And talk is cheap, even more so from a professional liar like Smed.
Actions are what count, not empty promises.
Had Smed been "sorry" about the NGE and that, he could have opened up a classic server as a way to "make it right" , even one would have shown something, but he didn't do that. (And the game did not close that long ago, he had plenty of chances.)
So nothing Smed says now makes any difference, then or now.
The only thing he is sorry about, is that SOE has a crap reputation, and that has cost SOE a whole lot of money.
^ This and Sony moving all their games to console only. They've become basically irrelevant in the PC gaming market. Which honestly I don't think they even really care.
It'll be a long time before Sony can ever touch the Stars Wars franchise. The evil empire EA with the blessing of Disney has absconded with the rights for the future years to come. So, no worries there.
Uhh they let them make that clone war abomination of free realms afterbirth. On top of that EA holds no rights for online entertainment, Disney still holds that and is branching out to other companies with offers. Never say never.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by free2play SWG, SWG/CU, SWG/NGE and just prior to the transfers they pushed multiple expansions in to the game, in months what would have been years of development.
They also lost 90% of their subscriptions in a few months and never got them back.
People screamed, people begged for a classic server. They got ignored.
But if you feel better looking down on other people, don't let me stop you.
I'm going to largely ignore your initial statement because it was pointless. I will simply say that observable stereotypes exist as generalisations for a reason, and whilst you may not agree with them they tend to offer some accuracy worth considering.
CU and NGE were designed as a response to specific criticisms from players leaving the game, something that was happening long before they came out, and were also designed to allow the game to compete with World of Warcraft. The truth is that SWG was designed to be a mass market title, a genre king (like World of Warcraft); it always failed to live up to those expectation.
Whilst you may not agree with what they did to the game in an attempt to rescue it, it was a fairly reasonable response to the problem at hand relative to the targets the developers had. CU was a poor attempt, and NGE only made things worse, but SWG did not have a "golden age" as far as the finances are concerned, and it failed to deliver from day 1. The game was on a path to oblivion before CU or NGE came out, and whilst the two prolific content updates arguably made things worse, things weren't great to begin with. SWG may have been a critical success on release, but it was never the commercial success it was expected to be, even with the "Star Wars" brand name attached to it.
Mistakes were made. Smedley even went so far as to explicitly highlight, take responsibility and apologise for those mistakes. That's a fairly bold and brave thing to do, and worth a lot of kudos imho. He has also been frank about WHY those mistakes were made; SWG was on a life line practically from day 1.
Yep, SWG was hosed from the start. It was hemorraghing subs well before the hated expansions. I know a couple of folks who worked on SWG, and their private tales of mismanagement and screwed up development are just terrible. They advised me against starting the game when it came out. I've always suspected that one of the reasons they went to new systems (aside from the old systems just being broken) was that a lot of the coders left the project and there were huge parts that were unknowns to those left.
Nothing wrong with liking it at any particular point, but the rosey remembrances of everything being wonderful probably grow in the telling.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
For all the trashtalking we do of Smedley and the NGE, I'm going to have to jump to both's defenses here. Yeah, Smed and the SWG devs lied to our faces repeatedly during the lifespan of SWG (Smugglers, my heart goes out to you), but it seems he's learned his lesson and the name of the game for SOE (compared to other studios at least) these days is transparency.
Say what you will, judge how you will, but I'd take the NGE over SWTOR any day of the week, and let me explain why.
1: Starfighter combat. While there's a new starfighter expansion in SWTOR, it's pvp only, none of the amazing free flying or missions from SWG, and the space we had before that was star fox railshooter stuff. Now I love a good rail shooter, but this wasn't one.
2: Theme. I'm much more a fan of the civil war era of the Star Wars timeline than the Old Republic. There's so much more appeal about -not- being locked into a faction at start and largely not even having to participate in the GCW if you don't want to. SWTOR locked you into a faction. Even the most light sided Sith was still a sith, and the most evil Jedi was still a member of the Republic to stay.
3: Crafting. While everybody says NGE item drops made crafting largely irrelevant, I have to disagree. I played a Brawler/TKA pre-NGE and a Jedi post-NGE
4: Companies: SOE, for all their problems and issues, were never once voted "The worst company in America". EA? got that two years in a row.
It'll be a long time before Sony can ever touch the Stars Wars franchise. The evil empire EA with the blessing of Disney has absconded with the rights for the future years to come. So, no worries there.
Uhh they let them make that clone war abomination of free realms afterbirth. On top of that EA holds no rights for online entertainment, Disney still holds that and is branching out to other companies with offers. Never say never.
Instead of waiting for some undisclosed future MMO from SOE, I would check out The Repopulation. Closed Beta is near. Anyway, I would call this a spirital successor of SWG. The only main thing it is missing is space combat. But hey, it even has entertainer and creature handler skills. Also, no levels, just a skillsystem. Player cities, housing included. Both instanced and non instanced (limited plots for single housing). Player cities are inside contested areas, which could be fun for the PVP enthousiasts.
I think it will be called SWG:Next and will launch in two parts. The first will be SWG:Next Landmark. In that version you can pay $100 to join the alpha for the free game (oh yeah that also give you a special badge and tool). This first game will be mostly focused on building things in your own plot of land that you will stake out. The terrain is deformable and you can build structures like the church shown in the screenshot.
This game will have little to nothing to do with the original SWG but rather will capitalize on it's name to draw curious people to take a look.
As funny as what this guy said i wouldn't put it past Smedley to do something like this. He is just trying to do what Camelot Unchained is doing minus actually delivering what is promised.
Originally posted by free2play SWG, SWG/CU, SWG/NGE and just prior to the transfers they pushed multiple expansions in to the game, in months what would have been years of development.
They also lost 90% of their subscriptions in a few months and never got them back.
People screamed, people begged for a classic server. They got ignored.
But if you feel better looking down on other people, don't let me stop you.
I'm going to largely ignore your initial statement because it was pointless. I will simply say that observable stereotypes exist as generalisations for a reason, and whilst you may not agree with them they tend to offer some accuracy worth considering.
CU and NGE were designed as a response to specific criticisms from players leaving the game, something that was happening long before they came out, and were also designed to allow the game to compete with World of Warcraft. The truth is that SWG was designed to be a mass market title, a genre king (like World of Warcraft); it always failed to live up to those expectation.
Whilst you may not agree with what they did to the game in an attempt to rescue it, it was a fairly reasonable response to the problem at hand relative to the targets the developers had. CU was a poor attempt, and NGE only made things worse, but SWG did not have a "golden age" as far as the finances are concerned, and it failed to deliver from day 1. The game was on a path to oblivion before CU or NGE came out, and whilst the two prolific content updates arguably made things worse, things weren't great to begin with. SWG may have been a critical success on release, but it was never the commercial success it was expected to be, even with the "Star Wars" brand name attached to it.
Mistakes were made. Smedley even went so far as to explicitly highlight, take responsibility and apologise for those mistakes. That's a fairly bold and brave thing to do, and worth a lot of kudos imho. He has also been frank about WHY those mistakes were made; SWG was on a life line practically from day 1.
Yep, SWG was hosed from the start. It was hemorraghing subs well before the hated expansions. I know a couple of folks who worked on SWG, and their private tales of mismanagement and screwed up development are just terrible. They advised me against starting the game when it came out. I've always suspected that one of the reasons they went to new systems (aside from the old systems just being broken) was that a lot of the coders left the project and there were huge parts that were unknowns to those left.
Nothing wrong with liking it at any particular point, but the rosey remembrances of everything being wonderful probably grow in the telling.
Seriously your inside information is not very reliable. I worked in the same complex, lunched with the SWG programmers almost every day. Smedley had a completely separate team implement NGE, the SWG team was not aware of the change until the day before it was implemented. Hence the huge bug problems with NGE, the team that implemented it was not familiar with the code at all. The SWG team felt betrayed and many of them left.
Actually they had about 450k subscribers at the point of NGE and they had just released a new expansion about a week or so prior to NGE and a lot of players had resubscribed. A good number for those days, problem was that Wow had millions and both Smedley and Lucas Arts thought if they made the game more Wow like it would take off.
Comments
^ This and Sony moving all their games to console only. They've become basically irrelevant in the PC gaming market. Which honestly I don't think they even really care.
Uhh they let them make that clone war abomination of free realms afterbirth. On top of that EA holds no rights for online entertainment, Disney still holds that and is branching out to other companies with offers. Never say never.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Yep, SWG was hosed from the start. It was hemorraghing subs well before the hated expansions. I know a couple of folks who worked on SWG, and their private tales of mismanagement and screwed up development are just terrible. They advised me against starting the game when it came out. I've always suspected that one of the reasons they went to new systems (aside from the old systems just being broken) was that a lot of the coders left the project and there were huge parts that were unknowns to those left.
Nothing wrong with liking it at any particular point, but the rosey remembrances of everything being wonderful probably grow in the telling.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
For all the trashtalking we do of Smedley and the NGE, I'm going to have to jump to both's defenses here. Yeah, Smed and the SWG devs lied to our faces repeatedly during the lifespan of SWG (Smugglers, my heart goes out to you), but it seems he's learned his lesson and the name of the game for SOE (compared to other studios at least) these days is transparency.
Say what you will, judge how you will, but I'd take the NGE over SWTOR any day of the week, and let me explain why.
1: Starfighter combat. While there's a new starfighter expansion in SWTOR, it's pvp only, none of the amazing free flying or missions from SWG, and the space we had before that was star fox railshooter stuff. Now I love a good rail shooter, but this wasn't one.
2: Theme. I'm much more a fan of the civil war era of the Star Wars timeline than the Old Republic. There's so much more appeal about -not- being locked into a faction at start and largely not even having to participate in the GCW if you don't want to. SWTOR locked you into a faction. Even the most light sided Sith was still a sith, and the most evil Jedi was still a member of the Republic to stay.
3: Crafting. While everybody says NGE item drops made crafting largely irrelevant, I have to disagree. I played a Brawler/TKA pre-NGE and a Jedi post-NGE
4: Companies: SOE, for all their problems and issues, were never once voted "The worst company in America". EA? got that two years in a row.
Really ? My reading comprehension must be off.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/6/4306022/ea-disney-star-wars-games-exclusive-rights
As funny as what this guy said i wouldn't put it past Smedley to do something like this. He is just trying to do what Camelot Unchained is doing minus actually delivering what is promised.
Seriously your inside information is not very reliable. I worked in the same complex, lunched with the SWG programmers almost every day. Smedley had a completely separate team implement NGE, the SWG team was not aware of the change until the day before it was implemented. Hence the huge bug problems with NGE, the team that implemented it was not familiar with the code at all. The SWG team felt betrayed and many of them left.
Actually they had about 450k subscribers at the point of NGE and they had just released a new expansion about a week or so prior to NGE and a lot of players had resubscribed. A good number for those days, problem was that Wow had millions and both Smedley and Lucas Arts thought if they made the game more Wow like it would take off.
While I can't deny the irony......
on closer inspection it is CASH:San Quentin - indicating to me it is a Johnny Cash poster from his performance at the prison.
I wouldn't exactly call the man-in-black a poster child for capitalism - so all is forgiven, in my book.