Here is a great article about SWG from a developer who actually worked on it

http://rubenfield.com/?p=86

This might help to remove some of the rose colored glasses some have on.

Here is a great article about SWG from a developer who actually worked on it

 

http://rubenfield.com/?p=86

 

 

This might help to remove some of the rose colored glasses some have on.

You know they'll never let go.

I like to dig this webcomic up whenever this topic arises.

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/652

I like to dig this webcomic up whenever this topic arises.

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/652

You know they'll never let go.

There is nothing to let go if it hasn't existed since 2005.

FYI, Rubenfield was one of those douchebags that heavily pushed the NGE changes, and when the end result was the majority of the 150-200k players leaving with numerous criticisms, he didn't like it.

150k-200k subscribers was a very respectable number if you weren't WoW. Anybody that says otherwise for that timeframe of MMORPG gaming is a liar. SOE & Lucasarts wasn't content with that 150k-200k number. They enviously looked at WoW's growing numbers and implemented measures that gutted SWG from its original vision.

SOE's missteps to make the NGE were monumental. They completely altered the core game, removed entire segments of gameplay, added sparkle and glitter effects (there are no damn sparkles and glitter in Star Wars!), oversimplified the game, oversimplified even the great animations, entire professions removed, etc., all right when they JUST released the Trials Of Obi-Wan expansion pack. The NGE changes did all this and alot of aspects of that expansion pack were negated on the same day players bought the damn pack. People left in disgust. People were pleading in letters, emails, on the forums for a rollback. SOE & Lucasarts persisted. The twits were content with having current paying customers leave for the prospect of us being replaced by a rampaging horde coming from WoW. But WoW players already had the game they wanted, and the population losses for SWG were never replaced, even to the day of the game's shutdown in Dec 2011.

And some people wonder why SOE isn't reviled?

The NGE debacle caused by SOE was immense in the MMORPG gaming world. Hell, it even made the New York Times in 2005, definitely not a time when MMO's were being covered by such a periodical.

The game that alot of us fans were defending ceased to exist in Nov 2005, when the NGE took place. And old SWG vets like to kick SOE & Lucasarts as we pass by whenever the game comes up in a discussion. I've gone on and played different titles, different genres. But SOE deserves a good kick in the balls every time SWG comes up.

Words

All you did was vindicate my post.

Here is a great article about SWG from a developer who actually worked on it

 

http://rubenfield.com/?p=86

 

 

This might help to remove some of the rose colored glasses some have on.

I still like my rose colored glasses...LOL

I read it, and yeah. He's right. Had they gone ahead with the combat fix, left the other core systems alone, fixed their damn bugs, and added the same content that was added post NGE over the life of the game it probably would have done considerably better.

He's still flashing that brand of SOE hubris that doomed SWG from the start, meaning that as a developer he can say that he F--ed up all day long, but he's learned nothing from it.

It wasn't the core concept that was causing them to hemorrhage subs. It was the rampant bugs, lack of useful content, and missing features that caused it.

After reading that post, I have to ask the question. Is it wrong for me to feel some satisfaction that one of the SWG devs admits that he ****ed up? I mean I had a huge grudge against SOE and the SWG dev team since the CU and only intensified during the NGE. But now I feel vindicated after reading this. It is good to hear the dev admitting that they had screwed up a game that could have been at least decent.

I wouldn't say its wrong. I think he said best

‘If someone asks for pink fluffy bunnies, we give then bunnies done to the best of our abilities. You might hate bunnies, but you make the best bunnies you can possibly make. That is your job”

he knows what he did but it wasn't his choice really.

SOE has a hard time understanding the desires of their player base. They almost act as though they should be patted on the back in thanks just for releasing the game, but they do not realize that MMO's are living organisms embodied by the players that inhabit those game worlds. After the debacle of both SWG and The Matrix Online, I have abandoned any desire to play an SOE game thanks to the horrendous treatment of their players. From the responses from SOE you almost got the feeling like they were laughing at the upset players as though we were delusional to their higher understanding of game development and marketing prowess.

Bioware and Blizzard make larger strides to mold and shape their games based on their players, and while they might not always hit the mark and can get burnt by their communities sometimes, they do still recognize and react in a more capable way than SOE ever has.

There is nothing to let go if it hasn't existed since 2005.

 

FYI, Rubenfield was one of those douchebags that heavily pushed the NGE changes, and when the end result was the majority of the 150-200k players leaving with numerous criticisms, he didn't like it.

 

150k-200k subscribers was a very respectable number if you weren't WoW. Anybody that says otherwise for that timeframe of MMORPG gaming is a liar. SOE & Lucasarts wasn't content with that 150k-200k number. They enviously looked at WoW's growing numbers and implemented measures that gutted SWG from its original vision.

 

SOE's missteps to make the NGE were monumental. They completely altered the core game, removed entire segments of gameplay, added sparkle and glitter effects (there are no damn sparkles and glitter in Star Wars!), oversimplified the game, oversimplified even the great animations, entire professions removed, etc., all right when they JUST released the Trials Of Obi-Wan expansion pack. The NGE changes did all this and alot of aspects of that expansion pack were negated on the same day players bought the damn pack. People left in disgust. People were pleading in letters, emails, on the forums for a rollback. SOE & Lucasarts persisted. The twits were content with having current paying customers leave for the prospect of us being replaced by a rampaging horde coming from WoW. But WoW players already had the game they wanted, and the population losses for SWG were never replaced, even to the day of the game's shutdown in Dec 2011.

 

And some people wonder why SOE isn't reviled?

 

The NGE debacle caused by SOE was immense in the MMORPG gaming world. Hell, it even made the New York Times in 2005, definitely not a time when MMO's were being covered by such a periodical.

 

The game that alot of us fans were defending ceased to exist in Nov 2005, when the NGE took place. And old SWG vets like to kick SOE & Lucasarts as we pass by whenever the game comes up in a discussion. I've gone on and played different titles, different genres. But SOE deserves a good kick in the balls every time SWG comes up.

FYI, SOE didn't come up with the CU or NGE, that was all Lucasarts. SOE only had the misfortune of having to implement them. So, you should really learn where to place your anger.

When it comes to the Star Wars License, the developer has barely more creative control than we do.

This might help to remove some of the rose colored glasses some have on.

The rose tinted glasses are being worn by the people who genuinely enjoyed the SWG experience pre-NGE, even with the problems the game had.

* There are no (or at least very few) plot-based missions to generate PvE? It is a sandbox, it is up to me to create my own story and define my own plot. The game can either try and tell me the story of a character or it can put me down in the middle of Mos Eisley and let me be the author of my own tale. Call me a masochist, but I know that I prefer to be the one with the pen in my hand instead of being led around like a prize bull in a show ring.

* The PvP combat sucked. Very true - coming from a long-time Planetside subscription, where you are basically playing a MMOFPS, the PvP combat in Galaxies sucked. But in my opinion, the PvP element in every MMORPG, including WoW, EQ/EQ2, SWTOR, Vanguard, Rift, Aion and every other title I can remember trying sucked.

* The graphics are awful. Granted they look sub-par now and they were between "just about average" and "pretty good but not earth-shattering" depending on your settings, at the time of release. But they did the job. Star Wars is not a Manga/Chibi/Pokemon-style universe with bright saturated colours and cute stuff all over the place. The graphics did a pretty good job of conveying the desolation of Tatooine and the lushness of Naboo without requiring a beast of a graphics card to maintain a decent frame rate.

* The game was losing subscribers. At the time (2005-09) I was interested in SWG, I was mostly living in the UK, spending some time in Europe and with regular visits to the US. Not once on any trip anywhere did I see any advertising for SWG. At the same time, I saw several ads on billboards, in magazines, on TV and on the web for WoW. There is a thing called "Marketing and Advertising", and apparently SoE/Lucasarts forgot about it. People will leave your game, that is a fact of life. Your subscriber base grows if you pull in enough players to exceed the leavers, or shrinks if you do not. The marketing term for it is, I believe, "churn".

* Crafting was too complex/time consuming. Crafting in SWG was a labor of love - yes, it took an obscenely long time to achieve the "Master" title in a crafting profession, and crafting became a full time task in the game if you really got into it. But for those that did so, persevering and mastering their professions and taking the time to become expert and hunting down the best resources, the rewards were high. Those players drove the economy in the game, amassing huge fortunes in the process and making a name for themselves, but they worked damned hard to get there.

* The Jedi grind in the village was ridiculously hard. Sorry, but in the Star Wars universe the path of a Jedi was not easy, requiring immense dedication, patience and commitment. At the time in which SWG was set, the Jedi religion was almost wiped out so there were not supposed to me many Jedi around. The village was an honest attempt at introducing that concept of difficulty and creating a barrier to entry for those who wanted things handed to them.

Pre-NGE, the game had problems. I do not think anyone denies that. But SOE/Lucasarts took the game that we were playing and replaced it with another one under the same name - that is the scale of changes that they made to the game. Changes were required - new content, profession balance (difficult with the pre-NGE profession system), bug fixes, and more subscribers. But post-NGE, we had very little of the old content, not much replacing it (granted, content was added afterwards, and most of the existing player base completely missed the new starting quest arc that took new characters to Tansarii Point Station and led them through the first 40 or so levels out of 80), different bugs replacing old ones and the same kind of linear leveling experience that we have in SWTOR, WoW and other MMORPGs, just without the customisation dimension of skill trees.

FYI, SOE didn't come up with the CU or NGE, that was all Lucasarts. SOE only had the misfortune of having to implement them. So, you should really learn where to place your anger.

 

When it comes to the Star Wars License, the developer has barely more creative control than we do.

Who "pulled the trigger" and implemented the changes? SOE. Trust me when I say Lucasarts has been an utterly worthless game company since The Phantom Menace movie (and retarded game) came out in 1998. I hold them in low regard and they've fallen very far from the glorious days they had in the 1990s. But SOE designed, implemented the changes, and when the changes clearly drove the majority away, refused to rollback.

They knew they were implementing changes that their then-current playerbase would be completely against, yet they made such changes in an effort to nibble off of that WoW-Pie Playerbase. They designed and implemented the changes without even telling the community what was coming down. The only warning you got was when the "Trials Of Obi-Wan" expansion came out. Naturally you downloaded a large update also. But once you logged in, the game was completely changed in every meaningful way in terms of gameplay. Entire segments of gaming and professions... GONE! Without warning!

Those morons implemented changes that took away huge portions of gaming from literally just released "Trials of Obi-Wan" expansion pack.

SOE are like the idiots causing a breach in the hull of a seagoing ship, realizing what they've done wrong, and refusing to fix and undo what they did to save the ship.

They're idiotic twits, plain and simple.

Who "pulled the trigger" and implemented the changes? SOE. Trust me when I say Lucasarts has been an utterly worthless game company since The Phantom Menace movie (and retarded game) came out in 1998. I hold them in low regard and they've fallen very far from the glorious days they had in the 1990s. But SOE designed, implemented the changes, and when the changes clearly drove the majority away, refused to rollback.

 

They knew they were implementing changes that their then-current playerbase would be completely against, yet they made such changes in an effort to nibble off of that WoW-Pie Playerbase. They designed and implemented the changes without even telling the community what was coming down. The only warning you got was when the "Trials Of Obi-Wan" expansion came out. Naturally you downloaded a large update also. But once you logged in, the game was completely changed in every meaningful way in terms of gameplay. Entire segments of gaming and professions... GONE! Without warning!

 

Those morons implemented changes that took away huge portions of gaming from literally just released "Trials of Obi-Wan" expansion pack.

 

SOE are like the idiots causing a breach in the hull of a seagoing ship, realizing what they've done wrong, and refusing to fix and undo what they did to save the ship.

 

They're idiotic twits, plain and simple.

What part of they didn't have a choice did you not understand? Lucasarts told them what changes to make and that was final. Basically, a developer goes to Lucasarts to get permission to make the game Lucasarts wants, not the game the developer wants. The developer comes up with an idea, Lucasarts tells them how they are allowed to implement it. Clone Wars Adventures is a Hub for Mini-Games because Lucasarts decided it was not allowed to be an MMORPG. The CU was implemented because Lucasarts decided the game should have less of a learning curve. The NGE was implemented because Lucasarts decided the kids who started playing the game should have a chance to be a Jedi too.

What part of they didn't have a choice did you not understand? Lucasarts told them what changes to make and that was final. Basically, a developer goes to Lucasarts to get permission to make the game Lucasarts wants, not the game the developer wants. The developer comes up with an idea, Lucasarts tells them how they are allowed to implement it. Clone Wars Adventures is a Hub for Mini-Games because Lucasarts decided it was not allowed to be an MMORPG. The CU was implemented because Lucasarts decided the game should have less of a learning curve. The NGE was implemented because Lucasarts decided the kids who started playing the game should have a chance to be a Jedi too.

it doesn't matter if LA made SOE make the changes the fact the game was bleeding subs at a rate of 10k a month is proof it was a failure. If they hadn't made the changes the game would have been empty.

btw LA didn't decide that CWA was to be a hub for mini games that was in the contract with SOE. They couldn't make a competing MMO Same reason why Atari was sued by Turbine because Atari licensed the rights to a D&D MMO to Turbine and then Atari tried to make a new one.

But even at it's peak ie the first 2 months after Launch for SWG it never reached numbers that Sony or Lucasarts were happy with.

If you dont like something play something else. Many people liked SWG, many people didn't....I can wager most people never even played it but talk bad about it because they want to fit in with the other haters.

Your opinion on why you disliked a game that has been shut down is a waste of internet space.

Share your blog link with someone else...like nobody and just move on.

I like to dig this webcomic up whenever this topic arises.

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/652

Its kind of like now, with TOR...but with BW taking the communitie's thoughts into consideration. SO that when what happened to SWG happens to TOR, it won't just be the developers fault..it will also be the communitie's.

Honestly tho, the game was better before the NGE no matter how many whiners there were during launch. The NGE broke the damn game. Without question. Combat was nice...but the overall game(classes, quests, etc) were broken. They had taken a whole new format, and literally plopped it right down on top of the old one. You can't remake a game on top of the exsisting format. You have to start from scratch. They learned that the hard way.

I read a lot of half-assed excuses that are trying not to sound like a developer making excuses. His big improvement to response time required players to develop specialized code for it to work so that the game played the way they envisioned it, so not exactly a solid improvement lol.

The NGE was a disaster, and even with the loss of subs monthly it was not as bad as losing the majority of your 200k regular customers in one shot.

it doesn't matter if LA made SOE make the changes the fact the game was bleeding subs at a rate of 10k a month is proof it was a failure. If they hadn't made the changes the game would have been empty.

 

btw LA didn't decide that CWA was to be a hub for mini games that was in the contract with SOE. They couldn't make a competing MMO Same reason why Atari was sued by Turbine because Atari licensed the rights to a D&D MMO to Turbine and then Atari tried to make a new one.

 

But even at it's peak ie the first 2 months after Launch for SWG it never reached numbers that Sony or Lucasarts were happy with.

My point is that people should direct their anger towards the correct source of their displeasure. I have not spoken a word about the state of the game. I have been speaking the entire time about whose decision it was to implement the CU and NGE. SOE may have implemented them, it was neither their decision nor their wish to do so. I'm a firm believer that anger aimed at the wrong target is both pointless and and only causes conflict where none need be present.

Did I say Lucasarts decided that Clone Wars Adventures was to be a Hub for Mini-Games? No. I said they decided it was not allowed to be an MMORPG.

I would suggest reading for comprehension before trying to disprove a person's point.