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Star Wars and Raph Leave SOE?
Gamespot reports that Raph Koster, chief creative officer for Sony Online Entertainment, has left the company. While Gamespot seems to confirm this news, there are a number of MMOG-related rumours swirling at GDC. Mythic may be in EA's sights for acquisition, and Sony Online may soon be losing the rights to the Star Wars license. IE: No more SWG. Grimwell online has a rundown on these virulent rumours. Chris Kramer (from SOE) said words to the effect of "We're in it together for the long haul." SWG will be staying with Sony Online for some time to come.
I played Everquest 2 for a year and 2 months. With 3 large combat changes the game is not what it originaly was when it came out. Which caused me to leave.
:P
I believe the same thing happened to SWG where they changed the game a great deal too much.
I don't know to many MMO players that are happy with the way SOE is doing business. It seems that in SOE's quest to gain more patronage, they fail to realize that the customers already in the game are playing it for the way it is. They don't want it to change drasticaly to gain other players that are looking for a more laid back game play.
If i wanted to play a game for 30 minutes and acomplish something i would play WoW. If i want to play a game that i won't be able to do anything except travel across the map in 30 minutes I'll play EQ2. For me i loved the complexity of the game. They've done away with that. And in turn they have done away with my subscription.
I see this as a signal that their are alot of troubles brewing within SOE.
Just a gamers Opinion though
Raph Koster is excellent at designing unfun games. I'm not sure this is a bad thing for the company "losing" him...
IMHO , SWG was doomed from the get go. The reason is that they had a great IP to develop a game off of. They had two options they could go for. Either make a game for star wars fans, or make a game for MMORPG players. They tried to straddle the fence and it cost them. The SW fans didn't feel that this game was any more SW than any other sci fi based MMORPG other than character references and some races. I mean really now, how many beast tamers did you see in the star wars movies? They got a similarly tepid response from MMORPG junkies because it really wasn't anything innovative to the genre and was cursed with some bottability issues. So they roll out NGE to try to fix this. Problem, the hardcore SW people have already left, and you remake the game to try to be more appeasing to what they're looking for. This annoys the MMORPG people because now it's even less of a game they can get into. In a perfect world it would have been "Hey, you got Star Wars in my MMORPG! No you got MMORPG in my Star Wars! Hey these are two great tastes that taste great together!!!" Instead we got "Hey, you got MMORPG in my star wars, and I seem to have gotten some Star wars in your MMORPG, how about we let this Sony person throw it on the ground and piss on it?"
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
it is unfortunate that it's passing won't wake up anyone at SOE to the fact that they have lost focus... To me the danger is that the EAs SOEs and Vuvendi Universals of the world will smother what is left of creativity or at the vary least use there market share to undermine smaller and more inovative developers while cranking out "sure thing" sequals and sport sims.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
SOE has screwed up SWG long enough, if they loose the licensing, who really cares? The few remaining players will be bummed, and rumors will float about some other company trying to do SWG right.
But having yet another solid and profitable independant developer like Mythic sucked up into the oppresive regime that is EA?!? I find that to be a much more disturbing thought.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I absolutely would fire the people involved for taking what should have been a slam-dunk title and turning it into a travesty. They played around with their ideas too much, and didn't attend to the business of making a solid game.
Note that none of this means the game should be made "my way". With a title like that, they should have made an rpg with mass appeal.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
Does anyone REALLY expect the President of a company to announce they will losing some asset/license/idea that WOULD cost shareholders to dump stock??? I cannot believe anyone would expect a confirmation that from him IF that was the truth.
I expect a wonderful reception by players for "Serenity Online", but due to a shortage of players it will shut down after a few months..
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
Yeah, it's suprising to see games based on movie licenses doing so badly.
I expect next year's E.T. MMORPG to be a smashing success...
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Given that one of the other rumors is:
Smedley Getting the Axe at SOE. This is a bonus entry, not from GDC. Something I was actually told last week and wanted to sit on and fact gather. At this point with Raph gone and SWG in question... it's hard to think this wouldn't be on the table.
I wouldn't expect Smedley to say anything else.
Him leaving wouldn't change my opinion though: I will never play an SoE game again.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
MMORPGs have become completly derivative of the genre as a whole. I can generically describe every MMORPG ever created as a game where you create a character, choose a class and then go out and complete missions. With the quests mostly consisting of killing monsters or some other NPC.
Sure, they have tried to throw in distractions such as housing, and guilds and different quest branches. (I.E. questing to gain a title or questing to gain an item, etc..)
I purchased EQ2 recently, because a year or so ago it was described as a unique game, with something different. By that I am referring to the class system where you pick a general class at first and specialize as you gain levels. From a magic user to a priest for example. But no, when I played it, you got to pick your class up front and that was your class for the rest of the game.
I actually think UO is the best MMORPG on the market. It make not look great, but it has way more variety. An Elder Srolls MMORPG would be incredible.
As it stands right now, SWG is in a tough spot. Those who want a space-based persistent world, with bounty-hunting, smuggling, and space combat have a great alternative in Eve.
Those who want sword fights, magic powers, alien landscapes, weird creatures and chainmail bikinis have pretty much every Fantasy RPG to play.
Those that want wear funky armor, control an army of robots, and use a blaster that allows you to shoot first can play City of Heroes.
Aside from Branding, exactly who is SWG trying to appeal to? Everything they might have is being done better by other games.
--sugarman--
While I wish no ill will on Raph, Star Wars Galaxies is a textbook example of a misguided project.
Star Wars is one of the most regonized and highly regarded franchises among video game consumers. Players have high expectations, and why shouldn't they? There's enough material there for an engaging and interesting MMO. One has to wonder, how could you mess up a Star Wars MMO?
Well, here's how:
1. Launch a buggy game your beta testers tell you is nowhere near ready.
2. Have no player-controlled starships. Space is just like "zoning" in EQ.
3. Have no class balance, and then screw up class balance. Make sure your producer's favorite class (pet handler) is insanely powerful at launch.
4. Make sure entire classes, (droid manufacturer), are completely foobar.
5. Totally mismanage player relations, eventually cutting off public access to the forums to hide discontentment. Be sure to have a privately run, but public web site up for the producer where he talks about how players are sheep, more or less.
6. Planets aren't even frickin' round, and they have edges which are just high mountains.
7. Make sure questing is so stupid players don't even bother to read the templated instructions for what you are doing, and instead focus on the one or two variables per template. (Go here, blow up nest, run back.)
8. Make sure PvP is totally hosed at launch.
9. Don't bother to react to major economy-ruining bugs for days, even after reports flood forums, so that money is completely devalued.
10. Make the #1 fantasy of every player, becoming a Jedi, completely out of reach to smart players who maybe, like, have a job, and within the reach of mindless drones who play your game 24/7.
Anyways, the game was fscked all along, and the final news that the combat/professions system needed another overhaul was just the coup-de-grace.
RIP; lesson learned for Lucusfilm.
I loved Dark Age of Camelot, played it about 3 years religiously till time constraints kicked in. Hate work interfering with fun, but hey that's life. Anyway I feel Mythic will lose its identity of making quality games, and well we all know what happens when EA (Assimilate Everything) gets a hold of something :(
You left out:
Make sure to have one sign-in / credit card / account server for opening day. Have thousands of people, who took the day off from work to get their account signed up and the player name they wanted on day one, scream in agony as the system wouldn't let them in.
SWG broke my heart. I waited for that game for years. I played UO, which was fun, but wanted SWG. When they announced it, the screenshots started coming out, I got more excited. When I found out that you could set up equipment to mine resources rather than doing it myself, I got MORE excited.
I got the chills when I walked to Uncle Owen's place, Jabba's palace, etc.
I hope that some day, a real game can be run with the same visuals.
My mom says I'm cool.
Of course, it'd lack the characters, and the dialog would be hard to enforce among the player base, which were two of the most interesting features. But a MMORPG based on smuggling and crime, ala Traveller but with no aliens I think could be real fun.
What I've heard pointed out is that any game based on a license is doomed to fail, simply because the licensing itself costs money that takes away from otherwise building a superior development environment. While it builds in a player base, that base leaves because of lack of content, content that could have been there but for the money having gone to the licensee.
Stands to reason, and it seems to hold up in practice, too. Is there ONE good game that was a license of a brand? Maybe the Harry Potter series of games, but I don't play.
--
$tar -xvf
ok, Raph had one sucess: UO. UO was fun, but that was also Garriots brain child and i would believe Raph had limited control over the game.
In SWG, well that was what i believe to be his first major project, and it showed at release. The game was a hack job that they spent months more fixing and duct taping. It took months to get to a working state and a year after the game was going great. THen they decided to change directions. A year later after everyone got used to it, they changed directions again.
I'm so totally happy Raph got his ass fired from SOE. When they first announced he's "leaving" the SWG project back over a year ago, i was totally happy. Now that his sticky fingers are out of the company entirely, well SOE can finally make fun non sadistic games made for masochists
The Star Wars Devs (and Raph the supposed 'Genius of MMOGs'in particular) should have realized that in a genre selling 'you are the hero' that everyone wants to be the hero, aka a JEDI. They should have therefore made the game with the design that the players WERE the jedi in the game, would be the jedi class at start for the most part and the world based around that concept kind of like a massively-multiplayer KOTOR. Had they realized that other classes would be the exception to the rule, included spaceflight and combat out of the box and they would have been coding a lisence to print money for the next 10 years.
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
Hopefully Star Trek online and Lord of the Rings online will fair better.
Hopefully Star Trek online and Lord of the Rings online won't be managed by SOE.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Is there ONE good game that was a license of a brand?
While the Star Wars games are hit and miss, there are certainly hits in there.. XvT comes to mind, as does last year's Lego Star Wars.
LucasArts isn't exactly Nintendo when it comes to protecting its brand names but they're not stupid enough to continue to let the Star Wars name be burned alive. (SWG is the laughingstock of MMOs these days.)
Subject was a direct quote from the article, move along.
I dunno... Ultima Online was fun or at least until they screwed it up with Trammel and all the ungodly changes. I don't know about SWG though.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I was on the tail end of the EQ2 beta and also played for a little while before being lured away by WoW...which I played for over a year.
Then I read a couple of reviews of the "revamp" of EQ2 and I went back to take a look. I was really impressed by how far it had come and decided to continue on with my character. There's a lot of depth there that was lacking when it first came out.
Traveling around in EQ2 isn't bad...no worse than WoW. But then again, I'm one that thinks traveling around EQ1 is WAY too easy than it used to be. The "good ol days" for EQ1, to me, was only the original game and the first two expansions...Kunark and Velious. After that it was the vocal whiners that got the game to where it was almost "teleport directly to the mob, have the mobs line up, die automatically for you, you get the experience, you get whatever you needed. NEXT". It was fun when it was more of a free-wheeling place, where you had to sell your own stuff, where you had to get a port out of some place. The world of EQ seemed SO big back then. Taking a Barbarian from Halas to Freeport was a daunting task of running through the Karanas. It was great. It was an adventure right there. Now...meh...you're a barbarian in Halas just gate up to the Plane of Knowledge and go wherever you want. No biggy. And to me, no fun. Again, that's just me. I'm a little goofy.
But I've been having a blast with EQ2. Well, not at the moment as all my attention is on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Now, if they get rid of some of the other mentally handicapped execs at Sony, I might stop boycotting their products.
For instance, they could get rid of whoever greenlighted that whole rootkit fiasco. I haven't heard of any firings related to that nightmare.
Leave it to Sony to start making me think Microsoft is an example of a 'good' corporation!
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
Not to mention Lucasarts is known to revoke licences. Decipher produced a fantastic collectible card game, SW:CCG, Lucasarts then decided to revoke their licence and gave it to Wizards of the Coast. In the process they killed one of the best CCGs.
I wouldn't be suprised at all if this rumour was more than just a pigment of someone's imagination.
By now I was expecting "Someone set us up the bomb"
Seriously though, it's funny how none of us are thinking "Hey Sony must feel like they're taking a bath on this!"
Worst yet, Sony's investors are probably thinking "Sony is successfully reducing costs by cutting online games that poor hopeful shmucks thought would be good. Good for them for treating customers like crap. Buy their stock."
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
>"Who's scruffy-lookin'?"
> "Where did you dig up that old fossil?"
> "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside"
> "It's not my fault!"
> "I've got a bad feeling about this"
> "Then I'll see you in hell"
You forgot the One True Line for SOE/SWG:
"Pull out, Raph, you can't do any good back there."
There are great Star Wars games, good Marvel Comics games, good LOTR games, the classic TMNT game, etc.
There are many licensed games that are genuinely good. The idea that licensed games are all bad comes from the fact that they (even the bad) tend to get heavy marketing support and when they flop everyone knows, and many have played. Usually, when a non-licensed game is bad fewer people play it and it never gets enough mindshare to be memorable...there are exceptions, of course, but the memorable non-licensed flops are usually pre-release over-hype situations (hi, Daikatana!) in an established series and/or from an established developer.
Never played SWG but the best movie quote is still the one about "Get in there you great furry oaf, I don't care what you smell!" Probably got at least one word wrong, though. Guess I have to hand in my SW Nerd card.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and XvT are of course the best. They're also all the same damn game with different vehicles, but never mind that. The Rogue Squadron games are pretty good too, but nowhere near as good. I enjoyed KOTOR but I heard KOTOR 2 was lame, had nothing like the same quality of design, and even a less contiguous story. And a lot of people seemed to like that first FPS (and its sequel.) Everything else is probably crap :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Star Wars Devs (and Raph the supposed 'Genius of MMOGs'in particular) should have realized that in a genre selling 'you are the hero' that everyone wants to be the hero, aka a JEDI.
/tells saying how he 'pnwed' him and his mother. The only reason people play nice in MMOGs is because of PvP limitations.
Everyone wants to kill the hero.... And take his things and send him nasty
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
KOTOR II started off great, but fell apart somewhat towards the end. The game was obviously badly rushed, resulting in game-breaking bugs and an ending that made almost no sense. It's a shame, because it definitely would have been brilliant given more time.
All I meant was that it was an accomplishment of a goal. To play a game that had the places I saw in my favorite movies.
Not a religious experience, but one of satisfaction.
Could it have been even better? Of course.
My mom says I'm cool.
Today there are dozens of Dev and producer posts that are out to counter the new wave of horrible press their lack of work and attention has created. It's all a joke so they can say, "Look how much we communicate!" when in fact it's their last ditch. The producer tripling his post count in one day impresses the small minded idiots, who get star-struck when a "red-name" (Dev) makes a post, but everyone else sees it for what it is : a glass of water thrown on a rampant house fire they created themselves because they simply didn't do what they promised. Again.
They are crooks (taking money for expansions one day before telling us the original game was getting shut down and they were putting a new one in, the NGE), liars (so many lies...some posts deleted later when they didn't think anyone was looking, but many remain), and don't understand the concept of setting a schedule/goal and getting it accomplished. Whatever dickhead is really in charge (Smed says it's not him today...then who the hell is it if not the producer?) needs to find employees who a) know their job, b) know how to do it efficently, and c) keep to some semblance of a schedule. They cry that it takes months of man hours to make a simple change - well, in that case, it's shoddy code to blame.
I wish Lucasarts would dump SOE - put the damn game out of it's misery. It's a complete boil on the arse of the Star Wars franchise, and the suits at SOE have spent three years telling people they were going to deliver a game that has never materialized. I've finally cancelled myself, and the only regret is that I spent any time at all playing a game where I was constantly told the "next big thing" was coming that would make the game an actual Star Wars experience; if the smug jack-offs like Smedley spent 1/10 of the energy they spend spinning shit, telling blatant lies about the game to trick people into playing/staying, into actually fixing the game, you'd have the biggest/best MMO in the Galaxy.
Unfortunately, that won't happen - SOE has ridden this pony as far as it can, and only the hardest-core-take-it-up-the-arse from the DEV fanbois (yes, I'm talking to you PsychoPyro, who kisses so much arse *I* get the bad taste in my mouth) are still there. I used to hope for the best, but they always deliver the worst. Eventually, even the most ardent supporter (except for the crazies, who are usually 16-year old bois who think when they get all growed up they could work for SOE so they start corporate kiss arse now) must realize that the game they say it will be never will be, any more than you should believe a leopard who tells you he's going to rearrange his spots. It's just not going to happen.
So, by now people have seen the news. Yes, it is true I am leaving SOE.
Why? Well, I've been here for gosh, almost six years maybe? It's been a good ride, and I think we've gotten to do some really fun and interesting work. But I am getting interested in doing some stuff that is a bit off the beaten path -- really, anyone who has been reading the blog can see that! -- and while SOE feels it's really cool stuff, it's just not where they are at right now. My contract was up, and it was the right time to poke my head up and look around, that sort of thing. It's all quite friendly, and actually, I hope that I'll work with SOE again in the future, because there's a lot of wonderful talent here and a lot of cool technology, and a lot of friends.
So, sometime soon here I'll be off on my own. Nope, no announcements about plans or anything. I don't have a new studio in my back pocket, I don't have a job lined up, any of that. And... we'll see what comes. I'm thinking sleeping in next week sounds good.
Oh -- the old email still works, for now. You can always post a comment or use the email addy at the bottom of this page to reach me, too.
All sort of anti-climactic, huh? ;)
Personally, I think he is one talented individual who would absolutely shine in a less, shall we say, strangling environment? GL Raph!
Brand X, er, that's generic X as in the unknown, not X-men, is a hot property.
Company who owns Brand X wants to take advantage of new media market M
Company doesn't make market M things, so licenses it off to someone who does
Brand X is popular, so only large corporations can afford to license it
Company in market M then has a brand they paid a ton for, and must sell it well to even dream of clearing a profit, much less a big one
Company having spent so much, has bigshots get involved to "ensure" project goes in correct direction
Camel gets designed by committee
Witness the horrific recent D&D "RTS" game -- it had nothing to do with D&D. It was a Warcraft III clone, complete with hero units. There was no "rolling your own". There was no research on how to create fighters with 20 str instead of just 18 or 16. And what could be more un-D&D than the hero unit? Hero units are fine, if you like them, but that ain't D&D.
And as a generic, non-D&D game with D&D slapped on it, it wasn't all that and a bag of gnome chips.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> And how many truly groundbreaking games were based on movies?
"Groundbreaking" is also misused a lot. The most recent Wired has a brief (i.e. bullet list) article about the origin of the Orc. One of the items is the "groundbreaking" game World of Warcraft. I will admit WoW broke ground for number of customers, but as a game it was hardly groundbreaking. It looks pretty good, but the gameplay is nothing special. Although I suppose that is at least an advantage over SWG, who shows it can get messed up, and then extremely messed up.
MMORPG addicts have memories like an elephant, and hold grudges. They remember all the nerfs, for example, EQ gave them over the years, and when the time to break away came, they did, and refused to get EQ2, etc. SWG will be in the same boat. WoW will not because, even through there have been some nerfs, it hasn't been on the same magnitude. Nah, the WoW franchise will have to die the old fashioned way, when WoW II is released.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> UO at that time was fun for all the opposite reasons that
> Raph intended. They didnt plan for it to become a murder
> fest.. but people basically did whatever they wanted.
When UO realized a larger chunk of their sales were 13 year olds getting their buddies to join, too, so they could stand in small gangs outside the cities and loot the role players instead of the monsters, they had to make a choice: role players or pk. They chose pk. So the roleplayers largely left, drying up the supply of suckers.
This is similar to the male lion in Africa. It lies around until the females, hungry, go take down the gazelle, then it saunters up and chases the females away and eats. Why go kill 100 monsters just to get that mediocre sword, when all you have to do is lie in wait for someone who already has?
The Flaming Sword of Ogre Strength And Shooting Lightning Out Your Ass? Just junk. What? Yes. I would like to destroy it, thanks.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Believe me, buddy, we wished it worked that way, too.
Then you wouldn't have been nerfing left and right. You'd have been fixing the problems instead. Boost the warrior instead of tearing down the necromancer, if the necro's pet can solo a warrior. Boost the magician's pet instead of tearing down the necromancer. Boost the monster AI instead of nerfing charm and pet attacks and DoTs that also slow the monster. Boost the monster AI instead of letting monsters hit through walls.
Yeah, we wished it worked that way, too.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So, are you disagreeing with me by asserting that all licensed games are bad? They're not.
Maybe you're disagreeing and asserting that all non-licensed games are good? That's not true, either.
I don't think you understand what the words "I have to disagree" mean...
WoW wasn't "groundbreaking", but it gets an amazing number of things, both large and small, just right. For example: no zoning (not quite true, but pretty much). As you move about the world, you are passing from zone to zone, but aside from a few places like travel between the continents, or entry into an instance, you don't get a "zoning" screen. Gives you a much higher sense of immersion in the game.
+1 Can't.Stop.Laughing
And it's a real shame. I played it when the game was released and it was actually fun.
Every craftable item is useful.
Anything you need, another player can make.
You don't have to be some sort of gunman, swordsman, or fighter to have fun.
Can you believe they trashed that?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I know, some people are going to mention Torment here - we'll just disagree on that point, shall we?