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Why SOE Decided To Cancel Star Wars Galaxies
Last month we discussed news that Sony Online Entertainment will be shutting down Star Wars Galaxies, which has been running since 2003. Sony officials recently spoke at Fan Faire to explain the business decisions behind the closure. Unsurprisingly, licensing and upcoming competition from BioWare's Star Wars MMO played a big part. CEO John Smedley said,
"We have a contractual relationship that's ending in 2012, The Old Republic launching, a bunch of other business things with LucasArts. And then you look at the odds of a pretty large portion of the audience moving to TOR, which looks like a terrific game. ... That's the problem with licenses: they end. We're going to continue to do some licensed work, but we're largely going to stick to original IP [going forward] because then we won't have this issue. We'll never have this problem with EverQuest. Back in 2001, not '03 when we launched, but back in 2001 when we [first] negotiated it, a five year license seemed like a really long g****** time. EverQuest was only a year or so old at that point. Could we have renegotiated? Maybe, but I don't think that would be the right thing for the company."
Smart move.
That's the problem with licenses: they end.
Are you telling me that in ~5 years I may or may not be able to play TOR after I invest tons of time into it? That could be a serious dealbreaker for something I've been following very closely. Or is this just some relatively small fee that Sony has to pay to keep a small but loyal set of fans happy (and, of course, they're in the screwing customers over business so why do that)?
Between this, the prequels and taking the license from Decipher and giving it to Wizards of the Coast who ruined it, I'm moving further and further away from Star Wars. And in my young adult years, this was my religion. Congratulations, Lucasfilm, you've done the impossible. You've made me hate and avoid something I once loved.
My work here is dung.
Googled
Giraffe. Don't look it up in urban dictionary, you don't want to know.
goddamn.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
How can you talk about fucking up a franchise if it's running for almost 7 years.. In my book that doesn't count as fucking up, as enough people seemed to have liked it, you propably didn't, but that doesn't mean it wasn't successfull..
It is because they screwed up almost 6 years ago with the NGE patch which turned the game into a total rip-off of World of Warcraft. After a bunch of people on my SWG server jumped ship for World of Warcraft, I downloaded the demo and as I went through it and you could see where SOE copied the feature exactly. Even worse than that, they released the "new game enhancements" with the "legacy quest" that got you to level 40-something leaving you to essentially grind out the remaining 40-some levels to hit 90 (which was the cap when I quit). The worst part is after losing a massive chunk of their playerbase in the space of a month and forced to give refunds for the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack, they still refused to admit the NGE was a mistake. They did not test anything properly it seemed (anyone remember the Publish 27 Commando PvP of pointing the heavy weapon down, holding down the fire button, and then running at the person you wanted to kill?) and the game would change more radically than WoW ever has.
The irony is Blizzard's VP was quoted as saying they were actually afraid of Star Wars Galaxies because of the strong Star Wars intellectual property. However SOE, with LucasArts' assistance, managed to screw it up to the point not even the fanboys could save it
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A smart move on whose part? LucasArts? Probably not. Sony? Definitely not.
I have a couple friends who _still_ play Galaxies from time to time. They just manged to convince a third friend to hop back in and catch up when this announcement came out. (Needless to say he's given up on the game again now.) As far as i know SOE managed to drive a lot of people away with the one big stupid update, but it seems like they've still got enough people subscribed to pay for the server costs and then some.
If enough people _did_ drop Galaxies and switch to TOR after it come out to make Galaxies no longer cost effective then at _that_ point discontinuing Galaxies would make sense. However announcing the closing before TOR even comes out just comes across as a dick move.
Like they said, Everquest is _still_ going despite Everquest 2. There are still enough people interested in paying money for Everquest for it to be worth keeping the servers open. It's pretty clear that they're not adverse to taking money as long as people are willing to give it to them. On the other hand denying a continuation of the license is exactly the kind of thing Lucas/LucasArts loves to do. They've clearly demonstrated in the past a desire to force the consumer to adapt to what Lucas/LucasArts thinks is best for them.
LucasArts at least can hope that by killing Galaxies they'll convince the people still playing it to get TOR. (That may or may not work out well for them.) However SOE gains absolutely nothing from it.
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Not sure about that. The number of people actually playing SWG is abysmal after what Sony did to it.
And let's not forget one important thing: a lot of those are on a Station Account, which gives them access to all games for a flat monthly fee. A lot of them really have no interest whatsoever in the current SWG. I know I still show as a SWG subscriber because I once added it to the station account, and basically never bothered digging too deep to find out how to remove just SWG from it, because it doesn't cost anything to leave it there.
The vast majority of those don't make any income for SWG per se, because basically hardly any will leave because SWG shuts down. It's actually people who play EQ2 or even EQ1 or whatever, and they're not going to cancel their subscription because SWG shuts down.
Out of the few who still were specifically hanging around SWG to beg Sony to roll back the idiotic changes, most didn't really play much and their ranks are thinning out as it is. A lot of those can be expected to fuck off the instant there is another SW game out there, and those DO make a difference to revenue.
So let's look at it from Sony's POV: they could keep running a game which is hardly making them any money, and pay a shitload of money for servers, support, AND pay a shitload of money to Lucas for support. Or they could finally admit that they ran it into the fucking ground, and move on. The smart move is the latter.
Granted, I didn't expect Sony to do it, because they have this annoying habit of not admitting any mistakes and pretending they're Numero Uno, baby, even while they're digging themselves into a hole and alienating their player base. Must be one of those "losing face" things. In fact that's how they dug it into a hole with SWG in the first place. If they could admit they screwed up at any point instead of forging ahead into stupid land, they probably wouldn't be here.
Now let's look at it from Lucas's POV. Frankly, SWG never was the kind of game that is actually all that beneficial for their license.
I mean, at least with a Darth Vader t-shirt or plastic lightsaber, you know what you're getting, and no hard feelings afterwards. With SWG, you had millions of fans expecting it like the second cumming of Christ, and getting bitter and disappointed. It's not necessarily the kind of thing you want when selling licensed stuff. You don't license your toys to a turd-burger shop, you know?
And let's not pretend it was just NGE. While I can see why some people liked the skill system, pretty much that was all there was to it even before SWG. But that doesn't do much for Lucas. It wasn't exactly the best game for showcasing their license.
And in fact it was a game which did funky things to their license. The game launched without space stuff or Jedi. And for that matter without much stuff to do except some pointless PvP. The latter introduction of Jedi pissed all over the license, in making you acceptable as a Jedi only after you're a bitter old wreck that's been a dozen other professions and gave up. That's exactly opposite to canon, you know?
The NGE somewhat fixed that, but screwed everything else. But even the license issue wasn't really "fixed" except in as much as a kitten is "fixed" after a trip to the vet ;)
The NGE went full tilt into shameless merchandising exercise, and to such an extent that it left a bitter taste in the mouth of everyone who wasn't explicitly after that. Suddenly you had Darth Vader personally pursuing some fucking Twi'lek dancer if the player was one, Han Solo personally rescuing her, etc. It's stuff that didn't even make much sense. WTF did she do, to warrant that? Gave Palpatine some Iridorian clap, or what?
It wasn't some subtle use of canon characters, but some mass produced drivel that shoved them down the player's throat whether he wanted them or not.
If you will, it's like those cheap knock-off toys that give Superman a parachute (WTF, can't he fly?) or put Darth Vader on a motorcycle.
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