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Poll on when the sun will set....
Clackamas
Member Posts: 776
Given the rumors of a KOTOR MMO and the, shall we say, less than informative Stratics Event tonight,
its time for another poll:
Comments
My earlier timeline reposted (and this time with the right year):
Timeline of SWG's future if NGE only:
November-December `06:
Boxed
set fails to sell in decent quantities, subs continue falling
throughout the holiday season, decision to pull the plug is made. All
of the Dev staff that isn't being reassigned to other projects are
fired effective January, all development stops. A skeleton live team
is kept until shutdown. SWG sees it's last major publish it will ever
have, 31 or 32, leaving 1/3rd to 1/2 of the professions without
expertise.
Rumors of the shutdown of course leak to the forums, but SOE remains silent. They want to refund as little as possible.
January `07:
Shutdown
is announced probably mid month, 60-90 days in the future. There will
be no further publishes or refunds of prepaid time (they will later
back down on this) but they will offer everyone their prepaid time
credit on another SOE game.
Shitstorm immediately hits even the mainstream press again, every story blaming the NGE for SWG's failure.
March-April `07:
Servers close.
Timeline if classic servers are implimented:
November-December `06:
Boxed
set fails to sell in decent quantities, subs continue falling
throughout the holiday season, decision to put in classic servers as a desperation play is made. Serious work on NGE is "paused" and Devs are reassigned.
January `07:
Classic servers are announced and implimented at Publish 14.1 (last pre-Cu publish). Officially there will be little or no support or development except for possible major exploit fixing. Character transfers are not allowed, and these are new, blank servers. Players leave NGE servers in droves as soon as these servers go online.
Press reports the massive positive wave of player response.
Dogs and cats reported as sleeping together.
February `07
For the first time since JTL, net SWG sub base rises as thousands trickle back to the game for the pre-CU servers which quickly get overloaded. NGE servers become abandoned ghost towns. Wepps shoots himself in the head. All NGE development halted as SOE shifts people frantically to the classic code base first to convert the expansions, then to backport compatible post-CU content (such as battlefields, quests, etc).
March-April `07:
NGE Servers close due to lack of population and intrest. BadgerSmaker found dead under the piers of the London Bridge from an apparent suicide.
Rest of 2007:
SWG recovers much of what they lost, stabilizing back over 200K subs. Eventually much of the expansion content is converted as well as other post-CU content. Sub base slowly starts to rise beyond this as more content comes on line and the Devs start speaking of 2008 expansions that will introduce capital ships and atmospheric flight to the game.
March 2008 - South Park Online is a raging success and SOE announces it is moving to the same 2D graphics in an effort to capture a larger market.
April 2008 - We all resume our normal lives and the World's GDP doubles in one year.
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
Isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
Isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?
OMGZ!!!!!! You understood my drunken rant! You *must* be an ADD proNGEr!!! <wink><wink>
According to Metservice.com, the sun will set at 6:02pm tomorrow
SOE pulls the plug on NGE in 1Q `07. NGE will be declared dead internally before the end of `06 though when the boxed set fails to sell/subs keep falling. Only way SWG survives beyond that time is by classic server, either SOE or duck.
Privately, I think NGE has already been declared dead inside SOE, which is why the publish cycle is lengthening and we are seeing the JV team's JV team Devs posting (not that SOE has varsity quality devs anymore). They are playing out the string to meet contractual obligations. I doubt very seriously anyone in SOE management believes anymore that SWG will ever turn around. If they do, they are certifiably insane or on some awesome drugs.
The best move for SOE or LEC is to dump the NGE entirely and go to classic servers and try to keep what they can salvage happy during the time it takes to develop the next Star Wars MMO. It's that or shutdown, NGE isn't bringing in new business and is only losing longtime customers who STILL prefer the original.