As time moves on, another passing in the MMO world to talk about. The curtain falls on Sony Online Entertainment space mess, "Star Wars Galaxies", as they announced last week that the servers would be shutting down in December of this year. Some people are crying 'foul' while others think...about time. One girl has gone as far as to make a youtube video. decrying this fact, going so far as to tell SOE, SWG, Bioware, and SWTOR to go and fuck themselves (sorry kiddies). I guess i can sympathize with her, to a degree. Nothing sucks (or hurts) more than spending years, building a community and relationships within that community within a game, only to have it cut off. Everything you have strived for mean nothing. Gone....poof....vapourized with the flip of a switch.
I say, good riddance. That being said, I never played the game. In fact, it was the SOE tag that made me turn around and walk away. I think Lucas Arts made the right choice in not renewing the contract with SOE. In my mind, while SOE is one of the biggest companies out there, they have without a doubt, pretty much destroyed anything they have put to market. I think that EQ and EQ2 are the two game that they have not completely screwed up. I am sure they have done some work that leaves a foul, foul taste in their players mouths, but nothing that they havent fixed. One does not totally screw up their flagship game(s). Like Blizzard.....oops.
Lets take a walk down SOE memory lane, starting with EQ, when they started down a story path that left many, and I mean many players wondering "WTF?", with their expac 'Gates of Discord". This content was so unpopular, that people kept playing the "Planes of Power" content with alts. Moving beyond that, some people kept wondering why there were more aliens within their fantasy genre. Plausible, but very silly in my eyes. Moving on, with Planetside, a game I truly enjoyed. Three factions, all player based, total PVP. Fast, frantic, action packed, FUN! Of course, that was beta, as once the game went live, many changes happened. Changes that made the game frustrating, lopsided, and not worth playing. Such is the SOE way. Lets take a look at one of their more recent offerings with DCUniverse Online. This game launched with tremendous amounts of potential. There is the issue, launched with potential. The game was released with a max level of 30, and not much of an end game in sight. People hit that cap, and raided enough to get their top tier armor sets well within the first month, if not few weeks. The replay content of the game is there, with different power sets, abilities and mentor characters. However, I found it hard to bring a 3rd character to max level. The combat was fun, intuitive, and different enough from other games. The story was good, not great, but good.
Another driving factor for me stopping was SOE itself, as an entity. All the forum threads asking for updates, content, complaints were locked down faster than.......I dont know. I cannot think of a joke to insert here.
The apparent disdain SOE hold for their player and fan base blows me away. This is something that has not changed from the days of Everquest, and I mean the early days, before kunark. SOE seems to hold the mantra of "this is our game, and you will play it our way" very near and dear.
Looking back at SWG, their first update, the Combat Upgrade ( I think, dont recall) drove players away en masse. In fact, it took divine intervention from Lucas Arts in order to bring about the New Game Experience, which sadly to say, caused yet another mass exodus of players from the game. Sometime after (2007 or so) LucasArts withdrew their creative contract from SOE, no longer allowing them to create new content for the game. It was revealed shortly there after that Bioware was awarded the contract, and was creating a new Star Wars MMO,
Perhaps, this will herald changes coming to SOE, perhaps they will take their products and fan base more seriously. After all, they have been losing players to other companies and games for years now. They have a chance now to take a look at things, and perhaps change their model, and start backing up their games.
Time will tell, as it is shown, the Force is not with SOE.
As always, Happy gaming.
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