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.

Comments

"I can't imagine Lucasarts could do a worse job.."

[geminidomino]

You poor, deluded bastard...

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This appears to be a complete rumor.

Then why did you post it?

Re:No jedi - I hope this is NOT true

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

And what was the re-re-re-remastered release that came with an announcement that there would be no release of the original un-fucked with episodes?

The job of Lucas is to now piss off as many people as he can.

SWG

[mabu]

I played SWG early on. Ironically I found the game to be so immersive and creative when it came to the realism of the world, that the gameplay itself took a back seat. I think this is a case of some great softare that has critically flawed game design.

Then again, it's entirely possible that SWG may be the most incredible MMORPG ever conceived, and because it seems to rely so much on player-generated content, it may take years before the game matures and shows what it's capable of.

However, the brilliance (or lack thereof) of the game may be moot. The other night I was in a club with a group of people and there was a Ms. Pac Man cocktail table game in the bar that people were lining up to play. Sometimes I think today's games have become so complex they've negated their value.

When you're playing a game that has 5000+ pages of documentation, with a minority hardcore community that considers you a n00b if you don't know that ALT-SHIFT-PgUp in combination with the alternative UI loaded and the spatial relativity ability received from completing the Lord Eladril quest will improve your defensive attack posture, you have to begin to wonder whether real life demoralization isn't preferable?

Here, here!!

[aztektum]

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.

Re:Here, here!!

[Doomstalk]

ames were about puzzles and intuition. Now it's twitch skills

You make it sound as if that's different from the way it was then. Have you ever played asteroids? There are a lot of twitch reflexes involved in doing well in that game. Same goes for defender, pretty much any 2D platformers, side/topscrolling shooters, and most other genres. Yes, some games have gotten too complex, I'll admit it. I've been known to give up on a game for being overwhelming myself. But don't over-romanticise the past, or over-generalize the present. Both have had their share of bad games (I welcome you to have a "Which was a bigger fiasco? ET or Daikatana?" debate) and their great ones.

Here's a Job Description a Lucas Arts, mofos

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the position at Lucas Arts:

http://www.lucasarts.com/jobs/descriptions/?ID=dir ector

Why the fuck would they be hiring somebody so high up if they didn't plan on going through with this shit? Good riddance to SOE, maybe I'll reactivate my account.

Sony and SWG have made a mockery of Star Wars.

[StormKrow]

Horrible customer service. We're the subscriber, *we* pay their salaries. It seems as though the devs, csrs, and SOE fail to grasp this concept.

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.

Re:The 14 day trial was "wonderful"...

[Phil the Canuck]

The only major outages lately were caused by a tornado hitting the east coast data center. I'm calling BS on you.