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Role Playing (Games)

SOE Offers SWG Players Refunds For Obi-Wan 31

Posted by Zonk from the they-keep-up-with-the-unexpected dept.
In yet another completely unexpected move, Sony Online Entertainment is offering players who purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion for SWG before Nov. 3rd a refund. The recently announced massive overhaul has upset a lot of people. From the Gamespot article: "To appease some of those angered by the reworking of Star Wars Galaxies, Sony Online and LucasArts are offering refunds to anyone with a Galaxies account in good standing who purchased the Trials of Obi-Wan before November 3. Players seeking refunds should send their name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, and Station Name to refunds@soe.sony.com ... All requests must be made by December 1, 2005."
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SOE Offers SWG Players Refunds For Obi-Wan More

SOE Offers SWG Players Refunds For Obi-Wan

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  • They should give refunds in this case (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jpowers ( 32595 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @06:25PM (#14017152) Homepage
    The massive changes they're planning will eliminate a lot of people's characters. The extensive crafting system is being scaled back, so specialists crafters are going to lose a lot.

    I haven't played in a year. I may go in and check out the new version of the game on Test Center, but I can't imagine it's going to be worth buying expansions for.

    It would have been a pretty interesting game without the Star Wars license confusing people. Of course then no one would have played it, but Star Wars evokes something this game isn't capable of delivering. They could start over with a Knights of the Old Republic MMO and people would have goten what they wanted from this game.

    • Re:They should give refunds in this case (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sugar Moose ( 686011 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @07:07PM (#14017364) Journal
      I think it's important to understand just what SOE is doing with SWG. Basically, they are releasing SWG 2, only they are overwriting the original SWG to force all users to change. SOE learned their lesson about sequels with EQ2, which has never had as many subscribers as the original EQ. They expected everyone from EQ to move to EQ2, but most people didn't. Now, they are stuck supporting two games instead of one just to keep the same number of subscribers. Exactly the same thing happened to Asheron's Call 2, which is shutting down soon while the original Asheron's Call continues. So from SOE's point of view, they get to keep every last subscriber, only support one game, and as you can see here, they're getting every bit of the press of a new game release.

      The reason they can allow for the refunds is the same reason companies offer rebates instead of just lowering the price. Odds are good that even if you want a refund, they will not have to give you your money. Either you will fill something out wrong, you will not include all of the stuff required, or you won't get it to them before the deal expires. Heck, even if they screw it up, it means they don't give you anything.

      I have a hard time applauding SOE for this. They knew these changes were coming well before the expansion pack was released. I'd wager the timing of the announcement was intentional, and SOE thought they could pull a fast one on their customers. This is just a quick fix because the public outcry was greater than they anticipated.
    • It would have been a pretty interesting game without the Star Wars license confusing people. Of course then no one would have played it
      I think since there's only a handful of comments on a geek site, nobody's playing it anyhow. (Unless they're all playing it right now, and so didn't see the story)
    • Are these changes live yet? Is there a date? Ironically, I may reactivate to play the Jedi. A lame Jedi no more powerful than any other melee class, but a Jedi anyway.

      Although my dream of being a Jedi dancer is evidently out the window.
    • While I think KOTOR was an awesome game and it may have some attraction for a MMORPG, I don't think it would be as popular as you think.

      People like Galaxies because it occurs in the time of the movies. The ships and politics are those that many are familiar with. This attracts movie fans while I think that a KOTOR MMORPG would have a harder time getting the casual Star Wars fan to pony up the bucks.

  • My demands (Score:5, Funny)

    by cpu_fusion ( 705735 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @06:40PM (#14017225)
    1. Refund for the time wasted on the game. 2. Raph Koster forced to play the original Kings Quest on a PC Jr until he repents from his transgressions. Membrane keyboard NOT negotiable. 3. John Smedly sent into exile to head the Sony DRM division. That is all.
    • INTERESTING?

      Funny at best.

      Why would you get a refund for the time you already spent playing? You played that time and apparently enjoyed it since you payed money to do so. That or you have a very hard time understanding the results of your actions.

    • What does Raph Koster have to do with it? He hasn't had his hands in the SWG pool since way before pre-cu. This was the guy responsible for the good features of SWG, ie crafting, player cities, etc.

      The CU1 and CU2 are not his doing.

  • Unexpected, my butt (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nevita ( 841283 )
    This was not an unexpected move, if you think about it.

    There are two reasons that this was going to happen. First, look at how much bad press Sony has been getting over the DRM spyware. There are a lot of people who are saying that they won't be buying anything from Sony ever again (or for the forseeable future, myself included). There are bound to be some SWG subscribers who are feeling the same way, and the last thing SOE needs is to lose even more SWG subscribers.

    The second reason, which ties in with
  • It was unbelievably sleazy for SOE to announce the massive overhaul the day after the release of the expansion. They had been promoting the expansion for weeks prior to the rollout, including pre-order incentives. They could hype The Trials of Obi-Wan expansion well before it was available, and yet they kept the NGE (new game enhancements) quiet until about 2 weeks prior to going live.

    I don't think the NGE affects the Obi-Wan expansion all that much other than the massive changes seen game-wide. But it was
  • Not to flame it up in here, but I really take issue with the term "appease". To appease those of you who dare to complain about our screwjob, we will give you refunds IFF you get us your information within two weeks from today...

    Very poor customer service. THIS is why Galaxies sucks so hard these days...it's the people at the top of the chain.
    • Nice use of the word IFF... One of my favorite English words. In case you think i'm an under-educated spelling nazi with a bad case of sarcasm, it means 'If and Only If'... Good word.

  • Defending SWG, because deep down it tried. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday November 12, 2005 @09:52PM (#14018101) Journal

    First, how SWG played a couple of months ago when I left.

    You would select a race/sex and choose your appearance. This cannot be compared to say Everquest 2 a game I play nowadays. You could customize far more and for instance make flat chested female or a fat wookie. Compare this to EQ2 were you can only change the face a little bit. Even more important perhaps is that you can change your appearance in SWG in game so you could change your hairstyle and makeup to fit you latest outfit.

    You would then be walked through the basics of the game before being dropped in the starters area. This was changed to Mos Eisly for everyone at one point and you would now also get a droid who would give you starter missions. You could start killing stuff right away and if you fought with your hands you would get melee xp, for ranged ranged xp. You could visit any trainer and use the XP to improve your capabilites in that field. Visit a medic trainer for instance and any healing you did would allow you to become a better medic.

    Each proffesions existed of a base box (medic, melee, ranged, scout, etc) 4x4 grid of specialistation wich each specilisation consisting of four boxes wich you had to get in sequence and a final master box. Each box cost a certain amount of job points of wich you had a finite amount.

    Advanced jobs could be learned once you had the required numbed of base specialistions. So for instance combat medic required some in marksman and some in medic, beast handler needed some of scout and some other I forgot. This in theory allowed you to truly create your own character. In theory, in practice the job skill cost was very expensive on say proffesions like crafters. It cost so many job skill points to become a master chef for instance that you could barely afford any combat skills. Since the swg universe needed a lot of specialised crafters, entertainers and doctors and it allowed only 1 character per server SWG always depended heavily on those people that were prepared to play with a non-combat optomized character.

    This is important because MMO's are closer to diablo then say D&D PnP.

    So while a combat specced who just been running some insane mission on dathomir needs an entertainer to heal his mind, that entertainer could not put a dent in a naff and spends his entire time online just standing around in a cantina on coronet spamming special moves and begging for tips.

    Luckily SWG had one thing that forced XP grinding would be combat specialist to also be entertainers. The hologrind.

    The only way to become a jedi was to unlock your holo and the way to do that was master a preset number of jobs. So there was a constant stream of players mastering entertainers, medics, doctors and crafters. While it did hurt those few players that wanted to be entertainers, medics, doctors or crafters it also meant there was a steady supply of fresh blood. Rather then what you see in most MMO's where everyone is at the highest level with newby areas totally deserted.

    SWG gameplay was always open-ended sandbox model rather then a story led game. Compared even with EQ2 it had far more Elite style missions, go kill X of Y and come back. Loot weapons were rare and crafting therefore important. EQ2 you can exist, in fact new player have to because of prices, on your loot. SWG your equipment was made by other players.

    The problem SWG has had that plagues every MMO game that want sto be more then a hack and slash is that players will happily shoot themselves in the foot. MMO players are FPS players who switch on godmode and then complain that the game offers no challenge.

    Why oh why did we spend all our time running naff missions (money and XP grind wich every swg player will regonize) when we could have had far more fun running away from nasties on endor? I remember one evening when with a couple of friendly players we just went exploring on endor. Just visiting nice locations, grahpics turned up and taking snapshots. We were having a lot of fun and doing a lot of

  • It looks like Sony and LucasArts have finally lost their minds. Lucas prolly figured out his "franchise" is on its last legs, and is prostituting Star Wars for all it's worth (He hasn't whored this bad since the Star Wars Holiday Special), SOE is pissing its pants over WoW, and SCE is realizing the Playstation total domination era is over... well, they're just losing their minds.

    As a recovering Star Wars fan, you need to do what I did. Recognize that SWG is a pile of crap, Lucas got lucky on Ep IV, and

  • SOE giving back money? This truly is the seventh sign of the apocolypse... repent, sinners, for the end is near.
  • Word on the street is that SWG is losing alot of players right now and they are trying to do everything in their power to prevent that.

    They have 2 good things in the last week to keep players:

    1) Everybody will be getting a 2nd character slot (still not enough IMHO).
    2) The ToOW refund.

    These 2 things are not enough to keep me around though. I am sick of SOE's treatment of customers.

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