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mixed feelings
gooner
Member Posts: 13
OK preparing myself for a lot of flaming already.
first, my credentials. I started playing SWG after it had been released for a year until after NGE. I had 2 alts on the europe infinity server. I've also been playing EQ2 for about a year.
in RL I work in finance and have some insight into the way major decisions like this are made. The way gamers have rected to the changes in SWG are similar to those of a football (soccer for you non-brits) fan - specifically manchester united fans when the club was sold to the Glazer family. you beleivce that through your purchase of the product that you own it. Sorry all but you dont... you are a consumer with all the rights that that entails and no more. we are owed nothing by SOE and LA (with the caveat that the NGE and TOOB is a case of misrepresentation insofar as the nature of the game changed dramatically in such a short space of time)
I am very sad to have lost access to one of the best games ever I had a great time playing it and beleive that many errors were made by many people. The biggets mistake was not charging enough for the monthly subs. This way they could have paid the DEVs more and stopped them defecting. Oh yes. Dont beleive that they left for anything other than money - they work for SONY after all and are highly skilled - valuable in the jobs market.
Of course the game was dumbed down to the level of the new DEVs - otherwise bug fixes would have taken longer and longer (if thta is possible) to implement and the system would have seized completely. Thus they metaphorically traded in their ferrarri for a Ford because they couldnt afford the mechanics fees, but still neede to drive.
so who's fault is it? no ones and everyones - market forces. Does anyone really think that SOE screwed the game just for the sake of it? no. It was (and still remians) the high watermark for the ingame complexity, player driven economy, playable land size etc etc but onece the rot set in it couldnt be removed.
I for one would welcome back a pre-CU server with open arms - happily paying double monthly subs if it meant the devs would work on bug fixes.
what proof do I have of the above? None other than common sense and a little knowledge. I do not work for SOE or LA or any affiliates or have any axe to grind other then the desire to put in my 2 pence worth after reading through all 36 pages in one sitting and thinking about what has been said here.
I'm really looking forward to Roma Victor tho......
Comments
Here are the ins and outs of EULA's....
http://www.eff.org/wp/eula.php
Xcathdra
Having access to a billion $ IP - Billions of dollars..
Having access to a massive fan base of said IP - Even more Billons...
Singly handedly alienating them due to stupidity - Priceless.
So you've got a lot of people who are doing this work because they're passionate about it. And when it comes to games, and in general, any field that has
conceptual design and implementation, you're gonna have a lot of drama. Typically a development team will go through several dozen drafts for ideas before settling on one solid design, usually after many closed-door meetings. As with any team you have the following forces:
- Artists, who want the game's elements to have some particular visual style (usually, their own)
- Programmers/Engineers/Developers (the term depends on what side of the coast you're on
- Designers/Architects, who want the game to be as flexible as possible so that they can do more with it
- Audio Engineers/Musicians who more or less sit back and laugh at everyone
And then, there's this guy:
- The Visionary, usually some idiot in a senior manegerial position who has a grand design in mind and tries to bend the wills of the above four forces to that of his own -- and isn't afraid to totally ditch many hard-thought ideas in the process. He also probably lacks basic level expertise in all of the fields above, except for expertise derrived many years (or in some cases, decades) ago, and this only adds to the chaos. Usually, he winds up pissing the dev team members off, and those that are pissed will bolt the moment their contract expires. Coincidentially, this winds up being over 60% of the team.
And the one that rules them all is this guy:
- The Accountant. He doesn't really need an explanation.
Anyway, the point here is that gaming is a field you enter if you're truly passionate about making games. It's really not for the feint of heart, and anyone thinking they'll get rich in the industry is outright kidding themselves. Most professional programmers, who program games in their spare time, leave themselves at the "hobbyist" tier because the gaming industry is so awfully rough. It's a nightmare on many levels that are incomprehensible to the end user, the gamer, and that is unsurprising because the gamers are part of the nightmare.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
I think what kyme is refering to is UO a few years ago. Was two guys or something like I dunno. I dont have any links so I dont know why im posting.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
Here is just one case, I have seen more though...just having difficultly tracking them down at the moment.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/fun.games/12/19/china.gamer.reut/