After continual thought, I still think this is a worthwhile discussion. I am cleaning out some of the assiness so we can maybe have a legitimate talk.
If I have ever created something that you didn’t like or that brought
you sadness, I apologize.
That is never the goal of a game developer.
However.
Let us set the record straight.
Let us set the history of the Star Wars Galaxies NGE into something
that makes a little more sense to those from the outside.
First, some ground rules.
I am a game designer. I make video games. I manage teams, develop
features, and turn the creative insanity that is game development into
demonstrable and sellable products.
A lot of this manifests itself in the form of direct implementation.
Scripting, writing, hands on content development.
I do not sit in a room and give orders. Generally, nobody I’ve worked
with ever did this.
We provided a means to create something to make money.
As professional developers, it is our job to execute on these types of
creative endeavors within the context of limited finances, linear
time, and sometimes explicit creative direction.
Sometimes this context is direction from Raph Koster. Sometimes it is
to meet a marketing need, other times it is one of business decisions.
At times, I describe it as,
‘If someone asks for pink fluffy bunnies, we give then bunnies done to the best of our abilities. You might hate bunnies, but you make the best bunnies you can possibly make. That is your job”
That is what we do. All of this is tempered with reality. Sometimes things take longer than we’d like.
Sometimes things end up more or less fun than we intended.
This is the job of a designer.
This is what I did on UO, Galaxies, JTL and every other game I worked
and am working on.
So we were given the directive to make Galaxies better.
Not just make Galaxies better, but make it succesful. Not the 200k
subs it had, but really succesful. The idea was that we had the most
valuable IP in the entire world, and we fucked it up to the point of
having 200k subs.
And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the
scheme of things.
I worked on Galaxies for around 5 and a half years. That’s a long time.
I wrote the combat system, mission system, spawning system. I wrote
the combat model for JTL, implemented all of the development tools and
ship interior systems and more.
Hell, I implemented the original Jedi System in 2 weeks after we
launched. Not because it was how we wanted it, but because we had 2
weeks to do it.
I have the understanding of where we went wrong and how. I see the
misteps and how the experience was misaligned with what most people
wanted from a Star Wars game.
So, when the NGE push came along, we were asked to reimagine the game.
Not just small changes, but rebuild it.
And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.
If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000
subs a month.
Note – I think our subs were closer to 160-180 than 200k. It was a bad financial situation no matter how you look at it.
It was not idyllic. You can remember it as an amazing game, but it wasn’t.
Hell, all of you who recall the grand ole days of launch seem to
conveniently forget that everyone quit shortly afterwards.
It’s similiar to the UO rose colored glasses. Everyone remembers the
positives, but nobody remembers how unpalatable UO was before Trammel.
Nobody acknowledges that after Renaissance, UO’s numbers rose from
110k to 220k.
But I digress.
WOW was out. SWG was niche and clunky. Or so it seemed. There’s a question of how close we got to the product, how our perspective changed as competitors launched.
We were told to imagine something new and unique. To push it to the
next level.
Originally, it was specced as a tutorial. A tutorial
paired with a new marketing push, new and grandiose relaunch that
would recapture the magic that we missed when we first released.
But a tutorial wasn’t enough. We scrambled to come up with something
more impressive.
We tested out a new combat system on a whim. I did a quick prototype
and we discussed it internally.
The difference was the control scheme, not the rules. You clicked, You shot.
When we demonstrated it, the first comment was “Wooooah….”
And the producer left the room.
He came back shortly and was torn. He knew that we had to make the
change. It was THAT much better. At least, that much potentially better.
We did a side by side comparison. We tried to play the old system. We couldn’t.
However, we made a mistake. A BIG mistake.
Somewhere during the discussions it was strongly recommended that we
streamline our characters.
People wanted something simpler, more direct, more accessible.
We told them. “If you do this, you will lose all of our subscribers. It is that significant.”
The response was that we would gain more due to the marketing push and relaunch.
So, we pushed forward.
If I remember the dates correctly, we did our NGE conversion in 2-3
months of solid crunch. It was some of the heaviest crunch I’ve ever
done.
We had an immovable date, and an insane set of features.
We were working in parallel, maintaining old code on the off chance
that we would pull the plug on the implementation.
Note – We didn’t notify anyone about the change until 2 weeks before launch because until 2 weeks before launch we hadn’t made a decision. You basically found out when we found out.
We launched, the marketing push failed, and we lost subscribers.
It was a misread at an organizational level. Design, Marketing, Production,
community. You name it.
We made huge mistakes. We got too close to the changes. Design took something and made it bigger than it should’ve been.
We got swept up in the wave of changes and ran with it. And we fucked it up. All of us.
Note – To those who think I might be pointing fingers. I say it out loud, Italicized and Bold.
I fucked it up.
Not all of it, but I made mistakes.
Some big ones, Some small ones,
Some that I’m still torn about to this day.
That is how things work. We make mistakes. We are not infallible.
We take these lessons and try not to fuck up again.
That is the nature of design.
Did the buck stop with design? Did the buck stop with Me?
No.
When I say it was an organizational failure, I mean it. Design made mistakes, Marketing made mistakes, Management made mistakes, Production made mistakes.
Did I alone give the go/no-go?
No.
Did design alone give the go/no-go?
No
Did an organization, made up of over 200 people give the go/no-go?
Yes.
Does that obviate us of blame?
Nope.
It was still a huge fuckup.
Epoch grade fuckup.
I think it lost a lot of the Raphy goodness that makes MMOs work, and that was a profound loss.
That was a huge mistake.
But I think the control scheme changes were dead on.
Does that matter? Not really.
The point, the fuckup, the mistake that we made, was answering an
unasked question.
“Can you change an MMO drastically after it launches?”
Categorically, NO.
If we were to do it again, and wanted to make those types of changes,
you have to make a new game.
Relaunch with a new title.
Or shut down Galaxies and relaunch for real.
You cannot change it at runtime.
A lot of you were upset. A lot of you still seem to be upset. I’m
sorry if you feel betrayed, or that we ruined something you liked.
But I’m proud of the work I and the rest of the team did. I’m proud of
the choices we made, the direction we took. ALL of SWG.
JTL, NGE, Launch, Jedi Fuckups. You name it.
We made mistakes. We made a LOT of mistakes. We crunched, we argued,
we fired people, we hired people.
But we fucking launched a goddamned game. We launched a SECOND
succesful MMO (post-uo). We made a fucking amazing space game using
the same fucking game engine, integrated action combat, interior
spaceships and in 9 MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS, all while running a
succesful, cash positive product.
NGE was done in right around 2 months by a team of people.
I am proud of the work that we did, even if I am torn about the end product.
So those who think it’s about blame or credit or who ruined what or
how great it used to be when kids didn’t swear so much…
Take a deep breath and move on. Times change. Games don’t last forever.
Except UO. It’s still running. And I bet people are still pissed about
some fucked up code I wrote in 1997.
That, I am genuinely sorry for.
“THE FUCKUP WAS NOT THE CHANGES.
Galaxies NGE made it more playable. I think it lost a lot of the Raphy goodness that makes MMOs work, and that was a profound loss.
But the general idea was sound.”
Gonna go ahead and (mostly) disagree there Pall.
It was unplayable. Did you actually play it? It was a broken unplayable mess. Did you even bother testing it in a real-world internet scenario? A good designer designs within technical limitations. Yes it’s good to push boundaries of course, but sometimes it’s wise to keep your feet planted on solid ground and know what actually WILL work.
And as for the subscription bleed out finally stopping… of course it slowed down. Cut someone (who’s anemic) a little, and they bleed for a long time… blow a hole in them with a shotgun, and they’ll bleed out alot faster, at that point, halelujah, they’ll stop bleeding (of course, like SWG, they’d be dead).
WOW! (The exclamation, not the game). Many years on, I still wonder at the gaff that was NGE, and I tidbits like this very interesting (thanks!)
Let me also say that it was a great game. Sure it had it’s problems, but there were many great elements that haven’t been seen since.
A few question:
#1 Was there a rationale given for not “tweaking and fixing”? Evolution rather than revolution?
#2 Have you heard since whether it has remained net positive? If one believes what one hears the game is barely played today.
For what it’s worth as J random player, I think the basic idea behind the NGE was a good one. I really liked the new control scheme. I didn’t like the way the skill system gave way to classes, but that wasn’t so bad in the abstract. It was the conversion process that drove me away.
If the conversion had gone smoother I probably would have stuck with it. As it was I went from skill-capped with a jack-of-all-trades character to level 30-something… too high for the initial quests, but too far away from Mustafar. Even so I would have ground out the XP in space, but since I was already Ace I wasn’t actually *getting* XP up there.
Jump to Lightspeed is hands down my favorite online experience. Thank you for what you did to provide me with so much fun. Of all the virtual homes I’ve left behind over the years, I think my YT-1300 is the one I miss the most.
Seems like you missed why things were not going well. perhaps the CU did not address the problems, and the game was never the success it should have been because of the mismanagement of assets, the lack of content, the broken professions and quests, and all the things people actually SAID.
Maybe thing would have turned around if you had actually fixed what was broken instead of trying to re-invent the wheel. I know hindsight is 20-20, but that’s what makes the most sense to me.
I realize you’re probably still under NDAs and other oppresive fascist shit, but answer me this:
What was the NGE really about? Was it about the Niemoidian slime of Lucas Arts being pissed that their IP was getting its ass kicked by Blizzard? Was it about John Smedley being pwned by the first MMO effort of Blizzard? Was it about pride? Was it about money?
Because it would have been far better to just bleed 10k subs a month than to instantly lose 200k, imagining that some of WoW’s playebase would flock to a barely out of alpha bastard copy of WoW with a Star Wars skin, which apparently is what Lucas Arts’ focus groups indicated would happen.
These idiots were told, five years ago this month, that SWG was not ready for launch by beta testers who wanted it to succeed every bit as much as anyone on the SOE payroll.
They launched it anyway, and you devs spent most of your time playing catchup trying to finish a game which is obviously in many respects still unfinished five years later, even after two major revisions.
BTW they’ve finally figured out what to do with the battlefields, it seems. Put a POI and some factional NPCS in the middle of it and send people on quests to it.
Assuming they don’t rubberband to death on the way there, or course.
Oh and so you know, when the NGE did what it did, I cancelled two accounts.
And have not been back as a paying customer. Of SOE or Lucas Arts.
This is beating a dead horse. A dead horse that gobbled time and in-game resources. A dead horse that was part of a much larger dead Trojan horse.
The casual gamer knew not what they were getting into when building towards something that was ultimately supposed to be unique – i.e. Jedi.
The casual gamer knew not that what made the game unique – the sandbox aspect – was no longer “marketable”.
The casual gamer knew not the changes in store right after a major content push for a new expansion (and probably wouldn’t have bought said new expansion if they had known about the new system, the complete rebuild, the completely (more or less) new game.)
All of the above is beating a dead horse, as is this post. And this comment.
If you want to get this off of your chest and feel like the ends justify the means, more power to you. More subscribers? Awesome. It’s just too bad that in the short time after the NGE hit, the economy was destroyed once again, and most of the subs that came in were for credit farmers and spam bots. Nobody would know the true number of how many spam bots and credit farmers actually inhabit a server at any given time since there is no real way to know how many subs are active on a server, nor where any of this data would be (if it even is) published.
People will play it because it is a glorified chatroom in which they can interact with other people and do more than just look at text fly by on a screen.
And we will continue to play it because it continues to give what any game should give – an escape from reality.
But then again, beating a dead horse is boring. It’s been long enough – and thankfully, anybody who still remembers is either not even subbed anymore or has moved on.
As have I.
So when you say that you kept the existing code…does that mean that Smed’s explanation that they don’t have the old code is a fabrication? NGE being better or not, many of us always believed that losing the code or doing away with it never made any sense.
[...] Apollo, Dear God The Internet It Burns IV: Srsly, Dude (Edit: it appears that bells are unringing, or at least the subject of this note took to heart some of the no doubt polite and reasoned [...]
the NGE was bad. Just bad. The implementation of the NGE was beyond bad.
With the NGE I lost EVERYTHING I had worked hard to obtain and play. The two professions I adored the most were gone, utterly gone . Wiped off the face of the game playing world with out so much as an apology or a by your leave or compensation. Gone.
Combat was sped up to the point of ridiculousness, the UI looked like a Japanese cartoon dog’s dinner nightmare and game play was borked beyond reason.
The NGE destroyed so many things and I, along with so many other people left.
The worst thing was the smug comments by certain members of the DEV team / management about the protest of people quitting was just for show.
WELL over a year after the NGE fiasco I came back mostly because My husband missed having me in game andthe game we currently have while still missing so much of what was there pre nge is better and more playable.
I do not yearn for pre CU, nor do I miss the Cu times either but I miss diversity and I miss CHOICE which none of the developers and the people who make the decisions seem to understand. With the implementation of the NGE you took away the player’s ability to choose. Now we have a game that is better than the NGE, maybe even better than before the NGE but we have a community so divided by what happened these wounds will never heal and that sits squarely on the people who implemented this disaster.
I will forever loath the people who created the NGE. The stupidity and selfish, sightless greed that created the mess we, as players, had to deal with serves as a message to all other mmos out there.
I cannot even begin to list the things that made / make me as a paying customer angry. I loath you all for what you did to us, the people who paid good money to play a good game.
Your attitude of take it or leave was a slap in the face.You ( collectively) insulted the intelligence of players and you all wonder why everyone was so angry.
It was a clusterfuck of huge proportions and it will never be forgotten.
Interesting article, and actually very fun to read.
And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.
Strange you say this, 200k means nothing? Maybe in the post WOW world 200k seems little, but if done right 200k can get you a long way (EVE?).
I think you mean 200k meant nothing for SOE. They went Jerry Maguire on everyone … “Show me the money!!”
If someone asks for pink fluffy bunnies, we give then bunnies done to the best of our abilities. You might hate bunnies, but you make the best bunnies you can possibly make. That is your job”
Speaks for itself. So you (and others) knew the game was going to be *** with all these changes.
Ok, I hear you when you say your proud of what you did in so little a time, but still, most people won’t see it that way
I am proud of the work that we did, even if I am torn about the end product.
Take a deep breath and move on. Times change. Games don’t last forever.
Cool of you to admit that.
I recently tried SWG again, you can see at my blog.
I think the current team is doing a nice job at keeping SWG alive if I can say it that way. I definately miss the old days, but like you said, those will live on in my memories
http://www.stefson.com/204/star-wars-galaxies-return-to-the-game/
http://www.stefson.com/227/an-epic-quest-trying-to-cancel-my-swg-sub/
“WOW was out. SWG was niche and clunky. Or so it seemed.”
Funny how you removed everything that made SWG unique and special with the NGE, but kept all the clunky aspects, and even made the whole UI more clunky than before.
It’s also funny how the CU slowed down the game horribly, and told us it’s perfect this way, half a year later you told us one of the reason for the NGE is that a star wars game has to be faster.
People left the game 2005 in droves mostly because of the CU, and how it did NOT adress the problems that existed for many people. And they left because of the bugs even before that.
You can say your sources, your surveys and focus groups, said something else. But we played and spoke with the people who left. We played the game.
Quote :
I think it lost a lot of the Raphy goodness that makes MMOs work,
It amazes me how much of the industry believes Kosters bullshit. He writes about fun, yet he doesn’t know how to deliver it. He is the industries pseudo-intellectual professor, who teaches in a college because he has no idea how to make it work in the real world.
Koster produces social experiments, not games. They aren’t what people are looking for in games
SWG had a lot of positive stuff. I had 3 accounts. It was missing meaningful loot. With no meaningful loot and no meaningful ‘dungeons’ all that was left was Raphs standard ’social experiment’, tagged on to a terrific class and combat system.
And a BIG part of the failure was shipping with a totally broken armor system. In a game which relied on player made armor and weapons, the armor system was broken.
I understand the business aspect behind it all. If 200k subs wasn’t good enough then you had to do something.
I just think your efforts would’ve been better focused on fixing all of the bugs and adding some good features and content, and then using that marketing blitz (which I don’t remember seeing anything) to pull more people in.
Instead, the game was changed, alienated 50+% of the playerbase, and wasn’t attractive to new players.
I think the biggest thing you didn’t take into account was that if you chase off all of the players then no one is going to touch your game. When the rats are trying to flee the sinking ship you’re not going to have a new group of rats trying to climb onboard.
——————————-
While your statements are actually nearing the feeling of what I as a customer in the game you worked on, needed to hear on that infamous Nov 15th; I think that there are so many people that invested so much of their time and lives into that game, only to be betrayed and utterly stripped of their time, social, and MONETARY investment, that no words at this point could ever neutralize the anger and resentment some people have. Especially with how we as a loyal paying customer were treated post NGE release.
Thank you for taking the time to state your view and explain things in the way you saw them.
I for one still harbor a deep resentment towards SWG management (that includes you I think) for destroying many of the in-game friendships that I formed or was forming. For actually allowing the most creative character skill creation system to be compromised for a dumbed-down painfully restrictive character skill set and removing some of the funnest and most difficult professions to play. What the hell were you people thinking by allowing Jedi to be a starting profession and so drastically flushing the time and money investment of you most loyal customers ? That was the kicker there. That made enough multi-account holding loyal customers push the cancel button and bad-mouth SWG into having the absolute worse reputation in the MMO world, as it exists today.
I am not angry that a game was changed. It’s just a game in that sense and I have played and shelved enough games to not be too bothered by that.
I am angry (still) that my investment was compromised by a bunch of short-sighted, greedy, lazy, weak-minded SWG management members. You as a primary contributor to the design of the game system and team lead bear a significant responsibility for the decisions that were taken and the resulting massive loss of player base.
You rewrote and launched a MMO in 2-3 months. You released it forcefully to a paying customer base of 200K people replacing the investment of 2+ years with your idea of an acceptable game system. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s just that it is unbelievable that a team staff of 200 could not have the vision or understanding to realize they were certainly going to alienate their existing customer base by completely changing the product without consulting their customers first. The quality of your released product (the NGE) was far-and-away the lowest quality of video game I have ever paid for and for me personally, the most disappointing in the 24 years I have been playing video games. Yup, I’m still pissed about it and so are the tens of thousands of others who trusted their investment in the hands of the likes of you and the rest of the team who were working on SWG at the time.
You and the rest of the management team at SWG could not have fucked it up any more than you did. It was an epic disaster I expect to be used as an example and talked about for many years to come.
Let’s talk expectation management for a minute.
I’m sure the suits all thought that if you took one of the most valuable IPs around and partnered it with the folks who made EverQuest (keep in mind this was pre-WoW, and EQ was the shit), you couldn’t lose. You would have millions of subs and everyone involved would be buried under piles of cash.
With that expectation, a Star Wars MMO with 200k subs was considered a complete failure. Something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly. Everyone keeps talking about fixing bugs and adding content. While that may have slowed the cancellation rate, it wasn’t enough. It would be like putting a new muffler on your Celica. Sure, it would make it better, but the NGE was a freakin Ferrari! The execs were willing to sacrifice the 200k players they had, thinking they could bring in a million new ones. A risky move, but once again, in their eyes they didn’t have much to lose.
What they didn’t count on was how much damage those disaffected players could do. Their existing player base was so angry (and rightfully so) that they began screaming and yelling to anyone who would listen. The marketing and community folks were simply unable to counter all of the negative press coming from those players, but not from a lack of trying. They did the best they could, but they were unprepared for the ferocity of that backlash.
Did the NGE make it a better game? Yeah. Did it make it more accessible to the masses? Definitely. Had the NGE been the game they shipped at launch, would they have had their millions of subs? I don’t know. We’ll never know.
Did anyone at any time think they should just change the combat system (which everyone from the knuckledragger crowd whined about since the beginning) and leave the rest of the game alone? The Raphiness was Raph at his best. We’ll never see anything like it again, even from him. The profession losses were the most idiodic thing–whose idea was that?
I also noted the line about the old code running alongside the new, which means a mystery solved and the pristine version of Galaxies could be brought back. Thanks for that, at least.
Athela
Atone for your sins and help out the SWGemu effort!!!
Milk. That one simple word is why I was frustrated with the original game. The Bio-Engineer required Milk in 90% of its recipes for the 2nd tier, and it hadn’t been placed in the game (or if it was, it wasn’t easily accessible.) All we wanted was Milk, all we asked for was Milk. Instead – we got the NGE – and the Bio-Engineer was removed the game. Milk is in the game now though.
I think that sums up SWG for me the most – in the real word we call it cutting off your nose to spite your face. Unfortunately, you took the eyes, mouth, and ears too. So, saying NGE was the problem – well – that’s a little disingenuous, isn’t it?
Thank you for this article. It is excellent to get a look behind the scenes in the famous event in MMO history.
With the information and expectations you had it seems like a reasonable decision to rebuild the game. I probably would have agreed with that at the time.
There are two things in your account that struck me. First was that you had only 2-3 months to totally revamp the game. I am a game designer for an MMO myself and if my department were asked to do this I would flat our refuse, at the risk of being terminated. This is nowhere near enough time to overhaul all the major game systems and retain any degree of quality.
The second thing is how nonchalantly you mention that you had 2-3 months. Is this par for the course? If s then it’s so much less surprising why most SOE MMOs suffer from such a lack of polish.
I don’t mean to subtract from your efforts and I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job. Performing this task in any way or form in this time is commendable. Asking people to do so is not.
Interesting info and insight.
I have a question I hope you can answer. In the original jedi system. Was the key mastering a random, pre-defined proffession? Was it a combination of pre-defined proffessions? Or was there a die roll after each mastery with better odds after each mastery?
I had to master 31 of the 32 professions to unlock my slot, and I’d like to know.
BTW, I still play and don’t look back with rose glasses.
Thank you for this honest and insightful look into SWG.
Doomed, we’re doooomed! (Sorry figured you needed a little Hal channeling for this)
Dan Rubenfield wrote: “And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.”
When was the ‘when we were asked’? If the crunch was 2-3 months. I assume there was some time prior to the crunch for the referenced prototyping, thinking and discussion. NGE launched in November … so that makes the timing July’ish … a few months after the CU release? The Wikipedia entry for SWG claims that subscriptions began to grow again, a short while after CU.
I think the big lesson (can it be called a lesson … is ‘learning’ that salt is, um, salty, a lesson?) … is that ‘ZOMG!!11 Epic Fun’ cannot be added to a game in a few months with patch.
“And yes, all 200k of you were important, but 200k means nothing in the scheme of things.”
Thank you for looking at the world of MMO’s like a comunist general. If we kill 200k people, then 1 million people will have a better life.
All life is important and I think SOE should have had someone on staff who realized that each and every account was valuable to them. It’s no longer about the game experience anymore, this discussion is about people not money. I’ve tried to find another word to use that doesn’t sound so hostile, but ‘HATE’ is the only one that truely expresses my feelings towards SOE.
SOE has time and again set a precident that they don’t care about the actual subscribers, just subscription numbers.
Vanguard is another prime example of putting something out there that is beyond broken and offering no appologies.
I will never, let me make this perfectly clear, NEVER play any game put out by SOE ever again. Regardless of it’s content, the company shows a complete disregard for the people who keep them in their fancy houses.
[...] http://rubenfield.com/ [...]
Throughout your post you apologize for making something we didn’t like.
Actions, however, speak louder than words. But you know, there is a way for you to un-do some of the damage you caused. I’m assuming you know of the Emulator project at http://www.swgemu.com and http://www.swganh.com. How about helping them? Ya sure, I know. You’re busy.
Go to http://www.swgemu.com. They have extensive forums and progress updates. Currently they are having issues with heightmaps. Maybe you could give them some tips? Something?
Believe me, I get it. You are out to make money. You want to be on the latest MMO development teams creating the newest mega-success.
You could redeem yourself in the eyes of the community if you helped the Emulator, in ANY way, big or small.
It’s your choice.
Well, for sure the original game design was already flawed and rushed to live before it was ready. There should have been more real Star wars options and one should have been able to enlist as an Imperial. However, the CU fixed most of it and the game was finally on it’s way up (from the content and balance point of view).
Who ever though that what was pushed out as the original NGE was a good idea has no idea on who a good game looks like and has never sen any Star Wars movie. When I first saw it I was horrified by the crap that was pushed on people who played a game that was after many years finally working for the most part.
Now, a few years later the current dev team has fixed some of the major mistakes that were made and finally have the game at a playable and interesting levle, however, the screw up of the original NGE set the game back about a year and I think it would be much more competitive in todays market without the NGE set back.
It is my opinion that one has a choice on what to do in their professional live. If you saw already at the time that it was rushed and that it would upset the players that were there it was your duty to speak up (than and there). Doing it now is too late. To many things on this earth happen and people say that they were just doing their job (or following orders). If you do not agree than say it out loud.
Genvieve: “..this discussion is about people not money.”
In the world of MMOs, people = money. There were not enough people to make SWG as profitable as expected, and given how drastic the NGE was I’m guessing SWG wasn’t profitable at all. People keep waving the OMG WoW GREED ENVY flag. From the original post here: “Hell, all of you who recall the grand ole days of launch seem to conveniently forget that everyone quit shortly afterwards.” (To be fair, I couldn’t ‘forget’ that because I never knew that — if SirBruce shrugs and keeps the subs at around 300K for 2 years, how are the rest of us supposed to know?)
The game was doing very, very poorly. Keep in mind that ambitious design + Star Wars IP + “dream team” design crew = expensive product. 200K may have been good for an MMO, but at the time this was the MMO.
People bailed. Now, I agree completely that those who chose to remain should’ve been treated much, much better, if for no other reason then because pissing off happy customers is bad for a company. Still, when you’re talking about a business where coders, artists, and designers need to have projects and take home paychecks… yeah, it is about money.
“Did an organization, made up of over 200 people give the go/no-go?
Yes.”
How, on God’s green Earth, did over 200 supposed game industry professionals agree to push the NGE live in the state it was in? Yes, I will concede that the design might have looked good on paper (and I’ll also concede and say in todays current guise it’s actually ‘fairly’ functional with alot of Pre-NGE features semi-returned, and might be even fun with about 10 more years of polish), but c’mon man, it didn’t even WORK. 3 months of crunch?! 3 months?! You redesigned a major AAA MMORPG in 3 months and thought it might actually fly? You also claim that the players weren’t notified until 2 weeks prior because it was unknown as to whether or not you were even going to launch it? You tell us this as though it would appease those feeling ripped off by buying the ToOW expansion (bait and switch). That’s craziness Pall. Even if the NGE was a good idea on paper, why the hell didn’t the project leads speak up about releasing yet another broken un-cooked game? Where were the test-leads and why weren’t they discussing these issues with the project managers and producers? What the hell happened man?
And IMO, the NGE isn’t just about clicky combat. How did you guys ever think that zero death penalty (aka Cloner Express transportation), removal of item decay, along with overpowered loot drops etc etc (you know what I’m getting at) would make the game fun? So you made it alot easier to START the game, big whoop. Did you not care about the actual players longevity or how to (God forbid) keep people playing (you do LIKE money don’t you?)?
It boggles the mind at how much you (and by you I mean you and your supposed 200 accomplices) forgot to finish. How can you be proud of that?
Thank you for your honesty. The mistake made is clear. 200K subs for an MMO of that era was not “fucked up” but successful. Galaxies was a successful MMO by any but WoW standards.
And therein lies the mistake. The WoW crowd is the WoW crowd, and you are not going to win them over no matter what you do. Keeping current customers happy is the key, not chasing WoW, because WoW is mythic, it’s in its own little world and the rest of us are not allowed in.
But we can have 200K subs, and 200K subs is anything but shameful. It’s success. A bird in the hand…
I want to go on the record and say that I played Star Wars Galaxies from August 2003 to November 2005. I quit because of the NGE. I dislike the NGE very much, and I prefer the pre-CU product.
That being said Lord Pall, I appreciate your insight here. It has helped me to understand a bit more about the best game I ever played got trashed. Yet sadly, I probably will never completely understand why it had to go down the way it did.
Hopefully, everybody learned something with SWG. As a player of MMOs, I learned that MMOs are a big expensive hassle that never ends well. Either your game gets cancelled, leaving you with a feeling of unfinished business; or your game gets nerfed into something you hate.
I don’t hate you Lord Pall. I hate the industry you work in, though. Since the NGE hit, I haven’t been able to enjoy an MMO as I did with SWG. In the back of my mind, I think, “don’t like this too much, because then you’ll get an NGE, or a cancellation notice.” Perhaps that’s a good thing though.
Good luck to you Lord Pall. I hope this industry doesn’t treat you too bad. After all, we need you to give us new games, and good games; games that make us say, “this is just like the fun I had in pre-CU, only better!”
And hopefully, when that day comes, developers and producers will be wise enough to make it last.
Thanks for admitting you made a mistake.
What I want to know is:
1) When did it dawn on management that they made a mistake?
2) After realizing the mistake, why wasn’t there a rollback or classic servers?
I played SWG from beta (oct 2002) until NGE. Had 6 accounts. the summer after NGE hit I went back for a few months and as bad and different as it was I tried my hardest to have fun. Well once I got mustafar’d out I left again and have not and will not return. I still talk to people that play and one of the things that gets me is that the devs still don’t listen. We told them in beta it needed 6 more months and a xmas launch. one dev and i wish i could remember who posted briefly on the beta forums that they agreed but it was not devolpments call to make it was the bean counters call. I was lucky enough to be trolling the forums while servers were down to pick up that nugget before it was removed. As the game aged we kept asking for fixes and being told they were coming. Smuggler was told in AUG 2003 that it would require a revamp and that it would get one. what they didn’t realize was that the revamp would be in NGE 2 years later. The general playerbase was told that the CURB would fix a ton of issues and balance the professions. then the CURB became the CU and a hell of alot more changed. some left some stayed. Others left and eventually came back as some of us actively talked them into coming back as while we liked pre-cu more we lived with what we were given in CU and saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Then came the dark times. The NGE. Guild that were numbered in the hundreds vanished. players were fleeing like the last one standing was getting stuck with the check. One of the reasons myself and a few others went back in NGE was to see how it progressed 6 months later and that we were hearing that bases would be coming back. Little did we know that the bases we thought of would forever be gone and we got something for the 12 year olds to bicker over to try and get the dispensed loot. we left again. have not returned. will not return. Hope and pray a pre-cu emulator can succeed and avoid any legal challenges. all the while the very small number of people i know that still play and comment on how empty the servers are still complain to this day that even though they themselves are 90’s that now a year and a half after NGE it is still IMPOSSIABLE to level to lvl 90 on the quests that are given to level you. you can only get so far than have to switch to a horriable grind or head up to space to get ground xp. (who thought up that retarded idea. lets give them ground xp in space oh and DING FRIES ARE DONE) well anyway the point of this drabble is that SWG never has been and more than likely never will be polished. Being rushed once was bad enough but more than once is criminal. If it wasn’t for the leeway you get from the EULA SOE would be bankrupt by now paying settlements.
Anyways if your still at SoE please smack Smedley on the back of the head for us and tell him to find the lost code and release at least 1 classic server. as much as i distrust SOE for the chance to play the game anywhere between launch and patch 14 again I’d gladly pay alot more than $15 a month. I’d I bet others would to.
If your so worried about money and subs. then why not simply keep devolping the NGE but release just 1 classic server and see how fast that server fills up to force opening more?
I’m going to start off with saying this is not an apology. At least it doesn’t come across to me as an apology. You can throw as many expletives as you want to make it appear remorseful, but if this is supposed to be an apology you’ve fallen far short of the mark which isn’t surprising given what you’re apologizing for.
I know so many believe that if you want to comment on game design that you have to be in the industry to know what you’re talking about. Surprisingly most people don’t know that that is simply not the case. People know what they like and people have an idea of what they want. What we wanted were fixes. The fact that to meet us halfway with those fixes was like pulling teeth demonstrated that you didn’t care a lick for the people paying your salary. Despite thoughts of a lot of us we just didn’t (or couldn’t) realize how incredily your stupidity (or stubborness take your pick) outmatched your greed. For if your want of money was your driving force you would have listened to the intelligent ideas that were suggested instead of placating the kids who wanted a bright shiny toy to play with for a few seconds before they got bored.
It still boggles my mind at how a company couldn’t take stock of what it had and then decided to do it’s damnedest to put out something pristine. Even if it didn’t come out like it was supposed to the effort would have been noticed and you wouldn’t have the backlash and all that came with it.
Ultimately, I have little care for what you put out here. Conversely you can have little care for my thoughts because really, it’s after the fact. You and your cohorts ran something powerful into the ground which I’ll applaud you for because that takes balls. It really does. If Lucas puts out a new Star Wars movie that thing will make millions. The fact that you and your people couldn’t see that and decided to go off on your own just expresses how out of touch you guys are.
And just to come back to it, I don’t buy this as an apology if that was your intention. It smacks of, as someone else pointed out, the good soldier saying he did his job with the added bonus of sounding like if you had to do it all again you would.
SWG was my first venture into the MMO world and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I can’t find myself actually haveing the same excitement for any new IP as I had for SWG. I guess it’s reality trumping idealism which for me is good. I’m glad I got it early rather than get it after five MMOs under my belt. It took one and now I’m cautious and forever will be so. I’m left with a bunch of would-be coasters now. I’m only waiting on the SWGemu to actually make it. Oh, and if the game were magically put out there Pre-CU I wouldn’t pay more as Banky Edwards stated. That’s too much of an insult to me and others who’ve supported you and were bitten as a result. You already got my money. Work with what little you have left of it.
What happened to all the colorful language? Nom Nom Nom~!
That aside, I don’t think much of what you say here or in your blog about putting the whole game industry on notice. You were one of the few people to ever have the chance to take the industry in a different direction and we all know what direction you chose.
I do read exactly what I think SOEs problem has been all along. They never factor in the customer and give higher priority to their timelines and bottom lines. You had to know this would be the outcome when asked to fix SWG cosidering how well EQ2/SWG and the CU were launched. To this day I don’t think they have learned that making a game is more important than making a product.
I feel the same about you after reading the tone of your unedited entries, but at least you are speaking honestly and not trying to hide the way you feel about how things went. Kudos for that at least.
i appologize if this has already been brought up in a question if so please just ignore and tell me to see above. i have not had the chance to read every question and reply yet.
first off i appreciate your candor…whats done is done but it just boggles my mind after reading what you’ve written that such a drastic approach was chosen, when there were hundreds of well written, well articulated and passionate posts on your forums, posts that had been written daily for months and months prior to nge clearly stating player hopes, wished,gripes and concerns. did any developers at that time ever seriously read forums and honestly listen to the players?
i’m not trying to be argumentative here just really curious because there seemed like so many ways the game could have been enhanced/fixed to bring back the subscribers that were leaving. everyone i knew leaving left because content was lacking dated or broken. i never heard anyone ever say they were quiting because they didn’t like the game. i personally knew many would have stayed had there been talk of new content, fixes for very old, long standing issues etc…. it just confuses me why such an extreme measure such as the total nge package was ever even conceived in the brain?
Viral marketing’s a double-edged bitch, ain’t it?
200k people’s money wasn’t good enough, but 200k people steering the mythical target player base away from your creation… sorry, that’s nothing short of poetic justice. Yeah, I know, you were just a dev doing what you were told, and you warned management. Fair enough. But now SOE reaps what they have sown, as does LA. No amount of trials will fix this, no sheer number of “collections” can possibly undo what has been done. What’s most baffling is the complete inability of so many, especially the devs, to comprehend what made SWG so great. It wasn’t a game, and you turned it into a game. It was a simulation, with games within it. I *lived* in the Star Wars universe. I wasn’t a hero; I didn’t want to be, at least not all the time. But those that wanted to be, were. You didn’t get that, SOE and LA management didn’t get that, and the current 8k or so people that play the NGE didn’t (and still don’t) get that. What’s more, you took 4 hours a day out of 2 years of my life and flushed it. The whole point to playing an MMO is to keep what you had the day before, and build on it if you want. Your people took that away.
You say you’re proud of what you did, and with launch and JTL, you certainly should be. Amazing stuff, even with the bugs. But management forgot the cardinal rule of MMO development after launch – fix bugs and add content. Instead, we got crazy rebalance after crazy rebalance because Joe the Bounty Hunter or Bob the Jedi on the forums whining because they lost a fight.
By they way, your first blog about this was more honest. You came off as a cosmetic tester telling everyone that testing on animals is how we do it and fuck you if you can’t deal with it. I don’t get this one. Redemption? Anxiety? In denial? You are a good dev, Lord Pall, no question. But nobody will EVER forget what happened to SWG, or its once-loyal players.
You showed no respect with that shit you developed to and put it on live server to me and 300k of people paying your bills.
And the truth is the CU 6 months before NGE was the first pile of crap wherefore the players hated SWG.
The right step was to remove the bullshit of the CU instead of put in the pile of shit of the NGE.
YOU and your team sucked that big and i will never forgive your NGE suckers.
And don’t dare to talk again about NGE shit needed.
It doens’t match any quality standards,horrible UI, full of stupid ideas stinking after somoene put it out of his ass.
The PRECU design was superior to every aspect over the this pile of crap you dare to put on live servers!
Dan, you are wrong. SWG was exempt from content. The non existant art team could only re-arrange the same old stuff in new creative angles. Gameplay was about killing Quenkers and decorating houses with junk. The whole epic conflict was setup in a way, that imperials and rebels where holding hands by design. The development team was exceptionally good at avoiding all the Star Wars coolness. You actively sabotaged the epic conflict by keeping Stormtrooper armors etc gimped, so that people would prefer Fantasy Armors (for some years). When the forums cried louder on that front, you decided to only listen to the Jedi fanbase, which you smartly merged with the GCW conflict. Before you could accidentially make the game cool, you made sure to introduce all the crap from the Prequel movies. Also you kept an eye on that all the “typical” (not to say iconic) Star Wars things are either non-existant or gimped so that nobody woud use them. Then you wondered why you lose customers.
Then the NGE came. The NGE changed some stuff, broke some more stuff, but didnt adress any of the issues.
After that, your colleages at SOE-LA continued with this vision and introduced purple mandalorian armors. SWG now has feather-dusters and a “Gardener” feature was seriously being discussed. You were also weak at crafting good metaphors, the reason why it was complicated, rather than complex.
If someone from managment would ask for Pink Bunnies, I would ask them why they want Pink Bunnies “we want to attract liitle girls”. I would then design something which attracts little girls which fits into the game.
– BadMisterFrosty
(former GCW Correspondent and Senator who met you once at a Game Convention in Leipzig before ToOW was announced)
I forgot: With you, I do not mean you personally but the team or whoever made such decisions.
SWG was bleeding subscribers because of the awful Combat Upgrade. The CU was put in without community consultation, it was inadequately beta tested, and pumped out WAY before it was ready. In doing so it made every combat class unplayable.
Add to this the purging of all the “Raph goodness” which is what we know as the NGE. Now pre-cu I poured hours of my life into SWG, and am not ashamed to say so. Although now when I dabble with the NGE, I’m just bored. SWG NGE is a boring game. SWG Pre-CU was an interesting and absorbing game, in the same way that EVE Online is absorbing and interesting, although SWG had all that, AND dancing girls.
To reply to one of your original closing point: How long did I play SWG Pre-CU? Nearly two years. How long did I play NGE before getting bored? 3 months.
Well, First and foremost. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this matter! Please ignore some of the other insulting comments. Indeed you messed up, though I myself think that the game was a BETTER game before the NGE, but was still a decent game when the NGE happened, though people that played CU and Pre CU were completly taken off guard, spoiled, Devistated, you name it. I myself joined THE DAY, and I mean the day the NGE came out. I thought it was a great game, and the others that didnt play CU or Pre CU thought that as well. Quite a few will probably disagree on the point I made about “it was still a decent game”, but I have made my thoughts. I hav experienced a taste of Pre CU through SWGEmu, and must say it is much more fun! I would take the words of the above comment into consideration: “On 06.13.08 CptKetten wrote these pithy words:
Throughout your post you apologize for making something we didn’t like.
Actions, however, speak louder than words. But you know, there is a way for you to un-do some of the damage you caused. I’m assuming you know of the Emulator project at http://www.swgemu.com and http://www.swganh.com. How about helping them? Ya sure, I know. You’re busy.
Go to http://www.swgemu.com. They have extensive forums and progress updates. Currently they are having issues with heightmaps. Maybe you could give them some tips? Something?
Believe me, I get it. You are out to make money. You want to be on the latest MMO development teams creating the newest mega-success.
You could redeem yourself in the eyes of the community if you helped the Emulator, in ANY way, big or small.
It’s your choice.”
Its nice to see someone coming clean about this. Thanks.
But for all you people who whine about the NGE and how you dont want to pay for it – you really should check out the SWG pre-cu emulators being developed. SWGEmu, SWGANH, etc. Most of Ahazi went to SWGANH. Google is your friend.
Dan, it seems like a some people are pretty certain about subscription figures here. In the interests of clarity, would you provide the following?
1) The number of active subscriptions as of January 31 2004, June 30 2004, January 31 2005, and June 30 2005
2) The average number of logins per month in each of those months
3) The projected ROI for Star Wars Galaxies (Box sales + Subscriptions) for each of those dates
5) The actual ROI for Star Wars Galaxies (same as above) for each of those dates
Given that SirBruce only gave the figures for SWG a grade of C over on MMOGChart, and given that the sources of the numbers are the widely-reviled Smedley at a time where it was in the companies best interest to spin towards the sunny side, I’m reluctant to call them accurate. I’m hesitant to accept anyone else’s assertions either. (If anyone else has definitive answers to the above questions, please provide them and your source.)
What was said right above is my hope. The emulators are making huge progress, and with the help of people like the author, it will progress faster. I don’t know if that’s something you’re interested in or even allowed to do, but for god’s sake please help those of us who miss the original game so dearly!
What an interesting post! Thanks for sharing your perspective on the internal workings of SWG’s development. If you (or any other former SOE dev) were to jump on board the SWGEmu project, we would be so grateful for the help. Nonetheless, thanks again for sharing your experiences.
If you ever get the time, try helping the people from http://www.swgemu.com . About 30k subscribers are trying to bring back the awsome space game you developed.
I was upset until after a week NGE launched I decided to try it and saw its potential. I saw it as simpler but easier to balance which preCU had none of. I saw my time to become a known threat vs Jedi, something I never did preCU, now I could kill them. I knew it was raw and a bit broken but I knew the updates and more diversity would come in time, which it has. There are many things that I miss about preCU but there are many things I miss about, say, watching Charles in Charge reruns too.
I get what you are saying. You also underestimate your errors methinks. That aside, business *IS* business and the point about failing to take advantage of the most valuable IP on the planet is well taken. The whole project missed the mark and disappointed in terms of desired business outcomes, check. What makes less sense is what has happened since.
Why not launch a product called “Classic SWG” with the old code? All the costs to develop it have already been paid. At this point from a purely profit minded perspective there is comparatively little to lose and so much profit to gain by trying it. Depending on the success of that effort proceed from there in profitable fashion in terms of continuing support and development for this totally separate product. Re-purposing and finding continuing markets for old products and equipment is standard procedure in many industries. Gaming does it too, moving old games to phones or consoles etc. in order to maximize profit on the stable of available old products.
I get the business forces driving the effort to do the NGE. Would appreciate some inside understanding to explain the seemingly illogical decisions since the failure of that effort.
I was really upset when SOE ruined SWG. I know it’s just a game, but it was the very best game I had ever played. I spent so many fun hours on SWG crafting weapons and selling them at my shop. I still miss the game and wish there was some way to play it.
As for the marketing… the assholes in “customer service” didn’t help things along for the Crap Upgrade and Non-Gaming Experience. I do believe that SOE really DIDN’T give one shit about the 200k already playing. Their rudeness and arrogance towards the customers after the implementation made that very clear.
Sorry that you guys ruined such a wonderful and fun experience. I keep looking around for another MMO that will satisfy me, but killing trolls for phat lewt alongside 11 year olds doesn’t excite me.
Dear Mr. Rubenfield,
Please could you reply to some of the very many valid questions your original post has sparked?
Thank you,
Alex
Hello,
i just have one question about this: if you all new you would piss of most of your costumer base AND you even got that confirmed after pushing the crapy bullshit that was called NGE live WHY DIDNT YOU DO A ROLLBACK???? Thats what i dont get, you must have seen realy soon after the release of the NGE what mess you created so why the hell didnt you go back to the old system?
The Pre-NGE crafting/harvesting system was and I think to date still is, the very *BEST* crafting system ever brought out in an MMO. The concept of harvesting, getting lucky on some high quality resources, stocking up for the future were just freakin great concepts that worked extremely well. Then on top of that, the fact that crafters could work to improve their recipees, coming up with something that not everyone else could create really MADE that crafting system.
I had two accounts just for the extra harvesting plots. I had a geeked out weaponsmith and was having a blast just making some excellent weapons for my clients. I didn’t run vendors, I only sold direct but I had a blast doing it.
THAT is what you all so blithely threw away with the NGE. Did you even realize how good a system that was as you ripped it out of the code? Sad, really sad.
amen! let the flys bite the dust and sun rise ones again.
that said how on earth did ya guys manage that clusterphuck ya dare call NGE(new game ENHANCMENT!)
freakin’ enhancment… no seriously. was NGE some kinda top secret goverment/S0E mind experiment? do ya ppl even know the truth on that one?
if not that then were ppl behind the NGE decision just brain dead and totally clueless? I mean how did ya even manage to screw up SWG after CU fiasco. can’t even learn from your mistakes and so make another mistake x10 worse?
what’s next? x100 worse SWG upgrade called NEA(Nuke ‘Em All)?
When SWG launched I was 18, I spent a minimum of 8 hours every single day since launch, until the “CU” and then my playtime gradually went down a bit until the NGE. My first time loading in after the NGE was launched, I couldn’t belive how quickly a game could go from a piece of potential Raph Koster magic, to something that was a bastardized hybrid of counterstrike and world of warcraft. The controls were terrible, completely and utterly terrible. There was a post up on my server forum named “How to make the NGE controls into something playable”. That thread had over 700 replies and close to 6000 views within a week. Nobody on my server could stand the new controls.
You (and I mean the team) screwed every single crafter who had loved the game. I myself had saved millions upon millions of top quality resources that pre-cu could have easily fetched 100 credits for each unit of resource. I had 3 houses filled with weapon enhancements that became useless.
My weaponsmith became useless. My Jedi became useless.
The only good thing to come out of it was that I decided that “I’m going to become a game designer”. That decision was made purely because I wanted to help recreate was SWG was to the players.
There were so many things you could have done that didn’t even require the CU.
- Add more star wars content. How about some decent GCW tools and events.
- Balance out mind being the only viable pool to hit in pvp by simply adding mind healing on stim packs. Or even better have entertainers craft them.
The controls of the NGE were so cumbersome, and showed such a clear lack of testing and even basic GUI design principles that it made me cry.
If the original system had remained with crafting, resource hunting, the 32 real professions instead of the stripped down 8 I would still be playing. Those 2 months spent “panic designing and coding” the NGE, could have been spent giving the game what was truly needed.
This to do besides Jedi, resource hunting and loot whoring.
The reason you hemoraged subscribers was the CU, I know a few hundred that quit after that mess myself. The problems with doing it was that such a massive change effectively put you back months in terms of game balance and fun. We got old bugs mixed in with new bugs, old imbalanced mixed in with new ones. The core remained but those who had little faith, lost what little they had left when that atrocity happened.
The 200k subs you had left would have stuck with your through almost anything provided the game didn’t get swapped from a deep game to something with less rpg elements than bio-shock. Personally if pre-cu had been kept around I would still have been playing that game, so would a lot of other players, probably more than are playing the NGE right now.
The NGE wasn’t the first major mistake, the CU caused almost just as much trouble, but people opted to stay because it was still SWG at it’s core. The NGE wasn’t.
Was there any reason why what was done content wise with Kash and Mustafar couldn’t have been done with the original monochrome swg system? Would it have been so hard to just revert creature handler back to it’s original state and put a 50% pvp reduction on the pets so they weren’t 3 shotted? Would it have been so hard to give deminishing returns to armor and clothing attachments so reaching the speed cap would have been harder? Would it have been so hard to alter the resource mechanic behind doctor and combat medic crafting so that buffs and poisons weren’t so freaking potent?
I guess what the core of my anger is: Would it have been so god damn hard to put what you did into the NGE and CU into the pre-cu system that those 200k subscribers wanted?
200k is less than wow, but I find it hard to believe that if some work was put into the pre-cu KOSTER-magic system that swg wouldn’t have gone over the million subs.
The reason people quit was that they lost faith in you, as developers as a mmorpg company. Speaking as a player, not a developer, seeing the same bugs for months and months and on top of that getting very little in terms of content or forward moving development crushes your hope.
People accept bugs in world of warcraft, because once a month there is a list 3 pages long of new stuff, fixes and whatever else the developers have done. So they can see that even if some bugs persist, the deveopers are working to improve the game. Every month there are small changes to classes that help balance them in context.
In swg I saw single combat medics taking out entire groups for months. I saw a Jedi system where Jedi got bounties after them for trying to do well in the FRS. The FRS was made in such a way that you had to fightclub in order to gain ranks due to insane decay.
Yet we didn’t get as much as a “We’re working on it” post.
Don’t get me started on Thunderhearth, the guy who “tested” if commando was unbalanced by fighting another commando.
over 2 years after launch, AA’s and CA’s with broken or redudant mods were still dropping. Weapons were dropping with speed or accuracy stats for other weapons IE Polearm with rifle speed, pistol with 2 hand speed and similar items.
There was no real end-game besides Jedi or Mandalorian armor/jet-packs. If the corvette had been reworked, more dungeons had been added, more rare babies for Ch every patch. Things that made rangers and droid engineers useful. How about letting droid engineers create real powerful droids that they could use in combat.
There were a million things you could have done but didn’t and I can’t think of a single reason why not. We all saw how easy it was when Blixtev or whatever his name was started playing a bounty hunter, saw that the investigation missions were really boring and a crappy grind. Then on his own time added loot items to them that made it so that everybody made a BH in the following week.
Why didn’t you do what was needed?
Oh and I’m sorry for that rant, it ended up being significantly longer than intended. I respect your honesty on this matter, there are just so many questions that lack answers. From a creative standpoint I can see that the CU and NGE systems may have been a step forward since they made implementing new things easier. Helped the integration of new planets, new armor and so on, but on the other hand, I find myself wondering what would have happened if say Mustafar had been added to the original SWG.
I wont run on.. As one who followed from pre-beta to near 5yrs of game play, as one who served as a Core Rep for that which is Star Warsy… thank you for your post above. I will say im still bitter about what SWG could have been, but thats not what im posting about.
You mentioned not recongizing SWG was having issues early on. Some of us did. CU was defintely needed, after all if a player could solo 3 rancors in their underwear something was wrong. But i will say some of the best days in SWG was pre-bacta buff battles. But i ramble on. Also i remember what UO was like before Reniassnce and Factions, and i still despise what Trammel was. My point being is some of us remain good and bad about early on, lots tend to forget the problems of earlier release but not all.
Where SWG failed was that it failed to do the one thing that no other game would be able to do “BE Star Wars”…
Adding to that is a build of issues youve already gone over.. and while you take the blame for a lot of things (which i dont believe you can take as much as you do), the failure was in the end this idea that losing current subs for imagined new marketing sub was a disaster of epic proportions…
Am i bitter, yes.. i put my heart and soul into the development of SWG as a fan, and as a Core Rep, who were attempting to speak for the fans and SWG Community… I still feel that pain, as silly as it may be, but given Star Wars has been at the core of my being since i was 3 yrs old, youll forgive me for just not seeing it as another game…
Let me be clear, i love SWG (and UO for the 7 yrs i was there). The best MMO gaming memories i will probably ever have will have been my stay in UO (as my first MMO) and the countless fun times i had in SWG as a rebel with my guild.. I do want to thank the original team and the devs after that for giving me that… SWG was an revolutionary game, and its a shame how things turned out… but i will always love SWG… i just wont play it any more.
- KStarfire
Ill just have to say sorry for the long post, i meant it to be short.. but well as you can tell SWG hits a soft spot for me…
The reason you were bleeding subs was because of the broken professions. People were begging for years to have things fixed and content added. For example Droid Engineer was always broken and they were constantly promised fixes that never happened. Smugglers demanded content such as I dont know SMUGGLING.
There were tons of broken items and the jedi system had a lot of problems that caused people to be angry. This is whey you were bleeding 10,000 subs a month.
If you guys just fixed the game people wouldn’t have left and subs would have went up. Changing the game is just depressing. I log in to the NGE about every 8 months or so I look around for 15 minutes and see no one so I just log out in disgust on how bad the game is now.
I loved SWG. Yes I have got angry and quit a few times but always came back. Since the NGE launched I just cant stand the game it just blows.
I hope Bio are will create something like SWG used to be however with working systems. I also cant wait for the EMU so I can once again play the game when it was great.
BTW: You don’t still have that old code just laying around anywhere do ya? lol
Well, thanks for the insight. It doesn’t really change anything now, but I’m always interested in the thoughts of a developer – especially of MMORPG’s.
The only positive out of SWG now, HOPEFULLY, is that we may be getting a dream MMORPG from BioWare based on a beloved IP.
I hope both you and BioWare were able to take away a lot from both the successes and mistakes SWG saw [I for one loved JTL at least!]
Have yourself a drink and good luck to you and to us all. BioWare SW MMORPG FTW? Here’s hoping!
Thanks for your insights on the background surrounding the NGE (and your bravery in posting them). I found it much more readable without the curse words.
For those of us outside it was extremely frustrating trying to figure out why? WHY???
The only thing I found wrong with the pre-CU, pre-NGE game was the bugs. If there was no bugs the lack of content could be addressed with a series of updates, the way other games do it. And SWG tried to do this… but was sabotaged constantly by the bugs. Old and new. Many players hung onto the hope that the bugs would be fixed some day… and some day a lot of them were. But many remained.
When the concept for the NGE came out my husband and I were excited – twitch based combat! Cool! But after a week of playing it we just couldn’t handle it. The bugs were back, there were more of them, and we were just too tired to hang on anymore. That, and the fact that I had been a Master Ranger/Master Creature Handler for almost 2 years before the NGE. Kinda put a damper on things.
You listed many smart lessons learned for SOE and other game manufacturers, but one I would emphasize is don’t release an unpolished game. No other game that I have played is as interesting as SWG was, but all of them are more playable out of the box simply because they have very few bugs. I am sure you realize this… just have to wait for it to sink into the collective consciousness of management and marketing.
If you had, as you suggest, released the NGE as SWG2, alongside of SWG1, and it was polished and playable I think the higher-ups would have been right. People would have flocked to it. My husband and I probably would have maintained our 5 SWG accounts and bought 2 new NGE accounts as well. But play a game that was so buggy and erased all of our previous efforts… we just couldn’t do it.
If a new, polished SWG was released I would probably come back to have a try. If it was another emulation of the Star Wars D20 game, like the original SWG, I would preorder several copies.
Seems this got deleted so I’m sure Danny boy must not want anything that counters him intelligently to be posted. Don’t bother Dan I’ll just post it again.
How you can claim this is not an argument when you clearly take shots at everyone you feel hates you, and get very defensive about what you along with SOE did, is clearly a joke. So I will respond to it in the tone of the blog, and not the name. Also after reading the whole thing I don’t understand what exactly you feel is ‘intelligent’ about it, or why you feel this gives us any perspective as we pretty much knew most of this already, and repeatedly called you out on it.
The only thing here I can agree with is that it was a colossal snafu. The apology is very insincere and seems more like you’re trying to use that excuse to cover for all the ripping you’re doing of everyone who doesn’t agree with you.
The reason we all have such fond memories of Pre-CU/NGE is not because the game was perfect, but because it was a game we liked none-the-less and because it was a hell of a lot better than what it was replaced with. So by comparison it was a great game. And if SOE had worked on doing what it should have been doing, which is fixing bugs, then it might have been even better.
Instead SOE neglected to realize that we were paying them and we determined what we like. Instead they decided that they know better what we like and that we would like the CU/NGE.
If what you claim, that when trying to compare the changes you made to the old game and being blown away, is not the biggest load of bullshit in this blog, then it has to be that “The fuck up was not the changes”, because it most definitely was! Hell you saying the mistake was answering the question of whether you can drastically change an MMO after it launches requires you to make the changes that you claim was not the fuck up! Who the hell are you trying to kid!? Not only were the changes the fuck up, it was not listening to people telling you that we didn’t want them. I’m not talking about the few whiners on forums that you must have used as your focus group, but rather the thousands of people that protested the changes prior to them being made.
You still have not learned from the past, which is really, really sad. You’ll never be a competent game designer until you do.
The lessons you should have learned were:
– SWG was bleeding 10 K subscribers monthly because of the CU and the dev refusal to mitigate FOTMs, stop weekly nerfs, reduce combat imbalances, fix bugs and add new content. You guys thought you were too good for meat and potatoes programming. You weren’t.
– It was more than organizational failure because you refused to reverse NGE back to preCU after you lost 80% of your subscribers. Ego, pride, refusal to listen to the dirty unwashed masses. This was the failure.
You should be ashamed of your involvement in the SWG NGE fiasco. And its failure will haunt the rest of your career. As it should.
Sir, I’m happy to see you set some things straight here.
I started on day 3, Ahazi. I was involved in beta-testing JTL, RoTW, CU, and ToOW.
I can’t think of another game that has been developed previous to, or since, Pre-CU SWG that captured the true essence of what I thought MMO’s should be.
I felt ownership of my toons, comradary with my guild, and actually felt like you folks gave us an amazing environment to explore. For all those good times I want to thank all of the Dev team.
I quit and went back to SWG about 6 times after NGE hit (I missed it that much). I had homes on 3 planets, owned one of every ship. I had Nuetral, Imperial, and Rebel pilots on each one of my accounts both of which had pre-pub 9 Jedi. I spent countless hours hunting trinkets and little hidden items all over the galaxy.
Here’s the thing that makes it all so much harder. I understand that SWG had it’s failings, it also had the most hardcore 200k fans I’ve met. The problem is now we’re surrounded by nothing but Orcs, Goblins, and Eve.
Where’s that next great MMO that gives us the same kind of feeling. I miss the exploration, the ability to be setup my little home in an obscure location of the world.
I’m absolutely dying for a Sci-fi (or original non-IP based) Sandbox style game that incorporates many of the things that the original SWG had.
Fine, lets not re-hash, lets move forward. Does anybody believe that with the WoW’s/AOC’s/EvE’s currently being successful that we are going to see another Sci-Fi based game that includes those features? With the lessons supposedly learned from SWG will we see those applied?
- multiple planets (non-instanced I might add)
- deep crafting system
- player run economy
- space travel
- player cities/communities/housing non-instanced
- the ability to choose your own path instead of warlock/druid/warrior/priest
- etc
Not everyone is “over it”, I moved on ages ago and now I’m just waiting for something even close to it. I know you read some of these gaming forums, there’s a market for a good sandbox game done correctly. I’d personally hand SWG’s original dev team my money monthly if they learned the lessons from SWG and applied it to something new and different.
I used my real name to post this, I haven’t done that in 15 years of working in I.T. I never reply to blogs and I avoid posting on forums. I’m saying all this because as someone who stuck with that Dev team through as much as I possibly could I still hope that we’ll see something amazing from you folks.
Thanks for setting the record straight, I admire that. Please, do us all a favor, save us from the constant onslaught of fantasy WoW-clones and PvP gimics. I don’t care if it’s tomorrow or 3 years from now, finish what you started and let that vision be complete.
To put it bluntly, the project showed every symptom of being a terribly mismanaged software dev project where the engineers were ignored and the Marketing drones were given a big say in features from Day One, and it only got worse from there.
You released by the calendar instead of code quality. You abandoned one guiding design philosophy after another. You willfully ignored the player base that was putting in thousands of hours of unpaid Beta testing for you.
In short, you committed every cardinal sin a dev organization could commit, and it would have been a miracle of epic proportions if you HADN’T ended up creating a steaming pile of poo.
The miracle, alas, did not come.
[...] SWG Dev on NGE In Which I try to speak honestly about history | rubenfield.com An interesting read, talking about his life as a dev from the launch of SWG and all about the NGE. [...]
Oh my sweet lord. Delusional doesn’t scratch the surface with what is wrong here.
First of all.. 200K was a HUGE success pre-WoW. We all know the flood of cancellations were due to the development team’s COMPLETE LACK OF CONTENT AND BUG FIXES.
The number one reason for cancellations pre-nge? LACK OF CONTENT AND BUG FIXES.
Number one reason for cancellation AFTER the nge? THE NGE!
SWG after what, two years after the nge is still a content free mess of cockroaches.
If you were responsible for JTL, thanks for creating the best thing in the game. Too bad it’s the only part left that doesn’t suck.
You lay blame on the underperformance of the game due to it being inaccessable? Could it be that Smed, and I quote, “Gave SWG a soft launch”? Could it be that there was not ONE television spot until the NGE came out? There was no major ad campaign? Relying on the word-of-mouth of a niche gaming community, and you got 200K subscribers?? You should have been overjoyed.
If half the effort spent for the CU and nge were spent on actually LISTENING TO THE COMMUNITY and giving them what they wanted, instead of deciding what we wanted and shoving it down our throats.. well you’d have WoW numbers.
I just pray to the video game gods you never develop a video game again. None of you involved in the nge deserve a paycheck ever again.
I always liked JTLS and how it is similar to freelancer. Same with the classic UI. But the NGE was released broken and that was wrong of management. You guys paved the way for WOW to be a hit and now the global consumer has rejected SWG due to its “major” idiotic mistakes.
SWG didn’t die in NOV 2005. It died in APR 2005 when the P.O.S. CU was rolled out instead of the promised CURB. That was the real fuck up in SWG.
That and the fact that SOE and LA sat around having jedi love fest circle jerk dedicating pub after pub to a bunch of bullshit that Koster told them was a dumb fucking move to include in the game at all (jedi).
So as the jedi express was humped and humped pub after pub the rest of the game disintegrated from negligence.
And who the fuck would be proud of writing a code which killed one of the biggest western MMOs in existence? That would be like who ever designed the ovens they roasted Jews in being proud of how humanely they worked.
See how retarded it is?
Fact of the matter is that this work caused the largest black eye in gaming history. You should have grown some balls and realized Raph knew what the fuck was he doing. Or that he at least knew a shit ton better than you did.
I personally can’t even believe there are companies willing to employ you.
Oh, and if people are really jonesing for a great looking science fiction based, seamless non-instanced world, open PvP, level-less, class-less, MMORPG with vehicles, 100% player crafted items, an actual economy, and vehicles, you should out MastHead Studio’s Earthrise.
The one major point you failed to address about the NGE fiasco is this:
In springing the NGE on the customer base, essentially two weeks after The Trials of Obiwan launched, SOE/Lucas Arts killed the games is it existed AND it killed any hope for a turn around.
Why? Because the trust of the gaming community was betrayed and not just the ones playing SWG. Everyone in the gaming community knew a screwing when they saw it so no one was going to be the next group of chumps to get pwned by an SOE Ninja-Screw.
The people that play these games are the ones in the gaming shops and Best Buy and Wal Mart and they were the ones telling potential customers not to touch SWG even if their lives depended on it. Death was the more honorable option.
I almost don’t know what to say.
By the time you introduced NGE most of those who were still there were still waiting, hoping and praying that you would finish what you started, and actually complete the game. We were looking for you to take what you HAD and finish making it the game that you promised.
Instead you took away a LOT of the things that we actually liked about the game and TOLD us that we would like these changes better. Many of us who stayed on and tried it were finally disappointed enough when we discovered how full of crap you were. Now you tell us that the whole piece of garbage was put together in less time than it took for Beta to move past 100 people?? WTF!!!
This is a nice post, but its pretty much what everybody has already speculated happened. No real big surprises here for me really.
But I do have 3 questions that have bugged me for a while now..
1- Why not a rollback?
2- And since youre about to say that its Technically not possible.. What does Technically not possible mean exactly?
3- If the 200k subs you had were not enough, do you think that the current sub numbers are enough for SWG?
Oh and btw.. The NGE was launched a mess. The animations were a mess. The targeting was a mess. And the UI was a mess.
Seriously, come on…
SWG failed because of the dev’s, marketers, etc etc…
Honestly you guys royally fucked up, It came out after Everquest and Everquest is still doing better. If there is a peak of failure, it is SWG.
One of the most adored fantasy environments that had practically unlimited potential was limited over and over again. It failed, it was ruined, the old days you say werent “that” great, but it did not do as bad as its doing now. SWG should be scrapped, redone OR thrown away. Its a money sink that has no profit margin with how bad the gameplay is right now. Seriously…how do you mess up a game that has billions of fans, this is the equivalent of the mario brothers movie or blood rayne, just in complete reverse.
With a new Star Wars MMORPG coming out, I see the final nail in the coffin for SWG, a game that had SO much potential, but failed because you could not simply just fix, you had to change.
First of all, thank you for the jedi system after launch, the only thing that irked me was that the master box was bugged, thank you for post patch 9 Jedi. It made things a little bit easier but it gave us more choice in what we wanted to be and downsized an alpha class to a beta class. But after patch 9, in my opinion almost everything aside from JTL that you guys did was a betrayal of the trust of your customers. It was short sighted and jealously driven. So what if Blizz released a million hit game from launch, lets see the facts. Blizzard has been building games on the Warcraft Genre for years and already had a STRONG gamer playerbase. SWG on the other hand, was based on a genre that has been out for almost 30 years. The problem with that is that majority of strong star wars fans are either not MMO gamers or frankly too old to be interested (in some cases). But you were attracting younger players who were interested in a challenge, not a walkthrough game like WOW.
WOW basically told you how to do everything step by step. In SWG you either learned from a vet or figured it out for yourself, that is one of the things I loved.
And finally, if you guys didn’t realize you would drive away the majority of your dedicated players with the NGE then you were morons, plain and simple. I don’t care how many different departments were involved, they all made a huge mistake. And if you did, and you expected the relaunch push to make up for it, then you were idiots. It is suicidal to relaunch an already established game with a new system that would cause the majority of your vet players to leave with the expectation of bringing in new players. New playings WILL not stay if they don’t have older more experienced players to teach them.
Typical SWG DEV, not even one reply.
Mr. Rubenfield I assume you don’t work for SOE anymore, you said you were directly involed with creating the core mechanics of the game… the good game… the game loved by thousands…
Reply to the questions asked! PLEASE! Pre-cu SWG was the best game I have ever played, I poured more hours into that buggy mess than any other game I’ve EVER played, having been a gamer for over 20 years.
PLEASE respond to the quesions asked, Mr. Rubenfield.
Specifically about the old code, where is it? Can it be rolled back? Why wasn’t it rolled back? Is it possible to have classic pre-cu severs? Is it that SOE just won’t admit they fucked up is the sole reason for not having classic severs? I’m 100% sure if a classic sever of the pre-cu game was to open up it would be filled up in a week by word of mouth alone.
ANSWER PLEASE Mr. Rubenfield!!!!!
Everyone keeps talking about fixing bugs and adding content. While that may have slowed the cancellation rate, it wasn’t enough. It would be like putting a new muffler on your Celica. Sure, it would make it better, but the NGE was a freakin Ferrari! The execs were willing to sacrifice the 200k players they had, thinking they could bring in a million new ones. A risky move, but once again, in their eyes they didn’t have much to lose.
Sorry? when u put it like that,first of all, pre-cu anology would be a bit better then a celica, lets say a Porche, then they tried to rebuild this Porche into a lamborgini with the CU wich was a complete disaster, then they tried to rebuild this mess into a ferari 6 months later, and do that in two months time (NGE). U think thats a risky move? u think they had nothing to loose?
Its a recepy for disaster. As we can see, it didnt come out as a Ferari, they just broke the Porche imo.
If someone asks for pink fluffy bunnies, we give then bunnies done to the best of our abilities. You might hate bunnies, but you make the best bunnies you can possibly make. That is your job”
Nobody asked for pink bunnies, thats clear now, we sceemed what we want and what we didnt want, instead u sayd, believe me, you want pink bunnies.
Not just make Galaxies better, but make it succesful. Not the 200k
subs it had, but really succesful. The idea was that we had the most
valuable IP in the entire world, and we fucked it up to the point of
having 200k subs.
Its clear we had way more before the CU, and way less at the end of the CU.
And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers.
If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000
subs a month.
Note – I think our subs were closer to 160-180 than 200k. It was a bad financial situation no matter how you look at it.
I hear you talk about the NGE, but the NGE wasnt the culprit here, it was the CU.
SWG didn’t loose 10k subscribers per month, the CU did. In a way you started the decline yourself, and if you had listened to the playerbase, and went back to pre-cu, you would have stopped the decline.
Also there were indications the playerbase at the end of the cu was alot lower then your 160k estamation. way below 100k.
I was around when the CU came, and people dropped in droves, ghost towns everywhere. for me, the cu felt like an easy layer to push out wooky world, it made pushing out content like this easier for the devs. The NGE made it even more easy to push out content. You said it yourself, NGE was build in two months, that should ring a bell.
WOW was out. SWG was niche and clunky. Or so it seemed. There’s a question of how close we got to the product, how our perspective changed as competitors launched.
We were told to imagine something new and unique. To push it to the
next level.
What? WOW? Unique? how dare you to put these two words in one sentence. You WOWified SWG, thats not unique, and now u see the fruits of it, of wich there aren’t any.
The difference was the control scheme, not the rules. You clicked, You shot.
Actually point and shoot doesnt have to be bad persé, for SWG it was.
SWG had a lack of some content.
Lets analyze swg (pre-cu).
SWG was totaly player driven because of lack of combat content. Players could do combat, and to become Jedi, people did mindless grinds even when they didnt want to grind, sounds bad, but it kept people bussy. and in the end, when they really where sick of this grind, they luckily could do something else like decorating their homes, looking for resources, checkup their mining stations, go shopping or craft their stuff. Al these things are community things, u do these for players and friends, and there lies the best thing SWG had, the community. These mindless grinds where only bareable in company, talking to people, and with your point and shoot system, chatting was gone from combat, because of the lack of a que, something that was always there. But this wasnt the only problem of the NGE.
We did a side by side comparison. We tried to play the old system. We couldn’t.
What do you mean by this?
Somewhere during the discussions it was strongly recommended that we
streamline our characters
And here we have the main problem of the NGE. for me it feels like this:
You guys have a meeting, and say, ok what proffession is the most popular? TKM u all shout, ok lets scrap that one then, whats the seccond most popluar? Creature handler you all cheer, ok lets scrap thatone too, oh, where are the people who are building the Trails of Obi-Wan expansion? don’t they need to be here? Nah!
People wanted something simpler, more direct, more accessible.
Who? I never saw anyone on the forums asking this? so who wants this? you wanted this, not us.
If we wanted easier, we would have played WOW, or tic tac to, with this easier thing, you didn’t respect the inteligence of Star Wars lovers.
If I remember the dates correctly, we did our NGE conversion in 2-3
months of solid crunch. It was some of the heaviest crunch I’ve ever
done.
For any good programmer this should have been a sign. That u think u did a great job in the time given, I only agree, but you should have known, this wasn’t possible. I have been in these positions, and I will not deliver under my potential, i’ll quit my job if i have to.
I fucked it up.
Not all of it, but I made mistakes.
Some big ones, Some small ones,
Some that I’m still torn about to this day.
That is how things work. We make mistakes. We are not infallible.
We take these lessons and try not to fuck up again.
That is the nature of design.
Did the buck stop with design? Did the buck stop with Me?
No.
When I say it was an organizational failure, I mean it. Design made mistakes, Marketing made mistakes, Management made mistakes, Production made mistakes.
Did I alone give the go/no-go?
No!
Did design alone give the go/no-go?
No
Did an organization, made up of over 200 people give the go/no-go?
Yes.
Does that obviate us of blame?
Nope.
And why did you fuckup? Time constraints? the only fuckup you made wwas starting this obviously stupid change that would be impossible to make and help the game, in the end, management is to blame, they came up with changes, they said to do it. I don’t care you tought them up or made em, they wanted the changes. They fucked up.
It was still a huge fuckup.
Epoch grade fuckup
I think it lost a lot of the Raphy goodness that makes MMOs work, and that was a profound loss.
Obviously it was clear at the start this would happen, and i am sure you all knew, but where afraid to stand up and say anything about it, thats where great fuckups happen. Like you said, alot of people where fired, and i bet there where some that disagreed alot with the changes.
But I think the control scheme changes were dead on.
I disagree for this game, it was a bad choice as i explained earlier, for another game it would be good.
The point, the fuckup, the mistake that we made, was answering an
unasked question.
“Can you change an MMO drastically after it launches?”
Categorically, NO.
I agree, and it was said, even minor changes in MMO’s give so much voice from the players, you all knew, you all disagreed, but still did it, and if you didn’t disagree, then maybe working on an MMO isnt your place.
But I’m proud of the work I and the rest of the team did. I’m proud of
the choices we made, the direction we took. ALL of SWG.
In a way i can see you are proud of doing all that in 2-3 months, but being proud of the choises, as in agreeing with NGE, NO!
I hope you are saying this because you still are afraid to get fired orsome, but if you really thought NGE would do it, i would say stop making games, hell stop being a programmer. There where soooo many signs that this will never work, and its not that you don’t have bad examples, you saw what happened after the CU, continueing the same path was “instant death”.
A lot of you were upset. A lot of you still seem to be upset. I’m
sorry if you feel betrayed, or that we ruined something you liked.
You still have no idea.
You still have no idea of what you had.
But we fucking launched a goddamned game. We launched a SECOND
succesful MMO (post-uo).
You see the pattern? now wake up!
We made a fucking amazing space game using
the same fucking game engine, integrated action combat, interior
spaceships and in 9 MOTHERFUCKING MONTHS, all while running a
succesful, cash positive product.
apart from the combat (but thats just me) i loved this, and yes, amazing if you did this in 9 months!
Take a deep breath and move on. Times change. Games don’t last forever.
It will be back, and you know it!
And you missed the oportunity to get it back!
That, I am genuinely sorry for.
Being proud and sorry for the NGE is a bit contradictive, that doesn’t work for me, sorry!
I still miss precu days, unfortunately I still play the game with NGE and all lol.
This post makes me angry
As a programmer myself, I can objectively appreciate the amount of effort and talent that went into such an endeavor as remaking a very large game. I also appreciate a little bit of a view into what was going on, confirming some suspicions many have held and giving a small peek behind the curtain.
However, your original version of this posting (that has been saved and posted in many forums now) was wholly intolerable and confirms the suspicions of SWG veterans that SOE development and management really hold a level of contempt and utter disregard for the playerbase. Completely infuriating.
That having been said, I myself was a long-time player who started at launch and quit at the NGE. I was a profession correspondent, a beta tester, an alpha tester for the CURB (that turned out completely different from what we had been told) and a forum senator.
My largest complaints about the NGE were in
(1) the roll-out (management and marketing) which includes community communication and involvement, the forced nature of the radical amount of changes, the lack of respect for players in general
(2) the scope of the changes (design) which were far too broad and affected the very underlying nature of the game and characters to such an extent that it was very much an entirely different game
(3) the disregard of the entire design, management and marketing staff, you guys really showed complete contempt for the players and their characters.
I also vehemently disagree with your statement that the “problem was not the changes”. The changes were an extremely large part of the problem. Not only the scope and amount of drastic, fundamental changes but also the unfinished state of the changes. That’s not so much the coder’s problem as it is anyone who had a part in the decisions on the direction of this monstrosity.
And then all the comments from SOE (including you) about how “people” wanted these changes. It’s evident that is absurdly false. SOE mislead the players purposefully.
Also, why do you not say anything about the Combat Upgrade? That was a large revamp that was going in the right direction for the most part, without the complete game-changing movement of the NGE. Were you not involved in that at all?
Additionally, remember the horrible timing of the ToOW release with the NGE? ToOW came out just before the NGE. How does a huge company that has released many expansions and products ‘accidentally’ make a huge mistake like that, especially with such a momentous change? They knowingly advertised items and extras for professions they knew full well were going to be removed soon because they knew they would lose vet accounts. Pushing the expansion out at the right time meant an extra boost of cash they might otherwise not gain if they released it later.
Do you have any comments on this?
The funny part about this history wise is.. The only game that could have defeated world of warcraft was SWG Pre-cu! I find this ironic now since it seems blizard has started to become more like you guys were in SOE in many ways.
I have seen a few of you original devs from SOE start to comment about the train wreck called “NGE” it appears that many of you have a ton of nerd rage, then not long after the rage you explain what we already know. you just don’t give a shit.
200k subs lost to a game that was 50X more orginal then the current crop of crap is a pretty bad loss for all of us.
(I didn’t read through the comments yet. Sorry, if this has been mentioned)
The fuckup is blameable on one, or at least a handful of persons. Personally, the “don’t point fingers, we screwed up together”-attitude just makes me a bit mad. It’s not a bloody democracy, there is a chain of command, and abviously you either respect the orders coming from the top or you quit. I understand that software development, especially computer games, is much more close to the whole “creatively together”-state, but there is still someone at the top to a) take control; b) take responsibility.
Secondly, and this is the whole point of my post: the fuckup was not about the changes. Well, that’s not true, it was about the changes, but in tha same time, it was about something different. And here comes why I put the first paragraph in. I just can’t believe that there is, say, 200 people, and not one person says that “guys, the problem with our game is not the damn combat system, but that IT IS GETTING BORING DUE TO THE COMPLETE LACK OF CONTENT!”. There is no fucking way. Either there was someone to say it, and it was shot down. There, you have someone to blame specifically. Otherwise, the whole team missed the very fundamental problem and shouldn’t have been allowed to work on the game, at all.
What do I mean? True, pre-CU had problems. Huge problems. Most of them WERE fixed with the CU. Not all of them, and not perfectly. But hey, this is MMO-development, and even the two absoltely best titles in this market (namely WoW and EVE Online – don’t say anything else, because putting aside any taste-differences, these are the two titles put together, polished and maintaned the closest to perfect at the moment on the market) are having problems with balance and tweaking.
If I were to put SWG’s development in a nutshel, it would be “good ideas with halfass (or not even that) completion”. I mean it. The original sandbox-idea was great, with the somehow skill-based character development, etc. It was started, executed and aborted at a point. Hell, we even have ancient problems still present, just take a look at player cities or guild management. The came the CU, and from a technical standpoint, it fixed a whole lot of problems. It was the best thing happened to SWG in its entire history. It came with the second expansion, so content wasn’t an issue for some time. Yes, it was bugged like hell, but it was fixed in an acceptable pace. It came sometime in the spring/early summer, and by the end of July, start of August, it was starting to blossom technically and rot content-wise. People were finishing with the expansion, and wanted more. We really did look forward to ToOW. Then came the NGE.
I think that SWG’s biggest problem, to this very day, is the complete lack of content. There is none. Zero. Any “content” that was added since the launch of the NGE is not conent, it’s either a techdemo (like Restuss, the Beast Mastery system, the collections system, etc.) or a blimp. When I heard the SWG team was reduced to like 20 people, I went ballistic, I was like “what the fuck are these people thinking? They need at least 100 more people writing quests and other content 24/7!”. I predicted the wrong turn, and the end result numerous times, and all I got was a ban. (Oh, nice PR btw, all the way, lol – but that wasn’t your fault, so let’s just skip that part)
The “Legacy” questline is a joke. Not only it’s boring, it’s short, repetitive and you managed to travel through any Star Wars content that could’ve been saved for later. Also, you turned away from the sandbox-approach so much, it pretty much killed roleplaying from the very start of the game. When I started playing back in early 2004, I knew, I wanted to be an Imperial player. Now imagine that now, and the disappointment that 1,5 minutes after starting the game, a supposedly Imperial character is rescued from the Imperials by Han Solo, has to shoot down TIE fighters and then has to work for Jabba. O-H, M-Y G-O-D! No thanks. What the hell happened to the “It’s time for the greates Star Wars saga ever told: Yours!”-line? If I wanted to relive the movies, I put my DVD in my player and watch the damn thing! Iconic and starwarsy my pale white nerdy ass.
This was, and still is the problem of SWG. SOE just doesn’t have, and never had, the guts to commit to something. You guys thing you were bleeding subscribers because the combat system wasn’t right? People were cancelling, because they didn’t get neither a sandbox-type game (see: EVE), nor a content-packed goodness (see: WoW). You guys just hit the floor between the two chairs.
I’m by the way an MMO-addict, sterted with pre-CU SWG in May, 2004, and since then I played virtually every significant title there is, and then some. I’m playing WoW at the moment, but my heart is where sci-fi is. But I just don’t have the passion to play EVE (although it IS a magnificent game, just not my cup of tea, but I played for a few months as well), so what else is there?
your right shit happens we learn and move on what doesnt kill us always makes us stronger. Its nice to see a Developers view but I never did blame the developers
@Chris:
Everyone is a developer, who works on a computer game, it doesn’t matter if they’re designers, animators or PR-people. So technically it actually is the developers who to blame, but I get your point. I don’t blame the programmers or people who aren’t making decisions, and I’m fairly sure they did the best job they could. I can totally get along with the “if they make me do bunnies, I’ll do the best bunnies I can”-sentiment, however what I couldn’t, can’t and never can get along is those who didn’t see, or did see bu didn’t speak up about the piss-poor concept they opened with. It doesn’t matter if it’s a castle, if it’s made from shit, it still be shit whatever it may look look like. (And let’s be fair, given the never optimized graphics engine, the poor netcode and the real cool abilities we were give (like the total customization of the characters and objects) any monkey with half a brain could’be seen that real-time, FPS-like combat has a fucking big “NO!”-sign all over it.)
But my point isn’t and wasn’t to comment on the technical decisions (which I could write another page and a half about), but the very fundamental mistake the SWG devs made, and then again, and again, and again, it’s like a misprogrammed endless loop. Somebody, please pull the plug on the poor things already!
I was a member of the pre-launch forums. I was a day 1 subscriber. I went to Fan Fest 1, all the way from Kansas. Did I love SWG as launched? I sure did. Did I think pre-CU was broken and buggy? Of course, because it was. There were significant problems with SWG as it was launched, but it was damned addictive. I still believe that SWG needed at least another 6 months development time, if not a year, before it was released.
SOE knows where they screwed up. That is a given. Enough people have posted about it on numerous forums. But the NGE cannot be justified, even now. For as broken and unbalanced as pre-NGE was claimed to have been, NGE SWG is far, far more unbalanced, especially in the realm of PvP, than preNGE ever thought about being. Rubes claims the game was clunky. The NGE was, and remains, the clunkiest game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played 5 other MMO’s. The UI is trash. The combat system still required 3 fully functional hands to master, or so it seems.
I think it foolish, buisness-wise, to decide to throw away 200K subscribers in the hope that you might garner 210K subscribers to replace the ones you ran off. You decided to chase WoW instead of being grateful for what you had. Turned out to be the wrong decision, which rightfully turned and bit SOE in the ass.
SOE has never produced a truly great game. Remember, SOE bought EQ when it acquired Verant, a year after EQ was released. SWG falls into a grey area, because I believe the engine was truly revolutionary. The downfall of SWG was lack of content, lack of the Devs listening to their player base and the truly disasterous Customer Service.
The problem with SOE is that they never admit mistakes and then refuse to learn from them. To this day, SOE and pretty much all the devs remain un-repentant about the NGE debacle. I understand about having pride in your work, and being unapologetic when good work pisses off someone. The problem is that the NGE was not good work, it was junk. It is still junk and will remain junk. No matter how often you claim to be proud of it, the fact will remain that the NGE is a blight on your record Rubes. Everyone you work for will know you were a part of it.
Self realization is a son of a bitch. You need to realize that the NGE is a stain that you will never be rid of. But the sooner you cop to that reality and quit trying to blow smoke up the MMO community’s collective ass about the NGE’s worth, the better off you will be, and the more credible you will become.
At first SOE|LucasArts lied to customers: pushing NGE just after people bought Mustafar expansion.
Then you never actually try to fix/balance the game.
Instead it was decided to make majors changes, twice.
Designers/Managers never listened to the player base.
You never admited your errors nor stepped back. Ex: Pvp decay: huge petitions, no more PvPing => you did nothing.
Pre-CU killed socialisation : no more need of docs nor entertainers. NGE killed it: impossible to chat and combat at the same time.
Crafting was ruined with NGE.
SWG was a great sandbox. It needed balancing, bug fixes, tweaking. After a learning curve the game opened it’s grandeur.
Content was made by players. With time adding dungeoons would have been nice.
In fact at start it was more CaveMan Galaxies than anything else.
BTW X-Wing series was much better than JTL if you ask. Better UI, better ship management, better flight dynamics.
Well, that’s always interesting to hear witnesses from people from the inside. I used to love SWG, and I had the greatest moments in my videogaming experience in this very game. For that, thanks a lot.
I forgive ya.
If you say sorry for most things bar the control scheme then I really can’t forgive you because that was in my top 3 sucky things the NGE did.
I can still say thanks for the original game as it was the best gaming I have experienced.
I really don’t think SOE/Lucasarts/you (to this day employed or moved on) really understand what you did of course you all have your version but I have never seen it match up with what the 99% player base felt about SWG.
Quote “If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000
subs a month.
Note – I think our subs were closer to 160-180 than 200k. It was a bad financial situation no matter how you look at it.”
That would have been the CU the first gaffe that infuriated the players. Half our city of ~150 people quit when the CU hit. The rest quit when NGE hit.
Yeah, I want to chime in hear and say something positive. That is, thank you for Pre-CU. It was THE best game I ever played. That’s quite an accomplishment for anyone, to create a game that is someones most amazing gaming experience, and I’d be proud of that if I were you. I’m not looking at it via nostalgia here either. There were so many moments while playing SWG that I specifically remember saying to myself, ‘this is amazing, there’s so much depth, so much to learn and do’. I was hooked. There were only a few times when that happened to me in the past. I’ll list them…
Super Mario Bros (yes, SWG was up there, even surpassed the rush I got the first time Super Mario busted my gamer cherry)
Zelda II.
Super Metroid.
Zelda III
Final Fantasy 7
Metal Gear Solid
Doom
Finally.. SWG (Pre-CU)
I played hundreds of games in between. These games were the only ones that made me feel as though I was new to gaming again and that games had once again entered the ‘next generation’.
Pre-CU was the last time that had happened to me. I gave the NGE a shot despite my anger towards SOE’s business practices. I’m sorry to say it felt like the game had stepped back a generation, to place alongside it’s competitors (all of which I had been dabbling in but couldn’t grip me like SWG Pre-CU).
So thanks for Pre-CU. I’m sad (and a bit fearful) that you and your team could not see past the code and understand what was so magical about it.
Why doesn’t SOE re-release the pre-CU version? gotta make more money than the current game out there
“It was not idyllic. You can remember it as an amazing game, but it wasn’t.
Hell, all of you who recall the grand ole days of launch seem to
conveniently forget that everyone quit shortly afterwards.”
You’re both right, and yet horribly wrong in the above assesment of the situation. And where you’re right, you’re only right insofar as it applies to the key reason why you started losing subscribers faster and faster: you lacked true compelling content, and you weren’t putting out anything new content-wise that was truly compelling either. Additionally, the whole mission terminal system and the whole lack of any real trackable or sensical questing played into that. You actually had more interesting content in terms of dynamically spawned faction type bases and such in beta than made it into launch. And the loot system/setup, that was beyond horrible honestly. When it comes to all those things, you’re right that the game was far from perfect and not ‘idyllic’ as you profess.
But where you’re completely, horribly wrong Dan, is in the one area you’re addressing here in the first place: the core game mechanics. This is precisely *why* everyone fawns over pre-CU days. Other than issues of imbalance (both to the positive and the negative depending on the combat profession), the core game mechanics, both combat wise and crafter wise was unique and extremely, extremely special. And the sick thing is, you guys *had* a sound plan to address at least most of the imbalance issues in combat before the farce that was CU came into being. I went to the first FanFest in Anaheim, I heard about it all in detail, and furthermore you had given far more detail to the correspondants, before that fateful summit you brought them all do and sprung the “CU” details they had mutated into. I remember that well too, because there was nary a correspondant who came back from that little trip who was even remotely happy about it. If you had simply stuck to your initial plan to deal with the melee template stackers, the stupid mind poison issues, etc., fixed the professions that sorely needed a boost like carbineer, pikeman and a few others, and then actually started to add compelling content to the gameworld, both on the ground and in space, you would have easily found many coming back simply by word of mouth alone. Instead, you guys kept tinkering with the core mechanics of the game that kept the ones that had stuck with you from the beginning around to begin with. People blast the NGE, but honestly the CU was a mini-travesty all its own as well. I suddenly felt like I was playing in a Star Wars universe with an Everquest approach, so much diversity we used to have was dumbed down combat wise, and I and everyone I played with despised it just as NGE….the only thing NGE did was trump the initial lead-in screwup.
You’re right, the game was nowhere near perfect before you started trying to ‘remake’ it….but you, and I mean *ALL* of you, completely and totally misjuged where the problems and imperfections lay.
So whatever about the combat changes. Whose fucking idea was it to effectively rape and kill crafting eventually?
“Hell, I implemented the original Jedi System in 2 weeks after we launched. Not because it was how we wanted it, but because we had 2 weeks to do it.”
I find this to be interesting, during beta there was a patch released where the Force Sensitive bar became visible. It was quicly repatched but I always thought that that was an indication of the system being present in some form or another.
“And it was needed. When we were asked, we were bleeding subscribers. If I remember correctly, somewhere around 10k a month. LOSING 10,000
subs a month.”
When did you start bleeding subscribers at this rate? Because by your estimation there were no more than 20k people playing the game by the time the CU went live. When I noticed my friends list getting smaller, when my friends were deciding to call it quits it wasn’t shortly after launch. It was within a few weeks of the Hologrind. There was a strong viable community in the game before that time. Yes the game was buggy as hell but it was our sandbox. People had set up beautiful thriving towns. With crafters, entertainers, everything you would expect from a real life town. There were malls, small shops, doctors, zoos, the works. And you destroyed that with the hologrind. If I remember right a bunch of you were sitting around watching people get close to locking then not. Then folks at SOE adn Torres got frustrated coming in every day, watching people play and be real close and never unlock. Because of your (the dev team/soe/LA) impatience you put the first nail in the coffin of SWG.
Then where bugs were concerned the word from development being passed on to the community by the CSR’s was “Yes we know of this issue, do not be concerned the Combat Revamp will address this and all other issues.” Then you all got sick of the bug reports and the community wanting some sort of feedback the line changed to “working as intended”.
From early on the dev team had an attitude of, pardon my language, but: “Fuck You, pay us, shut up and deal with it”. This is visible in everything that happened with SWG and the largest billboard of this ideaology came down in the form of the NGE.
“We launched, the marketing push failed, and we lost subscribers.”
No, the marketing push didn’t fail. You lost subscribers because, contrary to what some from the dev team had said, the nge was not fun, should never have been done, and the person(s) (most likely Smedley and Torres) responsible should not be working in the industry.
Had someone at SOE had the balls to say we fucked up years ago, rolled back the idiot NGE and actually FIXED THE DAMN game and added meaningful content (something other than moronic marketing tie-ins to shoddy poorly written and directed prequel movies) then SWG could still be going strong.
By the way, what are you working on now? Just curious because unlike the dev members that actually have a conscience and some standards of morality that walked out on SOE and SWG you are not one of them. As such I would really like to know what game my guild and I can stay far the hell away from. It takes some balls to admit that you screwed the pooch… too bad its several years too late and rings as hollow as the promises of the combat revamp lo those many years ago.
@ Frank, et al
The old code is gone, so stop asking.
What Dan was saying was they had to work in parallel with the existing code in case they decided at the last minute not to launch the NGE. Once it launched, the old code ceased to exist.
It’s time to move on.
@Valko
Why would code cease to exist because some other branch went active? It isn’t like the code is a single item that has things added to it and removed and is forever changed because of that. Standard procedure in most companies is to keep backup copies of all code.
How mentaly ill must someone be to design and develop such a weirdo thing like the big stinking piece of software called NG(ay)E.
Serious dude…
Speak straight, was it extortion ? did you all where drunk (or influenced by other drugs) for several months ? no sane mind can throw that pile of shit to his customer…
It’s ancient history for me, I cancelled a long time ago. I didn’t cancel because of the playability of the NGE, though.
I cancelled because of how easily you breezed over the knowledge that the changes would cost the current player base. Bye! Just that simple. In the future, at least pretend to care about your customers. Don’t implement massive changes with your middle finger up your players butts. Some of us don’t like that so much.
So, take heart. Not everyone hated the NGE for development reasons. Some of us just lost complete faith and respect for Sony Online Entertainment period. I for one will never buy or play another SOE *or* LA game. Middle finger right back at ya.
Is it possible for you to let us know what games you’ll be working on in the future? I would like to steer clear of any game you might be associated with, after seeing your contempt for your customers.
Anyone who thinks the original blog is a sincere apology should try this experiment.
The next time you do something hurtful to a significant other tell that you’re sorry, but you had to do it, and you’re actually proud of what you did, and that they should get over it, or go eat d*ck.
After you’ve done that, come back and let us all know how that worked out.
Re: ‘..’s comment.
He was referring to the unedited original version of this blog. Posted here for posterity.
http://wildcatmmo.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=2581&highlight=#2581
When the NGE came out, I wanted nothing more than to tar and feather everyone responsible. Heck, if I’d met you in real life I probably would have literally throttled you or boxed your ears until they bled. I was THAT mad.
I canceled my account within a week and I have never gone back aside from once several months ago to try out the free trial. I still hated it.
The fuckups weren’t so much in the changes (although it’s true that it was an epic fuckup) but in the fact that no one at SOE would listen to the players who were BEGGING for the game to go back to what it was. Scrap the shit, and roll it back! That’s all we asked!
I was D E V A S T A T E D when you took away the game I loved. Totally traumatized. I went to WoW and I’ve been an active player ever since. I’m pretty happy there, but I sorely miss pre-NGE SWG. (I wasn’t around for Pre-CU, so I don’t know what I missed.)
You can sit there and say, “Suck it up and move on.” or whatever all you like, but you really hurt a lot of people with this fiasco. Games are far more than just games for a lot of people. For some of us, the games are a world where we can be someone different, escape reality, actually ENJOY life. Some of us have very little happiness in life, and happiness can be very hard to find. It’s easier in a game.
Sure, it may be sad or pathetic that our only happiness is in a game world – a fantasy. But so fucking what? That’s OUR life. That’s OUR choice. If our reality is fantasy, that’s our business!
I’m glad YOU admit you fucked up, but it’s time for the management to admit it. If you brought back pre-NGE RIGHT NOW… after all this time… I’d come back in a HEARTBEAT.
I bet a lot of people would.
I check the site every once in a while for an announcement that pre-NGE is coming back, but it never has. I’m still holding on to hope.
When are those stubborn, imbecilic nutjobs in charge going to wake up and fix the steaming pile of bantha poodoo they pushed for so we can come back?
I sense a lot of bad karma over this issue. Many have been hurt and upset over the loss of the original SWG and all the efforts they put into it. It would be wise to assist (even in just small ways) the efforts at SWGEMU.COM and help restore some happyness over all the grief that exists on this issue. You will gain something much more than money and fame, you will gain positive karma.
Ive always liked SWG even with the bad times. Ive played since launch and im still subbed till september this year. I am Remeris on Eclipse in Wook guild so some of you may know us. We were a large guild running our city Mos Kashyyyk and have a website where were all still friends 5 years on playing other games.
Unfortunately after the NGE changes half our guild left and we had to rebuild. As time went on more left which was sad as I loved and still love JTL and my Jedi. Yes I was annoyed when I found out my Creature handler was gone and my pets useless, but I got over it and carried on.
I now play WOW also and unfortunately will not renew when my SWG sub runs out this year, purely because I have no friends there now and am the last remaining player in Mos Kashyyyk and in Wook which breaks my heart when I log in alone.
We are all huge Star Wars fans still and our guild would never of met if it had not been for SWG and were still great friends now so I thank you for that. Be sure we all await the next SWG MMO and we will all be back to play it
http://wook.bhozar.com/
While I am sure others have said it, I’ll say it again myself. The main reason that you lost subscribers was not due to people not liking the game as it was, but instead that the development team refused to listen to the players. Each of you involved refused to listen to the complaints about fixing bugs, adding content, and the calls to actually tell us what was going on with development in those areas.
What you did instead, was take the road of, in my opinion, doing everything you could to help kill the game so the damn subscribers would just shut the fuck up and go away. Let’s start with the CU. This wasn’t a Combat Upgrade, it was a way to tell players “We fixed some of your problems by giving you a slightly different game”. The response to complaints about that screw up was screw the players, don’t give them what they actually asked for, just continue to take the money.
From there the NGE told the players “We fixed some of your problems by giving you a completely different game that in no way resembles what you actually shelled out hundreds and thousands of dollars each for. But don’t worry, Marketting has decided you will like it because it is more iconic and Star Warsy”. The response to complaints from that were pretty much the same “Just shut up and pay us for something we all know is a piece of shit”.
So SOE was unhappy with 200K subs and slowly falling (relative to post NGE) but is happy with the NGE and 20-30K subs and falling still?
Yes, they basically thought it was worth the gamble. From what I can gather from Mr Rubenfield’s candid (to say the least) explanation, they understood they would lose *everyone*, but believed they would gain *even more* with the NGE. Fascinating.
I’ve been playing SWG since launch. Well, I used to play all the time until NGE hit. I have kept my account active and check in to play once in a great while.
Lately I’ve been actually playing SWG more and more. It has taken way too long for SWG to be fun and playable at the same time. I believe it’s finally starting to be FUN and challenging to play.
However, I really miss not being able to mix and match my professions (like pre NGE). It was sooo fun to be a tailor, dancer, CL1 Jedi Padawan.
I feel if they had kept CH and Bio Engineer, then they may have kept a few more subs. When I unlocked my second character, she was my CH and I loved it. The new BM just isn’t the same but at least its something.
Anyways, SWG is in fact getting better. I enjoy the heroic encounters and the collections. Jedi and BM need work though, still a big grind to get the holo’s and BM is VERY costly and time consuming. But overall it IS getting better.
So tell me, why hasn’t sony done a server merge and ruled out the possibility of one. The game may be playable now but there are only tunbleweeds and crickets on almost all the servers. Sony has to get out of this Field of Dreams mentality(tm) and stop expecting unending masses to appear out of thin air and be practical in dealing with the game.
If they have the old code, then why not give us a classic server? I could care less about the no lube fucking we’ve been given since the NGE, but at least this would be something to give us in return…kinda like a reach around
Excellent article, nice to have someone that can talk about this kinda thing, talk about it.
Personally, I loved – adored, the Combat Upgrade. It was the perfect compromise if you like for me. But I suppose it did not help with the falling subs and so NGE came along?
Oh well, thanks for all the great times in SWG you guys did give us. Oh yea, and I tried WoW and personally thought it was plain, simple and boring. Canceled my WoW sub within 2 months I think.
First off, let me say that I appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time to write this, it shows you are not indifferent to the effects of your work on your customers.
However, though you openly admit you’ve made mistakes, you are still actually justifying what happend. You shouldn’t.
SWG when launched was a very intricate and complicated niche-game which appealed to hardcore SW fans and hardcore MMO fans. It had it’s faults and bugs and issues, but all MMO’s do. If you’d stuck with simply improving the concept, I am fairly certain you could’ve had more then 200k subs now. Probably a LOT more, since WOW has enlarged the market, and people do get bored with it and start looking for a different kind of MMO. Like SWG was. Or EVE is… hey, they’re doing pretty well.
Unfortunately, LA and/or SOE decided that they didn’t want a niche game for the hard core, they wanted massive commercial succes ala WoW. To do that, you have to please the masses, and the masses aren’t hardcore.
So, simple, change the game so it appeals to the masses! It’s easy, because we’ve just seen WoW do it, so we know what the masses like!
This is where it all really went belly-up.
The Forgotten Facts (aka “what would have saved you if you’d realised”):
-WoW was produced by Blizzard, a gaming company vastly superior to SOE. Why? simply because it’s a gaming company, not Sony thinking “ooh we can make money with videogames”. That isn’t too say SOE can’t make a good game, it just means they will also release a crap game if they think it will work financially. Or if they don’t, but hey, it’s done now… shame to waste the investment by binning it…
-MMO’s where a niche-market to start with. WoW changed that, non-MMO players came and joined in the millions. So, now we have a whole new pool to fish for customers in. Which bait will they take? The shiny, well produced, well marketed game from a renowned name in the industry which all their friends are playing or the re-done failure from the big money-hungry multinational with a history of complaints from the customers? Guess…
-The SW ip is indeed very valuable. It is however also very different to different people. As said, the original SWG appealed to the hardcore fans. It succesfully turned the SW (extended) universe into a virtual world. The SW IP does appeal to the masses as well, but they could care less about the whole “universe”, they just want to be kick-ass with a lightsaber. Or possibly be Han Solo (and snog Leia). But if everyone is Han or a Jedi, that’s not SW. Simply put: The SW IP is not suited for a mass-market MMO, or at least not if it’s in the timeline of the movies. A KOTOR like MMO would’ve been much better for that, though of course the lack of famous characters would mean it would lose some appeal to the masses (though it would retain enough I dare say, based on the succes of KOTOR)
-IP isn’t everything. This is very, very important. And something SOE will probably never get. Yes, a crap game with a good IP will sell. However, it won’t be huge, it won’t beat the competition simply because of it’s IP. Especially not if its a sub-based game, as the IP shine wears off, the game itself becomes more and more important. The few people that WOULD stay around for the IP alone are, ironically, hardcore SW fans, you know, some of the original 200k you thought you could sacrifice because the IP should net you many more subs if done properly (read: mass-market commercially).
-The most important one now: If you make something, and it’s crap, admit it. Own up. DO NOT TRY TO PRETEND IT ISNT! I’m very impressed to here the whole NGE was done in two months. That is some amazing programming there. However, the result was crap. If I build a house in a day, that’s impressive. I wouldn’t want to live there though.
Basically what you are saying in your piece is “we had a crack team of programmers, what we missed, was a clue”
Seriously, did ANYONE at SOE or LA think that the NGE had a hope in hell in taking customers away from WoW? Did anyone try playing it? At all? Apart from crap controls, terrible AI, countless bugs, it obviously not being finished and lots of stuff “left over and useless” from the previous version, it simply wasn’t that good even in theory. Who thought it was a good idea to put Luke Skywalker on the background of your proffession screen? How infantile is that? Oh and if you’re going to steal ideas from others, at least friggin do it well!
My only conclusion can be that anyone who worked on this game in any position of influence is NOT suited for the position he or she held. That’s not to say you’re not a good coder or designer or whatever, just that there are others skills lacking. Like common sense. And the abbility to say “oh wait no, this is actually a very bad idea” to your boss. Anyone who takes pride in his work would’ve NOT wanted his or her name to be associated with the NGE release. When they said “release this” you should’ve said “No, or I’ll quit”, you didn’t, you chose money over quality and principles, you must’ve felt right at home at SOE. Judging from what you’ve written here, I think you blame cirumstances, not yourself and your team, for what happened. So you haven’t learned from it. What game are you working on at the moment? I’d like to know so I can prevent myself from accidentally buying it….
I played SWG from day 1 and I loved it, bugs and all. The crafting system was hands down the best crafting system I have ever seen. I loved the skill system (rather than classes) because it allowed a player to completely change the way they played the game without having to reroll a new character.
What broke the deal for me was nothing to do with design or marketing or anything like that. What drove me away from SWG was the atrocious customer service. I’m not even going to go in to the fiasco that wound up costing me over $100.00 in overdraft fees because of a miscommunication with a CSR and their complete and utter unwillingness to even look in to the matter. Suffice it to say that I had no interest in dealing with a company whose customer service representatives obviously had better things to do than customer service.
On another note, I did resub after 3 years, just to check out where the game had gone. My server was a ghost town. Where a person used to have to swim through a sea of people to get around town, I was lucky to see more than two or three people a day. The flood of spam from people advertising their wares and vendors was gone, which would normally be a good thing. The problem was that the spam was gone because the players were gone.
Then, what killed it the second time for me (the reason I did not keep up my sub for more than one month) was the fact that the crafting professions had become all but useless. Not only was there no population to which a crafter could sell their wares, but items dropped from mobs now, as well.
All in all, the NGE pretty much made SWG in to a clone of the normal MMO. Things that set it apart had been put aside for things that made it blend in.
I will say this, though. Those people who I did encounter during my brief visit, were more than helpful in explaining the new systems to me. Some went as far as giving me some stuff to help me get my feet on the ground again.
Oh and one more thing. The housing system, veteran rewards and badge collections are freakin’ awesome! These are the things that I truly, truly miss about the game (along with the crafting).
The game you launched was absolutely kick-ass. It had a breadth of gameplay concepts that was staggering only to be followed shortly afterwards by the blow-to-the-crotch of a lack of any depth to any individual system.
SWG had, I think, managed to create one of the deepest attachment-to-characters of any MMO I’ve played: you had so many options for customization and so many of us geeks have probably imagined ourselves in the StarWars universe at some time.
Your biggest killer points, then, were the combination of the trivial skill-tree and the limitation to one character per server. This mean’t that if you created your perfect Zabrak Bounty Hunter Weaponsmith in your first few weeks, you had three unpalatable choices: 1) Drop his skills and try a different class, 2) Play on a different server than your friends, 3) Buy another account.
Some classes or class combinations had more depth and thus persistence to them, while some were both shallow and reviled: I’d have loved to have seen the entertainer/medic/spy classes integrated with their own “re-badged” instance of the combat system in which the entertainers/medics accumulated some kind of atom (”gossip”) from working mission-specified locations which they could then convert into generated-content missions through Spys. Instead, all they were was forced socialization after getting your ass kicked. In most societies, this is known as “shaming” or “mocking”.
The last big gap that was left, you fixed as fast as you could to be fair, was the lack of activity-generating content. SWG was a fantastic game for roleplay for anyone whose ever held anything in their hands and made lightsaber noises or pointed a finger and gone “pchew, pchew” instead of “pew pew”.
Infact, a lot of what propped it up was the brilliantly vibrant economy/trading system. There was a little infrastructure missing that might have helped but shopping in SWG was largely fun. Visiting esoteric homes and browsing through strange and peculiar collections that felt truly ‘Warsy.
And I’d like to say: I thoroughly enjoyed the NGE experience, the fun stopped after I left the NGE and was ported back to Tat.
What you and all the MMO companies should be asking yourself is not why SWG failed but why are so many people still so passionately pissed about what happened years ago. The biggest mistakes made by the developers was not understanding the magic of what made SWG great and listening to the majority of the player base about what they wanted. SOE/LA biggest mistake not listening to the majority of the player base and not giving a shit what they thought or how they felt.
What SWG brought to the tabe ( Pre-Cu)
1) True total player economy – Even the elite drops had to have crafters to get the phawt loot which created a circle of life. Combat got the drops, and sold them to the crafters. The crafters paid the Combat to get the drops and patterns to sell the profitable products which the combats bought.
2) Social – Entertainers/ Medic/Doctors create a unique social environment. Pre med modules the cantina and medical centers were a booming hub of people applying there skills. After med- module med centers became ghost buildings.
3) Exploration – People love to explore a non-instanced environment and the galaxy and land masses were huge.
4) Non Cookie Cutter Professions – The profession system allowed people to make the type of character they wanted to play. Not all of all of us want to pvp or be combat killing machines. This increased the game play experience and widen the player base of experiences. You had pvp, pve, crafting, merchant, entertainer, healer and gather. All full experiences in them selves. The system allowed you to change your whole character on the fly with out delteing or rolling an alt to full fill your new role or goals.
5) Players ability to modify the persistant world in a personal way. We owned instanced property, buildings, harvesters and created unique communities. We could decorate and create a unique look in exactly the same type of buildings. The player left his/her unique mark on the world.
The Mistakes
1) The developers were no playing the game in the areas they were coding for. If I am responsible for a certain profession and I am getting owned consistently by the same profession and the community is saying the samething there is a balance issue. If I put 500 widgets up for sale at the same price, how can you not notice what a pain in the but it is and how it detracts from the fun factor.
CU – Destroyed the level in a group anywhere concepts and create a one planet grind group of a couple mob types. This took a way all the variety and wonder of different mobs and planets. We did not like it but moist of us stomached it.
2) Developers/SOE/LA were not listening to the non-elitist community. Blizzard understands this and is one of the many reasons there successful. The elitist/hard core community is the smallest minority in any game but usually the most vocal. You have to make changes that appeal to the largest audience without minimizing or dismissing the accomplishment of the elitist/hard core community.
3) SOE was more focused on money and numbers than the people and what was fun. We knew it we felt it in the way you treated us. Guess what marketing 101 word of mouth is the most important marketing you can have. You cannot buy it, you have to earn it. Not only will people stop playing your game they will stop buying ALL your products and yell at the top of their voice to anyone who will listen. Treat the people well and the money will follow.
4) Instead of fixing bugs, addressing balance issues, enhancing existing content you kept creating new widgets and telling us how we will like them better than the ones before. We did not want new widgets; we just wanted the old ones to work as advertised.
5) SOE tried to control game play through mechanics. – They limited number of characters per server to 1. So we bought more accounts, which benefitted you but at the sametime made us resent your greed. Created lot counts to control object drops. You implemented item limits in buildings. Instead of accomplishing your goals of reducing database item size you forced us to come up with creative ways to get around your limits which we obviously did not want. We lot traded to get more buildings and harvesters. Item limit counts just caused us to drop more buildings which created more large objects and reduced available real-estate. I would have been perfectly happy with a single guild hall to run my whole merchant empire from. Instead I wound up with our own Tier 5 city. Inventory management is not fun, when you have to go to 20 buildings to get materials you need to craft a set of items something is wrong. You could have accomplished your goals better by crating larger stack sizes, reducing the insane number of sub-components and creating an effective attrition system. One you should have limited the amount of maintenance you could put in a harvester and a building to 1 month. Created a grace and warning system once it ran out for no more than a week. Then removed the items from the world. I prepaid my harvesters and building for YEARS, it creates a ghost town and makes no room for the new people to get prime harvesting and real-estate or advance to their cities.
6) Implemented features and mechanics that catered to a small group while ignoring the larger player base. Cities were a great idea, private cities were not. In order to have try elections and maximize the whole system a small group should not be able to exclude the majority. This is especially true when you cap city advancement. Creating a lot of specific resource requirements for items created an elitist group of crafters who were slaves to resource markets. It made new crafters unable to compete at te same level as the veterans. For example med stuff that required specific planet wheat. The reality is if the quality spawns only happened once a quearter everyone else for 3 months was shafted. But had you used just wheat then all the crafters have a fairly even chance to obtain quality resources week to week. This also created the problem where you had certain resources or quality resources that had no outlet for attrition. People will not just destroy them but keep them around which increases your object count issue.
7) SOE did not understand how to handle the Mouse in the maze/Carrot on a stick for SWG because of the unique professions system. Mouse in the maze is the mouse chasing the cheese. The mouse is the player and the cheese is levels and gear. In atypical MMO people strive and chase there level to the cap. Along the way there chasing the rare gear and the focuses switches to all gear at the end game. Typical SOE solution to this was release a paid expansion to increase the level cap and introduce near gear obsoleting the old elite gear. If you have no gear or level to chase people get bored and move on to a new game.
9) NGE – Destroyed multiple beloved professions and gave most of a game that we did not want . Because of the advance notice and timing with the expansion it showed SOE to be underhanded and money grubbing. You destroy all crafting and gathering.
Now the answer to why we are still so pissed off and are not just “getting over it” You created a magical unique fun and obsessive world and plat experience and took it away from us. We resent you, some of us even hate you and we want it back. The problem is we can not find that experience in any other MMO, including Wow and that is why we are so pissed. If we could we all be playing and you be a distant memory not worth remembering.
Between my wife and I , we had 10 SWG accounts. Because of what happened with NGE I will never buy another SOE product again with one possible exception. If they released a classic sever I would give it a try and see if I could get past the resentment and bad feelings I have for what happened and SOE as a whole.
I’m glad you came forth and told us all about this information. I had a couple accounts myself plus a few friends.
I loved pre-nge SWG. Matter of fact I’m excited about the SWGEMU. There has not been a game released since SWG pre-nge that can hold my attention.
That said, I think there’s something the powers that be at SOE didn’t recognize was WOW’s simplicity would be it’s downfall. My friends and I were part of the “bleed”. We played WoW and after a while we realized… This game has nothing more to offer.. Hell it doesn’t even size up vs SWG. So we cancelled are accounts and headed back to SWG. We were unaware how soon NGE would come out. We played SWG and didn’t even think about going back to WOW. About a month and a half later NGE was released. Totally ruined the game hands down.
Some of you say the NGE is a good game. I 100% disagree. I wonder if you even played the game before NGE. Saying the combat system is better etc. Needless to say we re-quit SWG:NGE. We tried many other MMO’s but we have now settled on different games. I play WoW here and there but I’m still awaiting someone to release a game skill based like SWG that is as in depth as it was.
I wish we could get our hands on that pre-nge code for SWGEMU ^_^
If the NGE was so good, explain why we all left.
We can forgive and maybe even forget.
Format the servers & insall SWG starting back on day one, in 2002.
Build it and we will come.
When We went to the Seattle SWG con in 06. SOE told us they didnt want the 350 of us over 35 crowd that was there. They wanted the 12-22 year olds that WOW had.
Now they have niether
and we have to wait for EMU to get the only MMO worth playing back up again.
I will never give up on galaxies. Ever. Pre-Cu is not dead because we still have the client, and that client will tell all it’s little secrets about any of the packets (and has on MANY occasions, but more on that in several months
. An Pre-Cu SWG Emulator is on the way.
By the way; Your post made me forgive anyone involved in the CU/NGE shit for it; I understand the business world, and I accept that reasoning.
I understand why you love the work you did on the CU/NGE. If I had done any coding for it I’d love it too. Ignore the idiots who still wish to flame you for it. If you seriously made all those changes in that short period it is amazing (I’m surprised it works so well :p )
At this point we give all our heart and best wishes to the different teams try to restore what we all loved.
Forget this empty greedy people at $OE and the “big companies” they subsisted long enough from our regards.
Let us support those people who trully earn our respect.
I failed to get into the beta of SWG (probably because I’m in the UK). I failed to notice it launch.
I started playing about the time of Patch/Publish/Whatever it was called at the time 7 or 8. It was a bit before Jump to Lightspeed released, and quite a bit before the Jedi “Village” entered the game.
I didn’t mind the CU, or the NGE, in terms of what it did to the gameplay. What I did mind, was the changes to the profession system. As far as I know, it was fairly unique in it’s original form, and was my ideal system. As a knock-on from that, there was the screwing around with the long established continuity of the setting – the number of Jedi running around a core planet in the Original Trilogy era was offensive to Star Wars fan like myself. I know I wasn’t alone in this.
Those 2 reasons, and those alone, are the reason I don’t still play SWG. If those changes were reversed, I’d be back in a heartbeat. Pre-CU SWG + JtL is still, to this day, my baseline for a sci-fi MMO. No, not baseline. It’s the ideal to be achieved. No-one has done so yet.
I’m hoping SWG2 (if it ever appears) will learn from these mistakes, and get it right.
Thanks for being so honest about what went on.
The problem ALL of us had when you guys did this was that not only did you remove items from the game we were not compensated for the items removed.
Examples:
1. Power Ups. These were temporary upgrades for weapons, they were a steady source of income for crafters, and good ones were VERY popular.
I had 2 vendors full of 5 mod power ups. that was over 300 crates at 5k per crate, ingame value 1.5 million credits, when these *poofed* there was absolutely NO compensation.
2. Weapon Component upgrades. Krayt Tissue, Geonosian parts, etc…. These were Mid to high value items, we had to either work for or buy for a tremendous price.
You nullified the usefulness with the attitude of Suck it Up and deal with it. Again, no compensation.
3. Smuggler supplies. Loot only items, that were relatively expensive if you had to purchase.
*POOF!* gone, and what was that? ……. Once again NO COMPENSATION!
4. The removal of the player based economy, crafters, the equippers, outfitters, and suppliers of the game. Were basically told that we were no longer wanted and were snubbed and reduced to uselessness.
Every change that was made, was NOT what the people wanted. There were so many eloquent, constructive suggestions about what people wanted that you people CONSTANTLY threw out.
We wanted fixes, we wanted content, we wanted a working game. But you guys continually broke it, every patch, you held out a carrot promising fixes to keep people paying whether they played or not.
the biggest failure was your lack of involvement with the communities of the game, and the arrogant manner in which you treated the player base.
Before you guys destroyed the game I was the leader of a 100+ player multinational guild on eclipse with our own city. Which had to be moved due to the flakey ass server boundaries causing items to spontaneously disappear from vendors, houses, and player inventories.
the only fix was: “sorry, we’ll do a one time restore, and then that’s it”
Do you have ANY freaking idea how much of a pain it was to not only have to physically relocate a city with over 100 buildings, and before house pack ups were available, meaning EVERY item in the building had to be picked up, and moved before destroying the building.
There were bugs in the game that were there since launch (I was a day 2 vet), that we the community BEGGED you to fix. What did you guys do? Yu thumbed your noses at us, and told us that the changes “would come”.
Oh boy, did they EVER, you guys lied to us comtinually.
The one good lesson I learned from that debacle was to NEVER give 1 more penny to SOE or any other Sony division ever again.
Please make sure you let us know what you get involved with in the future regarding game design so we can avoid it like the plague.
thanks again for taking away probably one of the potentially best MMO’s ever. I am still looking for something that compares but haven’t found it yet.
Listen to me, Devs and Gamers… SHUT UP… The past is THE PAST, I loved SWG pre-CU I really did and I miss it like I miss my grand parents, but I also love the “new” SWG.
Let me explain why I want you to shut up, because no one is getting anywhere when they are angry and are trying to blame someone or when they are trying to justify something. Also why do I love both pos and pre CU ? because its a Star Wars game (justification enough for me).
Now the only way that we are going to move on playing the game and the way it should have been done to begin with is, listen, like the first word in my comment, listen. Why? because if you have 200K players then you would like to make them happy so they’ll spread the word about SWG (which was how I learned about it).
Now I’m not sure about the situation about listning to the community but it seems like some people are getting things through, well done Devs, now increase you ability to hear and listen for all the players, still in the game, cause they are the only ones you got and they are the only ones who can spread the word and tell people that SWG is back on track (when ever thats going to happen).
I will say that I totaly understand that the Devs are proud of their work and hell, if I’ve done something that was tough I would be proud too, even if it was a complete fuck up.
As we say in my family “The only thing worse than making a mistake is repeating it”
So Devs start listning and do good, if the CU and NGE was the game you wanted then fine, just fix the bugs and listen to the players, theres a lot that could be done WITHOUT doing a rollback to pre-CU.
And with that I’ll leave you cause I got a group ready for “Tusken Invasion of Mos Espa” instance so take care fellow gamers =)
Deakn
I could probably live with the combat, but I really liked how I could change my professions in game. None of that class stuff. I think the money guys were green with envy from WoW. I wish the NGE was even worse, because then we could turn off Galaxies and get on with SWG 2.
Stop deleting the posts that ask you to respond to the questions posted.
Answer the questions:
1) When did it dawn on management that they made a mistake?
2) After realizing the mistake, why wasn’t there a rollback or classic servers?
I sure miss pre-NGE SWG. When they realized it was a mistake, I still don’t understand why they just didn’t do a rollback. Even now if they implemented the old SWG I bet they’d get a lot more people back.
All civilization aside.. you, me, a room with no doors. I’ll bring my diamond studded brass knuckles.
I’ll show you what real combat is like.. alittle old school TK.
I’m upset due to the fact that my time was stolen. 21 professions mastered, days and days of throwing away part of my college experience. If I would have known Jedi was going to be handed out to every user who ever bought the game I would have went out more.
I made the choice, I’m perfectly aware. Thing is, just like one cannot sell their account, they sell their “time” I look at it in the same way. SOE has stolen my time and theres not shit I can legally do about it.
Look at EQ for example, I can’t recall what pac it was. But same thing in a way.. like a 2 year fucking quest chain and by the time all the top end guilds had their entire raid attuned to enter that shit.. nerfed, no attunment required. I had put faith back in SOE, I had tried SWG. Now, I’ll never buy a PS, PSP, anything with the word “Sony” on it, nothing Sony had to do with manufactoring something I may buy. I will bad mouth Sony, SOE, SWG, people like you for the rest of my life.
Just as I had a choice, you did too. You had a voice, and you fucking threw your cock between your legs “Yes Daddy” I’ll suck your cock and do this. People like you never go anywhere, you do what your told even if you may know better. Use you head, use your voice. You are a lot like your profession.. if I dont do this then I won’t money else I do it and I do.
While I appreciate the balls it took to make this post, and I appreciate the TIME you put into it, I still think you’re a tool, I’ll still bitch out any SOE employee I ever come across in real life.
I don’t do what you do in the computer industry, I run networks. I’m not talking grandpa’s little linksys with four PCs. I’m talking Cisco 6400s and Alcatel 7450s, ESRs etc. 300,000 users leasing IPs, directing traffic over OC768s. Maybe its that I’m young(23) but if my boss tells me, hey, you have 2 months to completely redo the network I’d tell him to fuck straight off. Not enough time, its going to suck, its going to cause more issues. And honestly, my relationship with him is 100% profession, and I dont think he’d fire me, he’d probably appreciate my input and trust me as I interface with the network as you interfaced directly with the coding.
SOE’s biggest flaw is what I’ve come to call God Mode. This goes out to anyone, tell me where you can find a thread on the SWG Forums that says “Suggestions, Player Suggestions” etc. Even to date the “Senate” members have a top 5 issue thread that states something a long the lines of “The Devs will decide how to fix the problem”
I’m happy to hear you moved on, hopefully you were fired, I really don’t consider it worth my time to check. And honestly, I hope you never touch another game targetted for anyone over five years old for the rest of your life.
As a closing statment.. yeah, wow was out, SWG ganked a lot of concepts and honestly, the most important thing that should have been stolen.. was the fact they listen to their players, you’ll find a player suggestions thread on the wow forums.
Thanks for the post bro, I do appreciate that. I’ll never like anyone that touched the source code of that game. The original was great despite the bugs… Oh.. one more thing! Currently with chracter transfers from server to server.. “Your datapad has a 90% chance of moving with your character” I’ve never seen a company openly state they didn’t know what they were doing. I’d like to see what happen if I told my boss “yeah, theres a 90% chance of this PVC move going through, may loss the data, but we’ll just tell those FUCKING PAYING cust. too bad, there is no guarentee”
On 06.29.08 Rhinn wrote these pithy words:
BTW those are angry words.. there you go again with God Mode…
take the game back to before JTL, and before you changed jedi and keep the game there at that stage, fix all bugs up to that point and you would have a beautiful flourishing community again.
Adding on to the above post:
there’s still no MMO out there that was more immersive and entertaining than at that point in SWG(pre-JTL). Nothing comes close.
Cutting through all the spin – tons of people left because they didn’t like NGE/CU, their money is now with other games, and SWG is not a particularly successful game anymore. Easy, peazy, done. Now excuse me while I go play games that are not SWG.
Well i have been a player pre and post NGE. I loved the game pre, and i still love the game post. Yes, it is a different experience now than pre-NGE, but that is all. Just different. I do miss the choices we players had pre-NGE. But again, there is little to apologize for here. Thank you (the devs) for spending so much of your time and energy keeping this wonderful world i get to escape to from time to time running. Keep up the good work..some of us here do appreciate you.
So many people have already expressed my feelings about SWG, I have almost nothing new to add. However, I appreciate someone from SOE “leveling” with me. I understand very well when Marketing is driving the boat in a corporate environment. There definitely should have been some huge data backups to restore things back to the way they were if the plan was going to explode. When a company is hemoraging cash-flow like that, they’re GOING to make impulsive decisions, marketing decisions, and developers and producers are going to be cornered into releasing a quick patch to stop the bleeding. It was a gamble, SOE rolled the dice, and it lost. Yes, PRE-NGE wasn’t perfect, but it was a HELL of a lot better than what it is today. So many of us are angry because we lost something we really loved playing and it PISSES US OFF that we can’t get it back…
Thanks for your honesty. I don’t doubt any of it. You did what you had to do.
I loved SWG and left shortly before the NGE simply due to having played out the game. I only learned later that they wiped out pretty much all the classes I enjoyed in the game. For that reason I was never tempted to return.
I loved SWG in many ways, mostly the crafting and housing aspects as they really allowed a massive amount of creativity. Exploring was fun and JTL really was a stunningly cool piece of work.
On the other hand combat was alwasy really poor and the adventures were terribly dull. The jedi system was horribly ill concieved. And worst of all the communication between fans and the folks calling the shots on game design were clearly terrible. Not that you have to do whatever the fans say, but you do have to listen and talk to them. Its one of the few games where the forum outrage was usualy justified.
Sadly I think SWG was both incredibly brilliant and generaly fucked up from day 1. It was brilliant in areas that only mattered to a niche and sucktastic in the areas that mattered to everyone else. So you paired off the general audience on launch day, and then paired off what was left on NGE.
No. I completely disagree. The NGE was unnecessary. And one of the main reasons why Blizzards WOW was so much more successful was not the gameplay, the content or whatever. It was simply their excellent marketing strategy. Maybe SOE/LA thought a game like SWG didn’t need advertisement but if you thought so you thought completely wrong.
The NGE was so necessary as a cow on the roof. I suppose though it wasn’t really that much SOE’s decision but LA. Otherwise I cannot understand why SOE implemented new pets and a rather new pet system allowing to keep pets up to level 80.
To cut a long story short, the mistake wasn’t the pre-cu nor was it the cu. I suppose the NGE was a desperate attempt to get more customers and more YOUNGER customers by a quicker more egoshooterlike gameplay. Sorry, but that was a big mistake.
Thanks for reading.
Reading a few of these posts… I WAS one of the beta testers that did say it was NOT ready for release in 2003.
There was so much wrong with the game on release it was obvious it was being pushed from a corporate level worried about losing money and pre-orders.
Yes a lot of people left the game in the first couple of months. It wasnt because it was bad, unfinished, lack of content or anything like that..
Most people left because of ONE thing. The bugs, the lack of bug fixing and the lack of communication from SOE which is STILL a problem. The rubberbanding going over boundarylines. Vanishing items from your house/backpack. Maybe SOE’s decision to use a beta version database wasnt such a hot one eh?
The CU DID slow the game down. It did address some issues of imbalance but it kept the diversity of the game. 70% of the classes were not rocket science to understand but 30% of them were actually quite an invested process (especially the crafting professions). There was no need to dumb down the game which is essentially what NGE was.
Streamlining isnt what was done. Button bashing is what was done. There was no longer any finesse, no uniqueness and worst of all it attracted the l33t crowd which many of the faithful SWG players DID NOT want in the game.
The game became a pitfall of farming for high weapons and doing nothing but PvP.
Bearing in mind that up to the NGE SWG not only had players (albeit lesser than on release) but it also built communities within the game. Now those are a thing of the past. It is a solo game with little tiny groups that go out and kill something for an item then come back.
I still have beta3 screenshots that show groups of 20 people in starports or in firefights against rebel/imperial npc’s.
We wanted the community feel. Our guild had arranged outings to planets like Dantooine. We would have 3 or 4 higher level players with the rest still skilling up the marksmans tree.
We would go out and hunt for meat/hide for our crafters whilst helping to skill the other players up.
This was a community who worked together.
This was a game that encouraged community and fun in groups.
This was a game that helped to show what teamwork, player cities, economy and most of all what other MMOs had yet to try and do… give people a chance of uniqueness (how many hunter clones do you see in WoW?).
I don’t blame the devs or programmers at all.. Never have..
I have always blamed the corporate side. The ones obsessed with quick money. If SWG had remained at a CU style but with the tweaks and publish updates of recent months then it would have been and stayed successful for many years.
SOE got “the red mist” and tried to turn the game into some sort of MMO FPS hybrid in the hope of attracting a younger audience who wanted something easy to understand.
It did’nt work did it!!!
I do miss:
The unbelievable crafting (always remember checking swgraft.com for resource spawns)
Just hanging out in the Cantina, swapping stories.
Decorating your Mall/house
Exploring
Surveying a planet tracking down resources
I also remember at the time on the rumor mill that the NGE was to dumb down SWG to make it compatible to be ported into the PS3 and played online that way.
That would have at least been a better reason for what they did than reality. Any one else remember that rumor?
So sad, I canceled my account 1 box away from Full template Jedi.
I play SWG now. I never got around to it pre-nge or pre-cu (real life was busy at the time).
I can see why people were angry at what happened to the game but the game is currently good and getting better by the month. A complete revamp of the weaponsmithing system is iminent and looks good; it is the result of a massive ammount of commuity consultation and I look forward to it greatly.
Thanks to Ruben for opening up like this. To those that are firmly pointing fingers at induviduals, you are wrong, there is no one person resposible. Maybe one person signed a paper of said “yes”, but that person would have taken the advice of many and the decision was not made in isolation.
He admits there were fuckups, but he is right in saying he is proud of his achievements. If you design a car that proves to be unpopular, but it is the most elegant piece of automotive engineering ever seen, the designers should be proud.
Thanks Ruben.
I am so glad to have found this post and to have my chance to respond. First I want to thank all the original devs for giving us such a wonderful game. I started playing SWG in September of 2003 and left the day World of Warcraft launched. I was an avid crafter, 5 accounts, 1 jedi account. I never got into the JTL thing although it was a nice diversion. I left the original game because honestly JTL didn’t give us any content on the ground to do. No new patterns to collect stuff for, no new instances with mats we needed to make bigger and better stuff. The CU was on the horizon, people were already negative about it, I jumped to WOW, made new friends, got into raiding. WOW rocks for the amount of content and for the smoothness of the game. But through it all I have always longed for some differentiation. A character that looks unique, has unique gear. I miss creating crafted stuff that people want to buy. I miss the player cities, resourcing, and mostly i miss the people and the variety of activities to choose from every day.
What the designers of SWG did that was unique…the core of the game that I think players were so passionate about…was to succeed in creating a world like no other I have encountered in gaming. I still describe it to my guildmates in World of Warcraft, I mourn for it at times.
I am back playing Star Wars Galaxies, about the middle of May a group of ex SWG players, all of us who tell the rest of our guild how great the game was pre CU have started playing again…and we are having fun. The instances are fun, the collections. I have created a new character and have enjoyed the legacy quest…but my heart still breaks for the crafting system and economy which still seem terribly broken to me. I went back to resourcing and creating…the things I loved in the original game…and there isnt anyone to sell to. Everyone has way to much money, nothing decays, no one really needs many consumables. It is fun, but it is a different game.
The thing to me though is. People are so passionate about this game still, 5 years after it was released. They MOURN its death. When I found this statement by this dev who worked on NGE, I feel real pain in his statements about what happened…as well as the players who it happened to. For all its faults and hiccups, the game was elegant, and fun and had so much potential…and here we all are years after it all still talking about it with passion. Just makes me feel there is a market for it still.
Well I share in the feelings of hate and discontent ~ and I agree pretty much with all of it…
So, lets focus on what everyone already knows, SOE doesn’t care about the people that help keep it in business. For the people at SOE that are confused by this statement, I’m refering to the subs. Which taking into account the current basic monthly charge of $15 dollars times that by the pre-NGE 200k subs and you get 3 mill a month. So apparently 36 mill a year just isn’t good enough, but with some creative business planning and some thoughtful dev design, you take 36 mill a year and drop it down to (if you’re lucky) maybe 2 mill a year. Now, I do not have a doctorate in business finance…but this looks like a REALLY big “fuck up” as you put it, and we’re talking in the tens of millions of prime revenue down the drain and that’s just in one year.
Now I have been playing MMO’s since the middle of 2000 with UO, the game was ugly as hell but I loved how there was finally an RPG that did not confine itself to the concept of “levels” but instead worked off the idea of skills that shaped the character, not becoming a god simply cause you killed 6 million skeletons in a stupid cave. But because it was so outdated, and the death/loot rules were so screwed, I moved to EQ in January of 01…and let the games begin. I thought SOE/V was the shit to say the least. I found a game that yes, was constrained to a level based system, but in an awe inspiring world, and there I stayed until EQ2. I was such a huge supporter of SOE that I had pre-ordered EQ2 and had it in hand the day it was released and, then I discovered within a month that the devs tried so hard to prevent some of the minor problems that plagued EQ that the spark that made the game so awesome was lost. Then a friend in EQ2 told me about SWG. I felt as if I had arrived at where I needed to be. This was before the CU, when once again a game was based off of skills and how you used your skills to create a truly unique character, especially when you threw in the large amount of gear that could be equiped and customized. The game pwned all the rest, even when the CU came out, yeah it was irritating to be back to a cheesed out level based system, but the game was still fun to play, in someways I think it even gave reasons to want to group up with peeps to go hunt. So I learned to like and live with it. And as I’m sure everyone has figured out, the NGE killed it. And I like the rest cancelled my premium account (eq/eq2/swg) and went to WoW, which lasted less than a year. No game compared to that of SWG, and I’m sure no game ever will…with exception to SWGEMU of course. (WTG GUYS – IF I WAS PROGRAMMER I WOULD BE THERE HELPING!!)
So…in an effort to make this a positive post, I want to reiterate what some have already proposed. If SOE was truly sorry for destroying the game and not only wanted to make ammends but also bring some revenue back. Here is something to toss around, if you do a graphics upgrade similar to what the Shadows of Luclin was to EQ (this doesn’t mean to make a second NGE – we are talking graphics only) maybe throw in another planet, who cares…the point being, you could repackage the damn game which would unlock a server to allow people to play pre-cu (I would even be happy with post-cu/pre-nge) so now you have a BS package with a mild graphics upgrade and old game play coding…slap a $60 price tag on it, you could be sure that atleast 100k (probably more but that is far beyond what you have now)…do the math, you make money from the sales of the BS expansion, we all get our old game back, you know, the one that we loved that you destroyed thus making us happy, you get to keep all of your NGE servers so you can save face with still being able to say “NGE worked” or whatever the hell you say that allows you to sleep good at night…who cares!! JUST BRING BACK THE DAMN GAME!!!
That’s my 2 copper…
Yes, SWG pre-CU was flawed. Yes it wasn’t perfect, and yes it needed help. But the CU and the NGE were not the answers. The following would have fixed SWG’s problems:
1. Content – we had none.
2. A real CU – buffs were insane, armor was too good, ranged profs were ineffective against melee profs, ranged profs were fodder for melee profs, stun was the end-all-be-all damage type, saber blocking was too good.
3. Jedi – the original idea of Jedi sounded good. Rare, severe penalties if caught/killed, but extremely powerful to make up for the penalties. Jedi instead became common-place with hardly any penalties and still were extremely powerful.
I’m always surprised at the disconnect between the designers/developers and the customers. You were told this by the people that played the game. But you didn’t listen.
I canceled my 3 subscriptions the day the CU went live and went to World of Warcraft.
I’ve played MMOs since the beta of Ultima Online. I also beta tested SWG and played until after the NGE came out.
I’ve never played a game with more promise and potential than Pre-CU SWG. Whoever gave the final word to screw this game up should choke on a dick in Hell for the rest of eternity.
I have played many MMO’s and not one of them had the dpeth and the greatness SWG had Pre-CU and even after CU it was still the best the customiztion was insanely awesome. I miss it and wish that you had listen to your Subcribers and not to the people who was bitching about the game not being as successful as WoW. All I have to say.. You should have gotten the picture and reverted the game back or opend up classic servers. PRE-CU and CU cause i know afew liked CU alot.
I’d like to say thanks, and compliment you on one of the best games i have ever played. That is SWG prior to the NGE.
There where so many systems in SWG that are still ahead of every MMO out there.
truly player driven economy.
player housing accessible to everyone.
player cities!!!
elements of persistence that went beyond just when you where logged in.
very high level of character customization, clothing customization, equipment customization.
item crafting that was not just “Recipe = Item”, with all output being the same bleh crap.
best skill system ever !.
For me, I left just prior to the NGE, (i’m likely one of the subscriber losses that helped trigger that decision, which makes me cry). but I left because of poor support, after watching a few of my friends (personal friends who i know and trust) get perma banned for things they didn’t do. I experienced some kind of server crash one evening after just setting up a new house, when i got back in all of my possessions in that house where gone, it was a resource storehouse with millions… support would do nothing for me to refund anything. after a few weeks of arguing through support channels over the loss, i left the game.
I have tried the NGE a few times now, and for me, the gutting of the skill system for a “cookie cutter skill tree” as well as the lack of subscriber numbers killed the game for me.
I just couldn’t get into the game without anyone to play with, and found it very difficult to find anyone doing anything near me to help out. once bustling cities i remember where empty ghost towns.
If the code from those Pre NGE days is around (I’m a dev so I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be in a repository somewhere) there is certainly a market for it.
I would subscribe again if even a single server where launched on Pre-NGE, I’m sure many others would as well (as evidenced by the thousands of members of the Emulated server sites out there) a relaunch of the good old SWG !!!
Thanks for the story of what happened on the development side of things, and while yes the combat system seemed to the main issue, the changing of the profession into 9 craptasic iconic ones was the worst idea ever. One that still remains a piece of junk today, even with expertise that makes you basically buy back what you need anyways.
Hopefully the next Star Wars MMO will get it right.
ROFL
NGE sucks dood, nuthin gonna change teh fax.
Teh game is broke! It stays broke.
I love Angry Dog he is meh wife
Imitaz Euro-Chimaera
And to think i was mad when my epix got useless cause of TBC… man i feel you!
I agree with a earlier post about swg emulators
you should try helping them at some level even if you couldn’t do alot you could at least guide some of these people working for nothing to get the emulators up and running..
I’m not saying that it is completely your fault because the management thought that it was the best thing ( and to be honest it was the dumbest thing they did ), you had no choice but to program it.
Alot of people were upset when the changes took place. I remember the day before it was implemented..we had people stationed in theed in game protesting. If that wasn’t enough warning that you will lose players I dont know what is.
I gave SWG a huge chance…and threw thick and thin the game got worse…not to mention the CSR’s didn’t have any power to help anyone at all.
It wasn’t just the programming.
If you look at the current wow game today the support is great and there just now starting to mess up the game I think. But other people are happy with it.
They provide help when you need it and they have a great support base. I wasn’t lucky enough to get help at all when it came down to swg…I had to go find help myself by looking on websites that talk about issues with the game.
To this day, I still miss my Ranger/Creature Handler and Tailor/Image Designer. Sigh.
I understand it was your job and thus, pretty important you towed the line. But seriously, where is the logic in culling fuck knows how many professions? Then turning an intelligent and rewarding game into one which was designed for 11 year olds to play? Even the professions you kept… I mean you destroyed pretty much any reason to be an entertainer. However fair enough to you for admitting the mistakes made, it just seems amazing that 200 people could really think that creating basically a whole new game in 2months was really a good idea? Surely you guys being a team of developers should understand the basic principle that two months is a fucking stupid amount of time to try an re-create a game virtually from the ground upwards?!
You fucking failed allright. Big time. You took a buggy, dicked-up game with a great concept behind it and rushed out a buggy, dicked-up, uplayable piece of shit that was attempting to rip off a successful MMO.
Great job dick face.
I played SWG for 4 years and was around PostCU and then the NGE. I appreciate what you say here, and I think for me and most other people, it lends credence to the fact that we felt betrayed, not by the devs, but by Smed and his minions that chastised us for being a vocal minority and that we wanted action over substance.
I want to say that space flight and combat was incredible. I have not played a game that approached the customization and the combat. The problem was, of course, there was nothing to do in space once you became a master pilot, except to grind for rare parts. It was the best part about SWG.
But, you take out the Jedi mess (it was a mess, no matter how you look at it), what the NGE wrought was creating a game that did not resemble anything Star Wars. Take off the costumes and the lightsabers, the game could have been called “Galaxy Conquest” and no one would have known the difference. I felt no immersion in the game being a Star Wars game. Then the GCW was created, then we had to defend our ranks from week to week (mindless base bust grind), then the power up for gear which was exploited, allowed to remain for two weeks, then removed, then right before I left, the whole reputation re-grind. The game became grind after grind after grind. Take away, give back, then take away again.
I started playing LOTRO, and became immersed in the story that was created. Sure, there were grinding quests, but the books were mostly fun, challenging, and gave nice rewards. While the game is not nearly as massive in terms of real-game items, it still is fun and now there is a expansion coming up which I fear may be NGE-ish.
Beyond the subterfuge by SOE, what we really lost was the customization. The ability to create a unique toon. Once that was lost, I think the game lost its heart.
Regardless. Bravo for the post. We appreciate candor. I always stated in the forums: just tell me the truth and let me decide if I like the direction you are going. This post, stated more politically correct, may have made me retain my subscription with the hope of improvement.
Has he answered WHY there can’t be a rollback or why they refused to do one?
It seems very few, if any questions were answered.
For all the bitching and complaining I’ve ever done about SWG, pre-NGE was the best MMO experience I’ve had. I thank you for that much. Also, I just have to say that SOE can’t do MMOs if it isn’t EQ. Just look at the games out there by them: SWG (fail), Vanguard (fail), Planetside (fail).
In the end, even NGE could’ve been worse. I mean, at least it wasn’t Horizons.
The reason they didn’t do a rollback was because they weren’t going to do the exact same thing twice. ((Take something away that they gave to the players)) They said it would be unfair to those who like the game the way it is.
What I’d like to know is why they didn’t just make new servers for different play styles. Make a server for Permadeathed Jedi ((the original way of being a Jedi)) Make a Server for the pre CU… Make a server for CU, and make a server for NGE… figure out which one would do best.. and make more servers for the ones with bigger populations… Seemed to make sense to me.
But what ticked most people off was taking the skill based system, and turning it into a WOW clone of level based stuff…
I really appreciate this one part.
[“Can you change an MMO drastically after it launches?”
Categorically, NO.]
I am very glad this was posted. Thanks to all the people who worked so hard on SWG, it was a ton of fun.
IF you really are who you say you are.
You have no excuse for this error, what did you think was going to happen? There is no reason why you alienate a core group of veteran gamers,who collected items, weapons, grinded countless hours of jedi, etc. EVERYTHING that we had acquired and made us veterans, gave us seniority, was taken away.
You gave all the starting players the same things that us veterans had worked over the previous 2 years.
We are all bitter, we do not trust SOE in any shape or form. To you its a business, had you kept the vocal minority of 200k players happy we would have helped in subscribing more players given that you would FIX the game.
Do we appreciate what you gave us despite the brokenass code and incompleteness of it all? Yes, but what NGE turned into, was the biggest slap in the face for any player ever.
We don’t want excuses, that is your job, the customer always comes first. Sorry, hope you find some better management and continue your skills in future games, because your management sucked. The most removed P.R. from the player base.
No hard feelings, but you guys were terribly off.
2 thoughts come to mind after reading this…
1. You think the NGE combat system was better than the pre-CU and the CU systems? Seriously, if you truly believe that, I think you might want to try a new profession. I don’t even mean that as an insult. I just don’t think anyone that thinks that buggy combat system (to this day even!) was anything other than crap has any business helping create any video game.
2. 200k subscribers is a failure? It’s a low number when you have Star Wars on the box, but I wouldn’t call 200k people X 15 bucks = 3 million bucks of revenue coming in PER MONTH a “failure”.
I think the announcement of SW:TOR has given us all some solace and stirred up quite some excitement. I’m sure looking forward to it and because of that, looking back, I forgive all of SOE’s and Lucasart’s sins. Not that I’ll trust either of them again. BioWare however, I do trust.
This is what is happeneing to WoW now. With the new 3.02 patch and the expac Blizzard is dumbing down the game, and rushing towards a failure completely resembling to this one.
I would love to see Mr Rubenfield opinion about this.
I agree with you that you put in some seriously herd work and pride into everything you did SWG. So you and your team screwed up. It happens. The thing that pisses me off is you could have “undone” the fucking mistake and roll back the servers. Then do what you should have done from the start. Slow down on new content and fix the fucking bugs. So if you ask me, which I know you’re not, it seems to me none of you knew what the fuck you were doing from square one. If you had so much experience in working and writing MMO’s you would have known the consequences. Better yet you would have acted fast to fix the damage done. Don’t sweat it, there are better MMO’s out there. Shame your name will always be attached to the largest mistake and failure in MMO history to date. Grow some fucking thick skin and deal with it
I’m still at a loss of words, so many years after the catastrophe. You completely annihilated my faith in SOE and I simply haven’t bought a game made by SOE since then. Not only by changing the game, but fucking over people who had paid a year in advance by not reimbursing them their cash without knowing of the changes coming. Never again SOE.
Then again, I’ll thank you for the best experience I’ve had in a onlinegame since I started playing back in ‘95 or ‘96. I began with UO when it was released and am still playing online, but SWG gave me the best and the worst experiences.
lets get this out here.
orginal game circa pub 10-14 was decently good it needed content it needed balancing but it had options enuff class character and custimsation options no 2 players needed to be alike it was decently good. my favorit parts was that for the first 2 months I never left tatoine I just hung out in anchorhead unguilded joining and working with totaly random groops killing things many times harder than i could on my own. finaly justennightshadow of allakhazam my collage roomate sugest to learn medic i go to coronet medical center and i finaly leave tatoine and the next 2 months i nearly spend entirely at the coronet med center socialising healing wounds mastering medic. someoene invites me to SEF a local guild of the planet. shortly thereafter JTL is released and i venture out in to space in the best space simulator ive ever played.
CU redid the classis all at once customisations and features such as color icons combat query and other things of that nature wer lost and with it alot of usablty was lost. Suddenly every player found them selves in the midst of a expantion thay thougt thay wanted and a compleat game change. Most of the professions thay knew how to play changed and thay had to relearn them. It wasnt good it was a shock players left.
mustafar the unkown expantion that appeard out of nowhere, seamed good, provied more content. Even when alot of players wer requesting hoth, or Coruscant. Mustafar was released instead and players forgave the devs in light of some new moderatly well written content. 2 days after the lanuch of mustafar NGE is announced. The players worst fears,a 2nd CU but this one, right after everyone had purchased mustafar. mos t felt cheeted at the least. In the middle Tiggs starts acting funny and then its found out she was fired a fue days ago. The community looses the last member of the staff thay feal thay can talkk to 1 on 1. NGE comes out and its worse than a CU its a nightmear 32 unique classes and the total way of customising your character from other characters is removed and reduced to 9 classes. Worst of all all those who worked so hard for jedi get told there = to a new player who started 5 min ago, JEDI is a starter class.
That is one players point of view of starwars galaxys pub 8 to NGE.
The fuckups started with nerfing shit instead of fixing it. Not adding content and trying to change game mechnics.
Why the hell did you change jedi, instead of fixing it? Why did you nerf pets so fking hard they were no longer good for anyhting in combat?
It didn’t start with NGE, or CU, not even with Patch9 Jedi Revamp. It started before the Hologrind when you kept implementing stupid stuff instead of fixing existing things and adding content in form of dungeons and quests.
Content would have kept a lot of subscribers, they would have even ignored most of the bugs.
Ok folks, i will not rehash all the comments that were made, but will add a few thoughts of my own.
1– Pre CU was the best game ive ever played even with all its faults and the most fun. Most of the post above have indacated most of my feeling of the game.
Lost of ever having any trust in any mmo sence soe had worked us over.
Lot of game were good designs fair quality, but not SW. I really cant wait until TOR comes out or untill one of the emu servers comes on line to make up for the lost of really playing in a Starwars game.
I had a friend tell me that after haveing played in one MMO that all the other couldn’t compair to the first MMO that you played, the feel and the exprience that you had will never be the same.
But you know, I hope that wouldn’t be true, but so far it has been a true statement and i keep going back to Galaxies and hopeing that some how things will chance and people will come back to play the best SF game out their, but will all the lost people and people still leaveing and with Soe planing a server murge, about time…hehe.
The game will never be the same, there are so few devs working on it at this time and it will become fewer and fewer as time goes on, the game in all reality is a dead game, even with the murger of all the server to four or five.
Humm not much else i can say here, what a lost of time and effort.. a world of fun and emurtion that is lost, and all the friends that are lost… well that speaks for its self.
I have been messing around with the SWGEmu, and I had glorified much of the old PRE-CU/NGE swg, i admit that. I did, however, just have a chance to play the pre-CU and, you are wrong, it was a significantly better system. I liked that I didn’t have to have 15 8″ fingers, I liked that I could plan attack combos, I liked that nobody knew what template I was unless I told them. The NGE fails in everything. The best thing that you all could do is to create 2 PRE-CU servers and let the market show you which they prefer.
New Coke failed, the brought back Coke Classic. Why are you all forgetting this?
SWG was the best game I have ever played.
EVER.
Nothing can compare to how much fun I had with that game…
I loved it so much I had to take a break for a while. IT WAS THAT FUN.
I still remember the day when my sister called me, in shock.
“Chris… SWG is F***ed up… they changed it again. You might want to log on.”
The first time I logged on to SWG and saw the NGE I cancelled my account.
I had been there since the begining…
I spent so long searching for those holocrons…
After losing everything I worked so hard for, I was again slapped in the face.
I did not realize the full destructive power of the NGE until I found find some 50 jedis running about like dumb monkeys yelling “CAN I HAS CREDITS?? ME 14 YEARS OLD. I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAPS LOCK IS!!!!1!!! HOW DO I TRADE???!!#@!?? WHATS A NERF? IS THAT A GUN????!!?!@#??”
Like as been said, the reasons why SWG was bleeding subs were many, but some of the main that I remember the most were the Beta bugs that never got fixed, some of which are atill in game, the lack of content and the devs refusing to fix broken professions. Body Shot 3 from pistoleer was broken from Day 1 until you pushed NGE live.
You never fixed what the player base told you to fix that needed to be fixed. You guys threw the baby out with the bath water with the NGE.
I think it is simply amazing how you, the SWG management and development team could so blatantly ignore the extremely valuable feedback you recieved in your forums. Although you have to be careful what arguments you listen to and not change every little thing someone wants changed, as an MMO game developer you have possibly the biggest opportunity of ANY industry to get an understanding of what your customers want AND implement it EVEN after product launch! They are telling you what you should do to get their money and their friends money, but yet you somehow think its a good idea to ignore it and go in completely the opposite direction. If you had spent half the energy you spent on the CU and nge on developing CONTENT! and evolusionary improvements to less perfect game systems, I would be astounded if you to this day over 5 years after launch did not have at the very least 500.000 active subscribers for SWG.
To be honest im supprised this kind of business practise existed in a supposedly innovative and “new technology” company in modern economy, it really is shocking.
SWG was my first MMO. When I started playing, it was daunting due to the size and complexity but luckily, I had a freind who played and could show me some of the basics. I can see how it was not casual friendly but I don’t think the term “casual” came about till WoW.
In SWG you could never kill a single durny with your avatar and be wildly successful as a crafter, entertainer or doctor. THAT RIGHT THERE seperates SWG from EVERY OTHER MMO. In the new generation of MMOs I have to grind out countless levels and kill the bigges badest dragon to get loot so I can kill the next biggest/badest dragon. It’s tedious and has zero flavor once you learn the scripted fights.
Let me list the blatant advantages SWG had over other MMOs.
1: INSANLY customizable professions
2: 32 individual professions
3: Ground AND space combat
4: Player housing
5: Droppable/moving items (decorating)
6: Real time harvesting of materials
7: Harvestables with unique stats
8: Meaningful crafting
9: MEANINGFUL crafting
10: MEANINGFUL CRAFTING!!!
One of the best features of the crafting system was sub components were tangible objects that could be dropped and maipulated.People (like myself) went CRAZY designing decorative stuff out of seemingly nothing. I made fish tanks out of house moduals and metal staffs. What other game would even THINK about something like that?
Crafters would spend MONTHS collecting just the right components to make godly weapons or armor. EVERYONE could make money in the game because EVERYONE needed resources for crafting. I agree the (great) crafters became gazillionaires but very few did it without outside help from the community. It was a HIGHLY social game (pre buffbot madness).
Looking at my list above I can’t see how this game failed as much as it did. You should have just fixed the small shit and not reinvented the wheel. I payed WoW (because there is nothing else out there worth playing ATM). You should see all the people who say on the forums or in game that they miss SWG pre-CU. A classic server would be much much more popular then you could imagine. I mean, you have a team of people reversing coding the ENTIRE game to get a pre-CU server. Doesn’t that tell you somethng?
“Did the NGE make it a better game? Yeah. Did it make it more accessible to the masses? Definitely. Had the NGE been the game they shipped at launch, would they have had their millions of subs? I don’t know. We’ll never know.”
All crap. What it became was something a 9 year old figured out instantly, and anyone older got bored with soon thereafter.
It is obvious to me the NGE was motivated by SOE’s belief that SWG as an intelligent, original game = few subscribers, and SWG as a 2 dimensional, moronic plagiarism of WoW = many subscribers.
I sincerely hope that SOE goes bankrupt in the near future, and that anyone involved with the NGE scam is blacklisted for life from the MMO industry.
It is a mystery to me why Blizzard did not take legal action against SOE for plagiarism the day after the NGE was released.
I could not imagine purchasing an SOE product ever again, and likewise seeing someone involved with the NGE scam in the list of designers for a new MMO, would eliminate any chance of my subscribing to that MMO.
I am a senior software engineer at Motorola. I would quit my job in a heartbeat if I was ever told to do something as unethical as the NGE, which tore the heart out of the greatest MMO ever designed, and spat in the faces of the entire pre-CU subscriber base, all in the name of corporate greed.
You are bang on. Excellent read.
Sadly for you, it looks like blind hatred of the fan boys surpasses even reason and logic of the most profound level. It pains me to say this of my fellow man but – 99.9% of the time – I wonder how we became the apex predator we are today. We don’t deserve that.
Anyhow, I wish you luck in the future. I am sure you are following SWTOR closely to see what happens their. I look forward to that game. Don’t let the raging fan boys get your down
Good to see you giving us some info on what happened inside of the SOE offices which changed SWG so drastically.
I work in the software industry myself, so I kind of know how the routine works.
Honestly, I’m a bit shocked though. Like others wrote, it baffles me to find out that no one even remotely was concerned with risking to lose a player base with all potential consequences.
I feel that you (SOE in general) and others in the MMO industry overlooked a very (if not the most) important factor in any industry: The Customer.
See, it might sound trivial, but The Customer is GOD in any industry. Because without him, you have no business. So The Customer has to be happy, no matter what. If he’s not, he will go to someone else and you have “no business”.
Thinking that time invested into a game is not such a huge loss is also a huge misconception of reality. Time is valuable to us all. We get to chose how we spend it, but what we spend it on does not make it more or less valuable. It is always valuable, because it is our effort, our choice to spend on whatever it is we pick and therefore becomes valuable for what it is we spent it on.
Therefore, time spent on a game is just as valuable to each and everyone of us as time spent on deveoping it, marketing it, selling it, etc.
So taking that away with a big overhaul like the NGE, is robbing people of their time invested. And yeah, that does piss people off, and rightly so. On top of that, they had to pay for it as well.
Anyway, you get my point. Someone else also mentioned expectation management, which is fundamental in these cases. Players expected what they had, not to have it taken away from them. It is about the biggest mistake one can make in software development. Like you said yourself: it is better to make a new game if you want to change things that much than to do what you guys did in the end.
Already during beta we all said that the game was not ready to be released, and it wasn’t. Instead of focussing on ironing out the game, fixing bugs, finishing professions and adding real Star Wars content, things went like this. People expected you guys to fix what had to be fixed, not make a new game. A customer should have at least the choice to trade in what he bought for something completely different. In this case, that choice was forced upon them. That also is killer in any kind of business.
I can simpathize with you a lot, being a former developer myself. However, I have refused a lot of requests from management, or from a board of directors myself. Many times have I been asked to do the impossible, even fraud QA results to please customers, and I never ever went along with those things that I considered to be completely inacceptable. I don’t get why no one of you guys did this.
Of course you said it, but then what? Why was there no one who just said to them: if you do this you find yourself without a team and good luck with no product? One can stand up for things they believe in. There is no need to let management rule as if they were Mussolini themselves. On top of that, you guys would have prevented them to commit disaster.
Anyway, like you said yourself, you move on. Please, for your own sake, don’t even think of going along with those kind of stupid requests again. One does not want things like SWG on a CV when applying for a job.
Oh, and as for mr. Koster (or was it Kostner?). He has some good ideas, but obviously is not that good at putting things in practice in a workable way.
In SWG originally the most essential things were basically almost completely missing: quests, content and a good story line. One cannot assume that just a fancy chat box is going to cut it.
I’ll say it again: The Customer is GOD in any business. Lose that, and you are out of business. It is really that simple. Give them what they want and they will be happy. Give them top grade service on top of that and they will stay and come back. Something a lot of industries obviously still have not figured out, unfortunately.
To add to that: I do wish you the best in your professional career. Despite of how I feel about how SOE handled SWG, I genuinly feel that you should have a proper opportunity to show that you can do a good job (mistakes and all). Everyone deserves that, without exception.
We do all make mistakes, it is how we deal with them that sets us apart from others.
I just have to ask, who’s idea was it to hand select Representatives from each profession, have them give up time to help develop your product, that was never intended to go live? That is where the marketing mistake was. SOE invited the best and brightest players, who knew there professions inside and out, the, the go-to guys when it came to game mechanics, and turned them into liers. It’s no that they pissed off a huge amount of players initially, It is that they pissed off the players that everyone listened to.
I am still playing 5 years later. And im still salty about everything. The only reason i’ve stuck around this long is because my son and I play, and he loves this game even if you deepfried it in wow shit and serve it up on a dirty plate.
Otherwise I have never really got over the whole fiasco. The mmo world was a place I was hoping the suits would have nothing to do with. But they have to screw everyone at some point it seems.
Go back to your fucking of people who want to get fucked and leave the rest of us to our own means.
I think this was the best read ever. From a developer stand point, I feel the pain, From a gamer stand point. ya, I agree the change was too drastic, and too left field. The new system still does not have the “charm” the “wonder”, the “magic” the old system did.
However as a developer I can feel the restructuring and the ” Oh SMURF!” moments after NGE. The ball was dropped, the ball was dropped huge. How ever this game still has one charm that no other game has YET to capture, I sometimes wonder of the developers ever got that notion, and that is the sence of “world”.
SWG to many of the Old vets wasn’t just an “IP”
wasn’t just a “GAME” it was like a novel, and you were there along side Luke, Vader, Palpatine, or Han. You had the skills to tip a battle, or to help create a world.
Now… It feels as if some hand has guilded the developers and said ” no nope, you have to go with the ” mold.” andf that’s where mmo’s of today fail. Wow on it’s own, ya has people, but it’s not same as swg. WoW is 1 dimentional… SWG was 3 dimentional. sad part is SWG is heading down the path of 1 dimentialism… :/ guess depends on who you want to market too.
I will give kudo’s were deserved. One can feel the developers and artists and programmers, etc all trying to ” fix things” and aton for their dire mistake called the NGE. In the past 2 years the game has started getting better. slowly.
Cheers man, and let the force be with you and your team.
If you knew it was going to kill the subscribers, you should have quit rather than publish a broken piece of manure.
I think the wrong company had the reins of a huge potential SWG would have become. If SOE kept working on it and had it launched with more content and was better polished, it would of been huge. The game was not finished during launch.
I’d like to see a take II on SWG. Entirely new server engine and very decent graphics. Start fresh and avoid previous made mistakes. Now, if only a company can put some love into developing a game instead of frantically running around about tight scheduling and budgets, things would be definitely different today in gaming.
A Ferrari?! A FERRARI? How dare you invoke the gold standard of automotive building excellence with that broken down shitbox called NGE. More like a Pontiac Fiero dressed up to look like a Ferrari. A un-tuned and un-serviced Fiero at that. Ferrari indeed. Ferrari makes cars by hand. They meticulously inspect it for deficiencies at every stage of building. An electron microscope is used to check every new block for the slightest crack. The NGE was an engine with a cracked block shoehorned into a dilapidated chassis. When it predictably blew up at the first attempt to rev it, and subs, like engine fluids, leaked out rapidly.
[...] After reading an interesting article from one of the developers at SWG, where they stated they were under pressure to change a game already bleeding an insane 10,000 + subscriptions per month, I decided to reconsider. (read here) [...]
I have been aware of this for a while but chose to not comment till now with the SWG 6 anniversary and the upcoming TOR.
First I felt that the transition to the CU was a big improvement on the game. Most of the people that wanted a return to the pre-CU days were the Jedi who actually wanted a return of the FRS and the 95 slots that the later Jedi could only fill if any of these 95 left and those who just do not like change.
When we had a chance to look at NGE I looked at it with nearly 20 years of software development in my own history. Tansari Point station worked well and while the FPS aspect of NGE was interesting and a great addition to SWG, it should have been like SWG is now, an optional way to do combat and not the only way. This became obvious when we were allowed out of Tansari into the rest of SWG with copies of our characters. The existing location just plane did not work with the new combat system and until it was all redone with the same attention to detail that you had in the tutorial it would not work.
I left feeling that NGE had many things that would improve the game, but at that time my professional feeling was that it needed about 2 months of polishing with a beta that was open to all subscribers to help get it right.
I did feel that that the only change needed to the professions was to remove the Jedi unlock since it was clearly the profession that many wanted. Many of the professions made no sense and if anything they could have made them less combat capable to slowly discourage people from playing them. Others could easily have been merged together over time since there were needless duplication.
By the time Chapter 6 came out SWG was where I personally felt the hype over NGE lead me to at the time to think that they were trying for.
I agree that what help push people away was that in some things they went to far. In other ways the entire Elder rewards were messed up completely. Especially when it came to the Jedi. Those were were actively working to unlock and limited by the 3 week village cycles at the time, were left out in the cold. I know many that left because their hard work was not recognized. I do know that many who were working the Village could care less about being Jedi and there was a problem with telling who deserved the reward and who did not. The division was arbitrary and had no feedback from the community on what would be fair. This help to turn people against the NGE changes. If they had done the 2 month beta to work out the issues and make the community feel like they were participating in the evolution of the game many of the acceptance issues would have been resolved and there would have been a chance to resolve the mass of bugs that were introduced with NGE.
What people do not understand if they do not actively play WoW is that Blizzard has had 3 CU/NGE like reworking of the game and have announced a 4th. The big difference is that they are announced at least a year in advance and they allow subscribers to try it out during that time and encourage and listen to feedback. So while there are people that do leave because of the changes. The vast majority are not surprised and feel that they were a part of the changes made to the system.
Their first one came after the NGE fiasco and I am certain that they learned a lot from the SWG mistakes. What causes me to not have high hopes for SWG reclaiming much of the position it deserves is that LA/SOE have not opened up more the change development in SWG. It is alot better than it was when NGE came out, but it is not as open as what Blizzard has adopted. Also much of what you see discussed and tried in the Blizzard beta testing does not make it to the live game servers for many reasons.
I only just discovered this post. I got burnt bad by SOE as many of my fellow correspondents know quite well.
Pre-CU had its share of nasty bugs and unworkable concepts, so did the CU, so does NGE. They all had their share of great ideas and concepts too.
Many other people before me have told you why you lost subs, but let me help you, because you’ve fucked up so badly in the past you may not have learnt from it yet. The game had bugs. Big ones. But you tinkered with the bits people liked, not the bits that were broken. You scrapped what was working and good and introduced crap with more bugs and less content. You never fixed the problems. You tacked bits on to already bad bits and made it even worse (the UI is a perfect example). I don’t want to think about the shit SOE put me through any more.
You all fucked up. Well, thanks for that, I enjoy being kicked in the teeth. You all knew you were making a mistake, yet you did it anyway. I don’t have much else to say, except to say SOE no longer gets any of my money. That’s the only way I can vote, and that’s how I’m doing it. Not that it matters, SOE doesn’t make anything worth my money anyway.
you deserved getting canned by soe
you suck as a dev ruben, all of your work is pretty fail to todays standards
rubens trying to save grace so his flawed projects dont expose him for the fail dev his past shows
https://secure.eve-online.com/ft/FreeTrialSignup.aspx?aid=103543
Almost bug free, huge universe, player driven economy, devs that listen (and love to play the game to boot), free expansions… Nuff said. It’s not for everyone, but trying it out is a must.
Hi, first of all thank you for sharing with us what you feel and how you guys messed up the game.
yes i was a really harcore player and nge fucked up my life… but i believe we all are humans and NOT INFALLIBLE so my friend i just hope you will be successful on ur future endeavors and I just hope that you guys have a huge lesson after this!
[...] SWG might have done okay in terms of sub numbers, but it never met management expectations, which was why the New Game Experience (NGE) was foisted onto players. A big difference was the time commitment required to play and advance in WoW versus [...]
The Star Wars license alone is a niche. You can’t expect earn WoW-like subscriptions while residing on a Sci-Fi lp.
You guys messed up by killing the uniqueness of SWG, e.g., mixing & matching professions, player driven economy, etc.
You say that a game cannot be remade in a live state. SOE should just can Galaxies and respawn with a graphically updated classic – if they still have the lp.
I’m late to the party, but just found this page. I played SWG from very shortly after launch (I can remember corpse runs) until about May of 08, shortly before you wrote your post.
I can understand professional pride in the job you did, and what you accomplished during your tenure with SOE working on SWG, even including the NGE. I appreciate the lessons that you say were learned, particularly that you remaking the game in a live state cannot be done. I hope that the industry as a whole doesn’t ever need to relearn that the hard way, but I’m sure that it will happen again.
I think that SOE, or LA, or whoever else among the interested parties thought that the Star Wars license was a chip that could be automatically cashed in for big big money. They put Raph Koster at the helm because he had been successful. But I think Koster’s sandbox philosophy honestly doesn’t really match the license all that well, and definitely didn’t match the vision of SOE/LA/producers/whoever.
As a player, it matched my tastes *amazingly* well. I love sandbox game design, and I like Star Wars. Koster learned the lessons of UO well, and avoided the problems that made me quit that game after under a year of play. I had a hell of a lot of fun living out the “Uncle Owen” experience. I had no interest in playing as a jedi, and actually actively avoided following that path.
That being said, I understand that sandbox games are a niche market. I think that is more recognized now than it was before and in the early days of SWG. I think that using hindsight, perhaps it was a mistake to go for the bigtime with a Star Wars license, and then put a sandbox designer in charge. At least, a mistake from the point of view of the powers that be, that saw the license as their ticket to mountains of cash. Again, from my particular view as a player, it was an incredibly fortuitous combination.
I think that WOW envy probably applied a lot of pressure. Now people just sort of accept that there is WOW, and everything else. If WOW could have been ignored, I think that maybe what SWG needed would have been more clear. I disagree that *any* of the changes in the NGE were going the right direction. The simplification / elimination of professions was a terrible idea. The new control scheme and combat style was, at best, something to be implemented in a *new* game, not grafted over what was already there.
You say that you were hemorrhaging players rapidly. I think that is because people were tired of waiting for fixes, content, and functional purpose for some of the “iconic” content already in the game. Jedi and Bounty Hunters got constant revamps and tweaks. Meanwhile, smugglers never got anything to smuggle, rangers had no reason to set up camps or use traps, and droid engineers made droids that weren’t actually used for anything of particular value.
You say UO doubled its subscription base after acknowledging what a disaster the game was before Trammel. SWG could have done the same thing, by fixing the problems and adding to the content that was lacking. What if the 2-3 months of crunch had gone into improving upon what was already there, rather than starting completely over?
I wish that SOE would take some of the now nearly-vacant servers from after character transfers, wipe them and convert 1 into an immediately pre-CU code server, and 1 into an immediately pre-NGE code server. Don’t fix any bugs, adjust any imbalances, or worry about having 3 development lines, just make the servers available. Continue development as normal on the NGE line, and just see what happens with the “classic” servers. I really can’t see any reason *not* to do that, short of actually not having the code available to revert to, which I frankly just don’t believe.
I will never be happy about how the CU or NGE were handled. The CU had some positive sides to it, and overall I think the CU days were the golden age of SWG from my perspective as far as game mechanics go, but it was executed in a way that I think didn’t show respect or understanding to the subscriber base. The NGE was handled even more poorly, by an order of magnitude.
Still, I will always have fond memories of much of my time as a subscriber to SWG, and I’ve moved on from feeling any particularly vehement resent. I’ve still got plenty of confusion over how things could have been so poorly handled for so long though.
I may have commented angrily before on this years ago, but this came up again and it spurred a revisit on how I see it now.
The original swg game had a lot of problems, but the systems for leveling were the game. You could be whatever you wanted to be may it be: combat, crafting, entertaining, or any type of hybrid of the lot. At first I was not happy with the CU upgrade but looking back the CU may have been the best system of all of them, and I think with a little work from that point the game might have been great.
The NGE in my opinion destroyed what we had worked on in our characters by getting rid of the character possibilities we now could only be one thing: combat crafter or entertainer.
Getting rid of the combat cues and other combat systems wasnt really a big deal, I dont mind playing first person shooters for the most part, but let me be a crafting tkm or tkm/doctor or whatever I want to be.
I quit when the NGE went live and havent payed for a sub since then, Rose coloured glasses or not SWG of old got more money and play time from me than NGE ever will
More than likely if it had stayed the old system I would have left and come back to the game 100 times by now but they would have gotten more money, and if they kept the CU I might have dropped even more money on the game.
I dont care what they do with the game now, its not my game. As long as Sony and Lucas can make money on the title I wish them good luck, and I’ll see Lucas again in SWTOR.
I attended an SOE Block Party while also attending the San Diego Comic Con. This was the year when Vanguard:Saga of Heroes was going to start beta testing.
What struck me was while at the SOE Block Party in their parking lot, Smedley was introduced as the person responsible for deciding NGE would be implemented. And he was going to be sitting in the dunk tank for people to take a shot at him. Smedley was laughing when they announced it. I think 3 people lined up, the rest left to peruse other areas. All the while, other SOE big-wigs were talking about how NGE was only a small mistake after all, laughing it up with Smedley. Arrogance, pure and simple.
Obviously a legendary fail, as we are still commenting on this years later.
Given the passage of time and the ability to play SWG as what it is now and be able to revisit ‘the good old days’ with the EMU… SWG today is WAY BETTER than it was pre-CU. Yes, I miss the skill system, but hey..at least there’s something to do now. Pre-CU might have been a sandbox, but you get tired of playing with sand and the occasional cat turd. Pre-CU had NO CONTENT. It was rolled out all wrong, and I say there should be ‘classic servers’ for those fans (but understand why there are not any, from a financial standpoint) but the game is better today as a game than it ever was.
Sadly, populations are decreasing to the point that it might have to go away soon, especially when the KOTOR one launches (which looks like crap BTW.)