Let's look at recent events:

• The Producers Letter was originally promised by Smed by the end of last year to inform the community of the dirrection of the game.
• The Letter was then promised by the end of January, and still nothing.
• Pub 27 was pushed back days before it was to roll.
• Pub 28 has been pushed back indefinatly, even though they suposedly had a direction and some things built for Ent's.
• Then TH says Producer's Letter will be out by the end of last week. Nothing.
• The Dev's post a very distracting post about their day the last work day of the week the letter was promised. Every post written about that letter that day was deleted immeadiatly.
• Pub 27 was then pushed onto TC VERY quickly that evening, only announced that day, again distracting the community from the Producer's Letter.
• Pub 27 is FAR from ready even for TC, considering that their tests didn't pick up repeat Lock-Ups and Crashes. I doubt it.
• TH then posts about the Letter being delayed AGAIN, with no relase date.
• The Producers Letter has been continually delayed.
• It's obvious that TH isn't being told what's going on.

OK, now let's look at some other interesting related facts:

• Julio hasn't posted on the forums since last year, even though it was promised.
• Smed hasn't posted any real info since last year, even though it was promised.
• The direction has not been given as promised.
• Julio hasn't been doing any of the interviews I've seen this year, but others at LA have been.
• I can't find ANY info (you may be able to) about or by JT this year.
• JT is the PRODUCER for this game. What is he actually doing? Aren't most Producers heard from almost weekly?
• LA sent out a survey (nothing shocking there) about the ToOW mainly, but it also asks ABOUT THE NGE / CU / AND PRE-CU (this has been gone for almost a year, isn't it starnge they'd bring it up in a New survey 2 Expansions later?)
• I've been told that LA Reviews SWG every year on Feb 6, and that the contract wasn't up, but that at this time LA can pull the Liscense without any penalties.
• Recently, it was shown that the Peak players online are around 11k, making the total number of subscribers/players (by industry generalations) between 33k & 50K. This ability has already been stealth-fixed adding to it legitimacy.
• Subscriptions have DUMPED well beyond SOE's & LA's expectations.

And the big questions:

• It is VERY obvious that Pub 27 was no where near ready for it's original launch date, and that had to be known well before it was bumped. A delay tactic?
• SOE has cut the Dev team for SWG by quite a bit. There was actually 2 Dev teams working on SWG all last year. If they were truely commited to the future of this game, wouldn't they be adding Dev's?
• If they were commited to health of this game, wouldn't these 2 large companys have invested into more than the marketing of the NGE instead of cutting CSR's & Dev's?
• What possible reasons would there be to continually delay the Producers Letter, and as a result keep loosing players who want dirrection?

Edit: And lets not forget the incredably bad national press, player backlash & word of mouth. I've NEVER seen anything like it. This game and SOE's tactics with it have become a laughingstock of the industry, an embaressment to both SOE & LA, and a future class topic in schools across the country.

Now, almost 3 months out and the ONLY communication on the direction of the game has been a TC Publish. SOE's Community Rep is obviously being mislead like Tiggs was. The Letter has been written for a while now, but STILL needs to be polished?

The only reason for the void in SOE/LA communication in front of us, IMO, can be Shut Down (see my Change of Heart bellow).

Some say they are delaying for an expansion announcement, or a rollback, but if these were the case, why delay it? Wouldn't annoucing it shore up SWG numbers? Wouldn't it generate SK sales and/or bring back those wanting content or a Rollback?

From a business standpoint, looking at the information we've been given, the only reason I can see is to milk as much cash as possible before a Shutdown.

That said, if the Liscense was pulled, neither company would want it known until weeks before a shutdown, inorder to milk as much cash as possible & keep people from bailing early. I would GUESS that about 8 weeks from Feb 6th will be around when they will shutdown. 4-2 weeks before that they would annouce it.

Nothing fact, but if you can offer any other possabilities, please post them!

Producers Letter Edit:

Well, 2 "Producers Letters" were released today, and all I can say is "WoW", hehe. No, seriously, I can't believe they delayed or hyped these.

Here are the things they didn't say:

• What the future of SWG holds, other than a "Star Wars Experience". I'm stunned, I mean, didn't they promise us a dirrection and some insight into their plans? What they provided was the same-old vague fluff.
• No Timeline Bump. TH wouldn't have mentioned this unless it was told to him, so we can say originally it was in the letter and removed. This is VERY sketchy, and leads me to believe there is something major going on to change such a large move.
• Direction, other than some real vague mentions of skill systems.
• No Rollback or Revert.

What they did say:

• Nothing. (joke, hehe) No, really, they actually didn't say anything, other than some PR.
• They will be adding back in old systems from the game. This just seems silly, since there is a game that already has those systems.
• According to JT's Publish Timeline comments, we're looking at (if we're lucky) a publish every 3 1/2 months at the soonest. If Pub 27 came out tomorrow, that means Pub 28 arround May/June, and a Pub 29 (the Trader Fix mind you) arround September/October... WTH is that? Even June is too late for Pub 29. If they were serious about this game, WHY NOT SHOW IT BY BRINGING IN MORE DEV's???
• That they are going to thuroughly test all publishes, so they will be pushing 27 live tomorrow (that's what JT said) even though it's a jumbled mess??? That's quality?
• That they really do care about us.... or our money, you tell me.
• PR, PR, PR. These letters are NOTHING BUT PR.
• Spam... everyone likes Spam.

These letters are so pointless that they lead you to belive that the ONLY reason they were released was because the community has been demanding them. They said nothing, other than how dedicated the Producers are. No dirrection. No insight. Just Fluff.

The only thing they were trying to accomplish with these letters, IMO, is to buy time... but for what?

My money is still on Shutdown. IMO, the signs point to it, and the only thing that could have shown that SOE/LA was making the effort to save the game were these letters, and fluff saves nothing. The only thing I got from the letters was "Keep paying us so we can make your game playable and so you can play in a SW universe." Isn't that what a Beta is for? If they were serious, wouldn't they bring in MORE DEV's to speed it up? It's just the same old shell game...

This was going to be the big Letter to show the future of SWG, keep players and save the game... what future are you seeing?

Change of Heart

Rouge_5's & Semd's Updates + Station Access Bundle = A Slow Death for SWG

Well, I was wrong. After hearing the news of the Station Access Bundle it's clear now that the NGE is here to stay, and that SOE/LA will be letting SWG die a slow, under-supported death. Adding it to this Bundle allows them to artificialy bump their subscibers (even if you don't play SWG, if you buy this they will count you as a SWG subscriber), and that means they will be taking what they can get for SWG, push out more expansions before fixing the game & putting way to few resorces behind the game, dragging fixing it to well over a year.

I was wrong, and I can live with that. But I can't live with this jumbled mess of SWG. The future of this game holds a long, slow death... enjoy.

EDIT: /sad  It seems that someone has Coppied/Pasted this post into the SWG Forums. Although I'm happy that this post is being seen by a larger audience, it appears from the C/P'ers responses that they're taking credit for writing it. I'm hoping it was a misunderstanding. In any case, please respond away!

Whatever the facts it seems obvious to me that SOE don't expect to see any growth concerning SWG.

"Never bite the hand that feeds", Smedley did................twice!

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Originally posted by Agricola1
Whatever the facts it seems obvious to me that SOE don't expect to see any growth concerning SWG.
"Never bite the hand that feeds", Smedley did................twice!

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He didn't just bite the hand, he tore it off and stuffed it up our collective asses.

And to the OP.....nice....I agree with everything you said. And since I am now officially a SOE hater, I hope the game shuts down with JT and JS going down in flames with it.

/spit SOE

I think they talked themselves into believing that they'd lose 20-25% of the sub base with the NGE, and that those would eventually return, as many did after leaving because of the CU who came back later in the summer.

And, they thought with the marketing blitz, and "YOU CAN BE JEDI OUT OF THE BOX" that there would be enough new blood infused to make up for the loss of veterans who cancelled because of the NGE.

I have no doubt they expected to be above 200K subs by now, in mid-Feb, not at <50K as they actually are.

They did not at all anticipate such a strong, passionate reaction from jilted players that has generated the worst press ANY MMO has ever had. SWG is in the news more than WoW, and for the WORST of reasons.

Also, it's fairly obvious the Dev team is now a skeleton crew. Just look at how slow Pub27 has come, how crappy and buggy it is (it was supposed to be released over a month ago originally), and that 95% of it is nothing more than bug fixes and/or adding BACK stuff that existed before NGE took them away (heavy weapons and even the "new" Jedi abilities).

My feeling is that there are 4 possibilities:

1. SWG will close by summer.

2. They will keep going with the NGE in the hopes that by next holiday season they are growing again.

3. They will announce a massive revamp of NGE incorporating as much of one (or both) of the older systems as they can re-integrate into it (they sort of are already doing this, just not on a large scale)

4. They will revert to one of the older systems, merge servers, and run with a skeleton crew while SWG2 is developed for 2008 release, based on the NGE or maybe a totally new engine/concept.

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I would love to see a playable, pre-NGE version of the game somewhere. I agree on the SOE shutdown idea. Don't you think they'd have to pull all the retail boxes first though?

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A good point..

BUT... They already seem to have pulled the game cards from retail. If the retail boxes start to disappear, then that is a sign.

There seem to be plenty of them on the shelves, probably because they aren't selling, obviously, as we know that SWG's subscriber base has collapsed since the 11-2-05 NGE announcement...

They might not even BE producing any more retail boxes, just leaving the ones out there that already are out.

I honestly don't think they will shutdown, but will try either an announced MASS revamp of NGE, classic servers, or reversion to an older system before shutting the whole thing down.

I'd love to see the reversion.

I've never really understood who is in charge of SWG. From a business standpoint, SOE has butchered this product probably beyond repair. If it's true that Torres works for LA, then how culpable is LA in all this?

LA must be embarrassed by what has transpired in the last 3 months. Hell, SWG still has the SW on it and I don't think Lucas has a great deal of patience for people who piss away income.

Any ideas?

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Originally posted by BamaDoc
I would love to see a playable, pre-NGE version of the game somewhere. I agree on the SOE shutdown idea. Don't you think they'd have to pull all the retail boxes first though?

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Originally posted by BamaDoc

I'd love to see the reversion.

I've never really understood who is in charge of SWG. From a business standpoint, SOE has butchered this product probably beyond repair. If it's true that Torres works for LA, then how culpable is LA in all this?

LA must be embarrassed by what has transpired in the last 3 months. Hell, SWG still has the SW on it and I don't think Lucas has a great deal of patience for people who piss away income.

Any ideas?

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A revert or rollback won't happen.

That would be admitting failure & incredibly poor judgement, costing all of the big-wigs their jobs. This last year they've gone from around 100mil annualy to less than 10 mil. Reverting would result in an increase in players and subs, and make them look like fools.

These guys have HUGE Ego's, what do you think is mor important to them: The game or their jobs?

They'll blame the game, the players, the old management, WoW, the media and eachother. That's the game for them. But at least there's a descent chance Smed & JT will loose their jobs.

SOE has lost 100 mil in subs in a year, and LA lost probably 22.5mil a year in pure off-the-top profit. Those are FAR from small numbers, especially for LA - they get it for doing almost nothing.

We'll see...

I'll bet now that JT will NEVER be a Producer for another game again, hehe.