I have a question (and it's SWG related)

Comments

• kordrial Member Posts: 160

  February 2007

  Weeeeeell

  alright, in essence, the game when it fist came out, was more innovative than anything since UO. it was skill based, with 33 proffessions who were all interdependent, that you could mix and match, and was sandbox.

  It had flaws though, like lack of content, grindy playstyle, and quit a few bugs---in short it needed polishing, and more content. this lead to a slow decline of sub #'s.

  Now keep in mind, this was STAR WARS coupled with SoE (the king of MMO's at the time) and it was the opinion of all but the most cynical critics that the game would be industry shattering, Smed said he expected over a mil subs, it never toped 350k, and was slowly designing due to the flaws i've listed above.

  well hum dee dum, a few expantions later, the game is in serious decline, with a large publish completely reevamping the combat, morphing every combat class (this was the Combat Upgrade, or CU, and was known to drop subs, although SW still had a great population)

  the expansions grew more quest driven, and linear, straying away from the original sandbox-style game which attracted the original crowd.

  eventually, here comes Trials of Obi Wan (ToOW) which promised new weapons and skills for the classes, improvements etc. etc. and was highly anticipated.

  well a week after it was released, on November 15th, it was like SoE fucking sneak-attacked the entire population for a lethal blow, implementing the New Game Enhancements (NGE) which dropped the proffession # from 35 at that point, to 9.

  these 9 profs did not depended on each other, at all. and it's assumed by many people that Smed (SoE's president) shot for a wow-esk game, changing their games sub-genre midway through their air time.

  This led to a DRASTIC amount of people leaving the game, i really can't help you invision this, there were entire player built cities in the game, that are now ghost towns, and i don't mean like 10, or 20, i mean 100's of cities throughout the 20 servers.

  SoE has followed this "Bait and Switch" up with even more legal, however unethical business practices, including, but not limited to lying to their community, bringing back shreds of old content and calling it new, and exciting, gone through like 4 lead developers, etc. etc.

  it's an undescribable leap from good to bad to worse, and it just gets more depressing each day.

  so yes you can say the causes of it were gradual and over-arching, however, the actual death-blow was overnight
• acmtalk Member Posts: 405

  February 2007

  Originally posted by Zindaihas
  
  
  I never played SWG, although I was tempted to for awhile.  I wouldn't mind getting caught up in a great Sci-fi world and I love the original movie that spawned a multi-billion dollar industry.  But since I had been playing another game when it was released and my time and money are limited, I decided to pass on the game.
  So as someone who knows nothing about it, I have been curious about what apparently was some sort of transformation the game underwent.  Virtually every post I read related to the game laments how SOE turned what was a totally awesome game into a complete dud.  I've always been curious about it, but never questioned what happened.
  Until now.  For some reason, I finally decided I wanted to learn what caused SWG to go from being a beloved online world into one of ridicule and scorn.  At first, I was going to go to the SWG forum and try to find out from there, but that could take forever.  So I decided to just make a post about it and see if anyone out there was willing to explain it to me.
  Was it some sort of cataclysmic 9/11-type event that happened overnight or was it a gradual change that snuck up on gamers?  Why was it so cool once and suck so bad now?  If it's too long of an explanation, don't trouble yourselves, it's not that important.  I'm just wondering.
  Thanks
  

  They changed the entire game!  Basic SOE Tried to copy WOW, Same numbers of classes etc..,  The New Combat system IS the worse I ever seem in a mmorpg,  They tried some crap FPS thing, But the engine doesn't suport it,  There are More bugs(old ones, and new ones),  The game is empty

  
• Dartje Member Posts: 45

  February 2007

  I recently rejoined SWG after the NGE and i have to say that the only thing i really REALLY liked was the "Jump to lightspeed" expansion. I had alot of fun flying in space and collecting xp to gain better ships and mods.
  The rest of SWG feels pretty dead and i left after, i think, 2 months.
  
  I would say try it and if you like it stick with it. Mind you, the entertainer proffesion is next to useless.
• Zindaihas Member UncommonPosts: 3,662

  February 2007

  Ah, thanks for the info.  So it sounds like the devs tried to do some really innovative things with SWG and then reverted to the standard cookie cutter ideas in hopes of increasing subscriptions and it ended up backfiring on them.  Sad.

  
• Dinion Member Posts: 879

  February 2007

  Well short story is that it started out as a game that worked well for it's target audience, and then WoW was released, an in an attempt by SOE to attract the WoW masses and fill their pockets they completely ruined the game. They lost their previous audience and failed miserably in trying to steal WoW players, so now SWG is nothing :P.
  
  
  
  Honestly if they rerolled the entire game back to when it had only been out for 6 months it would make more money.

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  MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.

  MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.

  MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
• osc8r Member UncommonPosts: 688

  February 2007

  Originally posted by Dinion
  
  Well short story is that it started out as a game that worked well for it's target audience, and then WoW was released, an in an attempt by SOE to attract the WoW masses and fill their pockets they completely ruined the game. They lost their previous audience and failed miserably in trying to steal WoW players, so now SWG is nothing :P.
  
  
  
  Honestly if they rerolled the entire game back to when it had only been out for 6 months it would make more money.

  Agreed. Hell, i know i'd go back to it, especially if the only changes they made from then on was new content and BUG FIXES.
  
  
  
  Oh, and NO JEDI'S!
• kashaun Member Posts: 220

  February 2007

  I don't expect them to go back to classic, but I have all my favorite items and gear stored away just in case, especially my ship parts. That's how fun classic swg was for me. Sure it was sort of crusty, but coming home from work and rolling into our city to handle business was really addictive.

  I suppose if I had to sum up what the changes did to the game for my part: within a couple of months, myself and about 20 or more people who game together on other games quite a bit landed in swg. We had a couple of guilds, cities, businesses, and some goofy pets following us around. My red cu pa was named Bitey. Our city was built for pilots and shipwrights, and we'd crew our ships for awhile and then I'd go handle my mining business or stick it to the empire in one of the many daily battles which were player driven as was most of the content.

  Come NGE, out of all of those people, myself and one other remained, we had no reason to go into space, no demand for our resources, and our cities died out. All my friend and I had left to do were those expansion pack quests since no one interacted with each other anymore and we had no character to build since they were already built for us.

  So, that's simply how we ended up. I can't say if the game took a turn for the better or for the worse, but that's how our time there ended after the big changes.

  Never give up and never surrender!
• Dinion Member Posts: 879

  February 2007

  Originally posted by BadChef
  
  
  I don't expect them to go back to classic, but I have all my favorite items and gear stored away just in case, especially my ship parts. That's how fun classic swg was for me. Sure it was sort of crusty, but coming home from work and rolling into our city to handle business was really addictive.
  I suppose if I had to sum up what the changes did to the game for my part: within a couple of months, myself and about 20 or more people who game together on other games quite a bit landed in swg. We had a couple of guilds, cities, businesses, and some goofy pets following us around. My red cu pa was named Bitey. Our city was built for pilots and shipwrights, and we'd crew our ships for awhile and then I'd go handle my mining business or stick it to the empire in one of the many daily battles which were player driven as was most of the content.
  Come NGE, out of all of those people, myself and one other remained, we had no reason to go into space, no demand for our resources, and our cities died out. All my friend and I had left to do were those expansion pack quests since no one interacted with each other anymore and we had no character to build since they were already built for us.
  So, that's simply how we ended up. I can't say if the game took a turn for the better or for the worse, but that's how our time there ended after the big changes.
  

  I myself didn't stay long enough for the NGE, the CU was enough for me to quit... but just to hear this story and know that this is pretty much the same experience as every other SWG vet who went through the CU and NGE shows how much SOE really betrayed it's core playerbase in an attempt to fatten their wallets. It really does make me sick, playing an MMO is like an investment and SOE screwed it's investors. Excuse my immature language but I really want to smack the f*cktards who ran SWG into the ground. Morality aside, it was a horrible business decision as well.
  
  
  
  Honestly I'm not sure if SWG is even making enough money to really be worth continuing service for. Imagine though, the fallout from failing to keep an MMO based off the Star Wars franchise afloat, I mean damn that license is gold, it would kill their stock and investor confidence.  

  ----------------------------------
  MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.

  MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.

  MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.