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Washington Post on Star Wars Galaxies Changes
spartan7891 writes "The Washington Post, by way of MSNBC, is running a story on how fans are outraged at the newest changes made to Star Wars Galaxies. As one player states, 'The game for me probably will be a lost love. Sort of like seeing your spouse with Alzheimer's. Outwardly, everything appears the same as it always has, but you know that beneath the surface, things will never be the same.' There's even rumors of LucasArts being so angry about the changes that they may cancel SOE's contract." Yeah ... if a major newspaper covers what you did in a patch, you probably did something wrong.
Yeah, because losing a video game is like seeing your loved one destroyed by a horrible disease... If leveling changes are the worst thing that happens to you this year, count yourself lucky. Wow...
I'd say that if this causes "one player" to spend a little more time in reality and acquire (if only by gamer standards) a bit of perspective, they've done him a huge favor.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
SOE blew it with SWG. The game was complex. It wasn't easy to become the best. There was a lot to know about everything and this is what drew me to it. With all the changes it's become more and more simple and has swerved away from all the reasons I loved it.
In their attempt to capture a wider player base they alienated the rest of us. The scope of the worlds and how you could build your character was so wide. The freedom to do what you wanted was amazing. And they took that freedom and they kicked it square in the balls.
SWG was the first and only MMPROG I stuck with for more than a month. And now they've lost me.
Bloggy Goodness
If it's "easy to play", and people can easier become Jedi's, and play/meet up with iconic characters, and it's more fast paced, won't SOE risk exchanging a player base of dedicated players with long term goals with unreliable (as for income stream) short-term players looking at the game as an action shooter they're done with after a month or so? I thought the point with MMORPG's was to set up several long term goals and lots of stuff to do, with lots of professions to pick from, lots of quests, lots of opportunities for social interactions, and basically make people grow into the world and make it their home on the Internet. Sounds evil, but I think that's what most MMORPG's strive for, although it doesn't sound like this one does anymore...
Is Sony missing that the equation is money * time = revenue?
Could Sony now see effects of a shortly increased popularity, but be worse off than ever in just a year?
Some companies manage to pull this off quite well, such as Blizzard with Diablo II, but that one's fee-free, as well as an FPS action game like Counterstrike. I think SOE will have quite a large burden to carry to make people want to pay monthly for some action with a reduced depth, professions, and less varying goals to aspire to.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Between this and their rootkit ("Oopsie!"), seems that Sony's really batting 1000 lately, doesn't it?
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
I have no interest in SWG - pre or post transition. If I had to pick I'd say I'm slightly more interested in a faster-paced FPS-style game than in the older RPG style game (I love Planetside). But at the same time, I don't think what SOE did was right or good. Even if it becomes a game more like one I'd want to play the fact that SOE is so ready to give the shaft to players that have dedicated years of their lives (laying aside whatever that says about their priorities) not only playing their game but paying money for it bodes ill for gamers no matter what your gaming preferences.
Just imagine if the situation was reversed and Planetside all of a sudden had dozens of "careers" like "supply clerk" and "truck driver" and the FPS combat was changed to some kind of RPG or even turn-based blend. The fact is that they are just different types of games. You (and I) may like FPS games, but that's just a matter of taste.
Suddenly destroying an old game and rendering it utterly useless for a large section of a fan base (by replacing it with a new game they didn't sign up for) is not a question of taste. It's a question of treating your cutomers right, of being honest with people, of integrity, and when it comes down to it a question of business sense. In all of these ways SOEs "upgrade" to SWG should be repugnant not just to the old vets of that game but to gamers everywhere who expect game companies to act with responsibility and honesty towards they're paying cutomers.
I'm not saying that SOE has a legal obligation to only make upgrades that are acceptable to the game. Customers pay for the game each month, and that means that SOE has the right to make any changes they want and the cutomers have no recourse (except they should be given money back for months they no longer wish to use). But because something is legal doesn't make it ethical - or smart. And companies should not be trying to get by some minimum standard of ethics with their customers - they should be seeking to rise to the highest level of customer satisfaction.
It comes down to this. If you get online to play Planetside tonight and find out that it has been turned into an RTS - how happy will you be? If you would not happy with that you shouldn't be happy with what happened to SWG either.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
"There's even rumors of LucasArts being so angry about the changes that they may cancel SOE's contract."
The formatting of this in italics makes it seem like it's mentioned in the story, which it's not...so that's a bit misleading or confusing.
If you read the article, in fact, the vice president of development at SOE said, "'It was a tough decision we had to make,' he said. 'We knew we were going to sacrifice some players . . . [but] as a Star Wars license, we should do a lot better than we have been doing.'"
So, in effect, it seems that SOE was probably lambasted by LucasArts and the NGE was the result. It was likely a joint effort between the two companies to kick start the game again. If LucasArts is still unhappy with it, then it is a situation they were well aware of, and it's doubtful they would suddenly become angry and cancel SOE's contract when they were part of the effort to "save" the game.
That said, I played this game for 2 years with multiple accounts. It used to be fun, and with the new way of things it just wasn't. Animations before the first overhaul of the game (Combat Upgrade) were fluid and fun to watch, especially the Darth Maul-esque double bladed lightsaber moves. The Combat Upgrade filled the game with flashy particle effects and magical auras everywhere - VERY unlike any Star Wars movie I've seen. That was lame. With the New Game Enhancements they just recently did, now they sped up everything so that characters run around like they're on crystal meth. It looks ridiculous. It was plagued with bugs and only had quests through level 30 out of the 90 levels in combat - that was just a stupid decision. The game needs more content and always has.
The game also needs a development team that can actually handle the workload required of the game - it's more than apparent that no matter what the configuration of the game, the Dev team isn't up to the task. Even as "cut down" as the game currently is, which it really isn't - many professions just got rolled up into "classes" so no significant work was really saved - the Devs still don't seem to have any significant effort being put toward finally getting this game polished and functioning.
In the end, the NGE basically achieved the purging of the veteran playerbase who were pissed that nothing good had come out of the potential the game had, and instead it overhauled everything to bring in a new crop of players willing to fork over cash and wait for the potential of the game to be realized. In other words, they have a whole new population of willing subscribers who will take another 2 years to really get mad that they've wasted their time to get nothing significant in return. The question is - will the new players have the staying power of the previous veteran players? Doubtful, in my opinion. They are flash in the pan Episode III-hyped players. The fans who were in it for the long haul have by and far given up by now.
Eventually this game will be abandoned in droves and it will fall apart. Too bad, because all I wanted was to actually be a musician in the Star Wars universe and entertain folks - and the Devs have no interest apparently in developing that "iconic class" as they call it. In addition, I got sick of playing a Jedi (which launched with the NGE with no armor - frickin' brilliant) which is a melee class in a ranged shoot-em-up game. If they can't get the game to work right with Jedi, what the hell kind of Star Wars game is it, anyways? And who the hell calls themselves a Dev for a Star Wars game when they can't even make Jedi fit into the game properly?