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Observations regarding recruiting people for SWG.
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
Smed has indicated that there is a level of uncertainty regarding SWG's future in light of the upcoming StarWars MMO.
Players are viewed as a free source of marketting, and have been encouraged to "entice" new people to join the game.
A new revenue generating mechanism has been introduced via the trading card game. People are reportedly spending hundreds of dollars in some cases, gambling that they will get SWG loot items when they purchase a TCG card pack.
It doesn't take a lot of in-depth analysis to quickly catch the drift of what's going on.
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Comments
Hmm, not sure. Perhaps on that 10 year mark, perhaps the so called viral marketers will be touting that the SWG TCG standalone game will be garnering in more subscribers than ever. Especially after losing all of those "unnecessary" SWG MMO players 9 years back.
i quit twice, once before the cu, again during it. I love teh game now and i also now have the barn and diner, I spent $120 on tcg, i love it, no need for greedy crafters.
u guys need to quit being so butter.
What I want to point out with this quote is that someone has just spent 120 real dollars, for 2 virtual items that he doesn't actually own. This is viewed as preferable to spending virtual (not real) dollars for virtual items.
$120 is about 8 months worth of subscription time. Just imagine how much virtual loot you could find, craft or purchase (for virtual currency) in 8 months of game time. Also, finding, crafting or purchasing items ingame can be an enjoyable online experience. How much fun is it to just hand over more than a hundred dollars to SOE in comparison?
I believe that marketting spin for this game would like people to feel that relieving them of 120 bucks, for 2 virtual loot items, is doing them a favour.
Again, it doesn't take a lot of in-depth analysis to see what's going on, to see who is benefitting, and who is getting fleeced.
You need to stop this pathetic sharade.
And everyone does need to stop being so butter
Greedy crafters Vs Greedy SOE, hmmmmm. Which is worse? Wasting your virtual 'flow', or wasting your RL cash? 120 credits I can walk away from since it won't even buy you a Stack of Brandy in game, $120 will feed my family for almost a month, or pay a utility bill in my household. Not that $120 is alot, but there are much better (or butter) things I could spend my money on, and my wife would agree.
Anyways, has anyone else noticed the "Anti-Marketing" going on with TOR? The trolls kinda got run off the TOR forums here due to the uber moderating here at MMORPG.com, but they have managed to infiltrate other sites for trolling purposes, and even the official site itself. I’m not saying it’s some conspiracy, but I do think some of them may be SOE employees, but mostly players who are on a mission to try and drive people away from the game. What’s funny is it’s not gonna work. People will either play it, or they won’t.
Yeah, have noticed a lot of TOR knocks and rumors as of late. Some of it influenced by the RMT ref. Its arrival though is inevitable. Only good news is that each public outcry signals to the devs what the big issues are. Upon launch day, there will be no excuse for anyone to claim ignorance.
That being said, I would love a bit more game info output from them.
For a long time I have noticed the questionable trend of posters who all seem to have the same exact format of their reviews. All seem to have the same typical post histories of either brand new accounts or accounts created a while back with almost no activity save a few meaningless posts to appear legitimate a few months/year later when they give their review.
The format is usually something along the lines of:
It is like someone was handed a check list of things to post about in an attempt to make a "good review" of the game on forums. Then you never hear from those posters again. Poof, they are gone as fast as they came.
We all know it is happening and who is behind it. It wouldn't be the first time Sony has been caught doing some less than ethical advertising for their products. The fake PS3 fan blog they hired a marketing company to create, the lawsuits they lost for false advertising their movies: using employees to give "movie watcher" reviews to newspapers, the imaginary movie critic they reference in news paper advertising that always gives their movies 5 stars, etc.
Those are just some of the things they have been caught doing. I think it is pretty clear hear also and Arc is right on the money about his observations.
soe is working the astroturfers overtime this year.
Greedy crafters Vs Greedy SOE, hmmmmm. Which is worse? Wasting your virtual 'flow', or wasting your RL cash? 120 credits I can walk away from since it won't even buy you a Stack of Brandy in game, $120 will feed my family for almost a month, or pay a utility bill in my household. Not that $120 is alot, but there are much better (or butter) things I could spend my money on, and my wife would agree.
greedy crafters are worse. soe owns the game, greedy crafters try to though.
it's a good thing that you can loot everything you need.
Greedy crafters Vs Greedy SOE, hmmmmm. Which is worse? Wasting your virtual 'flow', or wasting your RL cash? 120 credits I can walk away from since it won't even buy you a Stack of Brandy in game, $120 will feed my family for almost a month, or pay a utility bill in my household. Not that $120 is alot, but there are much better (or butter) things I could spend my money on, and my wife would agree.
greedy crafters are worse. soe owns the game, greedy crafters try to though.
it's a good thing that you can loot everything you need.
Did it ever dawn on you that SOE made the crafting in the game so that there would be demand for... wait for it... player crafted goods?
The impression you are displaying makes it seem like you would be better off in a single player game without those other "greedy" players ruining your advancement.
there are still greedy crafters in the game. jist not as many as before. Which is good.
I wanted the new housees, greedy crafters couldnt make them so i bought cards until i got both of them.
why dont you vets just admit the game is better now. it really is. i think soe noes what they are doing and they finally got the game right. no more i worked harder than you leet jedees, no more greedy crafters.
everyone is coming here telling you how much more better the game is.
Greedy crafters Vs Greedy SOE, hmmmmm. Which is worse? Wasting your virtual 'flow', or wasting your RL cash? 120 credits I can walk away from since it won't even buy you a Stack of Brandy in game, $120 will feed my family for almost a month, or pay a utility bill in my household. Not that $120 is alot, but there are much better (or butter) things I could spend my money on, and my wife would agree.
greedy crafters are worse. soe owns the game, greedy crafters try to though.
it's a good thing that you can loot everything you need.
Lol.
Yes, good thing the NGE, and later Helios, did away with the one game mechanic that separated SWG from the legions of cookie-cutter mmo's. SWG's craftng and economic systems were unique to the genre, save perhaps UO and EVE (and SWG did it better than both, imho), and for you to claim that the current loot-based system is superior demonstrates your complete ignorance.
Try again when you've got a clue, and in the meantime, enjoy your World of StarwarsCraft.
There still is place for crafters, they just arent allowed to be greedy liek they were in the past.
But now i can level my jedee and not have to deal with them. i alos like the levels its a lot better than the old junk where you woul d have to fill up all those box things. i wish theyd gotten rif of all that though, still dont like these skill things.
When you say "everyone" is coming here, who exactly are you talking about? You, gutboy and obriak?
im back, like swg as it is now and am just telling you about it. i don't mean to offend any of you. i just think the game now is more better than back when arrougant jedee and greedy crafters dominated. thus is why they had to change it.
What I see in response is people patiently highlighting that in your desire to avoid spending ingame money (like monopoly dollars), you've just given SOE the amount (in real dollars) that would cover 8 months of play time, and received two loot items for your expense. You may be happy about this, and I wouldn't want to diminish your good feelings. At the same time, this scenario appears to be a triumph for a greedy MMO company (well greedy or desperate, possibly both).
At the same time, I expect it's a short-term (quarterly) triumph. How many people, for example, do you think are really going to see 120 bucks for two random loot items as a better deal than 120 bucks for 8 months gameplay?
The result of the loot card gamble seems to be that some of the relative few remaining players in SWG are being bled dry. Some even say thank you in the process. A triumph for disreputable marketting, but as I say, one that is likely to be short-lived.
In fact, this is the kind of strategy you might expect from someone who feels he has little or nothing to lose at this point, and a short time to try to maximize revenue. It's sadly very consistent with Smed's way of dealing with players over the game's history. It also goes a long way towards explaining the empty servers and the desperate attempts to have the game marketted for free.
What I see in response is people patiently highlighting that in your desire to avoid spending ingame money (like monopoly dollars), you've just given SOE the amount (in real dollars) that would cover 8 months of play time, and received two loot items for your expense. You may be happy about this, and I wouldn't want to diminish your good feelings. At the same time, this scenario appears to be a triumph for a greedy MMO company (well greedy or desperate, possibly both).
At the same time, I expect it's a short-term (quarterly) triumph. How many people, for example, do you think are really going to see 120 bucks for two random loot items as a better deal than 120 bucks for 8 months gameplay?
The result of the loot card gamble seems to be that some of the relative few remaining players in SWG are being bled dry. Some even say thank you in the process. A triumph for disreputable marketting, but as I say, one that is likely to be short-lived.
In fact, this is the kind of strategy you might expect from someone who feels he has little or nothing to lose at this point, and a short time to try to maximize revenue. It's sadly very consistent with Smed's way of dealing with players over the game's history. It also goes a long way towards explaining the empty servers and the desperate attempts to have the game marketted for free.
how much I despise SOE for blatantly cheating on their customers over the years, I can't blame Smed for doing his.
You have a mmorpg on life support, few thousand of players left wandering around there on empty servers....you calculate and see there's just a few years of subscription left while milking it bit by bit till the end.........then introduce MT and people are paying years and years worth of subscription money in order to get a chance at some items....WHILE they stil pay their normal subscription.
Smed's a bastard......but I can't blame him for taking the money people are still throwing at him.
SWG may live ina coma for a total of 7-10 years, but people are paying 20 years of subscription in this way, smart marketing.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
lol so funny. People also enjoy Wurm Online, that dosn't mean its a great game for to 99.999999% of the people who play games. I don't understand who these SWG players are trying to sell the game to. Themselves? Us who will never pay to play it again? Players in other MMOs like WoW who think other games outside their own are icky. Really it serves no other purpose but to annoy the haters, in which case I say just ignore it.
What I want to point out with this quote is that someone has just spent 120 real dollars, for 2 virtual items that he doesn't actually own. This is viewed as preferable to spending virtual (not real) dollars for virtual items.
$120 is about 8 months worth of subscription time. Just imagine how much virtual loot you could find, craft or purchase (for virtual currency) in 8 months of game time. Also, finding, crafting or purchasing items ingame can be an enjoyable online experience. How much fun is it to just hand over more than a hundred dollars to SOE in comparison?
I believe that marketting spin for this game would like people to feel that relieving them of 120 bucks, for 2 virtual loot items, is doing them a favour.
Again, it doesn't take a lot of in-depth analysis to see what's going on, to see who is benefitting, and who is getting fleeced.
What makes this spending any different than the people spending real money on the Warcraft TCG? I know my wife will drop $40 every so often buying packs... but she doesn't play in any tourneys or anything. She only buys the packs hoping for the in-game fluff items.
She still pulls out some stupid beach umbrella thing she won...
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28371832@N02/2648951313/[/url]
a fool and his money are soon parted.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Disreputable marketing? Seriously?
You nailed it perfectly... loot card gamble. Gamble. GAMBLE. This is what draws people to anything collectible. A baseball card collector buys cards as a kid because he idolizes the players. As an adult, he buys cards hoping to score the current year's BIG ROOKIE that he can put his kids through college with in 20 years. I used to distribute sports cards for Upper Deck in the early 1990's and I have witnessed first-hand what people will spend money on in the hopes of getting the special insert card.
It's not just cards... When Superman was killed in the comics way back, the comic he died in was selling for $500 the same month it was printed. Today, the same comic can be bought for $5.
I bought Bionic Commando for the NES system back in the 1980's (don't remember the specific year) for $49. Last week I sold it on eBay for $120.
What's my point? People spend money because of a perceived value. If you know a card company was randomly inserting $120,000 original cards in a $2 pack, would your curiosity not be a little piqued? People add a value to the SWG in-game loot just as they do in the WOW in-game items from their card game.
I'm betting Blizzard is giggling at all the tens of thousands of packs of cards being purchased by people looking for in-game fluff which will mean nothing 5 years from now when the game is on it's last legs.
SOE is only doing wrong what everyone else selling collectible stuff is doing... cashing in on people's addictive natures.
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28371832@N02/2648951313/[/url]
Disreputable marketing? Seriously?
You nailed it perfectly... loot card gamble. Gamble. GAMBLE. This is what draws people to anything collectible. A baseball card collector buys cards as a kid because he idolizes the players. As an adult, he buys cards hoping to score the current year's BIG ROOKIE that he can put his kids through college with in 20 years. I used to distribute sports cards for Upper Deck in the early 1990's and I have witnessed first-hand what people will spend money on in the hopes of getting the special insert card.
It's not just cards... When Superman was killed in the comics way back, the comic he died in was selling for $500 the same month it was printed. Today, the same comic can be bought for $5.
I bought Bionic Commando for the NES system back in the 1980's (don't remember the specific year) for $49. Last week I sold it on eBay for $120.
What's my point? People spend money because of a perceived value. If you know a card company was randomly inserting $120,000 original cards in a $2 pack, would your curiosity not be a little piqued? People add a value to the SWG in-game loot just as they do in the WOW in-game items from their card game.
I'm betting Blizzard is giggling at all the tens of thousands of packs of cards being purchased by people looking for in-game fluff which will mean nothing 5 years from now when the game is on it's last legs.
SOE is only doing wrong what everyone else selling collectible stuff is doing... cashing in on people's addictive natures.
No different than a crack dealer.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Well I'm not playing it when it comes out.
Oh, not because I'm a SWG player, rather I don't particularly enjoy that period in the Star Wars universe.
The massiveness of the Star Wars universe was captured perfectly pre-CU. There were multiple professions and every profession had a role. TOR is set during a time when nothing matters except the Jedi struggle against the Sith.
Lightsabers are meant to be uber, never-gonna-own weapons. Just like the Jedi class.
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28371832@N02/2648951313/[/url]
Case in point. John.galt has done a wonderful job derailing this thread on his first day posting.
Who really loves the game and at the same time says "jedee". I call BS on everything he has said as just another example of what Arc is trying to point out.