Another One Bites the Dust: SWG Edition!

[DraconianOne]

*grin* Read Darth and Droids.

That's some painfully unfunny stuff...

Oh good. I thought it was just me having a sense of humour failure with it all.

[UnSub]

SWG is a case of fucking both. If it'd had been Generic Space MMORPG it would have been considered an absolute success. (It also probably would have launched at least six months later, but what can you say). After all, it sold a million boxes, had a sustained sub count up in the six figures, and a successful expansion or two. Because it was "Star Wars" it's got people screaming that it was the wrong sort of Star Wars (SimBeru! No Lightsabers! What shit is this?) and others screaming it had to be a failure because it didn't soar to 4 million subs and sell enough boxes to buy Norway.

If it hadn't been Star Wars, then it would have been received differently and it probably wouldn't have sold 1m boxes at launch. But it wouldn't have had the weight of expectation on it either. And it wouldn't be shutting down in December because there wouldn't be an independent IP holder to deal with.

Hell, it's (probably) going to be outlived by Anarchy Online.

But anyway, the discussion is going in circles.

[Surlyboi]

You know what the problem is with the Star Wars license? It poisons games. Half the fuckers writing Star Wars games treats it like some sort of magic ingrediant, that can be poured over utter shit to create gold. Half write solid games and have to listen to legioins of fanboys explain how their fucking wookies are the wrong color or something.

Two 'ee's in wookiee, dammit!

I'll be honest, I loved SWG, but I keep hearing 200k+ and maybe they were paying and not playing, but the emptiness of the worlds sure didn't look like 200k+ to me past the first month.

Twenty servers, ten huge worlds (each still larger than most entire game worlds combined), massive cities across several of those worlds, and outposts created by players before cities were even in.

Roughly averaging it out: 10k a server, 1k a planet, then 200 of those logged in at peak concurrency.  Players could very easily disappear from sight for weeks at a time if they really wanted.

That's pretty much how my Jedi stayed invisible on Chilastra for so long. Well, that and having a girlfriend that was a bounty hunter that could keep tabs on my visibility.

[WindupAtheist]

Also, I take the "plummeting" with a grain of salt because I know that particular talking point surfaced during the CU as a justification for the changes. Considering the popuilation DID plummet from the CU and later the NGE, I can't help but wonder how no one noticed a "plumetting" population before hand when it was readily apparent afterwards.

Careful champ, you're wandering into "crazy UO PK guy with a chart" territory when you start claiming that the developers were all lying about subscription numbers, and your pet era of the game was really successful really, please believe my vague observations as a player over those lying devs, etcetera.

[Lantyssa]

Losing 10k a month from 200k would easily put them at the 160-180k figure after implementation of the CU.  It fits the time frame perfectly, so neither of you is wrong.

They were greedy, panicking, short-sighted and made all their decisions based on trying to harvest for gold on top of a silver spawn, while discarding the silver as useless.

[eldaec]

If they believed they only had a year to run because of that rate of decline, the silver was pretty much worthless.

[Lantyssa]

That's because of their stupid priorities and decision making, not because they didn't have something worthwhile.

They tossed out a three-part change a third of the way through implementation for a universally applauded revamp which involved the community and was working on fixing things instead of throwing crap against the wall, which they dropped for a hastily done WoW-alike icon and combat change, only to drop that without warning for an entire system overhaul done in one of the worst crunches ever in MMO history that started on a whim.

It's not any wonder the game went to shit when they were too busy ignoring the good parts of it to chase after leprechauns.

[Ginaz]

WoW is the biggest factor when discussing the demise of swg.  It was a better game with drew people away and caused soe to make stupid knee jerk reactions to reach the same level of success.  If WoW had never been released, we might still have the pre-nge version running with decent amounts of people still playing.  

[DraconianOne]

If they believed they only had a year to run because of that rate of decline, the silver was pretty much worthless.

There's been some very flawed and assumption based logic in your most of your arguments and you continue to push them forward.

Stop it.

[WindupAtheist]

WoW is the biggest factor when discussing the demise of swg.  It was a better game with drew people away and caused soe to make stupid knee jerk reactions to reach the same level of success.  If WoW had never been released, we might still have the pre-nge version running with decent amounts of people still playing.

SWG was never going to survive the release of SWTOR. Not as a decrepit NGE-ravaged corpse, and not as a UO-style niche product with a small audience of hardcore sandbox devotees. There were just bigger expectations and requirements upon the game than it was ever equipped to fulfill, no matter how much people want to look at "180k and dropping, we were losing our ass!" and see "200k sustainable forever!"

I'm not sure LA wouldn't have pulled the plug even if it were 200k with zero churn. They're shooting for more with SWTOR.

[Tale]

Quick reminder: the piss-name troll never played SWG, or any MMOG of this decade or the last decade, besides WoW.

[SnakeCharmer]

That doesn't make him wrong.

[WindupAtheist]

Quick reminder: the piss-name troll never played SWG, or any MMOG of this decade or the last decade, besides WoW.

Have you ever tried to upbraid me on this forum without someone coming along within the next three posts and telling you I was right? I remember talking about WoW raids or some shit in the past and you going "Shut up WUA you never raided!" only to have the same thing happen. Go fuck yourself, dipshit. I'm going to go log into Ultima fucking Online and polish my armor (that I will still have after December of this year, ha) with your fucking tears.

[Paelos]

He's just not choosing his moments well. You're wrong a lot. 

[5150]

and not as a UO-style niche product with a small audience of hardcore sandbox devotees.

Could you also supply the next winning lottery numbers - ta muchly!

I'm not going to outright say you'd be wrong on this point, only that you can't say that with any certainty!

-edit-
Because I fail at quoting

[Surlyboi]

That doesn't make him wrong.

Doesn't particularly make him right either.

If SWG hadn't gone down the shitter with the CU and the NGE, SWTOR might not have even been put on the table.

[Morat20]

That doesn't make him wrong.

Doesn't particularly make him right either.

If SWG hadn't gone down the shitter with the CU and the NGE, SWTOR might not have even been put on the table.

Nah, it probably would have, if only because I can't see LucasArts not being utterly convinced that the Star Wars IP should get them ten million subs. They've a bit of a repuation for consistently over-estimating the appeal of Star Wars spinoffs.

[WindupAtheist]

LucasArts is an intellectual property holder, not an MMO developer. It doesn't foot the development cost for these games and doesn't give a shit if it's licensee's 160k subscriber niche product is turning a solid little profit or not. Not if there's someone else out there with a solid shot at doing better.

SWG could have been doing 300k sustained and the moment BioWare walked up and said "We think we can do at least 600k sustained and are willing to back that bet by giving you this sack of money!" LucasArts would have no reason at all not to look at SWG and go "Welp, sucks to be you."

SWTOR could be a giant fucking flop that sinks EA and LucasArts would just go "Welp, sucks to be you too! Thanks for the cash!" and hand the Star Wars license off to fucking Zynga or something when the contract expires.

[tazelbain]

I missed the part in the blizzard playbook where it says to use expensive third-party IPs.

[Paelos]

SWTOR could be a giant fucking flop that sinks EA and LucasArts would just go "Welp, sucks to be you too! Thanks for the cash!" and hand the Star Wars license off to fucking Zynga or something when the contract expires.

True, to a certain extent. Mortgaging your IP to a 3rd party highest bidder and watching the product tank will make your IP less valuable over time. You and I can argue on this, but I believe that due to the movies, the game flops, and the massive amount of shit books, that the IP is continually declining at a faster pace than it should. I'd have to run a complicated financial analysis to back my gut on that, which nobody wants, but it's just my opinion on the damage you can do to something.

Add in the aging population and the economic factors, and I would say at this point that if SWTOR tanks, the idea of releasing a SW 3rd party game again will be SEVERELY diminished to investors, thus decreasing that IP value. Therefore, I think it's very much in Lucasart's interest to have this game reach an appropriate amount of success.

[DraconianOne]

That doesn't make him wrong.

Doesn't particularly make him right either.

If SWG hadn't gone down the shitter with the CU and the NGE, SWTOR might not have even been put on the table.

Work started on SWTOR (with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight) in March 2006. We know that's when Bioware Austin was set up and I recall that the devs said recently that it's already been worked on for five years. That's only about 6 months after the NGE hit. I don't know what the lead time would be on putting together the proposals, assembling the team, doing all the relevant budget stuff, sorting out contracts etc. but is it reasonable to think that it would take at least 6 months?  Gordon Walton left SOE in March 2005 and Rich Vogel followed suit in May - perhaps enticed by prospect of working on a SW MMO done right?

What I'm getting at is that it's not too much of a leap in imagination to suggest that the proposal for SWTOR came before the NGE even happened. SWG's card may well have been marked after WoW demonstrated how to release an MMO properly and get millions of subscribers.

[DraconianOne]

LucasArts is an intellectual property holder, not an MMO developer. It doesn't foot the development cost for these games

The only problem I have with this statement is the thought that Bioware estimated the budget at however 100s of millions of $ and didn't challenge LA about having to shoulder all the risk. Especially as, prior to EA coming on board, I recall that it looked like LA were going to be the publisher.  Bioware have form for not taking on a project to work on their own IP (see KOTOR 2) and I'd like to believe that if LA weren't contributing to dev costs then Bioware would have told them go jump and started work on a NWN MMO or something. (Yeah, yeah, apart from the fact it's D&D and Atari and all that bollocks).

[WindupAtheist]

Add in the aging population and the economic factors, and I would say at this point that if SWTOR tanks, the idea of releasing a SW 3rd party game again will be SEVERELY diminished to investors, thus decreasing that IP value. Therefore, I think it's very much in Lucasart's interest to have this game reach an appropriate amount of success.

Sure, that's true enough. Still doesn't give LA any reason to content themselves with SWG and it's slowly dwindling fortunes forever, though. Not that you said it did.

The only problem I have with this statement is the thought that Bioware estimated the budget at however 100s of millions of $ and didn't challenge LA about having to shoulder all the risk.

I really don't know for sure, and LA has probably thrown some money in there, but all I hear are rumors about the budget spiralling out of control and how much EA is sinking into it. I wouldn't be surprised if LA coughed up it's proportion of a sane MMO budget up front and EA was left on the hook for whatever else happened.

In any case, SWG was marked for death the moment someone signed off to begin SWTOR development, CU/NGE or not. The billion-dollar dreams going on over there were never going to be dissuaded by SOE going "But we still have 120k craftards in 2011 since the NGE never happened in this timeline!"

[Paelos]

SWG was marked for death due to horrible mismanagement after the first year. I don't think SWTOR does anything except shoot a dying dog.

[DraconianOne]

I really don't know for sure, and LA has probably thrown some money in there, but all I hear are rumors about the budget spiralling out of control and how much EA is sinking into it. I wouldn't be surprised if LA coughed up it's proportion of a sane MMO budget up front and EA was left on the hook for whatever else happened.

Yeah, that sounds plausible. EA came onto the scene in 2007 and were going to joint publish SWTOR with LA. But in Nov 2010 it was announced that EA were going to be sole publishers so the conversation probably started with Bioware saying "Gief moar money plz!", EA telling LA to cough up their share, LA telling EA to die in a fire and foot the bill themselves, EA saying "if we're going to take the risk ourselves then we'll publish it ourselves" and LA saying "Your funeral - we get paid either way."

[WindupAtheist]

SWG was marked for death due to horrible mismanagement after the first year. I don't think SWTOR does anything except shoot a dying dog.

Yeah. It's worth noting that the only two games to have been drug out of Sony's MMO flophouse and put down, SWG and Matrix, are the two with external IP involved. Anything they own lock, stock, and barrel SOE will let go on forever. Fucking Vanguard is still around.

[WindupAtheist]

Welp, from the SWTOR thread we keep bouncing over to...

Story link.

Under the terms of its deal with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game.

With that in mind, LA really had no reason at all not to throw SWG under a bus. It really didn't matter how many subs SWG had. Unless it was a WoW-scale success that SWTOR would balk at besting even in 2011, it was history.

[Tale]

He's just not choosing his moments well. You're wrong a lot. 

Monkeys at typewriters can also be right or wrong about SWG. All I saw was the usual "Look at me! Look at me! Here is my validation-seeking opinion on something others did while I was playing UO."

[Kail]

With that in mind, LA really had no reason at all not to throw SWG under a bus. It really didn't matter how many subs SWG had. Unless it was a WoW-scale success that SWTOR would balk at besting even in 2011, it was history.

I'm not sure I'm following the theory that LA would be doing this.  LA doesn't care about the games, since it's not fitting the development costs.  So why would they care if there are two Star Wars MMOs out there?  Even if some exec believed that SWG was just so amazing that there was no way TOR could compete with it, why would Lucasarts care?  Every customer that TOR loses to SWG, LA still gets a cut.  No matter how much SOE is paying them, it's got to be more than $0, why would you turn down free money like that?

I can see SOE killing the game if it's not turning a profit anymore, or EA making it a condition of their contract (though if they're in a position to be seriously hurt by SWG and it's ten remaining subscribers, TOR is shakier than I thought), but why would LA care one way or the other?

[WindupAtheist]

Monkeys at typewriters can also be right or wrong about SWG. All I saw was the usual "Look at me! Look at me! Here is my validation-seeking opinion on something others did while I was playing UO."

Hey assbucket, why don't you draw on your extensive experience roleplaying a Wookiee hairdresser and share with us the deep insights playing Star Wars Galaxies gave you on the subjects of intellectual property licensing and MMO funding? Because so far it looks like I'm totally fucking right and you're just being a whiny know-nothing pissant as usual. This is at least the second time you've run into a thread going "Don't listen to WUA guys, he's just seeking validation! He didn't play the game so please ignore his completely correct statements!" I think last time it was EQ or some shit.

Also, will you please make up your precious little mind as to whether I'm trolling this thread trying to piss people off (you know, like trolls do) or whether I'm here seeking "validation" as you put it? Because they're sort of exactly contradictory things, you fucking moron.

Even if some exec believed that SWG was just so amazing that there was no way TOR could compete with it, why would Lucasarts care?  Every customer that TOR loses to SWG, LA still gets a cut.

Yeah, sure. I mean technically they could license the SW brand out to fifty companies and as long as they're all paying per head, what does LucasArts care? But there's such a thing as diluting a brand. If I had to guess I'd say someone at LA looked at EQ2 never doing as well as EQ1 and decided they weren't going to have two of these MMO things running at the same time, so let's axe that one that never did all that well in the first place, this new one is going to make us billions!

I mean I figure it has to be LA that dropped the hammer, and that's the best reason I can think of. Given his druthers Smedley will let any piece of shit run forever even if no one is playing.

[Amaron]

You know I'm still not clear why a Sandbox had to have shit combat and why that's OK?   The amount of "BUT...my first sandbox MMO!" nostalgia in this thread is quite staggering on the other hand.   It sort of makes me wonder if just the act of making a sandbox MMO would let you recreate "first MMO!" feeling in diku players.

[Sheepherder]

Also, will you please make up your precious little mind as to whether I'm trolling this thread trying to piss people off (you know, like trolls do) or whether I'm here seeking "validation" as you put it? Because they're sort of exactly contradictory things, you fucking moron.

I will hazard the guess that you are trolling.

Also, I'd guess the meeting went like this:

SOE:  Well, we'd really like to pay less in royalties for the next contracted period, otherwise we'll have to shut down.  Our game isn't doing so well in subscriber numbers, it's hard to make ends meet, and that other game you just approved is going to cannibalize the shit out of what we have left.
LucasArts:  And who's fault is that?
SOE:  Um...  So... you're not going to give us a break?
LucasArts:  Nope.  We'll just have to dry our tears on these giant wads of money Bioware is giving us.

[SnakeCharmer]

He's just not choosing his moments well. You're wrong a lot.  

Monkeys at typewriters can also be right or wrong about SWG. All I saw was the usual "Look at me! Look at me! Here is my validation-seeking opinion on something others did while I was playing UO."

You don't have to have played the game for 2 years before the CU/NGE to know why it was (in hindsight) a failure of an MMO.  Anyone with a half a brain that visited pretty much any gaming site (hell, HERE) would absorb why it sucked ass (again, in hindsight).  It's well documented here for fucks sake.

Combat was broken as fuck and sucked greasy ass and revolved around one thing - attacking the unhealable mind pool (except for Jedi and..Combat Medics (I think)) because the HAM system was broken as fuck.  For most professions, except Jedi, 3/4 of their skills didn't work all the way up to the CU.
Crafting, while innovative, but was pretty much locked out to anyone that didn't have access to materials that poofed like a fart in the wind.  Unless of course, they stuck around for months (years??) until they had enough time (and a HUGE amount of luck) to get materials to make top tier items that people would buy.  
Player cities, another innovative "idea" yanked from UO, were only for people that were around when the housing patch hit the servers in...August 2003, I think...because planets were instantly capped and stayed capped despite people leaving the game in DROVES.  Want to build a city with your guild?  Too bad so sad, buddy.  You gotta wait (and hope to Yodas asscrack) that some city somewhere is going to lose a tier to enable you to drop a shuttleport IF you could drop a city hall to begin with - the planet was most likely capped on empty, vacant cities.
Content?  Hahahaha.  Death Watch Bunker and Geo Cave thing.  Or you could farm krayt dragons and nightsisters IF it wasnt one of the MANY times the spawn generation system threw up on itself and neither one spawned for MONTHS.  Or you could grind up professions.  Or you could go the Jedi route and spend the next 3-4 months poopsocking your ass off trying to get the 9 billion xp needed to create a full temp Jedi at a rate of 1233 xp per kill IF you didn't have X amount XP vacated by death/bounty hunter.  Or you could solo group missions on Dant to get the money necessary to buy buffs and weapons and armor to solo group missions on Dant to buy buffs and weapons and armor.  Or you could duel in front of Theed starport after grinding up an ever so slightly different template using some wacked out weapon you looted off a Nightsister on Dathomir after you did solo group missions on Dant to get the money necessary to buy buffs and weapons and pay for skill boxes.

For 90 percent of the players, that was SWG.  And that's why it sucked.

For 5 percent of the players, it was an RPers heaven.  But they don't pay the bills.  They do make alot of noise on the forums though.

For the other 5 percent that got heavily vested into the game, we made some really great friends in that box that sits on our desk and we played it like EvE.  We have PvP politics, city politics, guild politics, server politics.  We waged wars against each other to take over cities and blow them up with spies.  Or we hunted rival faction/guild Jedi into quitting the game.  A few of us made some serious cash with the help of a pocket CSR getting prepatch 10 Jedi unlocked and ebaying them . An even smaller group of us made more bank ebaying SWG credits obtained a multitude of exploits and dupes and singlehandedly destroyed the economy our very populated server.  Or we totally broke the server into a laggy, craptastic mess MANY a night exploiting the crap out of Endor at the Geo cave and 0, 0 Black Sun waypoint.  Some of us became famous and/or infamous depending on who you talk to.  And alot of us didn't want to let that go.  Honestly, the whole thing brings Stockholme Syndrome to mind.

And, in hindsight, there was a strange psychological phenomenon for me.  It was as if SWG was my early midlife crisis in a lot of ways.  I got hooked, addicted even.  A few months after I quit as a result of the NGE, I could look back with clear eyes and realize just how bad it was before they gutted it.

[Paelos]

He's just not choosing his moments well. You're wrong a lot. 

Monkeys at typewriters can also be right or wrong about SWG.

I find your generalization offensive and will fling poop at you given the next opportunity.

[UnSub]

Welp, from the SWTOR thread we keep bouncing over to...

Story link.

Under the terms of its deal with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game.

With that in mind, LA really had no reason at all not to throw SWG under a bus. It really didn't matter how many subs SWG had. Unless it was a WoW-scale success that SWTOR would balk at besting even in 2011, it was history.

SOE has a similar arrangement with DC for DCUO.

With absolutely no knowledge of SOEs and LAs negotiations, I've little doubt that LA wanted to revise the SWG contract to be more reflective of what they are getting from the SWOR contract. Pachter (link above in my previous post) thought that LA was going to walk away with $5 from every $15 sub - if true, it could easily gut a title like SWG that may not be paying a royalty at that level.