Star Wars Galaxies

Originally posted by Jatwhal

 

Well let's blame it on the players, Lucas Arts and accountants. 

 

I honestly have to say that somewhere someone or a group of "non designers" were calling the shots.

Anyone who knows George Lucas' history of his tight grip on everything "Star Wars" (rightly so) can easily understand that he was more than likely "at the helm" of SWG.  

 

SWG started off with some of the greatest MMORPG "minds and talent" in the industry.   If anyone ever read some of their original plans/goals they can see where they completely compromised or had their design compromised after they left.

 

The leaving of these devs and the continual in and out of others makes one think of the possible conflicts that were ongoing with LA.

 

I've played since launch and I could probably find some of the posts from Devs about how rare Jedi were going to be and how hard it was going to be to play them. 

 

Can anyone say character perma-death!!

 

I think some bean counters went onto the SWG forums and without MMORPG game forum experience saw all the "whiners" posts.

 

Anyone who has been around knows game forums attract the whiny people who have more forum time than game time. 

 

I honestly believe that SWG attracted a large portion of Star Wars fans that weren't "gamers".

 

These gamers came to SWG to play Jedi and yes other professions but let's face it the "Master Replicas" is in the lightsaber memorabilia business, WalMart sold tons of lightsabers with the new movies, not blasters and power hammers.

 

Everyone remember "I want Jedi to be rare ,except for my account?"  Sure you do, you all claim to be glorious SWG vets.

 

That post held so true for the SW fans and even some of the gamer "elitists" who relish accomplishments over other players.

 

That was the first pressure from the players base....

 

Most of those posts were about how hard it was to figure out how to become a Jedi. 

Even though all the press had told them it would be hard they still complained and wanted it "rare, except for their account" while the rest of us were ingame working on it.  

 

Shoot, the game population(me included) was so slow that the devs had to give us hints. That was my first clue they were giving into the whiners. 

 

Then when those people got their Jedi they whined about the finality of their characters life. So there went perma death, then visibility, then open pvp!

 

Now who's to blame for that?  Think rationally now.  It started with the player base.  " I want Jedi, Jedi is too hard, stop the forced pvp."  While we "gamers" were in game trying to avoid perma death, visibility, loving the rarity and hardcoreness of our profession those others were the very vocal populace on the SOE forums getting listened to by ???? The devs? Lucas Arts? SOE?   

 

All the press told us what it was going to be like to play a Jedi yet those types got into the game and then flooded the forums till Jedi got nerfed to crap. 

Imagine what this game would be like if just those things had stayed in place with Jedi.  

 

Jedi was designed for the "hardcore" and only the hardcore would have stuck with it. 

 

As for the arguement of timeline- give me a break. First off lose your console mentality.  This is an MMORPG there is no "end game" there is no time "lock".   It's a forward moving world.

 

I once posted to those same whiners, then delete your Jedi if you are so thoroughly convicted to "canon".

Guess how many did?

 

Well somewhere some non gamer geek said all our models from Everquest and Everquest2 show that players like to have things handed to them. WoW's success proves these theories to be true so we need to change SWG to those styles.  

 

Well we all know how wrong they were now. 

It sure did drive subscriptions....away

 

I recently read somewhere on a forum about someone complaining about some game's interface and the reply was "it's the basic WoW interface, the industry standard. It's what all MMORPG's will use.

 

How boring is that?

 

Well I tried to play WoW at launch and 2 more times since. I never lasted more than a couple of weeks. 

 

I'm an mmorpg player, not a "console player online"

 

I've played Ultima online since launch and the only other mmorpg that I've kept playing in 10 years is SWG.    *EQ2 doesn't count since I only play that because my wife likes it* rolleyes:

Let's see now players, accountants, LucasArts.  Whose missing from this equation?  Oh yeah, SOE.  It must be everyone's fault but theirs, even though their development team came up with the NGE.  Yes, I think I see where you're coming from -_^.  I think most of the people that read these forums will also get your drift.
 

remove players and insert soe. you cant blame people whos only job is to show up and pay money. sure i ridicule nge players some but even i understand it's their choice to play what they like. it's the nature of star wars. in a way it's a cursed I.P. in movies and books it translates easier than in a mmo. some players want nothing more than a game where they can swing their glowbat, others point out that 5000 jedi running around breaks immersion and that there is much more to star wars than force users. truth is niether is wrong.

                              you can either make a virtual world  sandbox and capture the old-school gamer or go more linear and  get the younger market but you cant have both. and you really shouldn't switch on the fly (see soe).

I completely agree. The player base had a lot more to do with the undesirable changes than the supposed "schemers" at SOE and LA. I'll even go one step further - I blame the players of every cookie-cutter MMO out there for the madness of the NGE. Why in the hell would SOE/LA make such steep changes to the game? They anticipated higher sub numbers if the game was overly-simplified to a level seen in WoW. If MMO gamers weren't satisfied with the **** that these developers push out nowadays, we wouldn't be talking about the NGE, and we wouldn't have a SWG Veteran Refuge. Too bad that they are.

SWG's downfall was due to complete and utter mismanagement by SOE.  LEC was little more than an enabler.  The CU and NGE were a direct result of SOE not listening to what their existing customers, and the folks who quit the game, were asking for.  The main reason people gave for wuitting the game was the lack of directed content.  When players complained that the game didn't feel like Star Wars, they were complaining that there was little to do in the game that seemd like what we saw in the films or read about in the books and comics.  What was the response by the developers?  They decided to tweak the core game mechanics with a sledgehammer.  It takes a special kind of incompetence to interpret "We want content!" as "We hate the game systems!".  That was the kind of incompetence running things at SOE.

When the folks at LEC asked why the game wasn't doing as well as expected, the folks at SOE blamed the core game systems.  The core game was never the problem until the CU (and the NGE compounded it a hundred fold).  Had the developers focused on fixing the original game, and adding content (the game was always intended to include directd content and user generated contenent, such as the Storyteller System, in the initial design), SWG would have gotten much closer to the million sub number than it did.

Anyone who blames anybody except the folks at SOe for SWG's ignoble history hasn't been paying attention.

Originally posted by DrChicken

I completely agree. The player base had a lot more to do with the undesirable changes than the supposed "schemers" at SOE and LA. I'll even go one step further - I blame the players of every cookie-cutter MMO out there for the madness of the NGE. Why in the hell would SOE/LA make such steep changes to the game? They anticipated higher sub numbers if the game was overly-simplified to a level seen in WoW. If MMO gamers weren't satisfied with the **** that these developers push out nowadays, we wouldn't be talking about the NGE, and we wouldn't have a SWG Veteran Refuge. Too bad that they are.

The CU and NGE were not created for the folks who played the game.  They were made to make the game appeal to people who didn't play the game.  In fact, with the NGE, SOE knew they would lose most of the current (at the time) players, but they were arrogant enough to believe that they would replace the existing players with many times more new players.

Remove players and add SOE? How about add SOE and emphasize players cause if you haven't realized, gaming companies actually do take players into consideration for the most part when it comes to making a game better.

Why SOE decided not to go with classic servers is a bigger mystery then why they implemented CU and NGE.

However, it's all water under the bridge now and all we can do is look forward. SWG will never be the same, but that doesn't mean it can't improve on its current standards.

That goes for all MMOs because SWG isn't the only game that has caught the angry attention of its player base.

Such as...

Anarchy Online
Asheron's Call 2
Shadowbane
Dark Age of Camelot
Auto Assault
Horizons ( now Istaria )
Dark and Light
Ultima Online
Vanguard
Age of Conan