John Smedley (SW Galaxies) - An Open Letter to Fans

[fitbabits]

Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net) has all the wonderful details (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62649).

As resentment towards the "New Game Enhancements" in Star Wars Galaxies continues to grow, Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has invited the community to highlight the issues which urgently need addressing.

In a post on the SWG forums, Smedley wrote: "Obviously the NGE has stirred up a lot of strong feelings among the SWG playerbase. There is no denying these changes have upset some of our players.

"While I can certainly understand and respect these feelings, I assure you we approached them with a longer term strategy in mind and with the best of intentions. That strategy is to lay the foundation for a longer term vision of the game that will keep people playing for the long haul."
Good news or bad news? Chip in, SW Galaxies fans...

[thecrazyd]

This is like, months old. This was put through a couple days after the NGE went live. Personally? I perfer it. Combat is no longer as boring.

[fitbabits]

This is like, months old. This was put through a couple days after the NGE went live. Personally? I perfer it. Combat is no longer as boring.
It may well be, but I don't recall it being posted as news before. I searched the forums and could find no reference to Smedley's open letter. I could be wrong, though - it's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again. :o

[Valkyrist]

Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has invited the community to highlight the issues which urgently need addressing.
I'm sorry, but SOE had their heads up their asses about "their" game for too long. I doubt all of a sudden they're going to start listening to the community on any level beyond pacifying the mob. The above quote, in my mind, translates to:
"Why is everyone leaving our game? Do you hate us?"
to which we reply:
"Well we figured we'd just make the feeling mutual."

[endrom]

I'm a veteran SWG player, I rememeber before they introduced the speederbikes and theed was a computer crash zone. good times, every class had a use, and the RP in some places was awesome. But after CU and NGE, the population has dropped to grinding spots and AFK zombie cantinas... I miss my old SWG, the new engine is like GUNZ with star wars label on it. Oogomi iro master ithorian pilot commando fencer.

[Nite_Moogle]

An open letter to SOE.

Dear Smedley and company,
Your third iteration of arguably the most beloved sci-fi franchise in history still sucks. You have failed. The Star Wars universe all but assures you will sell box copies but your attempts to make the game something that people can be a part of for months or years have been met with ridicule. Sell the license and let someone else try again.
Sincerely,
Nite_Moogle

[Sophism]

It may well be, but I don't recall it being posted as news before. I searched the forums and could find no reference to Smedley's open letter. I could be wrong, though - it's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again. :o
Nah, the open letter wasn't posted before, but that wasn't the point. The point was that the letter was posted on November 25th. I mean, I was still waiting for Hardwood Backgammon to show up on my 360 then. :D

Regarding the actual letter, though, the only times that John Smedley or Julio Torres have actually come to the forum and wrote a letter like that have been when they changed something in-game that drove away thousands of players. It happened in May with the Combat Upgrade, it happened over the Summer when they tried to drop down experience gains to make leveling over 12 times as long, and it happened when the New Game Enhancements decimated the veteran population.

It doesn't mean anything, because these are what he posted as the goals moving ahead:

1) Fixing actual bugs
2) Adding new skills to differentiate the professions much better, and particularly the advancement path (i.e. making cool new skills the higher you rise through a particular profession).
3) Working on making crafting a much more important part of the NGE.
4) Cool new content - particularly focusing on the Galactic Civil War

Those have been the goals since day one of the game, and we are still waiting for bugs that I reported in beta back in May 2003 to be fixed, hehe.

We were supposed to see a large Publish to fix and add a lot of stuff January 17th. It's been delayed until at least the end of February.

There's not a lot of faith left in the development, and even less so in the management. It's just the stalwart community keeping the game alive at the moment.

Me? I just am subscribed for the forums. :D

[Demo_Boy]

Shoulda folded all servers together, then split the code base,
then done the CU
then said, ok no more updates on the pre CU.
you can move your char to the CU server if you want one time only.

then all players have choice

[Felonous]

As people have pointed out, it matters little what the players have to say, because in reality it will be ignored once again.

I was in the beta, and there was a HUGE outcry from the beta testers warning that the game was going to be shipping way to early, with too many bugs and classes unfinished. They ignored and proceeded.

After the game went live there were many instances where the community gave plenty of warning about the stupidity and/or damage their patches/updates where taking the game. Once again, the community was ignored and they proceeded. There is little doubt in my mind that the mismanagement of this game will drive it into the ground.

It is a pitty considering they had a gold mine license, a blank check so to speak. The fucktards have no idea how far from the mark they are.

[Roc Ingersol]

SWG has fans?

[Citizen Philip]

As people have pointed out, it matters little what the players have to say, because in reality it will be ignored once again.

I was in the beta, and there was a HUGE outcry from the beta testers warning that the game was going to be shipping way to early, with too many bugs and classes unfinished. They ignored and proceeded.

After the game went live there were many instances where the community gave plenty of warning about the stupidity and/or damage their patches/updates where taking the game. Once again, the community was ignored and they proceeded. There is little doubt in my mind that the mismanagement of this game will drive it into the ground.

It is a pitty considering they had a gold mine license, a blank check so to speak. The fucktards have no idea how far from the mark they are.

Bah. Every online gaming community always has something to whine about, valid or otherwise. Going back and picking out the ocassional rant that was accurate from underneath a pile of people who need to L2P isn't fair game in my opinion. I agree that some game players know quite a bit, and the few reasonable suggestions and warnings that are made by level-headed players is lost in the cacaphony of all the screaming children.

What I AM curious about is: how much freedom did they really have to make the game? Lucas is known for his stable of lawyers who hunt down unauthorized use of Star Wars related material. Did Lucas have enough strings attached to Star Wars: The MMO to hamstring the development? Was Lucas corporate going to force SOE to push this shovelware out before it was really done testing to meet a deadline that coinsided with a movie release? Enough clauses and overrides the Lucas corporate could just put a big red X on any feature (regardless of it's cost to the development of a good MMO) they thought would dirty their IP?

Lucas knew it was a blank check, a money tree, a gold mine, etc. from the get-go. How much of this screw up is his doing?

[Librum]

Ugh. I mean, really, I've never come across a game that I wanted to like so much yet had an impossible time succeeding. Sony must hire people who actively hate games to design their products, whether it be SWG or EQ2, or the shovels of garbage they've been heaping on to the rotting corpse of EQ1.

But the money must still be coming in, somehow, so perhaps they've just locked on to a 'select' customer base.

[Heretic Machine]

I liked SWG before the big patch. I thought it had a lot of admirable qualities, and was glad it wasn't all combat. After the patch, I found that not only was there a much higher emphasis placed on comabt, but also that the combat sucked, lag was worse, and the game was much slower and choppier over all. Simply put, it was a mistake, just as the past year of CoH patches were mistakes.

[Klade]

This is what SOE does. They make games that people want to like and then screw them up by making them painful to play or buggy or both. Almost all the arguments and complaints about SWG listed here could be slightly reworded and used against EQ1 5 years ago.

I thought it was funny that in this letter "The Vision (TM)" reared its ugly head. When I read the letter it sounded an awful lot like their long term plans basically included screwing over their current fans, becuase there wasn't enough of them, in favor of trying to find a new group of fans that would fill up the servers better. A cold hearted move but thats basically their thing.

[Lord Dongkey]

... I like the point that Lucas has his grubby little fingers in everything.

After Episode 1: The Phantom Jar-Jar, and Episode II: Attack of the shitty love-story... let's just say Lucas isn't my favoritest guy ever.

Episode III rocked though. *shrug*

[Krom]

Pleeease stay pleeeease, we're losing money. I swear it will get better.

[Maskatron]

"Some". LOFL.

edit: yeah that post is way old, but it's worth mentioning that Smedley posted maybe one or two posts on the message board since then. He didn't do much to maintain rapport with the community (whether he should have is arguable).

[Taco]

SWG was bar none the worst and most pointless MMRPG I've ever played. I mean I played Anarchy Online during launch week and there was more of an upside during that travesty than this game ever had.

[kickmybum]

SWG was a fun RP game when it first came out, now its a POS.

[JediSanf]

The idea of putting SWG in the middle of the rebellion was inane in any case. KOTOR proved that Luke and Leia does not a game make. They should've placed it 5000 years ago where Jedi were everywhere, let players be Jedi from the start (but they can't own property), and written a NEW storyline. While I'm wishing I want Zahn to be the one who writes it.

[PixelSamurai]

I keep seeing commercials for SWG; apparently they want you to think that it's just like the successful Battlefront series. All I can do is laugh, the voiceover is that same high-speed shit you hear in infomercials.

[Rakael]

Yeah, and the commercials arent much better than an infomercial, quality-wise. I too really wanted to love this game, but dropped it long before either "upgrade". Such a pitiful waste.

[thecrazyd]

Yeah, and the commercials arent much better than an infomercial, quality-wise. I too really wanted to love this game, but dropped it long before either "upgrade". Such a pitiful waste.
Oh... so... you haven't tried it?

[bean19]

I played the beta, about 3 months of live right after launch, and played a ten-day trial to see the NGE. . . which I then, mistakingly turned into a resubscription (and immediate recancellation). Here are my thoughts:

1. The gameplay in the NGE is pretty fun. Shooting stuff and having to hit while dodging behind crates is so much more "Star Wars".

2. However, while this gameplay is more immediately pleasing, it is very shallow and makes all the character classes play the same way. Also, it kills melee classes as you can't stand on something and pound it while also dodging and zooming about. The original game worked so that you were more accurate and more slow while kneeling (or even moreso while prone) and getting out of these stances took a little bit of time. So a skilled rifleman would go prone and try to pick you off from range, while a melee player (like a Jedi) would try to deflect these bolts and then run close to you where your accuracy bonus would lower and you would suffer a damage penalty for being low. . . NOW, with a system that judges hits by actually being hit, every class uses rifles (maximum range), and all weapons are about the same in damage as damage has been parred with the rate at which you can fire a weapon. Thus, the best classes are the ones that can use armor. Also, since weapons are parred, weapons crafters are useless. It is hard to imagine that they did not see these design flaws when implementing this system, and it is really inexcusable to half-implement the system without addressing so many problems that arise from it.

3. The directed content in the early stages of the game was a big part of what made it fun. In the tutorial, you get rescued by Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2D2, and C-3PO. Then you fly on the Millenium Falcon and have a space battle (where you man a turret). . . Darth Vader even makes a cameo (you wisely run like hell). Then you go to a quest park that has less engaging content, but stuff on par with other MMOs (as oppossed to bland random missions generated outside the directed content).

The UI has had some improvements in talking to NPCs and in the way that they deliver quests (they tell the quest story in dialogue and explain what you will earn from the quests).

The problem is that this content doesn't stretch very far at all. There is a small amount of it once you leave the station (newbie zone), and then you are left with the same old boring game with a huge universe that is spammed by player buildings, and looks just horrible by today's graphical standards.

4. They gave out a huge number of respecs to people signing on soon after the NGE to allow people to "browse" different classes. The problem I had was that I had a Master Doctor/Advanced Commando when I left the game, but when I came back, I only had a combat level of 50. . . my doctor experience just flew away. Also, my inventory items mostly didn't work and could not be traded in. When I used respec to try out Jedi, I was not given the tools and items I would need to construct a lightsaber. . . I bought what was needed and made them, but I did not have the necessary force crystals to power my light sabers and could not obtain them as they were now part of the "leveling up" system. . . and my 50 combat level put me past those levels that granted force items without giving them to me. The other classes were similarly difficult, but since I was a good number to be (level 50 gives items), I was able to try out commando again. Unfortunately, they've also worked out a system that gives you extra stat points as you level up. . . but you did not get this from respeccing. My bare bones character thus had less stat points than the throw away Jedi that I had played in the tutorial up to level 5. This meant that even with level 50 skills and equipment, I would get quickly torn apart by any even level mob. So /respec was broken as hell.

Basically, there is too much WRONG with this title in it's old and new forms to be playable by anyone. Star Wars fans won't be able to overlook just how broken this game is on so many levels.

Moogle was right. . . they should sell the license or at least negotiate to release the license back to Lucas Arts (I'm sure they just leased the license) and don't throw any good money after their bad money. . .

Of course, last time I checked they had over 200K subscribers. . . that makes for a profitable MMO, so I don't see this happening. They are making money. . . but pennies on the dollar compared to the potential of this license.

[gawaintheblind]

I quit playing sony-published PC games when they borked up "Infantry."

heh.

[alienchild]

Well, I'm happy, now Anarchy Online is swarming with ex-SWG players. Good people who fell victim for a company that doesnt take care of their customers. We feel your pain, now come over here and have some fun :p