I've read numerous posts, blogs, articles etc. that seem to suggest that the only thing SOE ever did wrong with this title was the NGE. SOE made "a" mistake we're told, they've apologized and learned from it.
So, what do you think. Is it true that the NGE was the only thing SOE ever did wrong with this title, or is someone forgetting an awful lot of nastiness?
The NGE was a transcendent moment of sheer stupidity. The magnitude of the disaster it caused made every previous bug, mistake and "oops" of SWG seem trivial.
SWG was badly flawed from the begining; the list of problems with core systems, exploits, bugs and lore were legion...but none of them had killed the game or made it unplayable. Many of the problems could have been fixed or had already been fixed.
Honestly, by the incredibly lax standards of the present day it would be only be fair to characterize the NGE as a wonderful launch However at the time, it represented the single biggest "FU" ever given by the management of a major MMO company to their existant playerbase. (Who holds that title now is somewhat up for debate, sadly!)
since SOE owns SWG im surprised they dont just restore the servers back to the original SWG and try to get some of their members back. Man I miss playing that game.
They originally claimed that the code was lost when they created the NGE and later said it was too late, that switching back to the old code would be like creating another NGE for the existing player base.
Personally I would rather someone take all the great things that were in SWG and put them into a newer MMO with improved graphics and animations without all the bugs, but devs seem more interested in trying to duplicate WoW.
But that would mean they were wrong about the CU and NGE all along. SOE is run by morons - I doubt they will ever run classic servers. It would be fun though.
Well, as a jedi pre-patch 9, I consider the CU as the very first catastrophe. However, the NGE was so bad that today, the CU looks great.
I'll never ever touch another $o€ game. I read somewhere someone saying that $o€ apologized for their mistake. This is wrong. They apologized to the communities of Vanguard & EQ2 when players started to fear to be screwed like us. SWG customers were left behind. As usual.
I also felt that the NGE was a colossal mistake that ruined the game by far. But I also felt the game was really hampered by setting it in the timeline of the movies. It would have much better for the game to focus on less explored time lines that were more open to expansion and freedom, such as Bioware is doing with SWTOR. The movie timeline was just topo iconic and defined to use it effectively for an MMO and when the Rage of the Wookies expansion hit the continuity of the timeline and the canon of that period was ruined and shot to hell gamewise.
Great post, good points and HELL NO it wasn't "just" the NGE...it was every issue you mention and then 100's more.
SoE's problems come from the top down. It's never been ONE thing (NGE) with them. It's years upon years upon years of neglecting their products and assuming the customer was replaceable.
This isn't limited to just SWG, it's SoE's entire corporate phylosophy that's ass backwards. SoE has ALWAYS been more concerned about the customers they DON'T have than the customers they DO (did) have. They don't try to grow, they try to replace. The WoW envy they have is tangible. Arrogance and greed are SoE's biggest problems...not the flippin NGE.
Great post, good points and HELL NO it wasn't "just" the NGE...it was every issue you mention and then 100's more.
SoE's problems come from the top down. It's never been ONE thing (NGE) with them. It's years upon years upon years of neglecting their products and assuming the customer was replaceable.
This isn't limited to just SWG, it's SoE's entire corporate phylosophy that's ass backwards. SoE has ALWAYS been more concerned about the customers they DON'T have than the customers they DO (did) have. They don't try to grow, they try to replace. The WoW envy they have is tangible. Arrogance and greed are SoE's biggest problems...not the flippin NGE.
This is the most important fact about the NGE and SOE as a whole.
For the record, I had quit SWG long before the combat upgrade or the nge. It didn't ruin my game and I had already come to the conclusion that soe could not properly manage the game. I was playing EQ2 at the time and it was going through a similar overhaul where soe bumbles around trying to fix to many problems at one time and only makes the problem worse.
SOE took their customers money and used it to redisgn SWG into something the customers didn't want in an effort to replace them. That isn't something that can change as long as the current leadership remains in charge. They simply view their customers as a source of revenue that can be used to attract the potential player and that is all they care about, the potential player. The only thing soe learned from this is that things can go terribly wrong and they cannot jump into these types of changes head first or they will lose everyone.
John Smedly wants to be an industry leader and a rock star among game developers. He doesn't care nor understand what it takes to make great games anymore and that attidtude trickles down through the entire company. That is their corporate culture now.
They are trying to replace the EQ2 playerbase right now in a similar manner. Right after promising they were not going to make EQ2 f2p, they announce f2p EQ2. Then they shift the entire dev team to work on that and shaft existing player by redoing the UI, spell effects and new player content. They remove the free trials from existing servers to drive new players to the cash shop server. They simply do not care about their customers.
The fact that they are so incompetent at developing and managing their games is a very distant second to this. All the mistakes and ignorant decisions in designing thier games do not come close to adding up to the simple fact that soe doesn't care for their customers.
Combining those two aspects is what kills any potential excellence they have. The station pass is filled with a ton of games that "could be great if soe would just....".
For the record, they never apologized for the NGE. They apologized for the way they delivered it. To this day they stick to their guns that it was the right thing to do and spew the old line "we were losing 10,000 subs a month!" So they opted to lose them all in one fell swoop instead. Their arrogance lead them to believe we'd be replaced by other far less intelligent players in 6 months.
For me, even if the NGE (that they have today) was the game they shipped with, it would still be an abomination.
I'm a SW fan first. SWG/NGE is an insult to SW fans (pink ewok love fest... where you have to do a quest where you're dipping your twig and berries in a chocolate fountain. Yeah, that's Star Warsy and iconic... ever get the feeling you're being made fun of all you SWG players?)
The issue with SWG, is that SOE just doesn't care, or worse, they seem to resent the IP. The NGE is simply an extension of that attitude.
Comeing from someone ho has been there since day one sure the game launched and had its problems through out but NGE was not SoE it was LA. LA wanted a peice of the WoW pocket saying if we make our game easier to play so new players can pick it up and dive right it with 0 learning curve we could get the money that WoW is generateing.
Horseshit, John Smedley fell in love with WoW, sold LA a line of bullshit to get them to allow the change and fucked the game up. It's that simple. That is why Pre-CU SWG did not get the fixes it deserved, they had the development team working on a completely different concept than what was originally released.
For the record, they never apologized for the NGE. They apologized for the way they delivered it. To this day they stick to their guns that it was the right thing to do and spew the old line "we were losing 10,000 subs a month!" So they opted to lose them all in one fell swoop instead. Their arrogance lead them to believe we'd be replaced by other far less intelligent players in 6 months.
For me, even if the NGE (that they have today) was the game they shipped with, it would still be an abomination.
I'm a SW fan first. SWG/NGE is an insult to SW fans (pink ewok love fest... where you have to do a quest where you're dipping your twig and berries in a chocolate fountain. Yeah, that's Star Warsy and iconic... ever get the feeling you're being made fun of all you SWG players?)
The issue with SWG, is that SOE just doesn't care, or worse, they seem to resent the IP. The NGE is simply an extension of that attitude.
Its not just SWG that has this problem. Numerous SOE Station games have been left to languish. Some games get completely ignored like Vanguard and Planet side. Others, like both EQ games, instead of having their long term problems fixed, get expansions shotgunned out in the hopes of eeking out a bit more cash from the player base. Face it, SOE is nothing better than a digital hospice where terminally ill MMORPGs go to die.
As to SOE's handling of SWG, I feel they bungled the game from the starting gate. SWG should have been the first Wow. Instead it was always a halfbaked, broken game that just got worse as time went by.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
All games have their issues, and SWG had it's share, but I didn't mind because I loved the concept and the game as a whole. Everyone's problem with the NGE wasn't about a singular issue, but that the entire... gender of the game changed. It was the old switcheroo: a non-twitch game became a twitch game. A game without classes or levels and the ability to mix and match as you pleased became... you get the idea.
The resentment is because we bought a ticket to see The Matrix, and halfway through it turned into The Notebook. Or worse, into Matrix 3. It's the same shock and disappointment as people got from the last episode of The Sopranos, or Battlestar Gallactica (still wish I'd seen every episode BUT that one), or when you get the girl home and THEN notice her adam's apple. Again.
But yeah, SWG had all kinds of other issues before the NGE came along and... I'm going to say 'betrayed it's fans', because in essence that's what it did. All the issues beforehand weren't anything more than the run-of-the-mill issues that every MMO goes through and its players have to endure. Still isues, but you don't complain about having a bad-hair-day when you just broke your leg.
You have a nice way of highlighting a history of problems and explaining why the NGE was a problem of a whole different magnitude. I think you help people understand why despite the game's many issues, NGE will always stand out, and won't be forgotten, probably no matter how much time passes...it was just that bad.
Comeing from someone ho has been there since day one sure the game launched and had its problems through out but NGE was not SoE it was LA. LA wanted a peice of the WoW pocket saying if we make our game easier to play so new players can pick it up and dive right it with 0 learning curve we could get the money that WoW is generateing.
We all know that SWG came with a steep learing curve and that was a good thing for most of us but all the rest of the things posted here sure it was SoE's fault but i do not blame SoE for the NGE as it has been stated over and over that it was not SoE that wanted it in fact they knew what the outcome would be thats why they didnt annouce it before hand because it wasnt gonna change a thing as LA put there foot down and said we own the IP you will do it this way.
There is alot of issues like this happening in all games lok at WAR the table top game is so huge but useing the IP for a MMO is tough because you have to stay true to the IP ask Mystic about the dwarf mounts they drew up and GW said no that isnt apart of the Lore so you cant do it.
I think people really need to let it go SoE appoligiesd over and over for it even if it wasnt there fault they still stood up and took all the punches and bad press and there wasnt much else they could of done.
as much as i love Bioware and they can do no wrong i have a feeling LA will try to change that game if it dosnt appeal to the way LA wants to make money.
It was SOE that came up with, and pushed for, the NGE. The former lead designer admitted it on his blog, while telling everyone who disagreed that it was the best thing ever to "eat a dick". The former lead gameplay designer admitted it right here on this very forum (look for posts by "Dundee". He explained how the idea went from a newbie space station that could be used as a free trial to the abomination that the is the NGE. The former Director of Global Communications (and later EQ2 lead producer who was fired for diddling an underling) said it, and claimed to be proud to be part of a company that was willing to do it, on the official forums, answering a post that asked flat out if LEC forced the NGE on SOE. The Smed has a few times said the NGE came from SOE, not LEC. Helios (who was on the dev team at the time the NGE was developed, and later lead designer of SWG) explained how some of the decisions were made (he told the lead designer that pets were getting in the way of targeting, and the lead dev said "cut 'em").
Everyone who was involved with the NGE's creation and development has explained it came from SOE, who sold LEC on it. It was also admitted that the NGE was not intended for the existing playerbase, but was intended to replace the existing playerbase with a new one. LEC is not innocent, as they should have killed it in the womb.
Also, as has been said by others in this thread, the only appologies that have been made for the NGE were for how it was communicated, not that it was done.
Comeing from someone ho has been there since day one sure the game launched and had its problems through out but NGE was not SoE it was LA. LA wanted a peice of the WoW pocket saying if we make our game easier to play so new players can pick it up and dive right it with 0 learning curve we could get the money that WoW is generateing.
We all know that SWG came with a steep learing curve and that was a good thing for most of us but all the rest of the things posted here sure it was SoE's fault but i do not blame SoE for the NGE as it has been stated over and over that it was not SoE that wanted it in fact they knew what the outcome would be thats why they didnt annouce it before hand because it wasnt gonna change a thing as LA put there foot down and said we own the IP you will do it this way.
There is alot of issues like this happening in all games lok at WAR the table top game is so huge but useing the IP for a MMO is tough because you have to stay true to the IP ask Mystic about the dwarf mounts they drew up and GW said no that isnt apart of the Lore so you cant do it.
I think people really need to let it go SoE appoligiesd over and over for it even if it wasnt there fault they still stood up and took all the punches and bad press and there wasnt much else they could of done.
as much as i love Bioware and they can do no wrong i have a feeling LA will try to change that game if it dosnt appeal to the way LA wants to make money.
It was SOE that came up with, and pushed for, the NGE. The former lead designer admitted it on his blog, while telling everyone who disagreed that it was the best thing ever to "eat a dick". The former lead gameplay designer admitted it right here on this very forum (look for posts by "Dundee". He explained how the idea went from a newbie space station that could be used as a free trial to the abomination that the is the NGE. The former Director of Global Communications (and later EQ2 lead producer who was fired for diddling an underling) said it, and claimed to be proud to be part of a company that was willing to do it, on the official forums, answering a post that asked flat out if LEC forced the NGE on SOE. The Smed has a few times said the NGE came from SOE, not LEC. Helios (who was on the dev team at the time the NGE was developed, and later lead designer of SWG) explained how some of the decisions were made (he told the lead designer that pets were getting in the way of targeting, and the lead dev said "cut 'em").
Everyone who was involved with the NGE's creation and development has explained it came from SOE, who sold LEC on it. It was also admitted that the NGE was not intended for the existing playerbase, but was intended to replace the existing playerbase with a new one. LEC is not innocent, as they should have killed it in the womb.
Also, as has been said by others in this thread, the only appologies that have been made for the NGE were for how it was communicated, not that it was done.
Soo much more going on here than a simple game change that people didn't like, which is often how the NGE is portrayed these days. One honest mistake that unreasonable gamers refuse to let go of? I really don't think that description fits the SWG situation...at all. And, judging from the responses, my perspective is not unique.
since SOE owns SWG im surprised they dont just restore the servers back to the original SWG and try to get some of their members back. Man I miss playing that game.
They originally claimed that the code was lost when they created the NGE and later said it was too late, that switching back to the old code would be like creating another NGE for the existing player base.
Personally I would rather someone take all the great things that were in SWG and put them into a newer MMO with improved graphics and animations without all the bugs, but devs seem more interested in trying to duplicate WoW.
I'm pretty sure George Lucas is feeding us the same line about the original cut of Star Wars....
The only thing they did wrong, definitely not. The worst, absolute most game-killing thing they did wrong, definitely. I am one of the few pre-CU veterans who actually liked the CU, so I'm definitely a little weird on that score (Star Wars is a gun driven universe, running around with a big hammer should not make you the baddest ass in the galaxy, it should get you shot and killed at range). The NGE dumbed the game down so much it could never recover, and SOE continously lied to players about what would happen next or how they would improve things or whether or not they had deleted the original code files for SWG. So, maybe not only one mistake, but only one absolutely unforgivable mistake.
The NGE is what made me pass on DCUO and every other SOE game since. Maybe I need to get over it, but I doubt I ever will. SOE pissed all over me and I will never forgive them for that.
I have played SWG for the last 5 years. Although I have just stoped my sub do to lack of game time now days I still enjoy the game. SWG still has alot going for it but it is showing its age and getting trial players to stick around is a struggle. Keeping a player city alive and finding a good active guild is the hardest thing to do. I would say that the hate for SWG is not the game but how the change took place. Pre-CU was broken from the start. (i know I'll get a rip for that so please don't) If the pre-CU never happened and the only thing players ever saw / played was the NGE this game I know would rival that of WOW. The sadest thing is that b/c of the way it all changed and how much of it changed (almost like a new game) vets will not return. Most vets will agree that they enjoy the game now but b/c of how it all went down they can not bring themself to play long term. Also, when they do return and see the sad state its in they leave after a few weeks out of heartbreak. I feel that f2p might help bring people in to fix the low population and maybe some vets too but even with that for most vets the damage is done. I understand how some might be upset but I also will still say its the best MMO I have played yet.
You won't get ripped for saying Pre-CU was broken, because it is the truth. SWG has never in its entire existance been in good shape. It has always been filled with bugs, poor design and development issues.
That being said, the NGE would have been no more successful if pre-cu never existed than it is now. There are tens of millions upon millions of new mmo players who have joined the market since the nge released and if the nge was that good more people would play the game. A few angry forum posters can't stop that.
It is unrealistic to think that soe would have somehow been more responsibile of capable developing the nge than they were any of the other different versions swg has been through. They simply are not capable of a solid design and following through on it. The nge is attracting and retaining all the players it is capable of and most of those have ties to the game prior to the changes.
A game can have all the potential in the world, but if it cannot deliver on it in 6 years then it has nothing else to blame but itself.
I have played SWG for the last 5 years. Although I have just stoped my sub do to lack of game time now days I still enjoy the game. SWG still has alot going for it but it is showing its age and getting trial players to stick around is a struggle. Keeping a player city alive and finding a good active guild is the hardest thing to do. I would say that the hate for SWG is not the game but how the change took place. Pre-CU was broken from the start. (i know I'll get a rip for that so please don't) If the pre-CU never happened and the only thing players ever saw / played was the NGE this game I know would rival that of WOW. The sadest thing is that b/c of the way it all changed and how much of it changed (almost like a new game) vets will not return. Most vets will agree that they enjoy the game now but b/c of how it all went down they can not bring themself to play long term. Also, when they do return and see the sad state its in they leave after a few weeks out of heartbreak. I feel that f2p might help bring people in to fix the low population and maybe some vets too but even with that for most vets the damage is done. I understand how some might be upset but I also will still say its the best MMO I have played yet.
As a launch day vet, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Since you have never played SWG before the NGE fiasco, there is no way you can determine that vets left because of "how" the NGE was delivered (it is one reason). Since you joined SWG post-NGE, you can never compare the the different versions of the game. The game I and many others bought and signed up for had great features that were deleted, nerfed and/or totally marginalized by the NGE. No matter what content or 'shinies' have been bolted on the NGE these past five years change the fundamental flaw of SWG - the core is still the NGE.
I am happy you can enjoy SWG in its current incarnation. I suspect never playing SWG before the NGE has allowed you that. I just believe that if the NGE version of SWG was so great, the game couldn't help but attract and retain players. The closed and dead servers tell the story. $OE was more concerned about the WoW players they didn't have than the ones they threw away with the NGE.
On release I grinded hard, and became a TKM brawler wookie.
I loved the game, had a pet Rancor, a house on Naboo, had an alt dancer/artisan on another server. We protected our 1 jedi we knew of on the server with much ferocity, and hunted others with the same. We were rebels, with backpacks and guidos that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but we were happy (even though our enemies had AT-ATs and legions of troops, we had our backpacks full of ice cream cake and cake.)
Then the words that ring in my ear even today...
'Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.' and the nerfs to the TKM following it.
It was a sign of what was to come sadly. NGE did it for many, but for my friends, it was how they treated the community and how they could dramatically changed the game early on that scared us away.
The NGE is what made me pass on DCUO and every other SOE game since. Maybe I need to get over it, but I doubt I ever will. SOE pissed all over me and I will never forgive them for that.
QFE
exactly how i feel
I felt the same way, but gave EQ2extended a chance (their new f2p version), and I'm glad I did. The game is probably the best f2p I have ever experienced so far.
I haven't completely forgiven them for SWG, doubtful I ever will. The community of SWG was such an extremely vibrant thing to witness it's hard to forgive them for destroying it. That being said...after witnessing how all the other companies have been treating players over the years, giving SOE another chance at a f2p wasn't that difficult, and I'm glad I did.
I felt the same way, but gave EQ2extended a chance (their new f2p version), and I'm glad I did. The game is probably the best f2p I have ever experienced so far.
I haven't completely forgiven them for SWG, doubtful I ever will. The community of SWG was such an extremely vibrant thing to witness it's hard to forgive them for destroying it. That being said...after witnessing how all the other companies have been treating players over the years, giving SOE another chance at a f2p wasn't that difficult, and I'm glad I did.
Something to keep in mind. The enjoyment you find in the free to play version has come at the expense of the former players on the subscription servers. They have been given their own nge style treatment in the creation of EQ2X so that soe could attract the potential player.
Soe is still fucking their players over, you just happened to be on the other end of the situation this time and if EQ2X had been a massive success you can bet your ass they would have continued fucking over their current players.
I recently gave SWG another whirl with the 14 day trial, mainly because of the long awaited SW:ToR is looming on the horizon and that most MMO's around atm I have found boring and I have been reminiscing about how wonderfull SWG was.
If there was any bigger travesty to befall any game in the history of videogames, this was the worst, most heinous crime of them all. Yet another reminder of why I have never bought another SOE game since the NGE was forced upon us.
We all know that SOE never deleted the original code for SWG or even the CU as we all know it just doesn't make sense. Every company has backups, hell, even all us gamers have back-ups as we all know how fickle computing can be, but even after the mass exodus of players from SWG and the new playerbase that never materialised, I would've thought that even the most stubborn of mules would have set up classic servers to regain some subscribers to rejuvinate income from their game.
I dare say that a lot of people would have returned. I know I would have in an instant, but what's done is done and SOE lost a lot of respect and credibility in the MMO world which will never be forgotten. Even new MMO players have heard about the NGE and in years to come, the NGE will be textbook teachings of what not to do in MMO's.
Until the release of SW:ToR, I shall continue to amuse myself with the flightless bird from New Zealand and pray for it's final completion (with JTL ofc).
Soo much more going on here than a simple game change that people didn't like, which is often how the NGE is portrayed these days. One honest mistake that unreasonable gamers refuse to let go of? I really don't think that description fits the SWG situation...at all. And, judging from the responses, my perspective is not unique.
I fully agree with you. The game was mismanaged from the start and the main creative people behind the game's design were removed from the dev team within a few months after launch. That left the game with a dev team that didn't understand the game, nor did they particualrly like the game the way it was.
SOE is a company that looks at short term income at the expense of the long term. None of the problems of SWG are specific to SWG. They can be found among every product SOE develops. You have folks in charge who think they know better what their customers want than their customers do. When thier customers tell them they don't like the things the developers are doing, the folks at SOE get pissy with their customers and continue doing what their customers don't want.
SWG and the NGE are just the largest and easiest example to point outwhat is wrong at SOE. The NGE wasn't a random outlier, it was, and is, a prime example of what has always been wrong at SOE. SOE is a company who's employees seem to resent thier customers, and it has been that way since EQ launched. Unfortunately the mindset at SOE is leeching out to other companies, such as Cryptic.
I felt the same way, but gave EQ2extended a chance (their new f2p version), and I'm glad I did. The game is probably the best f2p I have ever experienced so far.
I haven't completely forgiven them for SWG, doubtful I ever will. The community of SWG was such an extremely vibrant thing to witness it's hard to forgive them for destroying it. That being said...after witnessing how all the other companies have been treating players over the years, giving SOE another chance at a f2p wasn't that difficult, and I'm glad I did.
Something to keep in mind. The enjoyment you find in the free to play version has come at the expense of the former players on the subscription servers. They have been given their own nge style treatment in the creation of EQ2X so that soe could attract the potential player.
Soe is still fucking their players over, you just happened to be on the other end of the situation this time and if EQ2X had been a massive success you can bet your ass they would have continued fucking over their current players.
I'll confess to being out of the loop when it comes to the idea of EQ2X being made at the expense of EQ2 (regular?) players. Can you elaborate?
Comments
The NGE was a transcendent moment of sheer stupidity. The magnitude of the disaster it caused made every previous bug, mistake and "oops" of SWG seem trivial.
SWG was badly flawed from the begining; the list of problems with core systems, exploits, bugs and lore were legion...but none of them had killed the game or made it unplayable. Many of the problems could have been fixed or had already been fixed.
Honestly, by the incredibly lax standards of the present day it would be only be fair to characterize the NGE as a wonderful launch
However at the time, it represented the single biggest "FU" ever given by the management of a major MMO company to their existant playerbase. (Who holds that title now is somewhat up for debate, sadly!)
They originally claimed that the code was lost when they created the NGE and later said it was too late, that switching back to the old code would be like creating another NGE for the existing player base.
Personally I would rather someone take all the great things that were in SWG and put them into a newer MMO with improved graphics and animations without all the bugs, but devs seem more interested in trying to duplicate WoW.
But that would mean they were wrong about the CU and NGE all along. SOE is run by morons - I doubt they will ever run classic servers. It would be fun though.
Well, as a jedi pre-patch 9, I consider the CU as the very first catastrophe. However, the NGE was so bad that today, the CU looks great.
I'll never ever touch another $o€ game. I read somewhere someone saying that $o€ apologized for their mistake. This is wrong. They apologized to the communities of Vanguard & EQ2 when players started to fear to be screwed like us. SWG customers were left behind. As usual.
I also felt that the NGE was a colossal mistake that ruined the game by far. But I also felt the game was really hampered by setting it in the timeline of the movies. It would have much better for the game to focus on less explored time lines that were more open to expansion and freedom, such as Bioware is doing with SWTOR. The movie timeline was just topo iconic and defined to use it effectively for an MMO and when the Rage of the Wookies expansion hit the continuity of the timeline and the canon of that period was ruined and shot to hell gamewise.
Great post, good points and HELL NO it wasn't "just" the NGE...it was every issue you mention and then 100's more.
SoE's problems come from the top down. It's never been ONE thing (NGE) with them. It's years upon years upon years of neglecting their products and assuming the customer was replaceable.
This isn't limited to just SWG, it's SoE's entire corporate phylosophy that's ass backwards. SoE has ALWAYS been more concerned about the customers they DON'T have than the customers they DO (did) have. They don't try to grow, they try to replace. The WoW envy they have is tangible. Arrogance and greed are SoE's biggest problems...not the flippin NGE.
This is the most important fact about the NGE and SOE as a whole.
For the record, I had quit SWG long before the combat upgrade or the nge. It didn't ruin my game and I had already come to the conclusion that soe could not properly manage the game. I was playing EQ2 at the time and it was going through a similar overhaul where soe bumbles around trying to fix to many problems at one time and only makes the problem worse.
SOE took their customers money and used it to redisgn SWG into something the customers didn't want in an effort to replace them. That isn't something that can change as long as the current leadership remains in charge. They simply view their customers as a source of revenue that can be used to attract the potential player and that is all they care about, the potential player. The only thing soe learned from this is that things can go terribly wrong and they cannot jump into these types of changes head first or they will lose everyone.
John Smedly wants to be an industry leader and a rock star among game developers. He doesn't care nor understand what it takes to make great games anymore and that attidtude trickles down through the entire company. That is their corporate culture now.
They are trying to replace the EQ2 playerbase right now in a similar manner. Right after promising they were not going to make EQ2 f2p, they announce f2p EQ2. Then they shift the entire dev team to work on that and shaft existing player by redoing the UI, spell effects and new player content. They remove the free trials from existing servers to drive new players to the cash shop server. They simply do not care about their customers.
The fact that they are so incompetent at developing and managing their games is a very distant second to this. All the mistakes and ignorant decisions in designing thier games do not come close to adding up to the simple fact that soe doesn't care for their customers.
Combining those two aspects is what kills any potential excellence they have. The station pass is filled with a ton of games that "could be great if soe would just....".
For the record, they never apologized for the NGE. They apologized for the way they delivered it. To this day they stick to their guns that it was the right thing to do and spew the old line "we were losing 10,000 subs a month!" So they opted to lose them all in one fell swoop instead. Their arrogance lead them to believe we'd be replaced by other far less intelligent players in 6 months.
For me, even if the NGE (that they have today) was the game they shipped with, it would still be an abomination.
I'm a SW fan first. SWG/NGE is an insult to SW fans (pink ewok love fest... where you have to do a quest where you're dipping your twig and berries in a chocolate fountain. Yeah, that's Star Warsy and iconic... ever get the feeling you're being made fun of all you SWG players?)
The issue with SWG, is that SOE just doesn't care, or worse, they seem to resent the IP. The NGE is simply an extension of that attitude.
Horseshit, John Smedley fell in love with WoW, sold LA a line of bullshit to get them to allow the change and fucked the game up. It's that simple. That is why Pre-CU SWG did not get the fixes it deserved, they had the development team working on a completely different concept than what was originally released.
Its not just SWG that has this problem. Numerous SOE Station games have been left to languish. Some games get completely ignored like Vanguard and Planet side. Others, like both EQ games, instead of having their long term problems fixed, get expansions shotgunned out in the hopes of eeking out a bit more cash from the player base. Face it, SOE is nothing better than a digital hospice where terminally ill MMORPGs go to die.
As to SOE's handling of SWG, I feel they bungled the game from the starting gate. SWG should have been the first Wow. Instead it was always a halfbaked, broken game that just got worse as time went by.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
You have a nice way of highlighting a history of problems and explaining why the NGE was a problem of a whole different magnitude. I think you help people understand why despite the game's many issues, NGE will always stand out, and won't be forgotten, probably no matter how much time passes...it was just that bad.
It was SOE that came up with, and pushed for, the NGE. The former lead designer admitted it on his blog, while telling everyone who disagreed that it was the best thing ever to "eat a dick". The former lead gameplay designer admitted it right here on this very forum (look for posts by "Dundee". He explained how the idea went from a newbie space station that could be used as a free trial to the abomination that the is the NGE. The former Director of Global Communications (and later EQ2 lead producer who was fired for diddling an underling) said it, and claimed to be proud to be part of a company that was willing to do it, on the official forums, answering a post that asked flat out if LEC forced the NGE on SOE. The Smed has a few times said the NGE came from SOE, not LEC. Helios (who was on the dev team at the time the NGE was developed, and later lead designer of SWG) explained how some of the decisions were made (he told the lead designer that pets were getting in the way of targeting, and the lead dev said "cut 'em").
Everyone who was involved with the NGE's creation and development has explained it came from SOE, who sold LEC on it. It was also admitted that the NGE was not intended for the existing playerbase, but was intended to replace the existing playerbase with a new one. LEC is not innocent, as they should have killed it in the womb.
Also, as has been said by others in this thread, the only appologies that have been made for the NGE were for how it was communicated, not that it was done.
Soo much more going on here than a simple game change that people didn't like, which is often how the NGE is portrayed these days. One honest mistake that unreasonable gamers refuse to let go of? I really don't think that description fits the SWG situation...at all. And, judging from the responses, my perspective is not unique.
I'm pretty sure George Lucas is feeding us the same line about the original cut of Star Wars....
The only thing they did wrong, definitely not. The worst, absolute most game-killing thing they did wrong, definitely. I am one of the few pre-CU veterans who actually liked the CU, so I'm definitely a little weird on that score (Star Wars is a gun driven universe, running around with a big hammer should not make you the baddest ass in the galaxy, it should get you shot and killed at range). The NGE dumbed the game down so much it could never recover, and SOE continously lied to players about what would happen next or how they would improve things or whether or not they had deleted the original code files for SWG. So, maybe not only one mistake, but only one absolutely unforgivable mistake.
QFE
exactly how i feel
I have played SWG for the last 5 years. Although I have just stoped my sub do to lack of game time now days I still enjoy the game. SWG still has alot going for it but it is showing its age and getting trial players to stick around is a struggle. Keeping a player city alive and finding a good active guild is the hardest thing to do. I would say that the hate for SWG is not the game but how the change took place. Pre-CU was broken from the start. (i know I'll get a rip for that so please don't) If the pre-CU never happened and the only thing players ever saw / played was the NGE this game I know would rival that of WOW. The sadest thing is that b/c of the way it all changed and how much of it changed (almost like a new game) vets will not return. Most vets will agree that they enjoy the game now but b/c of how it all went down they can not bring themself to play long term. Also, when they do return and see the sad state its in they leave after a few weeks out of heartbreak. I feel that f2p might help bring people in to fix the low population and maybe some vets too but even with that for most vets the damage is done. I understand how some might be upset but I also will still say its the best MMO I have played yet.
You won't get ripped for saying Pre-CU was broken, because it is the truth. SWG has never in its entire existance been in good shape. It has always been filled with bugs, poor design and development issues.
That being said, the NGE would have been no more successful if pre-cu never existed than it is now. There are tens of millions upon millions of new mmo players who have joined the market since the nge released and if the nge was that good more people would play the game. A few angry forum posters can't stop that.
It is unrealistic to think that soe would have somehow been more responsibile of capable developing the nge than they were any of the other different versions swg has been through. They simply are not capable of a solid design and following through on it. The nge is attracting and retaining all the players it is capable of and most of those have ties to the game prior to the changes.
A game can have all the potential in the world, but if it cannot deliver on it in 6 years then it has nothing else to blame but itself.
As a launch day vet, I have to respectfully disagree with you. Since you have never played SWG before the NGE fiasco, there is no way you can determine that vets left because of "how" the NGE was delivered (it is one reason). Since you joined SWG post-NGE, you can never compare the the different versions of the game. The game I and many others bought and signed up for had great features that were deleted, nerfed and/or totally marginalized by the NGE. No matter what content or 'shinies' have been bolted on the NGE these past five years change the fundamental flaw of SWG - the core is still the NGE.
I am happy you can enjoy SWG in its current incarnation. I suspect never playing SWG before the NGE has allowed you that. I just believe that if the NGE version of SWG was so great, the game couldn't help but attract and retain players. The closed and dead servers tell the story. $OE was more concerned about the WoW players they didn't have than the ones they threw away with the NGE.
On release I grinded hard, and became a TKM brawler wookie.
I loved the game, had a pet Rancor, a house on Naboo, had an alt dancer/artisan on another server. We protected our 1 jedi we knew of on the server with much ferocity, and hunted others with the same. We were rebels, with backpacks and guidos that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but we were happy (even though our enemies had AT-ATs and legions of troops, we had our backpacks full of ice cream cake and cake.)
Then the words that ring in my ear even today...
'Don't bring a knife to a gunfight.' and the nerfs to the TKM following it.
It was a sign of what was to come sadly. NGE did it for many, but for my friends, it was how they treated the community and how they could dramatically changed the game early on that scared us away.
I felt the same way, but gave EQ2extended a chance (their new f2p version), and I'm glad I did. The game is probably the best f2p I have ever experienced so far.
I haven't completely forgiven them for SWG, doubtful I ever will. The community of SWG was such an extremely vibrant thing to witness it's hard to forgive them for destroying it. That being said...after witnessing how all the other companies have been treating players over the years, giving SOE another chance at a f2p wasn't that difficult, and I'm glad I did.
Something to keep in mind. The enjoyment you find in the free to play version has come at the expense of the former players on the subscription servers. They have been given their own nge style treatment in the creation of EQ2X so that soe could attract the potential player.
Soe is still fucking their players over, you just happened to be on the other end of the situation this time and if EQ2X had been a massive success you can bet your ass they would have continued fucking over their current players.
I recently gave SWG another whirl with the 14 day trial, mainly because of the long awaited SW:ToR is looming on the horizon and that most MMO's around atm I have found boring and I have been reminiscing about how wonderfull SWG was.
If there was any bigger travesty to befall any game in the history of videogames, this was the worst, most heinous crime of them all. Yet another reminder of why I have never bought another SOE game since the NGE was forced upon us.
We all know that SOE never deleted the original code for SWG or even the CU as we all know it just doesn't make sense. Every company has backups, hell, even all us gamers have back-ups as we all know how fickle computing can be, but even after the mass exodus of players from SWG and the new playerbase that never materialised, I would've thought that even the most stubborn of mules would have set up classic servers to regain some subscribers to rejuvinate income from their game.
I dare say that a lot of people would have returned. I know I would have in an instant, but what's done is done and SOE lost a lot of respect and credibility in the MMO world which will never be forgotten. Even new MMO players have heard about the NGE and in years to come, the NGE will be textbook teachings of what not to do in MMO's.
Until the release of SW:ToR, I shall continue to amuse myself with the flightless bird from New Zealand and pray for it's final completion (with JTL ofc).
I fully agree with you. The game was mismanaged from the start and the main creative people behind the game's design were removed from the dev team within a few months after launch. That left the game with a dev team that didn't understand the game, nor did they particualrly like the game the way it was.
SOE is a company that looks at short term income at the expense of the long term. None of the problems of SWG are specific to SWG. They can be found among every product SOE develops. You have folks in charge who think they know better what their customers want than their customers do. When thier customers tell them they don't like the things the developers are doing, the folks at SOE get pissy with their customers and continue doing what their customers don't want.
SWG and the NGE are just the largest and easiest example to point outwhat is wrong at SOE. The NGE wasn't a random outlier, it was, and is, a prime example of what has always been wrong at SOE. SOE is a company who's employees seem to resent thier customers, and it has been that way since EQ launched. Unfortunately the mindset at SOE is leeching out to other companies, such as Cryptic.
I'll confess to being out of the loop when it comes to the idea of EQ2X being made at the expense of EQ2 (regular?) players. Can you elaborate?