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Sony To Encase Half the Star Wars: Galaxies Servers In Carbonite
Impy the Impiuos Imp writes "Sony is apparently merging out of existence half its Star Wars: Galaxies servers. In spite of a number of innovative features (three health bars, choreograph-able dancing, music you can coordinate between several players, 'your own R2 unit and 3PO,' programmable droids, and so on), a complete overhaul of the combat system, designed to simplify it and make it more action-oriented, actually drove away more people than it attracted. It soon thereafter retired to that great, Sony one-fee-for-all stable of aging and also-rans in the sky. Still on life support, it was preceded in death by Sony foster brother The Matrix Online."
The combat system in Star Wars: Galaxies was actually completely revamped twice. The first revamp, called the CU (Combat Upgrade) went over somewhat okay. It resolved a few of the problems that the original system had, and it held a lot of promise. There were two major problems with the CU, though... One, it was just as buggy and unfinished as the system it replaced, and two Sony made almost zero effort to finish, improve, or troubleshoot the CU. The result was that even after several years into the game's launch, the core gaming system was still plagued with bugs, imbalances, half-finished ideas, and an odd mix of non-aesthetically matching game systems. Sony "solution" to all this was to simply redo the entire combat system again, this time calling it the NGE (New Game Experience). The problem with the NGE, though, was that like the CU before it, it was buggy and unfinished. At was it this point that the mass exodus of players began. Sony had already proven twice in a row that they had zero ability to actually finish and troubleshoot a combat system, and a large chunk of the playerbase decided that the NGE would be no exception. Sony also did a terrible job managing the transition from each system to the next. As in any MMO, loot, achievements, and other acquired goals/recourses play a major role in defining a player's sense of accomplishment in the game. Prior to each revamp, Sony promised that all of a players loot and achievements would be converted to something of equal usefulness in the next system. This ultimately proved to be nothing but a lie. All manner of loot and quest rewards were transformed into junk. Many players literally had months of effort wiped away in a single day. And this happened not once, but twice! The downfall of Star Wars: Galaxies was predicted from the moment the NGE was first announced. Sony ignored their playerbase when the game was launched, they ignored them when they introduced the CU, and they ignored them when they launched the NGE. It should come as zero surprise to them that their now former playerbase decided to ignore them back.