Deep Thoughts On The SWG Revamp

The always thoughtful Terra Nova has a look at the recent Star Wars Galaxies revamp from a group with a long view on the role of Massive games. From the article: "Unfortunately, the live management team seems to have ignored another long-standing criticism of SWG by many observers: that their design and implementation process is a disastrous mess. Never more so than with the NGE: whatever it is conceptually, in practice, it's roughly on par with an alpha build of a MMOG. Or did they ignore it? It's just possible that SWG's latest flaming car wreck resulted from deliberately driving over a cliff. I'm normally deeply suspicious of conspiracy theories. In the case of SWG's NGE, though, there are really only two possibilities: that there is a deeper agenda or that the live management team is well beyond cluelessly self-destructive, out in some outer void of fecklessness. "

Comments

I was at SOE to see...

[dhakbar]

SWG's development team is composed largely of individuals who worked on Ultima Online at OSI years ago. It is they who created the horrendous messes that were UO patching and, these days, SWG patching. The similarities are striking when one looks at the two games. Both UO and SWG have had duping issues, both have had problems with player structures and guilds, both shift the hot spots for experience, money, etc. every single patch.

These guys have some great ideas, they really do. They have a problem with implementation that needs to be solved if they are to ever create a game that stays fun without having to be completely overhauled every 2 years when subs fall through the floor.

Two views...

[thesandtiger]

One, is that if you play an MMO, you're paying for a consistent (more or less) game world. The experience may change over time, but generally it'll be fairly consistent. Completely gutting everything ... not good.

Two, is that this is pretty interesting from a game design challenge aspect. I played SWG way back when it first launched. I've sampled the Combat Upgrade, and I'm debating sampling the NGE - not because I'm interested in playing the game again, but because I'm interested in the concept of the whole MMO overhaul deal. It's kind of like how people who aren't terribly interested in getting plastic surgery done can still be fascinated by watching the procedure on a Discovery show.

From an entertainment standpoint, I think SWG is a miserable failure. One person I know said that it was a spreadsheet with a 3D interface, and that's about as apt a description as any I could think of.

From a game design standpoint, as a learning experience, as an example of what kinds of things can go right and what kinds of things can go so very, very wrong, as a window into the MMO business world, it's interesting. I found the recent /. Q&A with Smedley to be interesting - it was very clear that the one hand doesn't know what's going on with the other, and yet, they are still somehow managing to keep this sucker alive.

I think that, at one of those schools that's now offering a degree in game design (or whatever they're calling it) SWG would be a very fine bit of learning material.

Too bad they broke the game, though.