In the end I think we should also add to the blame list the people that pay for the NGE now... or at launch...

I think the blind faith foul move should be part of it.     If they had lost everyone but 1k subs they would have realized this mistake sooner and maybe had the investment and intrest to fix it.

NOW??  Now they can't and have to ride it out like a bad carny ride.

SWG what was once a world... is now just a bad carny ride waiting to stop."

Obviously the NGE is not Jeff's or SoE's or LA's or Smedley's fault.

Guys, come on, it's God's fault. He made the NGE and it's all in God's Plan. Pipe down young chap. More crappy MMO's in the future are coming.

Look, guys, I can get a as good a Freeman hate going as anyone -- but lay off him. It doesn't really matter.

I actually believe he's had the Come to Jesus moment on the CU and the NGE: "It was better not to do that, really.". SOE as a whole had it.

You don't get do-overs. Your playerbase is your playerbase, and you don't get to scrap them and look for another one. That's for sequels, but you don't get a new launch in the middle of an old game and expect it to work.

I wasn't there -- I have no idea what sort of shenanigans (Sorry Jeff -- couldn't resist!) were going on between the scrap of the CURB, the release of the CU, the nightmarishly quick design of the NGE, and the shitstorm that followed both the CU and the NGE (and ToOW, for that matteR).

Jeff wasn't the evil mastermind -- and while it's nice to wish he'd have stepped up and said "They're going to hate this, they're going to quit, and we're not going to be able to replace them" -- it really wasn't his job, and it's not like anyone would have listened.

If Jeff has a serious flaw at all, it was one shared with half or more of the Dev team -- they were designing and maintaining a type of game they didn't really care much for, and didn't understand the appeal of. By itself, that's not exactly a bad thing. You hire talent -- it doesn't matter if your DB guy doesn't like MMORPGs, or your art guy's not fond of virtual worlds -- it's not what you hired him for.

And Jeff's preference for a different style of MMORPG wasn't a bad thing -- unless it led him to make gameplay decisions that were based on what he found fun, as opposed to the game's players. There is a distinct difference between "The NGE is the kind of game Jeff found more fun then the pre-CU" and "Jeff turned the game into the sort of game he liked to play". I sincerly doubt he had that sort of pull. He's just visible, and here, and senior enough that he can take the heat for it.

Lay off him -- he might have been elbow deep in the NGE, but if it hadn't been him it would have been someone else. There's lots I could blame him for, but the NGE has a whole wasn't it -- he wasn't senior enough to pull the trigger on something that even internally they suspected would cost them tens of thousands of subs. That call was made higher up. I'm glad he's here talking about it -- I find the entire story fascinating -- but don't drive him off out of misplaced anger.

And a lot of that anger is really coming from things like TH's "We nerfed crafting , got rid of decay, and moved to a loot system because who liked all that looking for gear?" or Helios (or was it TH again) comment about "So you just sat there and it was fun?" -- taken as a reason camps were yanked from the game. It wasn't fun to the people making the decisions, so it was removed -- even though players enjoyed it and there was no gaming reason to remove it. (It's not like camps were an unbalanced and gamebreaking ability, you know?).

Judging by his comments here, Jeff's more or less got it down that if he's playing designer for a live game -- what's most important is to understand why players play the game, and what they get out of it. You develop for the customers, not for yourself. For a new game, well -- different horse, you know? You'll either find a market or you won't.

In the end, though -- he was doing his job. That he found the NGE concept more fun than the pre-CU is just personal taste. I suspect his biggest flaw was simply being part of the groupthink at SOE: Austin. It's a fairly nasty cycle:

1) Devs don't understand why the players play the game -- what they enjoy, what they get out of it, what they want.

2) Devs thus make changes that make sense to them, but inflame the users -- because it removes "fun" from the game.

3) Devs get flamed, shrug off flames as "forum bitching" and "everyone always complains about nerfs" (both of which are common) and start ignoring feedback as flaming.

4) That leads to a greater disconnect between Devs and players, leading to more changes that upset the user base -- driving users off and leading to more forum screaming.

It's a nasty cycle -- it's happened before, it'll happen again. I have nothing but respect for the few SOE: Devs that managed to break that (Greenmarine comes to mind -- I can't honestly assess you, Jeff. The NGE is hard to get past. I enjoyed JtL though) and make the connection. The months before the CU were some of the best in the game, because  the live team (not the CU team) actually understood who played the game and why. And their changes made the game better -- and that's probably one reason the CU was roundly hated.

It seemed likie it was finally going right -- Jump to Lightspeed was good (although the introduction of new races was an odd choice, given the one toon per server thing), the changes leading up to the CU improved the game and fixed long-standing bugs and issues, and the CURB leaks sounded awesome. Then the CU landed like a festering pile of shit, and things went quickly south.

hmm, I guess it's kind of cool to see some that really loved this game a lot more than me, and I thought I was crazy at the time. I miss it.

Originally posted by Dundee

ZING!

Boring story:

I did a lot of soul-searching after the NGE.  Months after, I mean, when I wasn't even on SWG any more. I revisited everything I had done (or not done), every design I could have changed, every decision I had made, or could have made but didn't.

Just thinking, "What could I have done, have done, tried to do, or tried to have done differently, in order to make the NGE less painful for the veterans?"

Yeah, you're wondering why I didn't think that 'til months later. Well. There's a reason for it that you wouldn't like, so back to my story...

Eventually I arrived at a design which would have kept the skill system, but still obliterated so many skill mods that a lot of vet's rares and uberjunk would still have been zapped, anything combat-related for sure. CH's and pets would have stayed, but their pets would have been a bit more autonomous. Crafters would maybe have not been completely replaced by loot - just a maybe there - but wouldn't make all the best items, or even most of them. Jedi skills would have been as easy to get as other elite skills, and balanced accordingly. And so on and so forth. Just really savage stuff, but all lesser than what NGE did.

Then I thought about how the vets would have reacted to that: Surprise! It's the NGE, Bob tell them what they've won!

Just the exact same reaction, I'd think.

A year later, we'd still be here, you and me, having this exact same thread. You'd still have asked, "Why weren't those "good ideas to make the game better" used instead of the NGE?"

I don't think a single person here or anywhere would believe me if the answer was "You should have seen what we were going to do!"

guys i want you to remember  all  the post we contribute to their SOE sucking forums about how to improve the game and  how bad really CU and NGE is and how all our Posts got deleted we all got banned like in a fascistic manner
and then you ll find that these word cant be better written :

Originally posted by Wildcat84

Freeman better get used to pumping gas. Or to asking "you want fries with that?!"

That is your future bro.

If you'd talked like you do now back in 2005 you'd have been a hero.

Talking like that now proves you are a chump.

You aren't on our side. You never were, you never will be. You are a patsy yes man. Well, you learned who the boss really is. Not Smed. US.

You're fired.

I'm hearing that some people (or person) higher up the foodchain had ideas like:

-lets see what some audience not currently playing SWG would like to see in a Star Wars MMO, (this would explain the nature of the focus groups),

-we need a game that has more "hands on, fast paced" combat,

-we need a game that has more quests and loot,

-we need to make jedi more accessible,

-we need a game that is simpler to play,

-we need to get this out before the holidays,

-we need to somehow connect this to the release of Episode 3,

-these changes will cost the current players a lot, and we'll lose them, but with good marketting we stand to gain more than we lose,

-we need to do something drastic to get our subscriptions up.

It sounds like some devs were asked, "can this be done?"  Some said yes, it can be done.  It also sounds like "higher up the foodchain guy" had his own computer, dickered with SWG and formed some opinions.  It sounds like some people within the company said this is a really bad idea, while others said we can make this work.  Some people left around this issue, and maybe some were asked to leave.

It also sounds like "higher up the foodchain" guy had the big red NGE button on his desk, and decided to push it.  Maybe there were two buttons, one at SOE and one at LA that needed to be pushed simultaneously, or maybe the SOE person just had a red phone to LA in his office.  Anyways, the button was pushed and we're now sifting through the debris trying to figure out what happened.

This is the picture I get in my mind when I read all the posts about how this all came about.  Does it sound like I'm getting a reasonably accurate picture Dundee?

Arc

  Looks like Jeff “Leprechaun” Freeman magically vanished once again retaining his infinite knowledge and frosted Lucky Charms. Or maybe the Men in Black came from SOE and took him away after learning; through the use of a bug in his home thermostat of his ultimate plans to take over the MMO industry with NGE clones dressed in the guise of a WoW style game. Or maybe his inter-web went down after his hamster ran away over a labor dispute involving lack of “fun” on the job. Or maybe Raph kidnapped him and hooked him up to his MMO “anti-suck” machine to avoid any future failure. Or maybe he just felt cornered by us vets Stay tuned for more updates!

only a joke btw or a real zinger as Jeff would call it.

I can understand a lot of the Dundee bashing.  If I'm reading his responses correctly though, he's pretty much playing Oliver North to Smed's and Julio's Reagan.  I know how much the suits can push around the creative folk, and I think this is the case to the extreme in Austin.  Yet still, I don't think anyone other than Dundee was in charge of development at that time.  I see him as a sort of Ferdinand Porsche, or Werner Von Braun.  Geniuses that have their legacy tarnished because they got caught up in the politics of the wrong regime.

From what I could tell, Koster was away from SWG for a long time before the CU, and Walton was, from all indications out of the studio by the time the NGE hit.  Vogel was always sort of elusive, and while it looks as if he was pretty much detached from SWG right around Jump to Lightspeed time (by the way Dundee, that was the finest expansion I've seen in an MMO, good job, man).  So it seems that the sad task fell to Dundee, and it is a sad task to have "design by management," when management doesn't know anything about design.

Guys, look.  Dundee may not have done a lot of stuff we approve of.  However, the guy does something that you don't find so much these days from the younger developers: he thinks about game design.  He doesn't just think about balancing loot tables, or how to implement the old "geek football" strategy of, Tank/DPS/Rezz0r.  He thinks about what keeps people logged on and playing, rather than logged off, yet still paying.

His article On Grouping is probably one of the most important statements on MMO gaming today, and all of his writings are written with the sort of seriousness and care you'd expect from a Bartle, or a Koster.  You may not agree with everything he says, but even when I don't agree, he makes me think.  He is the sort of developer we need in the industry right now to break us out of this corporate funk.

I've done a lot of lurking and reading, and I'm actually getting tired of trying to keep up. 

At what point though was it stated that Jeff was "in charge of development"?  I don't recall seeing that - anywhere - although I'll admit, I haven't read a copy of the Shenanigan's blog in many months. I'll also admit that my eyes glaze over when trying to unravel the Austin's team responsibilities heirachy;  so I might have just missed it.  Did I?

Originally posted by Beatnik59

I can understand a lot of the Dundee bashing.  If I'm reading his responses correctly though, he's pretty much playing Oliver North to Smed's and Julio's Reagan.  I know how much the suits can push around the creative folk, and I think this is the case to the extreme in Austin.  Yet still, I don't think anyone other than Dundee was in charge of development at that time.  I see him as a sort of Ferdinand Porsche, or Werner Von Braun.  Geniuses that have their legacy tarnished because they got caught up in the politics of the wrong regime.

From what I could tell, Koster was away from SWG for a long time before the CU, and Walton was, from all indications out of the studio by the time the NGE hit.  Vogel was always sort of elusive, and while it looks as if he was pretty much detached from SWG right around Jump to Lightspeed time (by the way Dundee, that was the finest expansion I've seen in an MMO, good job, man).  So it seems that the sad task fell to Dundee, and it is a sad task to have "design by management," when management doesn't know anything about design.

Guys, look.  Dundee may not have done a lot of stuff we approve of.  However, the guy does something that you don't find so much these days from the younger developers: he thinks about game design.  He doesn't just think about balancing loot tables, or how to implement the old "geek football" strategy of, Tank/DPS/Rezz0r.  He thinks about what keeps people logged on and playing, rather than logged off, yet still paying.

His article On Grouping is probably one of the most important statements on MMO gaming today, and all of his writings are written with the sort of seriousness and care you'd expect from a Bartle, or a Koster.  You may not agree with everything he says, but even when I don't agree, he makes me think.  He is the sort of developer we need in the industry right now to break us out of this corporate funk.

"Caught up in the politics of the wrong regime."  Sounds like a good summary of the NGE decision process to me.  "Design by management, when management doesn't know anything about design": another good summary if you ask me.  Well said.

Arc