CBS News Fields SWG Hatemail

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.

Comments

Compost Mainstream?

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When CBS and the Washington Post are covering something like this, it tells me two things. First, MMOGs are definitely mainstream now.

Parent post is partly meaningless since neither of these media outlets are mainstream anymore. Free broadcast news ratings are a fraction of what they used to be and continue to drop, the Washington Compost's numbers have been dropping for years and will continue to drop (as are all hardcopy paper's numbers).

Perhaps this only a good sign in that both outlets might be starting to wake up and realize they've screwed the pooch, alienated a majority of possible readers/viewers and are starting to seek new audiences.