and so, Vogel leaves

[Kelimbror]

RE: Stockholm Syndrome Feline

Sorry but hardly anyone is using that term. It's not just a terrible name, but not catchy at all. Secondly, it's a bit tiresome to have most of your posts complaining about these people that you seem to have a vendetta against. We are all victims of falling into the lure of someone trying to get our goose as it was, but complaining about complaining is getting just as old.

It honestly just feels like you are self promoting your made up word, hoping that it catches on in popularity.

Maybe we should just try talking about SWTOR for a day, then go to a week. Let's start here. Vogel leaving has no immediate and observable difference in the game. As such, we should probably stop using this thread as speculation on how and when the sky will fall. It looks like this MMO is here to stay, as many are these days, because at the end of the day it will still find a way to make money.

Look at LotRO. It's almost as old as WoW, has had several huge mistakes in it's life cycle, but is making more money than ever. SWTOR isn't going anywhere. Most of the people who will complain about the direction it is heading are already complaining about where it is at.

Things often devolve into a state that we aren't as satisfied with, it's part a mathematical curve of our waning desire directly proportional to the games sucking.

[Xcitement]

To me, as with a lot of observers, OLD REPUBLIC is a very important game, a very amazing game, and at the same time a disappointment. Let's be clear - they killed GALAXIES for the sake of this title, so for Star Wars MMO fans, this is our home, love it or hate it (or both). I play it every day I'm not on the road. Bottom line is, it needs to survive. And I think it will, for reasons stated earlier. And I hope (against hope) that it mellows out into a good playerbase/dev dialog of features, as GALAXIES did in its elder years. (As a thought experiment, imagine 2011-era GALAXIES rebooted with Unreal Engine 3. I think it would kick Old Republic's butt, but the marketing would be impossible.)

To me, and this is just my opinion, I never saw SW:G making a lasting appeal to a lot of people. Time frame was limiting and then there was the whole "You're just another average person in the universe." Some will love it most did not.

SW:TOR for me is nice. I no longer have the desire or drive to play like I used to back in the day. I've done the 50+ hrs of gaming in 3 days. No thank you. I think the problem is people want to play the game "hardcore" and try to squeeze too much out of the game. Then there's those who clearly never bothered to consider what type of game it is. Me? I was looking to move on from the medieval style MMO and move onto something more futuristic. Preferably a space MMO. SW:TOR will add in a more detailed space later so I'm cool with waiting.

If there were any aspects of SW:TOR that was being implemented that I was against I wouldn't of even bothered buying. For example If I did not want to deal with the whole traditional trinity system TOR wouldn't of gotten a second glance.

Players need to accept that not every game is for them and no amount of hoping and praying will change that. SW:G made the mistake in trying to change the game and ended up alienating their core loyal base of customers who liked it for what it was. Other companies hopefully learnt from that blunder.

[Clattuc]

To me, and this is just my opinion, I never saw SW:G making a lasting appeal to a lot of people. Time frame was limiting and then there was the whole "You're just another average person in the universe." Some will love it most did not.

Well, it did run eight years, and it was steadily improving (and slowly growing) for the last four of those years. Its biggest limitation was the 2001-era graphics which finally did get a little embarrassing, although I'll still take its free form, sand storm blown Tatooine over the IMAX theme park of TOR's version.

The whole "ordinary person" thing was this canard deriving from Smedley's infamous "Uncle Owen" remark. His brilliant mind fart was that supposedly everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. Well guess what, if you put 200 or 300 thousand players into a game, all milling around the plazas and bouncing around the cantinas, they can't all be Luke Skywalker! They can't all be "special." You can drown them in cutscenes and NPC dialog telling them they're special, while the guy in the LAN cublicle next to you goes through his cutscene telling him he's The Chosen One, but really... they can't all be special.

I was with Galaxies from the very start, and we didn't worry about that stuff at all! We weren't "ordinary" people, we were people! who had a chance to live and work and fight in this amazing Star Wars universe with kaadu and the waterfalls of Theed and Anchorhead and Yavin and so on. You could be mayor of your own beautiful city, you could man a multiplayer starship in space battles, you could put flowers at Beru's grave, you could take down a krayt dragon, you could tour a player built museum of weapons and paintings and fish tanks and all sorts of lovely nonsense. There was nothing ordinary about it, except in the minds of some grumpy suits who never "got" the game in the first place.

And what happened with that game is what's going to happen here eventually - they had about 300 thousand souls who wanted to play and be in that world, especially when Jump to Lightspeed added a state of the art (STILL state of the art) space component. But World of Warcraft made SOE/LEC's eyes light up with dollar signs like a Scrooge McDuck cartoon. All of a sudden 300k looked like chicken feed next to Blizzard's 5 million (at the time). So they effectively jettisoned most of the players they had (wrenching game changes will do that, even if the new game has its merits) in pursuit of those mythical millions.

But Warcraft was a game IP from the very beginning, created for that purpose, adapted repeatedly for that purpose. The entire universe was conceived and optimized to create what WoW became. Star Wars will never touch that. Lord of the Rings will never touch that. If they make a Harry Potter MMO, it won't hit those WoW numbers either. So they essentially demolished the SWG community for nothing, as Smedley has more or less admitted.

But even then, after the shattering, after the dev wipeout, after the server merges, people drifted back, and younger devs moved in, and good new content appeared on a steady schedule. People had fun. It wasn't for everybody, no game is, but there were memories and adventures created in that game that Old Republic will be extremely lucky to match.

[Hostagecat]

Well, it did run eight years, and it was steadily improving (and slowly growing) for the last four of those years. Its biggest limitation was the 2001-era graphics which finally did get a little embarrassing, although I'll still take its free form, sand storm blown Tatooine over the IMAX theme park of TOR's version.

The whole "ordinary person" thing was this canard deriving from Smedley's infamous "Uncle Owen" remark. His brilliant mind fart was that supposedly everyone wants to be Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. Well guess what, if you put 200 or 300 thousand players into a game, all milling around the plazas and bouncing around the cantinas, they can't all be Luke Skywalker! They can't all be "special." You can drown them in cutscenes and NPC dialog telling them they're special, while the guy in the LAN cublicle next to you goes through his cutscene telling him he's The Chosen One, but really... they can't all be special.

I was with Galaxies from the very start, and we didn't worry about that stuff at all! We weren't "ordinary" people, we were people! who had a chance to live and work and fight in this amazing Star Wars universe with kaadu and the waterfalls of Theed and Anchorhead and Yavin and so on. You could be mayor of your own beautiful city, you could man a multiplayer starship in space battles, you could put flowers at Beru's grave, you could take down a krayt dragon, you could tour a player built museum of weapons and paintings and fish tanks and all sorts of lovely nonsense. There was nothing ordinary about it, except in the minds of some grumpy suits who never "got" the game in the first place.

And what happened with that game is what's going to happen here eventually - they had about 300 thousand souls who wanted to play and be in that world, especially when Jump to Lightspeed added a state of the art (STILL state of the art) space component. But World of Warcraft made SOE/LEC's eyes light up with dollar signs like a Scrooge McDuck cartoon. All of a sudden 300k looked like chicken feed next to Blizzard's 5 million (at the time). So they effectively jettisoned most of the players they had (wrenching game changes will do that, even if the new game has its merits) in pursuit of those mythical millions.

But Warcraft was a game IP from the very beginning, created for that purpose, adapted repeatedly for that purpose. The entire universe was conceived and optimized to create what WoW became. Star Wars will never touch that. Lord of the Rings will never touch that. If they make a Harry Potter MMO, it won't hit those WoW numbers either. So they essentially demolished the SWG community for nothing, as Smedley has more or less admitted.

But even then, after the shattering, after the dev wipeout, after the server merges, people drifted back, and younger devs moved in, and good new content appeared on a steady schedule. People had fun. It wasn't for everybody, no game is, but there were memories and adventures created in that game that Old Republic will be extremely lucky to match.

I totally aggree with you on Galaxies, they had a rabid population that basically paid for multiple accounts, and at one time 300k subs was an awesome number. Heck its still an awesome number if you consider EVE has been living off not much more than that for a long time, and they seem to make a profit. I still love the JTL expansion the best. I did not like the hologrind, but I did love my entertainer. It was a game that had its strong points, and in the name of greed they destroyed it. So yeah i totally get where your coming from.

[Deleted]

Just found out they fired the consular story writer too...

[Deleted]

either. So they essentially demolished the SWG community for nothing, as Smedley has more or less admitted.

But even then, after the shattering, after the dev wipeout, after the server merges, people drifted back, and younger devs moved in, and good new content appeared on a steady schedule. People had fun. It wasn't for everybody, no game is, but there were memories and adventures created in that game that Old Republic will be extremely lucky to match.

People never drifted back it was plummeting since it launched, the NGE was a reaction to not only WoW(but the other lesser MMOS that also topped SWG's subs) and the original (broken) game bleeding subs, they'd already lost a 3rd of players(100k) before that thing was implemented.

Its fun to romanticise SWG like you have done but it was a terribly implemented and ran game. I noticed you missed out things like broken specs, unhtittable melee, FOTM templates being rampant, wounding mind, bioterrorist like combat medics , the god awful hologrind, the empty space, the huge ghost shanty towns, the small selection of armour(composite clone wars), broken armour system of stimming yourself to wear armour,mission terminals spitting out, go here kill this, the AFK entertainers, the pokemon creature hander wars.

SWG started dying the day it was launched, it wasnt WoW that killed it, it got less subs then EQ, Final fantasy 11 and then EQ2, it was always a bad game and it really does have most of the early players(me aside it seems) adopting rose tinted specs, with how it was "back in the day before the NGE tanked it" I do have some good memories of it on my server, we had a nice band who entertained at anchorhead in the early months and such, but the awful, far outweighed the good.

People like to say the NGE killed it, but the numbers speak for themselves.

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

they lost 100k from mid 2004 to mid 2005, when the NGE hit at the end of 2005(announced oct) they had 200k subscribers, it then took them nearly two years to lose another 100k, so they actually actually lost 100k subs quicker before the NGE then after.

[Xcitement]

I agree Clattuc that SW:G was great to those who loved the concept. In the gaming world MMO's was considered a niche market till WoW. SW:G did have over a million box sales and over 2/3 dropped within the first few months. It did not have mass appeal. Don't misunderstand, nothing is wrong with that. I think a lot of companies and gamers fail to realize that. They want to topple WoW and not be true to themselves. Some games rushing to free2play because they don't have 5mil subs. ~smh~ And players are also driving that idea. I mean look at the forums. "SW:TOR is going F2P because it ONLY have 1mil subs." Seriously!?!?

In my opinion the greatest failing of SW:G was changing the core of the game changing it from what the loyal players loved.

[Ap0calypse]

Just found out they fired the consular story writer too...

The Consular story was the most boring rubbish I have ever had the misfortune to endure.

[SirRobin]

Just found out they fired the consular story writer too...

Well when layoffs like these start they are rarely one-shot sort of things. They tend to go through several rounds of people getting canned. If I recall correctly, Warhammer Online's purge lasted more than six months and went through three major cullings as well as a few little ones. The point of them seems to be as much showing that no one isn't expendable as it is slashing the budget. EA's way of showing who the real boss is to everyone left working there.

[Deleted]

Remember how I said "Warhammer Online all over again"?

Yeeeaaahh....

[Leonard McCoy]

Remember how I said "Warhammer Online all over again"?

Yeeeaaahh....

What a unique and original statement. Thank you kindly. You must be the only guy in the universe to ever express such a sentiment. Does anyone have anything novel or original to say?

[OhpUldum]

Stay on topic with the discussion folks.

[woodydave44]

First, Riccitiello is a retard. I'm pretty sure his completely inept handling of the "overhaul" at EA has shown that. Second, I think you need to read the second article a little more thoroughly. Gibeau is hyping the EXACT thing that the game is stellar at, the story telling.

Indeed it is....

http://dulfy.net/2012/06/14/personal...d-differences/

[Clattuc]

Stellar? There's no question they put a lot of effort into TOR's storytelling, but at the end of the day it's completely predetermined and completely cosmetic. There is exactly one choice you make that has a permanent effect on your character, and that's the choice of advanced class. Everything else is just dialog, tiny changes to crafting speed, and a bad rash you can turn off in Preferences. There are eight stories, all on rails, maybe three of which would survive a pitch session in the Clone Wars office. When you have done all eight (if not long before) you find yourself holding down the space bar to skip over content they spent millions creating.

I'm going to hold out on "stellar" for now.

[Xcitement]

~smh~ You all seem to forget who BioWare is dealing with. They had to take out the option to kill your potential companion because people were killing them and then complaining that they can't get the companion.

The majority only want the illusion of choice but not real choices or the consequences that come with it.