Star Wars Galaxies

I posted a while back that things were starting to smell like NGE over in City of Heroes, and said that I'd give you guys an update when things developed further.

I'm doing this because a lot of SWG vets often come here asking about good games to play.  In my experience, these folks (myself included) are especially looking for games that:

A) work

B) are fun

C) give you what they advertise

D) don't revamp the entire game after it goes live.

I'm sad to say that since Cryptic has left City of Heroes in the hands of NCsoft alone, the game has begun failing these quality tests.

If you want the details, you can find them here:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/211054/page/1

In a nutshell, since Cryptic left, they've released an issue with a game-breaking bug of NGE proportions, advertised an expansion then failed to deliver, forced an unwanted complete game revamp on players instead of the promised expansion (mission architect), and told the current players outright that they won't like the changes, but they're doing them anyways because they will bring in more newer players.  Sound familiar?

So this is a heads up to all my SWG vet friends, if you're thinking of CoH as an alternate online funland, you may want to read the thread linked above for details.  Happy gaming, in a game where they remember that customer satisfaction is still a priority.

never mind. Answered before reading correctly. Move along!

If what the OP says is true then i truely wonder what the hell are corporations thinking?! I mean seriously... is it because they have survey people only taking wows numbers into effect and not looking on places that matter like these forums?

Hell theres like 10 threads a day at the least in multiple game threads that state they want games to change more towards sandboxes.... or even not to chance towars wow like gameplay.. ughh

What you have is NCSoft's Devs wanting to out their own mark on the game, since taking it over completely from Cryptic.

This is also what partially motivated the NGE, at least the extremity of it, SWG was on it's 3rd Dev team by then, with the new studio managers (Rubbenfield, Cao) and wanted to put their own "brilliance" into the game.

Ego.  Freeman basically revealed that decisions are made by MMO devs and managers purely on ego alone.  These guys by and large think their shit doesn't stink, and that they are smarter than everyone else.  This is what leads to the fatal "we know what game you want more than you do" mentality.  Freeman revealed that the failure of the NGE wasn't even anticipated, that it was a complete utter SHOCK to the egos involved that it didn't attract a bunch of new players.

I guess it's going to take another massive failure or more before the industry learns the lesson that you DO NOT make FUNDAMENTAL gameplay changes to a game post launch, NOR do you forsake the players you have for the players you'd like to have.

COH/COV is an ageing MMO with a decent following.  It's not setting the world on fire, but it is profitable and has a following.  The only thing a NGE will do to it is lose the following and make it unprofitable.

If you treat your customers as if they are expendable, they will be.

That is the true lesson of the NGE.

Originally posted by Burntvet

If you treat your customers as if they are expendable, they will be.

That is the true lesson of the NGE.

 

And, I guess DevEGO in the industry has recharged to the point where they can deceive themselves to think that the SWGNGE was a "fluke" that it wasn't a mistake, it was just communicated badly.

So it's going to be tried again, and so, predictably, ANOTHER decently profitable game with a loyal following will go down the toilet and fall to <10K subs.

Sadly, the losers in this are always the loyal players.  Devs just f'ing move on to something else.  This is why I favor the "NGE blacklist", that we should always maintain a list of Devs/managers attached to such cataclysmic game changes and make sure to advocate that no one bother with anything else they end up working on.  Consider any game that, say Cao or Heliass ends up on to be "NGE'd" in advance. 

If we quit buying games these assholes end up working for, ultimately they will be driven out of the industry, and perhaps other Devs will realize that the hot air holding up their ego balloon is the cash that the players pay and quit with the "F- the players" mentality that seems so prevalent.

Also, how many WOW clones have come out since 2005?  And how many of them have 1M subs?  Indeed, do all of them COMBINED equal 1M subs?  I doubt it...

Isn't it time to not only set into stone that NGE's dont work, but also that cloning other games just for the sake of chipping into THEIR playerbase also doesn't work?

Originally posted by salvaje

Originally posted by Burntvet

If you treat your customers as if they are expendable, they will be.

That is the true lesson of the NGE.

 

 

And, I guess DevEGO in the industry has recharged to the point where they can deceive themselves to think that the SWGNGE was a "fluke" that it wasn't a mistake, it was just communicated badly.

So it's going to be tried again, and so, predictably, ANOTHER decently profitable game with a loyal following will go down the toilet and fall to <10K subs.

Sadly, the losers in this are always the loyal players.  Devs just f'ing move on to something else.  This is why I favor the "NGE blacklist", that we should always maintain a list of Devs/managers attached to such cataclysmic game changes and make sure to advocate that no one bother with anything else they end up working on.  Consider any game that, say Cao or Heliass ends up on to be "NGE'd" in advance. 

If we quit buying games these assholes end up working for, ultimately they will be driven out of the industry, and perhaps other Devs will realize that the hot air holding up their ego balloon is the cash that the players pay and quit with the "F- the players" mentality that seems so prevalent.

Also, how many WOW clones have come out since 2005?  And how many of them have 1M subs?  Indeed, do all of them COMBINED equal 1M subs?  I doubt it...

Isn't it time to not only set into stone that NGE's dont work, but also that cloning other games just for the sake of chipping into THEIR playerbase also doesn't work?

I beg to differ a bit on the loser part. YEs... the players lose.. especially the loyal ones. But when its all said and done, the company loses.. a lot of money. And not only that.. they lose alot of trust via word of mouth? What your getting a game from that developer? Nah... dont do that, theyll just shaft you.. oh really? Thanks!

It happens all the time. I saw a person tell someone (in a gamestop store no less) that wanted to play war the other day that it was just another wow clone with a different sprinkle. The put it down so fast i thought they were going to break the stand. The man thanked the guy shortly after.

Word ..of... mouth.. kills...

So far I've not seen individuals involved in things like the NGE suffer anything but an ego bruise.  Fact of the matter is there are always other projects/companies for them TO jump to, and who ARE willing to hire them.

Dan Rubbenfield, for example who has no f'ing business working for a game company that produces anything more complex than Simon clones (the 80's electronic game).  Hell, Simon in his mind probably needs dumbed down so as to attract WOW players.

John Smedley was IN CHARGE of the whole damn thing and for some reason STILL has his job?!  Just by virtue of SOE's fall from being even close to the top in MMO subscribers, uh, by about 10 million off of it alone should have been reason for him to be replaced.  He must know where every skeleton in every senior Sony executive and large shareholder's closet is buried.