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SOE Retains Star Wars License
Next Generation confirms that Sony Online Entertainment will retain the Star Wars license for for their Massive title Star Wars Galaxies. From the article: "LucasArts and SOE have no plans to 'sunset' Star Wars Galaxies. The two companies will continue to work together as partners in making Star Wars Galaxies the ultimate online Star Wars experience. As has been announced several times previously, LucasArts and SOE are 100% committed and determined to continue to support Star Wars Galaxies together, especially with our renewed focus on improving the game for existing players through robust publish and content offerings in 2006."
Actually, if they kept much of their current game play, but introduced alternate timelines...such as 500 years before Phantom Menace, during the reign of the Old Republic...or even back 1000 years to Knights of the Old Republic. Then I would consider playing.
As it is, all those Jedi running around during the New Hope - Empire Strikes Back timeline just bugs the crap out of me.
"The two companies will continue to work together as partners in making Star Wars Galaxies the ultimate online Star Wars experience."
It's pretty easy to be the "ultimate online Star Wars experience" when you're the only game in town...
"If Common Sense was so common, it wouldn't be such a valued trait."
Some of the highlights:
This is, for all intents and purposes, SWG becoming a sci-fi analog to WoW. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it's not the game a lot of the players signed up for. If SOE pulls it off they may get a sizable player base, although I wouldn't pretend they'll match WoW's size.
The developer Helios has really upset the players with his pronouncement that SWG no longer strives to be a world simulator. One of the selling points of the original SWG was the open world where players would find their own things to do instead of being on treadmills. Sure, SWG failed in large ways because of experience grinding and lack of working, interesting content. But the play area was flexible enough and the way things worked pre-NGE managed to keep a lot of people interested.
Another developer, ChrisCao, comes across as an ass. He managed to insult just about everyone with what he said, being particularly dismissive of entertainers. His contention is that entertainers don't belong in the Star Wars universe because the only one in the movie got eaten. Not only is this wrong (cantina in Mos Eisley, partying ewoks, Jabba's personal entertainers), but by his logic they should eliminate bounty hunters because Greedo and both Jengo and Boba Fett were killed.
There was also a developer comment made (I think by ChrisCao) that droid engineers didn't exist in Star Wars, which is also ridiculous. Annakin was a droid engineer who built C-3PO. Luke, too, was a budding droid engineer. It was his tinkering with R2-D2 that unlocked Princess Leia's message. The jawas, as scavengers, also served as droid engineers. Gotta whip them into shape to sell them.
I don't know what kind of Star Wars fans the developers are, but it seems the ones making the decisions only understand the superficial aspects of the story arc. Some of us like playing someone like Oola or Watto or Uncle Owen. Give me an arid planet and some second-hand, rusted moisture extractors and I'll keep myself entertained for as long as there's a market for water.
SWG is turning into a radically different game. That's fine, if that's the business decision that needs to be made. I'm not sure they'll be able to make all of their changes in a short enough time to save the game, but that's just one player's opinion. And thank you, SOE, for finally being forthcoming in your intent so we can make informed decisions about playing. I started playing SWG because it was sci-fi and it had one of the most elaborate crafting systems of any MMOG on the market. Now that crafters are going to shift to glorified loot pimpers maybe I'll look elsewhere. Seed looks intriguing and is scheduled to launch in about a month. A zero-combat MMORPG may be just the antidote to what SWG wants to become.