Pre-Cu / Pre-NGE SWG lacked polish.

Great Ideas ,but poorly coded, too much bugs (even considering that it was innovative), not great support , very long bug fixage time.  Seem like it was just released 6-12 months too late + not good enough support after release.

Not surprising after all it is SOE. 

They can develop innovative games ,but they ruin it always by combination of making terrible game changes in order to get more players and not providing enough GM & Dev support.  Not to mention that it is one of first companies in west to try greedy revenue schemes (official RMT anyone? , one of first to have microtransactions in p2p games ,etc) Awful strategy tbh :/ 

One of reasons I stay far far away from SOE and not planning to come back.

The game went wrong from even before it launched when they made massive changes to the game that testers didn't like. the game launched to massive failure, it quiclkly lost the majority of it's player base and was considered a massive failure seeing as at the time Star Wars had massive pulling power. 

SWG had great ideas, just a shame SOE was in charge to ruin it from beta.

It's the rule of SOE really, make a great concept but fuck it up with lack of direction.

I thought we all knew where it went wrong... they trivialized everyones hard work by making Jedi's a class that could be created on demand, and subsequently sheer awe factor. Yes they were a god class, but at the same time they had a hard counter. The Bounty Hunter could easily eliminate any Jedi, especially if you caught them while they were still padawans. Just as any of the other classes feared the Jedi, the Jedi feared the Bounty Hunter just as much.  Not to mention that Bounty Hunters were able to actively locate any conspicuous or flagged Jedi.

(Actually I forget if they were always flagged or only when brandishing their lightsaber. I'm pretty sure that they were always flagged.)

I think most everyone agrees that the homogenization or dumbing down of the game is what caused players to leave.

I always thought it weird that the lava never could damage you, but then again in the early days of WoW, lava used to tick for 40ish damage.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

And will TOR eventually go the same road..

 

Just read this blog : http://blog.tp.org/chip/archives/002076.html

I think every serious MMO player should have read it, so they know what went wrong.

 

How much of this could fire back to SW:TOR in the end? 

BEcause Lucas Arts is still very much involved with this game.

TOR wont go down the same road, because it is already what Lucas Arts wants it to be. Popular.

SWG was created in the shadow of Everquest. But then WoW came along and turned the market on its head, and SoE / Lucas Arts wanted a piece of the super popular pie. So they redeveloped a game built from the ground up to be a sandbox, into a themepark, but forgetting that there were existing players that they were screwing over in the process.

In all honesty, the game was better after the NGE. But getting to that point pissed too many existing players off. If the game had launched as NGE, it would have been a different story altogether.

SWTOR wont have the same problems, because the game knows what it is. Its a themepark through and through.

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

And will TOR eventually go the same road..

 

Just read this blog : http://blog.tp.org/chip/archives/002076.html

I think every serious MMO player should have read it, so they know what went wrong.

 

How much of this could fire back to SW:TOR in the end? 

BEcause Lucas Arts is still very much involved with this game.

TOR wont go down the same road, because it is already what Lucas Arts wants it to be. Popular.

SWG was created in the shadow of Everquest. But then WoW came along and turned the market on its head, and SoE / Lucas Arts wanted a piece of the super popular pie. So they redeveloped a game built from the ground up to be a sandbox, into a themepark, but forgetting that there were existing players that they were screwing over in the process.

In all honesty, the game was better after the NGE. But getting to that point pissed too many existing players off. If the game had launched as NGE, it would have been a different story altogether.

SWTOR wont have the same problems, because the game knows what it is. Its a themepark through and through.

SWTOR may be popular at launch, only because of the hype and the success of KOTOR, but now that it is released most are now quitting and going back to WOW.

SWTOR UK sales plummet after only one week

By the end of the year it will be deader than SWG.

SWTOR does not know what it is, it is trying to be a MMO like WOW and failing, as it is really an offline RPG like Mass Effect with online multiplayer options at heart. The game worlds needs to be more open and less restrictive and not so linear, and I do not see them being able to fix that without rewriting the game from the ground up, which will not happen.

SWG went wrong the moment SOE was allowed to develop and manage it.  Why anyone continues to give this company money is beyond me. They are the last company I would ever trust my IP to. I can undestand LA being duped because SOE did have Everquest at that point in time. However, WB has no excuse for entrusting them with DCUO since this was years after the NGE bust.

Sorry but when i read the title of this thread my first thought went to how many SWG Pre-CU players thought "WHAT ?"

Smeadley, Combat Upgrade and the final nail in the coffin New Gaming Experience. Its a very sordid tale and its rather lengthy, but i am sure its been told by several SWG vets better than me.

Still... WHAT ?

Originally posted by travdoty

/fixed

SOE did not create SWTOR, yet it is like the NGE with even less features. It is less buggy but they had more time ion development, in fact the amount of time they have had it should be bug free, but still has loads of bugs and exploits causing them to shut the game down for maintenance daily.

Lucasarts seeing WOW's numbers and Tores and Macintyre asking why arent our numbers like that then Vogel, Walton etc who had been trying to get this past Smedley and others for some time finally getting their wish.

For the bad press Smed gets he had fought for some time against it as he alongside Tiggs was pretty much the only person who saw what would happen but Lucasarts had already had there heads turned by the consiprers within SOE to radically change things up.  When you have a company like Lucasarts telling you it HAS to happen theres little you can do about it regardless if your SOE, EA or Blizzard,  don't bend over and take it and you lose the licence.

Every single key decision maker in the NGE happening aside Macintrye who I think is still at Leapfrog the child learning toys company and Jeff Freeman who took his own life in 2008 (although I still think Jeff took far to much stick for his minor part in the whole debacle) is now involved or has been up until recently with SWTOR they finally got to make their wow in space with "Iconic" classes.

No I'm not a SWTOR hater its just a bit bland but playing it till something better comes along.

when they made the patch that changed the game into something player hated!

it was poorly made game with interesting concepts. then it was poorly redesigned with different concepts.

It was not the NGE that did the most damage, it was the way they went about it and changed it all within a matter of weeks, and made things redundant that was supposed to come with TOOW, and people managed to get refunds. Trust was lost. If they let people know that it was coming with months of notice like the CU, then it would not have been so bad.

SOE were doing all the right things in 2011, and with the constant free CTS there was 1 full hevay server Starsider, and then in May/June it shot up to four full heavy servers. In July or Aug it could have increased further, but did not as game was closing and people just jumped ship.

It could have been due to the free 45 days, but I find it not good business sense to shut it down before people prove it was the 45 days that gave it the boom. If they announced its closure in July or Aug it would still give plenty of announcement on its closure, and people would not feel cheated at all from that. Also if subs plummeted after June, and the shutdown announcement came in July or Aug, the closure of SWG would be easier to accept.. But it got shutdown regradless of what they thought the populations would end up becoming

Therefore SWGs ultimate failure which resulted in its closure was not to do with lack of population as at the time of the announcements things were picking up, and it was becoming a solid game. Where I believe (and from what others have said) it ultimately went wrong was due to a contract, basically stating that SWG can not operate alongside SWTOR.

I blame Lucas more for the NGE, than SoE.

I have never seen a developer change a game that much before, and I highly doubt they would of done the drastic changes they did, without Lucas pretty much making them do it.

The game needed more content, some class balancing stuff, and buffs toned down....But it had a lot going for it, just needed more content and some shine to turn around their subs imo....Not a facelift and sex change.

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Originally posted by spinner_vis
it was poorly made game with interesting concepts. then it was poorly redesigned with different concepts.

---

Please allow me to take your post as inspiration for this:

First it was a poor game based on excellent concepts - then it became a poor game based on poor concepts - as it died it was an average game based on mediocre concepts - it was never as promising as in its first phase!

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

And will TOR eventually go the same road..

 

Just read this blog : http://blog.tp.org/chip/archives/002076.html

I think every serious MMO player should have read it, so they know what went wrong.

 

How much of this could fire back to SW:TOR in the end? 

BEcause Lucas Arts is still very much involved with this game.

It went wrong the moment SOE/LA thought it would be a good idea to totally change one of the most popular MMORPGs to exist at the time into some kind of class based click to shoot theme park ish game LOL..

They released an amazing game, sure it had issues all MMOPGs do at release but what on earth went through their minds with CU/NGE i dont know...

That is the point SWG failed and died for me and many many others.. hell thats why the SWGemu started up and it seems to be even more popular than ever now.

They went wrong when they launched NGE and destroyed the best class system I have ever seen ina MMO to this day. To me SWG pre-NGE is still the best MMO i played so far and there crafting system, vendor/trade system is still i my eyes the standard to which all other MMO should strive.

2005 Nov 15.

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

2005 Nov 15.

 

Per your sig...

You didn't win Sh*t.  LA finally screwed the Rest of the Player Base 12/15/11. 

And if you didn't play SW:G post 2007...you don't know Sh$t about it other than it had 9 professions instead of 32.

Originally posted by hipiap

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

2005 Nov 15.

 

Per your sig...

 

You didn't win Sh*t.  LA finally screwed the Rest of the Player Base 12/15/11. 

 

And if you didn't play SW:G post 2007...you don't know Sh$t about it other than it had 9 professions instead of 32.

Get over it