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Lucasarts Through With Sony?
pdawerks writes "Heard through the grapevine: Apparently Lucasarts is displeased with the way that SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) has handled Star Wars' MMORPG Galaxies. The day after the JTL expansion goes live, they plan to announce the second expansion pack and the divorce between SOE and Lucasarts." This appears to be a complete rumor. However, I found corroborating rumormongering at SWG Warcry and Second Life Herald. Lucasarts has previously lessened their developer stable, casting doubt on this idea. I can't imagine Lucasarts could do a worse job with the game than SOE has, though.
This appears to be a complete rumor.
Then why did you post it?
If I had mod points right now I'd be boosting this score up.
There's a reason why classic gaming is so highly regarded and fondly remembered by hardcore gamers and even the more casual type who had at least an NES.
Games were about puzzles and intuition. Now it's twitch skills and MMO's which you have to relinquish part of your life in order to justify the monthly fee.
Ironically the largest and most advertised technical achievement of video games is what, I think, is creating a stagnate market. 3D graphics launched video games into more homes than ever before thanks to proliferation of fast PC's and Sony Playstations.
The down side is that as graphics advance and everyone wants even more realism, it takes longer to make a game that isn't rife with bugs, which results in watered down games that only look prettier than what we played the previous year.
No sig for you!!
People quitting as a result of their less than promised gaming experience and service.
As a result of so many people cancelling their accounts, SOE has outsourced a good portion of their CSR staff to India in order to make their margin...(No joke)
A complete lack of understanding of RPG gaming. Game designs have been implimented in this POS with no comprehension of the "give and take" method of RPG gaming, thus leaving a completely unbalanced end result.
A dev team that is completely out of touch with the Star Wars universe, and as such create situations in-game ad-hoc and in some cases contradict the current published works based on G. Lucas' creation.
I've played this game since Beta. I've beta tested many titles, including some SOE titles...(Evercrack comes to mind)...the game was released at bare minimum, 6 months too soon. 45% of content that was present in Beta was removed at launch. We (the Beta testers) told the dev team that the game wasn't ready, what still needed to be done to make it ready, and what needed to change to make it ready with the current code base. All of this was ignored by SOE. I've seen very few positive changes in the game. Many of the changes that have occured in the game were done to appease a vocal minority, and upset the majority of the community.
combat classes were given lipservice. Any class that *should've* been "uber leet" as the kids call it, were nerfed. Unpopular classes were given enough attention to keep them barely playable. Popular classes were either left somewhat untouched, or changed so that the *most* popular classes could defeat them easily.
Finally, anyone who criticized SOE, the Devs, or the CSR's for their haphazard design, unprofessional behavior, or lack of vision and direction, were summarily banned either from the forums, game, or both. (I myself have been banned numerous occasions for pointing out the shortcomings of SOE's support staff.) I also don't have to remind the Slashdot community that for a very long time, the SWG Forums were closed to the general public because there was such a huge sense of anger and dissatifaction that was conveyed by the player community. (for fear of a potential new customer seeing exactly how bad the game actually was.
Personally I think LucasArts taking the reigns from SOE will be the best thing that ever happened to the game. Even if they do a poor job, SOE hasn't lived up to the expectation the players had.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Have you even played PlanetSide? Wow... talk about a good idea mercilessly bludgeoned by poor management and greed.
For starters, the game has been wrought by ridiculous balance issues, graphical engine problems, and unreliable servers since (and even before) its inception. Even the newest of computers grind to a halt or crash to desktop at times. Good luck trying to attract attention to these issues, though. At best, you'll get defensive and downright hostile responses from the devs--in the unlikely situation you hear anything at all.
Secondly, before I cancelled my account, gameplay was atrocious. Strategy basically amounted to "zerging" or getting as many people in your faction to attack at one base and then jump around to all of the completely identical bases nearby. There was no point in defending. It was ridiculous. SOE's solution? An incoherrent version of capture the flag. Wow... real original, guys. What's crazy is that they released this solution--if you can call it that--when there were some amazingly good ideas floating around from the community.
But the real kicker, the slap in the face that made me cancel my account: Not even three months after the game had been dubiously released, SOE, as any hardened EQer' would expect, released the Core Combat expansion pack. It's main features? Vehicles and gameplay elements that were promised on the box of the original game, of course. Oh and just incase you were thinking you could get away with not buying their thirty dollar patch, be prepared to get killed by the new unbalanced, uber weapons wielded by everyone who did.
Sorry to disagree, parent, but SOE sucks. Their market share isn't due to brilliance or innovation. It's from stringing customers along from expansion pack to expansion pack and letting the competitive and addicting nature of MMORPG communities do the rest for them.
-Grym