Originally posted by Vrazule

The CU and NGE were fiascos, there is no doubting that, but I have very little doubt that the game wouldn't have succeeded any better if they hadn't made those changes.  It didn't have enough casual appeal to even outstrip EverQuest numbers, let alone ever reach second place after WoW.  The game was too complex, too time consuming, too crafting oriented and riddled with all kinds of hardcore style time sinks in the form of battle wounds, battle fatigue, slow experience curve, high learning curve, general downtime and excessive travel requirements for quests, forcing the most popular iconic class to be rare, Jedi.  These along with a myriad other things would have kept the game down in any shape or form.

Yo genius, it was a virtual world simulator. It did indeed take thought to play it well, but it was not very difficult. Not difficult, but not super-easy either: what you got out of it scaled with the effort you were willing to put into it. And the more they dumbed it down, the faster they lost players.

Originally posted by MARTYB2K

It was everyone leaving. Yes it's a paradox. Im sure if most people had stayed, and not threw they toys out of the pram, the game would be as good as it once was. Because the subscriptions are so low now, nothing is being invested in the game to make it great. People should have given them more chance instead of leaving after 24 hours.

I see everyone leaving as a step in the right direction and I would not give them a chance now if they paid me to come back.  You can only screw your customers over so many times before you lose them and turn them into bitter enemies.

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Originally posted by SioBabble
Sorry, Charlie, but the NGE continues to suck. It's not worth paying anything to play this wretched excuse for a WoW ripoff that, in typical SOE fashion, failed to rip off the things that make WoW a success.
Everyone left BECAUSE of the NGE. You cannot escape that fact.

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I'd quote the other person who made the same mistake, but let's keep this simple.

Star Wars Galaxies predates World of Warcraft by approximately one year. The game was kinda fun and kinda good when it first came out (Holochron farming, anyone?). So calling it a WoW ripoff is like telling the Campbell's Soup company that they ripped-off Andy Warhol.

Other than that, I agree with the rest of the posters here. The problem is not that people left, people left because there was a problem. There continues to be a problem.

The chicken or the egg?

The NGE was a massive step in the wrong direction for SWG.  It caused people to leave.  It may not be the snow that crushed the village, but it is the cause of the avalanche.

Originally posted by Thor_Leifson

 

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Originally posted by SioBabble
Sorry, Charlie, but the NGE continues to suck. It's not worth paying anything to play this wretched excuse for a WoW ripoff that, in typical SOE fashion, failed to rip off the things that make WoW a success.
Everyone left BECAUSE of the NGE. You cannot escape that fact.

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I'd quote the other person who made the same mistake, but let's keep this simple.

Star Wars Galaxies predates World of Warcraft by approximately one year. The game was kinda fun and kinda good when it first came out (Holochron farming, anyone?). So calling it a WoW ripoff is like telling the Campbell's Soup company that they ripped-off Andy Warhol.

 

Other than that, I agree with the rest of the posters here. The problem is not that people left, people left because there was a problem. There continues to be a problem.

Ah, but the CU and the NGE were both about making SWG more like WoW, in the hopes that some of WoW's humongus playerbase would be attracted to a WoW clone with Star Wars skin.  In the process of doing so, they forgot to do the things that actually made WoW a success, because SOE doesn't do finished games, and they don't do polish.

To me the NGE was the thing that ruined SWG. They could release a bug free NGE, and it would still failed for me. The big error is that they changed the game's gender. So, if you didn't like the new twitched based shoot Em' up style, you had only one thing to do. Quit.

Originally posted by MARTYB2K

It was everyone leaving. Yes it's a paradox. Im sure if most people had stayed, and not threw they toys out of the pram, the game would be as good as it once was. Because the subscriptions are so low now, nothing is being invested in the game to make it great. People should have given them more chance instead of leaving after 24 hours.

It's not a paradox.  SOE and LEC misled people and took their money for things they had already planned to delete.  They also deleted most of the professions people had worked on for years, and deleted much of the quest content people worked on for years.  They negated all the work people put into unlocking jedi.  They also removed a game with some bugs in it and replaced it with a game that had many more bugs in it.   In the NGE you couldn't initially move or chat, and your combat functions didn't work.  Heals healed enemies and resulted in the death of the healer.  That's 4 core systems broken to the point of being unuseable.  SOE and LEC then promised to fix many of the bugs and issues, many are still not fixed to this day.

People left the game as a direct result of this mistreatment.  There's no paradox here.  People were treated like garbage, they didn't like it, so they left.

Also, you ought to know.  People didn't leave after 24 hours.  Many stayed for months to try to work out solutions with SOE and LEC.  They got more broken promises, and they finally left as well.

You may not be aware of this in life yet, but when you repeatedly mistreat people, they eventually avoid you.  They are wise to do so.

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Originally posted by Vrazule
The CU and NGE were fiascos, there is no doubting that, but I have very little doubt that the game wouldn't have succeeded any better if they hadn't made those changes.  It didn't have enough casual appeal to even outstrip EverQuest numbers, let alone ever reach second place after WoW.  The game was too complex, too time consuming, too crafting oriented and riddled with all kinds of hardcore style time sinks in the form of battle wounds, battle fatigue, slow experience curve, high learning curve, general downtime and excessive travel requirements for quests, forcing the most popular iconic class to be rare, Jedi.  These along with a myriad other things would have kept the game down in any shape or form.

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that's the Smedley lie. The fact is, it had plenty of appeal to casual players, most people who played, and loved it, were casual players. The problem was mismanagement, broken quests, broken professions, and continually breaking promises.

Then, to cover that up, they blamed what you are saying and pulled the CU. It failed, because they were lying when they said the game didn't have casual appeal. They were trying to cover up their own mismanagement.

Then, when the CU failed to bring in more casual players, they lied again, and blamed the design again, and pulled the NGE. that failed epically, further proving they were lying when they said the game didn't have casual appeal, and THAT was why it didn't get the numbers.

All lies. The fact is had they fixed what was wrong, instead of reinventing the wheel to cover up for their mismanagement, the game would have broke one million subs. Instead, they lied, covered up, and covered their butts, and failed.

I don't think anyone has a right to speak of this game unless they played pre NGE.

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Originally posted by CasualMaker

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Originally posted by Vrazule

The CU and NGE were fiascos, there is no doubting that, but I have very little doubt that the game wouldn't have succeeded any better if they hadn't made those changes.  It didn't have enough casual appeal to even outstrip EverQuest numbers, let alone ever reach second place after WoW.  The game was too complex, too time consuming, too crafting oriented and riddled with all kinds of hardcore style time sinks in the form of battle wounds, battle fatigue, slow experience curve, high learning curve, general downtime and excessive travel requirements for quests, forcing the most popular iconic class to be rare, Jedi.  These along with a myriad other things would have kept the game down in any shape or form.

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Yo genius, it was a virtual world simulator. It did indeed take thought to play it well, but it was not very difficult. Not difficult, but not super-easy either: what you got out of it scaled with the effort you were willing to put into it. And the more they dumbed it down, the faster they lost players.

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It still is simply not so. The game was LOVED by casual players. People left because it was mismanaged, and SOE kept nerfing things without fixing what was wrong.

The big lie here is asserted to protect Smedley, blame Koster, and SOE has been doing this since the CU. They have an unholy horde of believers to preach this false gospel on every forum as well.

the initial game underoerformed purely because of Smedley's mismanagement; the CU failed because it didn't address that mismanagement, the NGE failed because it also did not address that, the current game is failing because they are not addressing that.

Everything SOE touches since the NGE is underperforming because they have not addressed this one big problem they have.

One can make up all the excuses one wishes to, and the small but dedicated horde of SOE fans have many -- the simple thing is there is one common thread to all of the problems. That common thread has a name. The man called Smedley.

Originally posted by jaxscorpio34

 

Originally posted by MARTYB2K

It was everyone leaving. Yes it's a paradox. Im sure if most people had stayed, and not threw they toys out of the pram, the game would be as good as it once was. Because the subscriptions are so low now, nothing is being invested in the game to make it great. People should have given them more chance instead of leaving after 24 hours.

 

I see everyone leaving as a step in the right direction and I would not give them a chance now if they paid me to come back.  You can only screw your customers over so many times before you lose them and turn them into bitter enemies.

Hi i agree with what Jax has said...

Originally posted by Thor_Leifson

 

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Originally posted by SioBabble
Sorry, Charlie, but the NGE continues to suck. It's not worth paying anything to play this wretched excuse for a WoW ripoff that, in typical SOE fashion, failed to rip off the things that make WoW a success.
Everyone left BECAUSE of the NGE. You cannot escape that fact.

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I'd quote the other person who made the same mistake, but let's keep this simple.

Star Wars Galaxies predates World of Warcraft by approximately one year. The game was kinda fun and kinda good when it first came out (Holochron farming, anyone?). So calling it a WoW ripoff is like telling the Campbell's Soup company that they ripped-off Andy Warhol.

 

Other than that, I agree with the rest of the posters here. The problem is not that people left, people left because there was a problem. There continues to be a problem.

Nice logic there buddy...

SWG came out before WoW but when WoW came out and was a major success SWG was redesigned to play exactly like WoW -- It just failed.

Where do you think the "levels/classes" came from?