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Games Entertainment

Lucasarts Through With Sony? 49

Posted by Zonk from the hang-in-there-little-wookies dept.
pdawerks writes "Heard through the grapevine: Apparently Lucasarts is displeased with the way that SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) has handled Star Wars' MMORPG Galaxies. The day after the JTL expansion goes live, they plan to announce the second expansion pack and the divorce between SOE and Lucasarts." This appears to be a complete rumor. However, I found corroborating rumormongering at SWG Warcry and Second Life Herald. Lucasarts has previously lessened their developer stable, casting doubt on this idea. I can't imagine Lucasarts could do a worse job with the game than SOE has, though.
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Lucasarts Through With Sony? More

Lucasarts Through With Sony?

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  • "I can't imagine Lucasarts could do a worse job.." (Score:5, Funny)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Sunday October 10, 2004 @03:21PM (#10487319) Journal
    You poor, deluded bastard...

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10, 2004 @03:29PM (#10487360)

    This appears to be a complete rumor.

    Then why did you post it?

    • Track record (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MMaestro ( 585010 )
      Because if your consider SOE's track record with working with SWG, its not too hard to believe. After SOE pissed everyone off with their mass banning/kicking, Lucasarts was no doubt pissed off at SOE without even mentioning other disagreements (Jedis? Space combat? The fact that everyone jokes about being a cantina dancer?)
    • "Then why did you post it?"

      Why not?
    • IT has reached more than rumor stage. Lucasarts put up a page over a week ago hiring a new director of SWG at Lucasarts. And SWG in Japan is run by EA games, not SOE. So someone upstairs has been trying to nudge Sony out of te full picture for some time. Now they are hiring someone to take over the whole project? I bet some of the SOE dev team is already rending their resumes around.
  • There are many players devoting all their gamepaly to the jedi quests and ginding jedi xp. The notion that that all this work will be simply erased amounts to a complete breach of trust.
  • If anybody could do a worse job than SOE, it's LucasArts. LucasArts has a long track record of being their own worst enemy. All of their licenses have gone on to do better things than their own efforts. If the author wrote that last sentence as a jab at SOE, they failed miserably. There are better things to bitch and moan about than SW:G.
    • I'm extremely sorry, but you are incorrect. I thought SOE was a good MMORPG handler after PlanetSide and EverQuest, but I was mistaken. The people they have set up to manage Star Wars Galaxies have got to be the stupidest people on the face of the planet. I could take ten Indian hindus who have never seen electronic technology and they could run this game better than these devs have done.

      It still had hope, but basically they said they could care less about what people think in an IGN interview.

      This is f
      • Believe it or not, I've played SW:G and there are many games that are far worse on the market and people are paying to play them. Despite your sample size of 1, you do not account for many of the other things SOE has done right and wrong. Also, the track record of Planetside and EQ have nothing to do with how SW:G would/could/was handled. They are different dev teams and different live teams.

        Thanks for the comment about Indians though. Because we know there aren't any people over there trained on the usa

  • SWG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @03:55PM (#10487505)
    I played SWG early on. Ironically I found the game to be so immersive and creative when it came to the realism of the world, that the gameplay itself took a back seat. I think this is a case of some great softare that has critically flawed game design.

    Then again, it's entirely possible that SWG may be the most incredible MMORPG ever conceived, and because it seems to rely so much on player-generated content, it may take years before the game matures and shows what it's capable of.

    However, the brilliance (or lack thereof) of the game may be moot. The other night I was in a club with a group of people and there was a Ms. Pac Man cocktail table game in the bar that people were lining up to play. Sometimes I think today's games have become so complex they've negated their value.

    When you're playing a game that has 5000+ pages of documentation, with a minority hardcore community that considers you a n00b if you don't know that ALT-SHIFT-PgUp in combination with the alternative UI loaded and the spatial relativity ability received from completing the Lord Eladril quest will improve your defensive attack posture, you have to begin to wonder whether real life demoralization isn't preferable?

    • Here, here!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @07:27PM (#10488685)
      If I had mod points right now I'd be boosting this score up.

      There's a reason why classic gaming is so highly regarded and fondly remembered by hardcore gamers and even the more casual type who had at least an NES.

      Games were about puzzles and intuition. Now it's twitch skills and MMO's which you have to relinquish part of your life in order to justify the monthly fee.

      Ironically the largest and most advertised technical achievement of video games is what, I think, is creating a stagnate market. 3D graphics launched video games into more homes than ever before thanks to proliferation of fast PC's and Sony Playstations.

      The down side is that as graphics advance and everyone wants even more realism, it takes longer to make a game that isn't rife with bugs, which results in watered down games that only look prettier than what we played the previous year.

      • Re:Here, here!! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Doomstalk ( 629173 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @11:26PM (#10489961)
        ames were about puzzles and intuition. Now it's twitch skills

        You make it sound as if that's different from the way it was then. Have you ever played asteroids? There are a lot of twitch reflexes involved in doing well in that game. Same goes for defender, pretty much any 2D platformers, side/topscrolling shooters, and most other genres. Yes, some games have gotten too complex, I'll admit it. I've been known to give up on a game for being overwhelming myself. But don't over-romanticise the past, or over-generalize the present. Both have had their share of bad games (I welcome you to have a "Which was a bigger fiasco? ET or Daikatana?" debate) and their great ones.
    • The other night I was in a club with a group of people and there was a Ms. Pac Man cocktail table game in the bar that people were lining up to play.

      Is this in praise of the fun of Ms. Pac-Man or an insult to the fun of the club?

      • Re:SWG (Score:2)

        by mabu ( 178417 )
        Is this in praise of the fun of Ms. Pac-Man or an insult to the fun of the club?

        Take your pick... lol

  • Great! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an ex-employee of SOE, I would like to say that I haven't ever seen a more incompetent group of people. The company is short-sighted, money-grubbing, disrespectful towards their customers, and has management filled with more idiots than the RNC.

    The developers churn out bloated crap that runs poorly on even the most powerful PCs. The developers have little concept of fun anymore... the original EverQuest development team - the people who made the company what it is today - are gone. They have largely

    • Re:Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Taulin ( 569009 )
      I thought SOE was just a publisher? EQ, SWG, and all the rest, were developed by a different company wern't they? Perhaps SOE owns those companies and you are just simplifying by grouping them under one name? I personally think EQ and SWG have been ran and developed pretty well taking into consideration the amount of people that play the game and how immense they are in terms of scope and functionality.
      • SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) was at one time more-or-less the developer and publisher of EverQuest through the 989 Studios label. Years ago, though, the decision was made to spin off the company developing EverQuest into its own entity, called Verant Interactive. About a year after EQ went live, though, SOE saw the recurring revenues that the EQ subscriber base had produced, and grabbed Verant back up.

        Currently, the company that runs EQ is called Sony Online Entertainment. They also run SWG, more or
    • Just wondering - in what capacity did you work at SOE?

    • Re:Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mabu ( 178417 )
      As an ex-employee of SOE, I would like to say that I haven't ever seen a more incompetent group of people. The company is short-sighted, money-grubbing, disrespectful towards their customers, and has management filled with more idiots than the RNC

      I respectfully disagree. I suspect the poster was probably a disgrunted volunteer-guide who got pissed when he was fired because he got caught ressing his friends in game.

      SOE has gone through a number of changes since their inception, and they still IMO are th

      • Re:Great! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Grym ( 725290 )

        ...and they still IMO are the best MMORPG development group in the world -- at least the Verant portion

        Have you even played PlanetSide? Wow... talk about a good idea mercilessly bludgeoned by poor management and greed.

        For starters, the game has been wrought by ridiculous balance issues, graphical engine problems, and unreliable servers since (and even before) its inception. Even the newest of computers grind to a halt or crash to desktop at times. Good luck trying to attract attention to these issue

  • Here's a Job Description a Lucas Arts, mofos (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 10, 2004 @07:50PM (#10488818)
    Here's the position at Lucas Arts:

    http://www.lucasarts.com/jobs/descriptions/?ID=dir ector [lucasarts.com]

    Why the fuck would they be hiring somebody so high up if they didn't plan on going through with this shit? Good riddance to SOE, maybe I'll reactivate my account.

  • Sony and SWG have made a mockery of Star Wars. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StormKrow ( 688323 ) on Monday October 11, 2004 @12:02AM (#10490107)
    Horrible customer service. We're the subscriber, *we* pay their salaries. It seems as though the devs, csrs, and SOE fail to grasp this concept.

    People quitting as a result of their less than promised gaming experience and service.

    As a result of so many people cancelling their accounts, SOE has outsourced a good portion of their CSR staff to India in order to make their margin...(No joke)

    A complete lack of understanding of RPG gaming. Game designs have been implimented in this POS with no comprehension of the "give and take" method of RPG gaming, thus leaving a completely unbalanced end result.

    A dev team that is completely out of touch with the Star Wars universe, and as such create situations in-game ad-hoc and in some cases contradict the current published works based on G. Lucas' creation.

    I've played this game since Beta. I've beta tested many titles, including some SOE titles...(Evercrack comes to mind)...the game was released at bare minimum, 6 months too soon. 45% of content that was present in Beta was removed at launch. We (the Beta testers) told the dev team that the game wasn't ready, what still needed to be done to make it ready, and what needed to change to make it ready with the current code base. All of this was ignored by SOE. I've seen very few positive changes in the game. Many of the changes that have occured in the game were done to appease a vocal minority, and upset the majority of the community.

    combat classes were given lipservice. Any class that *should've* been "uber leet" as the kids call it, were nerfed. Unpopular classes were given enough attention to keep them barely playable. Popular classes were either left somewhat untouched, or changed so that the *most* popular classes could defeat them easily.

    Finally, anyone who criticized SOE, the Devs, or the CSR's for their haphazard design, unprofessional behavior, or lack of vision and direction, were summarily banned either from the forums, game, or both. (I myself have been banned numerous occasions for pointing out the shortcomings of SOE's support staff.) I also don't have to remind the Slashdot community that for a very long time, the SWG Forums were closed to the general public because there was such a huge sense of anger and dissatifaction that was conveyed by the player community. (for fear of a potential new customer seeing exactly how bad the game actually was.

    Personally I think LucasArts taking the reigns from SOE will be the best thing that ever happened to the game. Even if they do a poor job, SOE hasn't lived up to the expectation the players had.

    • We're the subscriber, *we* pay their salaries.

      That's a bullshit argument. But if you want to take that line of reasoning a little further, you paid them to produce crap. And you're still paying them for crap. And since 'you are paying their salaries', you are responsible for the crap they put out. Thanks a bunch.
      • Way to one statement out of context, buddy.

        Allow me to explain the concept to you.

        Business unit A offers a product to Niche Market B. Business Unit A pisses off all (or most) of their customers. Business Unit A, come to the point where they can not maintain their current level of service without either reducing the quality of service, or increasing the price..(this is basic economic theory, and you should know this, you little Troll.) As a result, Business Unit A must take care of the customers in Nich

  • As a veteran SWG player I can say, we are seeing subscriber losses on our server that are staggering. Folks in the JTL beta are leaving, saying it blows goats. Everyone is pissed and angry all of the time at SOE, its CSRs and the Dev team. The dev team seems totally incompetent and often lies to the userbase. Sony is killing SWG, and many players are waiting for EQ2 or WoW to come out before finally moving on. I recently saw a link to a Lucasarts page hiring a director for SWG, and I am hopeful that an

  • Conspiracies abound (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This rumor could simply be a great marketing move by SOE. I (as well as many other folks) have been planning on dumping soon. I was gonna give JTL a try, but after playing the beta I'm not so sure. But, man, if we know that Lucasarts might be taking it over, I might keep my account for a few more months to see... that's just what Sony wants you to think.
  • ...head over to Lucasart's website and look at their job postings. Doesn't sound like much of a rumor if you ask me.

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