point to prove with turning this game around. LA are probably somewhat reluctant to continue with SWG but they are still actively bringing in the $$ and from that, they are content. I can imagine the media let the SWG business go if this happends but only after some criticisms regarding everything. The fans will rejoice but cry even louder if LA don't announce a new SW mmo game.
Make more drastic changes:
This is probably a huge outside possiblity and i'm quite certain that this will only ever be thought of six months down the line but it could potentially save the game. I'm sure the design plan as of late, has been extremely difficult for everyone and it seems that SOE are finally getting a future development plan going which is invaluable to the continuation of SWG. Now if they done the drastic changes, they would be back to square one and have to fix another buggy game all over and this is why I think this won't happend but if the past has told us anything, I wouldn't put it past SOE/LA to do this when things get desperate. If this happend, I think both companies would be considered a laughing stock with the media and most fans wouldn't even consider it but it could still arrouse some interest amongst more people.
Continue where the NGE left off:
This is what we believe is being done and to be fair, it's the most logical thing for both SOE and LA to do. Fix the broken mess and see how things are from there. Financially, it's probably going to be crappy but for long term reputations for both companies, this is the safest best. I'm sure both companies are getting extremely desperate to put an end to all the rumours going about as they are doing a lot of long term injuries to both SOE and LA and I think they are almost praying for these rumours to go away and sadly, they probably won't. Nobody could have predicted just how bad it would get from former players but this has to be the worst case scenario. The only thing left is for them to heal the wounds which will probably never fully happend but that is the plan.
Well that is my beliefs of what could have happend and why it didn't, feel free to criticise me, call me dumb or point out the millions of grammar problems and spelling mistakes but I never said I was smart
.
The most realistic future outcome will be that nothing major will be announced until after SOE sort the bugs out and revamp the game to a somewhat playable state. Once this happends, I would imagine that LA will announce a new MMO is being made (probably by bioware.) They will say that SOE can still go on with SWG (if there is enough subscribers) but they will be focusing on the new one. If they done this, LA would remain a loved company and will feel they can't be blaimed anymore for the SWG mess while SOE can pick up the pieces. All in all, I believe that SOE will probably get screwed over one way or another.
This is, overall, a great post! But, I don't see how a rollback is "unprofessional"? At the very least, SOE and LA have been acting unprofessional... as recently as the last 24 hours, it was inappropriate for Smedley to comment on the Ralph Koster departing SOE on the fohguild board. That is, until it was posted offically on the SOE forums.
So, I don't think professionalism is high on SOE list.
That is precisely why Smed shouldn't be in a job right now but doing a server rollback, would be unprofessional because it would be like admitting defeat and it would also screw up all their current plans for the future of SWG. Professionalism is regarded as one of the most important aspects of any business and ALL companies will strive to be as professional as possible. Ofcourse, there are idiots like Smed who fails miserably but after all the pressure he has been put through so far this year, you can't honestly blame him.
I only see two flaws in this explaination -- "screw up all their current plans for the future of SWG" -- I thought those plans were pretty much in doubt with the massive subscription loss the game has seen in the last 6 months.
I also think it is very appropriate for someone to say we messed up, here is what you asked for. In another thread, there was the "New Coke" vs. "Coke" fisaco. Old coke was brough back while new coke was quitely phased out after things had died down.
The anger of the customer base is still showing no signs of abatment. Even those like me who have cancelled.
They have 3 choices:
1. Do a rollback and address the problems under that system with content, etc. Probably most profitable at this point.
2. Continue down the path they are going. They *might* break even or edge out a small profit.
3. Shut the game down, and LA move on to another company.
I favor #3 at this point.
I can't imagine after all that has happened, Smed would be able to get a job in his position in any other gaming company. Sadly, the only reason he still has the job is because he has no conscience when it comes to lying to a vast community. He is freaking out, knowing that once SWG finally dies, he will be scraping gum from underneath the seats of his local movie theater.
As much as he has deceived, he should be hanging out with the Enron guys in jail.
Maybe a tad harsh, but think about the money he has reaped for SOE by misinformation. He is so lucky he has the Legal Document which says "gameplay may change" to hide under.