All Posts by tman5

Originally posted by Tenebroso

/signed in blood

 

i m so tired of these guys complaining and clogging the foruns with their tears and broken dreams. choose another game and move on people!

 

 

 

Fail

Originally posted by xtravert

 

LOL, I just had a mental image of a couple of old guys sitting around surrounded my small children.  Remembering their "victory" over SOE and how it was the crowning achievement of their lives.  It was a hysterical and pathetic picture but amusing anyhow.

Hahaha!   "Smed's in the wire! Smed's in the wire!" 

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

Good to see a familiar name.

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

You know what Tman, you are right. Admittedly, I do realize he really can't say anything other than what he already has said. He can't name names, he can't say where the order for the NGE came from, he can't say why they don't release classic servers etc...

What continues to get me is how he keeps reiterating that he was proud to be involved with the NGE. Yes, I know how one can be proud of his team getting alot done in such a short period of time, but c'mon, the guy is delusional if he thinks they actually did a good thing. I also work in the games industry, and I too have crunched under unreasonable deadlines and released a shyte product. I'm not proud of it. I'm actually ashamed of perhaps one or two things I've worked on (not due to my own lack of effort/skill of course). The team crunched, big whoop. Bottom line, if the final product is crap, there's really nothing to be proud of.  Rubenfield should be ashamed of himself and the rest of the management/marketing team.

 

My take is Rubenfield is proud of his efforts, not necessarily of the NGE in total.   And why shouldn't he be, if he did the best he could under the circumstances?  There were many others involved.  Is he really at fault for the calamity of the NGE?

Of course, Rubenfield's best bet was to have just stayed quiet, but he had to open his big, fat blog.  Just the same, I think he's been pretty forthcoming.

I'm not sure what you guys really want.  I think Rubenfield's been very forthcoming.  Sure, he's probably hamstrung by a NDA and the desire to continue working in the industry, but what he's put out - if you read it - gives a very good idea what was going on at the time.

I doubt anytime soon someone will write what so many of you want to hear:

<  On November 8th, 2005, at precisely 9:43:06 in the AM, John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment , held a meeting with all the SWG developers and proclaimed "All SWG players suck my balls!  I detest them with every ounce of my soul, which is black and hard and mortgaged to Satan.  Destroy their game!  Destroy it, I say!  But say nothing at first.  Lull them with false promises and trick them into paying as much money as they can muster.  Then, when the time is right, eliminate everything they have worked for, toss them out on their ears and open wide the doors so millions and gagillions of WoW players can come running to us with fists full of dollars!  Ethics, morality and customer relations be damned! Money money money!! MWUHAHAHA!  I just creamed myself!"

Now I, as one of the many developers who executed the NGE, must take personal responsibility for my heinous crime.  Which is why I will now commit seppuku in front of this webcam I have set up, in hope that I can, in some small way, restore honor to my profession, damged by my actions.  AAHHRRRGGG!' >

 It was clearly a group decision including many people and many departments.   It was also clear they had a plan that got seriously botched.   It is also clear that plan did not include veterans.  There was indifference toward us, but no malice.  Up until the NGE, gamers had never really stood up for themselves  - taking all kinds of buggy product and crap from development houses and often acting as apologists.  Why should have SOE expected the backlash they got? 

Does this let SOE off the hook?  No, not by any stretch.  But some of you are looking for a name and you ain't gonna get one.

Originally posted by thexrated

Besides, this game is based on  the mediocre TV-series (I have watched almost every episode myself as well) rather than the original film I believe.

You are entitled to your opinion but - mediocre?  Ten seasons, two DVD movies, and a spin-off going into its fifth season - mediocre?

But like I said, you are entitled to your opinion.

Originally posted by swgtester1

i lol'ed when i read the notes for game update 5

$OE and the puppet devs along with the fanbois and fanbots claim this will fix crafting and make it fun again.

wrong to all of you.

crafting was just fine in the pre-cu even better we had this thing called decay that made it so people would have to keep seeing us crafters for new guns and swords. did some of us get greedy no we just knew how to work the market so we can get a few more credits off those fighting.

this new system sucks however. no decay means someone will make a gun for someone and never see them again. this didn't fix anything and $OE knows it.

what happen to the old damage types? weapons had those like heat stun and cold. no it wasn't some side damage that did some type of lame dot. that was the damage your weapon did meaning you would have to change weapons when fighting.

once again $OE shows that they cannot do anything right and would rather the nge be a card game rather then the world we once had with pre-cu swg.

I also agree with Distiler.  Do you have any specifics?  What is it about update 5 that will bring about "The End," given none of the previous updates have done so?

It's easy to rant "SWG is teh suck! LOL" but that's done on every second thread on this forum.  If you want your argument to have any meaning, be specific.

Like it or not, SWG will be around until the day a new official Star Wars MMO opens servers.  It will not close shop one day sooner.  You read it hear first.

*deleted

My post contributed nothing to this discussion.  My apologies

Heh heh.  And I wasn't even trying to be prescient.

http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2100884#2100884

 Quote meself:

"So, the point of the game now is . . . be the first on your block to get the badge?

Man, this really blows chunks.  Huge, dripping, rancid chunks.  Why not just turn SWG into a collector card game? "

Originally posted by Tzimiscechi

 

Do you really expect us to believe that you truly thought the NGE was one of the greatest video game designs you've ever seen?

(When he says "yes"...)

Then why are the Devs STILL playing World of Warcraft as opposed to the greatest design ever laid out?

 

Your first question is decent, although already asked in one form or another several times on the list. 

Your second question, an intended "gotcha," is based on the premise that once one has the "greatest" or "best," anything less won't do.  Who, in your opinion, is the "greatest" actor working today?  I bet you still watch films in which he doesn't appear.

That will be the answer.  "WoW, even if not the greatest, is still a good game deserving to be played."

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

AHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!

Now that's frackin' funny!  I may have to see if I have any vet-time available to go see this fuster cluck for myself.

He he!  If you check this out:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=690236

You'll find where apparently folks denied the new shiny badge are blocking out other people from getting it.  When they're not screaming, crying and stomping their feet like two year olds.

Oh my Lord, what will these children do next?

So, the point of the game now is . . . be the first on your block to get the badge?

Man, this really blows chunks.  Huge, dripping, rancid chunks.  Why not just turn SWG into a collector card game?

If Danny boy answers half those questions with accuracy and some level of detail, we could finally solve the Great Mystery of WTF Happened.

As long as it wears the title "Star Wars Galaxies" it must be -and always shall be - compared to the original.

SOE should simply rebrand it.

Some very lucid, specific and respectful questions . . .so far.

I give it an hour before the first "OMG! U guyz is so stupid!  Why do u hate yur playerz so much! LOL!"  post appears.

Originally posted by hubertgrove

 

Well, aside from the 'amateur' smear, your argument would make more sense if you did not ignore that the capital freed firstly from the disastrous investment in the NGE and secondly retained because the enormous drop-off in figures would not have happened, then perhaps some of that money could have gone into protecting and building upon the 200k subscriber figure - which, by the way is the figiure Dan Rubenfield actually quoted - through marketing, through bug fixing and balancing, and through the addition of intelligent content.

You take "amateur" as an insult?  I apologize.  Are you saying you perform these kinds of analyses professionally?

Quote Dan Rubenstien, from his blog:

And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.

If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000
subs a month.
Note - I think our subs were closer to 160-180 than 200k. It was a bad financial situation no matter how you look at it.

160-180K, which I assume he means by the time of NGE.  Feel free to run your professional analysis again.  Note that the "enormous drop-off" in subscriptions was already happening.  It could be argued the NGE simply hastened the inevitable.

Originally posted by therain93

 

Actually, there are several things we don't know.  Among those were the costs to sustain the pre-cu code base and the churn rate of subscribers heading to WoW.  There very well could have been another set of projections which convincingly posited that the NGE changes would be necessary to the survival of SWG and considerably more profitable in the long run.  Given the fall out, at least one would hope that there existed best and worst case scenarios that fell in line like this and SOE just chose wrong.....

The only things proven were that SOE lost many customers quickly and yet SWG still runs today with some amount of subscribers.  Scoff if you will but Smed and Torres could always say things would have been much worse had they not implemented the NGE, that the departures were inevitable. Of course, by worse I mean shut down already as it's about the only situation that would be "worse". 

 

To expand on this point - If you read Rubenstien's blog - where he says SWG had 160-180k subscribers at NGE launch, not 200k - he says SWG was losing 10k subscribers per month.  Projecting that out, potentially the game would have been at ZERO subscribers in 16 to 20 months.  Realistically, that wouldn't happen, but there is no telling where the subscriber plateau would have been.  At what subscriber number is SWG no longer viable?  100K, as someone stated?  That would have meant in 6-10 months, SWG would have been kaput.  This was likely the main justification for the NGE.

A point Smed made during the NGE was making the game cheaper to maintain.  Was pre-NGE just too expensive to maintain within a likely threshold of subscribers?  Even with lost subscribers, is the NGE more profitable than pre-NGE?

I'm not saying I agree with these numbers, the actions, results or speculation, including mine.  I'm just pointing out that the OP is another amateur attempt to make a "business case," while ignoring facts that might cloud a preconcieved conclusion.

Originally posted by Kazara

Some responses are surfacing from other sites such as Broken Toys and Massively =

brokentoys.org/2008/06/12/good-apollo-dear-god-the-internet-it-burns-iv-srsly-dude/

 

".. SWG in general, and the NGE in specific, is basically the Derek Smart of MMO discussion."

The BEST quote from all these exchanges.

(Right after "OM NOM NOM")

You know what is funniest (or saddest)?  The fanbois screaming at the OP to pony up $50 -$100 for a character transfer and stop bitching about it.

In other words, if you aren't willing to give this multimillion dollar corporation even more of your money so you can enjoy the game you have already paid for, there is something wrong with you.

Pathetic