ya and soe wont bother to do a publicity campagn about the new vertue of swg (if there is one)for one simple reason , they got other fish to fry for the moment
SWG uses negative publicity campaigns. Use what ya got. If there are predictable people, use them too. Smed's gonna shit when he gets our bill.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
When Reklaw said "SOE only tried to deliver what was asked for, and yes that backfired on them, but it was mainly due to what was written by those who either left as early in beta or slightly after release and where still very loud or even louder then us who where actually enjoying the game."-reklaw
I don't think he was trying to say those people didn't help, but rather they were the catalyst of the NGE. I've heard some theories that are hard to swallow, but trying to say the NGE was developed in response to player feedback (and former players at that) is about the most unbelievable thing I have ever heard about star wars galaxies.
It just flies in direct opposition to every fact that is available.
Again already been over this, try to read the other post that came after the one you keep bringing up please.
But since you like to ignore that I will re-post it here:
I gotta say I feel it was a mixed of both like you say and what I said. Keep in mind not all 1.2 mil. boxes sold where all dual boxers, allot left due to the things we could read on the forums, I will fully agree that it must have scared SOE seeing a only game known IP beating something with a IP of Star Wars.
Still wished SOE would have taken the CCP route, but then again we also know the engine would not survive that type of up-building of the game as we already knew the pre-cu engine was quite a mess, as we all remember 1 fix 3 things broken scenario, I'll also say that most of us who indeed where playing and enjoying knew something had to change, of course we never wanted the NGE as most of us just wanted them to fix the engine and not completely rework the game. There is also a part of me that can not blame SOE for wanting to have more subs towards a IP like Star Wars, of course there is also a part of me that does blame them for letting me taste what I felt was to be a true MMORPG that after pre-cu I never had the pleasure to get intoa MMORPG that I would call true MMORPG. I also know because I was there that SOE wanted to replace most of us who where enjoying the game with a larger player base, which is for anyone into business something logical, regardless how it turned out to backfire on them.
And also keep in mind I only speak what I feel, no where did I state it as fact, something some of you seem to have a terrible hard time in understanding just that.
Yes I understand it is your opinion and you do realize I am posting my opinion in response right? For example, when I asked if it really was your theory, I fully acknowledge that it is your thoughts that you are speaking of. Do I really need to use the word opinion to satisfy you?
As for what you quoted and what was posted after the original post I reference, it doesn't change or justify the ridiculousness of the original comment in the slightest. Adding some other reasons you think might have contributed doesn't really add validity to the original comment. It just tries to cover it up a bit.
The 1.2 million (1.5 million actually) number of boxes sold, I'm pretty sure that is made up of the base game and expansions. We know that SWG was bleeding a average of around 10k subs a month according to what Dan Rubenfeld posted. That isn't enough of a loss to account for 1-1.2 million subscriptions over 2 years if the population was around 200-250k just prior to the nge. Selling 1.5 million boxes of the base game over 2 years would average over 60k new subscriptions joining the game each month. At that average compared to only 10k leaving would mean that SWG was averaging a net gain of 50k subscriptions a month, which we know wasn't true.
I don't think there were as many former players as people think there were.
Yes I understand it is your opinion and you do realize I am posting my opinion in response right? For example, when I asked if it really was your theory, I fully acknowledge that it is your thoughts that you are speaking of. Do I really need to use the word opinion to satisfy you? As for what you quoted and what was posted after the original post I reference, it doesn't change or justify the ridiculousness of the original comment in the slightest. Adding some other reasons you think might have contributed doesn't really add validity to the original comment. It just tries to cover it up a bit.
The 1.2 million (1.5 million actually) number of boxes sold, I'm pretty sure that is made up of the base game and expansions. We know that SWG was bleeding a average of around 10k subs a month according to what Dan Rubenfeld posted. That isn't enough of a loss to account for 1-1.2 million subscriptions over 2 years if the population was around 200-250k just prior to the nge. Selling 1.5 million boxes of the base game over 2 years would average over 60k new subscriptions joining the game each month. At that average compared to only 10k leaving would mean that SWG was averaging a net gain of 50k subscriptions a month, which we know wasn't true. I don't think there were as many former players as people think there were.
mm i keep seeing NGE linked with swg
could you stear me to an article that explain this deal nge-swg thing
i never saw this ,must have been bad everyone has been whining about swg since almost release lol
SOE "IS" the leader and might continue along that path. You can distort fact and the truth while knit picking,because i can find dirt and horrible development in EVERY developer.When you talk about the "leader"you are talking about pushing the envelope or pushing new ideas.
What exactly is soe the market leader of? Lets see:
Everquest: Yes 10 years ago soe was a market leader. There wasn't really anyone else in the market except origins and turbine, but soe was the undisputed leader. That was 10 years ago.
SWG: Soe was still leading the market, but they turned the biggest most profitable IP the world into the pinnacle of what not to do with an mmo. There is no arguing that soe has totally screwed up this game and drove away the vast majority of its players. It should be the flagship product soe brags about, but instead it is the embarrassment no one wants to acknowledge.
EQOA: Is a dead game and a failed effort to break into the console market. It sits around mostly unsupported.
EQMac: Is a dead game and a failed effort to break into the console market. It sits around mostly unsupported.
EQ2: Rushed to market and suffers to this very day by poor choices made in its design. This was soes best effort that can't be blamed on anyone else. They started merging servers within the first year of operation. This is obvisouly their biggest game and it is no bigger or smaller than several other games on the market right now. Some from indepenant developers.
Planetside: Dead game long ago abandoned by soe. Ruined by soes own hand with features that drove players away.
The Matrix: Bought by soe so they could aquire the DC license. Yes the game was pretty much dead when soe bought it, but by most accounts they further destroyed what little potential TMO had left by removing features and revamping systems.
Vanguard: Another game that was dead when they bought it. It was stripped of whatever quality resources it had from the moment they purchased it and was put on life support and as the lead developer said "left to fend for itself". Another case where soe made changes that drove away many players.
Just curious if you see the trend of soe making changes to their games that players neither want nor ask for that results in losses.
Free realms. This is your big claim of soe breaking new ground. It seems to me that they are following a trend here that was laid out by several other companies who already dominate the tween free to play market and have millions of customers. Not accounts, but customers. For all of soes efforts and claims of 5 millions players, they can not even fill up 1 server of this game and it wouldn't take much more than 1,000 players to pack a server with how little game space is available to play in.
So tell me, where is soe in a leadership position? It isn't from a standpoint of customers. Their latest effort is a complete dud that no one is going to emulate based on its rate of success, or should I say failure.
If you strip away everquest from their stable of games, what you are left with is a company that has a subscriber threshhold that can be measured in the tens of thousands spread across a number of mmos that all hand on the edge of being discontined. This is a company that is surviving based on their one big success over 10 years ago. Without everquest soe as an mmo game maker is a total failure and would be out of the market. That is not the sign of leadership.
Let me ask it this way. Say SOE was a sole corporation you could invest your retirement fund in and you had a good chunk invested in 2004 when soe had over a million subscription between all their games. How do you think your investment would be doing in 2009? Do you think the "market leader" would have grown your investment or do you think it would have crashed and burned due to soe losing the majority of their subscribers over the last several years?
Have new ideas that fail doesn't make anyone a leader. Having the most mmo titles doesn't make someone the leader when most of them are ready to be shut down. Ushering in game systems that drive your customers away is not something the rest of the market is going to look at as a leadership role.
This fits with my perception of SOE's "leadership" also, and your post is more comprehesive than mine. When I look at what SWG is a leader in, I think I see the following:
-pushing games live before they're ready
-introducing game-breaking revamps
-introducing game changing RMT loot to subscription based games
-introducing controversial pay real cash for only a random chance to win game changing loot to a subscription based game
-charging entry fees for Trading Card tournaments with a random chance of winning prizes and having them banned in a number of States as a result
-telling paying customers that they can expect certain things regarding the future of their games and then delivering the exact opposite: e.g. Smed being against RMT in Everquest, SWG expansion features that were deleted, promising profession revamps and then deleting the professions outright, saying that certain game systems are "here to stay" and then replacing them completely shortly thereafter etc. etc.
-alienating there own staff e.g. those leaving SOE and requesting transfers to other projects in light of one or more points above.
Is that really leadership? If so, it's in a very bad direction in my view. Despite all that someone like Wizardry might say, I don't see any of these points being contradicted.
No, the kind of leadership I'm looking for is:
-do your market research and set the direction of the game BEFORE it goes live, not after
-launch your game when it's not ass broke
-stick with one business model, and be up front with customers about it, don't keep changing it so that they pay more and more for less service
-don't tell people that the game is going in a particular direction when you either don't really have a clue where it's going, or worse yet, when you actually have plans to take it somewhere else--plans that you withhold from paying customers.
I think anyone who does this would be a leader in a positive sense. I also think they'd have successful, growing MMOs that get positive reviews from customers. Just for fun, I'm going to look at Blizzard and compare them to my list:
-did market research before the game, set its course and stuck with it? Check
-launch the game when it's not ass broke? Check
-stick with one business model and be up front about it? Check
-be honest with people about the direction of the game's development (e.g. don't tell them one thing and then do the opposite)? Check
Have a successful MMO that is growing and getting positive reviews? Well what do you know, check again. I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect, and I happen to dislike the graphic style in their game; but when it comes to positive leadership, they certainly come a lot closer to what I would expect to see.
P.S. I don't see pushing the envelope (in and of itself) as positive leadership. For example, the NGE certainly pushed the envelope, and SOE was proud of itself for being willing to take risks. Well, they pushed the envelope so far ethically that they ended up giving massive refunds to players who felt intentionally misled. Push the envelope? Oh yes, most definitely. Positive leadership? Lol, the lead designer decribed this move as an epoch grade catastrophe (that's a paraphrase to avoid profanity btw).
Just to add a point to the last few posts about the numbers of boxes sold. I played on Tarq. Like the makority of players on that server, I had 2 accounts. At 1 point towards the end, I had 3. My Guild leader had 4 accounts, my friends in other guilds all had 2 accounts. Since you could hcange a line in a file to allow multiple instances to run, it was common for us to ahve 1 toon buffing while playing the other. So most of the boxes sold were to single players.
Roses are red Violets are blue The reviewer has a mishapen head Which means his opinion is skewed ...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
Originally posted by drbaltazar mm i keep seeing NGE linked with swg could you stear me to an article that explain this deal nge-swg thing i never saw this ,must have been bad everyone has been whining about swg since almost release lol
That is a fairly decent review of what happened, but it doesn't cover all the important points of what happened.
In a nutshell SOE and Lucas Arts developed the NGE in secret from the players. They promised the first major revamp of the game [The Combat Upgrade] was not going away all the while they were planning to do a second massive revamp. This revamp was not aimed at retaining the current players, but aimed at attracting players from world of warcraft. SOE actively disposed of their current playerbase, because they thought they could increase subscribers to SWG by making it more wow like... aka "star warsy".
The amount of changes in the NGE were nothing short of drastic. Years worth of players efforts were destroyed. The best items in the game were rendered useless and in some cases unusable. You couldn't even equip much of the equipment you had prior to the changes. I really can't put words to just how massive the changes were nor how terribly unfinished it all was. From player achievements to game mechanics it was massive. Just for example all of the games 32 classes were removed and replaced with some stiched together amalgamation of what was left over in 9 classes. Some of the classes were removed entirely from the game with not even a remotely similar alternative offered.
It really bombed star wars galaxies back into the stone ages of development quality. SWG has always been a game that was poorly implemented, but the NGE wasn't even a playable game. The game currently still suffered massive performance issues as a result of the NGE changes.
Just to add a point to the last few posts about the numbers of boxes sold. I played on Tarq. Like the makority of players on that server, I had 2 accounts. At 1 point towards the end, I had 3. My Guild leader had 4 accounts, my friends in other guilds all had 2 accounts. Since you could hcange a line in a file to allow multiple instances to run, it was common for us to ahve 1 toon buffing while playing the other. So most of the boxes sold were to single players.
That's a huge sweeping statement with no facts to back it up other than your own experiences, which in the grand scheme of things are irrelevent with regards to this debate. SWG shifted 1 million boxes by mid-late 2004 from memory. Retention rate bewteen box sales and ongoing subscriptions were terrible, I don't think anyone doubts that. The problem SOE had is that they misinterpreted the reason for that incredibly bad retention rate and attributed it to the game being "too hard" when in truth no matter how "hard" they think it was, inaccessable or whatever else, the truth is it was a buggy piece of shit.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Originally posted by drbaltazar mm i keep seeing NGE linked with swg could you stear me to an article that explain this deal nge-swg thing i never saw this ,must have been bad everyone has been whining about swg since almost release lol
That is a fairly decent review of what happened, but it doesn't cover all the important points of what happened.
In a nutshell SOE and Lucas Arts developed the NGE in secret from the players. They promised the first major revamp of the game [The Combat Upgrade] was not going away all the while they were planning to do a second massive revamp. This revamp was not aimed at retaining the current players, but aimed at attracting players from world of warcraft. SOE actively disposed of their current playerbase, because they thought they could increase subscribers to SWG by making it more wow like... aka "star warsy".
The amount of changes in the NGE were nothing short of drastic. Years worth of players efforts were destroyed. The best items in the game were rendered useless and in some cases unusable. You couldn't even equip much of the equipment you had prior to the changes. I really can't put words to just how massive the changes were nor how terribly unfinished it all was. From player achievements to game mechanics it was massive. Just for example all of the games 32 classes were removed and replaced with some stiched together amalgamation of what was left over in 9 classes. Some of the classes were removed entirely from the game with not even a remotely similar alternative offered.
It really bombed star wars galaxies back into the stone ages of development quality. SWG has always been a game that was poorly implemented, but the NGE wasn't even a playable game. The game currently still suffered massive performance issues as a result of the NGE changes.
ty for link,men i dont understand it fully ,but basicly they took swg ,and made it just plain star wars
,lol even blizzard isnt cocky enough to play with the core design of wow lol
and hell they ll do cataclysm ,wich change the game by a lot ,but they wont change the core
hell soe would be better to just remoove nge from swg i dont believe it raised swg popularity
The NGE didn't increase the popularity of SWG. It actually drove away an estimated 200k players.
The NGE really embodies how SOE thinks. You can see smaller, but similar actions from soe in the way they develop their games and treat their customers.
ya at one point every fucking company decided to copy wow model ,every freaking company fell face first .i hope all those company learned their lesson and start reading some book there are ton of great book that could become game and their are so well described game maker dont even have to think they just have to do what written in the book
The NGE didn't increase the popularity of SWG. It actually drove away an estimated 200k players.
The NGE really embodies how SOE thinks. You can see smaller, but similar actions from soe in the way they develop their games and treat their customers.
What really struck me is the ongoing press describing SOE as leaders in the industry, and how Smed still goes around speaking at conferences telling people how to run their MMOs lol. What was the name of his seminar, "How to ruin two of the most promising MMO IP's of all time? How to alienate your subscriber base? How to set your company up for layoffs? How to drive away your best talent? How to attempt to access people's wallets through their kids?" Does anyone go to these seminars? Do they actually listen to Smed and follow his example? If so, where does that leave them?
Most people recognize the name Sony and think of the huge multinational corporation. SOE is the division that really broke the 3D mmo market wide open over 10 years ago. It is pretty easy to look at soe and think they are this huge successful mmo company. So many games, so many titles, etc.
It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil [edit: verant/989 studio] team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after.
Most people recognize the name Sony and think of the huge multinational corporation. SOE is the division that really broke the 3D mmo market wide open over 10 years ago. It is pretty easy to look at soe and think they are this huge successful mmo company. So many games, so many titles, etc. It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after.
I don't think that's the case anymore, MS and Nintendo are kicking their arse in the console wars, Samsung and LG have taken huge market share from them in consumer electronics (Samsung actually make the LCD panels for a lot of the Sony range of displays now) so even the average consumer can see that Sony is faltering, without the need to do any prior investigation.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Before SOE took the FF series under it's wing,of course with a price by committing FF only to the PS console,it was a franchise doomed for bankruptcy.They marketed it and brought life back into the series and it became arguably the most successful franchise in history of gaming,i believe the SIMS is up there also.
A few young teenagers started coding Crash Bandicoot,it soon became reality and became a big hit.SOE made those guys millionaires by buying rights to the game.It had a lot of success.To show the comparison as to how far ahead they are from everyone else,who is the richest dev right now?Blizzard?ok name the last game developer they backed up?Heck they are afraid of their own shadow,so much so they were afraid to develop SC2 and still are.
The best is yet to come....name ONE developer that shows leadership in ANY facet of game development?There is ONLY one ,and i can name it>>Square Enix,this is only recently because they have advanced gaming to ALL platforms,umm Blizzard fails large in development.Square has also revamped their game engine to produce top notch cinematic cut scenes and meet today standards,they do not remain stagnant.BTW...SOE has recently updated EQ2 graphics and made the leading edge game look even better.Guess who helped make Square what it is today???yep SOE,so now you have the leader ,perhaps passing the torch to Square Enix the developer SOE helped to survive.
Ehm SOE had nothing whatsoever to do about Square Enix. You must be thinking about SCE. SOE didn't come under SCE supervision until very recently. SOE didn't do anything with the Final Fantasy games, that was SCE. Same about Crash Bandicoot. You are confusing Sony Online Entertainment that is solely making and publishing online games with SCE that is focused on mostly Playstation platforms. They really didn't interact much between those 2 divisions. You really need to make a tiny bit of research instead of just making stuff up.
I don't think that's the case anymore, MS and Nintendo are kicking their arse in the console wars, Samsung and LG have taken huge market share from them in consumer electronics (Samsung actually make the LCD panels for a lot of the Sony range of displays now) so even the average consumer can see that Sony is faltering, without the need to do any prior investigation.
True that Sony is facing very big competition across all of their products, but people will still recognize the Sony name.
The average person will not recognize NCSoft for example, but NCSoft is heads and tails ahead of SOE right now in just about every aspect.
I'm not really sure what makes people think SOE is an industry leader anymore. Everquest was over 10 years ago and the company has been on a downward slide the last 5 years that is unequalled by any other company I can think of.
Originally posted by Daffid011 The average person will not recognize NCSoft for example, but NCSoft is heads and tails ahead of SOE right now in just about every aspect.
That may be true about the average person not knowing NCSoft, but I think most MMO players will.
Gaming is HUGE $$$ and the MMO market is the future of gaming IMO. Recurring charges, constant influx of $, building customer loyalty...there's so much money BEYOND the $49 original purchase...developers would be fools to not go all out to capture their share of this developing market.
Originally posted by Daffid011 The average person will not recognize NCSoft for example, but NCSoft is heads and tails ahead of SOE right now in just about every aspect.
That may be true about the average person not knowing NCSoft, but I think most MMO players will.
Gaming is HUGE $$$ and the MMO market is the future of gaming IMO. Recurring charges, constant influx of $, building customer loyalty...there's so much money BEYOND the $49 original purchase...developers would be fools to not go all out to capture their share of this developing market.
True. And SOE goes after those recurring charges and constant influx of cash as any good corporation would and should. But for some reason, they read "building customer loyalty" as "locking customers in by force and beating their self-esteem into the ground so they won't leave". TCG is a classic example. They finally provide things people have asked for for years, but in a way that requires additional recurring payments. We have what you want, but what you're paying ain't enough. DirecTV does the same thing with their NFL Sunday Ticket package. You can get all Sunday afternoon games for $250 for the season, minus blackouts and locals. But it's 2009... oh, you want that in HD? That'll be an extra $99 for the "Red Zone" package. I guess the difference is DirecTV has a monopoly on their product. SOE's got the monopoly on the Star Wars IP until a) the EMU is released, or b) SW:TOR is released.
Originally posted by Kylrathin But for some reason, they read "building customer loyalty" as "locking customers in by force and beating their self-esteem into the ground so they won't leave". TCG is a classic example. They finally provide things people have asked for for years, but in a way that requires additional recurring payments. We have what you want, but what you're paying ain't enough.
Most people recognize the name Sony and think of the huge multinational corporation. SOE is the division that really broke the 3D mmo market wide open over 10 years ago. It is pretty easy to look at soe and think they are this huge successful mmo company. So many games, so many titles, etc. The avarage player does not visit forums so would be unknown with SOE, it's mostly us hardcore players that take note of the company behind the game, but I geus you already knew that. And kinda always said that having so many games and being the "first" to put the name MMORPG on the map does make them the marketleaders in that area only. It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after. Sigil created Vanguard Saga of Heroes or was that what you meant?, SOE bought the game from them due the financial mess Sigil had made. EQ1/2 where both created by those who later took part of SOE, so not much difference there other then people like Smed now working for SOE instead of the company he and a few others build before they entered SOE. I will agree that the direction SOE took with their games is not the direction I wanted.
Most people recognize the name Sony and think of the huge multinational corporation. SOE is the division that really broke the 3D mmo market wide open over 10 years ago. It is pretty easy to look at soe and think they are this huge successful mmo company. So many games, so many titles, etc. The avarage player does not visit forums so would be unknown with SOE, it's mostly us hardcore players that take note of the company behind the game, but I geus you already knew that. And kinda always said that having so many games and being the "first" to put the name MMORPG on the map does make them the marketleaders in that area only. That may have been true for the last batch of MMO's and last Gen single player games but these days games are hyped in a similar way to movies with teasers, trailers and reveals ongoing from early development right up to release. Game devs and publishers now could almost be classed as minor celebs. The developers and the company they represent are at the forefront of these markeing campaigns and the negative press and word of mouth following they have..... follows them. ie: http://kotaku.com/5340127/some-super-screen-shots-of-dc-universe-online/gallery/ "The fact that SoE's involved doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. SWG anyone?"
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after.
Sigil created Vanguard Saga of Heroes or was that what you meant?, SOE bought the game from them due the financial mess Sigil had made. EQ1/2 where both created by those who later took part of SOE, so not much difference there other then people like Smed now working for SOE instead of the company he and a few others build before they entered SOE. I will agree that the direction SOE took with their games is not the direction I wanted.
Sorry I meant to say SOE bought out EQ from the Verant/989 team, but type sigil in my haste.
Basically Sony funded a studio to build a game they didn't think would amount to much. After it was already a run away success they started building SOE around that and eventually bought out the assets and things started going downhill from that moment.
ya at one point every fucking company decided to copy wow model ,every freaking company fell face first .i hope all those company learned their lesson and start reading some book there are ton of great book that could become game and their are so well described game maker dont even have to think they just have to do what written in the book
I agree its like they all want to follow the leader. You dont see nitch games being made now. SOE should have been happy a Sandbox game attracted 250k. Peaked at about 400k, but still had a steady population even after the CU, about 200-250k. Then they said to everyone that liked the game," Screw you we are going to copy WOW, and if you dont like it tuff we will attract people to replace you". And they still are going forward with a game no one wants to play. Whoever made the desicion to stick with the NGE is a total idiot.
It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after.
Sigil created Vanguard Saga of Heroes or was that what you meant?, SOE bought the game from them due the financial mess Sigil had made. EQ1/2 where both created by those who later took part of SOE, so not much difference there other then people like Smed now working for SOE instead of the company he and a few others build before they entered SOE. I will agree that the direction SOE took with their games is not the direction I wanted.
Sorry I meant to say SOE bought out EQ from the Verant/989 team, but type sigil in my haste.
Basically Sony funded a studio to build a game they didn't think would amount to much. After it was already a run away success they started building SOE around that and eventually bought out the assets and things started going downhill from that moment.
yep if it was verant/989 team that did that game they had one thing that not a lot of team today has.
a good idea!yes they might have needed help on doing it but good the idea behind it was genius
i had surprise today uo is expending on september 8 choice between old school graphic or ugraded version new race etc
that must have made lot of player very happy
eq1 is getting an expension soon i believe
most of those game play on almost anything lol .wich is a big plus. and content is top notch.
Alot of the ideas they have for making something into a game is only pretty on paper or existing number of fans.
Some of the ideas should have stayed where they were and not set foot into mmo industry. Why do I say this? It is because some stuff are better off viewed from an audience perspective, which is also where their charm rest. The audience's imagination is invoked by the said movie, novel, etc.
Turning something into a game becomes something to be experienced, and it works very differently than just take one idea and slap a system on it to call it a game. Lets take a small look at the example of the Matrix provided by the OP:
The Matrix is a good movie, it is a movie that develop on the concept of how human view reality and the possibly that what is in front of our eyes may not be the truth. This concept alone made the Matrix a very good at invoking the imaginations of the audience and made it entertaining. It also featured fast paced action and unreal events that excite the viewers.
However, when presented as games, for one reason or another it lost it's charm to some people. The Matrix as a game was not able to invoke imagination of audience as the movie was able to, and the original shock value of the concept of the Matrix is no longer there. This effectively turns it into a game based solely on action and combat, which we all know how much staying power that will have. There are plenty more different perspective about why the Matrix as a game did not take off even though the movie was widely popular. However, I'll stop here for sanity sake.
As for SOE being leader in the industry, I am not certain how much validity I want to put into that statement. Maybe financially it is very possible, but in other perspective I would take it with a grain of salt.
Comments
SWG uses negative publicity campaigns. Use what ya got. If there are predictable people, use them too. Smed's gonna shit when he gets our bill.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Again already been over this, try to read the other post that came after the one you keep bringing up please.
But since you like to ignore that I will re-post it here:
I gotta say I feel it was a mixed of both like you say and what I said. Keep in mind not all 1.2 mil. boxes sold where all dual boxers, allot left due to the things we could read on the forums, I will fully agree that it must have scared SOE seeing a only game known IP beating something with a IP of Star Wars.
Still wished SOE would have taken the CCP route, but then again we also know the engine would not survive that type of up-building of the game as we already knew the pre-cu engine was quite a mess, as we all remember 1 fix 3 things broken scenario, I'll also say that most of us who indeed where playing and enjoying knew something had to change, of course we never wanted the NGE as most of us just wanted them to fix the engine and not completely rework the game. There is also a part of me that can not blame SOE for wanting to have more subs towards a IP like Star Wars, of course there is also a part of me that does blame them for letting me taste what I felt was to be a true MMORPG that after pre-cu I never had the pleasure to get intoa MMORPG that I would call true MMORPG. I also know because I was there that SOE wanted to replace most of us who where enjoying the game with a larger player base, which is for anyone into business something logical, regardless how it turned out to backfire on them.
And also keep in mind I only speak what I feel, no where did I state it as fact, something some of you seem to have a terrible hard time in understanding just that.
Yes I understand it is your opinion and you do realize I am posting my opinion in response right? For example, when I asked if it really was your theory, I fully acknowledge that it is your thoughts that you are speaking of. Do I really need to use the word opinion to satisfy you?
As for what you quoted and what was posted after the original post I reference, it doesn't change or justify the ridiculousness of the original comment in the slightest. Adding some other reasons you think might have contributed doesn't really add validity to the original comment. It just tries to cover it up a bit.
The 1.2 million (1.5 million actually) number of boxes sold, I'm pretty sure that is made up of the base game and expansions. We know that SWG was bleeding a average of around 10k subs a month according to what Dan Rubenfeld posted. That isn't enough of a loss to account for 1-1.2 million subscriptions over 2 years if the population was around 200-250k just prior to the nge. Selling 1.5 million boxes of the base game over 2 years would average over 60k new subscriptions joining the game each month. At that average compared to only 10k leaving would mean that SWG was averaging a net gain of 50k subscriptions a month, which we know wasn't true.
I don't think there were as many former players as people think there were.
mm i keep seeing NGE linked with swg
could you stear me to an article that explain this deal nge-swg thing
i never saw this ,must have been bad everyone has been whining about swg since almost release lol
What exactly is soe the market leader of? Lets see:
Everquest: Yes 10 years ago soe was a market leader. There wasn't really anyone else in the market except origins and turbine, but soe was the undisputed leader. That was 10 years ago.
SWG: Soe was still leading the market, but they turned the biggest most profitable IP the world into the pinnacle of what not to do with an mmo. There is no arguing that soe has totally screwed up this game and drove away the vast majority of its players. It should be the flagship product soe brags about, but instead it is the embarrassment no one wants to acknowledge.
EQOA: Is a dead game and a failed effort to break into the console market. It sits around mostly unsupported.
EQMac: Is a dead game and a failed effort to break into the console market. It sits around mostly unsupported.
EQ2: Rushed to market and suffers to this very day by poor choices made in its design. This was soes best effort that can't be blamed on anyone else. They started merging servers within the first year of operation. This is obvisouly their biggest game and it is no bigger or smaller than several other games on the market right now. Some from indepenant developers.
Planetside: Dead game long ago abandoned by soe. Ruined by soes own hand with features that drove players away.
The Matrix: Bought by soe so they could aquire the DC license. Yes the game was pretty much dead when soe bought it, but by most accounts they further destroyed what little potential TMO had left by removing features and revamping systems.
Vanguard: Another game that was dead when they bought it. It was stripped of whatever quality resources it had from the moment they purchased it and was put on life support and as the lead developer said "left to fend for itself". Another case where soe made changes that drove away many players.
Just curious if you see the trend of soe making changes to their games that players neither want nor ask for that results in losses.
Free realms. This is your big claim of soe breaking new ground. It seems to me that they are following a trend here that was laid out by several other companies who already dominate the tween free to play market and have millions of customers. Not accounts, but customers. For all of soes efforts and claims of 5 millions players, they can not even fill up 1 server of this game and it wouldn't take much more than 1,000 players to pack a server with how little game space is available to play in.
So tell me, where is soe in a leadership position? It isn't from a standpoint of customers. Their latest effort is a complete dud that no one is going to emulate based on its rate of success, or should I say failure.
If you strip away everquest from their stable of games, what you are left with is a company that has a subscriber threshhold that can be measured in the tens of thousands spread across a number of mmos that all hand on the edge of being discontined. This is a company that is surviving based on their one big success over 10 years ago. Without everquest soe as an mmo game maker is a total failure and would be out of the market. That is not the sign of leadership.
Let me ask it this way. Say SOE was a sole corporation you could invest your retirement fund in and you had a good chunk invested in 2004 when soe had over a million subscription between all their games. How do you think your investment would be doing in 2009? Do you think the "market leader" would have grown your investment or do you think it would have crashed and burned due to soe losing the majority of their subscribers over the last several years?
Have new ideas that fail doesn't make anyone a leader. Having the most mmo titles doesn't make someone the leader when most of them are ready to be shut down. Ushering in game systems that drive your customers away is not something the rest of the market is going to look at as a leadership role.
This fits with my perception of SOE's "leadership" also, and your post is more comprehesive than mine. When I look at what SWG is a leader in, I think I see the following:
-pushing games live before they're ready
-introducing game-breaking revamps
-introducing game changing RMT loot to subscription based games
-introducing controversial pay real cash for only a random chance to win game changing loot to a subscription based game
-charging entry fees for Trading Card tournaments with a random chance of winning prizes and having them banned in a number of States as a result
-telling paying customers that they can expect certain things regarding the future of their games and then delivering the exact opposite: e.g. Smed being against RMT in Everquest, SWG expansion features that were deleted, promising profession revamps and then deleting the professions outright, saying that certain game systems are "here to stay" and then replacing them completely shortly thereafter etc. etc.
-alienating there own staff e.g. those leaving SOE and requesting transfers to other projects in light of one or more points above.
Is that really leadership? If so, it's in a very bad direction in my view. Despite all that someone like Wizardry might say, I don't see any of these points being contradicted.
No, the kind of leadership I'm looking for is:
-do your market research and set the direction of the game BEFORE it goes live, not after
-launch your game when it's not ass broke
-stick with one business model, and be up front with customers about it, don't keep changing it so that they pay more and more for less service
-don't tell people that the game is going in a particular direction when you either don't really have a clue where it's going, or worse yet, when you actually have plans to take it somewhere else--plans that you withhold from paying customers.
I think anyone who does this would be a leader in a positive sense. I also think they'd have successful, growing MMOs that get positive reviews from customers. Just for fun, I'm going to look at Blizzard and compare them to my list:
-did market research before the game, set its course and stuck with it? Check
-launch the game when it's not ass broke? Check
-stick with one business model and be up front about it? Check
-be honest with people about the direction of the game's development (e.g. don't tell them one thing and then do the opposite)? Check
Have a successful MMO that is growing and getting positive reviews? Well what do you know, check again. I'm not saying Blizzard is perfect, and I happen to dislike the graphic style in their game; but when it comes to positive leadership, they certainly come a lot closer to what I would expect to see.
P.S. I don't see pushing the envelope (in and of itself) as positive leadership. For example, the NGE certainly pushed the envelope, and SOE was proud of itself for being willing to take risks. Well, they pushed the envelope so far ethically that they ended up giving massive refunds to players who felt intentionally misled. Push the envelope? Oh yes, most definitely. Positive leadership? Lol, the lead designer decribed this move as an epoch grade catastrophe (that's a paraphrase to avoid profanity btw).
Just to add a point to the last few posts about the numbers of boxes sold. I played on Tarq. Like the makority of players on that server, I had 2 accounts. At 1 point towards the end, I had 3. My Guild leader had 4 accounts, my friends in other guilds all had 2 accounts. Since you could hcange a line in a file to allow multiple instances to run, it was common for us to ahve 1 toon buffing while playing the other. So most of the boxes sold were to single players.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley
www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2005/12/69816
That is a fairly decent review of what happened, but it doesn't cover all the important points of what happened.
In a nutshell SOE and Lucas Arts developed the NGE in secret from the players. They promised the first major revamp of the game [The Combat Upgrade] was not going away all the while they were planning to do a second massive revamp. This revamp was not aimed at retaining the current players, but aimed at attracting players from world of warcraft. SOE actively disposed of their current playerbase, because they thought they could increase subscribers to SWG by making it more wow like... aka "star warsy".
The amount of changes in the NGE were nothing short of drastic. Years worth of players efforts were destroyed. The best items in the game were rendered useless and in some cases unusable. You couldn't even equip much of the equipment you had prior to the changes. I really can't put words to just how massive the changes were nor how terribly unfinished it all was. From player achievements to game mechanics it was massive. Just for example all of the games 32 classes were removed and replaced with some stiched together amalgamation of what was left over in 9 classes. Some of the classes were removed entirely from the game with not even a remotely similar alternative offered.
It really bombed star wars galaxies back into the stone ages of development quality. SWG has always been a game that was poorly implemented, but the NGE wasn't even a playable game. The game currently still suffered massive performance issues as a result of the NGE changes.
That's a huge sweeping statement with no facts to back it up other than your own experiences, which in the grand scheme of things are irrelevent with regards to this debate. SWG shifted 1 million boxes by mid-late 2004 from memory. Retention rate bewteen box sales and ongoing subscriptions were terrible, I don't think anyone doubts that. The problem SOE had is that they misinterpreted the reason for that incredibly bad retention rate and attributed it to the game being "too hard" when in truth no matter how "hard" they think it was, inaccessable or whatever else, the truth is it was a buggy piece of shit.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/news/2005/12/69816
That is a fairly decent review of what happened, but it doesn't cover all the important points of what happened.
In a nutshell SOE and Lucas Arts developed the NGE in secret from the players. They promised the first major revamp of the game [The Combat Upgrade] was not going away all the while they were planning to do a second massive revamp. This revamp was not aimed at retaining the current players, but aimed at attracting players from world of warcraft. SOE actively disposed of their current playerbase, because they thought they could increase subscribers to SWG by making it more wow like... aka "star warsy".
The amount of changes in the NGE were nothing short of drastic. Years worth of players efforts were destroyed. The best items in the game were rendered useless and in some cases unusable. You couldn't even equip much of the equipment you had prior to the changes. I really can't put words to just how massive the changes were nor how terribly unfinished it all was. From player achievements to game mechanics it was massive. Just for example all of the games 32 classes were removed and replaced with some stiched together amalgamation of what was left over in 9 classes. Some of the classes were removed entirely from the game with not even a remotely similar alternative offered.
It really bombed star wars galaxies back into the stone ages of development quality. SWG has always been a game that was poorly implemented, but the NGE wasn't even a playable game. The game currently still suffered massive performance issues as a result of the NGE changes.
ty for link,men i dont understand it fully ,but basicly they took swg ,and made it just plain star wars
,lol even blizzard isnt cocky enough to play with the core design of wow lol
and hell they ll do cataclysm ,wich change the game by a lot ,but they wont change the core
hell soe would be better to just remoove nge from swg i dont believe it raised swg popularity
but then i could be wrong.
The NGE didn't increase the popularity of SWG. It actually drove away an estimated 200k players.
The NGE really embodies how SOE thinks. You can see smaller, but similar actions from soe in the way they develop their games and treat their customers.
ya at one point every fucking company decided to copy wow model ,every freaking company fell face first .i hope all those company learned their lesson and start reading some book there are ton of great book that could become game and their are so well described game maker dont even have to think they just have to do what written in the book
What really struck me is the ongoing press describing SOE as leaders in the industry, and how Smed still goes around speaking at conferences telling people how to run their MMOs lol. What was the name of his seminar, "How to ruin two of the most promising MMO IP's of all time? How to alienate your subscriber base? How to set your company up for layoffs? How to drive away your best talent? How to attempt to access people's wallets through their kids?" Does anyone go to these seminars? Do they actually listen to Smed and follow his example? If so, where does that leave them?
Most people recognize the name Sony and think of the huge multinational corporation. SOE is the division that really broke the 3D mmo market wide open over 10 years ago. It is pretty easy to look at soe and think they are this huge successful mmo company. So many games, so many titles, etc.
It isn't until someone really looks at their performance a bit closer that it shows how weak they are as a company. Outside of building upon the everquest title they bought out from the sigil [edit: verant/989 studio] team, soe has not really done much of significance. What they have done that was successful, they seem to destroy that not to long after.
Edit: brainfart fixed.
I don't think that's the case anymore, MS and Nintendo are kicking their arse in the console wars, Samsung and LG have taken huge market share from them in consumer electronics (Samsung actually make the LCD panels for a lot of the Sony range of displays now) so even the average consumer can see that Sony is faltering, without the need to do any prior investigation.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Ehm SOE had nothing whatsoever to do about Square Enix. You must be thinking about SCE. SOE didn't come under SCE supervision until very recently. SOE didn't do anything with the Final Fantasy games, that was SCE. Same about Crash Bandicoot. You are confusing Sony Online Entertainment that is solely making and publishing online games with SCE that is focused on mostly Playstation platforms. They really didn't interact much between those 2 divisions. You really need to make a tiny bit of research instead of just making stuff up.
True that Sony is facing very big competition across all of their products, but people will still recognize the Sony name.
The average person will not recognize NCSoft for example, but NCSoft is heads and tails ahead of SOE right now in just about every aspect.
I'm not really sure what makes people think SOE is an industry leader anymore. Everquest was over 10 years ago and the company has been on a downward slide the last 5 years that is unequalled by any other company I can think of.
That may be true about the average person not knowing NCSoft, but I think most MMO players will.
Gaming is HUGE $$$ and the MMO market is the future of gaming IMO. Recurring charges, constant influx of $, building customer loyalty...there's so much money BEYOND the $49 original purchase...developers would be fools to not go all out to capture their share of this developing market.
That may be true about the average person not knowing NCSoft, but I think most MMO players will.
Gaming is HUGE $$$ and the MMO market is the future of gaming IMO. Recurring charges, constant influx of $, building customer loyalty...there's so much money BEYOND the $49 original purchase...developers would be fools to not go all out to capture their share of this developing market.
True. And SOE goes after those recurring charges and constant influx of cash as any good corporation would and should. But for some reason, they read "building customer loyalty" as "locking customers in by force and beating their self-esteem into the ground so they won't leave". TCG is a classic example. They finally provide things people have asked for for years, but in a way that requires additional recurring payments. We have what you want, but what you're paying ain't enough. DirecTV does the same thing with their NFL Sunday Ticket package. You can get all Sunday afternoon games for $250 for the season, minus blackouts and locals. But it's 2009... oh, you want that in HD? That'll be an extra $99 for the "Red Zone" package. I guess the difference is DirecTV has a monopoly on their product. SOE's got the monopoly on the Star Wars IP until a) the EMU is released, or b) SW:TOR is released.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
Great observation!!!
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
Sorry I meant to say SOE bought out EQ from the Verant/989 team, but type sigil in my haste.
Basically Sony funded a studio to build a game they didn't think would amount to much. After it was already a run away success they started building SOE around that and eventually bought out the assets and things started going downhill from that moment.
I agree its like they all want to follow the leader. You dont see nitch games being made now. SOE should have been happy a Sandbox game attracted 250k. Peaked at about 400k, but still had a steady population even after the CU, about 200-250k. Then they said to everyone that liked the game," Screw you we are going to copy WOW, and if you dont like it tuff we will attract people to replace you". And they still are going forward with a game no one wants to play. Whoever made the desicion to stick with the NGE is a total idiot.
Sorry I meant to say SOE bought out EQ from the Verant/989 team, but type sigil in my haste.
Basically Sony funded a studio to build a game they didn't think would amount to much. After it was already a run away success they started building SOE around that and eventually bought out the assets and things started going downhill from that moment.
yep if it was verant/989 team that did that game they had one thing that not a lot of team today has.
a good idea!yes they might have needed help on doing it but good the idea behind it was genius
i had surprise today uo is expending on september 8 choice between old school graphic or ugraded version new race etc
that must have made lot of player very happy
eq1 is getting an expension soon i believe
most of those game play on almost anything lol .wich is a big plus. and content is top notch.
Alot of the ideas they have for making something into a game is only pretty on paper or existing number of fans.
Some of the ideas should have stayed where they were and not set foot into mmo industry. Why do I say this? It is because some stuff are better off viewed from an audience perspective, which is also where their charm rest. The audience's imagination is invoked by the said movie, novel, etc.
Turning something into a game becomes something to be experienced, and it works very differently than just take one idea and slap a system on it to call it a game. Lets take a small look at the example of the Matrix provided by the OP:
The Matrix is a good movie, it is a movie that develop on the concept of how human view reality and the possibly that what is in front of our eyes may not be the truth. This concept alone made the Matrix a very good at invoking the imaginations of the audience and made it entertaining. It also featured fast paced action and unreal events that excite the viewers.
However, when presented as games, for one reason or another it lost it's charm to some people. The Matrix as a game was not able to invoke imagination of audience as the movie was able to, and the original shock value of the concept of the Matrix is no longer there. This effectively turns it into a game based solely on action and combat, which we all know how much staying power that will have. There are plenty more different perspective about why the Matrix as a game did not take off even though the movie was widely popular. However, I'll stop here for sanity sake.
As for SOE being leader in the industry, I am not certain how much validity I want to put into that statement. Maybe financially it is very possible, but in other perspective I would take it with a grain of salt.