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Raise your hand if you hate SOE
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Member UncommonPosts: 602
*raises hand*.. seriously though, i have briefly kept up with all this NGE experience and just hearing what SOE are saying, it angers every bone in my body, first off, personally, i am all for this and i would have imagined that a lot of new people would be rushing to swg now that they can play jedi but as a former player, i have to say that i am extremely disapointed in the direction swg has gone.
They say it didn't have a star wars feel, how so? When i played it, i felt like i was just some regular guy making his way in the star wars universe. I remember the tutorial i took about 18 months ago when i first started, the way i felt just like a ordinary person and almost insignificant to the game, was immersive in a way i didn't think a game could do. Now look at the tutorial, meeting han solo, chewi etc and flying in the millenmium falcon, i didn't meet han until i played the game for a few months and it almost felt special, now look at it, it's depressing it really is. What they should have said is that they wanted to make kids feel more at home and make them feel like they really are a HERO. It's obvious that SOE are intimidated by the success of WoW because they are doing their hardest to convince all those cs players to leave their beloved bubbledins and come to their now childish game.
Also don't get me started on SOE in terms of loyalty to their devoted fanbase who spent literally months in getting a jedi. I knew some people going for jedi before the CU and the amount of time and dedication they put in, it was something worthy of a LOT of praise. Social lifes must have been ruined, jobs lost and probably families broken in some cases for people becoming a jedi and this is how SOE repay them, by letting everyone become a jedi... IT'S SICK!
So how does everyone reckon swg will last now considering that just about all the longterm subscribers who were there from the start, will have left and gave SOE the middle finger?
Comments
I know I sound like a broken record here, but I'm gonna keep posting it until people realize SOE DID NOT MAKE THIS GAME ALONE LUCASARTS IS AS MUCH TO BLAME AS SOE.
Thank you, you may now go back to your regularly scheduled stupidity.
I hate whoever is responsible for killing the original SWG. That's probably mostly the suits at SOE and LA, and the project managers at SOE. I can't hate the individual members of the dev team, since they were probably just doing what they were told. I reserve my venom for those giving the orders.
Then I listen to the better angels of my nature and reason that even the suits probably aren't wholly to blame. If the game wasn't meeting projected revenue goals and looked as though it was going to sink further, I can't really blame them for trying something to keep it afloat, desperate though it looks to have been. These guys aren't running an experiment in virtual world creation; they want to make money, and can't really be blamed for that.
Where I always end up is simply disappointed. I suspect (and nobody outside of the insiders in the SOE/LA collaboration really knows for sure) that the real bane of SWG was "short termism"--a profit motivated lack of patience and willingness to nurture the original game while it found its legs. Imagine if the game history had gone like this:
Released July, 2003. General consensus: interesting game philosophy with some potential, but not action oriented or Star Warsy enough. Almost universal agreement that the game is too buggy as is and was released prematurely.
August-December, 2003. Dev team acts aggressively to quash existing bugs. Simultaneously, Star Wars story based quests are introduced that are compelling and interesting and give good rewards (meaningful experience and loot comparable to good quality items that can be crafted, but no better, and in no way better than the best craftable). This is coupled with release of at least two extremely tough new dungeon areas for the power gamer combat people to conquer. Some attention is also given to irritating, persistent problems in entertaining and crafting. Balance issues in PvP are addressed by number tweaking. Jedi are not addressed. Leave the player community to figure out how to unlock. If few do it, great. Those who do unlock are extremely powerful from the get go, but face very heavy odds (if not permadeath, something close--getting dumped back halfway to padawan or something) if they play publically and aggressively.
First quarter 2004 and beyond. Most bugs in original code are eliminated. Balance continues with tweaking. New quests, loot and dungeons are added on a three month average rotation. Jedi are still left a mystery. Occasional content bonuses are also put in for crafters and entertainers. Player cities are not implemented, as it fragments the player base. Work is announced on an upcoming space expansion . . .
If they'd done this, rather than what they did do--in other words, if they'd stayed the course with their original vision, instead of bailing on it the minute it wasn't a million seller, then spending the next 18 months flailing around with radical, ill thought out experiments to change the original concept--they wouldn't have a had a million seller, but I'd bet they would have had a respected, solid title that offered a real alternative to other online games out there, and whose future health was pretty much assured. They didn't do this, we have the NGE, and the game looks as though there's a real possibility it may tank in the next six months.
So I guess I don't hate even the ones I really want to hate. I'm just very, very, very disappointed in their lack of courage and vision.
I despise both SOE and Lucas for what they did to SWG. However, after reading several speeches by Smedley its obvious most of the bad decisions fall on his shoulders.
They broke the cardinal rule of mmorpgs....I wont ever touch a mmorpg of theirs again because any effort I put in could be worthless soon after.
The beauty of mmorpgs is knowing that time and effort = reward. And knowing that the game I fell in love with 5 years ago will be the same game with more content years from now.
Lucasarts didn't code it, they didn't ignore the bugs, didn't have a piss-poor customer service department, and didn't treat the players like crap. That's all $OE.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
the L/A forums at their site were not as bad, but had several anti NGE posters in there....
The question i have is.....
don't they realize that the fans are so pissed that they'd rather take the 2 to 4 free hours they would have been playing pre-cu swg and will now go to the game stores and make sure nobody buys it while they are there? .....I for one will be going gaming shopping several times this season...and i PROMISE to camp a little while by the SWG boxes....and I intend to warn anyone that buys it that it's not what's in the box.....Call me whatever u like.....it's my free choice....
The issue here for me.....and yes i take this personally....
This is not "just a game" to many of these ppl...it was their , at least in my case, ONLY free time to do what they wanted to do after a hard day doing RL stuff......more than just a game.....I made life long friends on here...and I'm still with them on wow now until St:O comes out.....I'm seeing on other MMO's that you can't as easily be in combat and still chat it up like u could in pre nge swg...i loved that aspect! group chat was fun...now it's too hard to talk and fight....so yes..they did hurt the social part of the game....and they forgot that apparently, the average gaming age is around 30 years old.....we can go play doom for FPS.....but we wanted to LIVE in swg while we were on it...not just point and click
and another aspect of Star wars in general......is this not the only franchise that you see ppl standing in line for WEEKS in anticipation of a new movie? cmon...we're fanatics!.....SOE made a fatal error in forgetting that this was the same fanbase as it was the playerbase....WE are VERY passionate about Star wars in general.....
one last thought tho...sadly......
I now realized, while doing my dishes, that if today...smedley announced they were rolling back to pre nge ...even if they decided to at this point....it's too late....the damage is done....we're all gone...and we can't trust soe enough to come back....../sad......and that's a shame.....because either way, the players lost.
faxx of bria
gone to another galaxy now......called Star trek online
/raises hand
I miss...
the days of having ranger skills to help pitch up a tent and heal my group. A Doc with ranger skills was awesome, no need to run back to the city to get rid of the black bars. Watching my 2 razor cats swarm over rancors and having me heal them constantly. Having a group of 20 to do rancor hunting and they werent even in your guild. Watching out for merchants in coronet and rushing to their homes to buy up whatever they had on sale. Getting my stuff sliced and didnt have to worry about a smuggler stealing my stuff since if he wanted to surivive in the ECONOMY(Where is it now) he had to show he was trust-worthy. Exploring the planets without really worrying about 1 hit incaps because no lvls decided if you instantly died. Having to tame my pets when surrounded by autoagro things
All the game need was content, the quest they are giving are fine, exactly what was needed. But everything else was not needed at all.
BOOYAKA!
yay
/raises hand
Ebe ------ SWG -- ShadowFire -- Closed
Ann ----- SWG -- ShadowFire -- Closed
Zoo'xu -- SWG -- ShadowFire -- Closed
Raises hand higher.
Absolutely. $OE CREATED the bugs. Even if some stooge at LA was supposed to find them, it DOESN'T excuse the fact that the same bugs have been reported for TWO YEARS and $OE still ignored them. That, and I highly doubt the QA has the power to stop any patch $OE decides to throw at them.
Case in point... this BS "What's the biggest issues" post they just threw at us. You know what? ALL those issues were put fourth in the FREAKING BETA of that mess... and were uhhhh IGNORED! They acted like this was the first they had heard of the bugs... and they were reported day one of the beta!
The customer service has been atrocious, and you can't blame that on marketing. Marketing has been laughable at best, but not GAME COMMUNITY BREAKING like $OE's has.
I'm not giving LA a total pass here.. but 99% of the culpability lies SQUARELY on $OE's shoulders. THEY made this mess, now they're going down with it.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I hate SOE for their buggy code and poor implementation of great ideas.
I hate LucasArts for not doing their job and making sure this is a quality product.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Jodokai.. that would work in the military, but not in the corporate world. $OE bought the rights to produce the game. Their people coded it and were responsible for the gameplay.
LA gave them the rights to the characters, and final say on how their property was to be used. They also had a couple of their people involved in quality control and marketing.
But the nuts and bolts, coding, bugs, gameplay, classes, EVERYTHING was coded by $OE, Designed by $OE, Controlled by $OE.
Lucasarts had NO call on how things were implimented, only wide-scale suggestions like "make more jedi". They didn't tell them HOW to do it, just to do it. Lucas said "Make Kashyyyk and expansion" and they did it. They didn't say "Make a minind ship quest, yet bug it and never fix it".. that was all $OE.
$OE bought the rights to the name and made the game as THEY saw fit. They handled the customer service as THEY saw fit. They designed two CU's as THEY saw fit. Lucas only told them what direction to go.
That's why they get a pass for 99% of the mess. They didn't code it poorly and treat us like $#it.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Lucas Arts has actively participated in the development of the game since the very beginning. They did not just sell the rights, they provide feedback on anything concerning the mythology of Star Wars, the Star Wars franchise and how a Star Warsy game is supposed to be, they offered coders and they handled the Quality Assurance. Plus, they're the publisher, and that means a lot.
Just consider how other publishers, much like record labels, push a certain direction to the development teams. Electronic Arts being the most well known example of a "pushy" publisher. Their greatest concern is if the game will sell well, not if it's innovative or whatever. Now, consider that Lucas Arts is not just the publisher, it's also the firm that provides you the rights to develop a game, based on their own ideas, their own world. It's a scary thought. Essentially, they're going to meddle with any creative factors during development. They're going to force their own vision instead of yours.
Apparently, from the early beginning, the problem was that Lucas Arts had one vision of the game and SOE (primarily, Raph Koster) had a whole other vision. It's not an uncommon problem when you toy with someone else's creation and is certainly a problem that proved detrimental in the relationship between LA and SOE.
The fact that they could not stick to solid ideas and constantly shifted the game's goals (even before CU) is a strong indication that this is the case.
Currently playing:
* City of Heroes: Deggial, Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster. Server: Defiant.
* City of Villains: Snakeroot, Plant/Thorns Dominator. Server: Defiant.
/raise hand
SWG RIP
moctodumegws
Can't WAIT!
Lucas Arts has actively participated in the development of the game since the very beginning. They did not just sell the rights, they provide feedback on anything concerning the mythology of Star Wars, the Star Wars franchise and how a Star Warsy game is supposed to be, they offered coders and they handled the Quality Assurance. Plus, they're the publisher, and that means a lot.
Just consider how other publishers, much like record labels, push a certain direction to the development teams. Electronic Arts being the most well known example of a "pushy" publisher. Their greatest concern is if the game will sell well, not if it's innovative or whatever. Now, consider that Lucas Arts is not just the publisher, it's also the firm that provides you the rights to develop a game, based on their own ideas, their own world. It's a scary thought. Essentially, they're going to meddle with any creative factors during development. They're going to force their own vision instead of yours.
Apparently, from the early beginning, the problem was that Lucas Arts had one vision of the game and SOE (primarily, Raph Koster) had a whole other vision. It's not an uncommon problem when you toy with someone else's creation and is certainly a problem that proved detrimental in the relationship between LA and SOE.
The fact that they could not stick to solid ideas and constantly shifted the game's goals (even before CU) is a strong indication that this is the case.
Shayde,
What you described is what typically happens, but that's not what happened with SWG. As Deg stated LucasArts has been involved with the project from the begining. What confuses a lot of people is that when ever someone posts on the forums it is immeately assumed that that person works for SOE. I mean look at how many people think Jullio Torres works for SOE. They try to back their claims that SOE lied by quoting someone who works for LucasArts.
Then look at early production. SOE was saying this or that wouldn't be in the game, a week later LucasArts releases an ad that says it will be in the game. How can you not see that they are totally involved with the game?
If you look at it objectively, you'd realize that LucasArts is run EXACTLY like Geroge Lucas would do it if he ran it himself. People don't like to think of George or anything he creates as bad because he wrote (some say plagerized) a good story, but lets look at the facts:
The original Star Wars Trilogy is realeased on VHS YEARS after the movies. Why? To make sure Gerogie can make as much money as possible with re-releasing the movies.
Geroge remakes the original movies (and some say ruined them...Greedo fired first???). He then releases the remakes on VHS only, even though DVD has been out for YEARS and is the standard format, Why? Because he wants everyone who wants the movies to buy the VHS copy, THEN he releases the DVD years later so people will buy that. He just sold two copies when if he released DVD and VHS together he would have only sold one.
This is only a small example of the hundreds of things you can find (charging for a subscription to his website?) if you really look for them. So while you like to put $OE it would be much more accurate to write Luca$Art$
After typing all that out, I think I finally realize why I'm not getting though. You don't realize how big a role LucasArts plays in the making of SWG. You must not realize what an important job the Producer of a game has. You must not have been around pre-production and seen the posts about SOE having to have everything checked by LucasArts.
I keep telling you, but it's like the arguments I had with Kai, he would tell me the same thing over and over and saying I wasn't listening, and it wasn't that I didn't "hear" what he said, I just didn't believe what he was saying was true. He was saying one thing, others were saying the exact opposit yet somehow he wanted me to add more weight to what he was saying when neither side could produce proof. Now I'm doing it to you. Expecting you to believe that LA has their hand in everything just because I say so. The only thing I can say is find out for yourself. It's out there if you really want to find it.
Every asshole.. every stupid decision.. every bug ignored.. every mess was created by $OE.
Lucasarts compounded the problem, yes. But they didn't code a damn bit of it. They didn't run the laggy servers, they didn't run the horrible CS. They didn't design TWO bad revamps of the system, they didn't ignore all the bugs since launch.
ALL LA did was put pressure on $OE to get the job done and done right. A task they failed miserably.
$OE just blames LA for every foible because "we ran EQ, we know what we're doing!". Well, WoW kicked EQ2's ass up and down the MMORPG street, so EQ2 wasn't exactly success. Heck, before the CU it had less players than SWG.
When Dodi told the driver to"lose those photographers".. was it his fault they crashed and killed Diana, or the DRUNKEN driver? LA was in the back seat.. but $OE was driving drunk and wrecklessly.
Yeah.. I agree on the proof. Until I see anything exonerating $OE, I'll just think your family members work there and don't want the stock price to drop.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
I think SOE games are pretty cool... LA kinda screwed up the most wonderful game ive ever played, thats my op.