All Posts by Athela

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

I read a post the other day that mentioned an interview with Smed.  Apparently the game was revamped  once entirely even before release, and the original game was developed in what appeared to be a very short time.  When asked about quality concerns, this post reported Smed saying that people would play the game even if it was full of bugs and incomplete because it's StarWars. 

I can't find the post that mentioned all of this.  Did he really say that?  Anyone got a link?

The stuff you're quoting is from the "CBS Mailbag" incidents which happened after the NGE.  Nothing I've seen, and I have looked as far back as I could, indicates they scrapped an original plan and went in with a new one 14 months or whatever from release.

They did rush the game out, not early, it was supposed to be released the previous year, but unfinished.  They just couldn't seem to finish the game.  Beta players protested they needed to not release the game as it wasn't ready but they went ahead anyway.  Koster has been quoted as saying he did alot of last minute changing himself, and you've seen Rubenfeld say he produced the Jedi system in a couple of weeks after launch.

What you really always seem to have with this game is a huge disagreement at every step at all levels as to how the game should play out.  No wonder it was/is the messy messy thing we've seen.  It never really had a chance.

Originally posted by tman5

Hi Rapa.  Former Salley Torrancini.  We've crossed paths a few times.

Good to see a familiar name.

Wow Tman, you're   Sally  "Im Sony's Bitch and so are you" Torrancini????  Would never have guessed in a million.

Originally posted by Gutboy

• The weapons you have known, and grinded, and worked hard to get the best upgrades available, the weapon that has gottten you out a more than one scrape in Mos Eisley Cantina useless.
• The Armour that you have come to know how much damage you can take, that blaster burn that gives it character....It's now useless. 
• _________________________________________________________________________________
• I would answer to those 2 with "with decay all of those are worthless in short order and you would have to buy/craft more". I suit of armor would last 1 good PvP session, a weapon would last a bit more.

Gutboy:   Repair kits that worked.  The real answer.

It would be beyond awesome if, without a word, they took the servers down for regular maintenance and brought them up as they were for the last January 2005 update. 

No CU, No NGE, just gaming goodness. *poof*

Actually, you had a ton of stuff I didn't have.   /deepbow to Vortex500

Reading through this stuff I love and hate the people who created what was so amazing.  All the new people here and those with short memories...this is what is lost.  The New Game as it is experienced, ack what monstrousness...How could they mess something like Galaxies up? bah.

Fun stuff Vortex!  I was missing a couple these these items.  Gracias.

Originally posted by PreCU

rubenfield is definitely contradicting freeman. Are those freeman quotes still on the internet or did you save them before they got deleted?

Jeff's posts:   http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm?USERPOSTS=547413&PAGE=10&bhcp=1

Stratics announcement of the Trials of Ob-wan expansion August 19, 2005 wherein they do not present themselves as bleeding 10,000 subs a month:

Friday August 19 2005

Star Wars Galaxies™: Trials of Obi-Wan
GeneralNews - 11:55 AM PDT | Posted By: Issele
LUCASARTS ANNOUNCES NEW STAR WARS GALAXIES EXPANSION PACK AS FRANCHISE UNIT SALES SURPASS ONE MILLION Star Wars Galaxies™: Trials of Obi-Wan heats things up – literally! – with all new Mustafar content inspired by Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith Leipzig Games Convention – Leipzig, Germany – August 19, 2005 – LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE) today unveiled Star Wars Galaxies: Trials of Obi-Wan to the cheers of Star Wars Galaxies™ enthusiasts gathered for a fan breakfast at the 2005 Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany. This third expansion to the popular immersive online game is scheduled for release on November 1st, alongside the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith theatrical DVD and Star Wars Battlefront™ II video game. The companies also revealed that more than 1 million units of the Star Wars Galaxies franchise have now been sold, a testament to its ongoing popularity.

Grant McDaniel on the Trials and how exciting it will be!

Tuesday August 30 2005

Letter from Grant McDaniel
GeneralNews - 3:32 PM PDT | Posted By: Issele
Hi, I am Grant McDaniel. I am the Producer for Star Wars Galaxies at Sony Online Entertainment and have been with the team for over four years. I just returned from the Games Convention in Leipzig, which was amazing (over 100,000 gamers!) and also where we announced our upcoming expansion, Star Wars Galaxies: Trials of Obi-Wan. Over the past few months, a portion of our development team has been secretly working on this expansion, so I am really glad that I can finally begin to tell you a little bit about what we have been doing (just not everything – we have to leave a few surprises!). Over the upcoming weeks, our community group will be gathering your expansion-related questions from the forums so that I can provide you all with some answers and more information about what we have planned. We have already gathered some of the most common questions from the boards, and I have provided some initial answers to those below. I know there are a lot more questions where these came from, and we will post some answers regularly. Is this a Jedi expansion? Absolutely not. This expansion has content and adventures for all types of Star Wars Galaxies players. I'm not a Jedi...so is there any reason for me to obtain the Trials of Obi-Wan Expansion? Of course. All players will be able to converse with Obi-Wan and help him on his quests. Additionally, there will be many other quests as well as other reasons to explore the planet of Mustafar. And, the planet itself is so completely unique when compared to the rest of the planets in our game, that I think many people will just enjoy exploring and adventuring anywhere they can. (A lot more than Anakin!) Trials of Obi-Wan: Will there be a new playable species? How about new NPC species? We did not add any new playable species. However, Mustafar is home to two new native NPC species that you will find in the expansion (more on them later). Why was Obi-Wan chosen to appear at this point in the timeline since he hadn't yet visited Luke Skywalker? Events on Mustafar have caused a major disturbance in the Force, unleashing unknown dangers that could empower the dark side if not stopped. These events have led Obi-Wan Kenobi's spirit back to Mustafar to investigate how to eliminate this evil presence. With your help, he hopes to resolve the situation so that he can then move on to help the boy who could be our last hope… What are some of the highlights of the expansion? Star Wars Galaxies: Trials of Obi-Wan takes place on a harsh lava world unlike anything seen in our current game. There, you'll find a lava river and erupting volcanoes, as well as other dark and mysterious caves and dwellings. The expansion is built around the fiction of Mustafar, so there are many new story-driven quests, some of which revolve around Old Republic technology that has been discovered there. There will be lots of high-level loot, cool new reward items and features (including an increase in the number of ground vehicles that can be stored and used by the player), and many more exciting things that I look forward to sharing with you soon. All of these aspects combine to make this expansion look and feel like you are literally walking into the world of Episode III. Is there anything else you can share about the expansion that hasn't been discussed yet? Yes. There are a lot of new features as I have mentioned above, and they will be revealed over the next few weeks. I would love to reveal them now – but then they would have kill me! However, here is a little bit more background fiction, which gives a hint as to some of what is occurring on Mustafar:

Julio, October 27, 2005  interview on mmorpg.com wherein he does describe the NGE and its purpose if only you knew he was about to sledgehammer you!

Bad dogs, all.

Originally posted by todeswulf

I appreciate all of the PM's I received on this....some of the perspectives were interesting to say the least. I have been asked to kind of back off by a couple friends and since I respect them I'm going to do so.

It really wasn't my intent to stir the pot, or to cause grief.  I truly miss the game Raph Koster brought us, and I honestly don't think we will ever see it's like again.  I do want to finish up by saying That  Rubenfield and Torres deservs everything they get out of this, neither one of them should be working as janitors at a development house much less designers.

I will be posting on other forums on this site, but this is my last post on the Veteran refuge. It's time to let go and move on.  The reckoning that so many of us have been waiting for is finally coming home to roost, may it be as unforgiving and duplicitous as SOE was to the best community any MMO has ever seen.

Todeswulf out.

People say "this is my last post" all the time.  Next thing you know, they're drawn back by some tremor in the Force.  See ya soon.
 

Fishermage:  "That is quite possible, but it is far more likely that a discussion between Julio, Grant McDaniels, Jim Ward, Smedley, and SOE/LA marketing JOINTLY came up with the stripping of the professions. Remember, each SOE game has a profession structure similar, as does WoW (and most games for that matter).

I feel it was the suits who came up with the idea, but not necessarily LA alone. The design team, who knew the game slightly better, realized that it would be a disaster.

From what I have heard from various sources, it was a JOINT decision and was corporate and marketing. Those sources feel SOE and LEC were equally to blame."
 

Julio.

In the kitchen.

With the lightsaber.

I think Julio could get an easy pass from Jim Ward who was, from what I could see, a very casual gamer.   Rogue5 was in the Mustaphar test server with his little Rodian outfit, hanging around the Mensix Mining facility pretty happily until about halfway through testing, then he got sort of gruff.  He never seemed comfortable with dealing with what the changes wrought, he never came across as sure that it was super stuff.  I thought at one point he was guilty but now I don't think so.   Smedders, who I am mercilous on, has really just mumbled a line or two now and then saying yeah, NGE, great stuff, rah rah.  So...we wait and see who else squeaks.

I've had been looking at really old interviews and posts about Galaxies before the Rubenfield post, trying to figure out what went wrong, essentially.  The more I read those , and then re-read Rubenfields post, the long lost question of who is responsible for the NGE distills.  Note the lines in his post which he kept in over several versions (I have 3 saved)

"However we made a mistake.  ...Somewhere during the discussions it was strongly recommended that we streamline our characters.  People wanted something simpler, more direct, more accessible.  We told them "if you do this you will lose all 200k subscribers.  It is that significant.  It was explained that we would gain more due to the marketing push and relaunch."

So the finger pointing which has always been a puzzle is solved for me, at least.  The SOE team came up with the FPS combat and the LucasArts people, in the persona of Julio Torres, pushed for the nine iconic characters.  If you listen to Julio after the NGE, he is unusually defensive and determined there will be no change back to the previous game, he talks about how difficult the game was, for people to play (also the "Strident woman on one of the post NGE videos is very clear that the game was too hard". 

Note he says "we told them"  which has to mean LucasArts, that changing the base game and losing everything that made it special would lose subscribers. 

I don't recall LucasArts ever promoting the game much at all before this and suddenly there they were, oh look we have a Star Wars game.  Also, the changes were pushed to coincide with the Release of the last Star Wars film.  So certain was LucasArts that this was how to play.  I fear for a new LucasArts mmo based on Star Wars, and how messed up and simplistic it would be, if Julio was in on the ground floor making it.  I hope that LucasArts is doing it alone if they're doing one, so nobody can be blamed but them for utter mediocrity.

Your best report yet.  I think your character might be too popular to unmask.  We all need a maniacal hero, so don't  toss the wig and makeup yet :D

Who on earth was the woman speaking on the "just another Anti-NGE" video?  Her explanation of why the CU then six months later the NGE doesn't fit, just a defensive rant, whoever she was.  Looked like the devs were applauding the guy in the hat.

They're showing Julio in the promo for the Force Unleashed and they wouldn't if he weren't slinking around.  Think how action packed and iconic the game will be with his brilliant assistance.  Can't wait.

Can't believe Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel would want to work with Julio, lets-make-it-simple-stupid Torres again on a Star Wars game.  Nightmare of epic proportions for everyone.

Originally posted by Obee

Originally posted by Athela

I think the man deserves credit for finally putting some of the huge missing puzzle pieces together.  The whole timeline of events never made sense.

To me, letting everyone know that Sony and Lucasarts have always had the ability to give classic servers to fans just like every other company has who respect their own games and customers, just huge the incredible ability of Julio and Smedders to lie and be smug about it.  Suckers. 

By the way, in case you hope Julio (undoubtedly the "producer" who went "whoooummpf") got laid off by LA recently or ever, he is in this clip http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/14943 for the Force Unleashed looking slimy and Wormtonguelike.  Julio of the "it isn't technically possible" to do rollbacks.  Julio of the "the game was too difficult."

Julio and Smedders just need to be the ones nailed here and forever after.  They had the ability to order the changes and the b**** to be eternally smirky about everything.

 

Actually, Mr. Torres was the only person at either SOE or LEC to say that a classic server was possible.  He said they actually had some extra servers and could have a classic server up and running in a day or two, but he added that they weren't going to do it.  The producer Mr. Rubenfield was talking about was more likely to be Grant McDaniel (Rogue_5) or the SOE SWG lead producer before him.  Mr. Torres was probably at the LEC offices at the time the folks at SOE were conceptualizing the NGE.  Don't take any of this as a defense of Mr. Torres, he is a grade A moron who has been promoted way past his ability and should never, ever, be allowed to be anywhere near any type of promotion of any product ("If you don't like it, by all means go play something else").

I'm not sure where everyone is getting the whole 'We don't have the code' thing from.  The closest thing the Smed ever said to that was that it wasn't technically possible for SOE to maintain two separate codebases (which more than likely meant it would cost them too much to do so).  I don't recall anyone ever claiming they didn't have the code.  I think this has become more of an urban legend in the vein of 'Tiggs stood up for the players and was fired for it!'.  Tiggs never did that, but a post by a player has been falsely attributed to her and everyone seems to have forgotten that she was lying to us and defending the NGE right along with the rest of the weasels at SOE up until she was fired, for whatever the real reason was.

SOE and LEC both are in major need of housecleaning.  Of the two, SOE is much more likely to see one since their company has been moved to a different Sony division a couple months ago.  Unfortunately, I think it is unlikely that the Smed will be shoved out the door, which means that any housecleaning that does get done would leave intact one of the major reasons that SOE is the dismal company it is today.  I agree that both the Smed and Mr. Torres need to find some other industry to infest, hopefully one where they cannot cause much harm.  There are several folks at their respective companies that need to go along with them.

 

 

Julio stated in his G4 interview that they could run the classic servers.  He did in fact later say it wasn't "technically possible."  I am hunting down the quote as we speak.
 

I think the man deserves credit for finally putting some of the huge missing puzzle pieces together.  The whole timeline of events never made sense.

To me, letting everyone know that Sony and Lucasarts have always had the ability to give classic servers to fans just like every other company has who respect their own games and customers, just huge the incredible ability of Julio and Smedders to lie and be smug about it.  Suckers. 

By the way, in case you hope Julio (undoubtedly the "producer" who went "whoooummpf") got laid off by LA recently or ever, he is in this clip http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/14943 for the Force Unleashed looking slimy and Wormtonguelike.  Julio of the "it isn't technically possible" to do rollbacks.  Julio of the "the game was too difficult."

Julio and Smedders just need to be the ones nailed here and forever after.  They had the ability to order the changes and the b**** to be eternally smirky about everything.