Originally posted by Rekrul
WTS: pitchforks

Buy 5, get a stake free.

Torches sold separately.

Originally posted by Shayde
99% $OE and 1% LA.

$OE designed every bit of it. LA enabled the failures and the player-screwing.

Originally posted by Dundee

Originally posted by plong

Just out of morbid curiosity, could I ask why you have spent so much time on this rather hostile forum?  If it is any consolation, I used to think of you right up there with dirty baby diapers however after reading between the lines I'm beginning to  think what happened to SWG is more due to gross mismanagement than anything else.

Because I spent almost six years working on SWG and it kills me that the only people who liked it, hate me.

Frequently for misinformed reasons.

Originally posted by Fishermage
Yup. That's about right. LA should never have aprroved of it, but SOE came up with it, and sold it to the guys upstairs. According to his own blog, Jeff Freeman and Dan Rubenfield had to push for it 40 times a day for two months.

Originally posted by Dundee
Dag. I need a FAQ.

Originally posted by Fishermage
Yup. That's about right. LA should never have aprroved of it, but SOE came up with it, and sold it to the guys upstairs. According to his own blog, Jeff Freeman and Dan Rubenfield had to push for it 40 times a day for two months.

I used words that were misconstrued and misrepresented, but that isn't what I said and definitely not what I meant.

Previous post regarding that is here.

Originally posted by Fishermage

Originally posted by Dundee

Originally posted by plong

Just out of morbid curiosity, could I ask why you have spent so much time on this rather hostile forum?  If it is any consolation, I used to think of you right up there with dirty baby diapers however after reading between the lines I'm beginning to  think what happened to SWG is more due to gross mismanagement than anything else.

Because I spent almost six years working on SWG and it kills me that the only people who liked it, hate me.

Frequently for misinformed reasons.

If we are misinformed, that is also not our fault.

We are misinformed only because someone is deliberately deceiving us. I personally never signed a contract that would require me to deceive my customers.

Someone around here, or several someones obviously made that choice. PS -- for the record I don't hate you or ANYONE associated with the terrible unethical activities you all engaged in. It's VERY hard to make me hate someone. That being said, that doesn't make what any of you did right and good, and to coninue to allow "misinformation" is also not right and good. I'm sorry you made a bad deal with some unethical people, but to not share the truth at this point in some way is to perpetuate the sin. Props for trying though, and the fact that it kills you says a lot :)

Originally posted by Dundee
Dag. I need a FAQ.

Originally posted by Fishermage
Yup. That's about right. LA should never have aprroved of it, but SOE came up with it, and sold it to the guys upstairs. According to his own blog, Jeff Freeman and Dan Rubenfield had to push for it 40 times a day for two months.

I used words that were misconstrued and misrepresented, but that isn't what I said and definitely not what I meant.

Previous post regarding that is here.

Originally posted by Dundee

Originally posted by Fishermage

Originally posted by Dundee

Originally posted by plong

Just out of morbid curiosity, could I ask why you have spent so much time on this rather hostile forum?  If it is any consolation, I used to think of you right up there with dirty baby diapers however after reading between the lines I'm beginning to  think what happened to SWG is more due to gross mismanagement than anything else.

Because I spent almost six years working on SWG and it kills me that the only people who liked it, hate me.

Frequently for misinformed reasons.

If we are misinformed, that is also not our fault.

Actually, that was in reference to the misrepresentation of my post, which isn't singular-your fault, but is partially the fault of those who misrepresented it (repeatedly... everywhere), and partially my fault for not clarifying much, much sooner.

We are misinformed only because someone is deliberately deceiving us. I personally never signed a contract that would require me to deceive my customers.

When I first started on SWG, back before beta had started, most of the devs were not allowed to post to the forums. This rule relaxed to allow more devs to post, restricted to allow less, faded away, and reappeared over the years.

So being restricted from posting on the forums was nothing weird (just annoying), and I guess prevented any individual from deceiving the customers, since we couldn't talk to them at the time.

Someone around here, or several someones obviously made that choice. PS -- for the record I don't hate you or ANYONE associated with the terrible unethical activities you all engaged in. It's VERY hard to make me hate someone. That being said, that doesn't make what any of you did right and good, and to coninue to allow "misinformation" is also not right and good. I'm sorry you made a bad deal with some unethical people, but to not share the truth at this point in some way is to perpetuate the sin. Props for trying though, and the fact that it kills you says a lot :)

I believe in my heart of hearts that the law makes employers liable for their employees actions for a very good, ethical, justice-based reason. I think it's unethical to hold the employees responsible, especially to do so contrary to the law, so I just won't do that.

Originally posted by Fishermage
I understand all that but in that blog, who was "the man" that looked at the ideas and said hooooomph!

 "the Man" that YOU had to tell forty times a day for two months that it was "possible,"

 and when you say the "combat system," what exactly do you mean by combat system? NOT the removal of professions, but the clicky targeting?

Originally posted by Fishermage
law and liability (legalliability) has nothing to do with it as far as I am concerned. NO real damages were done; a game and a virtual world I loved was destroyed, but it was still a game and a vrtual world. I am certainly not gonna sue anyone over this.

Originally posted by Dundee

If you have to blame an individual, blame the CEOs. The buck stops there, and that's why they make the big bucks.

Originally posted by Dundee

Originally posted by Fishermage
law and liability (legalliability) has nothing to do with it as far as I am concerned. NO real damages were done; a game and a virtual world I loved was destroyed, but it was still a game and a vrtual world. I am certainly not gonna sue anyone over this.

Oh it's not just because the law is such, I sincerely believe it is appropriate to blame the companies, and not their employees.

If you have to blame an individual, blame the CEOs. The buck stops there, and that's why they make the big bucks.

'Course marketing is always fair game, too.

And I personally made some poor choices and did some poor work, which I regret.

Originally posted by Rekrul

Originally posted by Dundee

If you have to blame an individual, blame the CEOs. The buck stops there, and that's why they make the big bucks.

Extra! Extra!

Freeman says: BLAME SMED.

At least this is how it will, once again, get misinterpreted.

Originally posted by Rekrul
WTS: pitchforks

Buy 5, get a stake free.

Torches sold separately.

LOL...

You know, This is really all so pointless.

I remember back durring the pre-CU era, the heated discussions that did arise among the community when someone would say, "It's just a game. That person ended up getting pitchforks, stakes AND torches rammed up their backside, and rightly so. SWG WAS once more than just a game.

Regardless of WHO was responsible for the craptastic NGE, the bottom line is that all SWG is now IS "just a game".

And I am having one of my SWG cannot be saved days. I bounce back and forth a lot. On a good day, I want to fight for the hope that the game WILL enjoy new glory days. The old glory days will not return, I know this. But if things are done "right", even the current system can be used to deliver some cool stuff.

I guess that the real way that players are to blame for this whole thing is that they keep playing. But if they didn't enjoy it, they wouldn't play, right? So I guess the NGE did something right for SOME. But not us.

Our problem is that we don't want a game. We want a world. SOE and LEC do not want a world. They want a game. Well, that's the way it is.

Jeff Freeman... You are an idiot. I mean that in the nicest way, too. I mean, only an idiot would throw himself to the wolves like you have. This demonstrates to ME that you actually care; so, you are my kind of idiot.

Even though you were connected to the fiasco which was the NGE, you are here because you are a refugee from SWG as well. Your willingness to come here, rather than just go your own way speaks volumes. I can appreciate that.

I think that the point that people are trying to make here is that SOE should have known better. So should have LEC, but theirs has always been a detatched involvement with SWG. But SOE, having been bombarded with requests for content and bug fixes from day one, coupled with the mass-knee-jerk reaction to the CU, should have seen that another sweeping change to gameplay was not the right way to go. And if it was LEC that directed SOE to make the game "more fun" and the NGE was what SOE came up with, that fit within the scope of making it more fun, then so be it. One has to do what one is directed to do while working for those obligated to answer to directives. However, IF the NGE was solely SOE's idea, with no LEC directives behind it, my question is, with access to the exit statements of players who left because of the CU and the continued BEGGING for new content, HOW could anyone at SOE think that what the NGE would do to the game would be a good thing (TM)? How could SOE, with a community relations director who supposedly takes all the key concerns of the player base to his superiors NOT know what has always really been important to the players.

Personally, I think that Kurt Stangl should leave. Not because he does a bad job, but because it seems to me that the position of Community Relations Director is cosmetic and nothing more. I refuse to believe that with all the constant cries for content that Kurt has not taken those concerns to the team and to John Smedley himself. And yet at the summit, John was surprised that content was such an important concern over gameplay systems revamping. Reading between the linse, what I believe happened is that SOE hired Kurt to fill a role that they had no intention of taking seriously. I think their attitude was that they needed a whipping boy. Someone they could toss to the irate mob to make the customers think that someone was listening. I think that Kurt takes his job seriously and really does make note of the concerns and submits them to the team and to John. But I get this feeling that John sent a memo out to everyone but Kurt that says "any concerns delivered to you by the Community Relations Director are to be deposited in the circular file immediately after telling him 'Thank you, we'll look into it.'" And of course, John would practice that policy himself. It is the only reason I can think of as to why he was so ignorant of things which any noob visiting the boards could see within ten minutes of logging in.

It also explains why we had to wait nearly five months for the first Developer Letter and Roadmap after the NGE hit. Far too many community complaints reached the ears of the higher-ups that they had no choice but to act on it and deliver what ammounted to something that anyone could have written and posted within an hour of the first request for a Developer Letter. As to the roadmap? It took almost a year to deliver HALF of what was outlined in it, and most of the other stuff is currently not yet on the table.

And the NGE? Well. Gamers are like spoiled brat babies. The minute you take their toy away, they scream bloody murder. The minute that 70% of SWG's gameplay features were snatched away without reason, roughly 70% of the community pitched a temper tantrum and then went to find a new toy. And an adult reaction? If a satellite or cable service ceases to offer 70% of what its channels without any advanced warning, the average adult would call them up, chew them out, cancel and go elsewhere. Bottom line, whether mature or immature, when someone has things that they are enjoying just fine taken from them with no real explanation, the natural response is unbridled anger and a decision to no longer pay for what they no longer are getting. Did this human truth never factor into SOE's reasoning when they conceived of the NGE, and submitted it to LEC for approval?

Over a year later, people are still up in arms over what happened, because to this day, there still has been no answer as to WHY the NGE happened that is satisfactory. The excuses that were originally given were:

To make the game more iconic and star warsy

and

To make professions easier to manage and to make it easier to add content.

Today, the game is LESS star warsy. I don't know how iconic it is, but since iconic has always been tied to star warsy, I'm guessing not very much. And as to making professions easy to manage, it has taken a full year to just finish the expertise system, add smuggling and now suplementary crafting mechanics. All of which are viewed by most to be shallow and weak. As to it being easier to add content, Apparently this is not the case. If it were, then every publish should have had something new in the form of missions, or "toys" to play with. Instead we get paintings and junk to decorate houses with. But hey... what's this? We can't place houses because the good spots are taken by abandoned structures, so these decorations are just useless inventory slot fillers? Some content.

If SOE cannot make good on the excuses for the NGE, and if they are unwilling to finally start delivering content, then they should cut their losses, shut the game down, and free up the license for someon who is.

I look at WoW's update notes, and Vanguard's update notes, and every time, I see that every aspect of these games gets touched on with each patch. But SWG? Look how many patches have dealt with Jedi without touching a single other aspect. Look how many patches deal with PvP and PvE isn't touched except to nerf it further. Vanguard and WoW view each aspect as part of the whole. But SWG views each aspect as individual elements as fractured as the community. This has always been the case, even in pre-CU and Pre-NGE.

Lack of content and failure to address long-standing concerns for all aspects of the game in a timely manner is why the subscription base was dwendling durring pre-CU. The fact that what the CU introduced wasn't wanted or needed, the continued lack of content and the continued failure to address longer-standing concerns for all aspects of the game is why players left en masse after the CU hit. The fact that the NGE gutted the game and again introduced things unwanted and unneeded, the outright refusal to add content and the sweeping under the rug of longest-standing concernse for all aspects of the game (70% of them now rendered moot), is why roughly 70% of the remaining players left when the NGE hit. And a full year later, things are still being done that are neither wanted or needed, concerns still remain unaddressed, and SOE only now gets it that lack of content is something that needs addressing.

Something has to give. Soon.

Jeff, in your professional opinion, what will it take for SOE/LEC to realize that the key to saving SWG is to stop adding things that nobody asks for, start trying to add things that ARE being asked for and to address concerns? While you were there, did we, the community, even exist as far as the decision-makers were concerned. I do believe that Kurt is truly an advocate of the community, but while you were there, were the concerns he carried to the team and to management taken seriously at all? In your professional opinion, has the community ever had a reason to hope that their concerns would be addressed, or has it always been that SWG's developments revolve squarely around what SOE wants and not what the customer wants? I know that you can't state facts, but everyone can express an opinion...