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So why hasn't SWG bounced back... honestly.
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precisely. they took a old-school sandbox game....the only one of it's kind....and tried to turn it into a sci-fantasy themepark.
one has but to look at current trends in mmo development (and subsequent failures) to see that people are simply not willing to pay for a me-too-wow-clone.
precisely. they took a old-school sandbox game....the only one of it's kind....and tried to turn it into a sci-fantasy themepark.
one has but to look at current trends in mmo development (and subsequent failures) to see that people are simply not willing to pay for a me-too-wow-clone.
Yeah, especially one that was thrown together and doesn't work nearly as well as the original. Most of the "me-too" games seem rushed out of the box. Why would anyone leave a game that works very well--and their online community--to try a broken copy with nowhere near the population?
When I left SWG and played WoW for a short time, I was amazed at how much SWG seemed to rip off from this game. The glaring difference for me was the Blizzard's stuff actually worked well and was fun to play. The stuff they bolted onto SWG didn't work and seemed incredibly boring and repetitive by comparison.
Like I said before the only problem I had with WoW was waiting in the queue to get onto my friend's server--that and I don't really go for elves and faerie games. I'm a sci-fi fan.
One thing that has always bothered me is the term WOW clone applied to NGE. IF you really think about this it's such an oxymoron. If anything they went the opposite route of WOW from the ground up. If anything it was the fact it strayed so far away from that sort of design policy. The key word in that design is polish followed closely by execution. NGE was the polar opposite of this philosophy, the keys words for it would be desperate and failed. There's nothing that resembles WOW in SWG, that may be the problem if they would have hit any of Blizzards levels of quality this thread would not exist.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I don't think you can blame the vet's because so many posts both here and on the general board here when a newbie asks how the game is - the general answer is always 'try the free trial yourself and see'. If people are trying it and leaving - it ain't us!
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
If you only consider quality and polish, then you are correct. If you take into account design concepts, then the NGE lifted a number of things from WoW wholesale. The biggest one was that the Spy class in SWG is almost a direct copy/paste of WoW's Rogue class. Even a year after the NGE, the dev team was still lifting things from WoW, such as lifting WoW's Enchanting system to add to/replace SWG's crafting system.
The NGE was an attempt to make a WoW clone with a FPS combat system by an untalented development team with incompetent management. Even if the NGE had dropped fully polished and functional, the game would still be an unfun mess because the core game systems are horribly flawed. The entire development history of SWG since the NGE has been a complete waste of time because the core game is so fundamentally flawed. No amount of polish can fix that.
If you only consider quality and polish, then you are correct. If you take into account design concepts, then the NGE lifted a number of things from WoW wholesale. The biggest one was that the Spy class in SWG is almost a direct copy/paste of WoW's Rogue class. Even a year after the NGE, the dev team was still lifting things from WoW, such as lifting WoW's Enchanting system to add to/replace SWG's crafting system.
The NGE was an attempt to make a WoW clone with a FPS combat system by an untalented development team with incompetent management. Even if the NGE had dropped fully polished and functional, the game would still be an unfun mess because the core game systems are horribly flawed. The entire development history of SWG since the NGE has been a complete waste of time because the core game is so fundamentally flawed. No amount of polish can fix that.
Also from WoW:
-level system instead of skill based
-xp bar added to the bottom of the screen
-9 cookie cutter professions instead of more than 30 mix and match professions
-linear quest design as opposed to sandbox game (Legacy quest, uggh)
-beastmaster (it's actually even called beastmaster in Wow)
-switch emphasis away from crafting to a loot based economy
-magical heals instead of sci-fi mechanics for healing professions
-colourful new icons instead of those that blended into the background of the sandbox UI.
And why do I think this was all lifted from WoW specifically? Because the review I read in StarWars Insider magazine about most of these changes intentionally compared the revamp to WoW, and said it would appeal to WoW players.
Although SOE seemed to rip off WoW ideas in an attempt to appeal to Blizzard fans, the other poster is correct in saying that all of the polish was utterly missing. Both revamps, imo, were a disaster; with the NGE being catastrophic.
Originally SWG's dev team said "Its about living in the Star Wars Galaxies."
Now?
Now you can get all the movie posters in-game and put them up on your walls.
You can get a Yoda Bobble Head and put it anywhere, not to mention every other character.
The game is a terrible joke of a theme park now. How is that fun?
Can you imagine if Lord of the Rings Online let you put movie posters up around in-game? Jesus.....
Heh, a good friend of mine from City of Heroes said to me, "hey let's go try SWG, I hear they had some problems in the past but that's all behind them now." She didn't know my history with the game, so I just politely passed. Where is she now? Playing WoW lol.
There have been what? 6-7 vet trials since 2006? More?
Most of us have seen the game as it now is, and the vast majority of us are not coming back.
Ever.
Too much has been taken away, and although it is certainly in better shape than Nov 15 2005, it is still worse than Nov 14 2005.
Should SOE ever decide to throw some classic servers up, that will probably be the only success they will ever see in getting any vets to return.
And many will not go back, even for that.
I believe the spark that lit the flame of crappyness was the jedi system.
Before holocrons and Jedi's, SWG was a great game and many of us found a niche we liked. I had a GM weaponsmith and I spent years collecting material to make great weapons and I enjoyed selling them. People made friends and knew where to go to get things they wanted, then came Jedis and holocrons...
Now everyone abandoned their professions and started grinding new ones to unlock Jedi. Armor and weapon prices crashed as people grinded those professions out and practically gave the finished products away. Some people hated it and quit, some people got frustrated about not unlocking jedi and quit. The subscriber reduction caused some alarm with SOE and their eventual plan was to develope the NGE.
It is true the NGE was the last straw for many but the first straws came from the poorly implemented Jedi system in my opinion.
Why did you leave bad management off your list?
If a company screws you over - as a customer you have the right to take your money and walk which is the American way.
SOE is well regarded as one of the worst game management companies of all time because they seem to believe everything they do is made of gold and the community should love them for it.
They set the bar for companies who do not listen to their communities.
Ive played my last SOE game - thankfully thats an easy thing to live up to because their games are generally very medicore at best now days.
it might pickup some customer in february(since the whole month will be free for returning costumer)
Seeing as how it was deleted for some strange reason...I will RePost my Answer to the Threads Question:
It a combination of factors...
The Bad press from the reaction brought upon by the release of the NGE right after ToOW was pushed live.
The Community Response on public forums, Or by the media in press releases.
The State of Game play after the NGE was released (more FPS than RPG)
The Lack of any marketing...EG: No Box in stores, no commercials during Clone Wars TV episodes or Star Wars Movie time on TV channels.
While I enjoy SW:G enough to keep an Account sub'd continuously since 2004, and have a second account thats up every other month as well....it is far from PERFECT.
My only advice:
SOE/LA needs to advertise FFS.
The Former Vets that quit in 2005...I would invite you to try it out for 30 days...its really Improved over where it was in November 2005 and 2006. While it is Not the game you remember...it is still Fun in my opinion.
MMO History: 2528 days in SW:G
Do you honestly think most vets haven't given SWG another shot?
I've personally had approximately 24% of each year to play for FREE for the last SEVERAL years. This is the same offer given to every vet with an account in good standing.
I'll say this about your reasons.
1) SWG did have boxes on shelves, major retailers and internet sales sites.
2) It was also supported by television commercials, which makes it one of a very small list of pay to play mmos that has had television exposure.
3) There are millions of mmo games who have little to no idea about what went on in swg.
At some point the game itself has to stop hiding behind excuses and own up to its fate based on what it offers.
As for coming back to try the game, no thank you. I won't debate the game has improved since 2005, because honestly I doubt any company could spend 4 years and make things worse. What has improved for the sum of four years isn't worth the investment of joining a game like this. There simply isn't enough support and the majority of that support comes with twisted approach that only soe seems to accomplish. Either content is held hostage in some rmt loot card scam or it is rushed out unfinished and left to fester broken and malformed for years.
Even if the game was in wonderful shape that still would not change the biggest problem and that is the company running it. Nothing at soe has changed and until that happens there is little reason to invest time and money playing their games. Until they start to respect their players and focus on making games instead focusing how digitally access people wallets, there isn't much incentive to support their methods.
Soe may never pull something to the scale of the nge again, but they have shown time and time again they don't care or just don't know what they are doing. This can be evidenced in their latest game free realms. Players there are already comparing the devs to the nge and ninja stealth nerfs AFTER they have paid money for items. Not to mention yet ANOTHER combat revamp in one of their games and a very large lack of feedback to players on subjects.
It is always the same tired routine with soe. Someday I hope they change, because they should be making kick ass games. That isn't the case though.
I'd like to comment on your "reasons"...
Every one of those excuses blames someone other than SoE! You blame vets, community, press, marketing...dude...face it...SoE IS the problem...not everyone else.
It's time to stop blaming others for Sony's failures. Really...it gets old. If the game were THAT GOOD, people would play it, word would spread, more would join. Unfortunately, most people who have played it have quit. If you can't understand that the underlying issue is the development and direction of SWG, I don't know what else to tell ya mate.
It's really that simple.
Here is the answer to every game that someone posts this question about (SWG, Vanguard, AoC, WAR etc etc etc.):
Once you piss people off, or disappoint people, or make major changes that the regular players hated, all those people will leave and never try the game again. Once you drive off gamers they are done with your title, they don't think back and say "Hey that's the game that pissed me off and was a giant failure, man I want to try it again." No instead everytime they hear the name they think "I hate that terrible friggin game, I'm glad it's not doing well." That is just how gamers are.
So once a game has blown it's shot to impress gamers, or changed the game drastically and pissed off those who were impressed with the game, it never gets another chance. One mistake in the MMO world and you lose a section of gamers, it really comes down to which game launches smoothly and makes the least mistakes.
Back in the day gamers would try MMOs a second or third time but that is because there were only 4-5 choices. So you had to forgive mistakes if you wanted to play an MMO. Now there are an insane number of choices so when gamers get pissed they just try something else, and they keep doing that until they find one that keeps them happy for a while.
One shot, that's all you get as a game. One mistake can end any hopes of having a large playerbase.
Fantastic reply!!!
Post of the year.
Responding to this comment from Daffid:
"Either content is held hostage in some rmt loot card scam or it is rushed out unfinished and left to fester broken and malformed for years."
I believe we have a Bingo!
Post of the year.
That really is a fantastic summary of the MMO world these days I think.
Post of the year.
That really is a fantastic summary of the MMO world these days I think.
I agree, a good answer. However, what you say is true for all business and that makes it all the more stupid that people who manage games don't know better. Well, at least at SOE.
I am convinced that SOE is run by accounts that are trying to count the money before it is made.
That said, it is possible to recover from major business failures. Toyota is a great example. Their actions, despite the failure, have proven that they are commited to the quality of their product and safety of their customers.
SOE never made any such effort what so ever. Had they, maybe the game could have recovered.
When game makers stop acting like they can do what ever they want cause it is just a game, they might see greater success.
Atm, all I see is low quality, short cutting, poor CS, terrible TS, incomplete products rushed to market and a total lack of respect for the majority of gamers.
It's almost like gamers are the hippies of their day.
Post of the year.
That really is a fantastic summary of the MMO world these days I think.
I agree, a good answer. However, what you say is true for all business and that makes it all the more stupid that people who manage games don't know better. Well, at least at SOE.
I am convinced that SOE is run by accounts that are trying to count the money before it is made.
That said, it is possible to recover from major business failures. Toyota is a great example. Their actions, despite the failure, have proven that they are commited to the quality of their product and safety of their customers.
SOE never made any such effort what so ever. Had they, maybe the game could have recovered.
When game makers stop acting like they can do what ever they want cause it is just a game, they might see greater success.
Atm, all I see is low quality, short cutting, poor CS, terrible TS, incomplete products rushed to market and a total lack of respect for the majority of gamers.
It's almost like gamers are the hippies of their day.
Great post, pretty much sums up a lot of the factors i think, and there also seems to be a certain amount of 'contagion' after all, are there any SOE titles that are actually doing all that well ? My guess is that SOE arent all that good at learning from their mistakes - though i guess you first have to admit that you did make a mistake before you learn from it, much the same as alcoholics have to admit to themselves they have a problem with alcohol, before they can deal with it...
QFT- Well said
Post of the year.
That really is a fantastic summary of the MMO world these days I think.
Very good post, but IMO you can't blame SWG's failure entirely on the CU/NGE thing. Lets be honest- the game was released incomplete, if you were like me and one of the people who'd been waiting years for the game's release, then you might remember how the servers were all down on launch day. I didn't know it then but it was foretelling a grave future for the MMO; walking about, taking shuttle ports everywhere. Innovation came in the form of vehicles.. down the line... jedi and holocrons... but that's beside the point. I remember being very much into the game. It's a SW sandbox first and foremost and that alone attracted a loyal fanbase. Personally, I still love the housing and city structure in WoW. The fact that this 'structure' has resulted in endless stretches of ghost towns is irrelevant...
The truth is, the game had flaws from the start. I remember when the theme parks were released, the first I tried... I can't remember the name of... but you went from Jabba's palace to some space ship where super battle droids would glitch through the walls, and come at you in narrow corridors they didn't even fit in. This only added fuel to the fire for me- SWG already had a painfully boring quest system. Most of which revolved around going to waypoints in remote locations, there was no immersion even when you were doing quests for key characters like Luke or Han.. I left SWG long before NGE was released for WoW. Why? Because at one point I was playing JTL more then the rest of the game, and it dawned on me I could just as easily reinstall X Wing Alliance for that kind of fun, and not have to pay a monthly bill. As fun as sandboxes are, there's only so much you can do to entertain yourself in one when the game offers no real direction for your character.
I digress. My opinion on why SWG hasn't bounced back: when WoW was released it simply couldn't compete. CHANGE. WAS. NECESARY. The fact that the change only made a flawed game worse is a matter of opinion, but it did have it's desired result, I believe- I actually returned to SWG from WoW when I heard about the CU. And in all honesty, I liked the changes made, because it offered a group dynamic the game didn't really have before- with it's snares, distinct skill roles, etc.. of course, when obiwan was released along with the NGE, everything went down the gutter. SWG will not bounce back because SoE has turned it's star wars gem into an experiment in manipulating the mmo market. That is my conspiracy theory here. If you think about it, it's not entirely insane.
I've never played a game that went through such massive changes while I was playing, but it's understandable that they would change their game to attract a new market, or to give other MMOs competition. The fact that it didn't work out for a good deal of it's subscribes speaks for itself. SWG has not bounced back because it no longer caters to the MMO community so much as it caters to the fans. Just look at the veteran rewards- and all the subsequent rewards from buying the bundles and whatnot. SWG will not bounce back because it was never much of a gem to begin with... you can polish a turd all you want but all you're going to do is spread crap around.
And that's exactly what SWG is. A big smear of crap. That's all I have to say- it's sad, but SWG won't make a comeback, not even with classic servers.