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SWG's timeline going forward:
Wildcat84
Member Posts: 2,304
Pub 32 throws a half assed expertise revamp in for Medic, Spy, and Commando. It goes live around
Dec 1.
All combat professions are now into NGE balance and bliss... This is the last major publish ever.
Dec 2.
People still cancel. Combat people seeing boredom as the game has no content still after a year plus. crafters and entertainers who have been shit on with fake promises for a year plus.
Dec 5.
The boxed set sells so little that LEC has to take an embarrassing amount of returns, it goes into discount bins BEFORE Christmas...
Dec 10.
All development for SWG stops, devs are reassigned or fired effective Jan.
Dec 15.
Rumors of that start leaking.
Dec 25. SWG sees it's last Christmas.
Jan 5. Shutdown announcement made official, SWG shuts down March 15.
Jan 6. MSNil states that this shutdown is because there is too much reliance on other people.
Dec 1.
All combat professions are now into NGE balance and bliss... This is the last major publish ever.
Dec 2.
People still cancel. Combat people seeing boredom as the game has no content still after a year plus. crafters and entertainers who have been shit on with fake promises for a year plus.
Dec 5.
The boxed set sells so little that LEC has to take an embarrassing amount of returns, it goes into discount bins BEFORE Christmas...
Dec 10.
All development for SWG stops, devs are reassigned or fired effective Jan.
Dec 15.
Rumors of that start leaking.
Dec 25. SWG sees it's last Christmas.
Jan 5. Shutdown announcement made official, SWG shuts down March 15.
Jan 6. MSNil states that this shutdown is because there is too much reliance on other people.
Comments
dude whats going on... did i miss the dev chat? any one got a chat log?
i want to read it.. whats going down?
Nasedoo: You said traders would get a revamp under my supervision.
Darth Lord Blixtev: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Unaware of the Jestor?
http://about.me/JestorRodo/
Friends enjoy his classic Vblog - https://www.facebook.com/GoodOldReliableNathan
This could very well become the case for SWG, although I doubt they will make any announcement until AFTER X-mas. No need to flaunt your failure...
Seriously, how many times are we going to go through this?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Shutdown will have to be planned 6 months in advance at least. So if SWG were to shutdown beginning next year, then that's a done deal since well before the Restuss.
SWG is also operating on a flat fee. There are no developers to fire, since they most likely all come from the same pool at SOE.
And shutdown or hibernation is almost certainly planned already, and should have been since before the launch, at least as a rough date. It's what the pricing and budgets are based upon. But as others have shown before, MMOs can run in hibernation indefinitely, double so in case of SOE with station pass and shared revenue.
SWG, even if devoid of life, will not shutdown for technical or financial reasons, since it's just a part of Station. The one and only thing that can shut SWG down is LA. If they stop all development of any kind the long-term operation is essentially free.
But as everyone knows, SWG died in summer last year. All the responses after that were basical CPR attempts and ocasional regaining of consciousness, but all who played before then, knew the signs.
Seriously, how many times are we going to go through this?
Come on you're intelligent, read the forum title carefully.....I suspect this is not the last thread on this topic that will be seen....*rolls eyes*
Proud Master CH -
Sorry,
Proud FORMER Master CH...
my toon was untimely converted into something more Star Warsy
LOL..
MsNil.... yeah the un uber Jedi that did not unlock pre-9 and could not make Knight. She/He is pretty funny though. Us old Jedi always thought of her as a waste of time. She would post things about Jedi templates and she was far from most of them. Always was the person that cried, if anything she got what she deserved with the NGE. The old game was to hard for her and she pretty much said so in cries.
It's to bad though, Jedi was a decent class at first and we knew our role. "It was not to have a pole arm and run around in a Robe and duel everyone"........
______________________________
I usually picture the Career builder commercial with the room full of monkeys and upside down sales chart when thinking about the SOE/SWG decision making process.....
SOE's John Blakely and Todd Fiala issued a warning: "Don't make our mistakes." Ref NGE
Winner of the worst MMOS goes to.... the NGE and SWG..!!! http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm?loadFeature=1034&bhcp=1
Seriously, how many times are we going to go through this?
Of course the dates are speculation, but there is no way this game is going to go on too much longer. None of us know when it will get canned, but the truth is, MMOs are not forever, not even good ones. If you can't see that SWG is pretty much dead, you are kidding yourself (much like SOE). Yes, people were calling for a shutdown LAST Feb, and of course it never happened. Back then, there was still a chance to fix it. Now, sadly, there is little hope. The toilet must be flushed... let it go down.
SWG has been an undead game for well over a year now, and slowly walks the streets calling out for a sweet release from it's pain.
There is a very VERY strong probability SWG gets canned. When they did the CU and then NGE they had 200K+ subscribers that they were (in their minds anyway) going to expand on.
Currently they are likely well under 100K and falling. With the sub decline continuing with no end in sight no matter how far they get with the NGE, it is clear that they have to revamp the whole thing for a THIRD time.
They simply won't invest the money in that given that the previous two failed. Could a new core have succeded? possibly, but clearly not the one they chose.
At some point, if it hasn't already been reached, the sub revenue is no longer going to cover the cost of development/servers/bandwidth/LEC license fees each month and the game will be losing money. When that happens it's just a matter of when they pull the plug, not if.
It's really up to them at this point. I DO think SWG could be turned around and made viable again, at least long enough to get them to SWG2 in 2008. But the only way they can possibly do that is with classic servers and get and hold previous subscribers that left due to CUNGE, not with the NGE. They should have stuck with the CU and moved forward with expansions, if they had they'd have 3 times the subscribers and less than half the grief.
There simply is no "killer" publish in the pipeline that is going to reverse the trend of the past year, which has been the subscriptions falling off a cliff. SWG is no longer in the position where maintaining what is left is going to do it, they need an upward trend and very rapidly. Their best case scenario with the NGE is that at some point the decline halts, as they get down to the base of people who actually like it and prefer it to the previous game. That number is far FAR lower than they are going to be willing to put up with.
Seriously, how many times are we going to go through this?
In February, they start work on the Summer time end of SWG threads
"If we don't attack them, they will attack us first. So we'd better retaliate before they have a chance to strike"
SWG being doomed and shut down by March is definitely not something that is unavoidable, but I feel that it is going to if they remain locked on their current course. The current path is one to inevitable failure in the not too distant future.
I'm basing my prediction based on just how far subs have slid (SWG had 2 to 3 times the subscribers a year ago than it has now) and that it's not likely to stabilize or reverse. I am also assuming the boxed set basically flops (who that is playing doesn't already have the expansions, since the most recent one is over a year old, and who is coming into this game as a new player who would buy it in significant number?). This means SWG comes out of Christmas with less subs than going in.
My gut tells me that they think that they are going to do this one last Christmas push (maybe even with some ads), the boxed set, with combat expertise "complete" and win with the "kill loot rinse repeat" formula, as that portion of the NGE (nevermind Crafters and Entertainers) will be more or less complete. When that fails (and it will) I think they will give up and cut and run. I don't see them throwing millions of dollars into (again) redoing the whole core into a game with ~40-50K subs, and I honestly don't see them sucking up their pride and reverting to the old game or offering classic servers. If they do it will be imposed on them, it will not be the choice of current management.
"SWG, even if devoid of life, will not shutdown for technical or financial reasons, since it's just a part of Station. The one and only thing that can shut SWG down is LA. If they stop all development of any kind the long-term operation is essentially free."
I'm not trying to claim that SWG will shut down any time soon.
But there is a fatal flaw in this part of your post.
Even if SWG was operating for free (its not making a profit either). So just because " it's just a part of Station" does not give it a free ride.
Smed has claimed they have 4 or more MMO's in development. Everyone of those games has a development cost and almost all of them will end up on station.
So while each of those projects is trying to make up its development cost and move forward into profit making. That time will be extended so they can life support SWG... That would be a very bad idea as a "for profit" and publicly traded company that has seen its stock nose dive into the basement.
If anything as they move forward with new games... I would expect them to start dumping things that are not positively contirbuting financially.
That would include games besides SWG.
The only thing I would see off limits would get the EQ games. Just because... unless they get to a point that no one really is playing.
Personally I would guess that SWG is only still around because they had no "you're an idiot" clause in the contract on the IP license. Which as far as I know is the one thing no one has really ever known. That being how long the contract was for.
Like I said.. I don't claim to have any inside info that they "are" shutting the game down any time soon.
I'm just saying that .. just because its part of station access does not solve anything. Especially as they put more games on there that have to recover development costs before they start making a profit.
To SOE, SWG is just any other MMO. As you said they have more in development, each of which has the potential to make more money than is left in beating the SWG dead horse. SWG is LEC's ONLY MMO, and their only IP they can make a MMO out of.
If there is going to be a SWG 2, which I doubt, SOE and LA would be foolish to keep SWG alive until they launch it. As long as SWG is up and running, is going to be this smoldering resentment of SWG in places like this forum. Keeping SWG alive, keeps this embers of this resentment burning hot. The negative feeling toward SOE's SWG will then pull SWG 2 down like a millstone. All of us, that essentially think of SWG as it existed when we quit, will expect SWG 2 to pick up where we left off.
In the post WoW- dumbed down MMO market, SWG2 is going to be as big, if not bigger, dissappointment to us as the NGE was. SWG2 will be surronded with negative hype as soon as it annouced.
If on the other hand they let SWG die now, wait several years, then annouce SWG2's development, the embers of our resentment will mostly have cooled. Certainly there will be a few of us ready to pick up the crusade against SOE and Lucas Arts, if SWG2 doesn't include the best aspects of pre-CU SWG, but many just won't care enough. It will be such long history.
SWG's continued operation is like a wound that never heals. Personally, I hope SOE get gang green. lol.
If they do come out with SWG2 it can never be called SWG2 and it should downplay SOE's involvement, if it is involved at all. The name "Star Wars Galaxies" has been assassinated and is a liability now.
This is not an unreasonable assumption. It could be wrong, but it's the only thing to explain:
- No server merge (cut costs/maintainance)
- Investments into game (why develop the game anymore?)
- No money grab schemes (the SWG:C isn't really that, just an all-in-one package, standard to all MMOs in comparable situation) - remember TooW?.
SOE aren't fools. Ok, let's assume they aren't.
There is no force that would keep a company running a product in red numbers. Except for thousands of examples that occur daily. Why? Lots of different interests. There are many divisions in many companies which consistently operate in red. And yet, their overall contribution helps keeping the company afloat. All research divisions are in the red, sometimes in big numbers.
- Microsoft IE division (created to make loss to destroy Netscape - did they really lose money?)
- All console manufacturers (heh, enough said)
- Any corporate research division (they are standalone labs, with no income)
- The industrial boom of Japan up till 90s (subsidies, loans, etc, all in order to catch up to US)
All examples of going forward while making huge losses.
Will SOE fold? Are those 4 MMOs hype? Are people getting fired? Is Smed being lynched? I don't know.
What if, what if, doing the changes to SWG was a requirement from LA to obtain the contract for SWG2? Other companies don't apear interested.
- Blizzard won't
- PlayNC doesn't care
- EA can't
- Pandemic/Mythic don't need to
So.... If there is SWG2, who'll make it?
Maybe Lucas Arts will make it themselves. They may have to:)
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Maybe Lucas Arts will make it themselves. They may have to:)
Could be. Given the fact that SWG is second only to WoW in press coverage for a MMO, but for the fact that it has the worst name in MMO's and continually screws players over, they may not be able to pay a reputable MMO developer to take SWG2.
I wish this game would finally be put out of its misery. However, I said it before, and I'll say it again, that as long as SOE has Station Access, the game will linger. It may not go anywhere, and may get its staff cut, but they'll at least keep the servers on. They'll do it because it makes Station Access more valuable and more marketable with it, than without it.
Part of the draw of Station Access is to get the flagship game (Everquest II), and four sideshows (Matrix, SWG, EQ, and Planetside) for $24.99. That alone justifies turning the servers on once a day. If you cut SWG out of there, you may cut out a bit of overhead, but you lose so much more than you gain, because Station Access suddenly doesn't look like as good of a value.
$24.99 is a good return for SOE. As most only play one game at a time, the other games are there just in case the player gets bored, and try something new. At most, a player will only seriously play the two he or she likes the best, and maybe dabble in the others on a trial basis. So at a 66% increase over a single sub, SOE can basically get a lot more money, for relatively little extra expense.
That all changes though once you start dropping games from Station Access. If you pay $24.99 for five games, why should you pay $24.99 for four games? Which means there will have to be a pricecut to coincide with the reduction in services rendered. So let's say that you drop the price to $19.99 (25/5x4=20), and that is just too little return for the service level SOE has to provide. Instead of a 66% increase over a one game sub, it is now only a 33% increase.
Most of the big expenses in terms of SWG have already been paid. They can cut a lot from the expenses to maintain it now, and still keep it running for the purposes it is designed to fulfill: a side attraction for Station Access.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE