Originally posted by eric1000

Where did SWG go wrong huh?

 

Put it this way:  You buy yourself a nice new and shiney rolls royce, you drive that car and love it for three or four years and at the next service the garage takes it away and gives you a mini.

Shift my crafting empire to a pile of dust .

Recources shifted to crap , stuff that i took a long time and credits to get.

All my good  weps normailzed.

Oh and ...

3 classes i played gone.

I had 4 accounts.

I didnt care abount jedi , our guild BID made more content that you could want.

Was one of the best comunity driven games .

then everyone went way.....

Short and simple, NGE killed SWG.

Jedi go from WTF Pwn machines to Cheerleaders with glowsticks. TKM, gone, buffs gone, Ents, useless. AI showing code levels at level 500. They repaied alot of it over time but it was too late.

You can blame greed, politics of IP games, SOE. I hate to blame SOE, they are the only ones who paid for the mistake and they paid dearly. They still are to this day but the best description I could give would be, they acted like a publicly funded company. Like they were immune to any sort of damage, as if they were untouchable. Every game they have releases since has pretty much been a flop because they are forever the NGE company. The people who broke SWG. I don't know if they should carry that cross alone but with SW-TOR looking fine, it's clear LAE aren't hurting from it.

as said before.. swg went wrong in only 1 simple thing : SOE

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), games division from SONY, and owner of Verant Interactive.

While the motives behind their decision are still debatable ( some think Everquest II developed by SOE  and released at end of 2004 was one of them ), SOE decided to totally remap the way swg was played in 2005, 2 years after swg was released, killing the game and leading to a massive exodus of players from swg.

Easiest question in the world to answer... cause its kinda blaringly obvious.. rather then capitolizing on the game they had at creation they op'ted for a complete redesign in hopes of attracting more players.. unfortunatly all they actually acomplished was to alienate thier already existing solid player base.

LA is where SWG went wrong.

The Marketing people at LEC/LA saw the obscene sub's at WOW and twitched.  They assumed that because Star Wars is one of the Largest IP's on the planet (at the time) that the Subcriber base should be near WoW numbers.

They told SOE what they wanted done to the game to make it more accessible to the MMO player base, and forgot the most important thing:

Star Wars is a Niche Sci Fi genre.

WoW is a Fantasy genre.

Fantasy MMO gamers are not just going to play and stay with a Sci Fi game just for its name/IP.

If LA/LEC had kept their hands off of SW:G and just let SOE develop and introduce Star Wars content for the game, as well as FIX the profession Problems, then the CURB wouldn't have been Needed and the NGE wouldn't have happened.

SW:G would have had more expansions after ToOW if LA hadn't screwed up.

The problem though...People would have still been complaining about FoTM this and OP Jedi that and AFK regardless of the Timeframe of the game, be it 2004 or 2011.

And the game would still have lost sub's because eventually everyone but the Biggest Fanboy/girl is going to eventually move on to the next new shiney.

Just think about it as a normal game and its pretty obvious.

When you create a game.. pretty much you stick with what you sold your customers.

If things are broken you fix them.

If you want to make a different game then you make... another game.

Beyond that... we heard all this BS about "bleeding subs"... well ok but seriously?   At what point after the NGE did they have more subscribers than before... or prior to the CU?   There is just no way they ever had as many subs as even the CU had.   Yet they didn't change the mostly empty game (yes some servers like star sider had population) to something else.

The point with that isn't even the bleeding subs part.   When the CEO of EA was talking about subscribers he says... "we will make a substantial profit at 500,000" and then alludes to the fact they are thinking more like 1.5 million.   I have no idea what they currently think this was something he said a while ago.

Its just the idea that they would like this bigger number of subs... but really would be very happy with this lesser number because it would make a lot of profit.

Any game where the developer totally changes the product sold.. in the attempt to find the larger number of subscribers is pretty much going to fail.

Oh and yes I would say its really not the best idea to work with 3rd party IP's.   The cost of license along with restrictions or possible friction from the IP holder is just way to much Murphy added into something that has too many variables already.

not that I  played it, but SoE. duh

both soe and la are at fault in my opinion.   i love aspects of both pre and post nge.  i wish i could have played a mix of both.  too many changes to original game,  it was  a great game that just needed some adjustments.

Does anyone remember the SW ccg? why did Lucas pull the liscence and give it to another company who had a dumb down version? How about what Lucas did to the movies? There might be a pattern, there may not. But, I have given up spending my money on Lucas and everything SW cause of Lucas' Empire crushing everything I love and had respect for.

 SOE on the other hand dosent get away on how they treated thier costomers. They were HoRRiBLE!! And all you that blame the fans for "complaining the wrong way" and "not saying what you think they should say" to appease LA and SOE is absolute BS. nice try though lmao

Smed was a push over and Luca Arts are a bunch of ass hats. the end.

SWG did already have issues from start. It was poorly coded (like all SOE games) and they didn't care to fix many known issues, and in some cases pretended the issues didn't exist at all.

The NGE was just the final straw.

They had some great ideas and a better lead programmer and more will to fix what wasn't working from the start would have made wonders for the sub numbers.

Mainly, they tried to make the game more what i would call hard core.

Single character to start, lots of grind to get jedi.

Lots of dependencies on other characters, entertainers, medics.

Lots of skills, and character types, with all kind of ways to make use of skills.

Really, really complex crafting and gathering system.

All the above can be  and are good things. IF you take the time to make them work right. But also not something that will get you mass appeal.

Then they tried to turn the game not made for mass appeal into one that would be. By taking what could have been fixed up into a nice hard core type game, they took a chainsaw to it and made a mess.

NGE

/thread

It went wrong the day SOE signed the contract.

SOE was the problem. SOE is the problem.

SWG was not "niche" as some would like you to believe. Star Wars is the largest name in marketing. MMOs were "niche" at the time of release, but W0W changed that...SOE got jealous, failure ensued.

Originally posted by TUX426

SWG was not "niche" as some would like you to believe. Star Wars is the largest name in marketing. MMOs were "niche" at the time of release, but W0W changed that...SOE got jealous, failure ensued.

SWG was niche in regards that it wasnt a straight foward themepark

regarding the SWG NGE
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/10star.html

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base," said Nancy MacIntyre, the game's senior director at LucasArts.
"There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game. There was a lot of wandering around learning about different abilities. 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."

Originally posted by wizyy

SWG pre-CU was unique in so many ways. Sadly, after the departure of Raph Koster the rest of developers lost the original focus, and were probably pressured to do changes which corporate bosses were thinking would increase revenue.

SWG had something for practically everyone - even housewives were enjoying social aspects of it, there were grinders, incredible crafters and "businessmen", even elite smack-talking PvPers.

What it lacked is a certain accessibility for beginners, which could have been tweaked easily.

I remember some elements which were supposed to be included in the ORIGINAL Combat Upgrade - and those were excellent, but probably difficult to implement, so under constant pressure to "fluff-up" the game for kids, they come up with the rushed-up CU, which basically just introduced silly colored icons, destroyed many great combat animations, and added "root and snare" silliness.

I don't think Jedi destroyed the game - but in my opinion, the secret of unlocking should have remained a secret. It was mysterious and exciting - should have stayed that way.

All in all - WHAT WENT WRONG IS - if they wanted to make a new game, they should have just make a new game and leave the original one - even barely supported - for those who DID NOT want a new game.

Jedi completely ruined the game.

With the introduction of Jedi the focus of the game shifted from living in the galaxy of starwars to grinding out your jedi character.

To be competitive in PvP you had to be a Jedi because if you weren't Jedi you were the victim of a Jedi.

If you were fighting an elite mob the jedi would come up and steal it right from under you because they put out more DPS in seconds than your entire group could in minutes.

Jedi were gods that made "masters" of combat professions look like as if they were holding a sharped stick by the wrong end.

When Jedi became too numerous to count everybody (even those that didn't want to) was forced to either join the jedi or quit for the reasons I gave above.

So in the end you had jedi on one side and chefs, medics, entertainers, and mineral harvestors (the only professions that catered to jedi) on the other and that's all that was left of pre-CU SWG.  SWG wasn't just bleeding subs - it was hemorrhaging fast and something needed to be done about it. 

The combat rebalance was the cure, but instead they gave us the combat upgrade and before we were comfortable with it they dropped the NGE on us and that was the bullet in the head that stopped the bleeding once and for all.

SWTOR has avoided most of this mess by making jedi and sith just another class like any other...

Agreed, Jedi were the downfall.  There were a lot of smaller issues but in large part the game was enjoyed and immersive until Jedi were unlocked, then it became a grindfest.  Before that it just seemed like a 2nd life we all had set in a Star Wars story.

It was really cool. 

Originally posted by hipiap

LA is where SWG went wrong.

The Marketing people at LEC/LA saw the obscene sub's at WOW and twitched.  They assumed that because Star Wars is one of the Largest IP's on the planet (at the time) that the Subcriber base should be near WoW numbers.

 

They told SOE what they wanted done to the game to make it more accessible to the MMO player base, and forgot the most important thing:

 

Star Wars is a Niche Sci Fi genre.

WoW is a Fantasy genre.

Fantasy MMO gamers are not just going to play and stay with a Sci Fi game just for its name/IP.

 

If LA/LEC had kept their hands off of SW:G and just let SOE develop and introduce Star Wars content for the game, as well as FIX the profession Problems, then the CURB wouldn't have been Needed and the NGE wouldn't have happened.

SW:G would have had more expansions after ToOW if LA hadn't screwed up.

 

The problem though...People would have still been complaining about FoTM this and OP Jedi that and AFK regardless of the Timeframe of the game, be it 2004 or 2011.

And the game would still have lost sub's because eventually everyone but the Biggest Fanboy/girl is going to eventually move on to the next new shiney.

Ah, its the same old same old from the nge leftovers.  Its all Lucas Arts fault and soe was completely blameless.  Do you have any proof of this or is it just what you want to be true because I have proof that it was soe's decision to implement the nge.  Remember Jeff Freeman?  One of the lead devs for swg?  He CLEARLY stated that the nge came from soe, not LA.  If you want me to, I can find a link to what he said but you're just as capable of using Google as I am.

Btw, it was also soe's decision to drop the SW license and end swg and LA didn't force them to do anything.  Again, I can find proof of this with John Smedleys own words.  If you have trouble finding his statements on the closing of swg, just say so and I'll find a link.  Can you find anything that proves LA "forced" soe to shut swg done???  Didn't think so.

At this point, does it really matter? I'll just pray that we'll someday see another Star Wars sandbox MMORPG.

It is hard to explain the rage.