Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

Originally posted by kain4

Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

As bad as the NGE was, it has been confirmed the game was losing 10k subs a month prior to it happening. So while the NGE was an obvious fubar, the preNGE game wasnt doing very well either.

 i already replied to this but i forgot to quote it so people would understand what i was talking about.

swg only lost sub at that rate after cu. before cu swg had the record number of subs out of any mmo at the time before wow.

 

Maybe, maybe not. I highly doubt SWG ever surpassed EQ. Either way, the point is the game was in decline before the NGE. Sure, it was SOE's fault, but the NGE isnt what sent the game downhill. That was already in progress.

 Im not going to pretend we did not have problems with player population before the NGE.  The CU was the first hit, I saw 2 of the big guilds on Intrepid fold due to lack of members. I watched as BFG (bestine front gaurd) died, an dthen there was that rebel guild on lok it fell apart as well.  I remember this one guy was the best slicer in game, you wanted him slicing your stuff.

 I know folks who sold their holocron jedi accounts when the CU hit, I remember some of those going for 800 bucks on ebay. I stuck around until the NGE, in fact  I played a few months after the NGE but at that point I had lost all hope that we were ever going back.  I remember the lies, of oh we deleted the database, we don't have a backup so forth and so on.  However 10 subs a month is a small drop in the bucket compared to about 85% of your player base leaving.

I hate it for the current players, you got to be a dire hard in the wool swg player to have stuck with it this long.  

RIP SWG.

Only Sony can take a brand like Star Wars that is making billions for everyone around the globe for decades and ruin it like this.

Originally posted by mmonooblet
More people played AFTER CU, so you "vets" need to just get over yourselves. This game sucked from the beginning, the updates helped but it was never a good game.

Of course EA and LA wouldn't want people to confuse SWTOR with this unfinished pile of garbage.

SWG saw a breif bump in population after the CU, due to former players checking out the changes to the game.  Those folks didn't stick around, and many of the people playing prior to the CU decided to go with them.  Beyond the bait and switch of the CURB to the CU, the CU broke several of the core game systems.  The CU was almost to the point where most of what it broke was fixed when the NGE was announced (it still needed more work).  The CU was a failure, but nowhere near the failure of the NGE.

/tiphat SWG

one of my first mmos, I remember that I kept createing new acounts for the 14 day trial, good times..

I want LucasArts to take all the game assests from SWG and give them to Bioware to use as they wish for SWTOR.

Originally posted by Obee

Originally posted by mmonooblet
More people played AFTER CU, so you "vets" need to just get over yourselves. This game sucked from the beginning, the updates helped but it was never a good game.

Of course EA and LA wouldn't want people to confuse SWTOR with this unfinished pile of garbage.

SWG saw a breif bump in population after the CU, due to former players checking out the changes to the game.  Those folks didn't stick around, and many of the people playing prior to the CU decided to go with them.  Beyond the bait and switch of the CURB to the CU, the CU broke several of the core game systems.  The CU was almost to the point where most of what it broke was fixed when the NGE was announced (it still needed more work).  The CU was a failure, but nowhere near the failure of the NGE.

 

  Agreed.  I played preCU & NGE and there were more servers and players then than ever.  People keep posting the site with the interview with one of SWG former producers but I would not count that as fact.  I played a few years back after CU & NGE and there were around 5 servers up.  I remember when I played preCU & NGE there was upwards of 20 servers, so people can keep saying that NGE and the updates that followed helped the game but it really only helped it survive.  The game would have survived just as long without it.  Some of the reasons for NGE and CU was WoW had dropped and had 3x the subs nearly instantly.  They were trying to mold SWG into a more friendly game so they could grab more subs and it failed.

Pre NGE was the best time ever i have had in an mmo to date.

well I loved this game from the start even with the bugs LOL warping lol "air chairs" even to this day I miss the old game before NGE !

To all the people that say "vets get over it "! Does it not show what the game meant to us that years after we are still talking about it and miss it?

Am not going to say that I am sad that this game is going to me and many more it died with the NGE and to all the people that play it now and tell VETS to get over it now you know how we felt after the NGE and am sorry you lost your game now

Kebe Runningmoon Flurry server star league Guild

Oh, but don't forget! SOE still has the SW card in play.

http://www.clonewarsadventures.com/

I played SWG longer then any other MMO, I will miss all the good times.

Originally posted by bbethel

So SAD :(

I just came back after years of not playing becouse sony got hacked. Sony gave everybody that had a old acount 45 free days.

To bad they are shutting the game down. I was having fun playing SWG.

It is the best way to wait for TOR now.

Same thing here. . was planning to resub in a week when my 45 days ran out.

Welp, was only a matter of time.  In my humble opinion, this game and what that fateful patch did to it will go down in video game infamy.  The SOE bigwigs always think they know what we want and they are usually wrong.  Those guys should consider writing a book titled:  "How to ruin a game:  Introduce Features no one Wanted and Alienating Your Playerbase in one Easy Step"

I recently reactivated my account, taking advatage of my free 45 days, after being away for 6 years (yeah 6 years!) and it was tough to play.  I am glad I did get to play it again before it's gone.  It was nice to hear that music again, and unpack my houses from data pad and check out all my artifacts.  Unfortunately I could not stomach more than a few days of game time.  It's just not that game I loved.

R.I.P. SWG!

Originally posted by Timacek

Pre NGE was the best time ever i have had in an mmo to date.

QFE for sure...

RIP SWG...Thanks for the memories...It was a blast at times...It broke my heart other times...But I made friends for life there...And that's good enough for me...

Originally posted by kain4

Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

As bad as the NGE was, it has been confirmed the game was losing 10k subs a month prior to it happening. So while the NGE was an obvious fubar, the preNGE game wasnt doing very well either.

 i already replied to this but i forgot to quote it so people would understand what i was talking about.

swg only lost sub at that rate after cu. before cu swg had the record number of subs out of any mmo at the time before wow.

This isnt remotely true at all.

SWG never approached EQ numbers.  It sold close to it, but only 300k people subscribed at peak.  About half of what EQ had at the time.  

It released too early (Lucas Arts was the publisher so they were the ones that made that call) and was a mess.  Essays were written on what was wrong with it.  They did some work getting halfway decent content into the game, but things were pretty badly broken, and it wasnt enough.

I think it was the developer that posted on here for a few years that said that their acquisition rate was as expected, but their churn was horrendous (people were trying out the game, and not sticking with it).  This was an era where MMOs showed growth over their first few years (and all the games that are considered highly successful do:  EQ, WoW, EvE) and SWG never showed growth.  Ever.

Yes, the CU was the beginning of the end in some ways, but it was a story that never moved forward in the first place.  Crippled at the start due to early release, poor decisions made even before the CU.  LA launched an advertising blitz after NGE, but where was this before it?  The Jedi hologrind crap (its original implementation fo random profession grinding was the complete opposite of fun)...Lots of things that could have and should have been done differently before Lucas Arts told SoE the game wasnt star-warsy enough.

Then WoW launched, and shit hit the fan.

SWG was considered a failure before the NGE.  Yes, it had a decent population but nowhere near what was expected.  LA and SoE didnt ruin a great game, they ruined a bad game with great potential.

rip buddy. definitely had a blast pre-nge.

It still is pretty pathetic though, that after 6 years, a large percentage of people fail to open their eyes and instantly blame SoE for everything.

SoE never publicly threw LA under the bus, or vice versa.  However SoE developers have given the 'just following orders' line when told they had to change the game.  But no one ever singled which company the order came from.

But here is a quote from Smedley's blog in 2006 when he was discussing their hot new development project (lol), DCUO.  

'It’s often frustrating to work with third party IP. There’s a constant battle over what the right direction is for the game, and from our own recent experience, it’s not something we enjoy. It very often puts handcuffs on what we can and can’t do and, frankly speaking, it’s a lot harder to make great games when the IP holders don’t understand the online gaming market.

The exception to this rule has been our relationship with the team at DC Comics."

Also, here is a quote from a Lucas Arts employee, Nancy McIntyre:

'We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves'

Its just kind of ridiculous that with quotes like these out there people are quick to blame SoE for everything.  Of course they had some blame, but its obvious from what information we have that Lucas Arts was all over this.  And SoE did not have the final say.  They can't do a single thing without LA approval.

Originally posted by teakbois

It still is pretty pathetic though, that after 6 years, a large percentage of people fail to open their eyes and instantly blame SoE for everything.

 

SoE never publicly threw LA under the bus, or vice versa.  However SoE developers have given the 'just following orders' line when told they had to change the game.  But no one ever singled which company the order came from.

 

But here is a quote from Smedley's blog in 2006 when he was discussing their hot new development project (lol), DCUO.  

 

'It’s often frustrating to work with third party IP. There’s a constant battle over what the right direction is for the game, and from our own recent experience, it’s not something we enjoy. It very often puts handcuffs on what we can and can’t do and, frankly speaking, it’s a lot harder to make great games when the IP holders don’t understand the online gaming market.

 

The exception to this rule has been our relationship with the team at DC Comics."

 

Also, here is a quote from a Lucas Arts employee, Nancy McIntyre:

 

'We really needed to give people the experience of being Han Solo or Luke Skywalker rather than being Uncle Owen, the moisture farmer. We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves'

 

 

Its just kind of ridiculous that with quotes like these out there people are quick to blame SoE for everything.  Of course they had some blame, but its obvious from what information we have that Lucas Arts was all over this.  And SoE did not have the final say.  They can't do a single thing without LA approval.

Personally I don't think it was all SOE's fault but at the same time LA didn't do it.  Sure LA might have ordered it (thought there are blogs that disagree with that) but SOE instead of tring to put up a fight and supporting the game they had created themselves they just said yes master and did followed orders.  They didn't tell the player base about it either.  In fact they made promoses to fix that or put in this.  Then they would do something out of left field.

Now that the company has 1 less resource drain, maybe we could see some updates to Vanguard....

Originally posted by sevitoth

Makes me wonder what would have happened if SOE had swallowed their pride and released some pre-NGE servers.

No I don't believe for a second that they didn't have the old code to do it.