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Seriously, though, since MMOs are owned by so many different companies, having one subscription to all of them is quite unlikely to happen. EVER.

Whether or not Station Access originally covered SWG is irrelevant, as the conversation is about how SWG is doing now.

Old news - the technology's called LocationFree, the LocationFree player was already included in PSP firmware 2.5, as was already reported here, with the PS3 as PVR story repeated too many times to even bother pointing you there.

I want to start playing Planetside, as I've tried it at a few friends' places and I enjoyed it. Should I go for it now, or should I wait for this free grunt program thing mid-month to try it out?

The game is so cheap... $19.99... and it comes with one free month which is worth $13 or so, so you're going to pay an extra $7 over one month's subscription to try it out. After that, you can cancel or just play the free account for 12 months.

I say buy it. It's great. You'll want to get in early to get the jump on all the free account guys who are going to join soon. They'll be like free EXP for the first month or so.

Here's a fan made trailer.

The SWG community has been waiting for a mythical "Producer's Letter" since last November, fabled to detail the roadmap and plan for the game over the next few months.

It was promised for 'January'.

Needless to say, it still hasn't been posted, and a thread enquiring about it reveals the following exciting information:

* The Community Relations chump has been off work sick today.
* The Producer has mysteriously been out of town today.

All this despite having several months to write the damn thing.

What next? The dog ate it?

Not Good Enough, Sony. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Or a rootkit.

The Aurora (which is the VS Deliverer variant) developed a bug in a new release in which the gunner could fire the entire 12-shot clip of ammo in one concentrated blast. It was apparently triggered by clicking the left mouse button in a certain manner or sequence.

The VS quickly learned how to use it on the Emerald server. Suddenly, Aurora's were everywhere and they were devastating to all kinds of enemy armor. One blast could nearly destroy a medium battle tank (the Vanguard or Prowler), and all it took were a few more shots from someone else to finish it off.

I don't remember all the details, but the problem was reportedly identified during the beta test of that release, but that didn't stop it from being deployed. And it took it a long time to be fixed.

You can find one reference to it in this thread: Devs, whats the official story (again?) on the Aurora 12-shot "Bug" (Feature?). You might be able to find more on it by searching the forums.

oh and here's a link to the full article
http://planetside.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm ?id=67013&section=News&month=current

Having played online games and posted in a few forums, it's clear that most people actually care about others. Usually online communities seem to be pretty closely knit groups of people, otherwise you wouldn't log on to them--kind of makes sense.

If this young man committed suicide, he obviously needed a close group of friends which would explain why he would log onto the forums. Perhaps he was looking for someone to talk him out of it and he couldn't find anybody anywhere else? After RTFA, seems like he was a daily poster on the forum.

There's also cases of people dying in real life and the community coming together to remember them. I'm reminded of Luckky Johnson on the Scylla server of Star Wars Galaxies. She battled a serious illness in real life and her character (that was logged on at all times) was suddenly never on anymore.

I Suppose this is just another effect of social networks based on computer networks through the abstracted level of the internet. Will it ever be "ok" to be concerned about guildmates or people you play online with? Right now, everyone seems to treat "meeting online" as a social stigma ...

It's suggested that the thing can read PDFs this time

I would hope that this is a technology-simplifying, cost-saving measure -- since it's easier to make a product that will display only one format -- rather than a DRM measure, but I have my doubts.

On the product page, they write that it can hold 80 books (approx size per book 800kb), so I suppose it's 64MB internal memory storage. But you can always extend it using MemoryStick or SD card (i suppose it has MS and SD slots). So this way you can easily extend it to some GBs :-)

Don't buy anything with DRM, ever. We are the customers, they should supply what we demand. Don't ever ever comply, whoever is pushing the DRM, DRM, DRM or DRM.

Just an FYI, but this is the link to TH's confirmation. Not sure why it didn't work from my blog entry, but it should now.

The technology is coming soon. E-ink is a perfect solution once production costs drop. It uses no backlight, looks like it's on paper and only uses electricity when it needs to change the text. As long as the text is static, no power is consumed. I believe Sony actually presented something at CES just recently. Here it is, the Sony Reader. Unfortunately, it's still a little bulky, about the size of a small paperback.

According to Sony's website, it will read PDFs and other files (presumably including plain text), but you need to convert them to the Reader's own file format "using supplied software".

But apparently Sony have not confirmed whether a Mac version of the conversion software will be available. And I'm guessing that Linux users certainly need not apply. *sigh*

From Sony's website

I think i need this line for the lameness filter

Well, as the summary above indicates this reader uses E-Ink technology which makes the display very easy to read. Also, the power consumption is fairly low so reading several books on a single charge is possible.

Sony has more info on the device on their website:

http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/reader_feature s.html

More than books
Books are just the beginning for the Sony Reader. It also displays Adobe PDFs, personal documents, blogs, newsfeeds, and JPEGs with the same amazing readability, so you can take your favorite blogs and online newspapers with you. It even plays audio files.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but the Sony site:

http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/reader_feature s.html

Has much more info on the unit. Plays MP3s, does do other document formats including html, ASCII, shows pics, etc.

Oh dear, I'll probably have to turn apostate and get one of these. Or maybe wait until someone besides Sony makes something comparable.

It's claimed to offer a display "almost as sharp as paper", and perhaps it does, but in all the photos I've seen the contrast ratio doesn't look nearly as good as paper (even comparing to cheap paperbacks or newsprint).

Maybe the photos are just bad. Sony's own photos look much better, though they're probably retouched.

Take a look at the Sony PCS-1 video conferencing settop unit. It is the low-end of the stand alone business class models, and it has multicast and other high-end capabilities. You can get a PCS-1 for about $3500 from a videoconferencing reseller.

New York, NY - December 22, 2005 -- Sony Corporation of America announced today that Tim Schaaff has been appointed to the newly-created position of Senior Vice President of Software Development, effective immediately. Mr. Schaaff reports to Keiji Kimura, EVP and Officer in Charge of Technology Strategy of Sony Corporation.

http://www.sony.com/SCA/press/051222.shtml

Hmm someone get fired?

For instance, there's several things I saw in his responses that bugged me.

Well, first of all I would have to say that in Asia, the subscription model is definitely, by far, the number one model. Revenue wise, it's about 75 percent of the market. Look at World of Warcraft, Legend of Mir, Legend of MU...all are very high-priced subscriptions, by the way.

I don't know about in Asia, but in the US, the subscription prices for Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest II, and World of Warcraft are all about the same. So, why aren't they listed there, too?

With EverQuest 1, we learned an important lesson. We put it out in Korea and it didn't do very well. Why? Because it wasn't a Korean game. And we didn't make any effort whatsoever, beyond basic translation, to make it adaptable to that market.

Take something simple: for example, mouse control. When you're playing in a PC Bang, there are people that want to play with one hand--holding a cigarette in one hand and controlling the mouse in the other. They want to play the entire game that way; touching the keyboard rarely.

Obviously, you haven't learned it as well as you thought. SWG used to be close to one hand playable, but you removed the "hold right mouse button to run" feature from SWG in the NGE upgrade. That means, you can turn and shoot with one hand, but you can't actually move.

WoW, on the other hand, lets me:

1. Turn the camera by holding down the left mouse button.
2. Turn my character by holding down the right mouse button.
3. Move forward by holding down both mouse buttons.
4. Click targets and buttons when no mouse buttons are held down.
5. Click group member portraits to target them.
6. Click the icons in the lower right to open up different parts of the interface.

With the exception of chat and logging in, there's nothing I can't do using just the mouse. That's something I don't remember being able to do in SWG or EQ2, both of which came out after EQ1. SWG's switching cursor modes made this particularly impossible.

Now, having commented on John's comments above, I also have to say this: Word of mouth is a powerful thing. I know 10 people that myself and my brother convinced to buy World of Warcraft, after we played it in Open Beta. These people closed their various Everquest, Everquest 2, and City of Heroes accounts to play WoW.

SWG, on the other hand, is getting disrecommended by people, because, quite frankly, you ruined the experience for them.

While we're on the subject of ruining SWG, Julio Torres, SWG's Producer at LucasArts, said

After receiving feedback from members of the community, conducting extensive focus tests, and evaluating the combat systems of other games in the genre, we are confident this new fast-action combat truly delivers what players, fans, and gamers have come to expect from a Star Wars experience.

This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Your changes blind-sided everyone, even your own Player Correspondants, who are your main "focus group," and the people who you "officially" asked for opinions on fixing the game. They're the people you should be listening to. They're the people who, the day that the NGE was unveiled, said "we didn't know about this in advance." (I can't find the exact quote, as the NGE boards are hidden on the SWG Forums.)

In fact, you willfully withheld information from them and the community about the changes that you were about to make to the game, until the very day the changes went up on the test servers, the day after you shipped pre-orders for the latest expansion, even advertising things like this:

Will we be getting tamable (creatu

For instance, there's several things I saw in his responses that bugged me.

Well, first of all I would have to say that in Asia, the subscription model is definitely, by far, the number one model. Revenue wise, it's about 75 percent of the market. Look at World of Warcraft, Legend of Mir, Legend of MU...all are very high-priced subscriptions, by the way.

I don't know about in Asia, but in the US, the subscription prices for Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest II, and World of Warcraft are all about the same. So, why aren't they listed there, too?

With EverQuest 1, we learned an important lesson. We put it out in Korea and it didn't do very well. Why? Because it wasn't a Korean game. And we didn't make any effort whatsoever, beyond basic translation, to make it adaptable to that market.

Take something simple: for example, mouse control. When you're playing in a PC Bang, there are people that want to play with one hand--holding a cigarette in one hand and controlling the mouse in the other. They want to play the entire game that way; touching the keyboard rarely.

Obviously, you haven't learned it as well as you thought. SWG used to be close to one hand playable, but you removed the "hold right mouse button to run" feature from SWG in the NGE upgrade. That means, you can turn and shoot with one hand, but you can't actually move.

WoW, on the other hand, lets me:

1. Turn the camera by holding down the left mouse button.
2. Turn my character by holding down the right mouse button.
3. Move forward by holding down both mouse buttons.
4. Click targets and buttons when no mouse buttons are held down.
5. Click group member portraits to target them.
6. Click the icons in the lower right to open up different parts of the interface.

With the exception of chat and logging in, there's nothing I can't do using just the mouse. That's something I don't remember being able to do in SWG or EQ2, both of which came out after EQ1. SWG's switching cursor modes made this particularly impossible.

Now, having commented on John's comments above, I also have to say this: Word of mouth is a powerful thing. I know 10 people that myself and my brother convinced to buy World of Warcraft, after we played it in Open Beta. These people closed their various Everquest, Everquest 2, and City of Heroes accounts to play WoW.

SWG, on the other hand, is getting disrecommended by people, because, quite frankly, you ruined the experience for them.

While we're on the subject of ruining SWG, Julio Torres, SWG's Producer at LucasArts, said

After receiving feedback from members of the community, conducting extensive focus tests, and evaluating the combat systems of other games in the genre, we are confident this new fast-action combat truly delivers what players, fans, and gamers have come to expect from a Star Wars experience.

This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Your changes blind-sided everyone, even your own Player Correspondants, who are your main "focus group," and the people who you "officially" asked for opinions on fixing the game. They're the people you should be listening to. They're the people who, the day that the NGE was unveiled, said "we didn't know about this in advance." (I can't find the exact quote, as the NGE boards are hidden on the SWG Forums.)

In fact, you willfully withheld information from them and the community about the changes that you were about to make to the game, until the very day the changes went up on the test servers, the day after you shipped pre-orders for the latest expansion, even advertising things like this:

Will we be getting tamable (creatu

The big, bad, evil Sony has something like that. And it even streams TV to those useless PSPs everyone seems to hate. Apparently, you can change the channel, and stream TV from anyone (not just your own device).

Well... they can be. I hear that the redesigned Tabula Rasa may be a shoot 'em up as well.

For a guy who claims to have answered questions on the SWG forums. Here sure dose a good job consolidating his answers.

Total of 5 posts.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/view_profile?us er.id=308531

According to this unbiased site the PSP is owning.

We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else. We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good reasons.

That's the nature of humanity: eat or be eaten; kill or be killed; Darwinistic law-of-the-jungle; some days you're the statue, some days you're the bird. The only question is, how do we minimize the effect of that nature?

By keeping organizations small and competitive. Small, local governments (or barring that, state-level governments) doing most of the governing, and competing against other small, local governments for your citizenship and tax dollars. Small businesses (or barring that, at least several larger, non-colluding businesses) doing most of the bus

Right, because no other company can compete with Microsoft in the console market.

What do I mean? Simple - even if some Linux systems could be infected with DRM, those systems are only one instance of software running on top of a Linux kernel. A kernel with different a different configuration might not be infectable. The same kernel but with a different userland might not be infectable. Unless Linus embeds a code-executing virtual machine (like a JVM or Parrot) inside the kernel, the same kernel + userland running on a different CPU might not be infectable.

There are just too many variables at play. If Red Hat could be infected with DRM, then switch to Ubuntu. If Ubuntu falls, try Debian on a PowerPC. You get the idea.

What do I mean? Simple - even if some Linux systems could be infected with DRM, those systems are only one instance of software running on top of a Linux kernel. A kernel with different a different configuration might not be infectable. The same kernel but with a different userland might not be infectable. Unless Linus embeds a code-executing virtual machine (like a JVM or Parrot) inside the kernel, the same kernel + userland running on a different CPU might not be infectable.

There are just too many variables at play. If Red Hat could be infected with DRM, then switch to Ubuntu. If Ubuntu falls, try Debian on a PowerPC. You get the idea.

If the SWG forums are any indication how the upgrade is going, it looks like SWG will be completely dead in 2 months tops:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board?board.id= swggpdiscussion

There was an online poll at swg.stratics.com, which was heavily skewed against the NGE.

This Thread on the official forums contains the efforts of SOE CSR Raijin to first debunk the authenticity of the poll, and then subsequently admit to spamming the vote in order to further his employee's agenda.

This is a shameful breach of ethics, but how can we expect a Sony employee to possess any, given their history of Astroturfing is on the record.

Never trust a single word a Sony Employee says. And never pay them a single cent more.

That's nothing.

There's evidence of grass consumption by various species of dinosaurs in north america. I'm not sure they eat it, though.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=swggpdiscussion&message.id=25107&view=by_d ate_ascending&page=1

Sony Online Entertainment Community Relations employee admits to spamming online votes in order to place SOE games in a better light.

In the live version, none of those bugs are present and it just works very well.

You have got to be kidding me. If it works so well, how come there are 55 pages of comments in the "issues" thread alone??? -- check it out.

You must be some kind of SOE apologist. And for the record, I have 2 toons on TC (TC2 and TC5) -- I cannot tell the difference between the "live" game and testcenter.

why do the forums at http://forums.station.sony.com/swg report a "server error" when you try to read them on Mozilla (with or without Javascript, with or without cookies), but work fine on IE?

Because Mozilla sucks, Star Wars sucks and you suck. IE rules and you just need to face facts, cry baby. Have a nice day.

You guys at SOE allergic to HTML or something?

For another interesting experience, why do the forums at http://forums.station.sony.com/swg report a "server error" when you try to read them on Mozilla (with or without Javascript, with or without cookies), but work fine on IE?

Don't forget the stories online about the Playstation 3 being infected with DRM worse than what they tried with their music.

The Customers who play Starwars online are outraged, more so by this than the last major overhaul of the game (CU or Combat Upgrade). The Major Upgrade was announced just days after the next expansion for Starwars Online came out (Trials of Obiwon).
THe next upgrade turns the MMORPG into a FPS style play, it removes 26 classes from the game, dramtically alters the GUI, while further removing the already limited content in the game. Under the current system players are given a choice on what they can do and learn, and skills are spread out over multiple classes / templates. This gives each player the choice of being within the scope of the game, someone unique, as there are multiple possible skill combonations. THis goes away on the 15th with the NGE.

For those of you ever concidering playing Star Wars online. I wouldnt suggest it. Go buy a copy of Knights of the Old Republic, as that is exactly the same style boring limited game you will be playing, save for Knights of the Old Republic had a plot and a clear definate time line where Star Wars Online has no definate time line, the quests are all "fetch the stick" still quests of doing either, Go here and bring back this, or Go here and kill someone. You add to it the lack of content (no , you can not go to Corrisant, you cant go to Hoth, there is no Deggoba System,No Bespine, and Jedi are less powerful than your average stormtrooper)

You add to it Star Wars Online does not respond or care about its fan base, has horrible customer service , In fact they closed their customer service line. You will be disapointed in your experience with Star Wars Online

This post here has at this time of writting just under 2000 responses, almost all of which do not agree with the NGE
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=nge_discussion&message.id=1101

Actually, I use a Vaio, so it actually is their computer. I feel _so_ f*cking pwned right now.

I was going to buy a PlayStation 3, but I'm afraid the games will come infected with DRM like the sony music discs. I can't run the risk of a company telling me I can only play the games I bought on the console in my house a set number of times before the disc expires. Even worse would be if the PS3 left my home stereo system infected with DRM.

So, I guess I better start getting excited about the new nintendo console.

Sony won't stop until every last machine is Infected with DRM

Sony music wants your machine infected with DRM
Sony corporate wants your machine infected with DRM
I won't buy a playstation because I'm afraid it will leave my stereo equipment Infected with DRM

infected with DRM

infected wtih DRM

infected wtih DRM

infected wtih DRM

not to mention infected with flash

infected with DRM

infected wtih DRM

infected wtih DRM

infected wtih DRM

not to mention infected with flash

By looking at your forums it's obvious there is much more interest in the Jedi profession than any other: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg?category.id=nge _testing_boards

The number of posts in each profession category shows the Jedi interest to be 10-20x that of other profession in most cases. Does it concern you at all that most of your subscribers will create new Jedi and that's all you will see in the game? Based on the link above this doesn't seem unreasonable does it? Is this why you recently announced a second character slot per server for all subscribers? So at least people would create other professions?

/end of question

I would just like to say how stupid an idea I think this is personally. Thank god I ebayed my Jedi. If I hadn't already, I would be trying, but of course it would be worthless.

I see this move as the equivalent of firing all the management from a business. It only happens when things get really bleak. It's a last ditch effort to stem the hemmoraging but comes with a lot of negative side-effects. Obviously, you do not have any alternatve to save the game.

I see you having two types of subscribers at this point:

1. The veterans who hung around because they liked the game the way it was.
2. New subscribers reached through the tireless efforts of the LucasArts marketing machine.

Seems to me your probably getting a very good influx of group #2. Unfortunately they aren't sticking around very long. You don't have enough of group #1 even left to care about angering them all into quitting. So you have nothing to stop you from doing anything to make the game more fun for group #2.

Good luck, though I doubt it will work. Especially since the general tone on the forums is that your new combat system is more awkward than the last.

Do you feel you have any obligation to reimburse the veteran players who payed the premium prices ($30) for each of these expansions when they were first announced (many times before they were even released)? Either monetarily or through in-game items?

They already have

It's not a direct "Oh, you paid full for X expansion so you get Y item now it's bundled" but the fact that you were playing back then, and thus likely bought the full price expansion, means you've been rewarded every three months since with things a new player who buys the bundle doesn't get.

When you buy a $400 iPod and, two years on, $400 will buy you one with twice the capacity, a color screen and video, does Apple reimburse you because newer purchasers get a better deal? Of course not. They don't even give you a free song or album each month as a "veteran reward" program.

Do you get a refund on your old 32mb Compact Flash card that you paid $100 for now that they're bundled with every new camera as a freebie? Does Dell upgrade your PC for free because your old processor's now lower powered than the graphics or sound card they give away as a free upgrade on new purchases? Has Ford issued a recall on all 70s Mustangs so they can install the airbags, A/C and CD players that new Mustangs get as standard?

Economies change. What was once a premium product becomes one that gets bundled to add value to new products. That's the way of almost every market. If anything, with the Veteran Rewards, they're giving you more, as a thank you, than almost any other industry would.

Tiggs was the community relations go-to person on the official SWG forums. Why is it that she parted ways with SOE only six days prior to the deployment of these changes? Does this signify some sort of internal conflict over the direction of the game?

Tiggs spent many long nights and odd hours doing her best to keep the community informed. Though people often disagreed with her, she was undoubtedly very dedicated and tightly-knit with the community. In spite of this, we received no goodbye post from her. Our only official notice was a vaguely worded message located at: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?b oard.id=communityrelations&message.id=15830#M15830 .

it was a multiplayer online FPS with different levels. each time you leveled up you had access to more skills, vehicles, equipment etc.
http://planetside.station.sony.com/