Washington Post on Star Wars Galaxies Changes

spartan7891 writes "The Washington Post, by way of MSNBC, is running a story on how fans are outraged at the newest changes made to Star Wars Galaxies. As one player states, 'The game for me probably will be a lost love. Sort of like seeing your spouse with Alzheimer's. Outwardly, everything appears the same as it always has, but you know that beneath the surface, things will never be the same.' There's even rumors of LucasArts being so angry about the changes that they may cancel SOE's contract." Yeah ... if a major newspaper covers what you did in a patch, you probably did something wrong.

Like a spouse with alzheimers?

Yeah, because losing a video game is like seeing your loved one destroyed by a horrible disease... If leveling changes are the worst thing that happens to you this year, count yourself lucky. Wow...

Re:Like a spouse with alzheimers?

Yeah, because losing a video game is like seeing your loved one destroyed by a horrible disease...

And why shouldn't it be? A comparison between the character of one experience and the character of another does not necessitate that the scale of those experiences is being equated.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth is wasted by individuals who feel the need to pretend that any quality characterised by analogy is necessarily a quantity equated by analogy as well. No such necessity exists.

And maybe it's not artful to use analogies which differ in the scale of perceived wrongs which they compare, because the wilfully ignorant will inevitably misinterpret their meaning. But I like to think that writing should serve the genuinely interested reader first, rather than those who actively seek to misinterpret and misunderstand in pursuit of scandal.

Ummm

As one player states, 'The game for me probably will be a lost love. Sort of like seeing your spouse with Alzheimer's. Outwardly, everything appears the same as it always has, but you know that beneath the surface, things will never be the same.'

I'd say that if this causes "one player" to spend a little more time in reality and acquire (if only by gamer standards) a bit of perspective, they've done him a huge favor.

Life mimics Art

ILM, Lucas Arts = Downtrodden farm boy launched into space trying to change the universal views of perception. SOE = Stoic Empire that squashes all rebellious intent and free thinking schemes with an iron fist. Someone please tell me who the Cast and Characters are I know we can do a spoof for George

I'll do the obligatory

Did anyone feel a disturbance in the Force? As if thousands of players cried out in pain as their character's jobs were deleted?

Vandalism but tis not al bad to give up a game

I had a master ranger/master swordsman and specialsed in supplying cooks and armorsmiths with meat and hides. IT was great being part of player run economy where you chose your own customers, set your own prices and went off hunting whenever you needed cash.

Ranger, swordsman, cook and armorsmith were all dropped as part of the dumbing down of the game. Now we ahve something that seems to be be aimed at console players. Still, its given me time to watch TV and read books - two activities I had dropped to make time for SWG.

Re:Forgive me, but I really want to know:

I don't know whether or not you are trolling or honestly asking a question so I will assume the latter.

One of the attractions of SWG before the changes mentioned in the article were made was the complicated crafting system. I knew (know) several disabled players who could not keep up with the fighting aspects of the game but really enjoyed crafting (weaponsmith, armorsmith, architect etc...). This allowed them to be part of a guild, have a social aspect of the game and feel a like part of a community without having to suffer the aggravation of player-killers and such. Also, the article mentioned hair-dresser, which is incorrect. That profession was actually Image Designer and actually served a purpose a long time ago other than to change the appearance of your toon. You used to have secondary stats that you could custom tailor your character with -- in order to change these stats you needed an Image Designer. The combat "upgrade" killed off those stats and one of the uses of Image Designers.

Another thing to keep in mind, in SWG there are no NPC vendors -- you cant just go buy stuff (weapons/clothes/armor/food/etc...) anywhere, you have to either loot it or buy it from other players. This was one of the draws of the game. And most of the stuff that was "made" by players was of much higher quality than the stuff that you looted. There was a time when chefs (cooks) where invaluable due to the fact that the buffs you got from their foods/drinks could not be gotten elsewhere. Also, there was huge variation in the quality of these products from vendor to vendor. This was due to the fact that the quality of the resources(harvested) and components (player made) had direct effect on teh quality of the end product. This extends itself to all the crafting aspects of the game.

I could go on and on, but I refrain :). Suffice it to say that most of these aspects of the game have been removed. In fact, that is pretty much what the entire "Next Great Experiment" aka NGE was all about -- how much they could remove from the game without adding anything back and not completely kill the game. I think they underestimated the reaction to the POS they have turned the game into. I dropped 3 (all of my) accounts as a direct result of this latest "upgrade".

In other news

In other news today thousands of geeks were seen standing outside their parent's houses blinking at the sunglight for the first time in months.

It's not Star Wars, it's Planetside 2!

Those of us that play SOE's Planetside know that this is an attempt to create another Planetside-style MMOFPS using the Star Wars franchise as a backdrop. Months before SOE announced changes to Star Wars, Several of the lead developers from Planetside and SOE execs made a public "teaser" at an SOE Convention that their next MMOFPS based off of many of the concepts from Planetside was going to be coming by the end of the year. When the Star Wars Patch came out, those of us in Planetside who had been watching knew what it was.

Now, I do NOT think this is a bad thing. The reason I play Planetside is because I can't stand the boring level-grind that is EVERY MMORPG out there. When I get online to game, I want to have to work for my victories, not dice roll for them. I say 'Bravo Sony' for having the courage to step out and do something DIFFERENT for once, and to move away form the EQ-WOW-COH-Etc. level grinders that are smothering the MMO market today.

"The MMOFPS, it's an elegant game style from a more civilized time. Not as crude and random as a dice-roller MMORPG." (with apologies to Obi-Wan)

Sony blew it again.

SOE blew it with SWG. The game was complex. It wasn't easy to become the best. There was a lot to know about everything and this is what drew me to it. With all the changes it's become more and more simple and has swerved away from all the reasons I loved it.

In their attempt to capture a wider player base they alienated the rest of us. The scope of the worlds and how you could build your character was so wide. The freedom to do what you wanted was amazing. And they took that freedom and they kicked it square in the balls.

SWG was the first and only MMPROG I stuck with for more than a month. And now they've lost me.

dumbest business move?

I've never played Star Wars Galaxies but the 3 people I know who use to have all cancelled their accounts over the past month. Two said they hated the new changes and the other cancelled it yesturday saying that there just arn't enough "cool" people on the servers anymore.

I keep getting the feeling that in 3 or so years time this whole event will be features in one of those "top 10 dumbest business moves" articles.

Is Sony missing on the MMORPG golden rule?

If it's "easy to play", and people can easier become Jedi's, and play/meet up with iconic characters, and it's more fast paced, won't SOE risk exchanging a player base of dedicated players with long term goals with unreliable (as for income stream) short-term players looking at the game as an action shooter they're done with after a month or so? I thought the point with MMORPG's was to set up several long term goals and lots of stuff to do, with lots of professions to pick from, lots of quests, lots of opportunities for social interactions, and basically make people grow into the world and make it their home on the Internet. Sounds evil, but I think that's what most MMORPG's strive for, although it doesn't sound like this one does anymore...

Is Sony missing that the equation is money * time = revenue?

Could Sony now see effects of a shortly increased popularity, but be worse off than ever in just a year?

Some companies manage to pull this off quite well, such as Blizzard with Diablo II, but that one's fee-free, as well as an FPS action game like Counterstrike. I think SOE will have quite a large burden to carry to make people want to pay monthly for some action with a reduced depth, professions, and less varying goals to aspire to.

Wow

Between this and their rootkit ("Oopsie!"), seems that Sony's really batting 1000 lately, doesn't it?

LucasArts and the rumored anger about SWG

"There's even rumors of LucasArts being so angry about the changes that they may cancel SOE's contract."

The formatting of this in italics makes it seem like it's mentioned in the story, which it's not...so that's a bit misleading or confusing.

If you read the article, in fact, the vice president of development at SOE said, "'It was a tough decision we had to make,' he said. 'We knew we were going to sacrifice some players . . . [but] as a Star Wars license, we should do a lot better than we have been doing.'"

So, in effect, it seems that SOE was probably lambasted by LucasArts and the NGE was the result. It was likely a joint effort between the two companies to kick start the game again. If LucasArts is still unhappy with it, then it is a situation they were well aware of, and it's doubtful they would suddenly become angry and cancel SOE's contract when they were part of the effort to "save" the game.

That said, I played this game for 2 years with multiple accounts. It used to be fun, and with the new way of things it just wasn't. Animations before the first overhaul of the game (Combat Upgrade) were fluid and fun to watch, especially the Darth Maul-esque double bladed lightsaber moves. The Combat Upgrade filled the game with flashy particle effects and magical auras everywhere - VERY unlike any Star Wars movie I've seen. That was lame. With the New Game Enhancements they just recently did, now they sped up everything so that characters run around like they're on crystal meth. It looks ridiculous. It was plagued with bugs and only had quests through level 30 out of the 90 levels in combat - that was just a stupid decision. The game needs more content and always has.

The game also needs a development team that can actually handle the workload required of the game - it's more than apparent that no matter what the configuration of the game, the Dev team isn't up to the task. Even as "cut down" as the game currently is, which it really isn't - many professions just got rolled up into "classes" so no significant work was really saved - the Devs still don't seem to have any significant effort being put toward finally getting this game polished and functioning.

In the end, the NGE basically achieved the purging of the veteran playerbase who were pissed that nothing good had come out of the potential the game had, and instead it overhauled everything to bring in a new crop of players willing to fork over cash and wait for the potential of the game to be realized. In other words, they have a whole new population of willing subscribers who will take another 2 years to really get mad that they've wasted their time to get nothing significant in return. The question is - will the new players have the staying power of the previous veteran players? Doubtful, in my opinion. They are flash in the pan Episode III-hyped players. The fans who were in it for the long haul have by and far given up by now.

Eventually this game will be abandoned in droves and it will fall apart. Too bad, because all I wanted was to actually be a musician in the Star Wars universe and entertain folks - and the Devs have no interest apparently in developing that "iconic class" as they call it. In addition, I got sick of playing a Jedi (which launched with the NGE with no armor - frickin' brilliant) which is a melee class in a ranged shoot-em-up game. If they can't get the game to work right with Jedi, what the hell kind of Star Wars game is it, anyways? And who the hell calls themselves a Dev for a Star Wars game when they can't even make Jedi fit into the game properly?

Change for the better?

I don't consider myself a MMO newb by any means, but I dabbled with SWG in an earlier incarnation (immediately after Jump to Lightspeed) and I find a needlessly complex, slow moving, clumsly looking attempt at a Star Wars life simulator with a learning curve so steep I began looking for Derek Smart's name in the design credits.

In my estimation, simplifing and speeding up the action made it more true to the Star Wars universe.

EVE-Online Doesn't Suck

I've moved from playing SWG to Eve Online. It is a bit of a different experience, but I like it.

Much (but not all) of the economy is player controlled, and there are a nearly infinte amount of ways to play the game.

My favorite part though is that leveling is not a grind. Each skill takes a certain amout of time to train, and keeps training even when you log out. So as long as you can log in for a few minutes a week, you can keep advancing your character, just as fast as anyone else.

I've also noticed that the people I play with and against don't seem to act like the WOW-Tards I've seen on other MMORPGs

SOE and LA screwed up

SOE and LA really messed this change up, needed, wanted or whatever. The problem as restated most recently by Chris Krammer was they needed to save the business model because they (as a company) should have been doing better. Further more, he states that they knew the vet community at the time would upset. The bottem line is if the vet community had been used as an asset rather than a liability, the resulting bad blood would not have occured. You just don't change a sense of Ownership like SOE/LA did to the game and expect to not be critized. It also continues to be interesting that almost 3 months after the release of SWG:NGE, that bad press like the Washington Post article is still occuring. Overall, SOE/LA continues to ignore the current user base that doesn't fit in with there plans and they are suffering from the appropriate backlash and bad word of mouth they deserve.

Why not add a second game?

I wonder why they did it this way? Why not set up another virtual world with the newly designed game on it, and leave the original intact as a separate game? Why did it have to be one or the other? I would think the cost of a few servers and maintaining them would be less than the revenue generated by having two versions of the game.

WoW

Yeah ... if a major newspaper covers what you did in a patch, you probably did something wrong.

WoW got an interview about its latest patch covered in the NYT, but that was positive. I believe it was a slashdot article.

O RLY?

if a major newspaper covers what you did in a patch, you probably did something wrong.

The quality and significance of NYT articles is constantly on the decline, as they try to keep up with the information age, and so its natural for them to increase coverage of all things electronic. World of Warcraft has a higher population than 99% of the worlds cities, and regularily has higher 'viewers' than most TV shows, so that too makes it reasonable that they report on any (sic)world changing events in these types of realities. SWG may have a smaller population than WoW but the franchise has a wider fanbase.

Really, they're (NYT/WP/etc) still a couple years behind online news conglomerates like Fark, and the coming dominance of pages like google homepage or windows live will put a further nail in their coffins. Really, the only thing NYT has that gives them any kind of edge is that its 'low tech' news.

I would never suggest that paper is going away, but I feel that daily distribution of news is wasteful and needs to change.

SWG Refugees

I believe our little group of 700+ registered "Refugees" has gotten coverage by SlashDot in the past. But, hey -- we don't mind a little more company.
Come on over to visit Imperial Crackdown [imperialcrackdown.com]
We don't just whine & moan about our lost professions and how Evil Sony is (although you'd be welcome to).
We are largely about what is fun to do now.

I've returned to Guild Wars, which I enjoyed so much in Beta, using the handle I'm using here. You are also invited to my Guild's Homepage [guildwizard.com]