Star Wars Galaxies Forum » General Discussion » The Star Wars Galaxies 6th Anniversary/Empire Day re-entitlement promotion

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

I do think SWG has a healthy sub base, for a six year old game with the most controversial history in an MMORPG it is doing great.  Development on the game is very active and is dictated by player feedback, which I think is quite unique in the gaming industry, SWG in itself is rather unique too, which is what I think keeps people playing and brings so many people back.

 

Was it player feedback that created the RMT card games?  How about station cash?  How about exchange servers?  How did things go with the first friday feature of the new community manager?  Do you think he makes a good example of a company listening to their players?

SOE makes it a very clear habit to not listen to their players in many instances.  That is why certain topics are prohibited on forums or they stealth patch in changes with little to no discussion with the community.  They might create a forum for people to discuss their dissent with these changes and promises to listen, but at the very same time the devs are giving interviews with gaming sites saying the changes are there to stay.  That doesn't sound like a company listening to their players if you ask me.

 

Seriously, they are unique in listening to players?  I can think of half a dozen companies that have a real relationship with thier customers let alone soe being unique in their listening to their players.  I'm fairly certain you can go back each and every year for the last half dozen years and find quotes of soe promising to listen the customers in the future.  If they do what you say, why do they have to make those comments?

Sorry Badger, but SOE doesn't listen to our feedback until it's too late. I love the game, and I eagerly wait the you can-not-named-or-speak-about-it-here project.

Also my account isn't being re-entitled.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

I do think SWG has a healthy sub base, for a six year old game with the most controversial history in an MMORPG it is doing great.  Development on the game is very active and is dictated by player feedback, which I think is quite unique in the gaming industry, SWG in itself is rather unique too, which is what I think keeps people playing and brings so many people back.

 

Was it player feedback that created the RMT card games?  How about station cash?  How about exchange servers?  How did things go with the first friday feature of the new community manager?  Do you think he makes a good example of a company listening to their players?

SOE makes it a very clear habit to not listen to their players in many instances.  That is why certain topics are prohibited on forums or they stealth patch in changes with little to no discussion with the community.  They might create a forum for people to discuss their dissent with these changes and promises to listen, but at the very same time the devs are giving interviews with gaming sites saying the changes are there to stay.  That doesn't sound like a company listening to their players if you ask me.

 

Seriously, they are unique in listening to players?  I can think of half a dozen companies that have a real relationship with thier customers let alone soe being unique in their listening to their players.  I'm fairly certain you can go back each and every year for the last half dozen years and find quotes of soe promising to listen the customers in the future.  If they do what you say, why do they have to make those comments?

Alternatively I have seen many people ask for things such as new planets to explore, new profs, new races, ect. If develoment on SWG was "active and dictated by player feedback" then things like this would have been made long ago.

Originally posted by Suvroc

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

I do think SWG has a healthy sub base, for a six year old game with the most controversial history in an MMORPG it is doing great.  Development on the game is very active and is dictated by player feedback, which I think is quite unique in the gaming industry, SWG in itself is rather unique too, which is what I think keeps people playing and brings so many people back.

 

Was it player feedback that created the RMT card games?  How about station cash?  How about exchange servers?  How did things go with the first friday feature of the new community manager?  Do you think he makes a good example of a company listening to their players?

SOE makes it a very clear habit to not listen to their players in many instances.  That is why certain topics are prohibited on forums or they stealth patch in changes with little to no discussion with the community.  They might create a forum for people to discuss their dissent with these changes and promises to listen, but at the very same time the devs are giving interviews with gaming sites saying the changes are there to stay.  That doesn't sound like a company listening to their players if you ask me.

 

Seriously, they are unique in listening to players?  I can think of half a dozen companies that have a real relationship with thier customers let alone soe being unique in their listening to their players.  I'm fairly certain you can go back each and every year for the last half dozen years and find quotes of soe promising to listen the customers in the future.  If they do what you say, why do they have to make those comments?

 

Alternatively I have seen many people ask for things such as new planets to explore, new profs, new races, ect. If develoment on SWG was "active and dictated by player feedback" then things like this would have been made long ago.

The sad thing is they have 2 planets in the current .tre files they could be utilizing for something...anything....

I reactivated and transferred one of my toons from Lowca to Flurry.  I also made a new character to learn the game.

The most frustrating thing is the UI.  But that aside, and that is a BIG aside, I have gotten into a good guild and there seems to always be some people on.  The server pop seems adequate at this point. When I have questions, the folks in my guild are very helpful and friendly and offer good suggestions.  Most of the people in the guild are 30-40 years old  I think, but not sure.  They seem in general to be mature with a decent sense of humor which is all I could ask for.

In general I think I am having fun for now, and that's all I can ask of any game.  I like how my character looks, I like the housing and decorating system, I like that there are different planets and spaceships and cool vehicles.  They also implemented a vanity clothing system so you can use the graphic of clothing/armor only.

I think the game is not for everyone and for many it's precu or nothing.  But I'm bored of the mmo genre and there is nothing  currently that interests me.  SWG still offers some unique things that others don't, and I will entertain myself with those for the time being.

Originally posted by Terranah

I reactivated and transferred one of my toons from Lowca to Flurry.  I also made a new character to learn the game.

 

The most frustrating thing is the UI.  But that aside, and that is a BIG aside, I have gotten into a good guild and there seems to always be some people on.  The server pop seems adequate at this point. When I have questions, the folks in my guild are very helpful and friendly and offer good suggestions.  Most of the people in the guild are 30-40 years old  I think, but not sure.  They seem in general to be mature with a decent sense of humor which is all I could ask for.

 

In general I think I am having fun for now, and that's all I can ask of any game.  I like how my character looks, I like the housing and decorating system, I like that there are different planets and spaceships and cool vehicles.  They also implemented a vanity clothing system so you can use the graphic of clothing/armor only.

 

I think the game is not for everyone and for many it's precu or nothing.  But I'm bored of the mmo genre and there is nothing  currently that interests me.  SWG still offers some unique things that others don't, and I will entertain myself with those for the time being.

Yeah, I want to play this game again, but am waiting to see if my account gets flag for the free month. Don't wanna re-sub and lose the chance for a free month!
 

Originally posted by Terranah

SWG still offers some unique things that others don't, and I will entertain myself with those for the time being.

Glad to hear that, Terranah.

Were you able to remap your keys to more familar settings?  I have been trying to get a new default keymap implemented called "Star Wars Galaxies Veteran" which would have a lot of the keymap settings that you remember, or is it the graphical design of the UI window elements themselves that you don't like?

If you ask your guild, they should be able to suggest ways to change those windows to something more familiar.

I guess their Quarterly report is coming up, so they are opening up all their accounts to boost their sub number total on the report.

How predictable this has become.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

I guess their Quarterly report is coming up, so they are opening up all their accounts to boost their sub number total on the report.

How predictable this has become.

I don't think this is a factor, these free vet trials have been quite sucessful in the past in terms of getting veteran players to pick up SWG again.  Makes sense to have them every three months or so.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Guillermo197

I guess their Quarterly report is coming up, so they are opening up all their accounts to boost their sub number total on the report.

How predictable this has become.

 

I don't think this is a factor, these free vet trials have been quite sucessful in the past in terms of getting veteran players to pick up SWG again.  Makes sense to have them every three months or so.

Need to say more? As they are pretty much doing it with Vanguard as well.

Rest my case.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Need to say more? As they are pretty much doing it with Vanguard as well.

Rest my case.

SoE have had a great sucess with the Free to Play model with Free Realms, free trials and returning vet trials are a way that they can see the same effect in their subscription model MMOs.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Need to say more? As they are pretty much doing it with Vanguard as well.

Rest my case.

 

SoE have had a great sucess with the Free to Play model with Free Realms, free trials and returning vet trials are a way that they can see the same effect in their subscription model MMOs.

No, it's John Smedly's shady tactic for the last couple years to stay on the CEO position, because this way he can keep feeding surrealistic subscription numbers to his naive and blind superiors at Sony HQ.

He does it with Everquest 2 as well. The moment something goes wrong there and the sub numbers take a dive, just before the quarterly report comes up... BOOM! Vet accounts suddenly reopened for a month.

Now with the announcement of the Expac being pushed back to February 2010.... lot of people will rage quit, because they have run bored at lvl80 and nothing left to do... so sub numbers will go down and mark my words.... soon vet accounts will open up again in EverQuest 2 as well.

All to keep the numbers on the reports look good.

Cheers

Originally posted by Guillermo197

All to keep the numbers on the reports look good.

OK, I hear what you are saying.  I used to commute to work with a train company that had certain government set quotas on late trains.  If too many trains were late, they would be fined.

What the train company did, if a train was late, was mark it as cancelled and run it to the end of the line with whatever passengers it had picked up so far  and it would then not show on the "late" train stats.

I found this particularly agrivating everytime my half full train came speeding past my platform.  Eventually the government realised what they were up to and make the train company report on cancellations too.

In your scenario, you are imagining that SoE report trial accounts as subscriptions in order to fool their superiors?  That sounds a bit like tin-foil hat stuff, are you just having a pop at SoE and making up stuff because you are angry at them for some reason?

If so, why are you angry?

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Need to say more? As they are pretty much doing it with Vanguard as well.

Rest my case.

 

SoE have had a great sucess with the Free to Play model with Free Realms, free trials and returning vet trials are a way that they can see the same effect in their subscription model MMOs.

If the vet trials were so successful, then they would not have to do them so often.  Think about it.  You can only fish from the same pool so many times before it goes dry.  You can only make claims of increases and gains in population so many times, but the truth of the matter is told is the server mergers (or whatever they are called).

As for free realms being a great success?  The game only has 10 servers which makes it the smallest AAA title soe has.  The forums struggle to break 100 users online at any time (according to soe 750,000 people are adults so the forums should be packed).  7 out of the 10 servers are rather empty.   The entire gameworld is about the size of just 1 large zone in eq2. 

The only think saying the game is a success is the press release of millions of "registered accounts". 

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Guillermo197

I guess their Quarterly report is coming up, so they are opening up all their accounts to boost their sub number total on the report.

How predictable this has become.

 

I don't think this is a factor, these free vet trials have been quite sucessful in the past in terms of getting veteran players to pick up SWG again, and then put it right back down.  Makes sense to have them every three months or so.

Then it makes sense to have it every three months. The naive ones think "Hey, maybe it sucks less than it did three months ago!"

Originally posted by Daffid011

If the vet trials were so successful, then they would not have to do them so often.

The Development roadmap for SWG is very fast, we can get four publishes in the space of three months.  This changes the game considerably in that timeframe and always for the better.

I think it's good that veterans get the chance to try all these out and then decide if they would like to stay or not.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Daffid011

If the vet trials were so successful, then they would not have to do them so often.

 

The Development roadmap for SWG is very fast, we can get four publishes in the space of three months.  This changes the game considerably in that timeframe and always for the better.

I think it's good that veterans get the chance to try all these out and then decide if they would like to stay or not.

Your personal opinion on the merits of the trials are nice, but it doesn't change the nature of what is or isn't happening.  How many times can there be a vet trial which is "successful" before that inkwell goes dry?

I am going to ask this again, because honestly I don't know the answer or your history as others seem to know it.  I think you were once a senator or maybe you still are?  You often reference patches and work done by soe as "we have done this or that" just like you did above.  You have done it enough times that it doesn't seem like a passing mistake, so I have to ask.  Do you work for soe? 

Originally posted by Daffid011

Your personal opinion on the merits of the trials are nice, but it doesn't change the nature of what is or isn't happening.  How many times can there be a vet trial which is "successful" before that inkwell goes dry?

I am going to ask this again, because honestly I don't know the answer or your history as others seem to know it.  I think you were once a senator or maybe you still are?  You often reference patches and work done by soe as "we have done this or that" just like you did above.  You have done it enough times that it doesn't seem like a passing mistake, so I have to ask.  Do you work for soe? 

When I say "we" I am referring to myself and other SWG players.  I am a retired player volunteer but I still like to help people understand more about SWG and how it works.

My point with the recurring vet trials is that we get a lot of content and fixes in three months, a person who may not have found something of interest last time round may well find all new content and fun to be had this time.

There's no conspiricy theory, I guess the Devs just want people to come and check out their latest work, and perhaps stick around for more.  Looks like it works as I see more old faces return with each trial.

Combined with all the new players we get, it makes for a healthy and growing MMORPG.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Combined with all the new players we get, it makes for a healthy and growing MMORPG.

wow

Thanks for the answer badger.  I've seen companies who like to hire from their community and thought maybe that was your situation.  My question wasn't meant to imply conspiracy if thats how you read it.  Appologies if that is how it came off.

Originally posted by Valeran

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Combined with all the new players we get, it makes for a healthy and growing MMORPG.

 

wow

What he still doesn't get is that we see straight through his BS. Every SINGLE EFFING TIME there is a vet trial Badge comes here and says it's a smashing success and new blood is coming in in healthy numbers.

If this was the case then SWG would have been steadily growing over the years, not declining. You can't have repeated successful vet trials if there weren't a crap ton of inactive accounts to begin with. The only reason people even bother coming back for their free time is because they're bored.

SWG sucks, it's a WoW-ified piece of crap with fluffy cupid ewoks that bend you over and make you take it up the arse. I don't often say anything is WoW-ified, but SWG DEFINITELY is WoW-ified. Actually, you know what, it's not. It's WORSE than WoW. Worse because of the item shop and the TCG and the retarded Cupid ewoks that not even WoW has.

Worse because of the continued lies and massive brushing off of customer desires. Worse because your devs continue to ignore valuable imput, continue to put more items into the TCG than regular content and generally be douche bags.

If SOE was smart they would do what Turbine did with D&D. They would make the game completely free to play and put a few select things in the item shop. I personally find all that Turbine did to be unethical for a F2P model, but it's a decent enough start. Anyway, so then you also still have a monthly VIP subscription that would provide some points for the store, some TCG packs and maybe something else.

At least then people can still play most of the game for free and every time content is put into the TCG instead of updates the people that aren't subscribed don't feel ripped off.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Guillermo197

All to keep the numbers on the reports look good.

 

OK, I hear what you are saying.  I used to commute to work with a train company that had certain government set quotas on late trains.  If too many trains were late, they would be fined.

What the train company did, if a train was late, was mark it as cancelled and run it to the end of the line with whatever passengers it had picked up so far  and it would then not show on the "late" train stats.

I found this particularly agrivating everytime my half full train came speeding past my platform.  Eventually the government realised what they were up to and make the train company report on cancellations too.

In your scenario, you are imagining that SoE report trial accounts as subscriptions in order to fool their superiors?  That sounds a bit like tin-foil hat stuff, are you just having a pop at SoE and making up stuff because you are angry at them for some reason?

If so, why are you angry?

Oh I don't think this is tin hat foil stuff at all, but very very real.

Combine it with all the stupid people that spend litterly thousands of dollars on the Virtual Card Game crap (mostly loot card addicts) and he has some financials to add to make it all look good.

And I am not angry in any way at all. Altho I am not hiding the fact that I wouldn't mind seeing The Smed dissapear from the company rather sooner then later. As he is just poison with very bad ethics.

Cheers

A friend got me to download the game for the free month.  Yesh, the UI is even more clunky than before. 

Not knowing what exactly to do was weird, as well as getting quests for level 1, when I was level 46 the first time I logged on and was made to switch.

Two cool things, I kept all my titles (EXCEPT one terrible thing, I lost my rank of Captain, and now am a private again.) and the card game.  I wouldn't mind playing the card game, but meh.

Bad things. yeah...That should be obvious.

Originally posted by Swanea

A friend got me to download the game for the free month.  Yesh, the UI is even more clunky than before. 

Not knowing what exactly to do was weird, as well as getting quests for level 1, when I was level 46 the first time I logged on and was made to switch.

 

Two cool things, I kept all my titles (EXCEPT one terrible thing, I lost my rank of Captain, and now am a private again.) and the card game.  I wouldn't mind playing the card game, but meh.

Bad things. yeah...That should be obvious.

Welcome back.  When the new GCW ranking system went in, everyone got a rank reset to private.

It sounds like you logged in and got what we call an "NGE respec" and the system calculated that you are the equivalent of combat level 46 based on your character build at the time of the NGE.  Combat boxes gives you levels, so I guess you were a hybrid of some kind with almost half a combat mastery and some non-combat profession.

What issue did you have with the card game?  Just type /TCG in game and you should have five free packs to open which gives you a chance at some loot, those are not tradeable though so only your characters can use them, if you want to trade cards and loot you have to buy them from the store.

Originally posted by Lord_Ixigan

If this was the case then SWG would have been steadily growing over the years, not declining.

It is.  Log in to one of SWGs top eight servers and see.

If players hadn't skewed themselves across the top eight servers with the Free CTS, we'd have a healthy population on all 24 servers, just a bit larger than Shadowfire currently. 

But try Starsider, it's rockin'.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Lord_Ixigan

If this was the case then SWG would have been steadily growing over the years, not declining.

 

It is.  Log in to one of SWGs top eight servers and see.

If players hadn't skewed themselves across the top eight servers with the Free CTS, we'd have a healthy population on all 24 servers, just a bit larger than Shadowfire currently. 

But try Starsider, it's rockin'.

Badger, this is simply not true and wishful thinking doesn't make it so. The Free Character Transfer Service (FCTS) was implemented because there wasn't close to enough players to populate all the servers and $OE was losing losing subscrubers because of it. The FCTS didn't cause the dead servers, $OE did by losing well over 80% of the playerbase. The FTCS only allowed players to transfer to servers where they stood a better chance to actually find and play with other players. Even many of the currrent 'transfer- to' servers like Gorath and Radiant are litarally begging for the FCTS. There are posts asking for the FTCS on page one of the O-boards. Of the 24 servers, maybe five tops are claiming a good pupulatuion, and even a couple of those servers have occassional players complaining of more recent lower player numbers.