All Posts by Dracus

Well another drive-by complainer as the OP has made no attempt at defending his statement.

So instead of signing, I'm blocking.

/block

I believe a near complete agreement would be, that PotBS is not in the same league as other MMO's of the same monthly rate.

Which does surprise me, seems that MMO's which do not generate a large number of subscribers, do not reduce their price, rather they keep at the same rate (or go up) or go to F2P.

Originally posted by dalevi11

Dogs and Cats....

(insert whatever you need here to make you feel better, i don't give a flying () what, just make it matter, to you!)

(cause, frankly ([poster) I don't give a (evidently you could say this word in 1939, but now it gets you banned).

Have a nice day.

Kresh

You can stop looking up now, seems that my comment went over your head.

Originally posted by Costanza420

Originally posted by Fishermage 

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Just checking to see how many replies can be quoted...  16 so far.

Self amusement, nothing else. 

I would say, keep the game Avatar Centric and not with Ships, even in ship combat.

Now if the KOTOR MMO is true, best to do things different.  Place less importance for combat grinding (how about no xp for kills? Or perhaps based on the faction...) and more towards thinking and playing smarter.

If players just want to fight, then let them go and fight at the political boundaries, while the others can go elsewhere.

... human sacrifice, fanboys and burnt vets living together... MASS HYSTERIA!

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! 

The things we normally do about complainers and why they don’t work

There are several strategies people use around complainers, none of which really work.

1: Cheering them up doesn’t work
As in “Oh, it can’t be that bad”, “Come on, cheer up” or the perennial favorite “Time heals all wounds”.

Saying things like this shows the complainer that you’re not taking their pain seriously. When you tell a complainer “it’s not that bad”, he will often complain even harder to convince you (and himself) that his problems are very serious indeed.

2: Suggesting solutions doesn’t work
“Why don’t you…”, “have you tried…” or even worse “You should really have…”

The complainers’ problems are really serious and can’t be solved by a few smart-ass suggestions from you. Or so they’ve convinced themselves. The more you try to suggest solutions, the harder they will work to convince you and themselves that these solutions could never possibly work for them.

3: Telling them to pull themselves together doesn’t work
“Quit complaining and do something about it” or one of my favorites: “You either want the problem or you want the solution”.

Yeah, telling them that their problems are trivial and they just need to pull themselves together is going to work juuuuust fine. All complainers magically stop complaining at this. Or do they?

4: Complaining about the complainers doesn’t work
“Damn, that Sally complains a lot doesn’t she?”

Guess what, you just became a complainer

5: Ignoring them / avoiding them doesn’t work
This makes complainers clamor for attention even more - which usually makes people ignore them even more. That’s a vicious cycle right there.

6: Complaining along with them doesn’t work
“You know what, you’re right, the boss IS a jerk. And the weather sucks. In fact everything sucks.”

This can be kind of cosy because it creates bonding and an us-against-the-world feeling. But ultimately it’s a bad idea because the more people complain the less prone they are to doing something about their problems.

7: Confronting them doesn’t work
You can drive the complaints underground where you don’t see them, but they will probably still be going on. And repressed complaining is worse than open complaining because it gets to stew and grow while it’s hidden.

A trick that does work

So what does work? Here’s a simple but very effective trick:

A friend of mine who’s a dentist told me about an elderly, grouchy patient of hers. Every time he came in for an appointment he’d complain about the weather, his children, his car, taxes, society, and any other topic that might come up.

Now you might think “Hey, she’s a dentist, fill his mouth with gauze and cotton and let’s see him complain then!” but my friend is a naturally happy person and would instead try to cheer him up. Didn’t work, just made him complain even more.

So I taught her this trick and the next time he came in for an appointment she was ready. He went in the chair, and immediately started complaining.

After listening to his usual litany for a while my dentist friend said, with deep sympathy in her voice, “You know, that sounds terrible. I don’t know how you deal with all of these problems.”

You know what he said?

“Weeeeell, it’s not THAT bad!”

This approach works because it gives the complainer what he’s really after: Empathy. Not cheering up, not solutions, not egging-on. Just understanding of what is, for him, a difficult situation.

There are two important things to notice here:

1. Don’t be sarcastic when you say it. Be sincere.
2. You don’t have to agree that these are huge problems. Even if everything the complainer says sounds trivial to you, remember that it feels like a huge problem to him or her wouldn’t go on about it. What seems trivial to one person can be a huge problem for others.

So you’re not saying “Yes, I agree that’s a huge problem”. And you’re certainly not saying “Oh, poor poor you” in a sarcastic voice. You’re just acknowledging the fact that this is a huge problem for that person. Which undeniably it is.

Does this make the complaining go away? Only sometimes. But it keeps you from being part of a vicious cycle of responses that just makes the complainers complain more and more and more. The cycle is cut at the point you take their distress seriously.

And that ends my advice for the day.

Complaining about complainers... oh I luv that.

It is the announcement of STO being in development.

Nothing new that we don't already know.

ZZZZZzzzzz....

Originally posted by jiveturkey12

I stayed up with my friends that night, all the way until 7 in the morning, playing SWG, drinking mountain Dew, talking about Star Wars in general, and SWG's possible space exapnsion and what I would name my ship.

To that time when the game that had so much potential.

/toast

Originally posted by tvalentine

i thought EVE had about 20-30k users online every day .......... atleast it used to be back when i played.

You are correct, the numbers I listed were of XFire players per day of Eve-Online.  I just used the total number of subscribers as a quick reference ratio.

Originally posted by Exupery

 

Or if you consider that WoW has over 10 mil active subs and SWG had slightly less than 1% hours played than WoW in the OP, then SWG active subs are closer to 100,000 - but this is all meaningless because you can't use a snapshot of hours played to guess subs.  Maybe WoW players spend less time in game on average than SWG players, or maybe it's the other way around, in any event, mathematical comparisions like this assume (most likely wrongly) that the average player of Game A plays the same amount of hours than a player of Game B.

The deal with WoW of 10 million subscribers is that most of those subscribers are based on hourly rates and not monthly.

Well SOE still turns a profit, his name has influence and he hasn't done anything wrong (according to himself).

I do not think it is too late, there are methods to change things around and bring people back.  Albeit slowly.

Some of those methods would be:

- Make the client free, go with digital distribution.

- Reduce the monthly payments, $15/mo is too high for what is provided.  $10/mo may be right, though $5/mo may be too low.  But I think F2P should be avoided...  then again Pirates of the Caribbean looks like it is doing well.

- Engage the user community as was being done before.  Player created model ships for example.  Get the users to have ownership.

- Provide an effective change management program in which the users have a say in the manner of the proposed changes.  Let the customer be part of the team.

- Rename PotBS to PotBS: Something Epic or Catchy subtitle

- Conduct a marketing campaign.

- Provide incentives for new and current users.

A matter of principles.

I do believe that PotBS has merit and does have potential, even with its flaws.  However, I will not hand over money to support the salaries of the current management of SOE.  Until new policies and management is provided by SOE, then I as with many will continue to exert power with our wallets and press.

A shame that FLS had to endure the problems of being associated with SOE, but heck, FLS figured there was more to gain than to loose.

Originally posted by Suvroc 

Originally posted by Obraik

The first paragraph was a bit of showing off...how does a game that is suppose to be dead and no ones interested in (according to certain people on this forum at least) score a 2 page feature in a somewhat high-profile book? ;)

 

Ok this helps.

I would believe that the fact that it's a high profile IP helps to make it into this book.

- Marketing

- Favoritism by the Author

Originally posted by kefkah

Cool, so my guesstimates were nearly accurate.

Indeed

Originally posted by kefkah

Its equal to the total number of people who watched the David Hasslehoff pay per view concert.

I'm not even going to make the attempt to prove you wrong... you may be very well correct.

I am surprised that Tab-Raza is performing less than SWG.  But if going by the number of people that player per day and using some numbers from Eve-Online as reference, well here is this:

Eve-Online has 3328 users per day and has a reported 225,000 subscribers.

With some rough quick math...

SWG has 783 users per day, which is 23.5% of Eve-Online, so about 52,937 subscribers.

Then just for grins with Planetside of 143 users per day is 4.3% of Eve-Online so that would be about 9,668 subscribers.

Then take into account of trial accounts and Station Passes and the subscribers numbers are likely to be lower.  I think that kind of works out well to get a ball park number of the best case possible.

Originally posted by JestorRodo

 

As I have said , the End days are near for SWG and I must extend that to all SOE PC MMOs.

Actually, I take that back.  This is more closely related to the first console game crash in the early 80's.

Though to add creditability to your viewpoint, SCEA is focusing on console games with MMO's for consoles.  Since SOE is merged with SCEA, the days of PC MMO's by Sony are limited.  I just think in about two years would be about the time.

As for SWG....  I can see it closing in a few months.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

So what are developer companies to do now ? If there was ever doubt , now it is clear

Massive = Failure

Mini Online RPG = Success

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R.I.P Massive 

The future of massive games will be to those niched marketed games, such as Eve-Online and small companies.  Sure they lack money, most may fail, but some will succeed.