Originally posted by admriker444 Squidi, I dont care what you and your retard friends claim to see. The game is NOT growing. Get that through your fanboi brain. Smedley, you know him...the guy who's President of SOE...that guy stated the game is still LOSING players. Its beyond me to comprehend the ignorance of fanbois like Squidi who think their personal observations are evidence of growth. Do you see the accounts that are cancelled ? Do you see the accounts that were running on prepaid cards that continue to expire without renewels ? Until Smedley comes out and states the game is growing we can all assume its not. And you dam well better believe if that ever did happen (growth), Smedley would have the SOE PR machine screaming about it to everyone. Accept the fact that the game you have chosen to play is a failure. And accept the fact that you arent smart enough to quit when a company spits in your face, steals your money to develop another game in secret, and repeatedly lies to you. truth hurts
Yes, and Smedley also said that SWG is the 5th largest MMO on the market on that same day. Personal observations aren't evidence of growth? Then why do your personal obeservations count as evidence of a decrease?
Originally posted by Obraik Originally posted by admriker444 Squidi, I dont care what you and your retard friends claim to see. The game is NOT growing. Get that through your fanboi brain. Smedley, you know him...the guy who's President of SOE...that guy stated the game is still LOSING players. Its beyond me to comprehend the ignorance of fanbois like Squidi who think their personal observations are evidence of growth. Do you see the accounts that are cancelled ? Do you see the accounts that were running on prepaid cards that continue to expire without renewels ? Until Smedley comes out and states the game is growing we can all assume its not. And you dam well better believe if that ever did happen (growth), Smedley would have the SOE PR machine screaming about it to everyone. Accept the fact that the game you have chosen to play is a failure. And accept the fact that you arent smart enough to quit when a company spits in your face, steals your money to develop another game in secret, and repeatedly lies to you. truth hurts
Yes, and Smedley also said that SWG is the 5th largest MMO on the market on that same day. Personal observations aren't evidence of growth? Then why do your personal obeservations count as evidence of a decrease?
Actually, there not. Because the numbers that Smedley used to make his 5th largest claim are suspect. It is unfortunate, but true that you need the vets in order to save the game. But unless SOE goes pre-NGE at the least and pre-CU at best, the vets will not only not have anything to do with the game, but they will do there best to cast Sony appropriately in the light they felt Sony cast them in: unwanted.
Originally posted by got2kill ok so let me get this straight, swg doesnt have 190k people. Each server has about 100-200 active people. i have no clue where u get 190k from that.
The fact is SOE has announced they have about 850,000 total subscriptions of which 750000 are EQ/EQII subscriptions. So the logic is that SWG accounts for at most 1/2 100K subs distrubted over the rest of the games SOE has development control over. So, on the generous side, this is inline with the "at most 50K SWG subs" that are considered accurate by the industry at large. Also, these numbers don't tell us anything about how many of that 50K log into the game regularly. Based on industry guesses, probably only 10-20% are currently active for a total of 5-10K people. Again, these are generous guesses and the numbers are probably lower for SWG subs.
this game can have 100k subs, it can even have 150k or 190k ... but the fact is that 6months since nge the game is still RECOVERING and will be at least for another3-5months ... dunno but this looks ridiculous to me
Originally posted by teleprior this game can have 100k subs, it can even have 150k or 190k ... but the fact is that 6months since nge the game is still RECOVERING and will be at least for another3-5months ... dunno but this looks ridiculous to me
Add to this fact that it's been 3 years and the game is not even complete.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Originally posted by Clackamas Actually, 'there' not. Because the numbers that Smedley used to make his 5th largest claim are suspect.
Like it or not, he's in a position to know. You are not. Suspect him or not, he's a primary source and you're some illiterate guy on a forum who can't get his homophones straight (among many other atrocities). We know you make up shit whenever it pleases you. Maybe that's why you assume everybody else does too?
Smedley has no reason to lie. If he was making stuff up, why 5th? Why not 4th? Why even include Runescape's numbers at all? If he was lying, then at least he picked a realistic lie. You, however, state that 200,000 vets somehow left the game. That's not even remotely reasonable or realistic. He wins.
Originally posted by Squidi Smedley has no reason to lie. If he was making stuff up, why 5th? Why not 4th? Why even include Runescape's numbers at all? If he was lying, then at least he picked a realistic lie. You, however, state that 200,000 vets somehow left the game. That's not even remotely reasonable or realistic. He wins.
And neither did all those executives at Enron.
Three words for ye: board of directors.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
lol so head of multimilion-dollar company has no reason to lie?! dont want to sound like anti-capitalist but c'mon mate, would be wonderfull if it worked like that
Originally posted by teleprior lol so head of multimilion-dollar company has no reason to lie?! dont want to sound like anti-capitalist but c'mon mate, would be wonderfull if it worked like that
You're right he had every reason to lie - to comfort the playerbase and say that the game is alright and that the NGE would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to SWG. But he didn't say that. He said the NGE might be a mistake and they were losing subscriptions. He said SWG was the fifth largest mmorpg behind RUNESCAPE. If he was going to lie, why say that kind of stuff?
Want to compare it to Enron? They create projections based on deals that hadn't gone through yet, creating the illusion that the company was doing much, much, much better than the reality of it was. In retrospect, Enron was too good to be true. Can you even remotely say that SOE is pulling an Enron?
Originally posted by Squidi Originally posted by teleprior lol so head of multimilion-dollar company has no reason to lie?! dont want to sound like anti-capitalist but c'mon mate, would be wonderfull if it worked like that
You're right he had every reason to lie - to comfort the playerbase and say that the game is alright and that the NGE would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to SWG. But he didn't say that. He said the NGE might be a mistake and they were losing subscriptions. He said SWG was the fifth largest mmorpg behind RUNESCAPE. If he was going to lie, why say that kind of stuff?
Want to compare it to Enron? They create projections based on deals that hadn't gone through yet, creating the illusion that the company was doing much, much, much better than the reality of it was. In retrospect, Enron was too good to be true. Can you even remotely say that SOE is pulling an Enron?
Maybe he would lie to make things sound a little better than they really are? If he's saying things are bad, then things must be really, really bad. No President ever says things are bad unless they are awful, and even then he'll try to make it sound better...which is exactly what he did.
Originally posted by Squidi Originally posted by teleprior lol so head of multimilion-dollar company has no reason to lie?! dont want to sound like anti-capitalist but c'mon mate, would be wonderfull if it worked like that
You're right he had every reason to lie - to comfort the playerbase and say that the game is alright and that the NGE would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to SWG. But he didn't say that. He said the NGE might be a mistake and they were losing subscriptions. He said SWG was the fifth largest mmorpg behind RUNESCAPE. If he was going to lie, why say that kind of stuff?
Lets see, he Smedley didn't make a go of what should have be a successful game based on a popular franchise name: Star Wars. So, he has every reason to lie. He also has every obligation to make his companies products look good even if they are not. So Squidi, get of your high horse and just bow to the one rare instance when the majority is right and you and the rest of the fanbois are wrong.
Originally posted by Torak There was no reason, aside from a poor game design, that this game should have done as badly as it did. At the time 300k was a respectible amount of subs (remember this is pre-WoW) BUT it should have been a runaway hit. It should have hit 1 million.
It wasn't NGE that killed SWG, it was the crappy game design from the beginning and the numbers show that.
Sorry, but I disagree with you.
I played SWG since Pre-CU; the vision for the game--the design itself--was not only ahead of its time, but it was also brilliant. I cannot think of a game that has duplicated it to this day; sadly, I am combing games currently, looking for that magic combination, and coming up empty.
What SWG DID do horribly was set loose an alpha version of an incredible game and then never fix it. Not only that, they asked their paying customers to test it for them. In addition, SOE has what is most probably the most UN-customer friendly customer service in the industry.
THOSE two factors are in my opinion what drove people away from SWG. After playing for a year and banging their heads against those two walls to no avail, people began giving up. Even so, hundreds of thousands of us were so hooked on the vision of what it COULD be that we could not leave the thing alone. We became almost masochistic, lol, because here was an ADULT MMO, built on community interdependence and choice.
Ah well, don't start. Anyway, I don't think the design and vision was at fault. It was due to how it was shoved out of the oven before it was even stirred together, much less baked. And also to the customer service folks who STILL say, "We could care less about your problem; have a nice day."
Originally posted by Squidi Here's what they aren't going to do about it: rollback.The idea behind the NGE wasn't a mistake. The implementation was. If Battlefront had come out as a MMORPG, I promise you that it would be doing WoW numbers. SWG wasn't designed to be like Battlefront, so it is taking a lot of adjustment to get it to work with all that legacy stuff they don't dare throw out (like Entertainers). It isn't yet to the point where it is detailed enough to decide whether it was a mistake or not. Just because some kid played it for the first month and didn't like it doesn't mean the NGE was a mistake and it doesn't mean that a rollback is going to have everybody rushing back to play the game like nothing ever happened.What they are going to do is continually improve the NGE until it gets to a level where most people can tolerate it. Judging by the increased activity in the game recently, I'd say they are pretty close. This new patch should make a difference for a lot of people, and the expertise trees even more so. Smuggling, which has never been in the game in any way shape or form, should be coming after that, and a lot of people have wanted that since beta.The game's not getting worse. It's getting better, and the population is growing because of it. What remains to be seen is whether or not that population can grow larger than preCU at its lowest point (it would be very difficult for SWG to reach launch numbers without something greater than the NGE to push it, but the NGE is the first step in that). I think the simple fact that SWG is currently growing puts it ahead of the preCU, which most certainly wasn't.
So you are saying contrary to EVERY peice of data that has been published including comments by Smedley himself, the playerbase of SWG is growing?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Originally posted by Makane Maybe he would lie to make things sound a little better than they really are? If he's saying things are bad, then things must be really, really bad. No President ever says things are bad unless they are awful, and even then he'll try to make it sound better...which is exactly what he did.
Or maybe, he decided to go into the SWG and post as honestly as he could because the playerbase was upset and needed assurances that they listened, that they knew what they were doing, and that their input was important. Did you even read his posts? There were dozens of them, and he answered all sorts of questions. You aren't taking the context under which these quotes were written. You are just taking one out of context quote and manipulating it to mean whatever the hell you want it to.
Forget all the crap about what you think he said or why he said it - your speculation is less than worthless to me. It is hardly objective or well reasoned. What did he said EXACTLY? What did he say in the post before that? What did he say in the post after that? What question was he responding to when he said all that? Do you even know?
So you are saying contrary to EVERY peice of data that has been published including comments by Smedley himself, the playerbase of SWG is growing?
At what point will you accept that Smed's comments may be a little too old for this kind of reference? One publish? Two? Six months? Six years? And what EXACTLY did he say? Did he say the game wasn't gaining new players? Or did he say the game lost a lot of vets? NOT THE SAME THING. The game can experience a period where the players lost is greater than the players gained - and then it stops losing players at such a high rate and the net gain is positive. That's called growth. It had to happen some time because there's only so many so many vets who can quit in righteous indignation.
Honestly, with the way you guys love manipulating facts, I half expect the game to have twice the population in four years time and you STILL saying the game isn't growing because a long time ago Smed once said people were leaving.
The game is most certainly growing in population. If you have logged in regularly and actually saw the population, you'd know this. But you haven't, so you are using everything EXCEPT the actual population to tell me what the population is. It's more. I'm not the only person saying so.
"Honestly, with the way you guys love manipulating facts, I half expect the game to have twice the population in four years time and you STILL saying the game isn't growing because a long time ago Smed once said people were leaving."
Originally posted by Ithi Sorry, but I disagree with you. I played SWG since Pre-CU; the vision for the game--the design itself--was not only ahead of its time, but it was also brilliant. I cannot think of a game that has duplicated it to this day; sadly, I am combing games currently, looking for that magic combination, and coming up empty. It was ahead of itself. It was deeply flawed because the design was too experimental for its own good. It had really really good ideas in it - most of which survived the NGE - but they were just good pieces of a whole that never quite fit together. If you want something like SWG's magic, perhaps you might want to consider Raph Koster's other games, like Ultima Online or LegendMUD?
What SWG DID do horribly was set loose an alpha version of an incredible game and then never fix it. Not only that, they asked their paying customers to test it for them. In addition, SOE has what is most probably the most UN-customer friendly customer service in the industry. It was far worse than an alpha version. Not only were there bugs up the wazoo, there were major promised features missing, like mounts, player cities, and space. It took them a year just to deliver those features in the first place, and while they were busy racing to finish the game, we had to pay for it. But, I should add, as upset as you may be by this, THAT is the version of the game you prefer. You want the alpha version and all its warts over whatever current incarnation exists. If you thought about it, you'd quickly realize that this is due to the rose colored glasses of nostalgia - not there being a playable, bug free, and finished game waiting for you.
THOSE two factors are in my opinion what drove people away from SWG. After playing for a year and banging their heads against those two walls to no avail, people began giving up. Even so, hundreds of thousands of us were so hooked on the vision of what it COULD be that we could not leave the thing alone.
Lots of reasons drove people away from the game. For instance, there being huge planets with NOTHING on them, the grind for Jedi, no quests, grinding Bols, the player market making it difficult for newbies to find decent equipment, the composite + doctor buffs + TKM making the game entirely soloable, spamming specials into the queue and going to get coffee, killing Womprats instead of stormtroopers, the confusing interface, apprentice points, the painful grind, the fact that it felt more like Owen Lars the MMORPG than Han Solo the MMORPG. I'm not even listing them all. There were LOTS of reasons that people left the game and it wasn't just bugs. MMORPGs have a frequent patch schedule with major publishes. If bugs were the only barrier, people would continually pop back in the game to see what the status was. But people weren't doing that. They were leaving and not coming back. SWG was winning coaster of the year awards. It was getting terrible reviews. Please, please, please don't simplify the complaints of others into something that makes it sound like preCU was almost perfect and if only SOE marketed it better or fixed more bugs, the world would be a utopia. That's not the case. SWG had major damn issues that were too much for many people to take, and fixing those issues required more than customer service and a better QA dept.
We became almost masochistic, lol, because here was an ADULT MMO, built on community interdependence and choice. An adult mmo? Don't make me laugh. SWG has always had the most childish fanbase of any of the MMORPGs. You are right in saying that SWG demanded a certain level of maturity, but the fanbase wasn't up to it. Crafters developed monopolies and petitioned the devs to cement those monopolies even further. Players figured out ways to exploit the system and then complained when those exploits were removed (nerf! nerf!). Players DEMANDED a combat revamp, and then when they got exactly what they asked for, they blamed SOE for ruining the game. Jedi would duel out in the streets flaunting their alpha class, even when they got a TEF flag for it. Do you remember spinner groups? Or AFK grinders? Or people spamming outside starports for the stupidest things? You have a very selective memory. Maybe the people you played with were mature, but they by no means are representative of the maturity level of the game in general.
Ah well, don't start. Anyway, I don't think the design and vision was at fault. It was due to how it was shoved out of the oven before it was even stirred together, much less baked. And also to the customer service folks who STILL say, "We could care less about your problem; have a nice day."I assure you that those problems are the least of SWG's worries. Just look at any other MMORPG out there and you'll find terrible customer service and bugs that, in the eyes of the playerbase, are DESTROYING AMERICA! And yet, they play and enjoy those MMORPGs. Not SWG though. It had issues that none of the other MMORPGs had.
Honestly, with the way you guys love manipulating facts, I half expect the game to have twice the population in four years time and you STILL saying the game isn't growing because a long time ago Smed once said people were leaving.
There's manipulation on both sides of the fence, dear Squidi.
On the flamer side, you have people who will view statements, press releases, or whatever with a negative perspective. They can sort of get away with this, however, because of how ambiguous SOE acts. When Mr. Smed stormed the SWG boards in April, I knew it wasn't going to last. It was exactly what it appeared to be -- a ploy to calm people down and, in more critical terms, buy time. SOE has never been careful, complete, or (arguably) considerate enough toward it's customers to provide a definitive statement one way or the other. Worse yet, when they have given such statements, they have tendencies toward breaking them. Smugglers, NGE, CR, CU1, conversion, and Holocron Jedi are perhaps the most notable examples of SOE breaking promises -- and that's just a fractional list.
On the fanboy side, well, empirical evidence that is just that -- hearsay, at best. To say the game is doing better because there are more people in Mos Eisley at 2:00pm on server X is no different than any other statement to the contrary. Personally, I could say that DAoC is "on the rise" but I have absolutely no base to say anything like that. The best I can say is that I'm having a good time playing and relate my positive experiences to anyone that asks. If it seems to you like there's more people in SWG, that's great -- however, it's not a genuine fact that indicates whether the game is more alive or not, as hard as that may be to believe. A game can have, say, 150,000 subs and perhaps 2000 players on each server at peak times, but say, that game only has 8 servers. Another game can have the same 150,000 subs, but only one server (like EVE) so there are say 15,000 people playing at any one moment.
Once again, for the record here. The only way to prove or disprove the game's health is to do a little statistics on all servers over a period of time. Not even very complex stuff either, just simple calculations and algorithms. I've thrown the challenge out previously, and nobody's bitten. Until something like this happens, nobody on either side of the fence has a leg to stand on.
But, ultimately, IMHO, the battleground is not subs, but user experience. SOE has a long way to go (and an awful track record) of making a good user experience. I still think it can happen (and if they approached me for a best practice/user experience analysis I would love to help them make it happen).
Anyway, on a personal note, I'll admit that I'm absolutely baffled about your posting methodology, Squidi. You seem to fail to realize that both ends of the spectrum want the same goal -- a better SWG. I know the tone on these boards can get brutal at times, but ultimately, everyone posting in this forum wants SWG (while a few are genuinely out to get SOE). I think you should cool your jets a bit and be more like Obraik -- even though I find him a bit snooty at times, he does much more to positively promote the game than you do. Seriously man, your posts for the last week or two have been really nothing but raw flamebait. Once in a while, a little flamebait is okay, but every other post from you is knocking on vets. Guess what, mate -- in 6 months or a year, you'll be one of the vets you're bashing! And you might even become one of these "flamers" if, within the next year, SOE should happen to eliminate key aspects of the gameplay you currently enjoy and openly admit disregard for you as a customer.
Please keep in mind, a lot of these vets have a right to be angry with SOE. Just as much right as you do to enjoy SWG regardless.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Originally posted by Obraik Well, the guy at MMOChart has updated his stats up until May 2006 and he has SWG sitting at 190k subs, a tad above CoH/CoV... http://www.mmogchart.com/
I don't think those numbers are right. Afterall COH/COV actually have people in it playing and this is despite the heavly instanced missions. Everytime I have to waste a.........I mean enjoy a wonderful dinner at my mother in laws house I often look over my brother in laws shoulder while he plays on corbantis and it is a ghost town. I just can't see SWG having that many subscribers unless SOE is using funny math such as counting station pass people etc.
i think the only reason why SWG may have a high number of subscribers is because of the station access or w/e that allows players. so even if they dont actually play star wars galaxies SOE counts them as subscribers.
A subscriptions to SOE "All Access Pass" is a paid subscription to SWG, EQ2, PS, MO, and so forth, even if the 'subscriber' never plays the game. Usuall SOE BS. They lie to the customer base and everyone else all the time to make themselves look better in the marketplace.
Comments
Actually, there not. Because the numbers that Smedley used to make his 5th largest claim are suspect. It is unfortunate, but true that you need the vets in order to save the game. But unless SOE goes pre-NGE at the least and pre-CU at best, the vets will not only not have anything to do with the game, but they will do there best to cast Sony appropriately in the light they felt Sony cast them in: unwanted.
subscriptions. So the logic is that SWG accounts for at most 1/2 100K subs distrubted over the rest of the games SOE has development control over. So, on the generous side, this is inline with the "at most 50K SWG subs" that are considered accurate by the industry at large. Also, these numbers don't tell us anything about how many of that 50K log into the game regularly. Based on industry guesses, probably only 10-20% are currently active for a total of 5-10K people. Again, these are generous guesses and the numbers are probably lower for SWG subs.
1 comment to all this:
"This is gay"
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Smedley has no reason to lie. If he was making stuff up, why 5th? Why not 4th? Why even include Runescape's numbers at all? If he was lying, then at least he picked a realistic lie. You, however, state that 200,000 vets somehow left the game. That's not even remotely reasonable or realistic. He wins.
Three words for ye: board of directors.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Want to compare it to Enron? They create projections based on deals that hadn't gone through yet, creating the illusion that the company was doing much, much, much better than the reality of it was. In retrospect, Enron was too good to be true. Can you even remotely say that SOE is pulling an Enron?
Want to compare it to Enron? They create projections based on deals that hadn't gone through yet, creating the illusion that the company was doing much, much, much better than the reality of it was. In retrospect, Enron was too good to be true. Can you even remotely say that SOE is pulling an Enron?
Maybe he would lie to make things sound a little better than they really are? If he's saying things are bad, then things must be really, really bad. No President ever says things are bad unless they are awful, and even then he'll try to make it sound better...which is exactly what he did.
Lets see, he Smedley didn't make a go of what should have be a successful game based on a popular franchise name: Star Wars. So, he has every reason to lie. He also has every obligation to make his companies products look good even if they are not. So Squidi, get of your high horse and just bow to the one rare instance when the majority is right and you and the rest of the fanbois are wrong.
cut by poster
It wasn't NGE that killed SWG, it was the crappy game design from the beginning and the numbers show that.
Sorry, but I disagree with you.
I played SWG since Pre-CU; the vision for the game--the design itself--was not only ahead of its time, but it was also brilliant. I cannot think of a game that has duplicated it to this day; sadly, I am combing games currently, looking for that magic combination, and coming up empty.
What SWG DID do horribly was set loose an alpha version of an incredible game and then never fix it. Not only that, they asked their paying customers to test it for them. In addition, SOE has what is most probably the most UN-customer friendly customer service in the industry.
THOSE two factors are in my opinion what drove people away from SWG. After playing for a year and banging their heads against those two walls to no avail, people began giving up. Even so, hundreds of thousands of us were so hooked on the vision of what it COULD be that we could not leave the thing alone. We became almost masochistic, lol, because here was an ADULT MMO, built on community interdependence and choice.
Ah well, don't start. Anyway, I don't think the design and vision was at fault. It was due to how it was shoved out of the oven before it was even stirred together, much less baked. And also to the customer service folks who STILL say, "We could care less about your problem; have a nice day."
So you are saying contrary to EVERY peice of data that has been published including comments by Smedley himself, the playerbase of SWG is growing?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Forget all the crap about what you think he said or why he said it - your speculation is less than worthless to me. It is hardly objective or well reasoned. What did he said EXACTLY? What did he say in the post before that? What did he say in the post after that? What question was he responding to when he said all that? Do you even know?
Honestly, with the way you guys love manipulating facts, I half expect the game to have twice the population in four years time and you STILL saying the game isn't growing because a long time ago Smed once said people were leaving.
The game is most certainly growing in population. If you have logged in regularly and actually saw the population, you'd know this. But you haven't, so you are using everything EXCEPT the actual population to tell me what the population is. It's more. I'm not the only person saying so.
the game to have twice the population in four years time and you STILL
saying the game isn't growing because a long time ago Smed once said
people were leaving."
On the flamer side, you have people who will view statements, press releases, or whatever with a negative perspective. They can sort of get away with this, however, because of how ambiguous SOE acts. When Mr. Smed stormed the SWG boards in April, I knew it wasn't going to last. It was exactly what it appeared to be -- a ploy to calm people down and, in more critical terms, buy time. SOE has never been careful, complete, or (arguably) considerate enough toward it's customers to provide a definitive statement one way or the other. Worse yet, when they have given such statements, they have tendencies toward breaking them. Smugglers, NGE, CR, CU1, conversion, and Holocron Jedi are perhaps the most notable examples of SOE breaking promises -- and that's just a fractional list.
On the fanboy side, well, empirical evidence that is just that -- hearsay, at best. To say the game is doing better because there are more people in Mos Eisley at 2:00pm on server X is no different than any other statement to the contrary. Personally, I could say that DAoC is "on the rise" but I have absolutely no base to say anything like that. The best I can say is that I'm having a good time playing and relate my positive experiences to anyone that asks. If it seems to you like there's more people in SWG, that's great -- however, it's not a genuine fact that indicates whether the game is more alive or not, as hard as that may be to believe. A game can have, say, 150,000 subs and perhaps 2000 players on each server at peak times, but say, that game only has 8 servers. Another game can have the same 150,000 subs, but only one server (like EVE) so there are say 15,000 people playing at any one moment.
Once again, for the record here. The only way to prove or disprove the game's health is to do a little statistics on all servers over a period of time. Not even very complex stuff either, just simple calculations and algorithms. I've thrown the challenge out previously, and nobody's bitten. Until something like this happens, nobody on either side of the fence has a leg to stand on.
But, ultimately, IMHO, the battleground is not subs, but user experience.
SOE has a long way to go (and an awful track record) of making a good
user experience. I still think it can happen (and if they approached me for a best practice/user experience analysis I would love to help them make it happen).
Anyway, on a personal note, I'll admit that I'm absolutely baffled about your posting methodology, Squidi. You seem to fail to realize that both ends of the spectrum want the same goal -- a better SWG. I know the tone on these boards can get brutal at times, but ultimately, everyone posting in this forum wants SWG (while a few are genuinely out to get SOE). I think you should cool your jets a bit and be more like Obraik -- even though I find him a bit snooty at times, he does much more to positively promote the game than you do. Seriously man, your posts for the last week or two have been really nothing but raw flamebait. Once in a while, a little flamebait is okay, but every other post from you is knocking on vets. Guess what, mate -- in 6 months or a year, you'll be one of the vets you're bashing! And you might even become one of these "flamers" if, within the next year, SOE should happen to eliminate key aspects of the gameplay you currently enjoy and openly admit disregard for you as a customer.
Please keep in mind, a lot of these vets have a right to be angry with SOE. Just as much right as you do to enjoy SWG regardless.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
I don't think those numbers are right. Afterall COH/COV actually have people in it playing and this is despite the heavly instanced missions. Everytime I have to waste a.........I mean enjoy a wonderful dinner at my mother in laws house I often look over my brother in laws shoulder while he plays on corbantis and it is a ghost town. I just can't see SWG having that many subscribers unless SOE is using funny math such as counting station pass people etc.
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