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CBS News Fields SWG Hatemail

Posted by Zonk on from the force-really-needs-a-good-hosedown dept.

Back in December of last year, the CBS News site did a feature printing some of the frustrated and confused emails sent by Star Wars Galaxies players. These individuals were all upset by the 'NGE', or New Game Enhancements, patched into the game by publisher Sony Online Entertainment. Evidently the feature was so popular they've gone back into the well, printing up a whole new batch of SWG-related frustrations. When CBS and the Washington Post are covering something like this, it tells me two things. First, MMOGs are definitely mainstream now. Second, Sony made a mistake. Warcry has some information that may reveal how big a mistake. They claim that a packet sniffer built into the SWG client made population numbers for the servers available to players. On a Friday night, at peak time, post-NGE Galaxies is apparently only drawing 10,400 players across all galaxy servers. This is basically 'some guy on a website' talk, so take this with a big grain of salt. It's sobering news, though, if true.

2 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Why didn't sony create two seperate worlds? by Vellmont · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just don't understand why Sony didn't create a seperate world for people who wanted this "simplified SWG" or whatever you want to call it. Just have a frontend that connects you to a different server that has the patched version if that's the world you want to play in. Is it simply that Sony didn't want to maintain two branches?

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    AccountKiller
  2. "Sony made a mistake." by Errandboy+of+Doom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The mistakes happened long before the NGE. They were numerous. In fact, every design decision I can recall was tardy and poorly executed. That's why I left with most of the other players long ago.

    Sounds like the NGE was a desparate gasp from a company that realized it was trying to support an unsustainable (read: crappy) product. Sounds like the NGE itself is evidence something has been systemically wrong for a long time.

    Since the game has been so bad for so long, I'm not sure I can trust any reactions from those still playing. For all I know, maybe the NGE was a step in the right direction.

    Unfortunately, we'll never know, because it's too little too late for all of us who care about either a rewarding game experience or a minimally competent dev team.