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Star Wars Galaxies - My closing review
Wepps
Member Posts: 1,322
After 7 months following a badly timed release, there has been little positive change to this product. SOE appears to be in a complete state of panic, and has been making some very poor development decisions since that release.
My last feedback to them, before cancelling my account, was the following:
Given the past record of the development team, their ignorance concerning the effects of their changes, and the complete lack of confidence the vast majority of people in this (SWG) community have for their ability to make reasonable fixes to a badly broken product, I recommend it's time for a change.
It's become obvious that those managing the development of the product do not have the ability to make intelligent decisions based upon a reasonable set of priorities.
They are incapable of envisioning changes based upon balance, otherwise these issues would surely have been addressed.
They are unwilling to view the feedback of any of the differing communities as to the state of their professions, with the exception of Jedi.
Though quite capable of creative and intuitive thought, they sacrifice these basic concepts in the name of inefficient busy work, as changes made to Mon Calamari females' breasts, melons, and hats, seem to indicate their failure in assigning appropriate priorities to the major problems in existence.
The perception of the community is that they have daily meetings in order to pad their salaries, without any truly intuitive and intelligent thought involved, or even the ability of the people responsible to deliver the appropriate feedback from our individual communities to those attending said meeting. In essence, the correspondent program, which was designed in order to get direct feedback from our community to the developers, has failed since it somehow now requires a further need for an Assistant Community Manager to deliver this same feedback to the management team, and actually allows him further power to censure that feedback before it arrives at the appropriate desk.
They are less interested in the problems which exist, than they are with their own sensibilities being hurt, which seems to clearly show a general lack of professionalism on their part.
They have further wasted seven months of the development of this product on insignificant issues, and have repeatedly implemented game breaking policies, further wasting the community's time.
Their policies include failure to test and implement those changes, creating a bevy of coding errors which are not addressed properly after patched onto the client.
The development team does NOT have the pulse of the community. They continually ignore negative posts, as if to say there is nothing at all wrong with their design. Therefore, they do not have the capability to see what is truly wrong with this product in general, and are further enhancing this failure with coding practices more attuned to the street hacker than a professional coder.
The previous is magnified in their failure to promote proper documentation to these changes, and therefore it takes increasing amounts of time to even identify a problem in the code, let alone correct it.
After a series of organizational rearrangements, the resulting publish seems to have all these same failures, with no improvements witnessed by the community. Therefore, more time was wasted 'shuffling the deck', rather than getting down to brass tacks and fixing the problems.
Seven months, as of tomorrow, of the improper management practices listed above have placed us all in a situation where this product is making no progress towards a higher quality, whether in coded implementations themselves, the game play, or in the overall entertainment value of our paid accounts.
I feel it's time for a change. We need a more professional management, attuned to the needs of the community, and more capable of efficient and effective product development, and there is no better way to do this than to remove those incapable of such achievements and replace them with competent, intelligent, and creative individuals able to meet the needs of the SWG community.
Truly, expecting to see some negative feedback from other posters to this evaluation, I was surprised to see that any responses stated that this was exactly how the poster felt, and that they too were preparing to cancel their accounts.
As of today, I cancelled mine as well, citing incompetent management and their associated policy failures. Even though I had 5 months left on my account, the feedback concerning their 6th Major Publish since release, proved to me that there is simply no hope for the future of this wonderful gaming concept ... much to my disappointment, as I am an avid Star Wars fan who very much looked forward to the arrival of this game on the market. I spent much time in Beta 3 doing my best to help direct the developers to a better end, but it became apparent after their release announcement that they simply were no longer listening to the testers before that release, or to the feedback of the community afterwards.
In fact, at one point during my game play, things got so bad that I reinstalled an old standby....
Star Wars: Rebellion.
Now, THIS was a game! It only ever required one patch, and that to address online play. There were no bugs to speak of, that didn't involve the system it resisided on being underpowered. The game play, even though certainly not the same genre as SWG, and unlike SWG, was FUN!
I never found myself bored when playing Rebellion. Unfortunately, when I requested information from Lucasarts concerning a possible Rebellion II product, I was informed there were no such plans.
But, I digress. SWG is replete with the compiled failures of every other MMORPG in the history of the genre, and it's plain that the developers themselves are at a loss as to how to deal with these failures.
All in all, I'd say that Skywalker Ranch made a tremendously bad judgment call, in choosing SOE/Verant to manage SWG.
Therefore, in conclusion, I certainly wouldn't recommend this product to anybody whom I consider a friend, and since I don't talk to those whom I consider enemies, this pretty much includes everybody!
Wepps
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"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Comments
Amen
Some people wonder why there are those who are so against the game and has such a hatred against it. Other's will leap their bodies in front of this game and take a bullet for it.
I think the easiest explanation of why there are some of us so against this game is because the DEVs, in a lack of better words, treated their player-base like pieces of dog shista. They had this mentality that they could care less of the consumer ideals because they took c++ in college and studied multiple forms of programming that us, laymen, cannot hope to achieve. It's like they have a God mentality.
Sure, I have played games that sucked before, but i think SWG is one of the first games I played where they could give a rat's @$$ of how the game should be played.
Very good thread, Wepps....you really summed it up for all those 6-12 month gamers who felt "cheated" out of a damn good game
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
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Whether you want to admit it or not, you're on one of those sides as you are equally passionate about posting on the SWG forums. So, let me embrace you, my fellow idiot
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
*Stands and applauds Wepps
Nice to see the old BH rep again...you are the same Wepps right?
I knew they were not treating you guys right. I remember so many GREAT ideas you had, that fell on deaf ears. Some people around here don't want to hear about how bad the community reps were treated or turn a deaf ear on how bad the game is, now they hear it from one of the people that communicated with the devs, or should I say tried to communicate with the devs.
Hell, they still haven't fixed the broken classes yet, to my knowledge. How screwed up is that? And name one game that had to completely rework the combat system 6 months after release...
/deepbow
MAKANE
(Horizons: Malakye Revan - Conjurer on Bounty)
Lords of Stonekeep
Whether you want to admit it or not, you're on one of those sides as you are equally passionate about posting on the SWG forums. So, let me embrace you, my fellow idiot
Nice try, son.
You and your fellow SWG-bashers are one side to this.. and pretty much Xplororor is the other side, tossin' SOE-salad to annoy you. I'm in the middle, mostly laughing at both groups. I'm getting somewhat serious in my deliberations regarding leaving SWG. I'm neither here to defend it nor bash it. If one side or the other gets a little too stupid, I may comment on it if I so choose. Doesn't make me part of the opposite side, it just makes me sick of stupidity.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Yeah that's me. I also have some characters on the Bounty shard in Horizons
Today, i took the long walk into the desert heat, dropping my shattered armor along the way, forever silenced.
Right after I posted this, they banned me from the forums, as if it mattered now. I had my say, and they chose to ignore it, like they choose to ignore all other voices except those of the jedi now.
It's a shame really, the unprofessionalism and incompetence was enough to drive me nuts at times, but in the end I found peace. I just couldn't log into the game any more. And $15 a month, the highest in the industry, is definitely not worth it, when fixes are simply not forthcoming.
So, I fought the good fight. I let it stand on that.
This isn't an empassioned plea, or an SWG whine, or bash, it's the plain, hard, cold truth. In the end, everyone else will see it as well.
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"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
I started doing a little research recently, and viewing some of the polls on sites around the internet. After doing some number crunching, I noticed that those who quit are in the 60 percentile.
So it wasn't a lone voice.
Apparently, those remaining will eventually get around to it. Last report, 40% of those remaining are grinding FS slots. Jedi now have a free pass to mastery. And in 6 weeks time, they will dominate the game, starting with the destruction of all imperial presence on all planets, on all servers.
And by then, it will be too late to recover from this disaster. Publish 6 will go down in history, as the final nail in the SWG coffin.
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"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
A tad too melodramatic, especially this "final nail in the coffin" crap.
An example: The Sims Online has been a constant screw-up since day 1, and they haven't even had so much as a server consolidation yet. One publish isn't going to kill SWG. (mind you, even I am not thrilled with this upcoming publish, and it may even drive me off.. but the pub. still won't kill SWG utterly) All you doom-and-gloom types need to get a grip. Yes, SWG has probably failed. Yes, it may even be shut down within the next 18-24 months. But having seen two games that SHOULD'VE been shut down by now, (Earth and Beyond, and The Sims Online) and neither has shut down yet, I think SWG will last awhile yet on life support.
Oh yeah.. why might this publish drive me off? Let me show ya:
All soon to be worthless. This is just the ones I have on Tarquinas.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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You and your fellow SWG-bashers are one side to this.. and pretty much Xplororor is the other side, tossin' SOE-salad to annoy you. I'm in the middle, mostly laughing at both groups. I'm getting somewhat serious in my deliberations regarding leaving SWG. I'm neither here to defend it nor bash it. If one side or the other gets a little too stupid, I may comment on it if I so choose. Doesn't make me part of the opposite side, it just makes me sick of stupidity.
LOL, dont kid yourself,
virtually every single post you ever make, you either put someone down, call them your son (which I think is pretty damn sick), or basically regard them as being stupid.
X and I do not agree with each other opinions with SWG, but I don't hate the guy. His opinion is his, and my opinion is mine and it is quite human to get upset every once in while defending your side; it's happened to me and its happened to Xplorer and its happened to every poster here.
However, you're just in a category of your very own. You claim to be 31 (or somewhere close), yet think every other damn poster is some kind of zitty teenager, you view other people who are against the game or for the game as idiots and you think you are God's gift to any type of forum conversation.
Hell, you even respond to my posts in about under 20 minutes like you got it rigged from you email to ding or something. Dude, go out and get a real life and stop flaming every damn person who visits this forum (whether those against it or for it). You are a prime example of a troll.
I don't know, go out with a girl or something. You may find that to be more exciting than challenging the age or knowledge of every damn poster you disagree with.
Have I trolled before? Yes...I would be lying if I haven't. Have I tried to be fair and concise of why I hate this game? Yes. Are these forums designed for those who love and hate the game? Yes. The difference between you and me, Negative, is that I'm man enough to say I may have treated Xploreror unfairly at times. That's what seperates me from you. You have this really low self-esteem where you feel the need to bash people with words on forums because you sure as hell aren't man enough to confront anyone in real life.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Oh yeah.. what's next? You going to try and call me out IRL or something, Keyboard Commando? Most of your fellow idiot kids do it at some point, when I don't lay down and take it on your weak little jabs on what you think my real life is.
If so, let's hear it.. maybe you can be a little more creative than the last hundred smart-arsed brats were. No, that's giving you too much credit.
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It's not melodramatic, it's purely logical reasoning.
Why? This is NOT Sims. This is STAR WARS, and the majority of the population that wanted to play this game, expected precisely that.
Instead, they got massive numbers of Creature Handlers. And now a system that will have Jedi Knights, within 6 weeks, running around in armies annihilating every Imperial PA in the game.
Think it won't happen? Think again. They now literally have nothing to lose.
The sequence went like this:
1 - Jedi whined, they didn't know how to open the slot.
I warned the developers that if they started giving hints, even 1, that suddenly there would be a spike in the ppopulation that they never planned into the game. What they seem to fail to realize, along with so many others, is that the Jedi Knight in the game is the Trump Card. Already some exist, in one case a single Jedi Knight recently wiped out a full group of Imperials in Bestine.
2 - Instead of seeing it for what it was, the develoeprs listening to their marketing staff, and turned their attention to the Jedi. Gave them holocrons to gain as loot.
The problem here is that those holocrons were dropping FAST, not rarely. They were suddenly all over the place. I warned the developers that they would be gaining a significantly high population of FS slots in a very short period of time.
3 - Instead of realizing this and compensating, THEY GAVE THEM AWAY FOR FREE! I warned the developers that this would cause a situation where the players would no longer be supporting the economy, but instead grinding holos to Jedi slots.
DId they listen?
Now that the FS population on servers is so large, even some servers where entire Jedi cities are being built, did the developers make the right change?
4 - They took away Jedi permadeath.
Now the Jedi players have a free pass to mastery, and even if they finally got around to fixing the Bounty Hunters, it wouldn't matter. There is no longer anything that ANYBODY can do about this.
6 weeks time, and all that's left of this game are the Jedi players, mark my words.
I'm not psychic, and It's not an empassioned plea. It's simply the plain truth based upon mathematics and logic.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Wepps,
I actually agree with most of what you posted. I do think your post was far too long which drowned out your main point you were trying to make - in your opinion SWG management is too slow to respond and should be changed.
The name-calling parts in your post though (calling the SWG game DEVs "ignorant" etc....) don't help to get your point heard though.
I will say this:
1. Every single MMORPG that has ever been released, came into its prime 1 year after release. EQ, AC, AO, DAoC, EvE, and more.
2. Anarchy Online at it's 6month to 7 month annaversary (sp) was 90% unplayable. 1 year after release it became the exact opposite... 90% playable.
3. SWG should be given the same leeway as EQ, AC, DAoC, AO, etc..... with everyone seeing how it measures up 1 year after release. That would be this coming July 2004. If SWG is a horribly shoddy game 1 year after release, THEN it will indeed make NEW history as being a MMORPG not worth playing at all.
3b. As long as SWG continues to have more than 100,000 accounts, it will FOREVER remain around, a-la Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, and EverQuest.
3c. SWG only has 1 other direct Sci-Fi MMORPG competitor - Anarchy Online. In a way SWG is enjoying the same vacume EQ had when it first came out, and even during the first 3 years of EQ's existance.... little, to few, to almost no direct competition, except for AC which came out a bit after EQ.
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MMORPG games I've played:
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http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor
Star Wars Galaxies:
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http://community.webshots.com/user/capt_xplororor
More games:
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http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor_archives01
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Negative71, I find your comments to be filled with emotional bullet-taking for this product. Why, I really don't care.
Let me clarify something here. Your experience is minimal. I have had experience with nearly all the MMOs, from EQ beta, and the failures of Koster in UO. Each of the products you mention, could have done better all in all.
But, they had the advantages and disadvantages of being free to create their designs...from nothing.
It was pure creativity. AO, for example, was in-concept, an EXCELLENT idea. In implementation, it was a disaster. The game was totally mismanaged after release. EQ fell to the same problems, but had advantages in the basic gameplay which were difficult to destroy. Even given SOE's poor management of the community in EQ, there was plenty of community involvement to compensate for their failures, and the game did very well.
SWG has none of the advantages above. In order to be done correctly, they need to make decisions based upon examples already in existence. And their communications system is broken, in the game that is. The mutual support system in the game is not very well done, so people don't NEED a PA of friends in order to accomplish their needs. Therefore, not the same needed support system that existed in EQ. People are not nearly as tied to their friends in SWG as they were in EQ.
Hunting groups are not necessary. Player cities are sprawling lag fests. And those cities are in direct danger of being griefed out of existence, by tons of FS players that will be becoming Knights, and masters in the next 6 weeks before the next publish.
If this is allowed to be implemented in the manner described by the recent feature, this game will lose a significant portion of the remaining population.
So, at what point does a game fail? When they close the servers and thumb their noses at the paying customer base? Or when over 60% of the population leaves? If the latter, it has already failed.
But I'm here to tell you, that those remaining are expecting in this publish and the next, combat changes that are supposed to address the incredibly poorly implemented imbalances, the Star Wars feel, and their professions, which were promised to be fixed. The Smugglers, according to the developers, were supposed to be the January feature. Instead, we find it's the Jedi.
None of the mundane professions are happy at all with this. People are cancelling in droves, again, like they have each publish to date. This will only be magnified by a very bad decision to implement a free pass to the most powerful profession in the game to master their professions in the next 6 weeks. And by the time they realize this fiasco, it will be too late to do anything about it.
I'm sorry, but your evaluation of this is based upon generalizations and false premises. Being directly involved in the development of this game since Beta, I feel I am somewhat more qualified to make these judgments.
__________________________
"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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We're through here for this morning, cowboy. I've had enough of know-it-alls running their mouths. Even my patience has its limits.
When you learn how not to be so swayed by your knee-jerk emotional reactions, let me know and we'll consider talking again.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Ya know, in one sense I do agree with you hehe.
I've seen these types of posts, claiming that a game is going to die yadayada....I've seen this in every game I've studied.
Through all my experience, I have never made these kinds of posts, and ignored those that did.
Secondly, I respect you for coming to your own opinions on that matter, especially since they tend to agree with mine!
However, this is different. Unlike the development team of SWG, I DO have the pulse of this community. I've been directly involved, in one form or another, since before the beta character wipe. In beta, I tested primarily the Smuggler/Pistoleer combination, when they got around to implementing it, but also the CH, and the Droid Engineers. My argument then, Smugglers need to smuggle things :P
It's obvious, isn't it? To you and me?
Not to the development team. Rather than implement what should have gone into potentially the most popular profession in the game, they chose to ignore all creative feedback in that respect. The result, Smugglers in this game are glorified crafters with weak pistols. That's it, no more content than that.
Typically, the development team started to heavily concentrate on the needs of the Smugglers after 6 months of live. The result? A major rework of Jedi, REALLY ticking off the Smugglers.
They simply cannot continue in this manner, making promises, and then going back on their word. Further, the implementations they are making are half-a$$ed. They have yet to provide a finished implementation, as vehicles show the many bugs associated.
The problem here isn't all the complaints I've heard, and observations I've made, as much as the reasons for them. It's plain to me that the development team is being directed down all the wrong paths in this product, and that means the management either has to wake up and smell the coffee (which is unlikely given their performance in the past) or they need to be replaced with proper creative, intelligent, and dedicated people who really know their stuff. Certainly, given the problems associated with this product at this time, the last thing they need are professional managers. They need TECHNICAL management to take over and correct this mess. Suits are not the answer.
It's no more simple than this. Beginning with Koster, and working downhill, these guys need to be ushered out onto the sidewalk. Or, the product will fail miserably.
I think you do see this.
Again, I agree. These kinds of posts are alarmist dribble. I never read them...
But, understand, I have nothing to gain here. I have already cancelled my account, and therefore clearly my observations are unemotional, and based upon cold logic.
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"For one who seeks what he cannot obtain suffers torture; one who has what is not desirable is cheated; and one who does not seek what is worth seeking is diseased." - Augustine of Hippo
Negative, believe it or not, you ARE taking a side when you reply to these posts. You end up defending SWG. I don't have a problem with Wepps post because it is spreading the truth about how the devs screwed up and how this game is way off track. While I don't agree with him about the game in its death throes, I don't comment on it because it's purely his opinion. But you Negative continuously reply to the doom-and-gloom threads stating how stupid they are. I never read where Wepps became hostile, a jerk or uncivil. I did see you attacking his posts though as he was trying to explain his opinion.
And don't think I'm defending Wepps, he can handle himself. I am going to step in when people make ridiculous accusations. Your first post goes directly at attacking En1gma, without adding anything to the discussion (I don't know, maybe you guys should stop replying to each other), then you go on to tell Wepps how melodramatic he is, how uncivil, what a jerk he is. Who's acting like the teenager? You, in my opnion, hijack threads with your attitude, and end up looking like a troll. Alot like someone else on these forums...
My intention is not to offend, Negative.
/deepbow
MAKANE
(Horizons: Malakye Revan - Conjurer on Bounty)
Lords of Stonekeep
Negative71, your "hollier than thou" attitude makes you no better then all these "malcontents" that you bash.
Wepps will remember me from the SWG forums (Im Reilec). He and I had some differences in terms of what the game and Bounty Hunters should have been, but a majority of what he says here is sadly correct. This game wont die anytime soon, but it is a major letdown compared to what it should have been. Although this post is very negative, it does make some good points.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/taewyn/