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SOE Offers SWG Players Refunds For Obi-Wan
In yet another completely unexpected move, Sony Online Entertainment is offering players who purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion for SWG before Nov. 3rd a refund. The recently announced massive overhaul has upset a lot of people. From the Gamespot article: "To appease some of those angered by the reworking of Star Wars Galaxies, Sony Online and LucasArts are offering refunds to anyone with a Galaxies account in good standing who purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan before November 3. Players seeking refunds should send their name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and Station Name to refunds@soe.sony.com ... All requests must be made by December 1, 2005."
I worked for them for a while. Everything they touch turns to utter shit, save their Champions of Norrath titles which aren't developed in-house, but rather by Snowblind. This company has no clue how to remain innovative and competitive in the mmo world. It's just a matter of time until they are marginalized.
These people are getting refunds because the game has changed substanitally since they bought it. Matrix Online didn't pull a bait and switch on you. It was crap to begin with. If you have to blow $50 on any crappy game that comes out, you must be living in a bathroom.
Not to mention that SOE had no involvement in the creation of The Matrix Online. They just bought it after a few months of it doing horribly.
I live in a CLOSET you insensitive asshole.
:)
A 9'x9' walking closet off my bedroom, carpeted with plush shag carpeting. Furnished with a $2,000 office chair (think, a trucker's seat, but at home), some beanbags, a lava lamp, a nice 5.1 audio system and all my gaming machines (including the computer) and a circulation system and a mini fridge.
Not a bathroom, but close enough. I just need to get some bottles big enough to piss in for marathon gaming sessions of Battlefield2.
The massive changes they're planning will eliminate a lot of people's characters. The extensive crafting system is being scaled back, so specialists crafters are going to lose a lot.
I haven't played in a year. I may go in and check out the new version of the game on Test Center, but I can't imagine it's going to be worth buying expansions for.
It would have been a pretty interesting game without the Star Wars license confusing people. Of course then no one would have played it, but Star Wars evokes something this game isn't capable of delivering. They could start over with a Knights of the Old Republic MMO and people would have goten what they wanted from this game.
-jpowers
1. Refund for the time wasted on the game. 2. Raph Koster forced to play the original Kings Quest on a PC Jr until he repents from his transgressions. Membrane keyboard NOT negotiable. 3. John Smedly sent into exile to head the Sony DRM division. That is all.
You're an idiot.
This was not an unexpected move, if you think about it.
There are two reasons that this was going to happen. First, look at how much bad press Sony has been getting over the DRM spyware. There are a lot of people who are saying that they won't be buying anything from Sony ever again (or for the forseeable future, myself included). There are bound to be some SWG subscribers who are feeling the same way, and the last thing SOE needs is to lose even more SWG subscribers.
The second reason, which ties in with the first, is that if they didn't offer a refund, there would be a lot of rather angry SWG players. More bad press, and more cancelled subscriptions would be the end result.
Sony is clearly looking to generate some good will to recover from recent screwups.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
It was unbelievably sleazy for SOE to announce the massive overhaul the day after the release of the expansion. They had been promoting the expansion for weeks prior to the rollout, including pre-order incentives. They could hype The Trials of Obi-Wan expansion well before it was available, and yet they kept the NGE (new game enhancements) quiet until about 2 weeks prior to going live.
I don't think the NGE affects the Obi-Wan expansion all that much other than the massive changes seen game-wide. But it was definitely a very poor way to conduct business. Everyone feels like they had been conned, even if not all will demand a refund.
Not to flame it up in here, but I really take issue with the term "appease". To appease those of you who dare to complain about our screwjob, we will give you refunds IFF you get us your information within two weeks from today...
Very poor customer service. THIS is why Galaxies sucks so hard these days...it's the people at the top of the chain.
I live in a CLOSET you insensitive asshole.
I dunno which is funnier. The fact that you admit to being in the closet, or that you came out by telling everyone that cjb909 can't feel anything in his asshole anymore... : p
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Then SoE bought the game. They all just canceled their subscriptions right there.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
First, how SWG played a couple of months ago when I left.
You would select a race/sex and choose your appearance. This cannot be compared to say Everquest 2 a game I play nowadays. You could customize far more and for instance make flat chested female or a fat wookie. Compare this to EQ2 were you can only change the face a little bit. Even more important perhaps is that you can change your appearance in SWG in game so you could change your hairstyle and makeup to fit you latest outfit.
You would then be walked through the basics of the game before being dropped in the starters area. This was changed to Mos Eisly for everyone at one point and you would now also get a droid who would give you starter missions. You could start killing stuff right away and if you fought with your hands you would get melee xp, for ranged ranged xp. You could visit any trainer and use the XP to improve your capabilites in that field. Visit a medic trainer for instance and any healing you did would allow you to become a better medic.
Each proffesions existed of a base box (medic, melee, ranged, scout, etc) 4x4 grid of specialistation wich each specilisation consisting of four boxes wich you had to get in sequence and a final master box. Each box cost a certain amount of job points of wich you had a finite amount.
Advanced jobs could be learned once you had the required numbed of base specialistions. So for instance combat medic required some in marksman and some in medic, beast handler needed some of scout and some other I forgot. This in theory allowed you to truly create your own character. In theory, in practice the job skill cost was very expensive on say proffesions like crafters. It cost so many job skill points to become a master chef for instance that you could barely afford any combat skills. Since the swg universe needed a lot of specialised crafters, entertainers and doctors and it allowed only 1 character per server SWG always depended heavily on those people that were prepared to play with a non-combat optomized character.
This is important because MMO's are closer to diablo then say D&D PnP.
So while a combat specced who just been running some insane mission on dathomir needs an entertainer to heal his mind, that entertainer could not put a dent in a naff and spends his entire time online just standing around in a cantina on coronet spamming special moves and begging for tips.
Luckily SWG had one thing that forced XP grinding would be combat specialist to also be entertainers. The hologrind.
The only way to become a jedi was to unlock your holo and the way to do that was master a preset number of jobs. So there was a constant stream of players mastering entertainers, medics, doctors and crafters. While it did hurt those few players that wanted to be entertainers, medics, doctors or crafters it also meant there was a steady supply of fresh blood. Rather then what you see in most MMO's where everyone is at the highest level with newby areas totally deserted.
SWG gameplay was always open-ended sandbox model rather then a story led game. Compared even with EQ2 it had far more Elite style missions, go kill X of Y and come back. Loot weapons were rare and crafting therefore important. EQ2 you can exist, in fact new player have to because of prices, on your loot. SWG your equipment was made by other players.
The problem SWG has had that plagues every MMO game that want sto be more then a hack and slash is that players will happily shoot themselves in the foot. MMO players are FPS players who switch on godmode and then complain that the game offers no challenge.
Why oh why did we spend all our time running naff missions (money and XP grind wich every swg player will regonize) when we could have had far more fun running away from nasties on endor? I remember one evening when with a couple of friendly players we just went exploring on endor. Just visiting nice locations, grahpics turned up and taking snapshots. We were having a lot of fun and doing a lot of
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As a recovering Star Wars fan, you need to do what I did. Recognize that SWG is a pile of crap, Lucas got lucky on Ep IV, and your best hope for good SW lore is in the fan fiction.
Don't reward this behavior by LucasArts and Sony. They really don't deserve your money.
SOE giving back money? This truly is the seventh sign of the apocolypse... repent, sinners, for the end is near.
My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!
Word on the street is that SWG is losing alot of players right now and they are trying to do everything in their power to prevent that.
They have 2 good things in the last week to keep players:
1) Everybody will be getting a 2nd character slot (still not enough IMHO).
2) The ToOW refund.
These 2 things are not enough to keep me around though. I am sick of SOE's treatment of customers.