I think Lucas Arts would have loved to have two massive AAA star wars mmos on the market. Both of which were making them money hand over fist.
I don't think the SWG license was keeping them from creating a second MMO either. Smed said the original contract was for 5 years. Lucas Arts did not need to destroy SWG to start work on another MMO, because the contrat with SOE would already be up and SOE would lose any exclusive rights they might have had.
The combat upgrade was what SOE thought would fix the game even though it was no where close to what the actual players were asking for.
The NGE was designed to get WoW players. Even though SOE/LA knew it would most likely drive away all the current players, they really believed more new players would join. That is why they spent so much money on commercials and marketing.
The fact that the changes failed I think is in direct opposition to the intention of what SOE/LA intended.
Lastly Lucas Arts can't "force" SOE to spend millions of dollars to redeisng SWG into something they do not want to do. They most certainly couldn't do it in an attempt to ruin the game. It doesn't work like and if Lucas Arts forced SOE to do something that resulted in the lose of tens of millions of dollars a year, you can bet your ass SOE would sue them. At the very minumum Lucas Arts has to act in good faith on their part of the contract.
I can't believe how no one can see this was all by design. Smedley still keeping his job after the NGE blunder.. Why do you think the NGE happened less than 6 months after the Combat Upgrade.. The CU was designed and intended to kill off the game's subscriber base so Lucas could pull the game from sony and allow Bioware to make a new one more like WoW. But where the CU failed the NGE succeeded. The game went from around 250k to 30k subscribers.. Now why would a company not revert back to the old style of game that many became addicted to playing? Its because they wanted SWG dead! So they could pull the plug easier with less friction and backlash with the game supporting less than 20k-30k users...
I think you guys petitioning is hilarious.. If any iteration of that game should be restored its the original CU we had that actually fixed many of the combat problems we had and they could have built onto an awesome system from there.. I bet that game would have grown immensely had they just held off and never did the NGE.. Many players left in droves for WoW and eq2 when they released that took a major chunck of the original games subscriber base. Those people would have come back at some point when they got bored of wow and eq2.. I mean, I didn't leave till the NGE and I was forced into playing eq2 because I really couldn't stand WoW beyond the 42nd level.. The combat was so monotonous and boring to the point it would put me to sleep.
Had SWG stuck with the CU and added in the theme park questing and dungeons/raids and rettained its awesome pvp battles, swg would still be thriving today.. I will admit though, the game by now would have needed a port over to a newer game engine supporting dx9.0c at least.. So in a way they do need swtor to come out for the newer engine but the 2 games are vastly different in play style.. I really don't think we will ever see a triple A sandbox mmo ever again and I don't consider eve to be in the same ball park since its all space sim crap.. I think the first company to come out with a triple A sandbox mmorpg with strong theme park elements such as raiding, quest hubs and group dungeons; that will be the game to take wow down in terms of subscribers.. Swtor won't compete with WoW's sub base and never will.. Bioware is not even in the same strata as Blizzard when it comes to making games. The new swtor game will unforunately be a single player-story driven, pay to play online co op game which is heavily derived from blizzards World of Warcraft. All because Lucas Arts wanted World of Warcraft's 10 million subscribers @ $15/month. Greed was and still is the driving factor behind all of this going back to the CU/NGE and why it was done in the first place. Most people with half a brain would of said "opps, we messed up, heres your CU back" after the NGE fiasco... But nothing happened! and no one lost their job... Ask yourself why..
I didn't read past the first paragraph as it started to get way to "crazy". The first paragraph makes absolutely no sense. They brought up the NGE and didn't revert back because they wanted SWG dead? There would be less friction? That whole situation was the EXACT opposite. They PISSED off most of the player base who in turn quit, more or less killing it on the spot. Then they wanted to some how keep it alive until SWTOR came out and only piss off the rest of the player base that managed to stick around and support it? Sorry, everyone already knows that yes they wanted WoW subs, but they wanted them NOW and it didn't pan out, nothing more, nothing less. Why didn't they revert back? Arrogance
Sorry OP, the NGE did not extend the life of the game or revitalize it or anything along those lines. The NGE destroyed everything that made the game unique or evern very interesting aside from the Star Wars branding. The only thing that carried the game along after the NGE was the Star Wars branding. They didn't kill the game off after the NGE because it still had something resembling a population of people still playing it and the devs/publishers were too full of themselves and too full of shit to admit they fucked up and ruined the game. Anyone remember Hayden Blackman ranting about how it was the fault of the players who didn't support the NGE that it failed?
Anyhow, the OP's conspiracy theory is REALLY far-fetched and silly.
The game went from around 250k to 30k subscribers..
Can you somehow reliably back up that the game was not already losing subscribers pre CU/NGE?
I don't think that SWG losing subscriber prior to the NGE/CU was ever in question. It just was no were near as dramatic as when the NGE released.
Prior to the NGE and the CU to some extent, players still held some faith that SOE could "fix" SWG and help it reach its potential. After the NGE, not so much.
I didn't even mind the combat upgrade to be honest. Yes it simplified the combat some, but it removed the horrible HAM (Health, Action, Mind) setup they had. The spamming of Mind Fire and similar attacks was piss poor and almost an exploitable combat tactic prior to the CU. I think there was about one thing (Blue Milk) that could heal the mind stat.
So yeah, the NGE definitely sucked. But the game was already dying before that.
First, I wouldn't believe anything that arrogant dude says.
Second, people were leaving due to WoW fever but after a few months, THEY WERE COMING BACK. But relevant forces at the top (SOE or LA, whatever) panicked. Series of really bad, BAD decicions beginning with CU.
I didn't even mind the combat upgrade to be honest. Yes it simplified the combat some, but it removed the horrible HAM (Health, Action, Mind) setup they had. The spamming of Mind Fire and similar attacks was piss poor and almost an exploitable combat tactic prior to the CU. I think there was about one thing (Blue Milk) that could heal the mind stat.
Angerian Fishak Surprise was the best mind heal drink available, but it was very difficult to find a chef that could make it and make it to the level it was capable of.
The HAM system had a lot of potential, but as with all things SWG it was still in the concept stage and never truely tested and refined. There really was a lot that could be done with the system, especially when it was treated as a main health poor with 2 alternates that when attacked have negative affects on the target.
Instead mind was the hardest "health" pool to increase, regenerate and protect. Most attacks were nearly uncurable by most players and there were simply to many potent attacks and special weapons with ungodly stats that compounded the problem.
Given more time to actually play test before release I think it could have been an interesting system.
I didn't even mind the combat upgrade to be honest. Yes it simplified the combat some, but it removed the horrible HAM (Health, Action, Mind) setup they had. The spamming of Mind Fire and similar attacks was piss poor and almost an exploitable combat tactic prior to the CU. I think there was about one thing (Blue Milk) that could heal the mind stat.
Yet the fix for that was incredibly simple, and the CURB would have addressed it:
No incap without taking down all three stat pools. The problem with the "unhealable pool" would have been fixed, without the need to dumb down the combat system to WoW's level. The possiblity for much more nuanced, combined arms play in group PvP would still have been there.
An even simpler method would have been for the action and mind pools going to zero to not incap you, but simply to take away (at least for the moment) abilities dependent on those pools. This was a cooldown that wasn't an obvious, WoW mechanic cool down. Notice that the CU replaced all the existing mechanisms for limiiting the ability to use special attacks with WoW style cool downs, complete with the little graphic "clock" on the icon for the special. They did the same thing with the stomach for regulating food buffs. They had a functional equivalent of the cool down already in the game, but they INSISTED on doing it the way WoW did things, down to the graphics. They had functional equivalents but in their zeal to be "like WoW" in the hopes that the WoW audience would flock to WoW with flashlights, they failed to take into account that WoW, unlike SWG, worked solidly, was polished, etc.
They did not get what made WoW a success. They sought to replicate the surface without doing the actual work of the substance.
The effort failed. Spectacularly. The only reason SWG lingered on after the NGE was the brand. The game was a very bad imitation of WoW.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Yes it definitely had a steep learning curve... then they turned the game into a nerf toy with the NGE.
Please explain what was so hard about learning how to play any of the classes in SWG? Resource gathering and crafting may have been difficult, but the learning curve wasn't steep. Combat was poorly animated or buggy, but it most certainly was not hard to learn. Building a player city was easier to figure out then decorating my house in LOTRO. Yes, SWG had a steep learning curve alright, problem is, it was downhill.
It wasn't so much that the various professions were difficult to learn, it's that you didn't have any hints on what they could do or how they worked, at least in the original SWG.
There was a very short "this is how you move, this is how you shoot" tutorial on a space station, then you were handed a melon and a blaster, and you were delivered to a planet..."you're on your own, kid. This is where the fun begins!" That was pretty much it, entirely. If you were new to the MMO genre, that's pretty bare bones.
WoW feeds you information on the character selection screen that SWG classic never did...information on the classes, what they do, what the racial specials are, etc. SWG, at least at first, did not do that. That's what made the learning curve steep. That's what accessiblity is all about.
I remember helping out new players with learning how healing worked...something you didn't learn on the space station. You had three status bars that could be depleted in two different ways: temporary wounds that would recover over time, and "black bars" that needed the attention of a medic or an entertainer to be healed up that limited the size of your stat pools until you had them healed by a player with the ablity to heal them. Medical centers and cantinas became social hot spots as the result of this, which fostered community.
LEARNING how to do all the various things took a lot of time. Once you had that down, yeah, it was very straightforward in a lot of ways. But you had to discover that for yourself, or through another player. Or by...and this is the tough one...reading the manual. Because you didn't get an ingame tutorial that explained all this.
Boy did you join SWG late. When the game was out before CU, there was NO spacestation. You created a character, picked a planet and POP, you were there in a city... No tutorial at all. You went about learning how to play via THE COMMUNITY (which contrary to what a community had become after WoW was very helpful).
There were a spacestation Pre-CU, something like this...
Yes it definitely had a steep learning curve... then they turned the game into a nerf toy with the NGE.
Please explain what was so hard about learning how to play any of the classes in SWG? Resource gathering and crafting may have been difficult, but the learning curve wasn't steep. Combat was poorly animated or buggy, but it most certainly was not hard to learn. Building a player city was easier to figure out then decorating my house in LOTRO. Yes, SWG had a steep learning curve alright, problem is, it was downhill.
It wasn't so much that the various professions were difficult to learn, it's that you didn't have any hints on what they could do or how they worked, at least in the original SWG.
There was a very short "this is how you move, this is how you shoot" tutorial on a space station, then you were handed a melon and a blaster, and you were delivered to a planet..."you're on your own, kid. This is where the fun begins!" That was pretty much it, entirely. If you were new to the MMO genre, that's pretty bare bones.
WoW feeds you information on the character selection screen that SWG classic never did...information on the classes, what they do, what the racial specials are, etc. SWG, at least at first, did not do that. That's what made the learning curve steep. That's what accessiblity is all about.
I remember helping out new players with learning how healing worked...something you didn't learn on the space station. You had three status bars that could be depleted in two different ways: temporary wounds that would recover over time, and "black bars" that needed the attention of a medic or an entertainer to be healed up that limited the size of your stat pools until you had them healed by a player with the ablity to heal them. Medical centers and cantinas became social hot spots as the result of this, which fostered community.
LEARNING how to do all the various things took a lot of time. Once you had that down, yeah, it was very straightforward in a lot of ways. But you had to discover that for yourself, or through another player. Or by...and this is the tough one...reading the manual. Because you didn't get an ingame tutorial that explained all this.
Boy did you join SWG late. When the game was out before CU, there was NO spacestation. You created a character, picked a planet and POP, you were there in a city... No tutorial at all. You went about learning how to play via THE COMMUNITY (which contrary to what a community had become after WoW was very helpful).
There were a spacestation Pre-CU, something like this...
You are completely correct. Played SWG since day one (actually day two as the log in servers choked to death the first night.) After character creation you were on a space station where you could migrate your stats if you wanted to then used the terminal to pick your starting planet and city. While it wasn't an entire tutorial leveling area like post NGE it was still a FRACKIN space station.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Wow I have seen some out there theory's but this one takes the cake.
1st if you had been paying attention instead of coming up with crack pot theory's you would have seen the Lucas interview where he stated that he had signed off on creative liberty's for SWG and was very disappointed with how SOE handled it, not because they were not making him money but, because they gave away jedi and made it totally meaning less as well as a total failure to pay attention to SWG fans.
2nd Everyone of the devs that did not get behind SOE's push to bring out the cu lost there job, They hired an entirely new team and for a good portion of time nothing was fixed because they were unfamiliar with the system. If you had actually played from the CU until current you could plainly see this is the way they did things.
3rd being they had a contract giving them creative rights LA had little to do with SWG not to mention SWG was out and running long before Bioware decided to do SWTOR. A contract is a legally binding agreement, this is not a Mcdonalds they can't just fire people on whim. All that stuff you see in the movies where some guy goes in and outwits the ceo's and ends up the top man and fires all the jerks would never be possible in real life when said people have contracts.That type of thing is pure Hollywood not reality. Tryihng such a stunt in real life would have you deep in lawsuits for years.
4th the game had 20 servers and full,if incompatent, dev teams until this year, that is A LOT of money to pump into a game you are trying to kill, there were ads ran and commercials on t.v again A LOT more money then anyone would put into a game they were trying to kill.
5th it was a SOE announcement that they had spoken to the player base and that the cu is what people wanted, it was a total lie but, that was there story. If you had played pre-cu you would have seen the first thing that struck you as you logged into the cu was how close it looked to wow. The NGE just renforced that idea that they were trying for the wow crowd. The thinking was obviously that they had 250k subs and at the time wow was claiming 5 mil or some such and they wanted a chunk of the pie and mistakenly thought that SWG-WOW was the answer not considering that WoW type players and SWG type players are 2 entirely different type's of players.
6th If you had played you would have also noticed how the skill point system gradually changed to be very much like wow's even right down to about the same rate of earning said points, obviously yet another attempt to make the game a wow clone.
7th then the instance thing, again trying to do it more like wow, pre-cu we had no instances and we did not need any again another obvious attempt to make it SWG-WoW
SWG was making SOE money yes but, your statements show that you have no idea how buisness works in the modern world. You see, a company's value or worth is not determined by if they are making money or if they are making more then enough to pay there bills, A company's value/worth is based off weather or not they made more this year then they did last year. So what they did was try to grab some wow crowd by attempting to appeal to wow's players in a futile attempt to bring there profits up.
A large company like SOE typically has investors and investors don't care if the product is good or fun to play all they care about is that there investment is making them money and more then last year. That drives more of the company's choices then you think A LOT more then if it is or is not a fun game. Devs for the most part try to make a good game but, they have the bosses to please and the bosses have to please the investors.
In the end Lucas had already stated that he was unhappy with SOE's handling of SWG, he has worked with bioware in the past and they had done a great job with the kotor's. Just playing Kotor even still makes a person feel more like a jedi then cu or NGE ever did. This at least points at the fact that they have more of a grip on what it means to be jedi, SOE handed it out like candy, it was never meant to be that way. The contract was ending now he has the chance to "fire" the people he was displeased with and to do it legally so he did, Plain and simple.
If a person wants a book that they wrote to be considered a true part of the SW series they have to submit the story to LA and it has to fit into the already exsisting story along with many other things so that it does not mess with the story so far, if said book in any way fractures or breaks the story it will NOT become part of the official star wars series. This does not mean it won't get published by someone but, it won't have the Lucas badge nor apporval. This is not the way a company that did not care about there ip would act. If in fact they just wanted to kill it they would not have those restrictions.
I played SWG for 7.5 years and I made a jedi under the pre-cu system and watched him fall apart with the cu and then more in the NGE I feel the pain of SWG closeing but, really it was several bad choices by SOE in a thrust for money nothing more nothing less.
You are completely correct. Played SWG since day one (actually day two as the log in servers choked to death the first night.) After character creation you were on a space station where you could migrate your stats if you wanted to then used the terminal to pick your starting planet and city. While it wasn't an entire tutorial leveling area like post NGE it was still a FRACKIN space station.
Oh man! It's been so long that I didn't even remember most of that! Just that fight with the pirate, and the final terminal for planet selection. Hmmm... some of it must have stuck in the back of my mind though. Not long ago I was mentally constructing a Pre-CU mechanics tutorial in place of the NGE tutorial station, and the setup of why you were on the station followed pretty much the same plot line, but with a series of cut-scenes showing the events instead of NPCs just talking about it.
In May and June '04 there were some more attempts to improve the newbie experience: those awful green droids that gave you some simple quests to teach the basics of your profession, and handed out rewards: a transportation voucher, and "speeder bike rental" (call it 4-5 times before it went away). Then they started channeling all new players to Mos Eisley and set up a quest chain for beginners.
Originally posted by Grand_Nagus SWG was dying before the NGE. A former Dev, Dan Rubenfield, says the game was losing 10k subs PER MONTH before they did the NGE: http://rubenfield.com/?p=86 So yeah, the NGE definitely sucked. But the game was already dying before that.
You are completely correct. Played SWG since day one (actually day two as the log in servers choked to death the first night.) After character creation you were on a space station where you could migrate your stats if you wanted to then used the terminal to pick your starting planet and city. While it wasn't an entire tutorial leveling area like post NGE it was still a FRACKIN space station.
Oh man! It's been so long that I didn't even remember most of that! Just that fight with the pirate, and the final terminal for planet selection. Hmmm... some of it must have stuck in the back of my mind though. Not long ago I was mentally constructing a Pre-CU mechanics tutorial in place of the NGE tutorial station, and the setup of why you were on the station followed pretty much the same plot line, but with a series of cut-scenes showing the events instead of NPCs just talking about it.
In May and June '04 there were some more attempts to improve the newbie experience: those awful green droids that gave you some simple quests to teach the basics of your profession, and handed out rewards: a transportation voucher, and "speeder bike rental" (call it 4-5 times before it went away). Then they started channeling all new players to Mos Eisley and set up a quest chain for beginners.
Ahh, but what led you to the tutorial Space Station and then on to "The Greatest Adventure ... Yours."?
Comments
I think Lucas Arts would have loved to have two massive AAA star wars mmos on the market. Both of which were making them money hand over fist.
I don't think the SWG license was keeping them from creating a second MMO either. Smed said the original contract was for 5 years. Lucas Arts did not need to destroy SWG to start work on another MMO, because the contrat with SOE would already be up and SOE would lose any exclusive rights they might have had.
The combat upgrade was what SOE thought would fix the game even though it was no where close to what the actual players were asking for.
The NGE was designed to get WoW players. Even though SOE/LA knew it would most likely drive away all the current players, they really believed more new players would join. That is why they spent so much money on commercials and marketing.
The fact that the changes failed I think is in direct opposition to the intention of what SOE/LA intended.
Lastly Lucas Arts can't "force" SOE to spend millions of dollars to redeisng SWG into something they do not want to do. They most certainly couldn't do it in an attempt to ruin the game. It doesn't work like and if Lucas Arts forced SOE to do something that resulted in the lose of tens of millions of dollars a year, you can bet your ass SOE would sue them. At the very minumum Lucas Arts has to act in good faith on their part of the contract.
Early days in SWG I am on Tatoine Mos Eisley....
I asked: "hey where is Anchorhead and how do i get there?"
Someone answered: its west of here - im sure you will find it if you walk into that direction.... (ping i got a waypoint so i startet walking)
after 30 minutes i got a whisper from my helper: - btw - there are shuttles i this game.
Honestly i laughed at my stupidity - discovering the game and its mechanic was a great deal of fun.
Can you somehow reliably back up that the game was not already losing subscribers pre CU/NGE?
I didn't read past the first paragraph as it started to get way to "crazy". The first paragraph makes absolutely no sense. They brought up the NGE and didn't revert back because they wanted SWG dead? There would be less friction? That whole situation was the EXACT opposite. They PISSED off most of the player base who in turn quit, more or less killing it on the spot. Then they wanted to some how keep it alive until SWTOR came out and only piss off the rest of the player base that managed to stick around and support it? Sorry, everyone already knows that yes they wanted WoW subs, but they wanted them NOW and it didn't pan out, nothing more, nothing less. Why didn't they revert back? Arrogance
lol, this is one of the best conspiracy theories i've heard in a while. Thx for the LOL
I self identify as a monkey.
Sorry OP, the NGE did not extend the life of the game or revitalize it or anything along those lines. The NGE destroyed everything that made the game unique or evern very interesting aside from the Star Wars branding. The only thing that carried the game along after the NGE was the Star Wars branding. They didn't kill the game off after the NGE because it still had something resembling a population of people still playing it and the devs/publishers were too full of themselves and too full of shit to admit they fucked up and ruined the game. Anyone remember Hayden Blackman ranting about how it was the fault of the players who didn't support the NGE that it failed?
Anyhow, the OP's conspiracy theory is REALLY far-fetched and silly.
I don't think that SWG losing subscriber prior to the NGE/CU was ever in question. It just was no were near as dramatic as when the NGE released.
Prior to the NGE and the CU to some extent, players still held some faith that SOE could "fix" SWG and help it reach its potential. After the NGE, not so much.
SWG was dying before the NGE. A former Dev, Dan Rubenfield, says the game was losing 10k subs PER MONTH before they did the NGE:
http://rubenfield.com/?p=86
So yeah, the NGE definitely sucked. But the game was already dying before that.
I didn't even mind the combat upgrade to be honest. Yes it simplified the combat some, but it removed the horrible HAM (Health, Action, Mind) setup they had. The spamming of Mind Fire and similar attacks was piss poor and almost an exploitable combat tactic prior to the CU. I think there was about one thing (Blue Milk) that could heal the mind stat.
First, I wouldn't believe anything that arrogant dude says.
Second, people were leaving due to WoW fever but after a few months, THEY WERE COMING BACK. But relevant forces at the top (SOE or LA, whatever) panicked. Series of really bad, BAD decicions beginning with CU.
NEW IDEAS that can refresh the STALE state of MMORPGs
Reading this thread has definitely made my Monday morning entertaining. Well done.
Of course, the NGE didn't have anything to do with SWTOR, but whatever. It's still entertaining to read all this.
Angerian Fishak Surprise was the best mind heal drink available, but it was very difficult to find a chef that could make it and make it to the level it was capable of.
The HAM system had a lot of potential, but as with all things SWG it was still in the concept stage and never truely tested and refined. There really was a lot that could be done with the system, especially when it was treated as a main health poor with 2 alternates that when attacked have negative affects on the target.
Instead mind was the hardest "health" pool to increase, regenerate and protect. Most attacks were nearly uncurable by most players and there were simply to many potent attacks and special weapons with ungodly stats that compounded the problem.
Given more time to actually play test before release I think it could have been an interesting system.
Yet the fix for that was incredibly simple, and the CURB would have addressed it:
No incap without taking down all three stat pools. The problem with the "unhealable pool" would have been fixed, without the need to dumb down the combat system to WoW's level. The possiblity for much more nuanced, combined arms play in group PvP would still have been there.
An even simpler method would have been for the action and mind pools going to zero to not incap you, but simply to take away (at least for the moment) abilities dependent on those pools. This was a cooldown that wasn't an obvious, WoW mechanic cool down. Notice that the CU replaced all the existing mechanisms for limiiting the ability to use special attacks with WoW style cool downs, complete with the little graphic "clock" on the icon for the special. They did the same thing with the stomach for regulating food buffs. They had a functional equivalent of the cool down already in the game, but they INSISTED on doing it the way WoW did things, down to the graphics. They had functional equivalents but in their zeal to be "like WoW" in the hopes that the WoW audience would flock to WoW with flashlights, they failed to take into account that WoW, unlike SWG, worked solidly, was polished, etc.
They did not get what made WoW a success. They sought to replicate the surface without doing the actual work of the substance.
The effort failed. Spectacularly. The only reason SWG lingered on after the NGE was the brand. The game was a very bad imitation of WoW.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
There were a spacestation Pre-CU, something like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8L8MGeL7p8&feature=channel_video_title
Edit: link
You are completely correct. Played SWG since day one (actually day two as the log in servers choked to death the first night.) After character creation you were on a space station where you could migrate your stats if you wanted to then used the terminal to pick your starting planet and city. While it wasn't an entire tutorial leveling area like post NGE it was still a FRACKIN space station.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Wow I have seen some out there theory's but this one takes the cake.
1st if you had been paying attention instead of coming up with crack pot theory's you would have seen the Lucas interview where he stated that he had signed off on creative liberty's for SWG and was very disappointed with how SOE handled it, not because they were not making him money but, because they gave away jedi and made it totally meaning less as well as a total failure to pay attention to SWG fans.
2nd Everyone of the devs that did not get behind SOE's push to bring out the cu lost there job, They hired an entirely new team and for a good portion of time nothing was fixed because they were unfamiliar with the system. If you had actually played from the CU until current you could plainly see this is the way they did things.
3rd being they had a contract giving them creative rights LA had little to do with SWG not to mention SWG was out and running long before Bioware decided to do SWTOR. A contract is a legally binding agreement, this is not a Mcdonalds they can't just fire people on whim. All that stuff you see in the movies where some guy goes in and outwits the ceo's and ends up the top man and fires all the jerks would never be possible in real life when said people have contracts.That type of thing is pure Hollywood not reality. Tryihng such a stunt in real life would have you deep in lawsuits for years.
4th the game had 20 servers and full,if incompatent, dev teams until this year, that is A LOT of money to pump into a game you are trying to kill, there were ads ran and commercials on t.v again A LOT more money then anyone would put into a game they were trying to kill.
5th it was a SOE announcement that they had spoken to the player base and that the cu is what people wanted, it was a total lie but, that was there story. If you had played pre-cu you would have seen the first thing that struck you as you logged into the cu was how close it looked to wow. The NGE just renforced that idea that they were trying for the wow crowd. The thinking was obviously that they had 250k subs and at the time wow was claiming 5 mil or some such and they wanted a chunk of the pie and mistakenly thought that SWG-WOW was the answer not considering that WoW type players and SWG type players are 2 entirely different type's of players.
6th If you had played you would have also noticed how the skill point system gradually changed to be very much like wow's even right down to about the same rate of earning said points, obviously yet another attempt to make the game a wow clone.
7th then the instance thing, again trying to do it more like wow, pre-cu we had no instances and we did not need any again another obvious attempt to make it SWG-WoW
SWG was making SOE money yes but, your statements show that you have no idea how buisness works in the modern world. You see, a company's value or worth is not determined by if they are making money or if they are making more then enough to pay there bills, A company's value/worth is based off weather or not they made more this year then they did last year. So what they did was try to grab some wow crowd by attempting to appeal to wow's players in a futile attempt to bring there profits up.
A large company like SOE typically has investors and investors don't care if the product is good or fun to play all they care about is that there investment is making them money and more then last year. That drives more of the company's choices then you think A LOT more then if it is or is not a fun game. Devs for the most part try to make a good game but, they have the bosses to please and the bosses have to please the investors.
In the end Lucas had already stated that he was unhappy with SOE's handling of SWG, he has worked with bioware in the past and they had done a great job with the kotor's. Just playing Kotor even still makes a person feel more like a jedi then cu or NGE ever did. This at least points at the fact that they have more of a grip on what it means to be jedi, SOE handed it out like candy, it was never meant to be that way. The contract was ending now he has the chance to "fire" the people he was displeased with and to do it legally so he did, Plain and simple.
If a person wants a book that they wrote to be considered a true part of the SW series they have to submit the story to LA and it has to fit into the already exsisting story along with many other things so that it does not mess with the story so far, if said book in any way fractures or breaks the story it will NOT become part of the official star wars series. This does not mean it won't get published by someone but, it won't have the Lucas badge nor apporval. This is not the way a company that did not care about there ip would act. If in fact they just wanted to kill it they would not have those restrictions.
I played SWG for 7.5 years and I made a jedi under the pre-cu system and watched him fall apart with the cu and then more in the NGE I feel the pain of SWG closeing but, really it was several bad choices by SOE in a thrust for money nothing more nothing less.
Oh man! It's been so long that I didn't even remember most of that! Just that fight with the pirate, and the final terminal for planet selection. Hmmm... some of it must have stuck in the back of my mind though. Not long ago I was mentally constructing a Pre-CU mechanics tutorial in place of the NGE tutorial station, and the setup of why you were on the station followed pretty much the same plot line, but with a series of cut-scenes showing the events instead of NPCs just talking about it.
In May and June '04 there were some more attempts to improve the newbie experience: those awful green droids that gave you some simple quests to teach the basics of your profession, and handed out rewards: a transportation voucher, and "speeder bike rental" (call it 4-5 times before it went away). Then they started channeling all new players to Mos Eisley and set up a quest chain for beginners.
That was my point.
Ahh, but what led you to the tutorial Space Station and then on to "The Greatest Adventure ... Yours."?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmJK2I9qeCk&feature=player_detailpage