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Galaxies To Beat World of Warcraft?
We reported previously on an interview with John Smedley being run by Gamespot. They've put up the second part of the interview, and in the closing paragraph John takes the gloves off. From the article: "One thing that I love about our company is that there is no 'quit' in this company. It's about making sure that we have pride in what we do. People within the company feel so much pride in this game that they want it to beat the crap out of World of Warcraft. That's something we feel very passionate about. We know we are capable of making the best stuff out there, and I'm proud to say that with the changes we're making in Galaxies, I think we're headed in the right direction."
Galaxies doesn't have LeeRoy Jenkins!
People within the company feel so much pride in this game that they want it to beat the crap out of World of Warcraft. That's something we feel very passionate about.
Most eastern countries don't care about Star wars or western type MMORPGS. Blizzard has done the impossible with its World of Warcraft, and I doubt it could be achieved elsewhere.
Even if they could make SWG as interesting and accessible as WOW, it still wouldn't appeal to half the people that WOW appeals too.
No, that is what makes Battlefront 2 works, what makes JK2 work. No one will pay month after month for that same experience, which is the premise of the MMO revenue model. What people pay month after month for is the sandbox with complicated options and roles to explore. I was playing Eve for a while - which is in a Star Wars-like atmosphere - and I was trying (and failing, that's another story) to become a manufacturer. Not a space pirate or Luke Skywalker - a Manufacturer/Industrialist. I sold the cheapest ammo in several solar systems. I would play a more economic game in SWG if I could have.
Even Battlefield 2 seems to have more depth than SWG does now.
I didn't want to like WoW. I waited until September to play it (even though I had it in March). I played for 2 hours and bam, I was a goner. I don't play every moment of every day, but it is my favorite MMORPG by far (and the most popular one in my internet cafe - CoV/CoH is a reasonably close second)
This guy make think they are going in the right direction, but they have *so* far to go to catch up it would take a meltdown of Chernobyl proportions on blizzards part for SWG to even have a chance, and probably not even then....
The only MMORPG that I know of that might challenge the dominance of WoW is the new D&D game coming out.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
My goal is to single-handedly take over the free world. But that doesn't mean I will, as the title implies.
DYWYPI?
I thought the whole point of Star Wars Galaxies was to give the player the experience of living in the Star Wars Universe. At least, that's what they were saying during the years they spent putting this game together. Now Sony's pissed that EQ2 lost the war against WoW so they're trying to change this game, lame.
John Smedley is obviously getting his crack from the same source that supplies Darl McBride.
I have played WoW. It's an ok game, but I didn't like it all that much. It's not my style. I consider WoW to be a game that appeals to the lowest common denominator. It's pure hack and slash play with cartoony graphics and shallow, repetitive "kill foozle" gameplay. Star Wars never has been lowest common denominator, and neither should SWG be.
I have played SWG for a year and a half now. I have FOUR accounts. I have mastered almost every combat profession that the game ever had, including full template Jedi, which prior to the NGE, took months to do, and rewarded you with a character that, if played right was the most powerful in the game.
SWG is the only game that I have EVER played constantly for a very long period., mainly because there was always SOMETHING ELSE to go do!
And SWG never was a failure. We have (had) 200-300K subs, which made us a solid top 10 US MMO, a number 90% of the MMO's out there would die for.
Instead they chose to nuke the game, because they decided that those who made it what it was are now undesirable and they want the lowest common denominator crowd.
For the good of the industry, and for everyone who is a customer of MMO's, I hope SWG fails so horribly that it closes by Feb. For SOE/LA to do what they have done to everyone who ever gave them a red cent and get away with it, and to be REWARDED with larger sub numbers for it would be the doom of EVERYONE who is a customer of a MMO. They will ALL start doing the exact same thing TO YOU.
Even WoW...
Corporatism != Free Market
When you fuck up a MMORPG and fail your customers, THEY DON'T COME BACK. No matter what. Once you lose momentum against a competitor, that's it, game over.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Smed is taking heat for all of them, so I guess it's understandable that he's taking serious amounts of Valium (or gin) to get him through interviews.
My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!
when you copy every innovation from WoW.
of course then Galaxies will have to create a board game that beats WOW the boardgame ( which is suppose to be really good) QAK
anyone (or everyone?) else always have "17 more" game stories from the front page
The real problem with SWG was not that it never seemed able to make up its mind about what it wanted to be. In its attempt to be everything to everybody it ends up pissing off everyone. Instead of fixing the bugs they kept redesigning it and introducing even more bugs. I remember after the combat revamp (the first) that you would sometimes drive across places so fucking teeming with live that it was insane. Lairs with 30-40 critters around the entire horizon filled with prey. Granted it was amazing the game did not grind to a halt displaying it all but geez that bug should never have made it past testing.
This guy just doesn't seem to have a clue and if he thinks SWG can in this form compete with WoW he should have himself committed. This is no longer marketing speech this signals a severe mental disorder.
It may amaze some people but in MMO land some people LIKE being an entertainer, yes even a hairdresser. Some people really do enjoy being a cheff or general crafter. Other enjoy going out hunting not for money or xp or leet loot but to find the supplies that the crafters need.
But such a game is not for everybody and would need to be very clearly targetted. An open sandbox style game simply requires a different kind of player then well a fps linear story game.
You know what is odd? The game Guild Wars is advertised as a PvP game yet its quests are actually bloody intresting, with some nice stories and scripted quests that actually are a lot better then the typical EQ2 "go kill ten bears for the next page in a book" quests. GW has NPC's fighting along side you, a central story that actually advances, and in general is very suprising especialy when you consider that it is not a quest game at its heart.
Worse GW is better then EQ2 because you can far more create your own character, you have a maximum of 8 spells from a wide section and while there are only 5 jobs available they have a massive spell selection and 3 specilisations and you have to select a second job as well giving you a huge amount of choice as to how to build your character. Compared to EQ2 where everyone uses the same spells it is a breath of fresh air.
In fact it is a bit like SWG. Well SWG BEFORE Sony made it clear that anyone not adopting the one template to rule them all would just not be able to play with the higher level content. When Sony's idea of a good high level dungeon is filling it with critters that all but the most specced out combat classes can't handle then it becomes clear that Sony decided that the sandbox was not what they wanted.
Remember KOTOR? Nice game but hardly "open". Just try to make all your characters ranged weapon fighters. It was suicide. Jedi was you path and you would damn well take it.
SWG slowly rotted, partly because of bugs, partly because sony either encouraged or failed to discourage the use of quick paths to victory and partly because to many of the players allowed themselves to be drawn in by the lure of the xp grind.
In a recent /. article I put up a post about how SWG was fun before the doc buff and I describe a hunt on dathomir. Perhaps I should also write about how live was AFTER the doc buff became wide spread.
My Sabrak(?) was now an elite TKM/Sword Specialist. Sword being used to do the big damage, TKM for its fantastic healing and for the cheap damage that vibro knuckles give (top sword cost a million, top vibro knuckle a few thousand, your choice). The day would start with unloading your inventory of the previous day loot and checking your armour. Depending on how much you cared about looks your outfit would be the select pieces of armour that critters actually hit with the non-hitted parts of your body wrapped in clothes. If you could be bothered, many couldn't and fighting in your undies was perfectly acceptedle in the SWG universe.
Weapon check to see it had not deterioted to far. Then
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Galaxies is going to beat World of Warcraft like I beat my wife.
...and that I don't beat my wife.
Which means it isn't going to beat World of Warcraft.
No, seriously...I love her.
(awkward silence)
So...how bout that crazy weather?
Well that is because the european retail version is for the european servers only. A pretty nasty move as it means that I would be forced to play on servers along side the FRENCH and GERMANS!
If that isn't evil I don't know what is.
Oh you don't get what is so evil about it. Well how would you like a game server where 50% of the people talk in a foreign language spamming the chat channels in non-english begging for X repeatadly because nobody will answer them in their language? At least Sony allows me to play were I please. Remember that the people speaking in german or french are doing it because their command of english is even worse then mine. The only people in europe who do not speak english are 10 yr olds. German 10yr olds. ARGH
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Either smedley is insane or people out there are still playing it in big enough numbers to make him think that the players actually like the NGE and other stuff.
Are there any SWG players on /. or even more amazing have any of you recently joined the game?
From everything I hear including the other responses here on /. SWG is rapidly being deserted so what gives this smedley the idea that they have they are heading in the right direction? Could it actually be true that wile the hardcore gamers are leaving there is an influx of new gamers?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For those who don't know, Mechwarrior (MW) was a really cool minatures game put out by WizKids (of MageKnight fame... and yes, I know the FASA MW game before it....) So I bought a crapload of minatures, played the game, loved it, and then the hammer dropped. They basically said "We're changing everything, dear players, but we're doing it FOR YOU!... By the way, you know all those minatures you've collected? Yeah, they're being retired."
So they came out with new rules, new minatures, whatever. I suppose they just expected me to run out and drop another couple hundred on new minis. Needless to say, I boxed it all up in the garage and haven't played since.
Screw you, Wizkids.
and screw you too, SOE
For instance, there's several things I saw in his responses that bugged me.
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?
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:
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
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:
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
there's being ambitious and then there's just being delusional. I think they better dig themselves out of the hole they're in before they talk about climbing WoW's mountain of customers.
Does SWG compare with World of Warcraft? I sure as hell don't know as I haven't played either game; I must be the only City of Heroes player in this discussion. But I do try to keep up with the MMO world. And....
Okay, someone correct me if I'm wrong on my facts here.
Item 1: They release the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion. A full, buy-it-at-the-store update to the game, so it took a while to ship. Available in boxes, which take a while to print. Containing loads of new content for a number of classes, and that couldn't have been quick to develop.
Item 2: Two days after its release, they implement NGE. Entire thrust of the game changes. Over half the character classes evaporate into the ether. Some of those classes were the same ones for which new content were created for under Trials of Obi-Wan.
Hopefully NGE, which affected the entire game, took more time and sweat to implement than Trials of Obi-Wan, which was a standard new content expansion, did.
So logically, BOTH projects must have been in development at the same time. Logically people on the Obi-Wan team must have known what was coming down the pike. And they had to have been super demoralized to see what was coming, right? Or maybe they didn't believe it would really happen?
But working on two wide-ranging, world-changing events at once? That's a lot of wasted developer muscle and energy, and I don't think that a sane development process can account for it. I think, more likely, that some schizophrenia was involved, so I present these two possible scenarios:
1. NGE was slapped together at the last second, as a result of some unseen-from-outside pressure, either from Sony or Lucasarts. Someone didn't meet a quota, and judging from Smedley's comments it must be a damn big quota, so someone panicked. A bad, bad situation.
2. There was some kind of internal upheaval at Sony, or Dilbertesque maneuverings prevented communication between teams, or a power struggle between old guard and rising stars took place resulting in a fulcrum shift in the teetertotter of SOE office politics. One power bloc was responsible for Obi-Wan, the other, NGE. An even worse situation than scenario 1.
Either way, something is happening there that is causing them to make drastic, ill-considered changes in their game. And any smart player should be able to see that the risk that it'll happen again is exceedingly great.
Even if the NGE produced the Metaverse, I would think that Sony has now destroyed the customer base of Star Wars Galaxies completely. And such is the depth of the incompetence displayed here that I would be surprised it if didn't wash over into their other online properties.
This is SOE's Edsel.
I was part of one of the SWG beta tests, and as I recall I was pretty excited at first to begin playing. I created a couple of characters and would do a few quests, but I would eventually get bored. Of course this was in the days of the beta and getting around took forever and there is something to be said for having actual character levels and not whatever the hell it was we had.
After the poor experience in the beta, I had absolutely no wish to continue playing the game, especially if I was going to have to pay. Later on, WoW came along. I once again found myself with free time and began to play with several friends. I actually found many of the experiences entertaining and Battlegrounds came around at just the right time to keep me intersted. At present I have two characters on an RP server, a mid-50s Tauren Warrior and a low-30s Troll Priest. My main problem began with the fact that I can hardly do anything in the game with my Tauren Warrior without having to find a large group or raid. I actually enjoyed spending some time questing and fighting in certain areas for levelling, but the experience is greatly lowered.
Many of my friends began spending less time on the servers, and I found myself more entrapped by the real world that comes along after college. I want to be able to sign on and go straight to fighting creatures and doings quests, now that I have less free time then in school; however, the at the higher levels this is almost impossible. I am finding a similar problem with my priest who is sitting a this strange gray area level where I am a bit high for some of the quests and bit too low to do others.
In the end, I think I prefer games where I can get straight into the action without having to spend much time looking for parties or trying to find help when new quests come along. I do enjoy the social aspect, somewhat, because playing single player games the only interaction is with NPCs and that seems hurt in some cases. I am confident that the WoW Expansion might offer some new gameplay that will help with the current state of things and maybe bring things back to a state I will enjoy.
Otherwise, I will sit tight for ES4 and start playing the heck out of it.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Sorry to be nitpicky but, a few corrections about the guildwars bit (And I love Guildwars, it's a great game that I've spent far to much time playing).
First off, there are 6 classes (Warrior, Ranger, Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist, Monk).
Second, if by "specializations" you are refering to atributes, each class has 4 (or in the elementalist's case, 5) attributes, one of which you only get when you have that class as your primary class (So characters have 4 primary + 3 secondary attributes, + 1 to one of those if they are an elementalist primary or secondary).
And finally, each class has ~75-80 skills the effect of which is based on your attributes. And there aren't any "primary class only" skills.
Also, the way I see guildwars is as basically two almost entirely seperate games you can play, PvM and PvP Guildwars. A quick explanation for anyone interested! (Everything after this is a plug for what is IMO a great game, not intended as a reply to the parent)
The PvP half of the game can be played entirely without the PvM and quest/story. PvP only occurs in one of the games arenas (4v4 Random Teams, 4v4 Arranged Teams, 8v8 Arranged Teams, 8v8 Guild Ladder). Also, players can make pre-leveled PvP characters using any skills and weapon/armor mods they've "unlocked" by either finding them in the PvM parts of the game, or unlocking them through the "faction" system (think XP, except global for your account and gained for PvP kills). That aspect of PvP is great because it means you can test out character builds (granted, not for PvM) without having to spend hours/days leveling only to find out your idea won't work. PvP on the whole is very self-contained (although going straight to PvP with a new account means you don't have much unlocked) and the random-matching means you can always get a quick game in if you don't have much time.
On the other hand, the PvM half of the game is also very well self-contained. Players level like in a normal RPG (althoug, max level is 20 and you usually hit that anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through the game). As you progress, you find better equipment, new skills, get more attribute points, ect. However, the kinds of things that constitute "phat loot" in Guildwars do so mainly because they make your character look better (atleast in theory). It's not immune to grinding, but atleast all the grinders get is cooler looking armor and maybe an extra +1 or 2% damage/armor (where as in the SWG story above, where grinding is the only way to compete [note: token on-topic sentance]). The story is decent enough, and most of the quests are interesting. PvM definetly a great way to play if you love exploring, collecting things, or the social aspects of MMOs
HAH. I've played swg since '03. Quit w/ NGE. Got my refund for toow (GFY SoE) playing WoW now (blizzard thanks SoE for that) any game hosted by SoE would have to be 150% better than WoW/DnL/D&D for me to even consider playing it. John Smedley is the Darl McBride of gamers.
Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
I don't even play WoW or Galaxies, and I know exactly how Galaxies does it -- eliminate the monthly fee. I'd play then. Otherwise, no way in hell.
I wouldn't even then.
Why doesn't this article have the foot icon beside it?
In light of their very large mistakes, they should set their sight a little lower, like beating the crap out of $quare-nix's Final Fantasy XI Online instead.
d =1134736401209988735;num=0;page=1
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=29;mi
Hahahahahaha hahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahahahahahaha hahahahaha hahahahahahahahahaha hahahaha hahahahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahaha!!!!
(Lameness filter encountered.
Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.)
... the customers don't feel the way the devs do.
No shock there though, that's been the story with eq1, eq2, swg, planetside...
Shadus
So I went to MC and Onyxia last night with my Paladin. It was great! ...
So whats this guy talking about again?
Seriously though... They need to release a consumer based EQ1 server (16 and 32 player licenses) I would definately like that.
Why are you such a complete retard? We both know that Star Wars Galaxies does not come close to the solid design, brilliant artistic style, or enjoyable player experience of World of Warcraft. Stop acting like it ever will. If you want my advice, try designing a new game that doesn't suck large donkey nuts.
Lol.
WTF?
You couldnt even beat them with your flagship EQ2!
You certainly wont beat them with Galaxies!
No one will beat WoW currently and for the foreseeable future. For one even the n00biest of n00bs can reach level 60 in a month or less! That alone will cause others to shun your works.
One of the great things about PnP RPGing is that it is truly a sandbox. The DM/GM of course prepares much but the players might up and decide that they are going to go into castlebuilding instead of delving another dungeon, and because the group are friends and are cooperatively playing (even when their characters are adversaries), it all works out.
In an ideal world this concept just carries over to online play and scales indefinitely, and hundreds of thousands of players all get along even if one is a Sith and the other a rebel leader. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world.
EQ et al. have their roots in MUDding. I wasn't involved with that; while MUDs were on the rise I was engaged in online air combat; but the experiences are similar.
While the bond of physical proximity was cut in these early games, the community was still small, which meant it was self-policing. If your online game regularly has 100 people on, you get to know those guys quite well. If Lord Doofus shows up and disrupts the game, everyone else does something about it; and if Doofus disappears but re-emerges as Dink, nobody is fooled. So it was still safe to have a sandbox. In air combat games occasionally a bug would crop up which could be exploited; but since the community was small it was agreed not to use 'cheap' tactics and any player who did was generally hounded until they stopped.
When the idea was scaled up to the MMOG level, with many thousands playing at once, both the safeguards of proximity and community were lost, replaced by anonymity and indifference. When that happened the thinking "because I should" is lost on many and in its place "because I can" comes in.
Now it becomes problematic to be open-ended, because for every player who wants to do something unique in a good way, there are several whose thoughts revolve around finding ways to abuse the game system. Here's an Uncle Owen, who wants to be a moisture farmer, but right behind him is Uncle Pwn, who is busy pharming instead and selling money on the 'secondary market.' Now the good player is ruined, because the market is pooched.
Likewise SWG may have had 37(?) classes but really if you wanted to win you found a min/max combination, of which I'm quite certain there were far fewer than 37. Same thing happened in EQ; there are 10 expansions and I-don't-know-how-many zones but in practice all new characters go to zone A then B then C then D and 40 other alternative places to adventure sit empty. Similarly, in DAOC, theoretically you have the choice to specialize in several different areas but forget that, you'd better be specced exactly the same as everyone else or you're done for when you reach the top levels.
What looks like open-ended, when subjected to exploiters and abusers and not tamed by community, becomes only an exercise in min/max and is in fact far more restrictive than an apparently closed-ended class system.
In short, any game system open-ended enough to allow free-form roleplay is also open-ended enough to abuse, because the number of permutations becomes too high to test. Further, any game large enough to qualify as a MMOG doesn't have a self-policing nature.
That was one of SWG's design problems, and the only way out was to tear up the old system or make a SWG2. I don't know why they didn't make a SWG2 and let the people who liked the game as is remain. Maybe they looked at the EQ2 vs. EQ1 numbers and decided it was a poor investment. Maybe Lucas leaned on them and said that there will be only one Star Wars MMOG, not two. Who knows?
What I do know is that I had no interest in joining the old SWG, either in its original incarnation or in the 'CU' phase, because of this.
It was a grind, but the thing that kept me playing for a LONG freakin' time was the run from Qeynos to Freport.
Long as hell and scary, to boot. That had me hooked for a while. Going splat! when a giant smacked me up, griffins killing me in the Commonlands, you name it.
Loved it all, until I grew bored with the level treadmill. I couldn't even imagine portal stones and the like; a lot of the flavor of EQ IMO was that early discovery and the difficulty to travel.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
HAHAHAAHHAHAHAHHAAHAH.
okay im done for now.
Blizzard worked hard to get to the #1 spot for MMORPG's, in many facets. One could extrapolate that they analyzed the current plethora of MMORPG's in today's and yesterday's market, including UO,EQ,AC, and so forth. Analyzing what made them great, and what didnt.
For example, EQ was really good for PvE, but by today's standards it is a very unrewarding per time game. Blizz sped this up heavily in WoW, the game is more rewarding per time spent by far comparatively to EQ, and thus why I will never play EQ ever again.
Blizzard also has much experience in the realm of "Balancing", making the game even in their quirky rock-paper-scissors fashion. This experience stems from releasing many games before WoW, including the Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo series. Each series having its own signifigant twist to balancing in very advanced aspects.
Comparatively, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE, the developers of Star Wars Galaxies, SWG) have a few MMORPG's under their acquizition belt. Ultima Online, Ever Quest being the biggest. However, they handle these games differently from Blizzard. SOE bought these games, like any business, with the intent to turn major profit. And so they have, but at the cost of entertaining games. I have not experienced this first hand myself, but I know people who have played these games, witnessed changes SOE has made to these games to make them profitable, but not fun.
Blizzard, in stead, communicates heavily with their community formed around the game. The forums being the primary source of communication, as well as in-game GM support/assistance. Blizzard has observed the community, and the players at large, taking down notes and figuring out how to make the game more rewarding, both of current material and future material. At this point in their developed games the complexity of their balancing has reached such an advanced stage that even a single patch revamping a single class takes about 2 or 3 months to release (I am referring to patch 1.9 revamping the Paladin class, which to this date is still in public beta).
Blizzard cares, SOE doesnt, and the customer is wise enough to know what's fun, and what isnt.
These are the primary reasons why I believe that Blizzard will control the majority of the MMORPG market for a long time, if not forever. For this is their first MMORPG game, and they have captivated every major market around the world, with little advertising.
I will not leave WoW for SWG for other reasons (in addition to this). The primary reason I will not leave WoW for ANY OTHER MMORPG is due to the fact that I can customize my UI to an extreme degree. No other game features such functionality as featured in WoW. I have tried other games, such as Guild Wars, and it is by far nowhere near as enjoyable as being able to customize exactly what information you see as well as what functions (additional or originally implimented) are available to you. Blizzard had this system working even during open beta, the only changes since release they have made were to improve functionality or to fix bugs, I do not recall any major changes to the system at large, ever.
SWG will not win, ever, nor will any other MMORPG, unless Blizzard loses their Nack for game design, balancing, and entertainment.
I trust in Blizzard, why dont you?
"People within the company feel so much pride in this game that they want it to beat the crap out of World of Warcraft."
With a statement like that it's no surprise why Star Wars Galaxies is in the toilet, and their other MMOs aren't far behind.
/gnomelaugh
(I am in a bad mood today at work, therefore I shall rant....)
... well I know you and the team at Sony don't quite understand this concept (Blizzard seems to have mastered it) games have to be well.... FUN.
,that despartly need an alternate life to feel fullfilled we would run to an EXPERIENCE. But sadly, most of us are normal, well adjusted, people that can't speel wehn posting on Slashdot. Life has plently of EXPERIENCES we deal with in our normal day-to-day lives. We play games to have FUN. I am sorry that reality doesn't quite fit you vision of the typical game player, but that is reality.
Dear John Smedly:
After you and Sony fucked over EQ, fucked over EQ2, fucked over Planetside, and fucked over SWG, and while you have pride in fucking up each product as you go along, remember that quality actually counts for something. I've played em all (EQ,DAOC,AC,WOW,COH,etc.) and you still cannot beat your own orginal product in the form of innovation, quality, and
You see John nobody wants an "Experience." You've been hanging around MS too much. I don't come home from work or school and log into an online game for an EXPERIENCE. I want to have some FUN. Not all EXPERIENCES are FUN. Somewhere in those maggot sized brains you greed fucks there at Sony (and EA for that matter) forgot the definitions of FUN and EXPERIENCE. Yeah I guess if we were all low self-esteem, socially devoid people you see in movies and TV
You gonna kick's who's ass? Why would you fucking care sherlock? You should worry about making a great game, the hell with the market rules. Instead of being a follower try being a leader for once you sac of shit and shut the fuck up. If you spent 1/2 the energy you expend making excuses for your short commings and directed that into make FUN GAMES rather then products and EXPERIENCES you'd be in a much better position in life and the industry.
Gaming (playing, living, and making) is far more an art form then an manufacturing process.
Your world John:
Cute+Furry+Female Lead+Platform Scroller+30 hours game play+R&B Track = Successful Product with an estimated launch of 10 million in sales.
Gamer's World:
Mario Bros + Pokemon + Repetative Game Play = Suck-My-Ass.
Take a good hard look John, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU WANT TO EMULATE THE MOVIE INDUSTRY?! How often do people get tired of the same shit, crappy shit, at the theaters AND YOUR TAKING ADVICE FROM THIS INDUSTRY?? LAST I CHECKED THEY WERE IN THE DECLINE DUE TO WHAT?? YEAH POOR QUALITY!
Video Games != Movies != Books != Imagination != Life != Small Furry Aliens that like to eat Cats!
STFU John, we do't care what you think anymore.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The SOE's fatal mistake made is that they don't to understand what makes WoW successful, and instead have destroyed what (little) was great about SWG. Mass market doesn't mean stupid, and unfortunately SWG has been reduced to a brainless grind as opposed to a complex grind (pre NGE). It's not just that WoW was simpler, it's that WoW was fun. SOE doesn't understand this, and try to make up for the lack of content with grinding. Ironically that's what Blizzard is doing now with endgame content (faction grinds, 40-man raids) because it takes less dev time to make a game a grind. But everything with WoW before level 60 is fun, even from a non-MMO standpoint. SOE just doesn't know how to make games fun. And they've killed the one thing that was superior to WoW: crafting. They could've kept at least one aspect, but choose to dumb down the whole game. To a previous poster: you are incorrect about the Asian MMO market. Asian MMOs, especially China (which is where most of the revenue comes for Lineage/Lineage II and its huge installbase) rely *not* on subscriptions, but on hour-based rates. Same with Korea, where gamers typically play at "PC-bangs" (Internet Cafes) instead of having a personal computer at home.
Yes, World of Warcraft is beating the pants off of it's competitors. And yes a lot of folks who used to play other games have switched over to World of Warcraft. And dare I say that yes WoW has even brought a lot of new MMO players into the arena who never considered MMO's before? But don't let what this guy said turn into a SWG vs. WoW debate and be steered away from the abstract meaning of it all. What I'm saying is that the success of WoW is having a profound effect on the MMO market across the board, not just SWG. It has remotivated the other MMO companies to do things differently. The only thing I'm afraid of is that it will motivate them in the wrong direction. I really hope they don't all become driven to dumb down their games and turn them into a simple one size fits all game like WoW is. I have a feeling that dumbing down their game is the direction that SWG went in order to appeal to the general masses. And that's why it has turned off a lot of it's old player base. But it seems like other games have been motivated in a differnt direction; namely listening more to their player base. I can state Dark Age of Camelot as an example. They've sent out a few surveys to their players asking what they wanted them to focus more on. They haven't dumbed down their game and I have a feeling in the long run gamers are going to respect them for that. It's good that WoW has brought new players into the MMO market. That could have a positive effect overall. This could happen if these new players decide to try out the other games once they realize the shallowness of WoW. But, WoW could have a negative effect on the market too. The SWG kneejerk reaction to dumb down their game is a good example. I guess we'll all have to watch and see.
Must be me, cause I haven't even hit 60 yet, and I have been playing since december ' o4 (but in actual game play time, I am way less than 30 days)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Ok, first off, talk about that Gamespot article being nothing but pure rhetoric and fluff. For God's sake, they barely even touched on the pure unadulterated mess SWG is in right now instead focusing on how much Korean's like to smoke. I'm pretty sure the average SWG player for the last 2.5 years could care less. Amidst the ruin and rubble of their pissed away efforts I'm almost sure of it. Oh well, won't be the first time a game review site sold their souls for some ad cash.
Second, there is no way SWG will more than likely ever be able to compete with even 2 WoW servers much less the game and I'll tell you why...2 things.
1. Word of mouth
2. Corporate idiots getting in the way.
On word of mouth. Folks the reason WoW is such a juggernaut is not necessarily because of ease of leveling, better graphics, or even gameplay. As mentioned here before, Blizzard has borrowed heavily from other games for all the above. The main reason for their success, IMO, is word of mouth.
The buzz in the circles these games float in is that WoW is the game to buy. You have friends telling friends telling friends telling co-workers telling grandparents, etc. They did put out a solid game that doesn't try to corner the 16-25 male demographic exclusively. There's some saying that always floats around discussions about word of mouth being something like its 10x harder to acquire new customers than keep old customers. Don't know if it's true but heaven help SOE if it is.
Which makes the NGE decision so incomprehensible. Somebody somewhere had to actually think that people would forget 2.5 years of incompentence and rush out and buy SWG based on what? I don't know. The flashy commercials that have no relevance to actual gameplay whatsoever? The bugged quest following LA's Julio Torres on G4TV? Some marketing idiot (or CEO) probably was using the phrase "finger on the pulse of something" when they presented this tripe to whoever was dumb enough to digest it. Killing off 200,000 subscribers so you can appeal to a 13 year old who already has much better games to play and only has to bug mom and dad once a year for 50 bucks for xbox live? Hoping the same 13 year old will stay seeing that there allowance money is being wasted on something that is not even half as good? Right, that's gonna work.
Which brings up my second point, corporate idiots. If Roger Ebert wants any more proof that games are art then SOE is giving him proof by the shovelfuls. For they are a shiny beacon on what happens when you replace ingenuity, imagination, and artistic integrity with memos, meetings, and morons in marketing telling you to swing the game the direction of the pre-pube set.
Can you imagine Leonardo da Vinci working for SOE? The memo from marketing might look something like this...
Leo,
About the Mona Lisa project. We feel that our target audience would like to see maybe a lower cut blouse and we've also included some pictures of our favorite hooter's girls to take care of the face problem.
By the way, we realize that you have a few more months to complete but with the holiday season coming up do you think you could get us a product on oh, let's say, 3 days? Thanks I knew you could.
Regards,
Raymond Babbitt
Marketing
P.S. We're putting new coversheets on the TPS reports. Did you get the memo?
Just in case you may not know. SOE has failed to retain an amount of customers that would even warrant an itch in the jockstrap of WoW. Technically none of their products could be deemed long term successes. EQ was not their baby from the beginning and anyone will tell you that was around that it seriously went downhill after they took full control. Wanna know why? They injected into the whole creation process a plethora of yes men, middle managers, buck passers, meeting whores, and marketing morons. For some reason (hmm maybe greed) they weren't content with publishing EQ and leaving the creative side alone. As a result...
EQ------Former she
Meanwhile Star Wars gives you the experience of an entire galaxy, not just a continent like Middle Earth and manages to mix in a fantasy element too (the Force).
Sci Fi has way more to offer if only they get the mechanics of SWG down. You'd think in a tech forum like Slashdot, Sci Fi would win hands down.
You can't.
This guy should really just shut up.
Hehe Yeah right
Then I think this man is right on. I don't think he will succeed, mind you, but if you want to make money, you need to be popular.
FWIW - I loved the crafting system. I despised the entertainment nonsense. I thought combat was simply broken and needed to be fixed. I also felt the entire game was, as they put it, the "Uncle Owen" experience, and that bugged me too.
I really wish they had thought through things better to start, and kept the core game system (skill trees), and just balanced it out better. I also wish, like many people, that they had set this in a timeframe when you could have tons of Jedis running around.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
If you were to add the total number of subscribers to all SOE games, you would not get close to WoW's numbers.
To someone paying attention, that alone makes the difference between Blizzard and SOE not about an individual game, but about the difference in the companies behind them.
One thing that I love about our company is that there is no 'quit' in this company.
Translation: We're gonna throw money at this market until we have it sewn up, just like we're doing with the console market. Turn a profit? We're Sony! Fuck profit!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
"The second major portion is the implementation of "Fast Action Combat." We're going to strip out the current SWG "select target, start macros, wait for combat to end" gameplay and replace it with a much more engrossing, entertaining control scheme. "Fast Action combat" controls will be similar to action games that our playerbase is intimately familiar with (Diablo certainly comes to mind, as well as our own Untold Legends game for the PSP)." -John Smedley
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http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/10
"We're going to take down Blizzard's hit new game, World of Warcraft, by making our game feel more like Blizzard's ancient but still enjoyable game, Diablo! You hear that, WoW? You're going dooooooowwwnn!!"
They are both science fiction and both have the usual trappings such as space ships and blasters.
Other than that they really don't resemble each other.
Star Trek is takes place in the future with humans from Earth. Star Trek is about human exploration of the galaxy. Star Trek also commonly deals with with the human aspect as well - subjects such as sexism and racism have been addressed - human nature examined etc. Star Trek frequently addresses morality and ethics.
Star Wars is set "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away". Star Wars doesn't try to relate to real people or human history at all.
Star Wars is a rollicking adventure with clearly defined bad guys and good guys - even Anakin turns good to bad like a flip of a switch. It's more of a fantasy story in sci-fi trappings complete with knights with laser swords and princesses to rescue.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"Comparatively, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE, the developers of Star Wars Galaxies, SWG) have a few MMORPG's under their acquizition belt. Ultima Online, Ever Quest being the biggest."
Ultima Online is owned by Electronic Arts - not Sony.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
If a fight lasts say 1-2 seconds, as fights between the hero and stormtroopers last in real Star Wars, then only the first player would get a hit in and the rest would be left targetting a corpse. It was my main problem with the Combat Upgrade where combat seemed to go so fast that melee, who have to run to the target first, just couldn't get a hit in before the ranged had killed the target.
Sure sure, an alternative would be to have massive battlefields with your squad fighting an enemy 10x the size in number where it is 1 hit 1 kill so you get more like the battles in Lord of the Rings. Drool city to be sure but apparently hard on the cpu.
30 second fights are the current way to allow every class to do its thing. No need for damage-over-time attacks if there is no time.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'd played SWG since early 04 and quit after the combat upgrade. I've been playing EVE recently, Love the game. Ever since NGE came out, there has been a constant stream of new people coming into EVE saying they just canceled their SWG accounts and are looking for a new game. How do you plan on making it to #1 when everyone's leaving? I suggest you release a new expansion called "Reset to before we screwed everything up" That's you're only prayer.
Someone save me from this sanity.
I do believe Warriors get 5 attribs, too.
GW should not be seen as a MMORPG, rather, Unreal Tournament with a Magic:The Gathering style deck selection for your weaponry. With a single player campaign tacked on that you can play co-operatively.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I do believe Warriors get 5 attribs, too. :P
I do believe you're right. I don't play warrior very often, so I'd forgotten
GW should not be seen as a MMORPG...
I definetly agree there, although I don't think it's that much like UT. I see it more like Diablo, except with a focus on PvP, and much better done.