The much shorter list would be what is right with the game.

Which more or less is limited to JTL and the space game.  And the biggest reason for this is that the nincompoops who are running this thing refuse to touch it, if they did they'd destroy it.

They have mods who are players (the no names), as well.  The 'senators' more or less serve as marketing staff as well.

Non current SWG subs outnumber current ones at least 9-1.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Obee

My account was opened for the last trial, and it is open for the current trial.  Do you have a character on one of the transfer from servers, or maybe a building still somewhere?  The 'Please play our PoS!' email seems to focus on the house pack up, so it may be aimed at folks who still have structures on one of the servers.  I still have a hospital where the player city I was a part of on Sunrunner used to be. 

 

I'm quite confused as to who is eligable for this free veteran trial and who isn't as well.

There seems to be some situations where some vets get invited and others dont.  For the ones that didn't get an email, is your email address for that account up to date in the account details?

Also, I'll try and find out if getting your account marked pending for concurrent vet trials is intended or not.  Don't really see why it shouldn't be.

When it comes to SOE, the answer is usually incompetence.

Whatever "reactivate all unsubbed accounts older than X" script they use obviously has bugs.

SOE make something buggy?  Nahhhh... :)

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by lightning-rd

I've been TELLING them since the NGE what causes that.  It's their piss-poorly designed "super fast" combat engine. 

 

The devs have been looking into key causes of combat lag and recently found a large one and rectified it:

From the Chapter 11.3: "The Battle of Echo Base" Publish Notes, December 2, 2008

Optimized player health and action pool recalculations.

What was happening is that any time a player was buffed/debuffed and it changed their maximum health and action, the server would handle it inefficiently and this would cause a lot of lag.

They changed this to be faster and are continuing to reduce combat lag on an ongoing basis.

That does nothing to fix the packet flood problem of the TOO FAST and packet intensive combat engine.

That change amounted to a band-aid on a broken arm.

They simply don't want to commit to a real solution because it'd consume their whole rather lackluster Dev team for months to even begin to fix it.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Sharkypal

Is that why the servers went down last night and have been going down outside of scheduled maintenance periods for months.

S

 

There have been a few server crashes recently, I'm check that whatever caused it is being investigated.

I've been TELLING them since the NGE what causes that.  It's their piss-poorly designed "super fast" combat engine.

more attacks, more specials fired, more quickly (multiple times a second)= more network packets x more people x more client/server interactions = exponentially MORE lag.  This is why CCP, FYI, to reduce lag in large battles, have been making changes that REDUCE the number of server/client interactions.  My guess is no one at SOE knows Networking 101.  The original Devs CAPPED combat actions at a maximum rate of 1 per second, and that was rarely obtainable, for a GOOD REASON.

More lag+crappy, buggy code+more load=crashed server as well.

I told you all that if they ever DID by some miracle regain Pre-NGE type subscriber numbers and population density the game would be come unplayable.

You are now getting a taste of it now that those from the dead servers have fled to the not so dead ones. 

Good luck getting the Devs to acknowledge this or to do anything about it, since it basically means a complete re-do of the whole combat system to fix.  I think they are neither capable of doing this nor do they have enough people even if they were to get it done in anything approaching reasonable time.

You will get banned for bringing this up.  To acknowledge that this problem even exists would be to admit complete and utter incompetence to have built on this irrevocably broken engine for 3 years which would make them look very foolish.

The real irony here is that the only thing that has EVER made the NGE game playable at all WAS the mass subscriber loss!

Originally posted by pdxgeek

Originally posted by Gutboy

I can tell you that the people on the 12 populated servers do not care about the other low/empty servers it only matters what is happening on the server you are on.

Wow...what a community you guys have there...

EVE's Tranquility has about 40K on even on weeknights :)  That's at least 30K more than the NGE across all it's servers.

High as in anyone who thinks that today's "high" is the same as Pre-NGE "high" is..  high.

I reinstalled the client and played SWG tonight.

DAMN, I have to say the game is vastly improved.  I might even resubscribe.

Badger's right, more players than EVAH are playing this!

I don't WANT Smed fired.  Yet.

No one in the world is more qualified than he to fulfill my dream of the NGE being shut down and SOE dismembered in bankruptcy or a fire sale, even if they DELIBERATELY set out to do it.

Smed's unique management style needs to remain in force until that is complete.

If LEC hadn't granted the SWTOR rights to another publisher (Bioware) I might agree that SWG might be allowed to live past that game's release if it were profitable.

But I just don't see it happening.  LEC will see every sub for the NGE as a sub they are losing on their $70 million dollar new baby.

LEC might even pull it IF it still had 100K or more subs.  LucasArts has not been known for rational decision making (much like SOE). Think of it in terms of the NGE, they had no reason why they couldn't continue to support the existing Pre NGE game, kept us happy, then opened NGE servers for the "target audience", but they decided to force us into it because NGE was the way they'd decided to go.  SWTOR is the way they have decided to go. 

But with where subs are now (and where they likely will be a year from now), it will be a relatively easy decision for them to make.  I'm sure they will throw something in, like a free month or something, or maybe even some bauble, but the NGE definitely ends when SWTOR begins.

Confirmed...  Pending.

Now I can post on the suckboards again.  MUHA HA HA HA!

Originally posted by Kayless

 Seriously, how long are they going to keep dragging this out... turn the damn servers off!  

This will happen sometime between SWTOR Beta and on or shortly after SWTOR release.

Originally posted by Obraik

I'm thinking they may need to start herding transfers amoungst the servers.  It's only day one and there are now reports that some servers (such as Starsider & Bria) are sitting on "Extremely Heavy" population loads...

You know that this only means more than 300 logged into it, right?

Pre-NGE a server would only get that ranking if 2,000 were logged in.
 

Originally posted by admriker4

Last time I did a free trial Eclipse server was totally dead. There were no more than 10 people online at any given time. Why would SOE want players from empty servers to transfer to another empty server ?

So they end up with a "slightly less empty" server?

They should drop to no more than 5 servers, 2 US east coast, 2 US west coast, and 1 EU.

RIP to 11 servers. 

Now they need to get rid of about 10 more and then they might have actual Pre-NGE population density on the remaining ones.

If you want a game that is all huggy-feely nice, carebear, play WOW and the other 27,000 MMO's trying to be just like it.

EVE is a dark, dangerous place where sooner or later someone IS going to blow you up because "you were there".

PS to Jon Wood:  I know that you feel that you now have to publish lots of articles about EVE now that we're behind only WOW in the US and Europe, but could you PLEASE get someone who has actually played the game for longer than a trial, and who has actually LEFT highsec to write them?
 

Given the flaws in the NGE combat system giving it a propensity to cause excessive lag due to it being network packet heavy because NONE of the retards (with apologies to retards for comparing you to SWG NGE Devs) who develop for this game know anything about networks, all it'd take is about 20 of us spamming particle effects to crash a server.

20-25 people in one place is EXTREMELY rare as I saw in the LAST vet trial, on one of the so-called "heavy" servers.
 

If Sony wants to get back into competitiveness they need to forget Microsoft (which is also far behind Nintendo) and compete with the Wii.

True, the WOW player is the "target audience".  Everyone else moved to EVE.

I'm almost certain there are more former SWG players playing EVE than who play the current game.  Considering it wouldn't have to be that many to make it true.

This again calls into question the sanity of those who chose to do the NGE...  Did they REALLY think that people who were perfectly happy with WOW would jump ship to their buggy, broken and vapid impersonation of it?  And that the multitudes who WERE happy with the pre NGE game would go away quietly OR LIKE their game converted into such?

Everyone knew that what did happen would happen.  Everyone except a few fanbois and every single person involved in the decision it seems.